End of Year Awards

debaser wrote:

I particularly like Holloway's and Javier Clemente's quotes

Sheffield gunner wrote:
Best gaffer: Real Murcia coach Javier Clemente - banned journalists from the training ground in April after they recorded him telling his squad: 'You shits have no testicles! You're pathetic, lazy - you aren't even close to being footballers. You shat yourselves at the Bernabéu. You're morons.' Clemente said journalists betrayed his attempt to involve them in the club. 'I invited you in to my house for coffee and you f*cked my wife. I trusted you! You will never hear from me again.'

http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/2008/may/11/2

robert wrote:

Sheffield gunner wrote:
Best gaffer: Real Murcia coach Javier Clemente - banned journalists from the training ground in April after they recorded him telling his squad: 'You shits have no testicles! You're pathetic, lazy - you aren't even close to being footballers. You shat yourselves at the Bernabéu. You're morons.' Clemente said journalists betrayed his attempt to involve them in the club. 'I invited you in to my house for coffee and you f*cked my wife. I trusted you! You will never hear from me again.'

http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/2008/may/11/2

Fucking class!

2007-08: The good, the bad and the bubbly

With another Premier League season over Henry Winter casts his eye back over the highs and lows of the 2007-08 campaign

Footballer of the Year: Cristiano Ronaldo.

Team of the year (4-4-2): James (Portsmouth); Sagna (Arsenal), Ferdinand (Manchester United), Carvalho (Chelsea), Evra (Manchester United); Bentley (Blackburn Rovers), Fabregas (Arsenal), Barry (Aston Villa), Ronaldo (Manchester United); Torres (Liverpool), Adebayor (Arsenal). Subs: Hart (Manchester City), Lescott (Everton), Lampard (Chelsea), Young (Aston Villa), Keane (Tottenham Hotspur).

Manager of the year: Sir Alex Ferguson.

Young player of the year: Joe Hart.

Best chant: (to the tune of Pink Floyd’s Another Brick in the Wall)
"We don’t want no Phil Scolari, we don’t need Mourinho. Hey, Thaksin, leave our Sven alone." Manchester City fans at Anfield (May 4).

Scariest cabbie: (en route to Besiktas-Liverpool in Istanbul)
"I don’t like Galatasaray. I don’t like Besiktas. I don’t like Fenerbahce. I don’t like football. I like SHOOTING. My brother is a policeman. He has a Heckler and Kloch. My other brother is in the army, so I get guns easily." Let me out here.

Most hopeless tackler: Paul Scholes

Best Fergie banter with reporters 1:
"You have enthralled me all season with your honesty, integrity – and nonsense!" To which the man from the Mirror replied: "Likewise!"

Most theatricals:
1. Didier Drogba.
2. Cristiano Ronaldo.
3. Pascal Chimbonda.

Best fans: Derby County (kept singing despite the dross).

Worst owner: 1= Thaksin Shinawatra, Tom Hicks.

Best music: Anfield.

Excuse my English award: Franco Baldini, Fabio Capello’s No 2.
"When the England players get the ball, they look to the crow."
Cue newspaper verdicts on England being in a flap, putting the ball up in the air with the crows. Less poetically, Baldini actually said: "When the England players get the ball, they look to the crowd." They become nervous about the fans’ reaction.

So that’s why England get given the bird at times.

Reasons to be cheerful for England’s future 1: Theo Walcott.

Best signing:
1. Fernando Torres (Atletico Madrid to Liverpool).
2. Bacara Sagna (Auxerre to Arsenal).
3. Lord Triesman (Government to The FA).

Best chant 2:
"England’s No 4" - Ipswich Town fans to David James.
James responded by holding up five fingers; Portman Road applauded.

Best TV link (CNN presenters discussing fallout from Steve McClaren’s exit):
Presenter 1: We'll start a campaign: Jim Boulden (a CNN correspondent) for England manager - couldn't be worse than the last boy.
Presenter 2: He may not appreciate that, actually.
Presenter 1: All right, moving on, The Nuclear Question.

Prat of the year: Ashley Cole (for turning back on Mike Riley).

Best role model: Ryan Giggs.

Oddest greeting 1: (Istanbul street-trader)
"Are you from Stockport? I have genuine fake watches for you."

Best presenter: Adrian Chiles (Match of the Day 2).

Best commentator: John Murray (Five Live).

Best studio analyst: Graeme Souness (Sky).

Best Fergie banter with reporters 2:
"If you ever predict my team right I’ll give you a free weekend up in Loch Lomond - and I’ll make sure the midges are out for you!"

Reasons to be cheerful for England’s future 2: Michael Johnson (Manchester City).

Oddest greeting 2: (Austrian TV crew, Imperial Hotel, Vienna)
"You are English. Please tell us whether you put the milk into your tea-cup before you pour the tea in. Or do you put the milk in second?" Second – and pass the pastries.

