Post by QPR Report on Jan 8, 2009 9:40:17 GMT
Love his writing
BRIAN GLANVILLE/World Soccer - WITH FRIENDS LIKE THIS... 06/01/08
Mealy mouthed, the FA were all too quick to disavow Fabio Capello’s well-justified observation on the subject of Steven Gerrard’s recent travails. When Riccardo Montolivo, the talented young Florentina midfielder, declared that he wanted to base his game on Gerrard’s , a proper enough ambition, Fabio in a subsequent website interview opined that Montolivo should be more careful in his choice of idols, saying, “Let’s hope he doesn’t want to imitate Gerrard in every way, especially his recent behaviour.”
In rush The FA as fast and fallaciously as any PR specialist to tell us that of course Capello didn’t really mean it, that what he really meant was…well, what? “He was clearly not trying to be critical,” burbled the spokesman…and that is clear from the context of the comments in the interview.” Oh, no, it isn’t, though the assertion that “Steven remains part of Fabio’s plans was no more than the merest platitude.
Since Gerrard and his two misguided Huyton friends do not come up before the beak until January 23 at North Sefton Magistrates’ Court, we can have no idea of how Gerrard will eventually emerge from it all. As pure as the driven snow it may well be, and so we must all hope. But how apposite was the headline in the Daily Mail, 'A Squeaky Clean Family With Friends In Low Places'.
We can only surmise at exactly what happened early that December morning at the Lounge Inn, Southport, though there have been various eyewitness reports and whatever it was caused the police to keep Gerrard in custody for 20 hours and subsequently charge him and his young companions with assault and affray. We also know that the unfortunate disc jockey at the rendezvous who refused to play Gerrard’s request on the grounds that requests were never played, ended up having hospital treatment with stitches to his forehead, having lost a tooth into the bargain. There was also word that he’d been struck with a beer bottle, though there is no suggestion whatsoever that Gerrard was guilty of that.
It is hard to help thinking that if Gerrard had been in the place alone, with out his misguided Huyton friends, all would have passed off as just a trivial incident. Did Gerrard push the DJ, Marcus McGee, or did McGee push Gerrard? He seems to have sworn at him, which was allegedly the signal for Gerrard’s companions to confront him. Two against one, or whatever.
At all events, a cowardly assault. Liverpool FC themselves were surely ill advised to come out immediately in support of Gerrard, well before any definitive judgement had been made. How do they know what really happened? Quite a contrast with the club’s behaviour, some years ago, when Jan Molby was involved in a night time contretemps and given a gaol sentence. The club refused to pay his wages while he was inside; by sharp contrast with Arsenal, who continued to pay Tony Adams, after he had been gaoled around that time for drunk driving.
Yet the more information that emerges, the more it seems that Liverpool footballers and the local malavita as the Italians call it, or criminal fraternity, are strangely embroiled. Remember how, in 2004, Gerrard was seen as sure to leave Liverpool for Chelsea; he had even suggested it himself. But suddenly, when all appeared to be done and dusted, he changed his mind and stayed at Anfield. The word was then that the city’s hard men had menaced him.
Then last April, there was the astonishing episode of his father, Paul’s letter to Lincoln Crown Court, in favour of a notable criminal called John Kinsella, who was up before the beak for tying up a security guard and robbing £41,000. Gerrard senior’s letter asserted that Kinsella had the family’s gratitude for protecting Steven from a violent thug called George Bromley junior, alias The Psycho, who had been threatening him, smashing up his car and trying to extort money, threatening to shoot Gerrard in the legs, when they’d been involved with the same girl.
Bromley right now is serving a long prison sentence for drug dealing. But in Gerrard’s case, he called off his dogs. “We were at our wits end,” wrote Paul, but Kinsella came to their rescue. Paul actually need not have bothered to write his revelatory letter, since Kinsella broke out of court and has still to serve his ensuing 14-year sentence.
Gerrard’s wife, Alex, formerly a “fingernail technician,” whatever that is, herself was reportedly in a relationship with another well know Liverpudlian criminal in one Tony Richardson, who abandoned her for a “glamour model” called Jennifer Ellison, who till then had been the girl friend of…Steven Gerrard.
