I Go Driving In My Car

Whenever footballers are accused by the media or fans of leading privileged lives they are quick to stress their normality.

We at Sexy Football have always begged to differ and now have first knowledge to back this up.

So if you permit me, I will tell you a story.

I was at Bolton at the weekend watching Stoke City’s latest capitulation. It was my brother’s turn to drive. Unfortunately the vagaries of the M6 means that you are never sure how long the journey up the Motorway is going to take and we arrived at The Reebok at 12.30. Stupid o’clock in other words.

Anyone who has been to The Reebok knows that unless you fancy a big walk there is pretty much nothing to do.

So me and my brother were sat there in his car listening to Iced Earth’s new album and podcasts of Fighting Talk, when at around 1pm Bolton players started to arrive.

All of them in big black 4X4 cars, except Chris Eagles, who had a big white 4x4 and Martin Petrov, who had a big sports car that I don’t know the name of (my brother did tell me but I am not a car person).

I have no problem with that at all. With success comes money and with money comes big cars. But I do have a problem with what happened next.

The cars disappeared out of our view for a few minutes and were then parked up. My brother noticed it first. The footballers weren’t getting out of the cars at this point. So we did wonder initially if they were same cars, but then, as we watched Gary Cahill arrive, we realised what was going on.

Said Bolton player was getting out of his car at the entrance. Picking up his washbag and going into the ground. The aforementioned security guard was seen scurrying around, getting into Bolton players car, driving it all of 20 yards to the car park, parking the 4X4 and waiting for the next player to arrive.

What sort of world is it that we live in when Bolton Wanderers players can’t park their cars?! It isn’t a world that Sexy Football understands that’s for sure!

Are these people (and it probably isn’t just Bolton players, but all footballers – certainly at top level) so detached from reality that they don’t think they have to put their own vehicles between two lines? Seriously?

Everyone can probably agree that there’s no value for money in football – this website wouldn’t exist if there was, but surely this is a step to far!

I had a rant about this to a Kidderminster Harriers supporting mate who said when he text me back: “some of our players come in from Birmingham on the train.” And if ever anything showed the difference between top level and grass roots its that.

And don’t get me started on footballers not trying and thus not earning their wages. I could be on all night, couldn’t I, Jermaine, Glen and Jonathan? Those guys probably don’t park their cars either!

Charity Begins...In The Shop

I am a creature of habit.

There is not time here to list all the various rituals I go through before going to a football match.

I wear lucky t shirts, there are lucky songs, we have to park in the same place at certain grounds, you name it, I have come up with it as an idea to help us win.

And every night, on the way home from SexyFootball.org.uk I listen to Radio 5Live.

On the drive time show – a magnificent piece of radio – the other day they were discussing whether there was too many charity shops on Britain’s High streets. If I recall, they were in Rochdale, where apparently there were about 10 charity shops in 100 yards.

It wasn’t good, they concluded, for Britain’s shopkeepers, and whilst that might largely be true, it did go through my mind that these things existed because people like bargains.

Around a month ago my Dad was having one of his walks, and ended up in a town a couple of miles from where I live and happened to find himself in one of these shops.

He came home raving about it, to the point where he suggested my brother, who is soon to move into his first home with his fiancé, looked in there to kit out his new abode.

Whether my brother does indeed decide to buy his furnishings from the British Heart Foundation I don’t know (but then I don’t know how he bagged himself a trainee Doctor in the first place – life is full of mysteries) but it does go to prove that if you look away from the headlines you can find some great stuff out there.

And 5 or 6 a side football is where we can help you with that search. There is a massive difference in prices out there and as we grow – and believe me we have some big plans for 2012 – we will collate them all and make sure you get the best deal.

Now, we are away on Sunday, is it my lucky Iron Maiden shirt, or because we have lost the last few games shall I try something different? A Dream Theater one perhaps? We won when I wore at that at WBA…..

