Mel piles pressure on Marcelino as Betis face Sevilla

Real Betis Coach Pepe Mel has increased the pressure on his opposite number Marcelino, ahead of this weekend’s Sevilla derby at the Benito Villamarin. Saturday’s match marks the renewal of a long-standing city rivalry, with the first meeting of the two neighbours for almost three years.

Betis go into the derby eleventh in La Liga, just four places and three points behind Los Rojiblancos. Last Sunday they became the first away side to score at Camp Nou in La Liga this term, retrieving a two-goal deficit before eventually succumbing 4-2 to Barcelona.

Sevilla have a poor away record this season, winning just once on the road. They have scored only four goals away from the Ramon Sanchez Pizjuan and conceded just five, testament to Marcelino’s often cagey tactics. Speaking on Wednesday, Mel pointed to the derby as his opponent’s remaining chance to rescue Sevilla’s fading season.

“I know this city well enough to know that Marcelino has got himself into a sticky patch that he can only get out of by winning the derby,” the Betis Coach told Cadena SER radio. “I know he’s a great Coach, but Sevilla’s aim was to be in Europe and win the Copa del Rey but, unfortunately for them, they cannot. They can still finish third in the league, but it will be difficult. Sevilla are favourites (to beat us), but so were Barcelona and they had to fight.”

Betis President Miguel Guillen has worked hard to restore good relations between the two clubs since taking over his new role. His Sevilla counterpart, Jose Maria del Nido, whose own public image is under scrutiny after his conviction for embezzling public funds, denies that Marcelino’s job could be at risk should Betis be victorious on Saturday night.

“We are not considering the possibility of losing, but the Coach’s position isn’t up in the air,” said del Nido. “We’re not having a good championship, but Marcelino is a great worker, a great Coach who knows what he wants. It has taken time to get a team with continuity and we hope that the results come sooner rather than later.”

Form often counts for little in the derby. When the teams last met in February 2009, Betis triumphed 2-1 at the Sanchez Pizjuan, their first win away against their city rivals in 13 years. The victory salvaged some civic pride for Los Verdiblancos but they were relegated at the end of the season, while Sevilla finished third, qualifying for the Champions League.

The historic rivalry between Sevilla and Betis has always been lively and often volatile, on and off the pitch. 2007 saw an all-time low, when a Copa del Rey quarter-final between the two had to be suspended after a Betis supporter threw a projectile at the then Sevilla Coach Juande Ramos, knocking him unconscious. Betis were punished by having to play their next three home matches away from the Villamarin and Sevilla won the replayed Copa match behind closed doors at Getafe.

The build-up to that encounter was dominated by arguments between the two clubs over whether or not del Nido should be allowed into the VIP box at the Villamarin. The Sevilla supremo was eventually admitted, but was pelted with objects thrown by Betis fans as he took his seat. Further controversy ensued when a bronze bust of then Betis owner Manuel Ruiz de Lopera was strategically placed in a seat behind the Sevilla president.

Guillen, for whom Saturday’s derby will be a first-time experience, said del Nido would be welcome at the Villamarin, where he hoped that the match would be ‘without incident.’ He added that, as far as he was concerned, Sevilla were favourites to win the game.

“The derby is a special game in which anything can happen,” he said. “The important thing is that we project a good image and not what has occurred in recent years between the two clubs.”

Elliott piles more pressure on McCarthy

THE WOLVES owner, Steve Morgan, may have promised to keep faith with Mick McCarthy but a growing number of Wolves faithful seem pretty certain the manager has taken them as far as he can. A second-half strike from the prone Wade Elliott was enough for Birmingham City of the Championship to end the Premier League club’s participation in the FA Cup, a defeat which means Wolves have now failed to win any of their last nine games.

Defender Christophe Berra was the only man to retain his place from McCarthy’s team against Spurs last Saturday, which meant a rare start for Kevin Doyle – unquestionably Wolves’ player of the previous two seasons – up front. Doyle may get a lot more games if Wolves receive the sort of offer they cannot turn down for Steven Fletcher, the man who has moved ahead of the Irishman in the Molineux pecking order.

Birmingham manager Chris Hughton also rotated his squad, making six changes to the team who defeated Millwall 6-0. The 17-year-old winger Nathan Redmond, the subject of interest from Arsenal and Liverpool, started but that there was no place in the squad for Liam Ridgewell may suggest West Bromwich Albion will not have to increase their offer by much to receive a positive response.

