This article is about Arsene Wenger, but check out the bit at the end:
Wenger will be unimpressed by an admission from Bolton’s Kevin Nolan that he told a team-mate to foul Theo Walcott. “I said to Jlloyd Samuel, ‘Give him a little kick and see if he comes back at you’,” Nolan said, adding: “We are in danger of losing that side – the roughing up of people.”
I wouldn’t look at this twice were it not for several recent attempts to clean out Jimmy Bullard. The first of which was by Kevin Nolan. Nice man.
Looks like things are moving in the right direction for Sheffield United, at West Ham’s expense. Good. How this ever got to this point is a mystery to me; extraordinary gutlessness from the league at the time. Anyway, it partly explains why we were able to buy Zamora and Paintsil:
West Ham’s keenness to sell players this summer is now thought to have been prompted by a need to raise funds in anticipation of the judgment. Freddie Ljungberg was paid to leave to get him off the wage bill, Bobby Zamora and John Paintsil were sold to Fulham, and Richard Wright and Nolberto Solano also left.
Finally, the formatting’s gone again. They must have updated me. Oh well.
Oh dear! I think this format is quite snazzy though… definitely prefer it to the other ‘other’ one (if that makes sense).
‘Give him a little kick…’ what a tosser Nolan is. I still haven’t seen a replay of that horrible ‘tackle’ on Bullard – can’t believe MOTD didn’t even show it, or the the Andrews one up at Blackburn. I thought it was fashionable for them to get up in arms about that kind of thing – why not in these instances?
Comment by JamieR — September 23, 2008 @ 8:47 am |
I quite like this design as well.
Really hope Bolton go down this year, horrible side who (along with Blackburn – class of 2001) I’ve been desperate to see drop out of the league before we do.
Comment by Chopper — September 23, 2008 @ 10:16 am |
The Sheffield United compensation interests me.
They’ve calculated that they’ve lost approx £30M in income as a result of relegation but that’s for 1 season only. No one can yet know how long they’ll be away from the Premiere League.
Yet had they not been relegated and received that money most would have been spent on transfer fees and wages.
The loss therefore is not really financial in the way in which they’ve put it. Relegated teams may be left with the need to fulfil Premiere League contracts but the loss in effect is mostly not financial but the loss of good players with the impact that has on the club’s position in the pecking order.
From an accountancy position therefore the pure financial loss is only that money that they could not save (principally by off loading players) plus the money they would have earned but not spent which is unknowable as being wholly hypothetical.
So I think that unless they’re being awarded damages for loss of status the actual financial compensation ought not to be anything like £30M
Comment by Tony Gilroy — September 23, 2008 @ 10:22 am |
I had the same thought, Tony. Perhaps they felt that by asking for more they would risk losing the case and walking away with nothing? At least this way it’s a fairly definite case and one they’ve rightly succeeded with. Or perhaps it doesn’t work that way.
Comment by weltmeisterclaude — September 23, 2008 @ 10:40 am |