El-Reacho

I can't get my head around a clean Wiggins finishing just 30 seconds behind a doped Armstrong over three weeks in the 2009 Tour. Especially when Matt White was the DS shouting instructions from the car.

I really like Cavendish the way he speaks about doping - he speaks with the natural anger and exasperation that you would expect of someone who's being cheated. Valverde, Samuel Sanchez, Schleck etc show that the the problems are still deep rooted in the peloton the way the have reacted. There still seems to be a culture of hatred towards the guys that have confessed to doping, and a total acceptance of those that have been caught and tired to maintain their innocence. It makes it pretty hard to banish everything to the past and draw a line under it when that still goes on. A good example is Levi Leipheimer being sacked by Omega Pharma Lotto. There's no way on this earth they can only have found out about Levi when the USADA report came out, but when the world's media are focused on them they hang Leipheimer out to dry. Am a bit gutted that Cavendish has gone there - there's no way those guys represent a clean future for cycling.

Pat McQuaid (if he can be believed) has said that cyclists make up only one quarter of the athletes that were identified in Operacion Puerto. Given the money that Fuentes was charging you could only have paid for his services if you were a top level professional athlete. The cyclists who were interviewed about Fuentes reportedly said they saw La Liga footballers in the offices when they were there. L'equipe reported that there was Barcelona and Real players identified within the investigation but it's always been denied by the Spanish. Rafa Nadal has also been heavily linked. You would imagine the Spanish authorities would be absolutely desperate to ensure a doping scandal involving Barca, Real, or even Nadal didn't come out. Something like that would dwarf the Armstrong scandal. But you have to ask the question what other athletes could afford to spend the money Ullrich, Hamilton, Basso etc. could spend to make up the other three quarters?

Pat McQuaid will be interviewed on RTE Radio 1 this morning (it's online). It's with Pat Kenny, with good reason as it would be the equivalent of him going on Lorraine Kelly in UK. Hopefully he will try and ask him some of the questions everyone wants answered but I wouldn't hold my breath. McQuaid has refused to go on any of the other radio shows where he'd be taken to pieces. Kimmage was on Matt Cooper last night: media.todayfm.com/podcast/68383

Grenade tossed ;-) Differing opinions in here I think.

Pantani's biography is superb - it's anything but amusing; is very dark and very sad. Whilst both he and Lance were both dopers, Pantani is still incredibly likeable. Totally self-destructive though. He was in a crash in the mid-90's and when they took him to the hospital and took his blood his heamatocrit was 60%.

I see Cadel finally admitted to working with Ferrari - for fitness training only.... A good day to bury some news!

I'd say there's more chance that Zulle was clean in 1999 than Escartin. Kelme (Escartin's team) was one of the filthiest of that era - Fuentes was actually their team doctor at one stage I think. Zulle had just been arrested, interrogated, strip searched, and jailed and then banned the year before. 1999 was supposedly pretty clean (with the obvious exception of USPS) who had motoman following them, as everyone was scared to death of being arrested. There's as good an argument that Zulle was clean for the race, as there is that Escartin was doped IMHO. But then as EPO gave a 15-20% increase in performance at the time, the strongest argument would suggest the top 30-40 riders could have been doped.

Schleck showed exactly where he stands when he begrudgingly won the 2010 Tour because of Contador's positive - I reckon he still considers Contador to be the winner; Alberto certainly does. It's clearly not the done thing in the omerta to take your rightful win when someone else gets caught. Unless they actually confess to it in which case they are immediately thrown under the bus. Schleck and Contador are likely to be challenging for Tour for the next 5/6/7 years - doesn't exactly fill you with confidence that the dark days are behind us. It's clear that the omerta is still very much in place - does that definitely mean the drugs are still there too? Or is it just the attitudes regarding the past? It's just as easy to beat the tests now as it was 10 years ago, if you were a doper why would you stop?

This is well worth a listen. Millar immediately went on the PR drive about how clean the sport was now and the enormous amount of work that had been done, despite Dick Pound, Michael Ashenden, Tyler, and Matt Dicanio all saying there was still serious problems in cycling and in wider sport - I only wish they'd challenged him on it directly. It's amazing that Ashenden didn't bother watching the olympics he's so unconvinced by the integrity of the performances. Great programme though.

Wow - have never heard that. That would leave Nike's image in tatters too. I'm sure you were impressed with Phil's comments yesterday Paulo? Utterly utterly ludicrous. Does anyone think Lance will confess? I think the pressure on him to respond will grow and grow, and if he denies it again now after the media have ditched him he'll probably only harm what's left of his reputation even more (if possible!).

http://goo.gl/HRLrx Good article - first other than kimmage to ask questions of current and 'new age' teams.

