Swept away with the leaves once more

Breaking news from Russia, and it appears thespoiler favourite Juande Ramos will yet again, to paraphrase Wyclef Jean, be “gone by November.” No stranger to the Spanish Archer, Ramos has now bade farewell to his 13th club. Ramos’ P45 from CSKA Moscow will appear in the post almost a year to the day since Daniel Levy sent him one printed on Tottenham Hotspur-headed notepaper.

Juande’s latest sacking followed a 3-1 defeat to FC Moscow at the weekend, a result that leaves CSKA struggling to make Champions League qualification with just four games remaining in the Russian season. A CSKA statement read:

“Following an agreement between all parties, CSKA have cancelled their contract with head coach Juande Ramos. We are very grateful to Juande Ramos for the work he has done with the team.”

Clearly very grateful. The Ramos career remains something of an enigma. He passed through a plethora of mediocre Spanish teams whilst making very little impact, before bandwagonning on the the transfer brilliance of Sevilla’s Sports Chief Monchi, to take the club to back-to-back UEFA Cups. His time at Spurs was a disaster, before relative success at Madrid. And now chaos at CSKA.

It appears Ramos does his best when in Spain, but once on his travels, he likes to sign large contracts, and then do his upmost to get the boot. His time at Spurs famously included starving his players on matchday, naming teams in the dressing room that included players who were suspended or out on loan, and trying to sign Jesus Navas, a player who gets chronically home-sick even on away trips within Spain.

Having failed to engage with the English language at White Hart Lane, did he ever truly expect to master Russian, a language composed of an entirely different alphabet and with many regional variant dialects? Or was Juande once more up to his old tricks?

Real lose one game without C-Ron, go into complete meltdown

If there’s one thing the Spanish football press love more than those crazy upside down question marks, then it’s pouncing on an opportunity to shed doubt over the internal goings on Real Madrid. Today, there are plenty of stories to suggest that all is not well at the Bernabeu.

Up until last weekend, Los Blancos had enjoyed a 100 per cent record in La Liga, but this was brought to an abrupt end by Seville. AS tell us how Cristiano Ronaldo “suffered” while watching the game on TV, and Marca have taken the Portuguese star’s absence as an opportunity to run a hasty poll. According to their statistics, a whopping 58 per cent of Madridistas believe they have “Ronaldodependencia”, or rather an over-dependence on the Portuguese Man-o’-sex. A slightly rash conclusion, considering the season is six games old and cursed Ronny has missed only one of them.

Meanwhile, Sport has revealed (unsubstantiated) details of a post-Seville handbags session between Karim Benzema and Manuel Pellegrini. Apparently, the notoriously outspoken Frenchman has already grown tired of being replaced in big games, and has expressed his disapproval of sharing attacking duties with 412-year-old legend Raul, as

That’ll be Dani Alves, not Robinho

In August 2007, Chelsea attempted to acquire the services of Brazilian defender Daniel Alves from Seville. The Spanish club were insulted by the Blues’ low offer (£13.5m), and Alves made a €29m move to Barcelona the following summer, becoming the world’s most expensive right back.

The Mirror today claim the West London club are chasing the Brazilian once again, but The Spoiler has detected three obstacles for the deal: Barcelona do not need to sell, he has a whopping £90m price clause in his four-year contract, and Manchester City are also said to be sniffing around.

Meanwhile, reports are surfacing concerning the future of Florent Malouda. According to The Sun, Juventus have made contact with the Frenchman’s representatives, and are preparing an £11m summer bid.

Spoiler bonus: Check out some Dani Alves video highlights after the jump…

Lampsie and JT distract themselves from Chelsea troubles

Of a morning, The Spoiler’s inbox usually consists of requests to release funds from African bank accounts, congratulations for winning foreign lotteries we haven’t entered and information about ways to increase the size of our ‘love wands’. Today, however, about fifty of you sent us this pretty little picture Frank Lampard and John Terry demonstrating a way of bringing the divided Chelsea squad closer together. Bless.

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