An update....finally

The blog is back from the dead. Well, kind of. It's at least been updated. Check out the new selection of published works, there might be something you've never seen before. If you're lucky.

I start work as a writer for TV Sports Markets and SportBusiness International magazine on the 1st October. My first works will be up here (for egotistical reasons) as soon as they are published!

Wherefore art thou, Ashley?

Ashley Young should have been playing.

Luke just needed Moore time

http://www.avfcblog.com/content/view/2374/70/

AVFC Blog

I've started contributing as a blogger to www.avfcblog.com.

Checkout my first blog entry here

My First National Byline

Lucky enough to be asked to do this after a work experience stint.

http://www.independent.co.uk/sport/football/premier-league/how-was-the-season-for-you-aston-villa-826769.html

Pub ammunition about the the United No. 7

He's one a sports biggest names at the moment, but here are some things you probably didn't know about Cristiano Ronaldo....

1) The footballing name ‘Ronaldo’ may be common in football, but not in Portugal.
His full name is Cristiano Ronaldo dos Santos Aveiro: his second given name came from an admiration of Ronald Reagan.
Cristiano’s late father’s was a great admirer of the former American president and one-time actor.

2) Ronaldo never wanted the famous No. 7 Manchester United shirt.
His number of choice was 28, but Sir Alex Ferguson handed him the No. 7 shirt on his arrival to Old Trafford so that he would be motivated to follow in the footsteps of George Best, Eric Cantona and David Beckham.

3) A new contract offer that is expected to be tabled to Ronaldo would make him the highest paid player in the Premiership.
United want him to commit himself to the club until 2014, which would leave him earning around £7-8 million a year.
Or just over £20,000 for a day’s work.

4) After the Tsunami hit south-east Asia at the end of 2004, Ronaldo flew to Indonesia to visit the areas affected and raised over 1 billion rupiah by auctioning off his personal sports gear.
That’s about £55,000.

5) Ronaldo came close to signing for Arsenal before his transfer to Manchester United in August 2003.
Arsene Wenger said:
“He was here much earlier - he could tell you that if he wants. One day I will tell you more about that story and you will be surprised. You will have to ask him how close it was.”

6) Ronaldo has a weakness for good old English grub.
From steak pie and chips to cream cakes, since moving to Manchester he has developed a real taste for the local takeaways.
So much so that at the start of this season, Ronaldo admitted that club officials warned him against such food “because it would not be good for my game.”

Win or bust for Cardiff

When Joe Ledley hooked his left foot memorably around that dropping ball, firing the measured winner in front of 35,000 travelling supporters on the hallowed turf of Wembley, it marked a new highlight for Cardiff City’s supporters.

But don’t be fooled by the semi-final heroics. It would be mistaken to think that life as a Bluebird supporter is plain sailing. Indeed, this season manager Dave Jones has been behind the wheel of a dilapidated ship on decidedly choppy waters. The glory trail in this year’s FA Cup, reaching their first final since winning the trophy in 1927, is a soothing remedy to the aches and pains of debt and decades of football in the English lower leagues.

For the biggest club in Wales, and with a position as the only mainstream football club in Cardiff, City are undoubtedly inferior to their rivals over in Glasgow and London. The capital city football clubs over the borders in England and Scotland are European giants, fiscal power-houses and cup-winning regulars. The Bluebirds have distant memories of European football in the 1960s, a financial position teetering on the brink of bankruptcy, and a continued existence outside of the top-flight of English football.

This season, languishing in 20th position in the Championship in mid-November, Jones was told by chairman Peter Ridsdale that his job was in jeopardy unless there was an imminent turn around of fortunes. The former Southampton manager was also receiving death threats from City fans blaming him for the turmoil at Ninian Park. Although Jones steadied the boat, City currently lie just out of reach of the play-off positions, with focus on Cup glory against Portsmouth in mid-May eclipsing the target of Premiership football next season.

