Tuesday 14 April 2009

Bad Eggs - My Easter musings

Fergie to Ronaldo: “You can’t get everything your own way.”

I thought at first it was a late April fool, but Alex Ferguson has at last acknowledged what we all knew already – that Ronaldo can behave like a petulant brat.

It was obviously OK to let him behave like that when United were winning - but his sloppiness in possession and failure to track back has directly led to goals conceded against Villa and Porto recently. All of a sudden Ronaldo’s procrastinating has suddenly become an issue.

“If you give the ball away it takes a long time to get it back. It’s hard when a player who wants to entertain doesn’t get everything his own way. But you can’t get everything your own way.”

Communication breakdown.

While Fergie’s point is ringing loud and clear in Ronaldo’s ears, down at Spurs ‘Arry Redknapp is struggling to get striker Roman Pavlyuchenko to do what he wants.

Cockney rhyming slang and Russian is not really a good mix for starters, but a reliance on a translator is proving a headache in training.

““You’ve always got his interpreter running around the training ground. Sometimes you pass the ball and he chases it. And he’s running alongside him and he gets in there and heads it in the back of the net.”

With a squad incorporating among others Russians, Ivorians and Croatians a multi-lingual defensive lynchpin could be the answer to Spurs’ defensive problems, he may even be able to understand Redknapp as well.

Mysterious injury of the weekend?

Obafemi Martins

Did he oversleep? Did he have a groin injury?

Hmmm, it seems to me the Nigerian probably hasn’t the stomach for Newcastle’s relegation scrap, especially in the bear-pit that is the Britannia.

But if you don’t want to raise suspicion, of all the places on the body a GROIN injury developed after a night away in a hotel room isn’t the way to go about it. What was he up to?

Wise choice?

If the rumours are to be believed Dennis Wise made many of the transfer decisions during his disastrous spell at Newcastle, though he remained behind the scenes. But the boot will be on the other very expensive foot if he becomes the boss of QPR.

Yes they have loads of money, but Wise will see none of it. The owners sign who they want, play who they want and even dictate the formation. If I were Wise, I’d expect half-time phone calls from Flavio Briatore, sat on his yacht somewhere off St Tropez, telling him to switch back to 4-4-2 .

The curious case of Adriano

The troubled Brazilian striker has announced his temporary retirement from the game for personal reasons - though given his comments this week his main problem seems to be his indecisiveness:

“I’ve lost the happiness of playing. I wouldn’t like to go back to Italy.”
“I wasn’t unhappy in Italy. I don’t know if I’m going to stay for one, two or three months without playing.”
“I want to live in peace here in Brazil. I’m not ill, as many say. I just need peace and quiet - I’m going to rethink my career.”

This quote has a certain ‘schoolyard denial’ ring to it :

“It’s not true my friends are criminals. Certainly, you can find drug dealers in the favela and as I was born there I know who they are, but I definitely don’t hang around with them.”

It wasn’t me sir, it was them sir.

Peace is the word

A quick mention has to go out to the brilliant example set by the players and staff of Brazilian sides Juventude and Caxias, whose meeting had been preceded by a campaign to promote peace between the near- rivals’ sets of supporters. The result?


Read the rest of my guest blog over at Dangerhere.

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