fans Great Football Debate: #2 Republic Of The Fans

Alright lads — on three…”

Oh god. This is a bit of a pet peeve for me, it’s not really a heated debate as such but it’s some­thing that grinds on me and when you realise what I’m talk­ing about, it’ll prob­a­bly grind on you to. In fact it’s some­thing that should be argued, because it’s usu­ally the open­ing for ridicu­lous state­ments in foot­ball debates that no one ever really thinks to ques­tion. We all have a mate (or mates) that usu­ally flare up debates and love to attack rival fans, I live in the North East and there is a mix­ture of New­cas­tle and Sun­der­land fans all about — we never agree on any­thing. And pretty much every debate that occurs includes at some point the open­ing line of “your fans…”. Mean­ing of course that fans are gen­er­alised into one group, one way of think­ing, feel­ing and support.

You’ve heard all the stereo­types — Man Utd fans are all from Croy­don, Mill­wall fans are all hooli­gans, Wigan fans are crap because they “can’t” fill their sta­dium, New­cas­tle fans are deluded, Chelsea fans are band-Waggoner’s, fans of Ital­ian teams go around stab­bing every­body, Liv­er­pool fans will knick your car stereo etc. I know a lot of the time these jibes are made all in ban­ter and with a bit of fun, but you’d be sur­prised how many peo­ple believe these things and it often leaves peo­ple mak­ing ridicu­lous assump­tions on peo­ple based on what club they support.

I got into one of these argu­ments not too long ago, some­one I know who is a Sun­der­land fan chal­lenged me, he said that “New­cas­tle fans are crap, all the atmos­phere is gone and you think you’re still a big club — but you’re not! Sun­der­land are the biggest team in the North East now.” At first I was debat­ing all these points until all of a sud­den I just started think­ing to myself “hang on a sec­ond, this guy has just gen­er­alised all fans of my team into one voice and one mould — that can’t be right. I’m not the same as every­one else who sup­ports this club”. And then it really started to get to me, look­ing on Inter­net sto­ries regard­ing New­cas­tle there are peo­ple from other clubs who are say­ing things like “beat Villa 6–0 and they’re back to being deluded think­ing they will get into Europe now — thick Geordie so and so’s”. Appa­rantly all of us Toon fans have invented telekenisis.

Why it bugs me is that I know that isn’t me. I’m not deluded, there are some New­cas­tle fans that are a bit over opti­mistic but those sup­port­ers exist in pretty every club. I was at the game against Villa and I left the sta­dium in a jubi­lant mood — the rea­son most New­cas­tle fans were in this jubi­lant mood was because we’d just beaten a team that chal­lenges at the top of the table by 6 goals! Wouldn’t you be happy if your team did that? There are peo­ple that think we will go down and that is fair, we just came up and I know we’re in for a tough ride this sea­son, but when you’re fight­ing rel­e­ga­tion you have to be opti­mistic for your team’s chances at the start of the sea­son — noth­ing wrong with that really. When I go to St. James I see peo­ple around me mak­ing a lot of noise, but there’s also peo­ple who won’t make much noise in the match, but that is fair. And yeah, I know that my team has just come back up and we’re not going to stomp our boot down and storm into Europe — I’d love us to get 17th place and any­thing above that is a bonus!

A lot of fans will believe every­thing they hear, when a pun­dit opens their mouth or some­one with influ­ence, they’ll go along with it because peo­ple model them­selves on oth­ers; if you read or hear some­thing that is influ­enc­ing then you’re going to take that on as your own opin­ion most likely. The media in Eng­land are really bad for this sort of thing, the amount of social con­trol they have is scary. Stereo­types are impor­tant for the human mind, they help gen­er­alise infor­ma­tion so that we have to do as lit­tle cog­ni­tive pro­cess­ing as pos­si­ble, we can retrieve this infor­ma­tion as freely as we blink and you’d be sur­prised how quickly you form an opin­ion on some­one based on the infor­ma­tion you’re given when speak­ing to them. What foot­ball team you sup­port can also play an impact on what peo­ple think of you, I intro­duced one of my mates to another when I was at Uni­ver­sity and one of them was a Man Utd fan from Lon­don. The encounter didn’t last long, but my other mate didn’t really feel he was a real foot­ball sup­porter just because of he was a Lon­doner sup­port­ing Man Utd. He had taken a well known foot­balling norm and applied it freely with­out much thought or questioning.

