Good morning.
What’s in name? In a age where players’ are queuing round the block to see osteopaths and physios due to agrevated bouts of heading turning, accusations of race hate and the sinister world of roasting, a name or specifically your good name is quite possibly the only thing of value left in the game.
Players reveal just how good their name or how mud-like it is in a variety of ways. Parking in a disabled space when out for a meal, getting arrested for sexually assaulting a girl, shooting an intern, getting addicted to any variety of drugs…
Newcastle United have announced that Sid James’ Park is to changed to The Sports Direct Arena. If you open a window, you will be able to hear a mixture of sounds; that of a thousand hearts breaking, that last nail being tapped into a football club’s coffin. Mike Ashley is to most up there a rather despised figure. Despite having pumped copious amounts of real money into Toon he is still viewed as a cockney mafioso.
The renaming deal is, if you bother to read the announcement in full a temporary measure. But this is clearly a lie. On those swanky architects dreams we were shown of the new Lane, there is a ‘Your Company’s Name Here’ emblazoned on the roof or whatever. Even the thickest CEO in the world cab visualize his branding whacked on the side of a stadium, on the side of anything.
No, Ashley has failed to adhere to basic maximum of life – if you’re in a hole, stop digging – and this in an age of austerity a rather cynical move involving tax advantages and some horribly misguided self publicity.
Sports Direct is a fabulous operation, gone are the days of paying over the odds for sportswear that you’ve no great attachment to. If you just want a decent pair trainers and hoodie to go to the company gym in or have perhaps been invited to participate in a little light looting, they are your one stop affordably priced shop. But as a branding exercise this tramples on tradition. The perception of the new name is not ‘blue chip.’
Let’s hope that Levy & Co are watching …and learning. The current shirt sponsorship deals in place at Tottenham have been considered and quite clever. Neither Investec or Autonomy carry any great baggage. Manys first response to both was, ‘who?’ The cosmetic integrity (you can tell your kids where you read that phrase first) of the shirts is largely intact. It’s primarily a Spurs shirt. A shirt with WONGA.COM plastered across it can never come back from being the gaudy piece of junk it has been reduced to. Why not add ‘Keys Cut While U Wait At Brian’s Heel Bar’ beneath the number on the reverse?
Football is doing it’s very best to alienate the hand that feeds it.
The Under Armour Soccer Dome, N17
That would be ledge!
* HH here*
Daniel your comment is deeply offensive and has been removed. Might I suggest you dig out the T&C’s you agreed to when you signed for your broadband, email account etc.
daniel.hanna@live.co.uk
and the “Wit of the Week” prize goes to…er..jeffrey the rapist :gaehn:
Oi Chivers, you won a book :wassat: Mail me :freu
Can I book a win? Deliver it in 11 days please.
Oh cool! sent email to snack media address…
Wit? Berk would be more appropriate.
Berk? Prick would be much more appropriate.
No, ‘berk’ is definitely more appropriate.
Ok berk might be more appropriate but prick is more fitting…
But is either term really germane???
He is not a germane, he is a retard.
Don’t u no nuffink about jografi?
Both are… but considering the rapists comments not sure that germane is appropriate wording…..perhaps, relevant would have been a better choice.
@Hartley:
There is got to be something seriously wrong with anybody that prides themselves with the title “rapist”.
Yeah, I hate therapists too. :shifty:
Feck the Geordies………they moan more than us. They get an injection of cash, and its not like they have much in the way of history ha ha
They like to have a good old moan so if anything its done them a favour by filling conversation gaps until Christmas.
Football is no-longer a game. Staduims names are only the start (I tell ya)
Next you’ll have players who can only use one type of water bottle due to contract and dying of de-hydration due to the wrong type being the only available.
On a side note. God I hate Cheryl Cole. That is all.
Got to love a site that gives ‘jeffrey the rapist’ a wit of the week prize. I’m with Nick, f@@k the geordies, i think its great that they are owned by a spurs supporting cockney who they hate with a passion.
I remember someone describing Geordies as “Scotsmen with their brains kicked in”.
Pretty good description I think.
very apt indeed
Are you saying I should stop kicking in Scotsmens heads?
Yes: It’s the equivalent of birth control on Tyneside. If we stop kicking in Scotsman’s heads, the Geordie race will cease to exist.
Duly noted
It was Irvine Welsh who said that, in ‘Ecstasy’, I think…
I first heard it about 15 years. That just goes to prove that if it’s a good line, someone will always steal it.
There is a story Oscar Wilde and one of his admirers said “That was very clever. I wish I’d said that”
Wilde replied, “Don’t worry my boy. You will”