The Week That Was

Europe dominated the football landscape this week, and we’re not talking about a return of the 80s power balladeers responsible for The Final Countdown playing a stadium tour. Here’s our at-a-glance guide to the English teams’ performances in continental compeition this week:

In the Champions League Rafa fumed as Liverpool flopped in Florence against Fiorentina, Manchester United made hard work of a win over Wolfsburg, two goals from the Gunners gave them a good win against Olympiakos, and Chelsea’s performance away at APOEL left Ancelotti apologetic.

In the Europa League Fulham’s single strike sunk the Swiss side Basel, while Everton made their mark in Minsk beating Belarussians BATE Borisov.

With that out of the way, on to more serious issues. The matter of football club ownership is stirring up more and more debate of late, and not only the leveraged buy-outs of foreign owners in the Premier League. This week we’ve seen Portsmouth’s players go unpaid (admittedly only for a day or two), as well as Hyde United coming to the very verge of non-league non-existence before being saved by a mystery benefactor and the excellent effort of their fundraising fans.

Leeds owner Ken Bates also owned up to the fact that he didn’t actually own Leeds, but that we couldn’t find out who the owners were. Which apparently makes sense. Fit and proper person tests? Don’t make us laugh.

Speaking of making us laugh, we did have to feel a bit sorry for Jonny Evans for being put on the spot this week. Not in a John Terry fashion, you understand, but he was unfortunate to be sat alongside his manager at the pre-match press conference while Sir Alex was extolling the benefits of players settling down and getting married. When asked for his view, Evans sheepishly declined to comment, on the grounds that his girlfriend was among the assembled hacks. We’d agree that’s probably not the best place to have that particular conversation. Check out the video of it here.

Someone else who refused to be drawn into being tied down, TWTW favourite Kevin Keegan, has also popped back into the news this week. Kev has won a whopping £2m compensation from his former employers after he brought a case for constructive dismissal against Newcastle United. They might be top of the Championship, but it seems that bad news is never far around the corner for the Magpies.

There was good news for fans of Manchester City, though, after Emmanuel Adebayor and Craig Bellamy escaped bans for their respective recent misdemeanours in Manchester – Adebayor received a fine and suspended two-match ban for celebrating his goal against Arsenal, while Bellamy escaped punishment for slapping a pitch-intruder during the Manchester derby.

And finally in something that’s remniscent of the end of this Carlsberg commercial, if you’re a Leyton Orient fan with £210,000 to spare, you might want to look at this flat, which came on the market this week.

Cheerio until next week!