Shock horror, this week’s hot topic is Manchester City.
Shock horror (2), this week’s hot topic is a Manchester City striker.
After Adebayour sprinted anywhere between 80 and 1,672 yards- depending on which of the 2 billion reports you read- last week, his name was being bounced off every wall up and down the country and beyond. I’m sure he hated that. Simply hated it.
Now, after Sunday’s Manchester ‘Derby’, (I usually refuse to call any game where most of the home fans have to travel 200 miles to the stadium a ‘derby’, but for argument‘s sake in this case, let‘s run with it) we have the case of Craig Bellamy and the clown who entered the pitch and got a bit of a tickle on the chin from the Welshman.
Crazy though Adebayour’s celebration was, he didn’t directly come into contact with the Arsenal fans, but whether that stems from him genuinely not wanting to get hurt or that he fell to the floor exhausted, after sprinting the furthest he had ever ran on a football field, is another matter altogether.
Two cases, and undoubtedly entirely different punishments from the ever inconsistent FA.
The valid fear amongst football players- and indeed fans- is that Bellamy’s reputation will precede him when the tiny arm of the FA’s law comes for him. We’re not likely to see any wristbands with ‘What Would Craig Bellamy Do?’ on them anytime soon. But ponder over this ‘fan’ who could have had anything on them, which includes quite simply a bloody good punch. Had he reached a Man City player, the unthinkable might have become a horrible reality.
The FA, however are unlikely to scrutinise the ineptitude of the United stewards who allowed the cretin through in the first place, although they did weigh in on him once he had made very good ground onto the pitch- bravo guys- and instead go for the easy target, in this case the fiery Bellamy.
It was hardly a pasting from the striker, just a shove in the face while he was being held. Still, this prompted John O’Shea, Rio Ferdinand and Nemanja Vidic to all come over and have words with him. Not the fan- Bellamy. Whereas were it a City fan coming at them at Eastland’s, they would try to calm things down with words of course, not that a) anyone would be remotely stupid enough to have a go at Vidic and b) anyone would be able to understand a word the duck-mouthed Ferdinand said anyway.
I’m not condoning any sort of violence to do with football, whether it be from fans, players or indeed both. My point is that the FA need to look at the bigger picture- that sooner or later, things could get a lot uglier than a fan getting a nudge on the chin, and that scenario could just as easily come about from a spectator acting first or a player inciting fans with a celebration.
As for the actual football, we had a great weekend of action. The obvious place to start would be at Old Trafford, where Michael Owen scored deep into Fergie time. No matter what anyone says, there is definitely one rule for the bigger clubs and another for the rest. Owen’s goals certainly wouldn’t have cheered up the man he replaced, either. Dimitar Berbatov- the walking equivalent of a Smiths song- hasn’t exactly lit up the place since he arrived from Spurs last summer, and to be honest doesn’t look too bothered about it. A surprising error of judgement from Fergie, quite possibly.
Meanwhile Chelsea silently took the top spot back by brushing Spurs aside, who ended up with pretty much a defence with a minus number of defenders in it. Wolves and Everton recorded home wins, as well as Arsenal and once again Burnley, who look like they could be tough to beat at Turf Moor this season. They would be delighted with 17th of course, but then so would Bolton or Portsmouth at the moment. It’s also hard not to laugh whenever people refer to Pompey as ’pointless’, not because of the situation, more the choice of words.
Liverpool showed their good and bad points against West Ham, scoring excellently worked goals before deciding a ’zone’ is more dangerous than a real player at set pieces. It seems Rafa simply will not learn from past mistakes Give it time though, and he might well be asking 'what would Craig Bellamy do?'
Fact of the Week: Clive Mendonca is the nephew of former West Indian cricketer Ivor Mendonca. Ivor is the eldest of 10 brothers and sisters. I know! I couldn’t believe it either.
21 September 2009
7 September 2009
Flog - Crazy cousin Hockey
SCANDAL!
