TOP 100 SOCCER SITES
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| Heart skipper Colosimo out of derby Melbourne Heart captain Simon Colosimo will miss Friday night's A-League derby with Melbourne Victory after failing to recover from injury. foxsports.com.au |
Hicks and Gillett find pain at Anfield Rather than making off from Liverpool with wads of cash, Tom Hicks and George Gillett are set to get their fingers burnedWarning: the value of your investment can go down as well as up. Especially if you mumble the words to You'll Never Walk Alone, neglect to construct a stadium you promised to start "within 60 days" and play motorway chicken with the banks while sliding towards a relegation zone.In an ordered football world Tom Hicks and George Gillett would have been sent here to discourage les autres. It was about time a speculator took a caning. Picture the mirth in business circles if Tom & Jerry (their alternative titles) go down for the £144m they thought would shoot back to them with a vast premium attached. That was no egg they were nesting on. It was a cartoon time bomb.Lose-lose is the outcome facing Liverpool's absentee landlords. If the sale to New England Sports Ventures goes through and Anfield is twinned with Fenway Park then the £300m price will not cover their £144m injection plus the £237m borrowed from the Royal Bank of Scotland. If Liverpool fall into the arms of their creditors then John W Henry's consortium will collect the keys sharpish, and Hicks and Gillett will rue the day they mistook the Premier League for an under-exploited, potentially rich digital/multimedia gold mine.John W Henry (we must respect the W) must see it that way, too, else he would have not have bounced down from the bleachers to create "synergy" between Liverpool and the Red Sox. We played this game a few years back when Manchester United strapped themselves to the New York Yankees, but that went the way of many joint-branding capers. This time we see the restlessness of the American sports market claim another English institution for reasons that have nothing to do with tycoon vanity.Henry is a futures obsessive who spent nine months with a pocket calculator testing a man called WD Gann's commodity markets model against historical data. His compulsion is predicting and exploiting price moves. Speculators gamble on Premier League clubs when they consider them to be good value relative to potential future income – in this case from television deals, mobile phone streaming, internet revenues and all the rest. They "sweat the asset", to use another disagreeable banking phrase.Value-betting was the impulse, after all, that prompted JP McManus and John Magnier, the so-called Coolmore mafia, to buy a lump of United and then sell it on. Since Roman Abramovich and Sheikh Mansour of Abu Dhabi are pseudo-philanthropists with private motivations, the current impetus derives from American empire-builders.Before NESV pounced, Don Garber, the head of Major League Soccer in America, told the BBC: "There's real intrigue with the English Premier League among US sportsmen. There's a belief that there's a valuable global franchise with these clubs. More and more American owners will look to invest overseas."Already Randy Lerner rules at Aston Villa, Stan Kroenke owns almost 30% of Arsenal and the Glazers preside over Manchester United. Tom Wolfe's Masters of the Universe say the Hicks-Gillett ownership model merely tipped the balance too far towards short-term borrowing, without the necessary success on the pitch to support the debt.On the list of owners who have left town with saddlebags full from sales are Alan Sugar (Spurs), Martin Edwards (United), David Dein (Arsenal), Ken Bates (Chelsea), Thaksin Shinawatra (Manchester City), Freddy Shepherd (Newcastle United) and David Moores of Liverpool.Doubtless Tom and Jerry expected to join them at the get-out party. But football was bound to bite back. The market was predestined to "realign" itself and catch someone in its jaws. It came for Hicks and Gillett as Liverpool made their worst start to a season for 57 years, dressing-room morale collapsed and a state-owned bank was obliged to confront its duty not to help two profiteers to ruin an important social and sporting institution.Those perpetuating the myth that players are indifferent to the identity of those who pay their wages ignore the reality that the modern millionaire footballer can smell decline, smell fear, from 10 miles away. With that scent fouling the air he observes the loss of a Xabi Alonso or a Javier Mascherano – and