THE BRITISH THREAD II

Parts of Britain could enjoy weather as warm as Barcelona’s this weekend with temperatures reaching 18C

Gary Lineker is to honour his pledge to present Match of the Day in his underpants after his beloved Leicester City defied all the odds to become Premier League champions.

Lineker, who scored 95 goals in 194 appearances for during a seven-year career with Leicester – his local club – made the pledge as the team hunted down the most unlikely of championship wins.
Tottenham Hotspur’s failure to beat Chelsea at Stamford Bridge enabled Leicester to clinch the title in one of the biggest upsets in the history of football in Britain.

When he made his pledge in mid-December Leicester City were only two points ahead of Arsenal and most experts expected the club’s tilt for glory to fizzle out in the weeks ahead.
Few expected Lineker, 55, to have to honour his promise. Leicester, who had just avoided relegation the previous season, were 5,000/1 outsiders for the Premiership which has been the preserve of the well-funded footballing aristocracy.

At the beginning of the season bookies were offering less generous odds on David Cameron taking over as manager of Aston Villa (2,500/1) and Simon Cowell becoming the next Prime Minister.

Lineker’s appearance in his underpants will mark the culmination of a surreal season. It was, he said “The biggest sporting shock of my lifetime.”

A lifelong Leicester fan, as well as a former player. Lineker watched the match with three of his sons and told Radio 5 Live that they went “absolutely bonkers” and were “jumping around like lunatics” when it looked as if the team were on the cusp of being crowned champions.
His promise to appear before millions of television viewers in his underwear drew an interesting response on social media, including a tweet from his former wife, Danielle Bux. “Hope they’re whiter than white Links” she wrote.

A suspicious item discovered at Old Trafford on Sunday was a training device, police have confirmed.

The Premier League match between Manchester United and Bournemouth was called off after a suspect package was found shortly before kick-off and a controlled explosion carried out.

Police said the item had "accidentally" been left by a private company after a training exercise on Wednesday.

Greater Manchester's mayor and police and crime commissioner, Tony Lloyd, said Manchester United must be "up front" with answers about the "shambolic" security scare.

He said: "What's almost impossible to understand is how in placing so many dummies for an exercise, those dummies were not counted in again and in counting them in, to find that one is missing, if that was, as I understand it on Wednesday, really people shouldn't be searching all the way through till it's found, whether on Wednesday, on Thursday, on Friday, but certainly long before 20 minutes before kick-off of a major game at a time when already tens of thousands of people were in the ground.

"I think most of us would have assumed first of all it couldn't happen and the exercise went wrong in the way it did without remedial steps long before Sunday, but actually I think it's also astonishing that there isn't a routine sweeping of the ground to find something that seemingly was discovered quite easily once the sweep was taking place 20 minutes before kick-off, but far too late on."

Britons from the West Country to the north-east are increasingly speaking like southerners.

When it comes to football, the UK is still very much a part of Europe. 3 UK teams are in the round of 16 this year. I'll be cheering hard for Wales in their game against Northern Ireland, because unlike Northern Ireland, the Welsh could win more than just the one game.