If only league table positions were the extent of Cardiff’s problems. Financially speaking, the recent economic downturn around the world is predicted to leave the City reeling. But outside of London, in the business world of football, it is Cardiff City’s finances that are in dire straits. Despite building on a new stadium well in progress, the club is walking on a financial tightrope. Last month the club were taken to court over a loan repayment demand of £24 million from the Swiss investment bank Langston. Fortunately for everyone with a vested interest in the club, a High Court Judge dismissed the bank’s claim and the case will go forward to a full trial, or more likely, an out-of-court settlement.

It is clear that the FA Cup stands as a potential watershed for Cardiff’s recent fortunes. Indeed, there is more than a hint of weltpolitik about City’s FA Cup run. Just as Margaret Thatcher used the Falkland’s crisis to rally support for her Conservative administration, so too can Dave Jones play the part of the Iron Man in overcoming the odds by taking Cardiff to an FA Cup-winning climax. This domestic glory and European qualification would certainly set the ball in motion for the promising future of Cardiff City Football Club.

The financial benefits of the Cup are already evident. A club scheme of guaranteeing an FA Cup final ticket to fans who buy a season ticket for next term is poised to break season ticket sales records. With an extra 2,000 fans buying tickets for 2008-09, adding to the 8,000 existing season ticket holders, the prospect of over 10,000 season ticket holders in Ninian Park’s capacity of 18,000 brings welcome pound signs to the club. Conservative estimates calculate that the extra sales have raked in an extra £400,000 alone.

Cardiff deserves some footballing glory. Hopefully this extra money that the club are benefiting from will ease the financial pressure and help concentrate matters on the pitch. With a new stadium, and hopefully a trophy in the cabinet, May 17th could be the date that marks the light and the end of the tunnel for Bluebird fans.

Gloves off to a true professional

In the limelight grasping hand of world sport, Joe Calzaghe sticks out like a sore thumb.

Forget the flash private London night scene and the huge billboard faces advertising trainer brands; this man loves his sport and seeks no fulfilment from the fame that comes part and parcel with boxing. Indeed, the big bucks of boxing make it one of the most money-driven glamour sports on the globe. However, it is pleasing that in an age of shrieking celebrity, there is a low-profiling familiarity to Joe Calzaghe's every-day life. The boxer's life has certainly not embraced any lifestyle of fame initiated by the dollar signs.

Calzaghe has revealed that if he loses against Bernard Hopkins next week, he will retire from boxing and will never show his face in public again. But even if the former super-middleweight now light-heavyweight fighter continues his run to 45 matches without a loss, one can be certain his legacy as a British boxing great will not encourage him to indulge in the celebrity lifestyle.

Calzaghe hit the headlines 11 years ago, coming into the public eye with a spectacular win over Chris Eubank. This weekend's bout against Hopkins could prove to be the highlight of a career, one which includes being voted 2007 BBC Sports Personality of the Year: the result of over a decade of fighting without the bitter taste of defeat. But since then you could be excused of being ignorant of Wales' most-loved dual-Italian: he keeps a low-profile of Benedictine proportions.

Forget chauffeur driven journeys to the pristine Premiership training ground pitches of new. Calzaghe is coached by his father, a self-taught traine who has never boxed in his life. The office where all the hard work gets put in is a drab and derelict looking gym in his home town of Newbridge, South Wales. For Calzaghe, money is secondary to home comforts.

Calzaghe Sr. once parked 2 miles away from a weigh-in to avoid paying for any parking. Hardly the actions of the force behind a multi-millionaire.

It is revitalising that professionals like Calzaghe are on the scene. Perhaps it is his down-to-earth lifestyle that, in the familiar celebrity climate desert that we live in, supporters are suitably and thirst-quenchingly refreshed by his existence. The whole of Britain will be behind him this weekend against Bernard Hopkins.

