As Beetface’s lot saunters towards the league title without playing particularly well, there’s a truly scary proposition for the rest of English football to gnaw upon after the club announced record profits in Q4 2012.  Without the Glazers sucking out the profits from the club like anaemic vampires, how much further ahead might the quieter side [...]

It’s always nice to have midweek games in the Premier League. It’s sort of like putting on a coat you’ve not worn for a while and reaching into the pocket and pulling out $20, an unexpected and pleasant break in the normal mundane routine during the week. And it also allows us to watch football [...]

As I regularly make fun of Fleet Street types for lazy stereotyping, it would seem hypocritical to question whether Arsene Wenger’s nationality makes him every agent’s favourite pigeon manager at the bargaining table. Because given some of the dribs and drabs coming out of  Theo Walcott’s contract capitulation negotiation, it’s easy to understand why Holloway Road Properties doesn’t have [...]

A very thin gruel today, both in terms of punditry and rumours. But there’s some rare brilliance from the good folks at the Oxford Internet Institute, who used Twitter to track where supporters of different clubs actually live and find out if the fanbase of Salford’s finest was actually concentrated in Surrey. It was a good [...]

With pretty tepid fare on the midweek schedule — save for perhaps the lesser lights electric start against Brendan Rodgers’ tika-taka merchants — I thought I’ve give my readers some insights into the glamourous world of public relations and the beautiful people whose only agenda is the truth and serving the public’s interest. No, I [...]

@RICO
A little busy at work today so please post this afternoon after England’s match.
A quiet day for intelligent commentary as Fleet Street (sharpens its knives/clears its throat) to (gut Woy Hodgson like a freshly-caught flounder/trumpet the Three Lions to win the 2014 World Cup) based on tonight’s result against the 141st ranked team in FIFA’s thoroughly discredited rankings. [...]

European dreaming
Chelsea
Ins: Marko Marin (Werder Bremen, 7m) Eden Hazard (Lille, 35.2m) Thorgan Hazard (Lens, 880k) Oscar (Internacional, 28.1m)
Outs: Jose Bosingwa Salomon Kalou Didier Drogba (all released) Kevin de Bruyne (Werder Bremen, loan) Romelu Lukaku (West Brom, loan)
Why they’ll make Champions League
Roman Abramovich spent 70m pounds this summer – more than Manchester City, Manchester United and [...]

A bleary day in my part of the world so let’s look at news and rumours from around the world of football.
Let’s start in the noisier part of greater Salford, where Paul Wilson suggests the Middleastlanders spending sprees of the past are inhibiting their pursuit of Robin van Iscariot.
Nick Miller doesn’t understand why some supporters [...]

So 24 hours after RvP announces he wants to leave Holloway Road Properties because he disagrees with the club’s direction, minority shareholder and convicted racketeer – Uzbek billionaire Alisher Usmanov — sent a letter to Stan Kroenke. But rather than use the post office, courier, e-mail or fax, he decided to use the medium of Associated Press [...]

It’s a pretty sedate Monday following a weekend dominated by international friendlies and frenetic spinning of tales in the rumour mills, facilitated by Twitter. It’s becoming ever harder to sift the real from the surreal as Twitter appears to be populated by people with too much time on their hands, many who are either socially dysfunctional, barely [...]