Not that Liverpool’s criminals are always as benign with regard to the Gerrard’s as Kinsella. Sometimes they seem more in the image of George Bromley; who reportedly was shot in the face. There are local criminals who prey on the homes of local star players when they are playing in Europe. And poor Alex was, in fact, when Gerrard was in France, terrorised by four thugs in balaclavas, who stole her jewellery. Oh, then there was the matter of the father of another of Gerrard’s former girl friends, banged up for years for possession of 5000 ecstasy tablets and a gun.
Were the charges against Gerrard and his allegedly bellicose young friends to be upheld, there could be sentences in prison up to five years. I cannot believe this will happen to Gerrard. Never anything but civilised, however determined, both on and off the field, one suspects that his present problem lies in the company he keeps.
***************
There has been a remarkable and sudden shortening of the odds on whether Chelsea will part company with Big Phil Scolari. I still strongly believe that they should never have parted with Jose Mourninho, which became inevitable when their oligarch owner, Roman Abramovich, threw his toys out of the pram at Villa Park.
Grant was no proper successor, even if the team – aside from that fateful League Cup Final against Spurs – did have its successes under his tutelage. But what can it mean when it is bruited that Chelsea intend to charge their millionaire players for their meals, out at Cobham? And there’s the news that the club have been ordered not to spend in the January window.
We do know that Abramovich has lost millions in the recent credit squeeze, but he is still surely immensely affluent and could always sell one or two of his fleet of massive yachts. You just wonder, with Chelsea stuttering as they have, how long he will want to be involved with them.
That could mean a horribly rude awakening for the club; and carte blanche for Manchester City and its Abu Dhabi billionaire owners to buy anything and everything they choose. And thus to buy their way out of the shocking predicament in which, despite their previous expenditure under the appalling Shinawatra - (yet hundreds are rioting for him in Bangkok!) – results have varied from the abysmal to the humiliating. Culminating with the shame of that defeat by Nottingham Forest in the FA Cup.
***************
If it is true that Arsene Wenger is pursuing Matthew Upson, what a confession of error that must be! For Upson, a million pound buy as a youngster from Luton, before, I believe, he had even played a League game was abruptly sold off to Birmingham, while Wenger stubbornly hung on to his £2.1 million mistake, the lanky French centre-back, Pascal Cygan.
It looked at the time that Wenger didn’t want to admit his blunder in paying so much for so inadequate a player. Ah well; as an American President once said, the man who never made a mistake never made anything.
www.worldsoccer.com/glanville/
BRIAN GLANVILLE/World Soccer - WITH FRIENDS LIKE THIS... 06/01/08
Mealy mouthed, the FA were all too quick to disavow Fabio Capello’s well-justified observation on the subject of Steven Gerrard’s recent travails. When Riccardo Montolivo, the talented young Florentina midfielder, declared that he wanted to base his game on Gerrard’s , a proper enough ambition, Fabio in a subsequent website interview opined that Montolivo should be more careful in his choice of idols, saying, “Let’s hope he doesn’t want to imitate Gerrard in every way, especially his recent behaviour.”
In rush The FA as fast and fallaciously as any PR specialist to tell us that of course Capello didn’t really mean it, that what he really meant was…well, what? “He was clearly not trying to be critical,” burbled the spokesman…and that is clear from the context of the comments in the interview.” Oh, no, it isn’t, though the assertion that “Steven remains part of Fabio’s plans was no more than the merest platitude.
Since Gerrard and his two misguided Huyton friends do not come up before the beak until January 23 at North Sefton Magistrates’ Court, we can have no idea of how Gerrard will eventually emerge from it all. As pure as the driven snow it may well be, and so we must all hope. But how apposite was the headline in the Daily Mail, 'A Squeaky Clean Family With Friends In Low Places'.
We can only surmise at exactly what happened early that December morning at the Lounge Inn, Southport, though there have been various eyewitness reports and whatever it was caused the police to keep Gerrard in custody for 20 hours and subsequently charge him and his young companions with assault and affray. We also know that the unfortunate disc jockey at the rendezvous who refused to play Gerrard’s request on the grounds that requests were never played, ended up having hospital treatment with stitches to his forehead, having lost a tooth into the bargain. There was also word that he’d been struck with a beer bottle, though there is no suggestion whatsoever that Gerrard was guilty of that.
It is hard to help thinking that if Gerrard had been in the place alone, with out his misguided Huyton friends, all would have passed off as just a trivial incident. Did Gerrard push the DJ, Marcus McGee, or did McGee push Gerrard? He seems to have sworn at him, which was allegedly the signal for Gerrard’s companions to confront him. Two against one, or whatever.