Arsenal's Snow King

After a 2 years trekking perilously through the frost-bitten land of exile, the Iceman returneth.

Not many people know what Dennis Bergkamp has been doing since he hung up his boots. The last we saw of his was his appearance marking the first match at the Emirates Stadium, fans getting a final glimpse of the former legend in an Arsenal shirt for the very last time. After retiring as a player, Bergkamp insisted he would not move into coaching and he turned down an offer as an Arsenal scout. It seemed he was obviously not too keen to cement his link with the club for very much longer.

But the romance between the Dutchman and N7 is not necessarily over. It has been announced that he has gone back on his coaching decision enrolled on a fast-track diploma for former players from the Netherlands. The course starts in May this year and Bergkamp, who lives in Hertfordshire, will study under his former manager at the Emirates.Could an Arsenal fairy-tale of Hans Christian Andersen proportions be developing? Arsène Wenger has been behind the manager's desk for over ten years now and looks like he could go on for another ten....but everyone has their sell by date. If Bergkamp were to re-enter football at a management level, it is only natural that fans are going to be calling for their God to get behind the wheel.

Apologies for being a kill-joy, but is Dennis Bergkamp really management material? If the fairy-tale came true, the Champions League could prove a problem. Unless Arsenal can swing UEFA into franchising the European Cup into an IPL-esque English tournament, with Bergkamp's aviophobia (fear of flying), anywhere unreachable by the Channel Tunnel is a no-go. Those difficult ties away in Israel with an absent manager is surely a too ridiculous an idea to comprehend seriously.

After all, he may get his chance behind the helm but he's no Flying Dutchman.

(Sorry).

The Crouch End?

It has been reported recently that wantaway striker Peter Crouch is a likely exit candidate for Liverpool’s summer purge. After a – and I think I’m justified in saying – disappointing season, the pre-season re-jigging may leave little space for a man of such size. Hopefully the England man’s performance in the meaty Premiership fixture of the Arsenal-Liverpool fixture sandwich will be the slap around the face that Benitez needs when it comes to the England striker.

In only Crouch’s seventh Premiership start of the season, he was Liverpool’s shining light. And against Arsenal’s first-choice centre pairing at that. Neither Gallas nor Toure could handle the strikers work on the deck: in the first-half two Crouch long range efforts saw Almunia tip one-handed around the post and only moments later pick the ball out of the back of the net. It was a performance of a striker that any Premiership side would be proud to have. For a man who was only playing because Fernando Torres was being rested, Crouch could be justified in crunching up Friday’s issue of the Daily Mail and clouting his Spanish manager around the head to beat some sense into him.

Crouch’s future, it appears, is highly dependent on the formation that Benitez is prepared to play. By an ever-increasing reliance on Steven Gerrard in the centre of midfield, and playing the ball down the flanks a thing of the past, Crouch’s obvious asset in his height does not appear to have a place in the Benitez approach. Indeed, long gone has the purpose for which Jermaine Pennant was signed for gone out of the window; at the start of last season his £6.7 million move was constantly justified by his Premiership crossing statistics, and the prophetic link up with his 6 ft 7 team-mate.

Even more bizarrely, Benitez has stunningly revealed that Dirk Kuyt is still in front of Crouch in the Liverpool pecking order: “He is the kind of player any manager would want in his team. He is amazing. He has a high work-rate, can score goals and does a fantastic job for the team.” I think I cannot be alone in the size of my gaping mouth on reading that comment. Kuyt is a very different player to Crouch, but his awful form and goal-to-game ratio must scream to Benitez that it is time to give Crouch a run in the team. (Crouch: 3 goals in 7 starts; Kuyt: 3 goals in 21 starts)

It is the age old question: should a manager pick a formation first and then fit players into it, or pick his best XI and leave tactics as a secondary matter? I think Liverpool fans need to worry about a more pressing matter: does Rafa Benitez need a cataract operation? If Crouch’s performance against Arsenal doesn’t warrant him a consistent in the team, the St. Paul’s Eye Hospital is on Prescot Street, Liverpool, L7 8XP. Can a Scouse doctor give him a referral please.

