Footblog

Do you have to kick Bolton to beat them?

It's raining irony in the Premiership right now. Cocking-well pelting it down, in fact.

Arsenal's Abou Diaby was sent off at the weekend for a high lunge every bit as ugly as Martin Taylor's pin-snapper on the Gunners' Eduardo. The challenge, lest we forget, Arsene Wenger initially declared worthy of a lifetime ban, before downgrading it to a mere disgrace that needed to be stamped out of the game.

Wenger's reaction to the Diaby shin-splitter:

"I knew the injury was not bad and not comparable with Eduardo."

Nothing other than sheer good fortune prevented Bolton's Gretar Steinsson from following Eduardo on to the surgeon's table, and Wenger knows it. But will he impose a lifetime ban on his own player, or even publicly upbraid him in the way he's slated Taylor several times? More chance of him splashing out £50m on Titus Bramble.

And which side was the victim of the Arsenal player's assault? None other than Bolton, the side that Wenger has accused of kicking his team off the park several times. I trust an apology is on its way to the Reebok. Along with a a guidebook to the Coca-Cola Championship.

Roy Keane: the hypocrite's hypocrite

"There are a lot of hypocrites out there. The same bosses talking about players showing respect have been sent off themselves for abusing officials."

Roy Maurice Keane, 28th March 2008

Gallas's pre-match pep talk trashed by Adams

If Arsenal fans are looking for a reason why they have frittered away the biggest title lead since Kevin Keegan went crackerdogs (the first time), they should look no further than Captain Cretin, William Gallas.

Arsenal have never looked the same since his ridiculous strop at the Birmingham game. Since then they've looked nervous and tetchy, probably because a young side are now wary that one mistake could send their volatile captain into a mouth-foaming, cataclysm of mentalism.

And clock the faces of his team-mates as Gallas delivers this distinctly staged pre-match pep talk before their defeat to Chelsea. If ever a face conveyed the message: "what the f****?", it's Emmanuel Eboue's.

"Is that for the cameras?" asks Tony Adams in the studio, somewhat rhetorically. "I used to do that in the dressing room." And a damned-sight more convincingly than Gallas did, I'd wager.

Worst football excuse ever

From this morning's Guardian:

Arsène Wenger is considering reporting Internazionale to Uefa for tapping up Alexander Hleb. The Arsenal midfielder left the team's hotel the night before the second leg of their Champions League last-16 tie against Milan two weeks ago with the agent Claudio Vigorelli and is believed to have travelled to Inter's offices on Via Durini.

Vigorelli is an associate of Vincenzo Morabito, a leading international agent who has dealt frequently with Premier League clubs and is a director of the leading English agency First Artist. Yesterday Morabito denied there had been a meeting with Inter but conceded that Vigorelli and Hleb had shared a taxi from the Melia Felix hotel, where Arsenal were staying, and that Wenger had made a complaint.

"It's true that Hleb saw Vigorelli and they went out from the Melia Felix but it's not true that they went to talk to Inter Milan," said Morabito. "They went for an ice-cream."

Right oh. What flavour was it? Mint-choc bullsh*t?

 

Hurst, Brooking, Sears, surely?

Matthew Lorenzo's always struck me as a man whose knowledge of football could be written down on the back of a bus ticket. No more so than after last night's Football First, when the Hammers fan opined that - after a scoring a goal on his debut - Freddie Sears can now join the pantheon of West Ham Academy greats, such as Geoff Hurst and Trevor Brooking.

Sorry? After a career spanning no more than 15 minutes, Twat Lorenzo wants to rank him alongside the only man to ever score a hat-trick in a World Cup final and possibly the finest midfield player of his generation.

What is it with West Ham and piling pressure on young talents? When Joe Cole made his debut, the West Ham stadium announcer Jeremy Nicholas (who like Lorenzo, always looks far too pleased with himself) told the crowd that they'd be "able to tell their grandchildren they were here the day Joe Cole made his debut". If Cole's 17-year-old arse wasn't already flapping like a tuppence and a dinnerplate, it certainly was after Jeremy's ill-advised comment.

Leave the kids be. I remember Elliot Ward and Manny Omoyinmi being heralded as the "new Academy greats" at one point. They're playing at Coventry and retired after a career-ending injury sustained at Worthing now.

Although that's arguably more comforting for West Ham fans than the true Academy Greats. They're now playing at Man Utd and Chelsea.

He's really lost it this time

Kevin Keegan on the Magpies bench-warming, postcode for each arse cheek, goal machine, Mark Viduka:

"You saw Fernando Torres the other night score a goal [for Liverpool] when a lot of players would have taken another touch, and Mark comes into that category, too. He doesn’t need a lot of space.”

Au contraire, Kevin. He needs more space than a double-decker doing a three-point turn. Which is he why he scores less often than Iain Dowie in a disco.

Still hope for Newcastle

No win since December. The relegation zone looming larger in the rear mirror than Christopher Biggins in a hit-and-run. Who else does the official Newcastle website turn to to write a story about avoiding the drop? Step forward, Mr Hope.

Curbs goes crackers

If you took the goals out of it, it was obviously quite even," says Alan Curbishley, after seeing his side comprehensively dicked 4-0 by a Chelsea team with 10 men.

And if you took the points out of the table, we'd be joint f**Ing top, Curbs. 

Keegan: No wins, but new words

Kevin Keegan's second stint has brought about as much to Newcastle as Jonathan King brings to a debate on playground safety. However, he made his first telling contribution to the English language this weekend, with the invention of a new word to describe his side's characteristically shoddy defending:

"We didn't set up properly at the corner and we got caught," said Keegan, as slack-jawed journalists rubbed their ears in disbelief at Keegan admitting a defensive tactical flaw. "While you can criticise the players, everyone going up was more about genuineness [there it is!] than naivety."

Strange excuse that. The Newcastle back four didn't lollop forward through inexperience, they genuinely wanted to throw the game away in the last minute. And they say Keegone's not up to it?