A lot of talk going about regarding the Premier League releasing figures that recorded how much each club have spent on agents in the last year. The total came out at a massive £70million for around 80 transfers, so just under 1 million per transfer. Unsurprisingly big spenders Man City were top of that list having spent £14million on their raft of new players. The debate is really about whether these kind of figures are justified? Agents have long been painted as shady dodgy characters who will bung a manager a few quid on the hush, or buy the chairman an expensive bottle of wine etc. But as in general life I'm sure there are good apples and bad apples. When Anelka was at Arsenal for example, bought for £500,000, he had included in his entourage his now infamous 2 brothers. The Anelka brothers, motivated by greed and money encouraged their younger brother to pine for a move, and in the summer of 1999 Real Madrid stumped up £25 million for him. I'm sure the handlers would have been delighted with that one and Anelka has gone on to have a pretty successful career (best yet to come maybe), but it doesn't always work that way. There are agents who have no concern for the player's well being and future, and are just interested in that bottom line. Unfortunately I think that the agent system is a necessary evil in the football world, we can be grateful though that we do not follow the South American model of agents actually owning players. We all saw sticky a situation Carlos Tevez/Kia Jorfuckshin put everyone in.
Comfortable wins for Utd and Villa last night send them through to the semi finals of the Carling Cup. 2 of Arsenal, Man City, Blackburn and Chelsea will join them in what will be a tasty looking couple of semis, 2 legged of course. Chelsea flying high right now would be expected to go through and I obviously hope that Arsenal will join them and get Villa - the draw will take place on Sky straight after the game at Eastlands. I expect City will play a strong side, maybe their strongest, as Hughes is coming under a bit of pressure so will be going all out for the win. The Arsenal team will be pretty young but with one or 2 more regular faces in there to steady the ship. The squadlist is yet to be announced but I can see it being something like; Fabianski, Eboue Senderos Silvestre Traore, Eastmond Ramsey Merida (if he's not suspended, he got a red in the last reserve game, not sure if this counts), Wilshere Vela Walcott. On Arsene Wenger, some interesting quotes turned up on the website last night - 'I didn't feel we were in the need to buy anybody but we will be out in the market THAT IS FOR SURE NOW,' following a question regarding Van Persie's injury. Interesting stuff, as Wenger is always cautious even if he has something up his sleeve, he rarely lets on so for him to be so bold is quite a U-turn. Watch this space.
Neil Warnock reveled yesterday that the Crystal Palace staff and players weren't going to get paid for the next 10 days/2 weeks, because the owner has some 'cash flow problems.' Yeh, the orange faced twat Simon Jordan probably realised he was wasting too much money wiping his arse with it.
Finally, FIFA have finally put Ireland out of their misery but stating that they can't possibly be the 33rd team at the World Cup. Simple enough. Oh, and while writing this the reliable 5 Live has told me that England are included in the top seed pot for Friday's World Cup draw. This is as expected, but the commentator beforehand was basically saying that it would probably be between England and Holland who got that last spot, because England lost their last game in the qualification so it knocked them down a peg or two. So imagine my eyes widening when the names came out; South Africa, Brazil, Italy, THE NETHERLANDS - SHIIIIIT, Argentina, Spain, Germany, England. Pheeeew! That means that the commentator bloke got things a bit wrong, and now FRANCE have to battle it out in pot 4 instead of us or the Dutch. More on that tomorrow. Take her easy.
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