The People’s Clubs?
By Mike Gumballhead • Jan 18th, 2008 • Category: News & Notes • one responseMike Gumballhead returns for another rant, wondering what’s going on with the rich men running Liverpool and Newcastle.
Why is it that whenever a grotesquely rich businessman buys a football club, we’re surprised to find that he doesn’t run his team like a corporate Mahatma Gandhi but instead shows all the philanthropic patience of Donald Trump?
This past week, we’ve gorged on Mike Ashley’s madness — please, football gods, let him add Alan Shearer to the Wor Kev Movement at St. James Park — as pundits have wondered how a man brilliant enough to make a fortune selling polyester shirts could have lost his head so suddenly as soon as he bought a football club.
The man made a success of Milletts, for god’s sake, but give him Nicky Butt and Sam Allardyce’s twenty-five man entourage and suddenly he’s sunk in a diving bell 60m below the northern Caspian Sea giving an interview only Cristiano Ronaldo digs.
Meanwhile, on the opposite side of northern England, those damn Yanks have completely lost it, running Liverpool as if they had no history, no glory, as if they were merely the Montreal Canadiens of English sawker!
No, This is Anfield, and I’ve heard Jamie Carragher’s chirpy voice enough on Five Live to know those Yanks wouldn’t recognise the genius of Rafael Benitez even if they were an entire 24 points behind Man Utd right now, instead of a mere 12. This is a man who sees coruscating winger where we see Jamie Pennant, and goalscoring talent where we see Dirk Kuyt turning away from goal for the eight hundredth time.
What is going on, friends? How can men who have long robbed the poor to feed themselves fail to bring instant success to England’s two People’s Clubs? (Sorry, Everton.)
Photo credits: AndyNugent; Pose
Mike Gumballhead is not being entirely serious.
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… yes, I don’t think they realised that, in this case, the poor people were themselves.