Mikel taking

Indulge me a little football post. My team, Everton, have sold my favourite player, Mikel Arteta, to Arsenal, for £10m.  Other people liked him as well - Coleen Rooney tweeted this morning that son Kai had Mikel's name on the back of his toddler Everton kit - and you can bet that was dad's call.

With a few contributions from others, Arteta, for the past five years, has provided a shaky link with the old "school of soccer science" that was the legacy of Johnny Carey's management and John Moores' millions at Goodison Park in the 1960s. A classy player, who some fans will say has been "hiding" a little recently in the rough and tumble of mid-table clashes with Birmingham, Bolton, Blackburn, Stoke, Sunderland and Wolves. On the wide-open spaces of the Emirates, in front of 60,000 seats, not one obscured by a cast-iron pillar from the 1920s, there'll be no hiding place for Mikel. I wish him well.

Follow, follow, follow,
Everton are the team to follow
And there's nobody better
Than Mikel Arteta
He's the best little Spaniard we know

(Vaguely to the tune of Scott Joplin's The Entertainer)