More days at the races

It seems like only yesterday Jenson Button was clinching the motor racing title many people believed he was doomed never to win.

However, it wasn't yesterday; it was months ago. And now, in what feels like the blink of an eye, the new season is ready to kick off in Bahrain today. And, all things considered, it looks like a pretty interesting package of races this year.

For a start, Button and Lewis Hamilton, the last two champions, will both be driving for the same team, which is rather unusual in itself. Expect McLaren to insist there will be no favouritism.

And I am sure there won't be, provided young Hamilton is winning.

That's not to say they won't give Button support - of course they will. I just have a hunch that, when push comes to shove, they will tend to favour the young man they have been nurturing since he was in nappies. Nothing to do with his higher levels of marketability, of course.

Then there is the return of legend Michael Schumacher, which is sure to spice things up a bit on the track. Has he still got what it takes or should he have left well enough alone and not risked the potential damage to his reputation? My money is on the former. It may be a bit much to expect him to win the title with the new Mercedes team, at least this season, but he will be pushing for podiums.

If all that wasn't enough to ensure some exciting times ahead then we also have a few new teams on the grid to shake things up. One of them at least is rumoured to be in a position to spring the occasional surprise, although I expect the others to be as competitive on the track as a one-armed man driving a 1980s Skoda. In reverse.

As a sport, F1 had been going through a bit of a dull patch up until last season, when it seemed to burst back into life once more. Hopefully, those new levels of excitement will be maintained or even overtaken this time round. It's just a shame Toyota are no longer involved in the sport. Imagine what they could have achieved if they fitted their F1 cars with accelerators from the Prius.

There would have been no stopping them. Literally.

Save your tears for Chester City

The full extent of Portsmouth's dire situation really started to hit home this week when the club's administrator made 85 people redundant. It was part of the severe cost-cutting measures being introduced at Fratton Park, as the administrators try to save the club and make it more appealing to potential new buyers.

But while I do feel sorry for those who find themselves out of work, I don't share this wave of sympathy that seems to be building towards the ailing Premier League club.

It seems that everyone is saying 'ahh, poor Pompey' every time the club is mentioned and that is normally accompanied by a 'you've got to feel sorry for the fans'.

To a small extent you do. But let's not forget that it was these very same fans who loved every second of the big time, who lapped up every star player they signed and who jumped for joy when their over-spending helped them to an FA Cup victory.

I bet during those heady days you wouldn't have found a single one who was saying 'hold on a bit, can we really afford everything we are doing?'. I'm sure the conversations down the pub were not about cash flow and balance sheets but about who should be next on the shopping list of glory.

Don't get me wrong, I am absolutely not happy that the club finds itself in the mess it is currently in. I wouldn't wish that on any club. But sympathy is a commodity I find in short supply as far as Portsmouth is concerned.

Because if you want to feel sorry for a club, then do so for Chester City. This week, they were finally closed down after fighting a running battle to stay afloat for years. And that brought to an end a 126-year existence - making them 14 years older than Portsmouth, if slightly less glamorous.

Their problems were those you would expect a lower league club to face - falling crowds and lack of revenue. They were not guilty of overspending in search of success. In fact they finally lost their battle for survival over an unpaid tax bill of just £26,125. To put that in perspective, Portsmouth winger John Utaka is rumoured to be on roughly £80,000 a week.

There were no millionaires waiting to save Chester. No Premier League ready to offer the help and assistance to avoid the embarrassment of their demise. There were no star players that could be sold to raise desperately needed cash.

A living, breathing club died this week and it barely registered with the football world. So if you don't mind I will reserve my sympathies for Chester City and the 400 or so fans that turned up for their last ever football match back in February.

To me that's a darned sadder sight .

Your say

Important note to self: If you don't want to have to trawl through tonnes of e-mails from Manchester United fans saying how incredibly amazing, brilliant and superb their team is, stop trying to point out that, without Wayne Rooney, they are average.

"Once again you keep insisting how good Rooney is and how mediocre his teammates are. You made some curious calculations about points Rooney earned for United. Maybe you can enlighten us readers how many points would, for instance, Chelsea have without Drogba, Arsenal without Fabregas, Liverpool without Torres, Man City without Tevez, Barcelona without Messi, and so on.

"Wayne Rooney is a great United player and he is surrounded with great players - fact. These players work hard to create spaces and deliver crosses for him - fact. When Ronaldo was a United player, Rooney also did all that without being given much credit - fact." Mark Galea.

"A one-man team? Though observers of their relatively poor display at Wolves would argue otherwise, the statistics declare that Manchester United cope just fine, if not better, without Rooney.

"They've won the last eight matches he has missed, with October's 2-1 win over Bolton accounting for the other league game this season that he was absent for, and United have lost just six of the 61 games he has sat out since his arrival at Old Trafford in August 2004.

"It's a statistic that perhaps only proves that statistics can be misleading, but United's win percentage is actually slightly higher for the matches Rooney has missed than it is for the games he has played in." Claudio Sultana.

"Can you please stop showing your ignorance by insisting Manchester United is a one man team? There is so much more to them than just Wayne Rooney and it is about time you accepted that. Move on and accept their overall, not individual, brilliance." John Muscat.

"I read your column about the tickets you 'won' to the World Cup in South Africa, and it hurt me just as much to read it as it did, I'm sure, to write it. I'm in sort of a similar situation, except kind of reversed. I applied for my World Cup tickets in the first ticket sales phase, thinking I would never in my wildest dreams actually get them.

"I applied, thinking to myself: if I don't apply, I'm going to be kicking myself in June, regretting I didn't apply for them. One morning, like you, I received an e-mail stating that my visa had been charged.

"My heart kind of sank, because I wasn't really expecting to get them. My stomach then recovered and turned into a joy because I realised I had tickets to the World Cup. My initial plan was to pick the games that I wanted to go to (with some friends), and then just sell the other ones that I didn't want. That is until I happened to come across an article saying that Fifa would not be mailing out the tickets as they had done previously (I watched the Germany-Italy semi final in 2006) and to top it off, the applicant would be the one who had to pick up the tickets, with no exceptions. The applicant cannot even transfer his/her tickets.

"So now that's where my dilemma lies. I can't afford to take a whole month off work, and I can't just go ahead and sell the tickets for the matches I can't make. I've been stressing over trying to get rid of these tickets now for a few months, and it's taken the whole lustre off the World Cup. I now have no desire to go to South Africa, and it now makes me think that I will never apply for tickets to another World Cup again.

"The very fact that I can't do with the tickets as I please (within reason of course), and that they're telling me I have to attend, has left such a bitter taste in my mouth, that I now resent anything that has to do with Fifa. I live in Canada and, as you know, it's a little further from South Africa then Malta is, but the problems are the same for the both of us. We now have tickets for games we do not want to attend.

"I wish they would just mail us the tickets (or allow us to transfer them) without any problems. After all, it's not like it's only a two-hour drive to South Africa.

"I just felt compelled to write to you after seeing what you've gone through, and let you know you're not the only one who's upset at the way Fifa have done things." Carmine, Toronto

sportscolumnist@timesofmalta.com