But what about you? Do you want to be known as some­one who goes along with the crowd? When you think about it, do you agree with every­thing your fel­low sup­port­ers say? I know I don’t, I’m a per­son who likes to take time to form my own opin­ion and I believe that every­one has a right to sup­port their club in what­ever way they chose and they are free to have their opin­ion. I know a lad who lives me that sup­ports Man Utd and he won’t have a bad word said against them — he is quite biased in his sup­port but that is how he chooses to sup­port his team and it doesn’t really bother me as long as I know I have my own way of express­ing my sup­port. With this in mind, it has made me into a per­son that won’t use the argu­ment opener “your fans…” and I won’t crit­i­cize a body of fans just because of a gen­eral con­sen­sus made by the world of foot­ball. Yeah some clubs don’t fill their sta­dium, but does that mean that the peo­ple who do go are all ter­ri­ble fans too? Do they deserve that label? Of course they don’t. Just because Sky Sports asks a (very) select sam­ple of sup­port­ers their opin­ion on club mat­ters, does that mean every­one else holds those opin­ions? No it doesn’t. Stereo­types are always going to exist, but I’ve always won­dered how easy it would be to break most of them down, in my mind all fans are dif­fer­ent and I don’t want one thing I hear to form the opin­ion on the next sup­porter. Why should the opin­ion of the major­ity effect that of the minority?

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Sigurdsson 421149s 150x150 Npower Championship Transfer Round Up: Winners And Losers

We’ll miss you Gylfi!

Well now that Sky Sports is calm­ing down a bit from its day of “twist and turns” (sure), the trans­fer dead­line is upon us and teams can no longer make any more per­ma­nent sign­ings. The foot­ball league sides can still sign free agents and make short term loan sign­ings, but any per­ma­nent sign­ings in these hard eco­nom­i­cal times are all com­plete until Jan­u­ary. When it comes to the Cham­pi­onship, teams are often on a strict bud­get and new sign­ings are very com­mon, but who were the biggest win­ners and losers in this window?

Win­ners:

Cardiff City:

Craig Bel­lamy. That is with­out a doubt THE Cham­pi­onship sign­ing of the sum­mer and arguably one of the top sign­ings in Eng­lish foot­ball all together. Put on top of that the fact they’ve kept hold of Peter Wit­ting­ham, who may be sign­ing a new con­tract soon, and Michael Chopra who dis­ap­pointed some fans by announc­ing his inten­tion to leave the club. Regard­less of that, Cardiff City have the strongest attack in the Cham­pi­onship and they can only build on their good start to the sea­son which has seen them gain 10 points from four games. Jason Koumas has also returned for his sec­ond spell on loan at the Blue­birds along with Man­ches­ter United young­ster Danny Drinkwa­ter, Hull City’s Seyi Olofin­jana and Wolves striker Andy Keogh. Under new own­er­ship, the future looks a lit­tle brighter for the Welsh out­fit, after last season’s protests against Peter Ridsdale.

Mid­dles­brough:

Or team SPL as many peo­ple are call­ing them now, ‘Boro made the big sign­ing of Kris Boyd this sum­mer and excel­lent Steve Gib­son has cer­tainly took a gam­ble and shown his sup­port to Gor­don Stra­chan. Brad Jones is out and to be hon­est I think ‘Boro got a good deal from Liv­er­pool as I always thought that he was a ter­ri­ble goal keeper, they may not have brought in a replace­ment yet but I would expect a loan sign­ing or free trans­fer to come in soon. Nicky Bai­ley is another hon­ourable men­tion as well as Matt Kil­gal­lon, who has come on loan from local rivals Sun­der­land. You could argue that they’ve not exactly taken the league by storm in the first four games, but as Sir Bobby Rob­son once said “there’s no point in look­ing at the table until Novem­ber”. The defeat to Barns­ley was a bit of a shock, but I’ve been to Barns­ley before and they always make it hard for the oppo­si­tion, despite many labelling them for rel­e­ga­tion this sea­son I think they may stay up. The fact for ‘Boro is that the team will still be grow­ing rela­tion­ships with each other and the side has fan­tas­tic depth that will ben­e­fit them greatly through the winter.

