Good morning and welcome to a brand new week. It’s absolutely booting down with rain here in Dublin this morning. Not good, not good at all.
Thanks as always to Tom for standing in yesterday. It’s a measure of how quiet things are that the stuff he was talking about then is still quite current on the news feeds this morning. Adebayor? Pah. Cesc stuff. Meh. And then we’re right back to Tom Cruise going on loan.
As Interlull’s go this one is a right doozy. Whatever doozy means. It’s just a word you say after right. I suppose the only thing that’s good about is the fact the games are being played on Fridays and Tuesdays instead of Saturdays and Wednesdays. That means the club get more time with the players when they come back after the internationals.
I know some people were complaining about the Friday night kick-offs but I think it’s the best they’ve done with regard international football in ages. So what if it inconveniences a few people who can’t drag themselves away from the post-work pints on a Friday evening? It was always a ludicrous thing that players arrived back, in dribs and drabs, throughout Thursday and you got maybe one training session to prepare for the weekend’s game. Now there’s a bit more time and that can only be a good thing.
I see John Lukic was talking in the Mirror about NoKeepergate©® and suggested we should have bought Reina, Victor Valdes or Julio Cesar. I think we all accept we should have bought a keeper and the three are reasonable choices … if you’re playing Championship Manager. After what happened this summer with Barcelona the idea of dealing with them in way was totally out of the question – even if they might well have accepted to have the extra cash to bid higher for Cesc. Valdes wouldn’t adapt to England either, I’m sure of that.
Inter wouldn’t sell Cesar and I saw during the world cup he wears a girdle. He is the William Shatner of goalkeepers who they wouldn’t have sold anyway. Reina, slightly more gettable, and as Gunnerblog reported during the summer he’d have been interested in a move, but he signed a new deal with Liverpool, the transfer fee and wages would have been astronomical, and they likely wouldn’t have sold. So while it’s all well and good saying we should have bought a keeper he’d really want to make more sensible suggestions to be taken seriously.
Meanwhile, Mark Schwarzer is very unhappy at what went on, saying:
I would rather not say anything, I would really rather not say anything because otherwise I might say something wrong.
At the end of the day, however, Schwarzer, like another player closer to our hearts, has to accept the fact that he has a contract with his club and that contracts do mean something. We hear all the time about ‘player power’ and how contracts aren’t worth the paper they’re written on etc etc. Isn’t it a positive step for football that clubs aren’t allowing themselves to be dictated to by players, agents and potential suitors.
Sure, it can still go the other way – you look at somebody like Mascherano who acted in a way which made Liverpool doubt his professionalism. They had to make a choice in the best interests of their club. Would Mascherano be a disruptive influence? Probably. Sell. At 37 missing out on Arsenal is going to sting for a player like Schwarzer. Unlike Cesc he doesn’t have another 10 years ahead of him, but Fulham weren’t in a position to sell, he has to just get on with it. He might well be angry at how difficult the Fulham board made things prior to the Stockdale injury but at this point there’s not much he can do about it.
Anyway, the point I’m making is that some players, even if they do want to move, will respect the fact their club doesn’t want to sell them and act in a professional manner. And Mascherano is a cunt. I think that’s about the size of it.
And speaking of cunts Ryan Shawcross has had a pop at Arsene Wenger for his rugby comments, saying:
He always seems to have a problem with Stoke, our manager and certain players. He’s obviously got something against me. It’s just weird. He brings my name into it.
Yes, obviously. I wonder what it might be? I suspect it might be the fact that in recent seasons reckless tackles have put Theo Walcott out for months, Adebayor being tackled off the pitch putting him out for 3-4 weeks and the trifling matter of Aaron Ramsey’s leg being snapped in two by Stoke’s answer to Lennie Small (hat tip @kenearlys). If he thinks a man with some personal animus towards him is ‘weird’ then he’s even less self-aware than Johnny Amoeba.
Shawcross would be wise to shut his mouth and not get involved in stuff like this. Despite Stoke telling the world he’s not that kind of player, the evidence clearly shows that he is. If he wants to talk and demonstrate to all and sundry that he’s as stupid as he looks then by all means keep at it but there ought to be at least person at Stoke who doesn’t carry a massive chip on their shoulder who could say to him ‘You know, perhaps you should just keep quiet, you slack-jawed, drooling, half-witted, megaspacking wankhammer’.
I bet Shawcross was that kid in primary school who always had luminous green snot crusted around his nose. Fucking vegetable.
And aside from all that nothing there’s no other nothing to not talk about. Till tomorrow.