the recruitment of inferior replacements – and calls his agent, at first to moan, then to explore the potential for escape. Imagine how Christian Poulsen and Raul Meireles feel, walking into this burlesque.Yet the end is visible, liberation is close, because the £237m RBS loan, repayable a week today, has assumed a cleansing force. For once a debt has the power not to destroy but to save. This is not to say that annexation by the Red Sox is a panacea. All the while the motive is to use Premier League clubs as juice-squeezers there ought to be mistrust. At least this time there is a price on greed: that £144m loss, which is retribution.LiverpoolJohn W HenryBusinessPaul Haywardguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds guardian.co.uk |
Manchester City 3 Lech Poznan 1: Roberto Mancini praises 'excellent' Emmanuel Adebayor Roberto Mancini has praised striker Emmanuel Adebayor who scored a hat-trick in Manchester City's Europa League victory. telegraph.co.uk |
West Brom 2-1 Fulham West Bromwich Albion's giddy rise up the table continues. Temporarily at least they are in a Champions League position following a victory rather more convincing than the score may suggest, and while they cannot play Fulham every week – the visitors faded badly after the brightest of starts – the Baggies have already shown they can compete with teams at the top by winning at Arsenal and drawing at Manchester United.Fulham sprang a surprise even before kick-off by unveiling a perfectly foul away strip, an almost military shade of olive that made some of Liverpool's experiments with the green stuff appear well-judged. Then they surprised their hosts by taking the lead in the ninth minute, when Mousa Dembélé helped set up Zoltan Zera for a shot and the former Hawthorns favourite scored from 20 yards thanks to one deflection off an upright and two off the unlucky Scott Carson.Actually that does neither party any favours. It was a good shot by Gera and a terrific, full-length diving save from Carson. Unfortunately for him his fingertips diverted the ball on to a post and the rebound went in off his back, so technically that counts as an own goal as the ball was rebounding outwards before he sent it back across the line.It is a hard life being a goalkeeper, and life nearly got harder still for West Brom when Diomansy Kamara struck the foot of the same post four minutes later. This time the ball did rebound to safety. Even the Baggies' new-found confidence may not have survived going two goals down at home in the first 15 minutes, heroic recovery at Old Trafford last week or not.As it was, the home side kept calm and played their way back into the game, drawing level when Chris Brunt's clever diagonal pass allowed Youssouf Mulumbu to slide a shot under Mark Schwarzer. Brunt's pass was originally intended for Marc-Antoine Fortuné but West Brom found themselves with an attacker to spare, and Fortune sensibly allowed the ball to run on to an even better placed colleague. Jonas Olsson saw a header comfortably cleared off the line by Stephen Kelly before Fortuné gave his side the lead just before the interval. More crisp and incisive passing sent Jerome Thomas to the goalline, and from his pull-back it was a simple matter for Fortuné to sidefoot into a largely unguarded goal from close to the penalty spot.With Thomas enjoying himself against Kelly on the right West Brom were completely in charge in the second half and should have added to their lead. Fortuné failed to take a decent opportunity before being substituted, Paul Scharner brought an excellent save from Schwarzer and Thomas should probably have had a penalty when Kevin Friend rather generously decided Kelly had won the ball in bringing him down. James Morrison could have done better with a clear route one opportunity after beating the Fulham defence to a Carson punt upfield, and Roman Bednar could not quite get on the end of Somen Tchoyi's cross in stoppage time.Mark Hughes will not have been happy at the way his side barely managed to mount an attack after the interval, even after introducing Andy Johnson. Only in the closing minutes did Fulham throw caution to the wind and get bodies across the halfway line, and even then they did not cause a well-organised Albion defence much trouble.Premier LeagueWest BromFulhamPaul Wilsonguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds guardian.co.uk |
West Ham United v Newcastle United: live Follow live commentary of match between West Ham United and Newcastle United with the scores level at 1-1 at the break. telegraph.co.uk |