NEVER MIND THE POPE, WE'VE HAD SNOW THIS WEEK

Sometimes the big news stories simply aren't interesting enough. So, despite Maradona claiming (Hand of God) responsibility for giving the world an Argentinean Pope, we turned our attention to the wonderful world of Twitter and Albion fans’ efforts at creating blue and white clad snowmen. Special mention should go to  @maski1 (whose effort features above) and @Samuel26Murray (below) on Twitter who uploaded these efforts for a perusal from TSLR Towers on Tuesday just gone. These first two, naturally, make up the strike force of what is our attempt at presenting to you... an all Albion snow-based XI. We trawled the internet to supplement our new strike force thanks to the small amount of white powder that fell on the streets of Sussex (and beyond) back in January.

So with our strike force sorted, it was time to finalise the rest of our XI. This is where the January snow came to our rescue despite TSLR's Tuesday plea for some snow more offerings. So after much deliberation, we decided upon this as our midfield four (insert alleged white powder / Albion midfielder of the past joke here). These 'midfielders' were supplied not to us but to Twitter from (left to right) @68ron (no we can only see a bobble hat too); @WSCT_Jasmin (extra marks given for the inclusion hands); @gotaspareticket (so life like, it actually looks like a couple of Albionites we know); and @nialZ_BHA (whose size suggests he'd be a little midfield diamond, Rod Thomas, perhaps). Great work deserves a social media follow.

All we need now is a back four and a 'keeper suggested no TSLRites. If only to distract us from the game of impending doom we approach with outlandish quantities of trepidation this Sunday (ahead of the last El Crapico, we let the contributors go buck wild with their pre-Palace thoughts. Needless to say this time around, we're basically ignoring it).

So after more deliberation (well some further Twitter searching for more Albion snowmen) we came up with the following defenders. They are all massive and again we have to thank their creators (see we used the word creator, so we are remaining partially Catholicised / topical with this post). Again from left to right, they were posted by @owen_gibb1989 (through Instagram actually; scary eyes - a bit like Danny Cullip in his glory days); @NorthStandChat (getting a bit podgy this one); and @JonRobards who provided this skinny yet lanky full-back effort (Peter Smith, anyone?).

But that's only a back three, I hear you cry. Correct. That's been done on purpose as our final full-back submitted by @dogsgozoom deserved a full photo for including a dog.

That meant we had ten of our Albion snow XI. All we needed then was a goalkeeper - a snowman not fazed by warm weather or the prospect of defending the Albion goal from opposition striking snow people. We searched long and hard for another Albion snowman to add to our collection. It was ultimately fruitless as we discovered that the snow version of Graeme Smith simply didn't want to play for the Albion anymore...

Disclaimer: The Pope is the second most famous Argentinean - behind our very own Leo Ulloa