The Chambers of Commerce

Everyone has been passing judgment on the Dwain Chambers/Rugby League debate so it is about time I gave it a go. For those of you who haven’t been living the cloistered existence of a monk away from sports news in the past few months, you will know this debate all too well. For everyone else, the 29-year-old is a disgraced-drugs-dupe: a British sprinter who has served a two-year drugs ban, and after finding numerous difficulties to re-establish his athletics career, has now been offered a trial at bottom of the league Rugby League club Castleford.

The whole story is obviously primarily a publicity stunt. Chambers is trying to boost is profile and shift the concentration away from his identity as a rogue runner. With a life-time ban from the Olympics, and a high-scale opposition to his return to sprinting, the man needs to earn a living somehow and hopes to make use of his athletic ability. The man, after all, still owes the athletics authorities £100,000 in prize money which he won when he was taking drugs.

Castleford are in big trouble in the Super League, propping up England’s first division with only 2 points from the first 9 matches. "We must make the most of the opportunities for the attraction of new players," said Castleford Rugby Union coach Chris Willet only a week ago, reflecting the need to improve rugby in the community at large. If they can improve on ticket sales, attract some new blood and generally boost their profile, hopefully their poor start to the season will not lead to choppier waters further up stream.

But there is a rather non-sensical premise behind this switch. In fact, the idea is flawed by the whole idea of thinking that Chambers will be able to play and succeed in Rugby League. He has already had two failed attempts at American Football. Having the ability of a speed-merchant is not enough for an athlete to be able to take up a ball sport, so if the club and Chambers himself believe this time is going to be any different, they are living in cloud cuckoo land. I somehow doubt a crash-course in catching will be enough.

It is far more likely that a professional player in the sports of football or rugby would be able to traverse the switch to sprinting than the other way around. Such players have natural speed which is built upon through physical and nutritional training as being quick is a necessary component of being a successful player. Sprinters, on the other hand, are trained to be fast as the sole purpose of their existence. Running 100 or 200 metres in Chambers’ case, his body will be trained to run to its maximum capacity in the short space of 10 or 20 seconds. No other skills are needed to be a successful sprinter other than the physical training for the short distance running.

Should Castleford be hit by injuries, Chambers could make a shock debut against St Helens on Sunday. Saints, who are the 2007 World Club champions and have won the Challenge Cup two years running, could give the Chambers-Castleford combination the baptism of fire that this country’s media has been waiting for.

Oxbridge over troubled water

This weekend the crowds will be packed on the banks of the Thames, suitably loaded up on booze waiting for the one minute where two boats are in visible sight to pass so that they can go back to their normal Saturday routine. And then it is over for another year.

Call me an old fogy, but the Boat Race has perhaps the least amount of appeal than any sporting event that will be televised this year.

This is a race, remember, popular only due to its history. In this day and age, is there really that much public interest in Varsity sport? Perusers of digital sports channels during off-peak times, such as students like me, will have seen the Oxford-Cambridge Rugby League match on Sky Sports only a few weeks ago. Rugby League, that is the sport scarcely popular below the Midland belt, just to reiterate. So why even the most hardened rugby fan would want to watch two teams from the suburbs of London playing such a geographically misplaced sport is well beyond me.

Moreover, surely one of the fundamentals of sport is that there should be the opportunity to support one side over another. I have no national or personal persuasion to support either side in a tennis match between Nadal and Federer, yet I can find a reason to support either one. The Spaniard due to his age and physique, and the World Number One for his sheer class and elegance. Why would anyone from outside the two universities, unless they have a link somewhere in their life, give two hoots about which side wins?

