Premier League, Champions League, and MLS Tickets
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Arsenal chief executive Ivan Gazidis was interviewed by Fox on Sunday and he said that Arsenal will never be able to compete with the likes of Chelsea and Manchester City in the transfer market but believes Arsene Wenger’s focus on developing young players is the correct way to run a football club.
While City and Chelsea’s billionaire owners seem happy to invest in new players (and Arsenal’s isn’t), Gazidis said he is not a fan of how Chelsea and City conduct their financial affairs.
Chelsea continue to hemorrhage money after announcing a loss of £67.7million for the financial year ending June 30, 2011.
That is only a slight drop decrease from the loss of £70.9million in 2010, as Chelsea struggles to fall in line with UEFA’s new financial fair play rules.
Since Roman Abramovich bought the club, Chelsea have now lost a combined £620million.
Transfer fees were a main contributor to the loss, while Chelsea tried to spin the story to focus on the record club turnover of £222.3million. The £17.5m in increased revenue was due to higher receipts from the Champions League as well as an increase in TV rights relating to overseas broadcasting of Premier League matches.
The transfer window came to a close yesterday with some very interesting signings across Europe. Once again attention was centred on the EPL where a host of clubs were keen on bolstering their squads for the remainder of the season.
However, it was to be a bitter sweet day for league leaders Manchester City who despite capturing Roma midfielder David Pizarro on loan, suffered a 1-0 away defeat to Everton.
The Citizens went down to a Darron Gibson strike on the hour mark to surrender a 3 point lead over city rivals Manchester United who were 2-0 winners over Stoke City.
More shocks and surprises are on the cards with match day 3 of AFCON set to begin later on today. As things stand, co-hosts Equatorial Guinea and Gabon, Ivory Coast, Ghana and Tunisia have all sealed their places in the next round.
Friday’s thriller between Gabon and Morocco that saw the Co-hosts win the game with the last kick of the ball probably has to be the most entertaining match of the competition thus far.
That said, there have also been disappointments that cannot go unmentioned. Senegal who i considered one of the hot favourites and who i was looking forward to watching, will be heading home despite the result from their final game against Libya tonight.
Carlos Tevez’s advisor, Kia Joorabchian is quoted in the English newspapers as saying that Tevez will not be sold in the January transfer window:
“We’ve been in negotiations with three big clubs but I don’t think they have reached the figures Manchester City want. Carlos will remain at Man City until the summer. They [City] would like to move him on but only at a certain price.”
Joorabchian was interviewed earlier today on TalkSport and said that Roberto Mancini’s handling of the situation is what caused the at situation to deteriorate the way it did:
Very interesting revelations are emerging from the Harry Redknapp tax evasion court proceedings. On Thursday, the Southwark Crown Court heard some very amusing statements from the Tottenham Hotspurs manager.
Apparently, Redknapp is illiterate. He cannot read or write. In a tape recording played to the court, Redknapp said that he did not know what an email was and that he had never sent a text or fax in his life.
”I can’t work a computer, I don’t know what an email is, I can’t, I have never sent a fax and I’ve never even sent a text message. I have a big problem, I can’t write so I don’t keep anything. I am the most disorganised person, I am ashamed to say, in the world.” Redknapp said.
It’s funny how the English media mock the quality of Major League Soccer, but guess where Premier League teams turned to this month to help their sides? Yep, MLS.
First we had the Galaxy‘s Landon Donovan going back to Everton on loan and then the NYRB‘s Thierry Henry returned to Arsenal, where he promptly scored the winner in their FA Cup tie against Leeds.
The latest player to make the journey across the pond is the Red Bulls Tim Ream who Bolton bought for £2.5m. Ream will be expected the fill the shoes of England defender Gary Cahill who signed for Chelsea earlier this month.
Harry Redknapp, the Tottenham Hotspur manager, has said in court that he believes he is being victimised because of his cockney accent (an accent peculiar to those from London). The cockney accent in British culture has long been associated with deviant behaviour, much like in New York an Italian might be stereotyped as being part of the mafia simply on the basis of the person being Italian. It’s a stereotype and a generality, Harry Redknapp claim’s that it is this generality that has led to him being persecuted and placed in court on tax evasion charges.
On the weekend just past the Spanish daily newspaper, Marca, released what they claimed to be an exclusive. The newspapers football journalists had found out that Jose Mourinho, the Real Madrid coach, was dissatisfied with the level of hostility targeted in his direction and believing that his work was not recieving the plaudits he felt it welcomed he was going to leave his position at the end of the current season. Yes, Marca, the newspaper symbiotically connected with Real Madrid was claiming that the Real Madrid coach was on the way out.
When it comes to Real Madrid Marca rarely get it wrong. They exxagerate, the use revisionist history, they are bias, but they rarely concoct entire falsehoods from thin air. As far stretched as a story might be the paper, when it comes to Real Madrid, tends to have clout and its stories have substance. When the article was published nobody chose to question the journalist’s integrity and nobody considered it untrue. The only thing that was worthy of consideration was whether Jose Mourinho was sincere and determined in his resolution or whether it was merely a consideration.
This was one result i was not expecting, however one i totally agree with. Right from the start of the tournament and even through out the Qualifying period, the Lions of Teranga had established themselves as one of the very few sides who were strong favourites to lift the AFCON trophy on Feb 12th.
However, losing both their games, the first against Zambia 2-1 and then to co -hosts Equatorial Guinea by a similar scoreline yesterday, Senegal are now out.
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