16.00 THE HEADLINES AT THE END OF THE DAY
Joe Kinnear was only supposed to be at Newcastle for a couple of matches. One touchline ban, a foul-mouthed rant at the fourth estate, an FA charge for insulting a referee, Mike Ashley’s inability to sell the club and two wins in eight games later and he’s earned himself a contract through till the summer. Good effort.
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Despite not having played enough full internationals to qualify, someone at the Home Office obviously shares Sir Alex Ferguson’s high opinion of Serbian flier Zoran Tosic and has granted him a work permit. The Partizan Belgrade winger will join in January and is the long term replacement to Ryan Giggs.
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Arsene Wenger admits Arsenal aren’t in the title race at the moment – but almost in the same breath said that if they beat Chelsea on Sunday then that all changes.
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And Luiz Felipe Scolari has offered support to his opposite number this Sunday, claiming he is in the top five of managers currently working today. Much as he is in the top five of the Premier League, eh?
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15.25
Marseille can feel themselves a little unlucky, in a way. Whoever was in charge of the investigation has broken with Uefa convention and actually done something in a relatively timely fashion, meaning the French club have been charged in connection with some soft-minded hoon lobbing a lighter at Steven Gerrard – just two days ago!
Marseille will answer the case at a Dec 11 meeting of its control and disciplinary panel.
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15.00 THE HEADLINES THIS HOUR
There’s another Super Smashing Great Sunday heading your way this weekend and the main protagonists are obviously getting excited. How else to explain away the series of explosive press conferences we were treated to this afternoon?
Luiz Felipe Scolari has controversially branded Arsene Wenger a ‘friend’ and says his adversary’s teams play ‘beautiful’ football. Take that!
Wenger retorted with a withering assessment of the game as one that will be ‘difficult’ against a ‘good’ team’. Kerpow!
And in the north west, Mark Hughes dropped the bombshell that Manchester City will be capable of attracting some better players this January than they could have done just a few months ago. But then cheekily suggested making City a top team would ‘take time’. Have some of that!
Praise the lord then that loose-lipped mischief maker Joe Kinnear has been handed a contract at Newcastle till the end of the season. Someone get a disparaging newspaper article and a microphone in front of him, quick smart.
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14.00 THE HEADLINES THIS HOUR
There must be something in the London air today. Both Luiz Felipe Scolari and Arsene Wenger believe Arsenal are still in the title race, and don't mind telling anyone who'll listen. Though Wenger at least admitted that it requires his side to beat Chelsea at Stamford Bridge this weekend.
Manchester United winger Ryan Giggs, 54, is to have the young lad to help around the place he increasingly needs now that the Home Office have rubber stamped the visa application of Serbian flier Zoran Tosic.
And Joe Kinnear will be terrorising lazy journalists a while longer yet. The interim Newcastle manager has been handed a contract that runs till the end of the season.
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13.00 THE HEADLINES THIS HOUR
Zoran Tosic – the Serbian Ryan Giggs by all accounts – said earlier this week that he knew nothing of Manchester United’s bid to sign him. But that hasn’t stopped the club successfully applying for a work permit for the Partizan Belgrade winger.
Referee-baiting pretend Newcastle United manager Joe Kinnear has been handed a proper contract at the club, at least until the end of the season anyway.
And Luiz Felipe Scolari rates Arsene Wenger as one of the top five managers in the world – looking at the Premier League table this morning the other four must be Rafael Benitez, Sir Alex Ferguson, Martin O’Neill and himself, eh?
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12.30
England goalkeeper David James is a tree-hugging liberal, literally. As part of National Tree Week, James will spend three hours with his arms wrapped round a great oak in Exeter on Monday, to promote environmental awareness. Either that or he has nothing better to do with his days off since he knocked the old PlayStation on the head.
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12.00 THE HEADLINES THIS HOUR
Potty-mouthed rabble-rouser Joe Kinnear has had his contract with Newcastle United extended until the end of the season because club owner Mike Ashley can’t find someone with the requisite money-to-sense ratio willing to buy the club and he is the best manager they can hope to attract. Or because his two wins in eight matches have convinced the Newcastle suits he knows what he’s doing, depending on your stand point.
Money can’t buy you love, or the respect of Sir Alex Ferguson and Wayne Rooney, it seems. Speaking ahead of the Manchester derby both men have dismissed Manchester City as nothing more than middle of the road patsies. No danger of that coming back to bite them, eh?
Agricultural route-one merchants Bolton are taking po-faced malcontent Nicolas Anelka to court over an image rights dispute. Really, they are.
And William Gallas isn’t content with bad mouthing his current team, now it’s Chelsea’s turn to feel the sharp end of the Frenchman’s overactive tongue.
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11.30
You will often hear it said that Sir Alex Ferguson is the master of the mind game. Indeed the phrase only entered football lexicon when the fiery Scotsman started messing with opposition managers in a process that reached it’s apex with the mental breakdown of Kevin Keegan during a famous post-match interview back in 1996.
Getting a rise out of Keegan is the psychological equivalent of stealing candy from a particularly slow witted baby. While it is asleep, and so Ferguson’s undisputed title in the field is perhaps a touch unwarranted.
Especially when he is busy going about setting himself up for a fall in this weekend’s Manchester derby. To be fair, Wayne Rooney started it, but Ferguson should know better than to follow the youngster's lead.
“Where are they at the moment?’’ inquired Ferguson of Mark Hughes’ 11th-placed City. “Excuse me! At this moment in time our threats are still Chelsea and Liverpool, who are sitting above us. Aren’t they? That’s the focus.’’
Rooney said earlier this week that he wasn’t bothered about all the noise coming out of Eastlands and was equally dismissive about the current City side. “If City were winning trophies, it would irritate me,’’ he said, “but while they are still lingering in mid-table, I am not really too bothered about it.’’
With United failing to get a point against their neighbours last season and City coming off the back of a fantastic result against Schalke in the Uefa Cup, someone really ought to tell Ferguson about what order pride and falls usually come in.
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William Gallas just doesn’t know when to quit does he? Fresh from undermining Arsenal’s (admittedly moribund) title chances with his warts and all expose of life in the Emirates dressing room, he has revisited a previous crime, when he agitated for a move away from Chelsea by threatening to score an own goal if picked. At least that was the version at the time. But history has been rewritten.
“They ignored the truth,” he said. “For them I was a player who would score an own-goal. Who cared if I’d given them five years of my life, my passion, a Premier League title to share.” When Jose Mourinho said he was still going to pick the Frenchman, he says now, his response was more considered. “You are going to put me on the pitch OK,” recalls Gallas of his reaction at the time. “But if the heart is not there and I’m not concentrating I risk making errors I’m not used to making.”
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Football continues to cripple itself under the weight of it’s own self-importance. Don’t believe me? Then consider this. Bolton have submitted a claim to the High Court over disputed image rights in relation to Nicolas Anelka’s time at the club.
Considering that Anelka’s moody mien would only have a chance of being used to sell bits of tat in the club shop once a year at Halloween, just what kind of figures can they be disputing? And after pocketing around £7 million in profit on the buying and selling of the player between 2006 and 2008 – a time when Anelka scored 21 goals for the club in 53 appearances – you’d have thought they would have sent him on his way with their best wishes.
Not so, apparently, and to the highest court in the land it is for them to squabble over a few shekels and the whys and wherefores of a few mugs and key rings with Anelka’s name on them.
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