At all events, a cowardly assault. Liverpool FC themselves were surely ill advised to come out immediately in support of Gerrard, well before any definitive judgement had been made. How do they know what really happened? Quite a contrast with the club’s behaviour, some years ago, when Jan Molby was involved in a night time contretemps and given a gaol sentence. The club refused to pay his wages while he was inside; by sharp contrast with Arsenal, who continued to pay Tony Adams, after he had been gaoled around that time for drunk driving.
Yet the more information that emerges, the more it seems that Liverpool footballers and the local malavita as the Italians call it, or criminal fraternity, are strangely embroiled. Remember how, in 2004, Gerrard was seen as sure to leave Liverpool for Chelsea; he had even suggested it himself. But suddenly, when all appeared to be done and dusted, he changed his mind and stayed at Anfield. The word was then that the city’s hard men had menaced him.
Then last April, there was the astonishing episode of his father, Paul’s letter to Lincoln Crown Court, in favour of a notable criminal called John Kinsella, who was up before the beak for tying up a security guard and robbing £41,000. Gerrard senior’s letter asserted that Kinsella had the family’s gratitude for protecting Steven from a violent thug called George Bromley junior, alias The Psycho, who had been threatening him, smashing up his car and trying to extort money, threatening to shoot Gerrard in the legs, when they’d been involved with the same girl.
Bromley right now is serving a long prison sentence for drug dealing. But in Gerrard’s case, he called off his dogs. “We were at our wits end,” wrote Paul, but Kinsella came to their rescue. Paul actually need not have bothered to write his revelatory letter, since Kinsella broke out of court and has still to serve his ensuing 14-year sentence.
Gerrard’s wife, Alex, formerly a “fingernail technician,” whatever that is, herself was reportedly in a relationship with another well know Liverpudlian criminal in one Tony Richardson, who abandoned her for a “glamour model” called Jennifer Ellison, who till then had been the girl friend of…Steven Gerrard.
Not that Liverpool’s criminals are always as benign with regard to the Gerrard’s as Kinsella. Sometimes they seem more in the image of George Bromley; who reportedly was shot in the face. There are local criminals who prey on the homes of local star players when they are playing in Europe. And poor Alex was, in fact, when Gerrard was in France, terrorised by four thugs in balaclavas, who stole her jewellery. Oh, then there was the matter of the father of another of Gerrard’s former girl friends, banged up for years for possession of 5000 ecstasy tablets and a gun.
Were the charges against Gerrard and his allegedly bellicose young friends to be upheld, there could be sentences in prison up to five years. I cannot believe this will happen to Gerrard. Never anything but civilised, however determined, both on and off the field, one suspects that his present problem lies in the company he keeps.
***************
There has been a remarkable and sudden shortening of the odds on whether Chelsea will part company with Big Phil Scolari. I still strongly believe that they should never have parted with Jose Mourninho, which became inevitable when their oligarch owner, Roman Abramovich, threw his toys out of the pram at Villa Park.
Grant was no proper successor, even if the team – aside from that fateful League Cup Final against Spurs – did have its successes under his tutelage. But what can it mean when it is bruited that Chelsea intend to charge their millionaire players for their meals, out at Cobham? And there’s the news that the club have been ordered not to spend in the January window.
We do know that Abramovich has lost millions in the recent credit squeeze, but he is still surely immensely affluent and could always sell one or two of his fleet of massive yachts. You just wonder, with Chelsea stuttering as they have, how long he will want to be involved with them.
That could mean a horribly rude awakening for the club; and carte blanche for Manchester City and its Abu Dhabi billionaire owners to buy anything and everything they choose. And thus to buy their way out of the shocking predicament in which, despite their previous expenditure under the appalling Shinawatra - (yet hundreds are rioting for him in Bangkok!) – results have varied from the abysmal to the humiliating. Culminating with the shame of that defeat by Nottingham Forest in the FA Cup.
***************
If it is true that Arsene Wenger is pursuing Matthew Upson, what a confession of error that must be! For Upson, a million pound buy as a youngster from Luton, before, I believe, he had even played a League game was abruptly sold off to Birmingham, while Wenger stubbornly hung on to his £2.1 million mistake, the lanky French centre-back, Pascal Cygan.
It looked at the time that Wenger didn’t want to admit his blunder in paying so much for so inadequate a player. Ah well; as an American President once said, the man who never made a mistake never made anything.
www.worldsoccer.com/glanville/