And welcome to the current bi-weekly SW19 update. Believe it or not, I do have a life, albeit not a very pleasant one 🙂 But I will endeavour to keep going a little while longer yet. Honest.
Anyway, where to start? Oh yeah, TB has made his first signing, a 6 ft 7 goalie called Ian Feur. From West Ham. For nowt. Well, Harry Redknapp wanted to keep him, but as he was on a Bosman then he could bugger off. Now, there are two schools of thought here : firstly, you can argue that TB and R&G don’t know what they’re doing, and signing goalies is not a sign of rebuilding properly, or you can argue that we need another goalie simply because Sully is gone, Kelvin is just that little bit too inexperienced and Healdy is a bit of a walking wounded character.
Myself, I go for the latter – just remember that we haven’t exactly signed big name goalies in the past few years (Perry Digweed? Paul Kee? Simon “4.5 goals conceeded in two games” Tracey?). As my brother said to me recently, “there are plenty of good goalkeepers around”. Relax, don’t think that this will be our only major signing this season
Coincidentally, did you know that Ian Feur is Mickey Rouke’s brother-in-law? Neither did I. Wasn’t he the ex-boxer? No, that’s Mickey Rooney isn’t it? Or whoever.
Everyone’s favourite embarrasment to Elephant and Castle, one Carl Cort, is whinging yet again. He wants to move to Leicester because of Peter Taylor, and he’s prepared to move out of London. I suppose that he wants to show the world that he is harder than Mark Morrison. Difference is, Mr Morrison knows how to shoot properly.
Anyway, he conveniently and so earth-shatteringly tells us that his heart isn’t with WFC anymore. No shit Sherlock. Obviously we were priveliged last season to watch him perform 100% so I shudder to think how much he’ll put in if he stays. I guess he won’t even get out of bed…. Actually, it’s probably best if he does go (sudden U-turn alert), because we’ll get £5m for him and TB is only prepared to keep players who are committed to WFC. So, that’s half our first team squad gone for starters.
Speaking of which, everyone’s second favourite embarrasment to Elephant and Castle (funnily enough, most E&C residents I know would give their weekly DSS payment to even be playing pro football), one Jason Euell, is going down the Peter Fear route. As many people know, he was seen partying it up and snort….. er, anyway, he wasn’t exactly focused on the Soton game, and now he’s been caught on the piss again, this time in Cyprus.
Rumours abound that nobody had exactly come in for him – Celsi have reportedly had a very lukewarm interest in him, but nothing more – so he’s decided to combat the indignity of playing for the club that made him by pissing it up the wall. Great, another career ruined, and more importantly another £5m down the drain. What is it with our players when their values drop?
W&WW has some intriguing stuff re: transfers. You all know about Jermaine Darlington, but Chris Bart Williams (who we should have signed about 3 years ago) and John Scales are reportedly linked. Now, CBW would be a good buy, but Scales bothers me. His injury record is quite long, and although his experience is invaluable (the way he marshalled the green Chris Perry amazes me to this day), I’m still not too sure. It’s worth remembering though, that we are a first division club these days, and we’re not exactly going to entice the cream to come to us. But then, when did we ever?
The world’s biggest anchronism behind the Civil Service, the BBC, has lost all rights to the Premiership. Boo fucking hoo. Before you start lamenting its loss, just remember that they have a habit of doctoring games to make the glamourous team look far better than they actually were (this is not a problem unique to WFC), they employ Lineker and Lawrenson, their coverage is bland etc etc. Besides, ITV have Gaby Yorath. Also, if we do exactly what SW19 suggests next season and don’t go up, we’ll be much more OK because ITV/ONDigital have bought the Nationwide rights for £315m. Or nearly £1m a year. Now, does anyone else remember the days when the fans raised £16k to buy Tommy Cunningham by carrying a blanket around the Plough Lane pitch in 1981? And people complain that the Sky money is pushing clubs out of business.
From the Don’t Know You’re Born department : the chairman of Charlton has complained that the Sky money they’ve got from being promoted isn’t enough. Some clubs would like £3m next year, like Palace. Of course, if they don’t like the money they could always forfeit their right to going in the Premiership and give their place to a more deserving cause. Like, erm, us…..
With regards to Palace, they’ve been given another week to sort themselves out, I would not swap our position for theirs anytime soon. The main problem seems to be around the SP leasehold : if Lim doesn’t get it, then he’ll either move or (possibly) Ron Noades will take over Palace again. Or the latest one I’ve heard – an Anglo-German consortium, featuring none other than SH. Funny how he’s been linked with Palace more and more recently – and people still worship him?
In many ways, if SH does get involved with CPFC (remember, the guy tried to merge us and CP at least twice) then it may well work to our advantage : SH hates R&G for catching him with his hand in the till chucking him out of WFC, and being the spineless spiteful little tax evader that he is, he’ll use his newly found power to try and force us out of SP (just remember who drew up the contract in the first place). Although I wouldn’t doubt that R&G’s lawyers are slightly better than SH’s.
Finally, I’ve bunged a Message Board on the SW19 Poll section, this is for those of you who need help with filling the poll in (and some people seem to). BTW, you may wish to resubmit your entry if you so wish. Aren’t I nice?