Last week we mentioned a few statistics pulled together by The Guardian in their always entertaining section, The Knowledge. Not to get too carried away with our admiration for the paper, but we thought another of their regular football blogs deserved a mention – Six Of The Best. Bringing together six classic moments on a given theme, this week’s collection is all about counter-attacking goals, and there’s some absolute pearlers in there. For anyone looking for a bigger fix of pure goalscoring action, the comments section below normally has a glut of other suggestions from readers for you to feast upon. Enjoy.

Going back to the stats, for it is such an integral part of football, there was a remarkable world record broken this week. With news that will make Rory Delap and Dave Challinor weep at their own feeble attempts, the world record for the longest throw in ever was broken this week – by a PE teacher from Yorkshire. Former gymnast Danny Brooks threw a ball a remarkable 49.78 metres – the same distance as five double decker buses – using a special forward-role-enhanced technique. You can check out his impressive effort here, although I’m not sure how it’d work in a real match!

One player you might want on the end of those throw-ins is Kevin Davies, the Bolton striker who often arrives with words such as ‘battling’, ‘combative’ and ‘tough to play against’ in front of his name. Is Davies part of a dying breed of old-fashioned strikers who are being removed from football because of changes to the rules? Or is he merely being caught fouling in an effort to beat more skillful players? There’s an interesting blog here on the BBC site, which examines both sides of this debate along with an interview with Davies. For anyone who relishes the mud ‘n’ graft side of the game will find it a great read.

Of course, those fans who crave that old-fashioned side of the game will have been looking into the financial situation at big clubs such as Manchester United and Liverpool with concern. A lot has already been said about what these situations mean for the teams, but what are the fans doing about it? We Don’t Know Football report on an interesting campaign from United fans looking to protest against their club – by wearing a classic kit loaded with reference to an earlier era. Will it work? Only time will tell.

Looking further afield, you’ll find plenty of passionate fans over in the Basque country, where Athletic Bilbao play. They’re not just a football team though – they’re part of a fierce political ideology and a strain of nationalism that would put even the most stringent Scot to shame. The full story of Athletic Bilbao is examined in this brilliantly thought-provoking tale over at Goal.com, a story that makes any regional rivalry here in the UK pale in comparison.

Finally, I’m afraid to say that the picture at the top of the page is another Umbro self-reference. It’s a picture of the special 3D shapes that have been used as part of the creation of the new England kit – you can see more elsewhere on the blog or over at Umbro.com. Seen on their own like that though, those figures look pretty terrifying!