It seems Sir Alex Ferguson is on a mission to crack the problem of modern players being “fragile” and “lacking responsibility” - as Man Utd new boy Gabriel Obertan has already found out.
Instead of being allowed to doss about at home while recovering from a back injury at the start of the season, the £3m signing was handed a pair of overalls and some gardening gloves. According to The Sun Obertan “watered hanging baskets, pruned rose bushes and washed staff cars” at United’s Carrington training ground. A ’source’ ’said’:
It’s not very often these days a United first-teamer can ever be seen on manual duties! But Gabby is a nice kid and he was only too happy to help out with the older coaches’ requests.
He could give the groundsmen a run for their money with his trimming and lawn skills!
Before running back around the other side of his desk and filing the story.
The Spoiler has no idea what is going on here, but Francesco Totti’s mullet is nice
How have Capello’s England done against the world’s best so far?
[Guardian]
Fans of being laughed at should get John O’Shea’s new signature boots
[Off the Post]
Eduardo is tired of collecting splinters on the bench
[Caught Offside]
Remember Freddy Adu? Of course you do. Next, we want to know where Cherno Samba, Tonton Zola Moukoko, Andri Sigporsson and all the other Championship Manager faux-legends ended up
[BBC Sport]
Kaka wants Beckham at WC2010. So he can run rings around him in a quarter-final
[The Sun]
Ben Foster refuses to accept his own rank mediocrity
[Telegraph]
Expect Gary Lineker’s opening lines on next season’s Match of the Day to be even more smug and annoying than usual. New Premier League rules, to be enforced next year, mean all managers will have to give post-match interviews to broadcasting rights holders - meaning Sir Alex Ferguson will have to explain his latest outburst to the cameras himself, rather than sending right-hand man Mike Phelan.
Ferguson promised never to do another interview with the BBC after it broadcast a documentary alleging his football agent son Jason used the family name to gain influence in transfer dealings, in 2004.
Spurs boss Harry Redknapp and Blackburn’s Sam Allardyce have also had previous run-ins with the Beeb over corruption allegations, but all will have to give TV or radio interviews or face ‘a sliding scale of punishments’.
Whose dugout would you like to see the Portugeezer rock up in?
Over the weekend Jose Mourinho took a break from bullying football’s favourite pensioner and being told what to do by Samuel Eto’o, to confirm what we all already knew - he wants a Premier League comeback sooner rather than later:
I love Inter and would love to build for the future here. In fact, I am doing it now because I am not a selfish coach and I’m thinking about the future in terms of youth development and the age structure of my first team.
But Italy is not the country for this. England is the country — and my football is English football. I am ready for the next phase of my career — I want to work with a different perspective.
Gone by 2011, having pretty much clocked the game of football
Carlos Tevez has always struck The Spoiler as a simple man with simple needs. Give him a football, bessie mates “Pat & Ji”, and his choice of knitted headscarf (black or white), and he’s happy. Professional football and all of its trappings, we imagine, he could take or leave. So it comes as no major surprise that, at the age of 25, the Argentinean forward has admitted considering retirement.
Speaking before Argentina’s 2-1 defeat in Spain on Saturday, Tev revealed losing his place in the national side to Gonzalo Higuain and the pressures of juggling both international and domestic football caused him to reevaluate his career:
It’s complicated, there’s my family, the desire to return to Boca Juniors, but I think about it. It crosses my mind to hang up my boots if we win the World Cup, although I have a contract [with Man City] until 2014.
Ruud van Nistelrooy, Jaap Stam and Roy Keane all have the same two things in common. All three were indispensable Man Utd players who were very much dispensed of the moment they crossed Sir Alex Ferguson.
The Spoiler can only assume Utd winger Nani, who is currently about as indispensable as a used, porous condom, was blissfully unaware of these events ever having happened, since he’s made the extremely stupid move of criticising Fergie in the tabloid press.
“It is clear the 23-year-old has reached the end of his tether,” crows The Sun, while rubbing their hands at the carnage about to unfold. “In a no-holds barred interview, Nani reveals how:”
He has felt the withering force of Fergie’s infamous hairdryer rage.
He is frustrated at being omitted from big-game starting line-ups.
He believes promises have not been kept.
Three grievances, all of which can be answered with one simple explanation: “It’s because you’re s**t.”
Loading ...