The Week That Was

Pay up Pompey, Pompey pay up. The South Coast club narrowly avoided administration as Ali Al Faraj stepped in to take over from Sulaiman Al Fahim who did have enough cash. Then didn’t. Then did. Then didn’t need it because someone else stepped up to the plate. We think. Football’s a confusing business, our head is spinning and please God can we have a decent fit-and-proper-person test?

On to possibly the scariest man in the football world – Roy Keane. The Tractor Boys boss didn’t take too kindly to his future being questioned, see the death stare here on BBC Sport, and a chill wind could be felt around the country. We were terrified watching on TV, at the other end of the country, five hours after the event.

When is a fine not a fine? Emmanuel Adebayor’s pockets were thought to be a little lighter following his £25,000 fine for antagonising Arsenal fans but news reaches us the Sun paid him £20,000+VAT for this exclusive interview on the subject last month. Lucky him – he’s almost in profit! And yet criminals aren’t allowed to profit from their own crimes, to hell-in-a-handcart, you couldn’t make it up etc.

More serious matters next and we were interested to see Greater Manchester Police apologising to Stoke fans following its officers’ behaviour when the Potters took on Bolton last month. Fans were boxed in and escorted around Manchester city centre. Wonder if the swift apology is in anyway linked to previous FSF campaigns? We’d like to think so.

There’s been a lot of talk around England and the internet-only tie away to Ukraine too. The cliché goes that the media loves nothing more than to talk about itself and this held true as we’ve been bombarded with calls from journalists over the past 24 hours asking what we think. Basically, we believe that EVERY competitive game involving any of the Home Nations should be free-to-air.

Speaking of clichés one of the most popular in this country is that football fans like a beer. OK, there might be some truth in that. But we’ve got nothing on our Australian cousins who have been told to curb their drinking at the popular Bathurst 1000 motor festival. Draconian new rules have been enforced which limit fans to 36 cans per person, per day. Or only four litres of wine, for the more cultured race-goer. That’ll work then.

To round off we doff our cap to the master of diversionary tactics, Sir Alex of Ferguson. Following United’s 2-2 draw with Sunderland Fergie berated ‘unfit’ Alan Wiley as it was obviously the ref’s fault that United played a weakened team and never got going. Needless to say it worked and despite the fact that Wiley called every decision correctly, the media still went big on Fergie’s comments.

So you’ve got to love this Times piece which actually shows that ‘unfit’ Wiley ran further than all but four of Fergie’s players. Marvellous!

Enjoy the weekend!

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