Summer Blues
The most boring time of the year
As we lounge around hoping that the sun will poke its head through the clouds I can't help but feel fed up with waiting for something to happen in football again. This is by far the most boring time of the year because apart from ridiculous transfer rumours to discuss not a lot is happening at the minute.
There is only so much I can stand of the Cristiano Ronaldo or Gareth Barry transfer sagas. We were all informed that after Euro 2008 the transfer market would pick-up and things would be more exciting and to a point things have improved in that we have actually had some transfers. Just this morning we have seen Turkish side Galatasaray take a gamble and sign Harry Kewell.
This is probably the most interesting completed transfer of the summer because I always believed that Kewell would want to stay in the Premier League or at least in
Underneath it though is the news that Peter Crouch is off to Portsmouth, another saga that has gone on far too long for my liking.
On that page the BBC have done a good job in highlighting how much rubbish gets printed in the British newspapers day in, day out. The Sun, Daily Express and Daily Mail all have the news on Crouch's transfer but they have all given different prices. Now I suspect that one of these will be true and the other two completely made up, which two are false we won't find out until that transfer goes ahead, if it ever goes ahead. This is just an example of how the newspapers can get away with printing absolute twaddle at this time of the year.
I have come to believe none of it, the number of times I have seen my club linked with a great player only for it to turn out to be just a rumour is unbelievable. I have decided now not to believe anything I read until I see that player holding up the shirt at the press conference. When I was younger I use to get really annoyed at the manager when a transfer rumour didn't come true because I believed that it was his fault we hadn't signed this or that player. Now I realise that the only ones I should be getting annoyed with are the players agents who start these tales so their client can add an extra zero to the end of his salary.
For example let's look at the Peter Crouch transfer again. Everyone has known for some time that Harry Redknapp, the Portsmouth manager, has been interested in Crouch. Yet last week I read a story in a newspaper that Arsenal were now interested in buying Crouch.
This to me is a blatant example of an agent starting a rumour to hurry one club a long, in this case Portsmouth so that they would pay the asking price and the aforementioned agent gets a bigger slice of the transfer deal. I know the debate about agents has been going on for some time but they are one of the things that is currently wrong with football. However I won't go into that now and instead will stick with the summer transfer market. You can read about the transfer odds here.
I think everyone is getting a little tired of reading the same thing over and over again on the back pages of the newspaper. I think what everyone would like from all the players involved in the on going sagas is a definitive answer from all the parties involved saying if they are going or staying. However even then things are not cleared up.
For example last Friday Emmanueal Adebayor said he was staying at Arsenal but one hour later he refused to deny that he could move to Milan. Now I have read that Barcelona have made a big for the
I really don't like this time of the year, it really brings outs the ugly side in football where you can see how much money dominates the English game these days. The one thing that is keeping me going through all the rubbish is the thought that football will return very soon and finally we will have something to debate where the facts can not be altered and we get the whole picture.
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