Losers:

Hull City:

I was quite shocked to hear that Nigel Pear­son was admit­ted to hos­pi­tal after com­plain­ing about a tight chest, but luck­ily the Hull man­ager is set to return. Pear­son had hoped that a num­ber of top earn­ers would move on and although a num­ber were sent out on loan and a few released/sold, there still remains a lot of play­ers dam­ag­ing an already tricky finan­cial sit­u­a­tion at Hull. Most notably is Jimmy Bullard, who wasn’t played in pre-season in order to ensure that he would remain fit in the prospect of a sale or loan move. Robert Koren and Jay Simp­son are decent sign­ings, but the club still has a lot of top earn­ers that they were hope­ful to get rid of and if Jay Simp­son doesn’t start smash­ing in the goals then the club could really strug­gle to bounce back at the first time of asking.

Read­ing:

If you’re a Read­ing fan you’ll prob­a­bly know why your club was one of the big losers this trans­fer win­dow and that rea­son is Gylfi Sig­urdsson. It appears that my arti­cle regard­ing the 5 play­ers to watch this sea­son has been a kiss of death for these guys, par­tic­u­larly Nicky May­nard who is out for 4 months (which all but ended my bet for him to fin­ish top goal scorer this sea­son!). Sig­urds­son has made the move to Ger­many for a reported £4.25m, as he will wear the colours of Hof­fen­heim next sea­son. I know it’s quite a bit of money for a Cham­pi­onship side, but this guy got 21 goals for Read­ing last sea­son and he is a mid­fielder. At only 20 years old he still has a lot of progress to make and it would seem that Read­ing have lost the main cog in their sys­tem. On dead­line day the age­ing Ian Harte and Zurab Khizan­ishvilli (took me a while to spell that one) have came in, and although they’ll pro­vide much needed sup­port in the full back posi­tions, Read­ing have lost their top player and it’s a shame that one of the Championship’s top play­ers has left this season.

Derby County:

The board at Derby should be ashamed. They’ve promised to fund the squad for every trans­fer win­dow and rarely does there appear to be any sort of ambi­tious invest­ment from them. The rea­son they are in the losers sec­tion is the fact that Derby County have one of the loy­al­ist, if not THE loy­al­ist, fan base in the coun­try and if you were to put teams in the top league based on their fans then Derby would be up there every sea­son. Luke Var­ney is off the wage bill, but the squad hasn’t exactly been strength­ened to chal­lenge in the league too much. Sup­port­ers of the Rams will be hope­ful that loan sign­ing Alberto Bueno comes good, but truth be told this is another trans­fer win­dow of what could have been for Derby, the squad really does need quite a lot of fresh tal­ent. As I write this Rob Hulse may also be on his way out to QPR and Derby fans will be dis­ap­pointed to see him leave.

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bellamyspeed Welsh Dragons Bellamy and Speed Look To Shake Up The Championship

Blue­birds player Bel­lamy and Blades Man­ager Speed

It’s a good week for Welsh foot­ball, as not only has one of the great­est ever Welsh play­ers pro­duced become man­ager of Sheffield United, but a Welsh striker of top Pre­mier League qual­ity has joined the Blue­birds. Gary Speed is expected to be named man­ager of York­shire out­fit Sheffield United and Craig Bel­lamy will make a dream move to play for Cardiff City on a sea­son long loan. The move to man­age­ment for Speed was some­thing I always felt was com­ing and it is great to see one of the most like­able peo­ple in the game get a start at a good club like the Blades. The move for Bel­lamy is one that will sur­prise many how­ever, as last sea­son Bel­lamy was putting Pre­mier League defences to the sword and con­sid­er­ing Cardiff’s uncer­tain finan­cial sit­u­a­tion it is a mas­sive coup for the club who will feel that if Bel­lamy stays fit then they could finally become the first Welsh side to play in England’s top flight.