A small but noisy crowd saw Wolves make and miss the first chance, Adam Hammill twisting clear down the right and putting in a cross which Sylvan Ebanks-Blake, under pressure, contrived to head wide from no more than six yards. The right flank was an occasionally productive channel for the home team and a Matt Doherty cross almost gave Ebanks-Blake a chance to atone for his earlier miss.

A clash of heads between team-mates David Murphy and Jean Beausejour briefly reduced Birmingham to nine men, and having survived, they should have taken the lead. Berra unaccountably allowed a hopeful punt to fall over his head, allowing Adam Rooney to run clear on goal. The former Inverness Caledonian Thistle forward delayed his shot long enough for George Elokobi to get in a challenge.

Berra was similarly lax in allowing Curtis Davies to escape his attentions and bring a decent save from Dorus de Vries with a header shortly before half-time. Jonathan Spector drove just wide as Birmingham ended the first half on top.

The Blues continued to have the better of it after the break. McCarthy will have been disappointed that Jordon Mutch was allowed to run from deep before driving in a low shot which De Vries parried, but Doherty was unlucky when his fierce shot from outside the area was deflected straight into the hands of Colin Doyle.

The sight of Fletcher warming up shortly after the hour mark drew warm applause from the crowd and may have served a purpose in encouraging the Wolves players to up their efforts. Eggert Jonsson’s firm shot was saved by Doyle, the Icelanders’ last contribution before being replaced by Adlene Guedioura, but not long after Fletcher was introduced Birmingham took the lead. The goal was as messy as much of the game, in that Elliott was on the floor, having seen his first attempt to turn in a corner hit the post, when the ball was poked back towards him by Murphy. The former Burnley player swung a foot, and got enough on the ball to turn it past De Vries.

Man banned from insect infested flat after hoarding rotting food and rubbish

A MAN who put his neighbours through a 'living hell' has been kicked out of his flat by a court.

Anthony Drake, aged 54, filled his Efford home with rubbish and rotten food, leading to an infestation of cockroaches, flies and fleas.

Plymouth Magistrates' Court heard housing officials were even worried the floor could collapse in to the flat below because of the weight of his belongings.

Neighbours also said they had been kept up through the night by loud music.

Magistrates have given Drake an indefinite antisocial behaviour order banning him from his flat in Pike Road.

He must also not abuse or threaten any person in Plymouth.

Dylan Sadler, applying for the order for Plymouth City Council, said: "Allowing him to return to that flat would be condemning the neighbours to a living hell."

Drake contested the order, promising to clear some of the belongings from the flat and not to play loud music.

He added: "I am no threat to anyone."

The court heard Drake filled his flat with furniture, broken television sets, a bicycle and piles of food.

City council antisocial behaviour officer Debbie Goad told the court: "I have never seen anything like it in my life. He is a hoarder. The property was filled with all manner of things. There was an awful lot of food in there."

She said she could see cockroaches, flies and later found she was covered in flea bites.

Miss Goad said it was hardly possible to get through the flat, save for a small path between the piles of belongings. She added even his bed was piled high with belongings, forcing Drake to sleep underneath it with his dog.

Miss Goad said Drake had no underlying mental illness and had not co-operated with efforts to find another home.

Steven Didymus, from landlords Plymouth Community Homes, said nine lorry loads of rubbish were taken from the garden alone.

He added the flat had to be decontaminated three times by a specialist cleaning company.

Mr Didymus said: "There was a concern that the floor could have fallen into the flat below were it to get any worse."

He added that there had been no complaints of antisocial behaviour since an interim antisocial behaviour order was granted in August last year.

Neighbour Vivien Nevill said in one incident before the order her partner was threatened with a knife outside the flat.

She added: "I was petrified in my own property. I was scared to go out the door. It has been blissful since he left."

The college student said her work suffered because she was kept up at night by loud music, often finishing at midnight and starting again at 5am.

Ms Nevill also said Drake regularly left piles of stale food outside her door.

Miss Goad said another neighbour was forced to give up her job as a carer because she could not sleep at night.

The resident, who wanted to remain anonymous, said Drake had chased her son down the street.

PCSO Chris Kinski said Drake was an amphetamine user.

Drake will be allowed one visit, accompanied by a policeman or council officer, to the flat to collect his belongings.

