Pre-Season Football Round-Up 02/08/2010

Man City- summer spenders
Manchester City have continued their summer tradition of the last few years, by once again attempting to buy any footballer who has ever played international football. With the summer spending spree already pushing towards a £100m and the signings of Jerome Boateng, David Silva, Yaya Toure and Aleksandar Kolanov already confirmed, City are also hoping to confirm the signing of Inter Milan’s temperamental forward Mario Balotelli over the next few days.

All of this means that some of City’s current stars are going to be shipped out. This is where another interesting trend appears to be developing. Emmanuel Adebayor, a ‘world class’ player bought to replace the previous year’s ‘world class’ signing Robinho, is now being linked with a loan move to Marseille and other ‘world class’ signings from last season like Roque Santa Cruz, Wayne Bridge and Joleon Lescott are all now being linked with a move away.

With Robinho shipped out on loan for the best part of last season and now actively seeking a move elsewhere, it seems that City are developing a habit of buying big-name expensive players, keeping them for a year and then letting them leave on the cheap or on loan.

With this in mind, you have to ask if some of Europe’s less wealthy clubs are already working on next summer’s loan bids for Silva and Balotelli.

MEN in overblown sports headline
Last Thursday’s sport dominated both the front and back pages of the Manchester Evening News with the front page of the paper carrying a photo of, Manchester United manager, Sir Alex Ferguson with the headline ‘Fergie Stands Up For Glazers’.

This of course was the story that Sir Alex, when questioned about the controversial owners whilst on the club’s pre-season tour to the states, had remarked that his bosses have ‘done well’.

I’m not too sure about you, but as a United fan I dislike the Glazers as much as the next fan. However, I really don’t see the story, let alone front and back page news, in a man speaking positively of his bosses. They do pay his wages after all.With this in mind, I wonder if the MEN will be running similar stories over the next few weeks.

“My boss is alright!” says Dave from the United fast food concession.

“I think you’re a top bloke! Please don’t fire me!” begs Brian from accounts.

Crude football joke
Liverpool begin their Europa League adventure this week with a journey to Macedonia to play Rabotnicki Football Club.

With the majority of football fans never having heard of the club, Thursday’s Metro looked to bring some knowledge to the table by featuring a column where a man called Chris Stocks interviewed himself, asking questions about the club before answering his own questions with facts he had found on the internet.

The potentially schizophrenic Chris Stocks did provide an interesting insight to the club though, telling us that they are based in the countries capital of Skopje and are owned by an iron ore firm.

This leads Stocks to ask himself whether all of this means that Rabotnicki are the Man City of the Balklands. ‘No’, Stocks replies to himself, ‘however they do have six Brazilians.’

Whilst I was utterly confused by the interview process, my mate James was more confused by the answer.

“Six Brazilians!” He proclaimed “So what? My last six girlfriends all had Brazilians and none of them were good at football.”

Bad-um chhhhhhh.

Stupid footballers
Some people in football are generally entertaining to watch when they’re being interviewed. Eric Cantona and his seagull routine is the stuff of legend, almost everything Jose Mourinho ever said was sheer brilliance and others like Martin O’Neill, Roy Keane and even Arsene Wenger have all had their moments of displaying exceptional wit.

However for every clever person in football there seems to be a dozen who will say something stupid or pointless.

This week’s moment comes from Tom Ince, son of former England international Paul, who looks set to make his debut for Liverpool in Macedonia this week, under new boss Roy Hodgson.

However, this summer isn’t the first time the two have met. Back in 1995, Hodgson was the manager of Italian giants Inter Milan- the club Tom’s dad Paul was playing for at the time.

When asked about how strange it was to play for the same manager his dad had, Tom replied with the very insightful: “Roy was at Inter Milan when my dad joined, so I know him from back then. He told me that I’ve grown up a lot since - I’m taller.”Cheers for that Tom, it is encouraging to know you have had a growth spurt between the ages of three and eighteen.

Rio fighting censoring
Manchester United centre half and England captain Rio Ferdinand has been dominating twitter recently. So far the content of his tweets have seen him Twitter trend and he even started a campaign for his page to be verified, asking all of his followers to post for his verification.

However, on Thursday Ferdinand turned his attention to censorship. Whilst listening to a debate on Radio Five Live about whether former premiership footballer Marlon King should be allowed to play again after his impending release from prison, a particular phone call caught Rio’s attention.

He tweeted: ‘OMG any1 listening to @talksport? "Marlon king doesn't deserve another chance yet U guys work alongside stan collym...." Cut straight off!’

He then went on to say. ‘At least let the caller finish the guys name, don't cut him off mid sentence....reimburse him surely! Whether it’s right or wrong a team will take Marlon King to their club regardless of him being in prison-fact.’

Ferdinand continued to fight the fight against censorship into the afternoon. He also said he’ll give some X-Boxes away when he reaches fifty thousand Twitter followers. Rio is a one man whirlwind of something or other. No, he really is.