A first chance in man­age­ment for Speed who recently received an MBE ear­lier in the year and his first shot at tak­ing the reins could be rather tricky. Although a decent open­ing day draw at Cardiff, where the Blades went down to ten men, Hartle­pool and QPR found it eas­ier in against United in the league cup and Cham­pi­onship respec­tively. A 3–0 home defeat against QPR and for­mer man­ager Neil Warnock and it appeared to be the final straw in the rela­tion­ship between Kevin Black­well and the Blades board. To me, it seemed quite bizarre to make this deci­sion with only two games into the sea­son. Many fans were appar­ently call­ing for Black­well to be removed from his posi­tion after see­ing their side hum­bled by Rangers and it appears that the board mem­bers heard those cries. I think Speed has all the mak­ings to be a great man­ager, but it is impor­tant that he is put along­side and assis­tant who is expe­ri­enced. Sheffield United have brought in a few decent sign­ings, but due to a few finan­cial con­straints, itis dif­fi­cult to expect them to really push on for a play­off berth this sea­son and it is prob­a­bly more expec­tant the he has a decent first sea­son in charge of the Blades that they can then build off. As a fan of Gary Speed I wish him all the best and hope he finds suc­cess in his first man­age­r­ial job.

The other piece of big Welsh news this week is of course that Craig Bel­lamy has now signed for Cardiff. This for me (and prob­a­bly every­one else) is sign­ing of the sum­mer for any Cham­pi­onship side. Man City’s reluc­tance to give Bel­lamy to one of their Pre­mier League rivals has seen the player ful­fil a dream of his by finally get­ting to play for his home­town club. Last sea­son, Bel­lamy looked like an impor­tant part of the Man City attack and if he stays fit he will ter­rify every defence in England’s sec­ond tier. It’s a sen­sa­tional trans­fer and I bet there are a lot more peo­ple throw­ing money on Cardiff to gain pro­mo­tion now. Bel­lamy could start in the game against Don­caster Rovers this week­end and will have a chance to get the first team foot­ball he has been crav­ing. It’s unlikely that Cardiff are fund­ing his entire wages and this may well be a case of Man City being unwill­ing to strengthen fel­low Pre­mier League sides, as Bel­lamy is still a qual­ity player that can play at the top level. If he stays fit, few will doubt that Craig Bel­lamy will have a great sea­son in the Cham­pi­onship and could give Cardiff that lit­tle extra push to help them finally achieve pro­mo­tion. In any case, Dave Jones must be doing cart­wheels around the streets of Cardiff right now.

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Jose Aurelio Gay Great Football Debate: #1 Have You Heard That Footballer Is Gay?!

Sorry Jose Aure­lio Gay, this one isn’t about you

As well as writ­ing about the Cham­pi­onship (which ruined my accu­mu­la­tor at the week­end as I incor­rectly pre­dicted four results and got none of them right. Yes I’ve thought about writ­ing up a let­ter of res­ig­na­tion) I thought I’d write about some of those talk­ing points in foot­ball that are often debated, whether it be in the main­stream media, obscure forum chats or just in the pub with your mates. There’s no bet­ter place to start than talk­ing about a sub­ject that is start­ing to become more promi­nent due to a change in cul­ture — gay foot­ballers and how they would be treated by foot­ball fans. Basi­cally, it’s more of a ques­tion as to why this is such a taboo sub­ject when it comes to football.

In west­ern cul­ture, homo­pho­bic remarks are com­monly used with a dif­fer­ent mean­ing to what they entail. You will prob­a­bly know what I’m talk­ing about, you’ve likely used terms like ‘shut up you fag’ if you are part of the MTV gen­er­a­tion onwards (what is the cur­rent gen­er­a­tion called? In fact I’m pretty sure only the “MTV gen­er­a­tion” have their own label). In most cases, peo­ple don’t use it to show spite or mal­ice against gay peo­ple, it’s as a result of mod­ern media that such terms are used so com­monly; if you have ever seen the South Park Episode “The F word”, they cover this sub­ject quite well. It’s a mod­ern day insult that is used by many peo­ple. Although despite a more accept­ing cul­ture in the west of homo­sex­u­al­ity, homo­pho­bia still exists.