Alaska winter piles on more snow for weather-weary

The worst winter anyone can remember in Alaska has piled snow so high people can't see out the windows, kept a tanker in ice-choked waters from delivering fuel on time and turned snow-packed roofs into sled runs.

While most of the nation has gone without much seasonal snow, the state already known for winter is buried in weather that has dumped more than twice as much snow as usual on its largest city, brought out the National Guard and put a run on snow shovels.

As a Russian tanker crawled toward the iced-in coastal community of Nome to bring in much-needed fuel, weather-weary Alaskans awoke Thursday to more of the white stuff and said enough was enough.

"The scary part is, we still have three more months to go," said Kathryn Hawkins, a veterinarian who lives in the coastal community of Valdez, about 100 miles southeast of Anchorage. "I look out and go, `Oh my gosh, where can it all go?'"

More than 26 feet of snow has fallen in Valdez since November. The 8-foot snow piles outside Hawkins' home are so high she can't see out the front or back of her house. Her 12-year-old son has been sliding off the roof into the yard.

In the nearby fishing community of Cordova, more than 172 inches of snow has fallen since November; snow began falling again after midnight Wednesday. The Alaskan National Guard was called in to help move the snow, and the city is running out of places to put it. Front-end loaders are hauling snow from dump piles to a snow-melting machine.

"That's our big issue, getting our snow dumps cleared for the next barrage of snow," Cordova spokesman Allen Marquette said.

Anchorage had 88 inches fall as of Thursday _ more than twice the average snowfall of 30.1 inches for the same time period. The weather service counts July 1 through the end of June as a snow season. More than 7 inches had fallen on Thursday and more than a foot was expected.

This year's total already broke the record 77.3 inches that fell during the same period in 1993-94. If it keeps up, Anchorage is on track to have the snowiest winter ever, surpassing the previous record of 132.8 inches in 1954-55.

Two atmospheric patterns are behind the state's massive snowfall: the Pacific weather pattern known as La Nina, and another called the Arctic Oscillation that has been strong this year, changing air patterns to the south and keeping the coldest winter air locked up in the Arctic.

"Alaska is definitely getting the big dump," said Bill Patzert, a climate expert at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

Many of the lower 48 states have seen an unusually mild start to the winter. A storm dumped several inches of snow on northwestern Wisconsin and western Iowa before moving eastward and to start blanketing Milwaukee, St. Louis and Chicago, which was expected to get up to 8 inches by Friday morning.

In the ice-choked frozen waters of the Bering Sea, a Russian tanker loaded with 1.3 million gallons of fuel progressed steadily toward Nome, following the path being painstakingly plowed by a Coast Guard icebreaker. Thick ice, wind and unfavorable ocean currents had initially slowed the vessel down; but as of 2 p.m. Thursday the tanker and the icebreaker were 46 miles from Nome and likely to arrive Friday, said Coast Guard spokesman David Mosley.

The city missed its final pre-winter delivery of fuel by barge when a big storm swept the region last fall. Without the delivery, Nome could run short of fuel before another barge arrives in late spring, forcing fuel to be flown in and raising prices as high as $9 a gallon. Gasoline was selling for Gasoline was selling for $5.43 on Thursday.

The weather has put a strain on the state, which estimates the cost of paying for guard members in Cordova, heavy equipment, fuel and other costs at $775,000, said emergency management spokesman Jeremy Zidek.

In Anchorage, schools were open Thursday, but some school bus routes were canceled because of whiteout driving conditions.

"I think people were girding their loins for a long winter," said Anchorage police Lt. Dave Parker. He hasn't seen an upsurge of crime, but "by the end of March, there might be a few frustrated people."

In Cordova, shovel-makers were making emergency shipments to help out. There are plenty of standard shovels around town, but they're lacking a version with a 26-inch scoop that can push a cubic foot of snow or better at a time.

The new shovels cost about $50 each, and the city is paying for them with emergency funds.

"We have the National Guard right now using the standard shovel, and they're getting pretty trashed everyday _ not the shovels but the Guardsmen themselves," city spokesman Tim Joyce said.

The warmer temperatures _ about 35 degrees midday Wednesday _ brought another hazard to the Prince William Sound community of 2,200 people: avalanche danger.

The one road leading out of the city was closed, and the city warned people not to stand under the eaves of their houses to clear snow off the roof.

