AOB: Michel Platini is great

Not much to report from the good ship CUFC this week. We can only hope that the lack of news coming out of the Abbey means there haven't been anymore players picking up ankle injuries.

Anyway, I'm a bit of a Francophile as it goes. In fact next week I'll be heading across the channel for a holiday with my lovely (half-french) girlfriend, where I'll look forward to eating good food, drinking good wine, and nearly getting run over by psychopathic Parisien drivers. In short, I'm a big fan.

But, even if you are less keen on our Gallic cousins than I, you can hardly fail to have been impressed by Michel Platini's first year in charge of UEFA.

It's nice to see a football administrator talking sense for once. Only this week Platini has stepped in on behalf of Cardiff, as a tide of buerocracy threatens to deny them a place in Europe next season should they triumph in the FA Cup. Previously he has come out in favour of reducing the number of teams from the Premier League qualifying for the Champions League, and condemned the "malign and ever present influence of money" in our game.

While this may all seem like fairly basic, obvious stuff to you and I, it's worth remembering that the best ideas from the other leading figure in world Football, FIFA's Sepp Blatter, involve female players wearing tighter shorts, making goals bigger and scrapping draws. He also encourages the "malign and ever present influence of money" into his own bank account, if ongoing allegations into FIFA finances are to be believed.

So yeah, well played Mr Platini. In the increasingly corrupt, cash-orientated, cartel that is world football, it seems at least someone in charge appears to have the good of the game at heart.