Specs bombs

I seem to be focused on an eyewear thing at the moment, or more precisely what not to eyewear. Two recent posts on my facebook pages:

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=1405906809638322&set=a.1390376631191340.1073741827.100006570487269&type=1 and https://www.facebook.com/paulleonard60/posts/1406856676210002?notif_t=like

– yes I’ve joined the social media revolution comrades – are about slightly odd specs choices, a thought which sets up this posting. And what I was thinking is, what is the link between an alleged Eastbourne serial killer and a host of top football managers?

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managerial panto time

So SAF’s retired and will be replaced by Everyon’s David Moyes, Mancini and his valet have left the Etihad, Pulis has been sacked from Stoke, Martinez is thinking about both that job and the Everton vacancy, Mourinho’s leaving Real and heading back to Chelsea, maybe, to replace Benitez who’s heading everywhere there’s a vacancy it seems now that his CV is all glitzty again. Yes it’s football’s pantomine season when club chairmen don their Baron Hardup outfits and seek to replace their ugly sister managers with a shiney new Buttons.

a tale of two (?) managers

Have you ever seen Premiership managers Avram Grant and Gerard Houllier on the same touchline? Of course not because they are one and the same person. Foreign, misunderstood and unloved by their English peers and the club fans alike. They both have a disliking for the English winter weather, cloaking themselves in the largest club puffa jackets and scarves (occasionally thrown into the crowd), spookily both in claret and blue! Same hang-dog expressions caused no doubt by the constant rumours that their jobs are on the line. One works for a Randy Lerner; the other for a randy expert.Both haunted by the spectre of that bloody Martin O’Neill !!!

the september sack race

Well it’s not quite the season for  mists and mellow fruitfulness just yet but it’s definitely the time when misses (by strikers) and shallow ruthlessness (by club chairmen) strike fear in the hearts of Premiership managers. Yes the football season is only a few games old but the knives are already being sharpenned as chairmen’s sphincters start to squeak. Who’s going to be  winner of the annual race to be first manager to walk down the road clutching his P45 and £multi-million pay-off?

managerial swap shop; a never-ending story

So Man City finally sack Sven GE as their manager yesterday. Sven, of course, once accepted the job of managing Blackburn Rovers before giving back word. Now Man City are chasing Mark Hughes the current Blackburn manager, who once played for Chelsea. Chelsea once interviewed Sven GE for their manager’s job before giving it to Jose Mourinho, who surfaced yesterday as the new manager of Inter Milan, having sacked Roberto Mancini the other day. Mancini is one of the candidates for the Chelsea job which became vacant following the departure of Avram Grant, who is one of the candidates for the Man City job. So too is Big Phil Scolari, the current manager of the Portuguese national side, but Phil is also being chased by Chelsea. If he cannot be prised away then Chelsea may well plump for the afore-mentioned Hughes. Sven GE is unlikley to return to Blackburn and will probably take up a role with the Mexican national side. Blackburn may therefore go for Sam Allardyce who used to manage rivals Bolton before he moved to a bigger job at Newcastle from whence he got sacked earlier this season. The Newcastle job was probably the one that ought to have been offered to Sven GE but they’ve now appointed Kevin Keegan, who’s done the job previously. That was before he went to Man City who finally sacked Sven GE as their manager yesterday…..

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the not so special one

So Avram Grant gets the sack. We forecast it months ago but he’s lasted longer than I ever imagined. It never was going to be an inspired appointment, although that’s how Kenyon and Buck tried to present it at the news conference to announce his appointment as Chelsea manager. He was following in the footsteps of the most successful manager in Chelsea history, Jose Mourinho, the self-anointed ‘special one’. But he came in as a friend of Abramovitch having, it is said, been active in undermining Jo-Mo’s position at the club whilst Director of Football (a position JM thought was unnecessary). The players never really took to him – referring to him as Avram Can’t. Several, including the influential Drogba, openly flaunted their disappointment over the Mourinho sacking ( and by inference their disenchantment with his successor). Not a good start…

world of football

This is just a mix of thoughts about footie stuff tracking some of the main news items over the last 24 hours or so. Firstly did you hear the 5 Live interview with McClaren today? Very intriguing stuff. That £2.6M pay off isn’t going to last long in chez McClaren clearly and he’s a little bored now so he wants to get back into management. He did that mini charm offensive when the Newcastle and Derby jobs were unfilled, declaring his readiness to listen to any offers. Well ready or not, that didn’t work and now he’s out and about again declaring that he would be happy to work abroad or EVEN in the Championship providing that the club Chairman had a ‘vision and belief’ that matched his own. Oh that’s rich. How I hoped he would end up at Leeds but that’s not going to happen any time soon. I think you’ll be lucky to get a job within 2000 miles of Soho Sq though I’m praying that the Blackpool job doesn’t become available soon.

The Magpies!

Disappointing news emanating from the Emirates last night but at least I was cheered to learn that iconic British film director Ridley Scott will be filming his homage to the great film maker Alfred Hitchcock. Ridley’s new film will be a re-making of the classic thriller, The Birds! Set in the remote north-east, The Magpies! will tell the tale of a once-great football club, isolated in the fog-strewn area of Tyneside, being torn apart by vicious vulturistic forces. Will the club survive the flocks of attacks or find themselves slipping slowly into the mire of banishment to the dark side in the…… Championship?