Football is like the older brother of rugby. It’s popular to the extent rugby wants to be. It’s minted beyond rugby’s wildest dreams. Football is going out with the pop star girlfriend while rugby gets a sensible Royal on it’s arm to take to family parties, in which there estranged cousin Hockey usually makes a tit out of itself. Football can never let rugby steal the limelight, even for a second.
After Bloodgate- annoyingly now a phrase the media does not feel needs inverted commas around it- football needed something to take back centre stage, even if it was a stage surrounded by controversy and shame.
So first came Eduardo and his dive- not simulation, not getting out of the way of a challenge, his DIVE- which has been widely debated not only for the ramifications of UEFA’s subsequent ban but also the fact that Arsene Wenger actually saw the incident. In well over a decade of English football, Wenger has only had his eyes open for about 50 seconds collectively and it seems 8 of those were spent watching Eduardo cheat. Not to be deterred though, Wenger said he didn’t think it was cheating. Brilliant- after waiting the best part of 15 years for him to watch a game with his eyes open, eventually it turns out he has cataracts.
Then came Chelsea and the signings fiasco. My, my, the governors that control this football world have been busy, haven’t they? They couldn’t have rugby enjoying the back pages for too long, could they?
FIFA would be naïve to think that Chelsea are the only club to which the finger of blame can pointed, which is exactly why we should fear their half-hearted investigations into other dodgy transfers because this not only puts them in the firing line, it also gives Chelsea one more reason to think football owes them a favour. Hopefully Abramovic will get so upset at all these gosh darn rules and regulations in the legal world of football that he will take the club to Jupiter to form their own league in the gas clouds, which is where Abramovic seems to have stuck his head for a few years now.
Although the appeal is likely to reduce the transfer ban, Chelsea are losing legs to stand on. Back in 2005, they were ordered to pay £18million pounds for Jon Obi Mikel- £16m of which to United- which must have left an even more sour taste in the mouth when they realised just what a pile of crap they had bought. In a world where the normal folk live, this would have triggered a period of laying low on the transfer front, making sure every deal was dealt with painstakingly thoroughness at every stage. This lasted for precisely 34 seconds at Stamford Bridge, as we then had the whole Ashley Cole/nearly crashing his car at his contract offer situation, which not only made us start questioning Chelsea’s means of conducting themselves, it also made us question the need for brakes for footballers who drive Land Rovers.
Then there was Frank Arnesen. Does the list intend on getting bigger? Only a rushed and weak FIFA dossier will reveal.
I’m about ready to move in with crazy cousin Hockey.
Football is like the older brother of rugby. It’s popular to the extent rugby wants to be. It’s minted beyond rugby’s wildest dreams. Football is going out with the pop star girlfriend while rugby gets a sensible Royal on it’s arm to take to family parties, in which there estranged cousin Hockey usually makes a tit out of itself. Football can never let rugby steal the limelight, even for a second.
After Bloodgate- annoyingly now a phrase the media does not feel needs inverted commas around it- football needed something to take back centre stage, even if it was a stage surrounded by controversy and shame.
So first came Eduardo and his dive- not simulation, not getting out of the way of a challenge, his DIVE- which has been widely debated not only for the ramifications of UEFA’s subsequent ban but also the fact that Arsene Wenger actually saw the incident. In well over a decade of English football, Wenger has only had his eyes open for about 50 seconds collectively and it seems 8 of those were spent watching Eduardo cheat. Not to be deterred though, Wenger said he didn’t think it was cheating. Brilliant- after waiting the best part of 15 years for him to watch a game with his eyes open, eventually it turns out he has cataracts.
Then came Chelsea and the signings fiasco. My, my, the governors that control this football world have been busy, haven’t they? They couldn’t have rugby enjoying the back pages for too long, could they?
FIFA would be naïve to think that Chelsea are the only club to which the finger of blame can pointed, which is exactly why we should fear their half-hearted investigations into other dodgy transfers because this not only puts them in the firing line, it also gives Chelsea one more reason to think football owes them a favour. Hopefully Abramovic will get so upset at all these gosh darn rules and regulations in the legal world of football that he will take the club to Jupiter to form their own league in the gas clouds, which is where Abramovic seems to have stuck his head for a few years now.
