Italy took a big step towards qualification for the World Cup this week with two 2-0 wins. After struggling for long periods against Georgia, they took a vital three points after two excellent finishes from Kakha Kaladze. The Georgian Kaladze. Who plays for AC Milan. In Italy.

With Portsmouth’s takeover finally complete, manager Paul Hart wasted no time in delving into the transfer market. After a predictably poor start to the season, funds have been secured for the signings of Championship striker Danny Webber, defender Mike Williamson who was in League 2 this time last season, Spurs flop Kevin-Prince Boateng and Wigan pedestrian Michael Brown. Meanwhile they ensured Distin and Kranjcar were shipped out. Congratulations must go to Hart who has managed to defy the odds and weaken an already woeful side. In short, they’re fucked.

Down in our own League Two, and it seems Accrington are knackered with a £300k tax bill to pay off in two months. Quite how you can manage to run up such a bill when you repeatedly state you have the lowest budget in the league is anybody’s guess. Making comparisons to rival clubs is irrelevant – you have to live within your own means and paying £85k for a player little over 18 months ago sounds like a recipe for disaster. The new owners have attempted to reduce the playing budget but it sounds like they’re fighting a losing battle again the all-too-common theme of living beyond your means. They have experienced big crowd drops and the loss of a sponsor but the lack of foresight from the previous owners is quite shocking. We don’t want to see any fan lose their club but by the same token you don’t want to see a club get away with this sort of stuff.

Lots of French clubs have jumped on the Gael Kakuta bandwagon and started bleating about English clubs stealing their young talent. In France, you cannot sign a contract until you are 18 and so the likes of Chelsea with Kakuta and Man Utd with Paul Pogba have taken advantage. Of course, French clubs would never dream of taking cheap young talent from, lets say, Africa would they? Joking aside, clubs which bring players through need better protection – but we would say that seeing as the Daggers have produced some gems in recent years!

Martin Allen decided to call Julian Alsop a “gristly old fatty lump of lard” after his Cheltenham side’s draw with us. With praise like that it is no wonder he is utterly useless. At least nobody mentioned a banana.

England qualified for the World Cup finals with an emphatic 5-1 mauling of Croatia. This is remarkable considering the handicap of having a woeful right-back, no natural left midfield player and no target man who knows where the goal is. Of course the usual over-optimism has started with everybody and their granny saying “we can win it” so don’t be surprised to see us go out in the quarter finals amidst howls of “overpaid tossers”. We can win it though.

This entry was posted on Thursday, September 10th, 2009 at 11:42 pm and is filed under Ramblings. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.