by NANNY RED » Sat Jul 19, 2008 4:52 pm
Been reading the Mirror today and theres an article in there by Brian Reade on all this transfer nonsence thingy. Hes got it spot on once again with his comments.
Chest can't get my mind off Helen Mirren and back on the football
19/07/2008
(This week I've been mostly thinking how divine Helen Mirren's 62-year-old bosom looks.
I've also been studying Sarah Jessica Parker's chin mole, which is unusual because the only time a mole interests me is when they're leaking top secret Tory plans to shoot single mothers.
I've even started reading about the golf, which is a first, as I'm from that school of thought which believes that if suicide bombers must choose a public place to showcase their desire to meet 72 virgins, where better than a clubhouse full of bores in Pringle sweaters?
Yet what is a man to do, when Euro 2008 aside, the only football-related stories since the season ended have been about very disloyal, very rich young men showing even more disloyalty to try and make themselves even richer, being thwarted and seeking sympathy.
Day after day for six long weeks, the people who manipulate the likes of Cristiano Ronaldo, Gareth Barry, Frank Lampard, Emmanuel Adebayor, David Bentley and Didier Drogba have tried to pluck our heartstrings by delivering updates on the painful limbo facing these tortured geniuses who simply want to take their art to a higher plane.
And I'm bored rigid. It is the worst summer of transfers I can ever remember.
There has never been so much money at the top end of the English game, yet there has never been so little activity.
Because all the major players involved - agents, players, managers, chairmen - are trying to hold each other to ransom as the season's kick-off looms.
It feels like we are all stuck in a three-month chain for an over-priced semi, being held up by shysters who keep gazumping. And it's very, very draining.
Surely another summer like this and we will have to start lobbying for the scrapping of artificial transfer windows and a return to a time when moves happened when they happened.
Not like today, when agents are let out of their cages after four months' hibernation to unsettle their cash-cows and instigate big-money transfers which will keep up the payments on their Learjets.
(Have you noticed how the players who are desperate to leave have yet to put in a transfer request as it will cut their agent's commission?).
Jose Mourinho says he's prepared to drag out the Lampard saga until August 31 (that's the one where Frank says he wants to move to Milan for the Italian experience. Unless Chelsea give him a five-year contract worth £140,000 a week, in which case hey, who needs pasta when there's a perfectly good Italian on the Kings Road?).
I don't want to hear agents threatening clubs with moves unless new contracts are drawn up. I've had enough of managers feigning disgust about tapping-up then doing precisely that to another club.
I cannot bear the shameless lies that pour out of players' mouths as they recite the script that earns them yet another killing.
Take Alexander Hleb, who claimed he had to leave Arsenal because living in a bustling cosmopolitan city like London was cabbaging his head. So he moved to the slumbering hamlet of Barcelona.
And what did he say when he arrived? "I want to win everything with Barca. I love this team. It is a dream."
Which might sound sincere, if the Belarusian hadn't said this on joining Arsenal three years ago: "It's a great honour for me to play for Arsenal. This is the team I dreamed about."
Well I'm dreaming, too. Of days when managers drove their Cortinas to service stations and did deals with players over pots of tea and hand-shakes (not to mention the odd brown paper bag).
I dream of days when you got wind that a player was coming to your club, 24 hours later he was holding up the shirt on the pitch, and in the team for Saturday.
I dream of chucking a fire extinguisher through the transfer window so football can breathe again, fans can look forward to the new season with anticipation not fear, and I can stop permanently dreaming about Dame Helen's melons.
I cannot bear the shameless lies that pour out of players' mouths as they recite the script that earns them yet another killing
HE WHO BETRAYS WILL ALWAYS WALK ALONE