Football 2010-2011

[TheGayTent]

Defence didn't look great. Though to be fair, Ghana aren't a bad side, and you can't expect a brand new back 4 to gel instantly

[Ed209]

thought it was a shame Welbeck was booed by the Ghana fans. He's a born and bred mancunian ffs

[chappiepunk]

Defence didn't look great. Though to be fair, Ghana aren't a bad side, and you can't expect a brand new back 4 to gel instantly

[Greeny_Musicchild]

Gary Cahill didn't have a perticularly bad game. If we never play anyone else who's going to step into the breach when Terry loses it and Rio gets even slower? We can't be scared to lose a friendly.

Ghana's goal was thouroughly deserved, if for nothing more than the tremendous support the clearly brought with them. Fantastic goal it was too.

[The Nal]

us English would be too if our team was as shit as yours.

[ampersand]

how bads van persie's international injury this time? he is exhibit a for why arsenal will not win the league again this year. your star player can't be crocked for chunks of the season. as liverpool learned with torres.

[eFestivals]

how bads van persie's international injury this time? he is exhibit a for why arsenal will not win the league again this year. your star player can't be crocked for chunks of the season. as liverpool learned with torres.

i hope it's not too bad - he's been in fantastic form, and it would be a shame for Arsenal's challenge to fade thru injury.

[The Nal]

how bads van persie's international injury this time?

[Jaybles]

<br />Its not too bad, he just got a dead leg. Could be back for the weekend.<br />

[TheGayTent]

i hope it's not too bad - he's been in fantastic form, and it would be a shame for Arsenal's challenge to fade thru injury.

[The Nal]

It wouldn't. It would fade through having a (relatively) poor squad.

[ralph250]

And a stubborn unwillingness to spend any money. If Wenger had spent 15 million last summer, Arsenal would be miles ahead in the league now.

[Kowalski]

how bads van persie's international injury this time? he is exhibit a for why arsenal will not win the league again this year. your star player can't be crocked for chunks of the season.

[ampersand]

Except he's not their star player. Their star player is crocked for chunks of the season too though.

[jump]

Man U have made a bid £17.5m bid for De Gea. At least they learnt their lesson from when Schmeichel left & Arsenal and get a decent replacement straight away.

[ralph250]

Bild are reporting a bomb attack been foiled in Germany.

using google translate...

Dortmund - Borussia Dortmund in alarm! The Federal Criminal Police may have a bomb-attack on the stadium of the Bundesliga ("Signal Iduna Park ') thwarted! A 25-year-old German was arrested - his motive is still unclear.

In a spectacular operation, the investigators raised by ART information in the Thursday night to Erddepots with "suspicious explosive objects," including time bombs. A man (25) was arrested - in his apartment, police found a lot of chemicals and other suspicious items.

Wanted the man killed on Saturday when fans arriving Bundesliga match against Borussia Dortmund Hannover 96? Or was it to blackmail?

"The forensic investigations concerning possible functionality of the explosives and suspicious items discovered the possible utility of the chemicals are ongoing. Following a first assessment but not by an acute threat to the population be considered ", said the BKA.

According to the BKA had its starting point the facts already in February 2011: At that time, an anonymous whistleblower adopted by e-mail contact the German Embassy in Islamabad (Pakistan) and would provide information about two alleged by a group planned attacks in Germany.

But the caller was, inter alia, through his extensive knowledge of the construction of explosive devices even suspicious.

The BKA investigation then took over on suspicion of preparing an explosive crime against man

Using a linguistic analysis of email messages that investigators quickly established a link with another unsolved case from 2010: At that time, the same man tried to extort a business enterprise.

On Tuesday it was accessed: In a hotel in Cologne, police arrested the 25-year-old German. Shortly before the man apparently threatened with the attack on the Dortmund stadium!

The 25-year-old admitted in a first hearing, to have placed in the stadium three explosive devices. These were found by the investigators close to the "Signal Iduna Park, formerly the Westfalen Stadium, too.

In his apartment, put the BKA lot of chemicals and three explosives suspicious items "safe and made harmless.

The motive of the man is still unclear. In his questioning, he said out loud BKA, have "invented" the attacks only.