Best goal: Cristiano Ronaldo’s back-heel v Aston Villa.

Pottiest idea:
1. The 39th Step (Richard Scudamore).
2. Premier League title play-off (Avram Grant).
3. Umbrella at Wembley (Steve McClaren).

Good luck: Those Manchester United fans sleeping on a boat on the Moscow River. Float on.

Most exciting game: Tottenham Hotspur 4 Chelsea 4.

Rule most in need of scrapping:
Yellow-card sanction for whipping a shirt off during goal celebration. Football should be about fun.

Most community work: 1= Rio Ferdinand, Reading’s WAGs.

Best atmosphere: Barnsley 1 Chelsea 0, FA Cup.

Best Fergie banter with reporters 3:
"Rangers will bring 50,000 fans down here (Manchester). Please wander about the city centre – I’m going to give your profiles to some of the heavy team!"

Best referee: Howard Webb.

So good, so why dive?: 1= Didier Drogba, Steven Gerrard.

Best chant 3:
"We’re going to Moscow – via Poland" Chelsea fans.

Reasons to be cheerful for England’s future 3: The FA should win the 2018 World Cup bid, so England will not have to qualify.

Biggest false dawn: Derby County 1 Newcastle United 0.

Best pitch: Emirates.

Dignity:
1. Sven-Goran Eriksson during Thaksin Shinawatra fall-out
2. Avram Grant during week of Champions League semi-finals and Holocaust Memorial Day
3. Manchester City fans at Old Trafford during Munich tribute.

So long, and thanks for the memories: Teddy Sheringham (top bloke, top striker).

Best email (following Telegraph piece saying that Steve McClaren will be greeted by "90,000 banshees at Wembley")

Dear Henry,

A banshee is a woman spirit/fairy. The majority of the 90,000 at Wembley will be men.
No doubt you meant that if England fail to qualify for Euro 2008, the noise from the fans will be like the sound of 90,000 banshees wailing.
Folklore in Ireland and Scotland suggests that if you hear the cry, scream or wailing of a banshee, one of your family will die soon. Perhaps some lonely Celts in remote areas invented the tale after imbibing too much of the hard stuff, which caused their imagination to run riot.
I hope I'm wrong, but anyone who thinks that an England soccer team will win an international tournament in the near future could be accused of being away with the fairies or indulging in the hard stuff too much.

Cheers, Lorcan Mullally (from Reading).

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/main.jhtml?xml=/sport/2008/05/12/nosplit/ufnseason112.xml

Wallies, brollies and follies

From Ronaldo’s goals to Steve McClaren, this season has had its share of the good, the bad and the ugly
John Aizlewood

THE GOOD

Anthropological discovery of the year: the Football League’s backbone in standing up to Leeds’s quest to overturn their points deduction

Cristiano Ronaldo: imagine how many goals he’d score if he was an out-an-out striker. It doesn’t mean we have to actually like him . . .

An all-English Champions League final: the Premier League is the strongest domestic competition in the world, you know Arsenal’s free-flowing, exhilarating passing game: football for purists and idealists . . . the goals of Emmanuel Adebayor, the defensive genius of Kolo Toure, the flowering of Theo Walcott

Avram Grant: a superior record to Jose Mourinho’s, a Champions League final and almost the Premier League. What can the problem possibly be?

MK Dons: League Two champions and getting better attendances in the lowest league than Wimbledon were in the highest Least likely scenario in November: that by December, QPR would be the wealthiest club in West London

Fabio Capello: a man of honour, a man of integrity, a man of discipline. Just what England’s slugabeds need

Injury: Rochdale’s Lee Thorpe, who broke his arm in three places arm-wrestling on the team coach while travelling to their playoff at Darlington. “Arm-wrestling is something we have been doing most days,” said manager Keith Hill. “It’s easy for outsider to say, ‘They shouldn’t have been messing around like that’.” They shouldn’t have been messing around like that

Sir Bobby Robson: tears were shed when the old soldier collected the BBC’s Lifetime Achievement Award. Even Sir Alex Ferguson dropped his BBC boycott to present it

Goal of the season: Cristiano Ronaldo’s free kick against Portsmouth at Old Trafford. It was as if it came from another planet, one more adept at football

Kevin Keegan: for starters, making Michael Owen look interested; for the main course, shipping David Rozenhal off to Rome and, for a dessert nobody thought they had room for, plugging Newcastle’s traditional colander of a defence

Fernando Torres: the only man capable of making £26.5m look a bargain

Unsung manager of the year: Rochdale’s Keith Hill. Without a penny to spend and with only four wins in 20 games until December, his canny use of the loan system saw English football’s least successful club reach the playoffs. Arm-wrestling aside Bradford City fans: 10th in League Two; average attendance, 13,756

