Red Lolly, Yellow Lolly

By London_Duncan Last edited 214 months ago
Red Lolly, Yellow Lolly
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It's five miles outside the Greater London border. It's five miles inside the M25. The clincher for us is that it's on the Metropolitan line. Just. Right at the end there, next to Croxley. And so it is that Londonist doffs its cap to Watford's stunning achievement in reaching the Premiership when they crushed Leeds United 3-0 in the Coca Cola Championship playoff final at the Millennium Stadium in Cardiff on Sunday.

Last night they enjoyed an open-top bus tour around the town and soon they'll have to work out what to spend that much quoted £40m of extra income on. It might have bought broadband access for 2,582 schools across London, 35 gastro-pubs scattered around the country or a brand new tennis centre in Roehampton. It could instead buy them most of Michael Essien and Shaun Wright-Phillips so long as Chelsea will sell and neither of them want paying.

Shaun was, of course, a dead cert for the England world cup squad which was definitely going to be playing warm up games at the new Wembley before departing for Germany. Sadly neither he nor a pitch was anywhere to be seen as the squad gained some useful practice in the wearing of hard hats after something hadn't gone according to plan when they visited the stadium site today so that Sven could check the sightlines from the seat up in the stands that he'll be sipping expensive wine from during England's next qualifying campaign. You can catch some other international footballers larking about at Craven Cottage, Fulham tomorrow afternoon as part of ITV's Soccer Aid series. The Rest of the World former players and celebrities will take on an XI of ex-Scotland internationals and if the England lads fancy popping over I'm sure Lothar Mattheus, Marcel Desailly and even David Campese would be happy to show them their world cup winners' medals.

Meanwhile Czech star Tomas Rosicky has just arrived at Arsenal after an unexpected last minute detour from Madrid. The zippy creative midfielder, soon to feature in our guide to picking a competitive world cup fantasy football team, will doubtless have been delighted to be told on his arrival from Dortmund that Panini are producing a special sticker of new team-mate Jens Lehmann which can be placed over the picture of second choice German goalkeeper Oliver Kahn in the world cup album for those of you who, like Jens himself, enjoy rushing out to collect cards.

Last Updated 24 May 2006