The Great Stone Roses Mystery

I hate the Stone Roses. Always have.

I remember when “Stone Roses” (their debut album) came out. I was in my second year at Senior School. Everyone went mad for it. Except me. And my best mate.

We liked Bon Jovi/Kiss/Van Halen/Gun N Roses/Motley Crue and millions of other American hard rock bands. Never liked indie. Still don’t. Never will. And I’ve got the same best mate.

Last week, I did a lot of shouting at the tele when we were supposed to care about The Stone Roses cash in….sorry I mean reunion.

“Who cares”, I yelled. Turns out, everybody seemed too. Except me. And my best mate. And my brother (who was only six at the time the debut came out, so probably didn’t have an opinion.)

There were people at the Sexy Football Offices who were buying tickets for this nonsense. They were by turns gutted when they didn’t get the first night, suicidal when they didn’t get the second night and punched the air when they got the third sorted.

I was cast in my usual role as office curmudgeon when I suggested I would help them get their money back, and also offered that they might want to join the fan club next time (my Iron Maiden membership means I can get tickets before anyone else. Very handy.)

Even odder is the fact that these tickets are going for small fortunes on Ebay . Hundreds of pounds is changing hands. Just briefly, I admit, Sexyfootball.org.uk considered entering the ticket touting business, but it never came off.

All of which proves that there is a potential for people to allow themselves to be ripped off in ridiculous ways if they are passionate about something. Something is, I guess, worth whatever you want to pay for it but that doesn’t mean you can’t shop around for the best deal. Premier League Football isn’t worth £50, but you don’t get the shop around option there, you pay whatever you are told by what amounts to a cartel.

Which is the key difference in 5 a side and 6 a side football. There are some good deals if you look – and that’s where we come in.

And if you didn’t get tickets for the Stone Roses then whilst we I can’t offer sympathy, I can offer solace. My aforementioned best mates little lad is three this week and I will wager you right now that by the time he’s in his second year at Senior School they’ll be back round for a another cash in…I mean reunion.

I am pleased to say that the then 13 year old won’t care. He likes Queen, Rory Gallagher and Joe Satriani, and Thomas the Tank Engine. He’ll grow out of the latter, but probably not the former. Its only rock n roll but he likes it.

It’s just better when it’s cheap.

The Great Celebrity Cook Off

Last week someone at the Sexy Football offices tweeted something about Hayley McQueen, one of the newest – and hottest – Sky Sports News Presenters.

 

The divine Ms McQueen aside we are lucky to be allowed SSN on in the office. This is good because it allows us to have plenty of football related banter while we are trying our best find you the best deal for 5 a side football.

There are downsides, of course. On a slow day the “Breaking News” yellow bar they love so much isn’t so much “Breaking” as “Broken” – for example for about an hour this morning there was some news that James McFadden was at Everton’s training ground (wow! Really! An injured player! On a free transfer! Stop the presses!) and it can be terrible if your team has had a spanking the night before and you have to watch the goals again and again.

And on transfer deadline day it can be really, really awful. Sky Sports lives, basically for two days a year, August 31^st and January 31^st and, as such, it has managed to convince us hard bitten football supporters (even ones as curmudgeonly as us at Sexy Football) that if our teams don’t sign anyone the end of the world is nigh.

And sometimes, if our teams have done something out of the ordinary, we have to put up with watching players we respect doing something …well…..a little stupid.

As a Stoke supporter therefore I was a little bit worried to see that Sky Sports New Cameras were at The Brit last week to watch Peter Crouch, Matthew Upson and Carlo Nash make fools of themselves, cooking with Marco Pierre White in front of 280 guests.

Season ticket holders had been offered tickets but they were top dollar and I am so tight fisted that I wouldn’t pay that price even if it meant I got to rub shoulders with Abby Clancy.