Overachievers: Hereford United, Carlisle United, Stoke City Birmingham City’s Stephen Kelly: the only outfield player to appear in every minute of every Premier League game

Peterborough United’s Aaron McLean: the most prolific striker in the Football League, five years after being cast into the nonleague tundra by Leyton Orient

Clubman of the year: Scarborough Athletic’s Gary Hepples, jailed for four months after breaching his supervision order to play against Staveley Miners Welfare

Most romantic footballer: Sheffield Wednesday’s Rob Burch, who, on Valentine’s Day, asked his girlfriend if she would be his lawfully wedded Wag. On daytime television

Craig Bellamy: the combative striker invested more than £500,000 of his own money to set up a football academy in war-ravaged Sierra Leone

Fulham: how on earth did that happen?

THE BAD

The Football League: a spineless refusal to increase Leeds United’s punishment for their frivolous, pointless appeal An all-English Champions League final: with so few English players, something is wrong in paradise

Steve McClaren: never looked like being good enough, never actually good enough. The umbrella, the Scott Carson selection, the David Beckham sentimentality, the tactical ineptitude, the failure to qualify for Euro 2008. Just the man the BBC need to explain, er, Euro 2008 to a grateful nation . . .

Arsène Wenger’s increasingly wearying myopia: he should visit a well-known High Street opticians, poor lamb Worst substitution: Rafael Benitez withdrawing Fernando Torres with Liverpool trailing to Chelsea in the Champions League semi-final The 39th Game: unless it meant an opportunity to offload Middlesbrough v Blackburn Rovers onto the unsuspecting Laos public

Quietest £9m arrival: Branislav Ivanovic signed for Chelsea - Avram Grant’s first recruit - was given the prestigious No 2 shirt and promptly disappeared quicker than you could say “tax loss”

Fabio Capello: a man under investigation for tax fraud. Bring back honest Terry Venables. And what was that performance in Paris all about? And the craven reinstatement of David Beckham?

Season of transition: Arsenal. See also 2004-05, 2005-06, 2006-07

Leicester City: sacking Martin Allen after losing just one of his four games in charge never looked like a bright move, did it, Milan Mandaric? And replacing him with the ever-loyal Gary Megson?

Three of four FA Cup semi-finalists hailing from outside the Premier League: a sign of the FA Cup’s wretched marginalisation, not its soul-stirring unpredictability

Walsall: sitty pretty in December, sold best players in January. Mid-table, without a manager in April. There’s a moral there

Underachievers: Leicester City, Huddersfield Town, Brentford

Derby County: “bad” somehow seems an insufficiently, er, bad word for a team relegated before April

John Hartson’s retirement: on the grounds that “I can’t have a burger without putting on half a stone”. Not to be confused with not having scored since January 2007

Kenny Lunt’s car: “It was like someone had tipped a load of rubbish into the back. Every time he turned a corner, there’d be bottles flying and discarded papers everywhere,” according to Steve Watson, who accepted a lift, once

Darren Purse’s suspension: after a Turf Moor tackle that left Andy Cole needing 10 stitches, overturned by the Welsh FA, enabling him to play for Cardiff City in the FA Cup final yesterday

Avram Grant: appointed by his chum Roman Abramovich to play swashbuckling football. Oh dear

Manchester United’s finances: just the £58m loss

West Bromwich Albion: spoilsport refusal to have an open-top bus tour of their locality after winning the Championship to give the players “a well-earned rest”

Claudio Pizarro: just two goals all season (both against Birmingham City) on wages that meant each strike cost Roman Abramovich more than £1m. Pizarro did manage to receive an 18-month international ban for inviting wine and women back to his hotel room the night before his Peru lost 5-1 in Ecuador

THE UGLY

The tackle by Martin Taylor on Eduardo

Carlos Queiroz: his whining about Manchester United not getting their fair share of penalties. Two words: “Cristiano” and “Ronaldo”

Ian Wright: stomping off from the BBC, complaining that he was cast as “a court jester”. He then joined Gladiators, a programme few refer to as the new World In Action

The Manchester United Christmas party: couldn’t they have gone for a pizza and then perhaps on to the cinema to see a Hugh Grant film?

