Michael Dawson wants out. Late last night the Spurs defender set fire to his team shirt at White Hart Lane in protest during an impassioned plea for a pay rise to Levy & Co turned into what experts are calling a ‘pyrotechnic palaver’.
Eyewitnesses are claiming that heated negotiations became literally combustible when the player, unable to cope with the Chairman’s hard ball iced tea tactics, lost his head and ignited his squad shirt in the North London Club’s boardroom.
Obviously this is cobblers. Made up. Untrue. But you have to ask yourself, ‘What’s next?’ There are two issues here. The players and the media. I’ll address the last one first.
I refuse to blame the media. Whilst we want the conventional press and us online wallahs to report in a reputable manner and not ‘make things up’ we cannot expect them not to report at all. It doesn’t work like that. Nor can you sit there in a huff acting all hurt that the news reported doesn’t suit you.
So then to the players. Guess what? Here’s where your problem is. The bulk of these guys have nothing to do and all day to do it in. The bulk of them aren’t burdened academically. When their brains aren’t being pounded with choons via Jazzy Beats headphones they are either being tattooed or ordering bottles of Champagne that cost more than a small car.
So faced with a Chairman who runs a tight ship, knows he only has 36,000 seats to sell every other week and only so much in the bank they have to become inventive. Low animal cunning inventive. Jerry distracting Tom inventive and consequently the results are as cartoon like.
‘We had agreement!’ bleated Modders as security fecked him out a side door. No, schmuko. You have a contract.
Now we have the boy Dawson nervously approaching the venerable Bede, bowl in hand wanting more gruel. ‘Please sir, I want … I want m m m more, sir.’ Except the Little Levy doesn’t suddenly morph into Harry Secombe. He simply takes off his glasses, smiles faintly and asks, ‘Why?‘
A source close to the player has told The Sun that Mickey feels undervalued. Well guess what. So do we, son.
Yesterday I wrote that it was always the way that players came and went and it us – the mugs – clunking through the turnstiles, the mugs ordering polyester shirts with a little badge sewn into it, the mugs who leap about like madmen when a goal goes in on the radio … us mugs who stay forever.
So Michael, if this ‘source close to the player’ is fictional tell us. If it is true then join the queue of slouches and also rans who in the final analysis never quite cut it with the people that count.
Us.
Two things about this makes me mad.
1. My kettle dosnt always boil to boiling point meaning sometimes I have to put only a small amount of milk in my tea.
2. Ive lost a small screw from my sun glasses meaning my glasses might get lost if they fall off whilst turning my head fast at a tennis match.
If you only turn your head counter clockwise, you will effectively screw the glasses back together as you watch. Can’t help on the kettle unfortunately.
can’t or won’t – Kettlist!
Made up story. You gots to chill.
When clubs are spending 85% on income on players wages, how can the game possibly sustain these inflated unrealistic demands? I can imagine a prem player hearing about Euro lottery win, and evaluating it in terms of weeks to earn that sort of money!
Back to the subject in hand!
The financial fair play rules look like heading for the waste basket at the first hurdle. Clubs like Citeh & Cheatski will wrap the money up into ever more convoluted sponsorship & ground development deals, which will have UEFA’s accountants & lawyers tied up for years.
Challenges will be appealed in court (The clubs having unlimited funds to draw on), which will keep the whole thing rolling on for years. Unenforceable & unworkable, they will eventually disappear – But in the meantime, those clubs which have adhered to the terms of the deal will fall ever further behind.
For probably the first time in my football following life, the only club I feel any kind of… And I struggle to say it… sympathy toward, is Ar5ena1. They, like us, seem to have been trying to do things the right way… with better resources and greater investment. And yet it still hasn’t bought the rewards.
I guess it all comes down to what do you wish for. Success or truth? Integrity or Victory at all costs? I know what I’d prefer as I never followed Spurs just to see them win by any means. Sadly however, those are only terms that fans will ever judge things by. The days of honesty and integrity died when the EPL was born, so I guess one way or another we have to live with it.
…on days when you can get a tickets to WHL, come watch AFC Wimbledon, it’s not always pretty, but honesty and integrity in abundance!
…I meant ‘can’t’…and come to think of it, now they are ‘professional’ can they still be called Afc Wimbledon??
Strangely, A good friend of mine who’s Cheatski fan has been doing exactly the same thing. He can’t stand what’s going on at the Fridge. I myself have been spending much more time in the last few seasons going to Ipswich with a Suffolk boy who’s one of my best friends. I enjoy going, it kind of reminds me of going to WHL back in the 70’s.
It was all getting back to some sort of sanity around 2003-4, then some Russian twat came in, bought a near bankrupt outfit, and threw stupid money at the damned thing. Other sides then had to compete,and we have the situation we’re in now!
There are a lot of people in the world with a lot of money who need ways to appease their vanity. Owning sports clubs will always be a way of doing that. The difference until now has been that the owners themselves have all been sports fans or had the good of the sport at heart (Like in the early days of the NFL).
The CL & the EPL were tailor made to the advertising market & people like Roman. Roman is no more a footballing man as Seb Coe or George Bush, the players he’s bought and foisted on his managers show that – £50m for busted flush Torres, probably on the advice of Bernie Ecclestone or Naomi Campbell, shows that.
The stupidity of the people who came up with these golden geese is that they thought they could control them. The likes of Roman don’t listen to authority or suits, if they don’t get what they want he ‘disappears’ them down a shaft in one of his gas fields. If UEFA think they can control what they’ve created they are dreaming.
The whole debacle of FIFA, UEFA & the FA trying to control the game is like watching a bunch of waiters desperately trying to keep the silver set out right on the dining tables as the Titanic sank.
Where am I rambling with all of this? I just hope we never go down that route. I hope that we never sell out to some oligarch just to hang on the coat tails of the likes of Citeh. Let’s get WHL up to 45,000 so we can at least make a decent fist of it but keep trying to do what we’ve done. Play good football honestly – Even if it means losing 2 or 3 players a year to the likes of Roman. As long as he pays through the nose then sod it… Because one thing will always be certain to me, and that’s that for me, no-one will ever be able to tarnish nights like beating Ar5ena1 in the cc Semi.
Well that’s not rambling, but in the light of recent revelations about Murdoch, it’s unlikely, I know, but what if RM said, that’s it, I’m pulling Sky, who would take over the football TV rights. We are all culpable and willing participants in this, because the game has our hear and the club our soul. But even Faust realized the price the devil demands is sometimes too much, and I’m fast becoming Faust!
Finger me
For what? Brinks-Mat? The killing of Kennedy?
Be more specific.
I think hes talking…….Raunchy!
Que Blue Oyster Bar music….