The term homo­pho­bia itself is quite con­fus­ing though, as it would sug­gest that these peo­ple are scared of gay peo­ple. Algio­pho­bia is the fear of pain, achlu­pho­bia is a fear of dark­ness and lutra­pho­bia is a fear of otters. You are not born with pho­bias, if you ever see in TV shows when a char­ac­ter goes to coun­sel­lor they usu­ally ask them to back track as to what could have trig­gered the fear and what past events have been trau­matic that it makes them want to avoid it and panic about it (For another pop cul­ture ref­er­ence see The Simp­sons “Fear Of Fly­ing”, but if you are like me you’ve prob­a­bly already seen it 100 times). Pho­bias are a defence mech­a­nism from the brain so you attempt to avoid some­thing that caused so much dis­tress, I have a degree in Psy­chol­ogy and when I was at uni­ver­sity one of my lec­tur­ers told me a story where he was coun­selling a woman who had recently been raped and she had a com­plete panic attack in the mid­dle of a shop­ping cen­tre which had her scream­ing. The rea­son was that she had seen some­one wear­ing a jacket that was sim­i­lar to the per­son who had raped her, her brain had picked up on this and this caused stress. The brain stores more infor­ma­tion from trau­matic events than it usu­ally would, there is a lot of papers that look at a link between stress and mem­ory which is quite a broad and inter­est­ing subject.

Now you aver­age per­son who would be described as “homo­pho­bic” will gen­er­ally have not had an expe­ri­ence which would lead them to com­pletely panic when they see a gay per­son. In fact many of the peo­ple who go on about how wrong it is to be gay or make fun of celebri­ties that are gay will be so two faced that when they meet a per­son who is a homo­sex­ual, they’ll act nicer than they would to their mates! Homo­pho­bia in west­ern cul­ture is not as much a fear of gay peo­ple, but the hate of them or a gen­eral dis­agree­ment with their lifestyle. I’ve never under­stood though why this exists, do these peo­ple think that every gay per­son will thrust their lower region in their face the minute they meet them? And peo­ple also claim they hate how camp they are, but in truth the major­ity of gay peo­ple are camp, but in pop cul­ture when a writer wants to por­tray a gay per­son they’ll often make them so camp it truly is fiction.

But gen­er­ally the peo­ple you will find that use such lan­guage and use gay cul­ture as an insult are the lads — the boys — drink­ing bud­dies that you will sit in the pub (or bar in Amer­ica I sup­pose) with and they are usu­ally the same lads that will be debat­ing the foot­ball or hav­ing a pre-match pint. Which is why it is such a taboo sub­ject, how would foot­ball fans react to a foot­baller that they know is gay? And how would all those macho alpha male play­ers react to know­ing that they have a team mate that is bat­ting for the other team? You can’t really com­pare it to the rise of black foot­ballers as they are two sep­a­rate sub­jects and whereas that was an issue of race, homo­sex­u­al­ity is a lifestyle choice (or you’re gay from birth — whichever side of the argu­ment you want to be on but I don’t really have enough knowl­edge on what that argu­ment is about).

You hear all the rumours about play­ers that are gay, I never know where they start. I won’t list any I’ve heard because truth be told they prob­a­bly have no fac­tual basis, but most fans have dis­cussed this sub­ject at least once and you’re often given replies of “I heard *insert player here* is gay”. And there are rumours because to my knowl­edge I don’t actu­ally recall a mod­ern high pro­file player that has came out as gay. I also never get why it has to be cov­ered so in depth by the media, how is it news that some­one is a homo­sex­ual, why does it have to do the rounds? I don’t really care if some­one is gay or not, it’s about as news­wor­thy to me as my mam telling me she’s just come back from work. You never see head­lines about peo­ple being straight, the fact that it is news almost sug­gests that it is the wrong option which is non­sense and why I don’t care for it being news — it doesn’t have much sig­nif­i­cant mean­ing to me whether a per­son wants to be straight or gay and it shouldn’t be a big issue.

But pretty much every­one either knows a gay per­son or has met one. It’s very likely that there are gay foot­ballers but they prob­a­bly live in fear that knowl­edge of this might alien­ate peo­ple. The sub­ject itself is tricky because you have no idea how peo­ple will react to it. At uni­ver­sity I had a mate who was a Brighton fan and if you are unfa­mil­iar with Brighton, it is pretty much known as gay cap­i­tal of Britain as it is a pop­u­lar place to go for gay peo­ple (par­tic­u­larly from Lon­don) in the sum­mer time. But the stereo­type is that every­one from Brighton is gay and there­fore their fans deserve to hear about it. I only went to two Brighton away games and I have been assured that the chants of “Gay! Gay! Gay! Gay! Gay! Gay!” are as com­mon in all Brighton games as they were at those two. Stuff like this leads you to ques­tion how worth­while it would be for a foot­baller to let the world know he is gay, as this sort of reac­tion could be a real bur­den on not only them but the team as well as it is hate­ful dis­trac­tion that isn’t welcome.

