Hold Your Nose -- It's a Garbage Strike

Ricky Hatton's long lost brother

I think Rob Smythe said it best when he described this year's Premier League season as a David Lynch movie: the more you watch, the less you understand. Big Four, like a group of bike couriers on their wedding night, shoot simultaneous blanks, Villa draws in anti-heroic fashion, Tottenham still good, Ince looks sadder and sadder, and the rest of it.

So today, I want only to draw attention to thirty-nine year old Dean 'Deano' Windass. For one, his name is so apt it seems worthy of a Martin Amis novella: he looks like a pub owner who underwent a leg transplant with Linford Christie. He's the man responsible for Hull's Premier League adventure, scoring an incredible volley at Wembley to win the Championship playoffs.

But this weekend Windass scored a very different sort of goal, and, at least when I play football, one of my favourites -- the Garbage Strike.

These are those goals that will never make the highlight reel -- they look controversial, like non-goals, but they count nonetheless and leave everyone scratching their heads. Windass scored it, to draw Pompei against the run of play -- or did he? No, a Paramot own-goal. But what could the defender consciously do to prevent this one (0.22 in) from going in? It is the perfect Garbage Strike -- irreducible, and maddening.

And how close did we come to the Garbage Strike of the century when Van Persie pulled a Best and stripped the ball from Joe Hart's hands, only to have it (probably justifiably) disallowed? And when will someone finally put out the highlight reel of the ugliest non-own goals of the past fifteen years of the Premier League?