Although the appeal is likely to reduce the transfer ban, Chelsea are losing legs to stand on. Back in 2005, they were ordered to pay £18million pounds for Jon Obi Mikel- £16m of which to United- which must have left an even more sour taste in the mouth when they realised just what a pile of crap they had bought. In a world where the normal folk live, this would have triggered a period of laying low on the transfer front, making sure every deal was dealt with painstakingly thoroughness at every stage. This lasted for precisely 34 seconds at Stamford Bridge, as we then had the whole Ashley Cole/nearly crashing his car at his contract offer situation, which not only made us start questioning Chelsea’s means of conducting themselves, it also made us question the need for brakes for footballers who drive Land Rovers.
Then there was Frank Arnesen. Does the list intend on getting bigger? Only a rushed and weak FIFA dossier will reveal.
I’m about ready to move in with crazy cousin Hockey.
1 September 2009
Flog - TV + Laptop + sitting in your pants = that time of year again
That’ll teach you for vegetating in front of BBC Sport’s live transfer feed and/or (most likely and) Sky Sports News all day.
This time last year I was still mulling over the 11th hour Berbatov deal and the ridiculous Robinho saga at Man City. This time around all I have is a vague confusion over which Collins now plays for which claret and blue team and which one doesn’t anymore and which one is the ginger one and stuff. I am hardly looking forward to tomorrow’s back pages if they are filled with Ibrahima Sonko interviews about how he is delighted to have swapped Stoke for Hull- kind of like swapping dog shit for a cow pat. That’s not being derogatory to either team by the way, it’s just this particular deal doesn’t illuminate my imagination as to what we can expect defensively from Hull now.
There are two problems with transfer deadline day. Problem one: the amount of fantasy the day not only encourages but now embraces. On BBC’s live feed, a small cartoon of a flying pig was placed next to any crazy sounding deal that a bored so-and-so has texted, belittling the claim and emphasising it’s absurdity. But the BBC is also very clever with this, because although they point and laugh at the texts that flood their inbox, should the unthinkable actually happen, they can say they were first to report it, even though it was actually footballfan87 sitting at Heathrow airport with a packet of Quavers reporting via text.
Being ‘first’ means the absolute world to the media, and we live in such an immediate environment- before you hear the explosion you are standing next to you’re seeing it on the news- that stories have to be made and not reported.
‘Robinho to Man City? Come on, surely not. Stick it on the news feed though, in case he’s right. And stick a patronising flying pig next to it…make sure you can remove it later though…you know...just in case…’
Problem two: the football economy. The colossal increase of money in football was supposed to increase the excitement on transfer deadline days, with clubs fighting it out for the next greasy wonderkid from Brazil or Argentina, throwing fifty pound notes made from recycled twenty pound notes at their clubs in the hope of landing their man. Agents licking shoes of other agents, chairmen and managers so they get their slice of the pie and see their man shoot to the top of the world scene.
But the biggest deals of the summer all went to Real Madrid, and after that we pretty much have to look at the Eto’o and Ibrahimovic swap deal amid of course all that happened at Man City. But even they wrapped it all up over a week ago with the Lescott drama finally coming to a head when- shock horror- he did what we knew he would do all summer and packed his bags. After that, there wasn't much left for everyone else.
Every club now fears that if they offer X million pounds, another club with their own bearded and oil-rich billionaire will come in and offer X million pounds as well, but throw a family pack of Twix bars into the deal. After hijacking the deal, the team who made the initial bid must admit defeat gracefully, unless you’re Rafa Benitez, in which case you launch a scathing attack on the player in question and wonder if all these clubs with all these millions and endless amounts of Twix’s in the cupboards are ruining football altogether.