Tottenham’s sacking of Martin Jol: that it may have been the correct decision doesn’t make its whiff any more pleasant

Ankle socks, according to Fabio Capello: “When the trouser legs ride up to show hairy shins, it offends my eyes”

John Terry parking his Bentley in a disabled bay outside Pizza Express while he enjoyed lunch: not the sort of thing Bobby Moore did when he was in the running to be England captain

Portsmouth’s David Nugent: could not be bothered to tell Ipswich he had turned down a loan move the clubs had agreed. “These Premier League lads seem happy to pick up their money and sit and not play,” said Ipswich manager Jim Magilton

Thaksin Shinawatra: “A human rights abuser of the worst kind,” say Human Rights Watch. Currently, fears are growing over the job safety of Swedish citizen Svennis Eriksson after piloting Manchester City to a top10 finish

The police raid on Harry Redknapp’s mansion: Mock Tudor. Ugh

Arsenal captain William Gallas’s lack of leadership: after Gael Clichy conceded a late penalty at St Andrews, sitting in the centre circle muttering to himself wasn’t the answer, whatever the question was

Ian Holloway: not so much the leaving of Plymouth as the “it’s poppycock” denials, the cynical declarations of love for all things Argyle and the shattering of a nice-guy reputation

Worst value for money: Fulham signed Jari Litmanen in January on a free transfer. So far, he’s cost £225,000 in wages without playing

Tom Hicks and George Gillett’s spat in the Liverpool boardroom: children, children, please! And while their backs are turned, Rafael Benitez has wasted another £6m of their bucks on this year’s Jan Kromkamp, Martin Skrtel.

Watford’s Al Bangura: his successful campaign to avoid deportation to Sierra Leone – where he said his life was in danger after losing contact with his family – warmed hearts nationwide until a spurned lover said: “He was in so much danger in Sierra Leone that he was planning to take me there on holiday and his mum wasn’t missing: he was in touch with her and wired her £50,000 so she could build a house”

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/sport/football/article3953602.ece

Kevin Keegan: for starters, making Michael Owen look interested; for the main course, shipping David Rozenhal off to Rome and, for a dessert nobody thought they had room for, plugging Newcastle’s traditional colander of a defence

Quietest £9m arrival: Branislav Ivanovic signed for Chelsea - Avram Grant’s first recruit - was given the prestigious No 2 shirt and promptly disappeared quicker than you could say “tax loss”

Parks lives wrote:Team of the year (4-4-2): James (Portsmouth); Sagna (Arsenal), Ferdinand (Manchester United), Carvalho (Chelsea), Evra (Manchester United); Bentley (Blackburn Rovers), Fabregas (Arsenal), Barry (Aston Villa), Ronaldo (Manchester United); Torres (Liverpool), Adebayor (Arsenal).

Thats a much better team. Though I'm not sure Carvalho has played enough games to qualify.

Three of four FA Cup semi-finalists hailing from outside the Premier League: a sign of the FA Cup’s wretched marginalisation, not its soul-stirring unpredictability

John Terry parking his Bentley in a disabled bay outside Pizza Express while he enjoyed lunch: not the sort of thing Bobby Moore did when he was in the running to be England captain

Watford’s Al Bangura: his successful campaign to avoid deportation to Sierra Leone – where he said his life was in danger after losing contact with his family – warmed hearts nationwide until a spurned lover said: “He was in so much danger in Sierra Leone that he was planning to take me there on holiday and his mum wasn’t missing: he was in touch with her and wired her £50,000 so she could build a house”

Cesc Soler wrote:
Cristiano Ronaldo: imagine how many goals he’d score if he was an out-an-out striker. It doesn’t mean we have to actually like him . . .

Worst value for money: Fulham signed Jari Litmanen in January on a free transfer. So far, he’s cost £225,000 in wages without playing

Arsène Wenger’s increasingly wearying myopia: he should visit a well-known High Street opticians, poor lamb Worst substitution: Rafael Benitez withdrawing Fernando Torres with Liverpool trailing to Chelsea in the Champions League semi-final The 39th Game: unless it meant an opportunity to offload Middlesbrough v Blackburn Rovers onto the unsuspecting Laos public

Z wrote:

Arsène Wenger’s increasingly wearying myopia: he should visit a well-known High Street opticians, poor lamb Worst substitution: Rafael Benitez withdrawing Fernando Torres with Liverpool trailing to Chelsea in the Champions League semi-final The 39th Game: unless it meant an opportunity to offload Middlesbrough v Blackburn Rovers onto the unsuspecting Laos public

Hamstring injury. The player who came on for him scored. This is typically retarded anti-benitez journalism.

...Rosicky... wrote:

Z wrote:

Arsène Wenger’s increasingly wearying myopia: he should visit a well-known High Street opticians, poor lamb Worst substitution: Rafael Benitez withdrawing Fernando Torres with Liverpool trailing to Chelsea in the Champions League semi-final The 39th Game: unless it meant an opportunity to offload Middlesbrough v Blackburn Rovers onto the unsuspecting Laos public

Hamstring injury. The player who came on for him scored. This is typically retarded anti-benitez journalism.

He cant of been that injured! He started the next prem game!

Cesc Soler wrote:

Tom Hicks and George Gillett’s spat in the Liverpool boardroom: children, children, please! And while their backs are turned, Rafael Benitez has wasted another £6m of their bucks on this year’s Jan Kromkamp, Martin Skrtel.