The Week That Was

So Wigan Athletic’s Marlon King has been jailed for 18 months after breaking a woman’s nose because she spurned his advances in a nightclub. He’ll not be missed. We’re not saying people aren’t deserving of a second chance in life but King had 13 previous convictions and we wouldn’t want him at our club.

It was no surprise to see King’s agent popping up saying that someone would sign him when he got out. That may be true, although his claim that King was ‘employed in football to score goals’ probably won’t help. 12 Premier League goals in four seasons hardly takes him into Shearer territory, and he’s got more convictions than goals this year.

Someone else in trouble with the law this week was 47-year-old Michael Lewis who managed to breach his football banning order after visiting Blackpool’s Bloomfield Road. Lewis is a Burnley fan and thought the ban only applied at Turf Moor. He managed to avoid jail and was handed a suspended sentence.

“I would not like to go to prison today,” said Lewis. “Years ago, I would not have been bothered, but I now have a little dog, who is like a son to me, and I would miss him.” Woof justice indeed.

Meanwhile Spurs unveiled plans for their new stadium and kudos to them too for doing something a little different. They’re trying to incorporate a massive single tier stand into the design to avoid being an ‘Emirates-lite’ according to the Indie.

Speaking of football stadiums there’s quite a few angry Toon fans out there this week what with Mike Ashley’s decision to try and make a quick buck from renaming St James’s Park.

Plenty in the red half of Liverpool were fuming this week too, prior to their team’s game with Manchester United as supporters protested at the debt racked up by Hicks and Gillett since taking over the club. Credit to fans’ group the Spirit of Shankly who helped organise the demonstration.

News also hit that the FA had failed to find buyers for the FA Cup matches to which the now bust Setanta had originally held the rights. The long and short is that the FA will now stream one match on its website – an interesting piece about that on the ever-excellent twohundredpercent blog here.

Over at the Mirror and Stan Collymore was making the case for a closed shop Premier League minus Wigan, Hull and Bolton. This is because he thinks that only the ‘biggest’ sides should be allowed in. OK Stan, why don’t we just base everything on the size of a club’s crowd? We won’t even have to bother with the actual matches then, we can all just stare at an empty field for a couple of hours!

Lastly, we wrote last week that Gordon Strachan was back, great news we’re sure you’ll agree. A better antidote to the bland, clichéd management speak we coudn’t wish for –check out the best of Strachan here courtesy of Soccer AM.

Enjoy the weekend folks.

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