Back of the Net!

Manchester City and Manchester United go head-to-head today at the Eastlands stadium, with the City team sitting 14th and finally beginning to play like a team of millionaires which Manchester United can use a win to push themselves back into contention.

With Liverpool not playing until Monday (when they welcome a below-par West Ham United), Chelsea can put a bit of air between them with a win over Arsenal. Continue Reading »

An interesting business move by a couple of English Premier League footballers recently was their investment in the Danny Dyer/50 Cent movie Dead Man Running, which is being filmed inLondon and Manchester.

Ashley Cole and Rio Ferdinand have both invested in the production, which sees footballers entering an interesting new phase.

For years now, football fans have been shouting out for a decent football movie.  Escape to Victory is fine for a Bank Holiday, and When Saturday Comes is an FA Cup dream that isn’t totally convincing.  Only Bend it Like Beckham comes close to actually saying anything real about football, but there are too many girls in it.

If Cole and Ferdinand make a decent return on the film, they should seriously consider repeating the gamble - as well as setting up some sort of production outfit to concentrate on making good movies about the beautiful game.

It’s fascinating that my club Middlesbrough FC is considering lowering
the price of tickets in order to maintain support for the club during
concerning economic times.

Few top flight clubs are as passionate about maintaining links in the
close-nit local community as Boro - with the exception of clubs like
Sunderland, West Ham and the recently promoted Hull and Stoke.  It’s
heartwarming and encouraging to see Chief Executive Keith Lamb and
Manager Gareth Southgate speaking on BBC Tees’ Boro Forum recently about
how the club will progress during the economic downturn. Continue Reading »

Newcastle United manager Joe Kinnear is set to be offered a new contract that will take him through to the end of the season.

Not a massive surprise really, especially with the alleged American investors pulling out of “talks” with the camera-shy Mike Ashley.

I’m not going to put my head on the line and say out and out, once and for all that there is no interest in Newcastle United. Continue Reading »

French moves to push the European Union into banning football transfers involving players under the age of 18 will be discussed this week, with sports ministers from across the Union meeting to discuss the implications of such a ban.

Many have declared the potential ban as nothing more than jealousy - British clubs wealth throughout the last 15 years has enabled them to sign some outstanding players as schoolboys and apprentices without any major compensation being paid to the teams that did the work in discovering the players. Continue Reading »

Thank to the big world wide web of internets, people who would otherwise never have considered picking up a pen or tapping words into a keyboard to form sentences have been handed careers as bloggers.

I am of course talking about athletes, footballers, and in particular those that post regularly on the BBC football website.

I won’t name names but some of their posts are the dullest load of old bobbins dripping in sychophancy and lacking in anything that constitutes an original opinion. Continue Reading »

Since having taken charge in September, Joe Kinnear has guided Newcastle United to a run of 2 wins, 4 draws and 3 defeats, while also (seemingly) taking charge of the clubs Public Relations department.

Apparently both Mike Ashley and Dennis Wise are unavailable to make any kind of contact with the media or fans, leaving the hard graft to Kinnear - how else do you explain this? Continue Reading »

Leaving top flight football for one brief moment, news that 50-60 Football League clubs have tax arrears - with the largest amounting to almost £7,000,000 for one club - has come as a huge bolt out of the blue.

The BBC have published a league table that reveals that two former English Premier League clubs, Leicester City and Leeds United failed to submit PAYE Tax and National Insurance on behalf of their employees (presumably given the amounts involved some of their players) to Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs (HMRC).

What this means is that the British public purse has lost out by around £28m - all because clubs have pushed for success, borrowed money and signed players at inflated rates and then attempted to defraud the British taxpayer.

How has this occurred?  Simply, the clubs have all at some point in the last 10 years been in administration of changed hands.  As a result, arrangements have been made to settle with creditors.  HMRC is not deemed a priority creditor, and as such arrangements have been put on the back burner.  In the example given at the top, Leicester City managed to make arrangements to repay just 10% of the amount owed.

It’s an astonishing revelation, one which will leave murmurings of discontent echoing around football clubs across England and Wales.

With the January transfer window slowly approaching on the horizon, English Premier League fans attention is focussed almost as firmly on Manchester City as their own clubs.

They have money to spend, and City look likely to force some sort of bouyancy in the European transfer market - but who do they want ?

£25 million (not a penny less) would secure them Middlesbrough’s Stewart Downing, for instance, while rumour states that manager Mark Hughes plans to raid former club Blackburn for Roque Santa Cruz (£15 million). There’s also talk of Kolo Toure leaving Arsenal for the right price, but most surprising is the ambition to sign Juventus’ Gianluigi Buffon. Continue Reading »

William Gallas’ recent bizarre behaviour is appearing to be the cause of the recent run of bad form experienced by Arsenal.

His comments this week as to why the Gunners have under-performed have only served to put him squarely under the microscope, not long after the furor over him being photographed smoking outside a nightclub died down. Continue Reading »