Footblog

Jonathan Woodgate - £450,000 an appearance

Spurs aren't renowned for getting value for money in the transfer market - Darren Bent's got about £16.4m of his £16.5m fee to pay off by my reckoning, for instance.

But God knows what inspired them to pay up to £8m for Jonathan Woodgate, a player who makes the lovechild of Darren Anderton and Kieron Dyer look like a man of steel.

Here's his record since leaving Leeds:

Newcastle
Fee: £9m
Appearances: 37

Real Madrid
Fee: £13.4m
Appearances: 10

Middlesbrough (not including loan spell)
Fee: £7m
Appearances 19

That means he's cost an average of £445,455 per appearance since 2003 - and when you add his wages and signing fees to that total, you're probably looking at well over half a million per game.

Suddenly Bent looks like money well spent.

The Adebayor school of sport pyschology

How do you motivate your team-mates? One of those wanky group hugs before kick off? A pre-match speech? No, go straight for the Glasgow Kiss.

"I tried to motivate him [Bendtner] and he took it in the wrong way," says Arsenal's Emmanuel Adebyaor, of the headbutt that left his striking partner walking around the pitch with a bloodied nose, whilst his own continues to lengthen considerably.  "Then I did a little bit — I have to work at that as well."

Backtrack of the year

Top story on BBC Sport at 12:05pm:

"Leeds United boss Dennis Wise will be offered a role as Newcastle's director of football, BBC Leeds understands."

Top story on BBC Sport at 12:45pm:

" Leeds United boss Dennis Wise will be offered a role in Newcastle's coaching set-up, BBC Leeds understands."

Straight-jackets all round then?

Lampard in fifth choice England team

The national newspapers, not least The Sunday Times, are chock-full of West Ham fans. I'm not sure whether the ST's Joe Lovejoy bleeds claret and blue, but he won't need to buy a drink in The Boleyn for quite some time, after listing his top five England teams today and dropping Frank Lampard into the fifth squad, playing alongside the mighty Zat Knight, Michael Ball and Michael Johnson.

Either that or Lampard's swiped his pork pie on the last England trip...

TEAM 1
Scott Carson (Aston Villa)
Micah Richards (Man City)
Rio Ferdinand (Man Utd)
Ledley King (Tottenham)
Wayne Bridge (Chelsea)
Shaun W-Phillips (Chelsea)
Owen Hargreaves (Man Utd)
Steven Gerrard (Liverpool)
Wayne Rooney (Man Utd)
Emile Heskey (Wigan)
Michael Owen (Newcastle)

TEAM 2
David James (Portsmouth)
Glen Johnson (Portsmouth)
Jonathan Woodgate (M’bro)
Sol Campbell (Portsmouth)
Ashley Cole (Chelsea)
David Beckham (LA Galaxy)
Gareth Barry (A Villa)
Jermaine Jenas (Tottenham)
Joe Cole (Chelsea)
Peter Crouch (Liverpool)
Jermain Defoe (Tottenham)

TEAM 3
Robert Green (West Ham)
Wes Brown (Man Utd)
Michael Dawson (Tottenham)
Matthew Upson (West Ham)
Nicky Shorey (Reading)
David Bentley (Blackburn)
Nicky Butt (Newcastle)
Michael Carrick (Man Utd)
Stewart Downing (M’bro)
Andy Johnson (Everton)
Dean Ashton (West Ham)

TEAM 4
Chris Kirkland (Wigan)
Phil Neville (Everton)
Steven Taylor (Newcastle)
Joleon Lescott (Everton)
Stephen Warnock (Blackburn)
Aaron Lennon (Tottenham)
Scott Parker (West Ham)
Nigel Reo-Coker (A Villa)
Ashley Young (A Villa)
Gabriel Agbonlahor (A Villa)
Carlton Cole (West Ham)

TEAM 5
Paul Robinson (Tottenham)
Tony Hibbert (Everton)
John Terry (Chelsea)
Zat Knight (A Villa)
Michael Ball (Man City)
Jermaine Pennant (Liverpool)
Michael Johnson (Man City)
Frank Lampard (Chelsea)
Kieron Dyer (West Ham)
Darius Vassell (Man City)
Darren Bent (Tottenham)

UPDATE: I was so dumbfounded/tickled by the Lampard demotion I failed to spot England captain John Terry had been demoted to the fifths, too. Did Terry and Lampard spit roast Lovejoy's wife, or something?

Hey, Wenger, leave those kids alone

Arsenal's happy-go-lucky bench warmer, Jens Lehmann, has apparently turned down a move to Dortmund because he didn't want to leave his wife and kids at the mercy of London's burglars - although judging by his earlier season performances, the chances of Jens catching them himself are slimmer than Amy Winehouse.