"There's a real high potential that if it does slide, they'd be buried," Joyce said.

The snow has damaged four commercial buildings and two homes and evacuated a 24-unit apartment complex in Cordova.

The current storm system is expected to be gone by Friday, but temperatures were expected to fall as low as 10 below zero this weekend, making it more difficult to shovel harder, packed snow.

If there's one fan of the snow in Valdez, it's 12-year-old Trevor, Kathryn Hawkins' son. School is out and the snow is piled so high on the roof that he turned it into a sledding hill.

"When it first started snowing, he said, `More, more, more snow,' and I'm like, `Will you stop it? We've had enough.'" Hawkins said.

"And that was before all this came. He said, `I want to slide off the roof again,'" she said. "And now he can, to his heart's content."

Romney’s riches buying him piles of trouble

In Disney’s version, McDuck is Donald Duck’s rich uncle, fond of diving into his money bin and swimming through his pile of coins. Romney achieved much the same effect years ago when he posed with fellow Bain Capital executives for a photo showing paper money pouring from their pockets and mouths.

But as he stumped through New Hampshire Monday, his riches were bringing him a wealth of trouble.

Speaking at a Chamber of Commerce event at a Radisson hotel here, he was discussing the value of shopping around for health insurance when he turned to the camera and said, with perverse pleasure, “I like being able to fire people who provide services to me.”

Thus did the likely Republican nominee film, pro bono, one of President Obama’s first re-election ads.

If this weren’t enough evidence that Romney represented the Plutocrat Progress Party, the first questioner confirmed it.

“In this historic election, we need to convince the masses that our vision as conservatives benefits them,” she said. “So my question is: How will you as the nominee get the minds of America behind you?”

At least she didn’t say “unwashed masses.”

Romney didn’t show any concern that the woman had spoken aloud from the plutocrats’ playbook. “That is the question of my campaign, of course,” he said.

The candidate worried aloud on Sunday that “there were a couple of times I wondered if I was going to get a pink slip” when he worked in the consulting business ― an enterprise that helped build his personal wealth to as much as $250 million.

Perhaps realizing that the pink-slip pronouncement was problematic, the owner of multiple homes and horses asserted on Monday that, “I started off, actually, at the entry level, coming out of graduate school.”

Newly minted MBAs from Romney’s Harvard can count on making well into the six figures in their “entry-level” jobs at consulting firms.

The entry-level explanation didn’t advance far with Romney’s rivals.

Rick Perry, whose net worth is rather south of Romney’s, responded while touring a restaurant in South Carolina: “Now, I have no doubt that Mitt Romney was worried about pink slips― whether he was going to have enough of them to hand out because his company, Bain Capital, with all the jobs that they killed, I’m sure he was worried that he’d run out of pink slips.”

And Newt Gingrich described Bain Capital as a “small group of rich people manipulating the lives of thousands of people and taking all the money.”

Gingrich, however, lives in a glass mansion on this one. He boasts about his $60,000-a-pop speeches and has taken to complaining about food-stamp recipients in his speeches in New Hampshire.

By the time Romney arrived at his next event on Monday, he was clearly out of sorts. He mixed up his own offspring in making introductions: “My third son is Ben, who has been missing. He’s a doctor from Utah. He came in last night. Special applause.” After the applause, Romney revised: “What did I say? My third son is coming tonight. Ben is my fourth.”

Romney went on to attempt to explain the value of shopping around for health insurance― this time without mentioning the pleasure he gets from firing people. He likened it to auto insurance.

“If you watch on TV, the little animal, little gecko? You see these guys competing hard for your business.”

In the audience, many of the 150 reporters looked at one another and smiled.

The candidate had already treated them to a wealth of blue-blooded phrases during the day, seasoning his speech to the Chamber of Commerce with phrases such as “net-net” and “if you’re in a C-corporation” and “get a pro forma together.”

Romney was not done with his “firing” line, however. After his event, held in a metal fabricating plant, he returned to take questions from the unwashed masses of the news corps, including 35 TV cameras.

He said that his fondness for firing was limited to health-insurance providers, and that “people are going to take things out of context and make it something it is not.”

This from a man who recently released an ad appearing to show President Obama saying that “if we keep talking about the economy, we’re going to lose.” In fact, Obama, in the 2008 passage, was quoting an aide to John McCain.

And now Romney is complaining about being taken out of context? That’s rich.