This is why foot­ball isn’t ideal for this sort of thing. Peo­ple should have the right to be gay with­out any sort of announce­ment or bur­den, but it will always change opin­ions. I’m in no doubt that there are a lot of foot­ball fans that would be accept­ing of a foot­baller being gay, if you have any sense it shouldn’t change your opin­ion, but even though black foot­ballers are wel­comed with open arms by foot­ball fans, racism still exists. Not just those inci­dents reported in East­ern Europe that Sky report, if you’re sit­ting in the sta­dium you’ve more than likely heard some­one use a racial slur against a black player. Chris Kamara spoke about racism in the mod­ern game, at one point he was even told that when they were mak­ing racist remarks against Emile Hes­key, they were not intended to offend Kamara because “they didn’t con­sider him black”. In the 21st cen­tury cow­ardly fans shout­ing from their seat, in the knowl­edge that the play­ers can’t react, resort to using vul­gar lan­guage against black play­ers and it is more than likely that this would be the same for a gay foot­baller. Hell, it even exists within the game, just look at Michael Ballack’s agent who called the entire Ger­man squad gay for not win­ning the World Cup and we all know that the rea­son they didn’t win it was because of Paul the psy­chic octo­pus.

I myself am not per­son­ally gay and I don’t try to push “gay rights” in peo­ples face but I do believe in com­mon sense. I can bet in the future that high pro­file player will come out as gay, but the real ques­tion is to how it will be han­dled by the sup­port­ers and if it would change people’s feel­ings towards that player. Sure they might be abused by fans for their lifestyle, but if they can put it aside, block it out and show that they are a good player, it could change a lot of opin­ions and let peo­ple know that gay peo­ple are not some giant machine that is com­ing to destroy the world. The weird thing about this sub­ject is that it isn’t some­thing that is spoke about heav­ily in the main­stream media, but instead it is sub­ject dis­cussed by fans. I’m not say­ing we should get ten ex-professionals around a table and list down which foot­ballers are gay, but it would be inter­est­ing to hear a high pro­file player or ex-pro turned pun­dit if they knew any play­ers and how foot­ballers feel about the sub­ject of homo­sex­u­al­ity. It almost echoes the Amer­i­can army with their “don’t ask, don’t tell” pol­icy, which is with­out a doubt one of the most ridicu­lous things I have ever heard. If you aren’t aware of it, you can be gay in the army but you can’t let any­one know you are gay. Appar­ently a gay solider might dis­tract the sol­diers, but to be hon­est if you try to have sex with any type of co-worker then that is con­sid­ered unprofessional.

The bot­tom line is that mod­er­ate to extreme “homo­pho­bia” exists in our cul­ture, but gay peo­ple are accepted in every­day life, so why should it be dif­fer­ent for foot­ball? I know I said I didn’t really get why peo­ple had to make a big announce­ment about the fact that they are gay, but if that is the way of the world then why should a foot­baller cover it up? Actu­ally, like I pre­vi­ously men­tioned, I don’t get why being gay is even an issue, so this whole debate is built on pretty shal­low foun­da­tions. I do know how­ever that there are a lot of gay peo­ple who are fed up of peo­ple using slurs like “gay” and “fag” to describe peo­ple and want it to change. Many famous gay peo­ple are often seen as fig­ures who have the abil­ity to change opin­ions and make it more accept­able to be gay, yet there are none in foot­ball. I’m not say­ing we need gay foot­ballers, but on aver­age it is likely that there are a few gay foot­ballers, so why should they cover it up?

