Once again Martin Samuel speaks for us

[tommybooth]

sign him up as our pr man.

 

[1894]

Yep, enjoyable read for a Monday morning...

The status quo is being disturbed by a club all-but-dismissed by the pompous voices around football. Good !

 

[Cheltblue]

Its a good read after all the slaggin of the last 4 or 5 days.

Hope thats the start of a very good Monday.

 

[we-r-the-big-4]

the top 3 things i heard or read all weekend:

1 .. 1-0 to city of course

2 .. shearer stating the good for the prem and mugging off Bin-dipper-Twat-son and the same time

3 .. This bit of un-biased ;truthful ; man who has a good view to write and isn't afraid to say it bit of journalism

Yeah there is world wide recession, but kings n queens, film stars, pop stars etc etc all have bankrolls and they carry on the same , but man city owners are a disgrace for splashing out that much on 1 player blah blah blah..Unlucky RAGS YOUR TIME IS UP

 

[nelsons willie]

Yep, enjoyable read for a Monday morning...

The status quo is being disturbed by a club all-but-dismissed by the pompous voices around football. Good !

whoa whoa what have the quo got to do with this.im sick and tired of them being blamed for everthing from mid east crisis to the world economy..enoughs enough..rock on francis and rick...quooooooooooooooooooooooo ooooooooooooo oooo

 

[oxomcfc]

mint article arsene wenger knows for a fact his team is gonna be the first to suffer dropping out of the top four because of citys wealth.thats why he is saying we are not living in the real world.well champions league is the real world so is kaka i love it

 

[Johnno's Beer Gut]

Never been keen on this bloke but well done to him this time, i think a lot of the comments from other managers etc is just envy.

 

[1894]

Yep, enjoyable read for a Monday morning...

The status quo is being disturbed by a club all-but-dismissed by the pompous voices around football. Good !

whoa whoa what have the quo got to do with this.im sick and tired of them being blamed for everthing from mid east crisis to the world economy..enoughs enough..rock on francis and rick...quooooooooooooooooooooooo ooooooooooooo oooo

And I like it, I like it, I like it, I like it
I li-li-li-like it, li-li-li-li
Here we go
City all over the world

 

[Prestwich_Blue]

And another one - Martin Kelner in the Guardian. Martin Kelner Link

Here's a sample:

What is obscene? A man making love to a slumbering wildebeest, and posting footage of it on YouTube? A naked churchwarden bathing in syrup of figs? We all have our favourites, but Kaka being offered £500,000 a week? How many fantasies does that figure in, outside the sky-blue half of Manchester?

Arguably, it is less of an obscenity than Lucas Neill finding 70 grand in his little brown envelope every Friday. (But look at the tax!) Out in phone-in land, though, "obscene" was definitely the word of choice for the Kaka deal, and it was echoed by the BBC's lovable Jeremiah for all seasons, Mark Lawrenson, on Football Focus. "Quite obscene," thundered Lawro. Actually, Lawro does not thunder so much as drizzle, but the details of the Kaka move had clearly got in amongst him. It was, he said, the "death knell for English football", a sign that football "had lost its soul". Ah, soul. Excuse me, but if we are talking about football as the working man's theatre, did that not happen a long time ago, about the time it started costing the average weekly wage to take a child or two to a Premier League match?

The Kaka pay packet was on Gary Lineker's mind on Match of the Day, too. "There comes a moment when every professional footballer wishes he was born 10 years later," said Lineker, "For me and Mark Lawrenson, it came years ago, but it has just come to Alan Shearer." Ho, ho.

It is all relative, of course, and I have no exact figures, but I should say the boys are quite handsomely remunerated for what they do on Match of the Day. I hesitate to place terms like "money" and "old rope" in any kind of juxtaposition, but if Shearer receives a thousandth of Kaka's wedge for putting on a nice shirt and telling us every week that Aston Villa have got pace up front in Ashley Young and Gabby Agbonlahor, and "you'll always pose problems with that sort of pace", he should trouser it gratefully. What with the crisp adverts and everything, I would suggest Lineker has not done too badly either for a goal hanger with a certain blokey charm.

"Let's go back to the way we was," suggested Ray Parlour on Setanta's Friday Football Show, a sentiment those of us in the veteran stage of our career would readily endorse, although recognising it as unlikely in a business that long ago lost sight of the old ways. If you want a sport where tradition has some importance, may I suggest the World Eskimo-Indian Olympics, featured on Transworld Sport on Sky, held annually for the past 47 years to "celebrate a rapidly vanishing culture".

 

[TonyGrealishstache]

Great article. Why's he suddenly turned into such a nice guy though? Anyone else suspect he's just playing devil's advocate for the attention?

Martin Samuel cut his teeth as a junior jorno in the North West and has always had a soft spot not just for City but for Lancashire football in general. This was in the days when Manchester had a newspaper industry. He used to live in Crumpsall/Cheetham Hills as a young man. Maybe he understands more than most London based journos. West Ham fan I think