It blows my mind to think that broadcasters are having a tug of war for the rights to the annual event. Perhaps the reason for this is that the cost is loose change compared to the Champions League or English Test Cricket, rather than it being THE event of the year for the UK’s sports viewers.

Perhaps there is a deep-rooted antagonism in my inner psyche that I am unaware of caused by Oxbridge rejection, yet which side one would cheer to victory is a non-sensical choice to have to make. So when the two teams cruise under Barnes Bridge with a quarter of a million people watching from the banks, 7 to 9 million people on TV in the UK, and an estimated 120 million globally, am I the only one who really could not care less?

Price of Fernando's loyalty card

It looks like Formula One’s biggest rogue ego is at it again after only two races with his new employers. Fernando Alonso revealed to a Spanish newspaper that although he returned to Renault to get back to his winning ways, he has “an option to leave so I can be in the best possible car, and it is clear Ferrari is one of the best.” Alonso's comments have come after his and the cars disappointing start to the season.

This made me think: in the globally engulfing, money-mad world of sport that we live in, is there such thing as loyalty and a challenge anymore? Certainly not in this case; it seems that the words ‘loyalty’ and ‘challenge’ are completely absent from Alonso’s dictionary. Unless Fernando’s Spanish-Italian dictionary has never been open at the words fidelización and desafier for him to become sufficiently familiar with the translations.

Indeed, pundits had speculated before Alonso even signed a two-year contract at Renault that he would join rivals Ferrari after this season. It is obvious that the length of contract is completely nominal to the man if he is already discussing his future so early on in his return to the Italian team. But then I suppose contracts themselves are nominal when one is filthy rich enough for the money required to buy them out being the simple matter of delving one’s hand into one’s back pocket. Alonso’s lawyer must have been laughing all the way to the bank the day he bagged the chance to be the Spaniard’s representative.

In business the comparison of this attitude seems equally as preposterous. Two weeks into a new job after moving from a rival company, you suddenly realise that you are performing substandardly compared to a third rival, so it’s time to thrown in the towel and pack up your desk again. Or if you see someone slightly better looking than your girlfriend, dump your current one and when the even sexier version comes along, dump her too. Life really seems to be that simple.

Plenty of examples spring to mind of top professionals whose loyal allegiances eclipsed the prospect of greater glory elsewhere. Look at not-so-good pundit but dynamite on the pitch former Southampton midfielder Matt Le Tissier. 16 years the England international spent on the south coast, consistently using his talent to keep the relegation strugglers adrift when he could have plied his trade at a far more successful club. His autobiography indicated that he rejected big-money moves to both AC Milan and Chelsea, places where he also could have achieved far more than the 8 international caps which his talent heralded.

Everyone thinks how greener the grass is on the other side, but is sport not about bringing the best out of yourself in the face of challenging circumstances? The true test of a sporting great is using ability to beat your rivals when the going is not perfect. Someone translate that into Spanish for Fernando because I am sure there are plenty of Italians thinking exactly the same thing.

Jamie using his Gray matter

Grand Slam Sunday is always hyped to the extreme and earlier evidence would suggest that there is a great chance of it being a complete let-down. December 16th’s reverse fixtures saw only two goals, no red cards and no real scandal. As loyal fee-paying customers, all fingers and toes were crossed for some better viewing. Thankfully for Sky Sports did the four sides fulfil their duties and give two three-goal thrillers and one of the most talked about sendings off of the season.

Yet for me the most enjoyable segment of the Sky coverage was not something that could be seen on the pitch. Forget Nani’s smartly taken finish and Drogba’s brace to snatch the match from Arsène Wenger’s grasp, the blood-boilingly obnoxious attitude of Andy Gray and his heated argument with fellow pundit Jamie Redknapp was the highlight of the day’s coverage. Instigated by Javier Mascherano’s idiocracy, the closely-avoided bust-up on the pitch was quickly followed by similar scenes in the studio after Gray empathised with the Argentine. Cue a heated studio with Richard Keys sitting pretty like a rose between two thorns. It would never happen on the BBC.