In the end Upson impressed the celebrity chef enough to win the competition. The menu, according to Stoke’s website was this: Seared Salmon Fillet, Rib Eye Beef and White Chocolate and Vanilla Cheesecake. It wouldn’t have been my choice (I don’t like fish without chips or unless its in finger variety and I am yet to establish just why cheese and cake should go together) and Peter Crouch didn’t sound to overwhelmed either: “I’ll probably give it a go when I get home,” was about as much enthusiasm as he can muster.

I guess these are things that footballers have to do in return for their celebrity – but just occasionally I am glad I am not one. And donning a chefs hat and gurning for the cameras definitely is in that category.

And finally – just because it occurred to me over the weekend while watching the Rugby. do you think Peter Crouch has ever said this when he….errm….scrums down: “Crouch. Touch. Pause. Engage.”

I would if I was him – but that’s just me…

See you next week for a detailed run down of the Sky Sports News ladies, ok perhaps not!

If You’re Ugly Then I am Ugly Too

“If you’re ugly then I am ugly too.” So sang Jon Bon Jovi on the truly awful solo album “Destination Anywhere” which came out getting on for 20 years ago.

However allow us, if we may, to use that line to talk about our two least favourite football figures Carlos Tevez, who we discussed here and “Wazza.”

Now I have to be honest, I wasn’t watching the game live on Friday (international football is as pointless as paying over the odds for 5 a side football in my book and there was boxing on the tele.) But I saw what Wayne Rooney did on the news and there is no defence. I notice today that he has written to Uefa to express his contrition in regard to the red card – perhaps he has brought some new crayons.

Of course it’s not without precedent for England’s most over-rated, supposedly world class player to behave, well, like a bit of a moron. Last season he spent more time on the front pages than the back, sulked, asked for a transfer came off the transfer list when offered a huge, fat contract, shot off to Dubai to celebrate his birthday while his team mates were playing a game, elbowed Wigan’s James McCarthy in front of the referee – and scored THAT goal against Man City (and be honest, another day it ends the proverbial row Z). This season it has to be said, that for Manchester United he has been outstanding but that belies the facts of his career at top level.

He routinely, for England, has gone missing. He is without a goal in tournament play since 2004 and he cannot be stacked up alongside the true greats of the game.

Ever since his first goal against Arsenal when he displayed the by now infamous “Once a blue, always a blue” there is something of the idiot about the lad. The finger is never too far from the self destruct button.

We have used this blog recently to defend footballers. They are not all morally bankrupt idiots who typify all that is wrong with British Society, never mind sport.  But they aren’t. Not all of them anyway – some of them are.

And amid the outcry over what they get paid it is worth remembering, as a mate of mine remarked once about a Premier League footballer who was forever getting into trouble “it doesn’t matter if you are on the £30 a week or £30 grand, a scumbag is still a scumbag.”

It is something Wayne can ruminate on when he is sitting out his ban in the Euro 2012 tournament (as an aside, will he even care? That’s another argument for another day – and another blog!) Personally on Thursday when Uefa meets to hand out its punishment on Rooney I hope they come down hard. He deserves, just for once to be made to pay for what he has done – he has got away with these instances for just too long.

And perhaps his looks have something to do with it. He’s got the plugs, he’s dyed them, and yet he still looks like Shrek.

As Jon Bon Jovi, on that same god-awful song we started with observed in the chorus, “There ain’t no rainbow in the sky when you feel u g l y” of course that might be the worst lyric ever put on paper, but perhaps if Wayne had a sunnier outlook he might just be a little less full of rage.

Either that or he can just go home and count his money. I suspect he’ll do the latter.

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In Praise Of Robbie Savage

At Sexy Football we don’t spend much time watching tele on a Saturday night. We are always at football somewhere (as long as it’s cheap, obviously…)

There are way more important things than watching whatever nonsense Ant and Dec put out and I have never liked Doctor Who (as an aside is there ANYTHING worse than Science Fiction – or is that just us?)

So I have to confess that the whole Robbie Savage on Strictly Come Dancing thing has passed us by.

