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“The next stop is undersoil heating everywhere - we don’t live in Barbados.”
Chelsea manager Emma Hayes, tiring of frozen pitches resulting in postponed matches in not so balmy Blighty.
Number: 246
That’s how many million Euros Chelsea have spent on seven players in the January transfer window … more than all the clubs in Serie A, Ligue 1 and the Bundesliga combined.
Duncan Ferguson’s Vegan blues
There was no little chuckling last week at Duncan Ferguson’s unveiling as the new Forest Green Rovers gaffer alongside club chairman Dale Vince, Duncan - who would always have struck you as a red meat kind of a fella - having to look very excited when presented with a vegan burger.
“They look lovely, don’t they? Very nice indeed,” he said, trying to smile, “I don’t think I have tried vegan food.” (At which point Vince told him that chips are vegan, so he probably had).
It’s a whole new world for Duncan, then. Rovers, after all, are officially the world’s greenest club, wearing kits made from coffee bean waste and recyclable plastic bottles, converting supporters’ urine to fertiliser, like you do, and serving only vegan food at the club.
Mind you, the players haven’t always abided by the club’s vegan-only food policy, a louser of a taxi driver once squealing to the press that he had delivered £200 worth of fish, chicken and chips (vegan, presumably) to the team coach.
Duncan, you sense, will be getting hold of his number very, very soon.
Word of mouth
“What are you smoking so I can get some.”
Weston McKennie’s father John responding to a Tweeter who suggested his son, currently with Juventus, wasn’t good enough for Arsenal.
“Do they deserve to be paid? I wouldn’t pay you if you turned up and did a job in my house and did it to the standard of some of our boys today. I’d be chucking you out of the house and never allowing you back in and you certainly wouldn’t be getting a pound note off me. But that’s the beauty of football, isn’t it? The lads get paid regardless.”
Joey Barton, safe to say, was a bit peeved by the performance of his Bristol Rovers players in their 5-1 defeat by Morecambe.
“I’m not Harry Potter.”
Erik ten Hag very modestly insisting dismissing any notion that he has magical powers, that Marcus Rashford’s form is down to the player himself.
Rangers/DC
Last week’s most peculiar link-up between a Scottish football club and a heavy metal band formed in the 1970s? We finally narrowed the winner down to Glasgow Rangers and AC/DC who launched a clothing range to mark the band’s upcoming 2023 tour, the connection being that AC/DC’s Angus and Malcolm Young were born in Glasgow and are diehard Rangers fans.
Still, the whole thing left supporters a touch puzzled, and not a little angry after the club had revealed that a BIG announcement was imminent. They, of course, hoped that, say, Kylian Mbappé was joining from PSG, but instead the news was about the AC/DC venture.
Describing the inspiration behind the clothing range’s design, the club said: “We cross referenced key landmarks in Glasgow such as the sharp abstract lines of the art gallery alongside the voltage bar from their logo, also incorporating the movement of sound through the prints.”
Rangers fans, no doubt excited by that description, might well have rushed to the club shop to make their purchases, but were possibly taken aback by the price range - a bog standard Rangers AC/DC bobble hat, for example, will set you back €41. But at least, as the club stated, “it is the perfect way to celebrate and acknowledge the rock band’s iconic Scottish gig back in 1976″.
Celtic, meanwhile, were busy announcing that their away kit was in stock again. “Back In Black,” they declared. Cheeky.
Bassey the eyesore
How have things been going for Calvin Bassey since his €23m move from Rangers to Ajax last summer? Well, he was sent off on his debut, and things really haven’t picked up since.
“Apart from his lack of quality on the ball, he is above all very rash - Calvin Bassey playing football hurts my eyes,” said Dutch old boy Wim Kieft a couple of months ago.
And last week? Was former Danish international-turned pundit Kenneth Perez any kinder? “I really have the feeling that every time that round thing rolls towards him he thinks: ‘oh f***, what am I going to do with it?”
No.