Critical of Steve Bennett’s handling of the situation, Gray entrenched himself firmly at the other side of the battle line drawn by the commentary team and supported by Redknapp, all who believed that Mascherano was firmly in the wrong and the referee should be commended in his actions. Gray took the stance that players are unable to ‘talk’ to the referees in the current climate, particularly after Ashley Cole’s petulant treatment of Mike Riley in midweek. I am no qualified lip-reader, but the filthy verbal tirade that the Liverpool midfielder had been consistently giving Bennett ever since he was rightfully booked for a late challenge on 11 minutes is a different definition of ‘talking’ to what I am familiar with.

Nevertheless Redknapp, a former Liverpool midfielder himself and a novice in the Sky broadcasting hierarchy, put club allegiance and Sky pecking order aside to fervently criticise Mascherano’s actions and Gray’s substantial point of view. Something that did not go down too well at all with the Scotsman.

“Can’t you talk to a referee and ask what’s happening anymore? Is that what you want Jamie?”

Indeed, Gray must be a worse lip-reader than I; either that or we were watching different matches. Whether I would have had the self-assurance to stand up to an Aston Villa-legend certainly makes me an inferior man compared to Jamie. If the verbal disagreement in the studio had deteriorated into a fist-fight (with Richard Keys acting as guest referee), it would have been a mismatch akin to Henry Cooper throttling his badly-behaved eldest son for speaking out of turn. But an entertaining mismatch nonetheless.

Gray will have lost the respect of many views of Sky Sports coverage after becoming part of the ideal and untouchable commentary package alongside Martin “And it’s live” Tyler. But all the same, if there is a rematch between the broadcasting titans anytime soon, Sky will be foolish not to get it on a pay-per-view, one night only boxing match and show it in its own right.

Ryan's Easter surprise

If there is one thing to say about the rollercoaster of emotion that comes with being an English sports fan, life is never dull. Once one reaches that exhilarating peak of short-term triumph, or the prospect of the next big-born-and-bred Englishman who has just hit the scene, it is always going to do downhill. So put on your safety strap because this is going to be one hell of a bumpy ride.

On Saturday night, a celebratory day of anomaly sandwiched between Good Friday and Easter Sunday, I probably should have had something better to do that flicking through the channels to decide upon a crumbling England first innings as the source of my late evening entertainment. The first thing I saw was Stuart Broad, hyped for this all-round ability that is so desperately needed in a batting tail these days, depressingly prodding at the first ball of the day to precipitate another quick-fire batting collapse that followers of the Barmy Army are only too keen to expect.

Yet it would not be an English Easter without a sporting resurrection of Christ’s own proportions. Apt perhaps that at the forefront of this was a man all too familiar with the red-petalous flower in sport, was ready to wear it on his heart for county and give all the ticker of an English Rose. Just as Jesus rose from the dead, so too did a long-haired man praised in his vicinity unexpectedly give onlookers what they least expected. Cue the fightback that makes life as an English fan worth living.

All of a sudden, two England collapses in one innings looked favourable compared to the one-man demolition job Ryan Sidebottom was about to do to New Zealand. The Nottinghamshire man gave a bowling display that took the home side from 103-1 to 168 all-out. His performance, rather like a mentally-unstable workman given free-reign on a JCB for a few hours, returned figures of 7-47. He’s no Messiah, but seemed to have the miraculous touch only heard of in folk law.

What began as a depressingly familiar downward spiral of English characteristic, without warning I was as content as the Easter Bunny planning his relaxation schedule for the rest of the year. The feeling of satisfaction felt in the face of adversity is perhaps the greatest of all.

But perspective is needed. Tonight’s performance will probably leave us gorging on chocolate eggs in an act of self-loathing initiated by the next twist in the story of the ever-unknowing English fan.