These are the Champions...

Another round of Champion's League group matches and another round of debate regarding the pointlessness and drudgery of the stages prior to the knockout round. The Guardian's match commentary of Chelsea and Atlético kicked off with one reader writing in and making the point that Kazan's brilliant away win at Barca will, at the end of the day, most likely amount to nowt. These one off upsets, the argument goes, lack excitement in the face of what the results mean in larger picture of the competition - Barca will make it out of the group stages and Kazan will still struggle to pip Inter and Kiev to the other spot.

Pass It! investigative reporter PJ Tizzo took time out from his plans to sabotage the Fascist All Star match in Madrid to call in and express his hope against hope that Atletico could take something from Chelsea. Of course as nice as it would be to see Chelsea drop points it would ultimately prove meaningless. Like Barca, Chelsea will most certainly make it out of their group. And like finding out there's no sex in the champagne room and what this costs you on your monthly credit card statement, we'll probably find another knockout round stacked with the usual Madrid's and Chelsea's and look back at that increasingly meaningless titillation of an "upset".

And if anyone wants to argue about the scousers don't even bother. While its certainly disappointing for a team of their expectations and standards to find themselves with two losses, its not much of an upset that these have come against Fiorentina and Lyon.

Talking points amongst the drudgery:

Will discussion of Rangers and Celtic joining the Premiership please end? Beaten, no slaughtered, at home against Unirea, there's something terribly rotten in the state of Glasgow. And you can't just blame it on lack of cash from TV rights. Last time I checked the Romania first division wasn't exactly shitting gold eggs.

Pirlo's goal against Milan - Team of the Decade stuff. Take that. In fact the fascismo derbi made a case for an interesting group stage match - five goals, terrible referring, a few handbags and more flowing locks than a L'Oreal commercial.

Are Sevilla shaping up to be the dark horse of the tournament? Granted they've only beaten a troubled Stuttgart, a shite Rangers and a Romanian side whose name conjures up a searing pain in the unmentionables. At any rate their one hundred percent record and recent victory in La Liga against Real Madrid have them poised for the more interesting part of the tournament.

And since Pass It! is not only about big, nasty, commercial football we'll mention that Gareth Southgate finally got the sack. Boro might be fourth but they've already lost four games and conceded only two fewer goals than Doncaster Rovers, who are in eighteenth in the league. Also, our favourite manager, Ian Holloway, saw his Blackpool side moved up to fifth in a very competitive league after a convincing 3-0 win against Sheffield United. Holloway, an often overlooked genius, is most famous for this gem:

"To put it in gentleman's terms if you've been out for a night and you're looking for a young lady and you pull one, some weeks they're good looking and some weeks they're not the best. Our performance today would have been not the best looking bird but at least we got her in the taxi. She weren't the best looking lady we ended up taking home but she was very pleasant and very nice, so thanks very much, let's have a coffee."

Until next time, when we can only hope to find a fitter bird...