Get this man on Sky Sports
Ray Hudson commentates as Real Madrid win La Liga.
(Sorry, I can’t seem to embed the video here)
When It Rains, It Pours
West Ham’s Julien Faubert is ruled out for six months.
Budge up, Matty Upson, Lucas Neill, etc. etc. This bloke signs on 1st July and is knacked on the 17th.
Divine retribution? Justice? Tough shit? Whatever it is, I’ll wager Neil Warnock and Paul Jewell aren’t too bothered.
It would appear…
…that West Ham are about to be fucked.
This whole scenario gets more and more sordid by the minute.
Football clubs raided
All around you the blogs are going mental. Football clubs raided! Awesome. But nobody’s saying who it is. We know. And we’re not afraid to tell.
Arsenal FC - Anti-corruption agents found Arsene Wenger sitting at a big oak table counting dozens of gold coins, saying ‘Money. Beautiful money. I’ll never spend you’ while the rest of the board prepared breakfast solutions for the 11 labatory produced babies - all of whom were made with Dennis Bergkamp’s DNA.
West Ham - The raid here took place just at sunrise in order to catch Eggart Magnuson at his most vulnerable. The fact that the new West Ham Chairman is really Mr Barlow from Salem’s Lot only came to light, pardon the pun, late last week. He was put through the heart with a poplar stake and some black stuff came out of his mouth before he crumbled to dust.
Chelsea FC - even with most of the players and staff having fun on their pre-season American tour the Department of the Environment closed down the training ground after a Frank Lampard log blocked the sewerage system for a 3 mile radius. Lampard has been flown back from the US immediately to have his anus investigated.
Shocking stuff, I’m sure you’ll agree.
Player grabs ref’s red card, gets it straight in his face
No more to say really. Check this out. Classic. From the U20 World Cup.
Nugent’s Signing Prompts Free For All For Weekend Warriors*
The signing of David “Ted” Nugent from Preston for the reported sum of £6m will buoy Pompey fans no doubt; the addition of an English international striker (and goalscorer, sort of) to bolster an occasionally misfiring front line. It will probably signal the end for Kanu, with Todorov leaving already and Utaka joining. What are they getting for their money? Ted’s record is 94 appearances for Preston with 33 goals, a pretty healthy return. However, he cost £6m, and Harry says;
I’m delighted to get David and will be delighted if he gets double figures.
(Harry goes onto say the days of the likes of Clive Allen scoring 40 goals a season are long gone, maybe the case in the Prem but I remember Henrik Larsson doing it a wee while ago in the Scottish Premier League).
However, if my team spunked £6m on a striker, I’d want double figures AT LEAST, and not just that but a healthy dose of assists! By way of those maths, if Darren (£16m) Bent doesn’t get in excess of 25 goals then, and only then will Martin Jol be delighted. Everton wouldn’t pay more than £4m for him, and he professes to be a lifelong Everton fan – maybe Moyes recognises the true worth of a player in this case.
While I’d like my team to have a totally British squad, I know it’s not going to happen because they won’t spend over the odds on mediocre players; the £5m Roy Keane has splashed on Michael Chopra, who cost Cardiff £500K and scored 22 goals last season (nearly as many in one season as Nugent got in his entire Preston career) seems more than a tad excessive. Chopra did next to nothing in the Premiership when he was in Newcastle so why can he do it now, with Sunderland, I asked myself? “Buggered if I know” was the answer.
Benitez (or is it his evil twin? That beard is well sinister) will be looking for something spectacular from £28m Torres who cost more than Drogba, who despite being roundly disliked has proved to be worth a fair chunk of what Chelsea paid.
My opinion is that it’s the English player scenario again, which exemplifies the supply & demand theory. The English market is so skewed by the big spenders (and I don’t just mean Chelsea) that in order to buy British you pay through the nose. Paying the same amount for Darren Bent as Barcelona paid for Henry doesn’t make him anywhere near as good a player; even Darren himself said he thought the Spanish media meddlers got him cheap. He didn’t go as far as saying “I’m nowhere near as good as Henry”, but we all know that’s what you were thinking Daz.
Am I wrong here, or is Bent really as good as Henry? Is Nugent capable of scoring double figures?
(*-for all the Ted Nugent fans out there)
Schuster appointed Madrid coach
Ramon Calderon - July 2007:
His teams play good, entertaining football. He knows the club and will handle a dressing room full of stars.
Ramon Calderon - July 2008:
Despite winning La Liga, the Copa del Rey, the Spanish supercup, the Champions League (with an 8-0 win over Barcelona in the final), the World Club Championships and the Intergalactic Cup in which we beat a team of highly advanced robot footballers in a zero gravity arena we have decided to terminate the contract of Bernd Schuster.
We’re just looking for something a little bit different.
Editorial standards at the BBC
If there’s one thing you can rely on it’s the BBC paying strict attention to spelling, grammar, syntax and making Peter Kenyon sound like Ali G.
More evidence…
…if it were ever needed, that Chelsea have more money than sense.
I can’t be the only one who thinks he’s one of the most overrated players of all time, can I?