However at Sexy towers we do like Sav. We subscribe to his Twitter Feed, we read his column in the Mirror and we admire the fact that he made the most out of his career as a footballer despite, in brutal honesty, not being the best player to ever grace a midfield (it also helps, probably that I don’t recall ever seeing him play live, so he never got the chance to wind me up!)

He does a nice line in self deprecation too; apparently his routine on Saturday isn’t shaping up to be the best, as he put it in the paper today: “"I've got the foxtrot. Looks like I've got the trots when I dance it. I'm hopeless.”

No doubt, as he acknowledges himself, Savage is a real “marmite” type character. You either love him or hate him, I guess and we are in the former camp. I was, as it happens watching the news headlines on BBC Red Button this morning, before flicking to the sport. The sport feed had a small programme with Robbie answering tweets from viewers, and as normal, he attacked the thing with gusto, calling the sending off of Jack Rodwell “a joke” and demanding that referee Martin Atkinson be suspended after administering the red card and launching an attack on the board of Nottingham Forest for allowing Billy Davies to leave and appointing Steve McLaren without backing him.

Yes he was a little outspoken of course, but that’s not a crime. In a world where most pundits are bland and anodyne, never saying anything particularly interesting, it makes a change to have one who says what he thinks.

Some of his antics on the BBC show Lake Kick Off (the Midlands version which I get to watch, has Robbie as a pundit along with Manish Bhasin) are worth the license fee alone. Witness this from last year when Shrewsbury player Dave Hibbert scored a great goal. They go back to the studio and Manish, chirruping with childlike enthusiasm, says “what about that technique from Dave Hibbert, Robbie?” At which point a clearly distracted Savage can manage to mumble, “I don’t know Manish, I wasn’t watching!”

And no Savage blog would be complete without mention of this story: A couple of years ago Rob was doing a signing session in a Derby shopping mall. After he’d met all the fans he was walking back to his car. A fella comes running out of a bedroom showroom and says: “Mr. Savage, can I interest you in a new bedroom?”

Robbie’s reply came back, quick as a flash: “No thanks mate, I have already got seven.”

Robbie, we salute you. And I wouldn’t know a good foxtrot from a bad one.

Football's Ugly Side (And That's Just His Face)

"Manchester City can confirm that striker Carlos Tevez has been suspended until further notice for a maximum period of two weeks.

"The player's suspension is pending a full review into his alleged conduct during Tuesday evening's 2-0 defeat to Bayern Munich. "The player will not be considered for selection or take part in training whilst the review is under way."

So says the official statement on the “Citeh” website regarding what is now known as the “Carlos Tevez incident” (how long before it is called Tevez-gate?”)

So if before the Man City fans thought he was god, perhaps now he to quote Monty Python, “isn’t the messiah, he’s a very naughty boy.”

Tevez, as well as being hideously ugly (you certainly couldn’t say it was “Sexy Football” where he is concerned, could you?) is a very good footballer. I might even go so far as to say he is brilliant actually – he has ripped my team to pieces for both Manchester clubs and for that reason alone I would love to see the back of him.

But there are more reasons than just that one.

What Tevez did on Tuesday – and indeed how he has behaved for months and months – is just the sort of thing we hate here at sexyfootball.

These people need to know just lucky they are to play football for a living, and to refuse to come on as a substitute as he appears to have done is nothing short of a disgrace.

It might be that there was, as Tevez claims, a misunderstanding – although quite how there can be a misunderstanding in the phrase “you’re on, son” I am yet to establish – and he might still be the good professional he claims to be but the fans in the Sky Blue half seem to be decided on the issue – especially if the story that someone pinned a sign to his gate telling him he was a “disgrace” is true.

As you know, at Sexyfootball we like to save you money on 5 and 6 a side football, but our general ethos is that we love football and want to see it protected. With that in mind, we have an idea as to how Manchester City could save themselves £100,000 a week or more…..