Not that Jens is bitter.

"My wife and I did not want to disrupt their [children's] happiness, simply because their dad made a couple of mistakes at the start of the season and now has to sit on the subs' bench."

That's the spirit.

Ferguson's self-inflicted fixture congestion

The next time Alex Ferguson moans about having to play on a Saturday after a European game or three games in a week, can someone please remind him that 48 hours after his side played Reading, he took them on a seven-hour flight to Saudi Arabia to play in (a no doubt highly lucrative) friendly? A game, in which, by my reckoning, no fewer than nine first-team regulars played for at least 45 minutes.

"We're resting on Tuesday," says old red nose-in-chief. "Some of the players will stay by the pool and get some sun, some will play golf. I'll certainly be playing golf! Then we'll have two training sessions on Wednesday before heading back home. Hopefully all the players will feel refreshed."

Yes, one-day off sandwiched between three games in a week and at least 14 hours in the air is the ideal preparation for a vital FA Cup tie, surely?

United: Van der Sar (Kuszczak 30, Heaton 65); Simpson, Ferdinand (Vidic 46), O'Shea, Evra (Hargreaves 46); Eagles, Fletcher, Anderson (Welbeck 65), Nani; Ronaldo (Park 46), Tevez (Rooney 46)

 

Newcastle 0 vs Bolton 0

"They're going to be entertained. They've worked hard all week and they are coming to this ground and they want to see something that's worth seeing. They want to enjoy it.

"What they don't want is for us to go out and drably play and win 1-0 and maybe finish half way up the table. They want us to have a go and that's why I am here. We will have a go."

Goals: 0

Shots on target: 0

He's not the messiah, he's a very naughty boy.

Why England aren't in the Euros

Remember Steve McClaren waving furiously at his defence to get back when we equalised against Croatia? So does his opposite number, Slaven Bilic, who brilliantly dissects England's problems in today's Times.

"I saw you at the European Championship in 2004 and your team was brilliant. Should have beaten France, easily beat Switzerland, slaughtered Croatia and you play Portugal in the quarter-finals and you are leading 1-0. And then Wayne Rooney gets injured. And you sit back. And you have been sitting back ever since. I do not understand it. With your players — attack, attack, always attack.

“It was the same against us. You forced us back in the second half and got the score to 2-2 and then as soon as that happened, you let us come at you again. I would not praise myself for that. I did not have to say, ‘Let us go and score a goal.’ You let us play again, just as you knocked yourselves out in Moscow. When you let us come into your half, we are dangerous. I don’t know why you did that."

Neither do we, Slaven. Neither do we.

Klinsmann: the Rafa reserve

Looks like Liverpool have got a nasty case of that awful virus that's sweeping the country at the moment: itchy trigger finger.

The yanks have decided to come clean on their approach for Jurgen Klinsmann to take over from the Great Rotator in November.

"We attempted to negotiate an option as an insurance policy... if Rafa left for Real Madrid or other clubs rumoured, " co-owner Tom Hicks is quoted as saying, presumably with fingers crossed behind his back.

It all smells disturbingly similar to the Spurs' Ramos fiasco, when Paul Kemsley insisted they were only chatting to the Spaniard in case Jol did a midnight flit to Luton. Still, that one all ended cleanly. And I'm sure that easy-going, never-ruffled Rafa will take this latest incident with a pinch of salt, too. Probably by referring all questions at his next press conference to Herr Klinsmann...

The barmy barcodes

Having spent the past week in Las Vegas, I thought I'd seen all that insanity had to offer. But the speaking pavements and slot machines in the bogs merely distracted me from the barcodes, and their incessant campaign to be the laughing stock of football.

First they fire Big Sam, who whilst hardly dousing the planet in petrol and striking the Swanvesta, had made a half-decent start with bugger-all money. He was sacked with the club toiling merrily in 11th place, precisely two places above the position they finished last season, and three positions above their 2004/2005 finish. He was, arguably, over-achieving.

So having shown Sam a fat severance cheque, and then made a botched attempt to land the only other Premiership manager to secure his own Panaroma/Police investigation, who do they turn to? The SAK, or Shearer and Keegan. A tiresome pundit with as much managerial experience as Lassie, and a washed-up former boss who famously conceded he doesn't quite cut at it tactically at the highest level.

But that's OK, because the new chairman's aims are modest:  "I want a team that will go all out to try to give Chelsea a walloping, that will try to stuff Tottenham and that will be brave and bold enough to attack Manchester United," he tells the News of the Screws.

And when they spend more time in their own onion bag than the average greengrocer, the barcodes can go back to complaining about how they would win the title if only they had a manager who knew how to defend, a manager like...

No, don't spoil it for them.