Running Down A Dream

England’s “Dream Team” is taking shape for the post – Eriksson era, with rumours abounding that Alan Shearer and Terry Venables will be joining "The Management once the World Cup is over, for England at least. These to me seem good choices to compliment those staying on, as presumably Sammy Lee and Ray Clemence will retain their posts. At least it will sort out the staff party pantomime for 2006 with the roles for Mary Poppins, Fagin, Humpty Dumpty and Pinocchio all filled. Barwick will no doubt be called upon to play Widow Twanky whilst for the moment, McClaren can fill the role of Aladdin should England win in Germany.

Fallout from the Italian “Match Fixing” scandal continues unabated with Patrick Vieira being linked to a move to the Glazerbucks Disneydome or a return to North London. Vieira has been non-committal over his future when questioned about the investigations in Italy. The bigger issue is the impact on transfer fees that must surely be forced downwards if the four clubs charged have to hold fire sales to release players. This will impact on other transfers that are mooted for this season such as Fernando Torres move to just about every major club in Europe which was expected to be in excess of £20m, could be driven downwards or put on ice. A surplus of top quality players being available will cause prices to fall, to the detriment of lower league clubs who tend to overvalue their “stars” anyway. After all, using Buffon as an example, why pay out for English ‘keeper who has a lot of potential for say £3m when you may be able to pick up the finished article for £10m? The £31m paid by Chelsea for Shevchenko is beginning to look even more extravagant knowing that they could have paid up to 30% less had they waited for the outcome of the trial. One wonders how much the investigation contributed to the Ukrainian’s decision to move, knowing that he would be missing out on Champions League football for at least one season, probably two if Milan were to be demoted.

Unsurprisingly, The FA has ruled that Arsenal has no case to answer for their “relationship” with Beveren. The announcement on the FA website is as follows:

"Following a report on BBC Newsnight regarding the relationship between Arsenal FC and Belgian club Beveren, The FA was asked by FIFA to conduct an investigation.

The FA has since conducted inquiries with the assistance of The FA Premier League. As a result of those inquiries, we can confirm that we have not identified any evidence to suggest that Arsenal have breached any rules of The FA or The FA Premier League in relation to their dealings with Beveren and specifically any breaches of the FA and FAPL rules concerning dual interests or associations between clubs.

In order to protect the integrity of matches and competitions, these rules prohibit clubs in the same competition from being owned, influenced or controlled by the same person or entity.

In this case, the relevant competitions are The FA Cup and The FA Premier League. The rules also prevent a Premier League club from owning or controlling another Premier League or Football League club.

The FA has provided all the material obtained during its inquiry to FIFA for its consideration.”

Newsnight meanwhile have issued a statement,

"The FA has established that Beveren is a Belgian football club and therefore does not compete against Arsenal in the Premiership or the FA Cup. This is not what Sepp Blatter asked for"

as is quoted on the BBC Sport site. The Newsnight quote shows again that they have missed the point. FIFA asked the FA to investigate yet the only remit that the FA have under FIFA regulations is to investigate any breach of FA or FAPL rules. So rather than accepting that the FA have done their job, they are readying themselves to accuse football of a whitewash. The statement further shows how little the Newsnight team know about football. If they were true followers of the game, they would know that what FIFA say publicly and do privately are two very different things.

Interestingly, the BBC do not give this turn of events as much coverage as they did with their original story something I find deeply surprising. However, very kindly BBC Sport give you a link to follow to see the full text of their response which at 17:45 BST is taking you to Page 404 error. Honestly, you could not make it up. This genuinely is what happens when you follow the link to the Newsnight response from the BBC Sport site, and happened every time I tried it from about 17:10 BST until 18:00 BST when this blog was posted.

Spain changed all eleven of their starting line-up for today’s match against Saudi Arabia and it showed. They started brightly enough but the match definitely had the feel of an end of season friendly for their part. Reyes and Fabregas were both substituted although the former supplied the cross from which Juanito thumped home a header. The Ukraine joined them in the next round with a Shevchenko penalty separating them from Tunisia in what was apparently an equally uninspiring match.

Colchester United have successfully sought an injunction to prevent Phil Parkinson joining Hull City although according to the latter they have attempted to discuss compensation with the U's. Despite having an employee who has resigned, the Colchester Board have refused to accept this turn of events and steadfastly hold him to his contract of employment. This is all well and good except that more and more, the EU or the ECJ are becoming involved in all aspects of Sport and the day is not too far away when a manager will successfully sue for normal working conditions to apply to their contracts and be able to walk away within a suitable notice period, the managerial equivalent of a Bosman, if you like.

Todays Tunes are from Tom Petty, Live at the Bonnaroo Festival this month:

Gloria

Don't Come Around Here No More

Saving Grace

Thanks to Pete at Ickmusic, where the whole of the concert is available for downloading.