What you missed while jellyfish were solving engineering problems in fluid dynamics…
- You know that ankle injury that Wayne Rooney’s had all season? Yeah, um…he doesn’t know what Sir Alex Ferguson is talking about, because his ankle’s been fine.
- Owen Hargreaves (whose injuries appear to be legit) may make his return from injury this Saturday against West Brom. I have dibs on “Saturday” in the “When will Owen Hargreaves be re-injured” pool.
- Yossi Benayoun isn’t really sure how Chelsea medics missed the fact that he’d torn his Achilles tendon.
- Barcelona Stuttgart Birmingham City midfielder Alexander Hleb admits that it might’ve been a mistake to leave Arsenal.
- Spurs midfielder Rafael van der Vaart would’ve joined Arsenal if Arsene Wenger had made a move for him.
- Bolton striker Johan Elmander has placed the blame for his poor performance in previous seasons squarely on the shoulder of former manager Gary Megson.
- Contrary to previous reports, Liverpool have not made a move for Napoli striker Edinson Cavani (although, honestly, they’ve been really busy this week).
- Everton defender John Heitinga could be interested in a move to Bayern Munich. Because, really, Bayern needs more Dutch internationals on their squad.
- Tuncay wants to leave Stoke City after making only two substitute appearances this season.
- Palermo wonderkid Abel Hernandez is content in Italy and won’t be seeking a move for a few years. Look for Hernandez to move in January.
- Serbia may be disqualified from Euro 2012 after Serbian fans behaved really, really badly in their qualification match against Italy.
- Bayern striker Miroslav Klose will be out for at least ten days after tearing a thigh muscle while on German international duty.
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I’ll take “Monday in an innocuous training exercise” in the Hargreaves pool.
The football gods have a sense of humor, so what will happen: De Jong will karate kick Hargreaves and Owen will immediately disintegrate. Further, this will cause De Jong to give up footballing and follow the Jean Claude Van Damme career path. And there was much rejoicing, yay. In all seriousness, he’ll be nicked up within a fortnight.
Serbia – So long and thanks for all the flares. Shame for the players, not if the fans are going to be raving loonies though.
Speaking of raving loonies, Gillette and Hicks…work with me here: I’m not legal scholar, but Liverpool are in England. Texas is nowhere near England. Texas law has nothing to do with UK law. However, this isn’t about law. The companies involved don’t want to lose face in the US (or business), so we’ve gone political. In the best interest of the sanity of Liverpool fans and football fans in general, a plea to Gillette and Hicks: F*ck off you money grubbing a**holes. W*ankers.
Tuncay is reaching Mido levels of ridiculousness now.
Word yesterday was that Rooney had ended contract talks with United. Now this. Seems he’s taking the Beckham path out of Old Trafford.
I try to be pretty measured and refrain from ranting and raving, but Hicks is fucking scum. EVEN IF HE DELAYS THE SALE he can’t afford the payments and the club gets sold; not only that, he takes an even bigger loss. It’s beyond ridiculous; he’s everything that’s wrong with the entitled upper echelon of American politics and finance, and the fact that he’s greased our legal and financial institutions purely on the basis of connections is disgusting.
Also, it’s equally disgusting and disturbing that a Texas court has seen it fit to intervene here. If this were your company or your house, you’d be fucked; Hicks is getting special treatment not on merit (there really isn’t a case here) but on who he knows, and is abusing that authority based on his actions. It’s vile, and it’s one of the unseemly underbellies of the inner workings of this country that makes me least impressed with our justice system.
That said: this is all a symptom of huge, huge problems in the sport. At some point, the leagues need to step in and even out the money, whether via a spending cap, a wage cap, or both. I’m not saying that an NFL style cap is necessary, but the competitive balance of the league (going into this season, there were only three or four clubs with a realistic shot of winning the league, and all but one of them – Arsenal – is posting some kind of major loss) is nonexistant.
Bottom line: continue to reward clubs for spending money they don’t have, and you’ll continue to see the top clubs enter dire financial straits.
Are you familiar with the English expression, “Pull the ladder up Jack, I’m alright.” That’s what is going on at the league level. It’s like with GM, Bank of America, etc: They do so much for the economy that the government would never let them fail, no matter how they warrant it. So a club is in trouble, an owner comes in with cash waving, the league makes it’s fees and doesn’t ask too many questions. The ‘fit and proper person’ test? It’s a god damned joke.
Hicks…I don’t have enough words to describe what a jackwagon he is. Thank god the High Court struck the Texas order out. Unfortunately, the personal lawsuits haven’t even begun yet.
The tough thing about caps in European football is the fact that there are so many different FA’s and leagues varying from amateurish to the EPL. This makes putting an amount cap in place very difficult. I think the best thing to do would be to cap player wages at 70% of prior year revenue and transfer payments at 150% of present value of players’ remaining wage payments. The wage cap leaves ample room for clubs to pay club personnel, run facilities, and make debt service payments. The transfer payment cap ensures that clubs aren’t solely financing their player buys through player sales and ensures that morons like City, Barca, & Madrid don’t ruin the transfer market for everyone else. Example: Let’s say Rooney’s contract owes him $60M in wages over the next 4 years (I have no idea if that’s remotely accurate, just for sake of example). If, say, Madrid want him, discount the $60M at prevailing interest rates to something like $52M (what the $60M is worth if Man U paid it all today) and then Madrid can only pay a max of $78M for his transfer fee. This also would eliminate massive fees for some newbie who has a breakout international tournament (Mesut Oezil) by tying the fee to his previous contract. Finally, if a team wants to demand a big payday for selling a “star,” then they better pay him like a star. The final caveat would be the contract would have to be in place for 6 months before the sale of the player, to prevent teams from signing a huge new contract the day before a sale, just to cash in.