A Football Report

By Andy, whose footballing expertise lies in the Premier League, as well as in European and South American football.

This week, football for a number of reasons: the good, the bad and the down right sad. The good, United’s emphatic win over Arsenal (it hurts me to say that being an Arsenal fan), John Terry’s transgressions being the bad, and Portsmouth’s fourth owner being the sad part. It’s never nice seeing any club in this sort of financial predicament, forget the footballers who most have enough in the bank to last a life time or the owners who screwed it up, it’s sad for the supporters who turn out week in week out to support their team through thick and thin.

This past week has seen alot of football, with some surprise results, Chelsea dropping two points at Hull, Burnley pushing Chelsea all the way too, while Birmingham continue their great form in the top half by holding Tottenham to a draw with a extra time goal. My pick of the weekend games (Villa vs Fulham) ended with Villa winning 2-0.


This week instead of focusing on football and the premier league first, I want to look at what’s dominated the headlines: John Terry and his extra marital affairs. Personally, I think cheating in any kind of relationship, from a 15 year-old couple to people who have been married years, is wrong. To relate my point to football, I agree with the view that footballers are role models and thus have to act in a professional and honest manner, both on and off the pitch. Going all the way back to ‘66 when England won the World Cup, we had a great Captain who led from the front, acting accordingly both on and off the pitch. Terry could do with taking a leaf out of Moore’s book.


Regarding actual football, we saw the transfer window close with a couple of signings on deadline day. The most notable were Keane going from Spurs to Celtic, while young starlet Johnson joined Man City from Middlesbough and Wigan snapping up the exciting talent that is Victor Moses from Crystal Palace. That final one I mentioned, Moses, for me is the most interesting of the transfers, he reportedly could of joined a number of teams including Arsenal, United and a number of other clubs “bigger” than Wigan. While I would of loved to see such young, exciting and English talent at Arsenal, I am glad in a way that for once the big bucks of clubs like Arsenal and United didn’t triumph, I feel Moses could get alot of playing time at Wigan and it would be beneficial for him obviously, but also for the national team. The overall transfer window in contrast to others was dead, barely 50 million pounds was spent whereas in past seasons it’s gone over 100 million pounds. This summer will be interesting, as a lot of teams have aging squads or aging star players, while a lot of players can leave their clubs on Bosman’s (free transfers). A big player who has yet to sign a new contract at their club is Joe Cole, it will be interesting to see if he stays at Chelsea.


Anyway I think I better wrap it up here, but one last thing:

Pick of the weekend games: The Merseyside derby between Liverpool and Everton along with the London derby between Arsenal and Chelsea have to be the games of the week, but if you want a game between smaller teams, then I would suggest Sunderland vs Wigan, with two points seperating the teams who occupy 13 and 14 I think we could see more attacking football from them than we normally would.

Send Andy a message at andyjay17@hotmail.co.uk. Have your say about “The Virtuoso’s View” below!