Vaughters, Millar, McQuaid and various other people who stand to earn alot of money from the sport are banging on about how clean the sport is. This guy, who has nothing to gain from it said this however: http://goo.gl/ev938 When he says about 'new age' teams he can only be referring to Garmin or Sky. Reckon it might have been Barry he was referring to, given that he only testified to USADA a couple of weeks ago. I will be genuinely excited when someone does what Lance actually suggested and never bothered doing, and hires an independent doping expert to follow them around France for the duration of the Tour - takes their blood every day and publishes their analysis of it with their opinion every evening. That would be a truly impressive tour winner.

The thing that upsets me most about Sky is that the engineered PR is identical to Lance and USPS. They create headlines for the mass market, that they know will hit the BBC and Sky websites, like not hiring Millar, like their proposed seminar on their methods that was supposed to happen this October, like their marginal gains techniques, or like their investigation into Leinders. But once the mass media clears off they obviously have no intention of answering questions on any of the detail, like Brailsford saying 'er I think we've done an investigation into Leinders' a few weeks back. Now that the Tour's finished and the media storm has disappeared there's no mention of any seminar. They won't answer questions as to why the marginal gains techniques only work for four riders on their team and only seem to have worked in the last 18 months. The blood values thing was exactly the same as Lance when he announced his comeback. When the world's media was watching Lance said he would publish all of his blood values for all to see, but once they had all cleared off he never bothered his arse. Sky have done something similar; launching a team on the principals of transparency and being clean was more important than winning races when they started (their words), but since then they've never published anything, and won't allow journalists to ask any doping related questions. The current PR spin in peloton in dealing with the Lance situation seems to be to keep quoting '10-15 years ago' and the 'dark ages' of cycling - which I reckon has led to Wiggo's bizarre denial of even racing with Lance. The doping experts seem to be quite sure that the omerta and drug abuse is still alive and well in the peloton.

Yates, Rodgers, Julich, all tarnished. Knaven and DeJong both thrown off the Tour during the Festina scandal because of team wide doping in TVM. Leinders and Barry both former employees. And yet they make their stand that David Millar could never be allowed ride for the team.

http://goo.gl/LO5e2 Samuel Sanchez doesn't believe that Lance is guilty..... Omerta alive and well it seems.

Sky feeling the heat here a bit. Their 'not hiring anyone connected with drugs' line is starting to fall apart. Michael Barry apparently hid his past from Brailsford, Michael Rodgers is named in Levi Leipheimer's testimony as training with Ferrari. Is Leinders the Rabobank Doctor referred to who supplied him? The timing of his sacking from Sky (or at least the announcement of it) seems strangely coincidental. Fair play to Brailsford for going on R5 live last night, but a comment from Brad wouldn't go a miss - especially when the emails show that lance doped to deny him a podium spot in 2009. The silence from the sport's top riders is deafening.

Deffo - when Gabby's in the form he was in the other night he's not unlike Rooney in the role that he plays, running at defences from deep and bringing in the other striker. I reckon it's why he thrived under O'Neill's system - he was able to burst forward from deep as we caught teams on the break.

How was the team set up last night? Did we stick with the diamond with two up front? Where did Zog fit in and Albrighton when he came on?

Will see PL's skills at adapting his side now. The faults in the side were evident on Saturday, so it will be interesting to see where he takes us from here. I wonder will Albrighton get a look in, which would mean a change in the formation. Maybe Albrighton and gabby either side of Benteke. Will be interesting to see how he replaces Ireland in the side also. I don't think it will be a case of keeping this formation and swapping the personnel around.

Brilliant. J'Loyd Samuel's injured.

Just goes to show how competent the management were. I mean, we had Herd, Lichaj and even Cuellar who could and all did do a better job at RB than Hutton. Thank God McLeish and his obsession with "experience" is gone. In fairness to you know who, Lichaj was injured until Xmas and Carlos didn't get back till the end of October so we did need to get an RB in and Hutton did play well for Scotland for a while. Hutton was signed a couple of days after Chris Herd had put in one of the stand out performances of the season at right back against Wolves I think. There was no need for such desperation in signing a RB IMHO.

Aye I thought Herd was Wiemann. Recognised Lowton and Benteke from Saturday but didn't know what the other deadline day signings looked like.

Are the two guys who are doing Pedal for Petrov in that photo?

Think Guzan's centred because he's a few inches taller than the others (pretty much everyone else in the photo). Dunne's clearly enjoyed his summer, he looks huge.