Fans are unfor­giv­ing in what they say and every game for a gay foot­baller could end up hav­ing a sim­i­lar atmos­phere to a Brighton away day, but if this were the case, the abil­ity to over come this would speak louder than any words could. Should gay foot­ballers be accepted? Abso­lut­ley! Would we see a bar­rage of offen­sive chants directed towards them? Who knows…

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Leicester City Bought By Asian Consortium

by Rob McCluskey on August 12, 2010 · 0 comments

LESTER CITY LOGO Leicester City Bought By Asian Consortium

Good God. The Pre­mier League may be start­ing this week­end but the Cham­pi­onship is doing its hard­est to get all the atten­tion. It may be bad news for Bris­tol City today, but it’s poten­tially good news for Leices­ter City who have found invest­ment from a num­ber of Asian com­pa­nies, who are in a con­sor­tium led by Aiyawatt Rak­sri­ak­sorn (who in the future I will be refer­ring to as “Leices­ter City owner”). Milan Man­daric will remain as chair­man of the club, but the con­sor­tium has bought a major­ity stake in the Foxes and the new own­ers will take on the clubs debt of £26m as well as the value of the club (which varies depend­ing on who you read). Inter­est­ingly about this takeover is that it is one of the first (if not the first) since the FA announced that there would be stricter rules on who could buy a foot­ball club after the var­i­ous finan­cial prob­lems across the league last season.

The Leices­ter City owner is known for being the owner of Asian duty-free shop­ping cen­tre King Power Group, the com­pany that will be the Foxes shirt spon­sor for the next three years. Excit­ing indeed, but you wouldn’t argue if peo­ple wanted to reserve judge­ment on this deal, as we’ve seen a num­ber of ques­tion­able own­ers come into the Eng­lish game over the past few years. But in any case, this may well mean that Paulo Sousa has more money to bol­ster his squad just before the Cham­pi­onship starts. I always thought this would be an excit­ing and open sea­son, but I didn’t expect twists and turns like this (espe­cially not two in one day).

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Steve Coppell Leaves Bristol City. Wait, What?

by Rob McCluskey on August 12, 2010 · 4 comments

coppell Steve Coppell Leaves Bristol City. Wait, What?

Bye Steve

Well while many Bris­tol City fans felt that they had one of their best squads in years a few weeks ago, Steve Cop­pell has damp­ened hopes of pro­mo­tion slightly by announc­ing his res­ig­na­tion today after only two com­pet­i­tive games in charge. Cop­pell claims, in his state­ment, that he has failed to become pas­sion­ate about man­ag­ing Bris­tol City and he could never be more accu­rate when he says that the tim­ing of his depar­ture is not ideal. It’s hard not to feel sorry for Bris­tol City fans at this moment, Cop­pell has basi­cally came in and spent the clubs bud­get on play­ers he wanted, only to walk out and poten­tially dam­age what was a promis­ing sea­son. The ex-Reading man­ager has also said that he is retir­ing from foot­ball man­age­ment and the rumour mill is bound to start turn­ing, as peo­ple will spec­u­late rea­sons as to why this chain of events has occurred.

Bris­tol City were shocked on the open­ing day of the sea­son, as newly pro­moted Mill­wall ran out 3–0 win­ners at Ash­ton Gate and Tuesday’s 3–2 defeat to League One Southend in the Car­ling Cup also sent alarm bells ring­ing. Cop­pell was one of the most respected British man­agers in the coun­try, par­tic­u­larly after his suc­cess with Read­ing and he seemed like quite the coup for Bris­tol City. Long serv­ing Bris­tol player/coach Keith Millen has been appointed as the side’s new man­ager, sign­ing a three year con­tract and will now be tasked with lead­ing the team for­ward in the Championship.

So Cop­pell has left after only two games, but City fans can remain hope­ful that they still have a num­ber of qual­ity play­ers at their dis­posal. This is Millen’s first job in foot­ball man­age­ment and I wish him all the best.

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When you go to watch your team you often meet char­ac­ters like this, but it isn’t too often you get to cap­ture it on film. A sneaky QPR fan turned his atten­tion away from the 3–1 defeat to League Two out­fit Port Vale and cap­tured a Rangers fan who was attempt­ing to let Neil Warnock know his feel­ings from a dis­tance. It’s not clear if the play­ers got the mes­sage, but the man a few rows behind heard it loud and clear. Credit for find­ing this must of course go firstly to the uploader 10wal, but also to my mate Rich who posted this on face­book. He is a Brighton fan, so I’m prob­a­bly guess­ing that he got it from their mes­sage board North Stand Chat. Good cap­ture Seagulls.

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