Soon enough we will be seeing agents and managers meeting under lampposts at the 3 in the morning in the inner city alleyways, their faces lit only by the glow of their last cigarette, passing players between their long coats and checking to see if any rival managers are lurking around to mug them as they walk away trying to look innocent. This is the future of football- secret deals and back alleys. And you will sit and watch it on Sky Sports News all day.
New to Flog, it’s Fact of the Week: only three out of the last ten players to wear the number 3 shirt for Tottenham have made over 10 appearances for the club. This means they have had seven left backs that were so rubbish they couldn’t even make it to double figures before being sent on their way. Worryingly for Spurs fans, this logic tells us that these seven were worse than Mauricio Taricco, who made no less than 160 (awful) performances for them.
This time last year I was still mulling over the 11th hour Berbatov deal and the ridiculous Robinho saga at Man City. This time around all I have is a vague confusion over which Collins now plays for which claret and blue team and which one doesn’t anymore and which one is the ginger one and stuff. I am hardly looking forward to tomorrow’s back pages if they are filled with Ibrahima Sonko interviews about how he is delighted to have swapped Stoke for Hull- kind of like swapping dog shit for a cow pat. That’s not being derogatory to either team by the way, it’s just this particular deal doesn’t illuminate my imagination as to what we can expect defensively from Hull now.
There are two problems with transfer deadline day. Problem one: the amount of fantasy the day not only encourages but now embraces. On BBC’s live feed, a small cartoon of a flying pig was placed next to any crazy sounding deal that a bored so-and-so has texted, belittling the claim and emphasising it’s absurdity. But the BBC is also very clever with this, because although they point and laugh at the texts that flood their inbox, should the unthinkable actually happen, they can say they were first to report it, even though it was actually footballfan87 sitting at Heathrow airport with a packet of Quavers reporting via text.
Being ‘first’ means the absolute world to the media, and we live in such an immediate environment- before you hear the explosion you are standing next to you’re seeing it on the news- that stories have to be made and not reported.
‘Robinho to Man City? Come on, surely not. Stick it on the news feed though, in case he’s right. And stick a patronising flying pig next to it…make sure you can remove it later though…you know...just in case…’
Problem two: the football economy. The colossal increase of money in football was supposed to increase the excitement on transfer deadline days, with clubs fighting it out for the next greasy wonderkid from Brazil or Argentina, throwing fifty pound notes made from recycled twenty pound notes at their clubs in the hope of landing their man. Agents licking shoes of other agents, chairmen and managers so they get their slice of the pie and see their man shoot to the top of the world scene.
But the biggest deals of the summer all went to Real Madrid, and after that we pretty much have to look at the Eto’o and Ibrahimovic swap deal amid of course all that happened at Man City. But even they wrapped it all up over a week ago with the Lescott drama finally coming to a head when- shock horror- he did what we knew he would do all summer and packed his bags. After that, there wasn't much left for everyone else.
Every club now fears that if they offer X million pounds, another club with their own bearded and oil-rich billionaire will come in and offer X million pounds as well, but throw a family pack of Twix bars into the deal. After hijacking the deal, the team who made the initial bid must admit defeat gracefully, unless you’re Rafa Benitez, in which case you launch a scathing attack on the player in question and wonder if all these clubs with all these millions and endless amounts of Twix’s in the cupboards are ruining football altogether.
Soon enough we will be seeing agents and managers meeting under lampposts at the 3 in the morning in the inner city alleyways, their faces lit only by the glow of their last cigarette, passing players between their long coats and checking to see if any rival managers are lurking around to mug them as they walk away trying to look innocent. This is the future of football- secret deals and back alleys. And you will sit and watch it on Sky Sports News all day.
New to Flog, it’s Fact of the Week: only three out of the last ten players to wear the number 3 shirt for Tottenham have made over 10 appearances for the club. This means they have had seven left backs that were so rubbish they couldn’t even make it to double figures before being sent on their way. Worryingly for Spurs fans, this logic tells us that these seven were worse than Mauricio Taricco, who made no less than 160 (awful) performances for them.
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