Mark Butcher's Blog by Mark_Butcher

So what a final day of the January transfer window it turned out to be. Honestly, I don't mean to besmirch my footballing brethren but doesn't the whole thing just make you feel a little queasy? It certainly did my drummer, Roy Martin. As staunch a Liverpool fan as there ever was, he could hardly raise a stick during rehearsals on Saturday, such was his distress and disappointment over Fernando Torres' last minute transfer request. As a Crystal Palace fan I hardly get the opportunity to be upset over big names wanting to leave the club, but, I was thoroughly disheartened to hear that Charlie Adam, Blackpool's midfield maestro, had also decided he wanted to leave.

It's not the fact that players put these transfer requests in that bothers me/Roy/anybody that happens to switch on Sky Sports News. Let's face it, player loyalty disappeared down the tunnel with Saint & Greavsie. It's the fact that they should wish to jump ship in the middle of the season, to a club playing in the same league, that leaves such a bad taste in the mouth. If I were a teammate of either of them, to say I'd be disappointed would be a gross understatement. Speaking of bad taste, there's been far too many column inches spent on the Keys & Gray saga already, but I couldn't gloss over it entirely so, here goes. One person came out of this with dignity intact: assistant referee Sian Massey. In sport, people will always have something to say about people who are different, whether that difference is skin-colour, gender or sexual preference and the best thing you can do to combat that, is to do what she's done; get your head down, work hard and prove them wrong. Acceptance will follow.

Changing the subject entirely, I mentioned a couple of weeks ago that the band and I popped down to Yellow Fish Studios in East Sussex to perform a seat of the pants live session. Well if you click on the following, you can see how it went! We also played a function gig at the scene of many a schoolboy sporting triumph, Parkside School in Surrey, on Saturday night. It brought back the hazy memory of a last-minute of extra time winner I struck in a cup final back in 1984. What's that old saying… 'The older I get, the better I was…' The knees were certainly better back then anyway, a truth I was reminded of when rather over-zealously aping the 67 year- old Mick Jagger, during a rollicking version of "You Can't Always Get What You Want". Perhaps that song should be a motif for players and clubs during the transfer window?