The league home game against Borussia Dortmund Hannover 96 on Saturday will take place according to the police in Dortmund as planned.

"The published results of investigations by the Federal police in Dortmund sees no danger to the visitors of the Signal Iduna Park," it said in a statement.

http://www.bild.de/news/inland/bombendrohung/dortmund-17190386.bild.html

[TheGayTent]

Dean Ashton spent international weekend with his young family in their Norfolk idyll, kicking a football around with three-year-old son Ethan on the semi-circular lawn. There was no running, though, because Ashton no longer can.

He was three months short of his 23rd birthday when he was called into Steve McClaren’s first England squad for a friendly against Greece in August 2006. The day before his debut, a heavy tackle in training from team-mate Shaun Wright-Phillips shattered his left ankle and re-shaped his life.

In the changing room, pain, shock and fear took hold. Ashton cried uncontrollably because he knew the injury was severe. He played only 41 more games, including 45 minutes for England in Trinidad. He knew he was not the same player and his career was over at the age of 26. The same age Wayne Rooney will reach later this year; they used to talk about Ashton and Rooney as England’s next strike force.

In spite of the occasional punditry for Sky and a visit to his old club Norwich with family and friends, Ashton has pulled back from football because he had to. He needs to love the game again and for that to happen, the resentment over his fate has to subside.

‘I’m still bitter about the way football is for me personally, so I want to give myself plenty of time to feel comfortable with it again,’ he says with a refreshing candour.

‘It’s very difficult when you finish playing the game but all of the players you’ve been playing with carry on and players who are older than you are still playing.

‘I was in the same Under 21s team as James Milner, Darren Bent, Carlton Cole, Michael Dawson and Stewart Downing. They are all in the England squad now. That’s what is hard to watch because you feel you would have been there and involved in matches like the Wales game. That makes it very difficult to handle.

‘I don’t feel bitter towards England. I don’t sit in my room depressed when England are on. And I have no grudge towards Shaun Wright-Phillips. It’s just that I’m not comfortable yet with loving football. The worst thing I could do would be to rush back into football and really dislike it.

‘It’s pretty simple. I just wish I hadn’t broken my ankle. But I had a good 10 years in the game and the experience I had was fantastic. My best friends who were at the Crewe academy with me but who never quite made it soon remind me, “Hang on, we didn’t make it and we’ve got nine-to-five jobs. You’ve got to be grateful for what you had”.’

There may be no grudge towards Wright-Phillips but ask Ashton whether the Manchester City winger phoned him with a message of sympathy or apology when his retirement was finally confirmed in December 2009 and the answer is a simple ‘No’.

Ashton prefers to keep his feelings on the matter private but you feel that if the boot which ended a fellow professional’s career had been on a different foot — Ashton’s foot, perhaps — a phone call would have been the minimum support offered.

Ashton also prefers to keep details of his financial severance from the game private, but it is safe to say he does not have to find work until he is ready. A five-year contract West Ham gave him in the summer of 2008, just a few months before his ankle gave out for good, helped.

‘I was lucky enough that I managed to play in the Premier League for a few years and that makes me more secure than a lot of players who retired through injury before the money came into the game.

‘I haven’t even thought about managing, let alone coaching at the moment, although the coaching side is something I want to do when I feel I’m really ready to do it.

‘You can’t be retired from 26 for the rest of your life. You need things to stimulate your mind. Although I’ve got young kids at the moment, eventually they will go to school and I will need to test my mind and keep my brain going. I’m not particularly busy but it’s lovely just to be spending time with the family and doing things I want to do. It’s nice to have free time. There are not many people in the country who get to spend time with their kids like I am at the moment.

‘The phone didn’t particularly ring a lot when I retired. I had the odd text message but not many deep and meaningful conversations with people. However bad they feel for you, professional players almost want to block it out. They don’t want to think about what it must be like and to think that it might happen to them.’

You sense that the emotions at work, even within the articulate and intelligent Ashton, are complex and still a little raw. At least the pain has subsided from his left ankle and with it the heartache of fighting a daily battle which he knew deep down would be lost.

‘I was really glad to retire in the end because I had had enough of operations and recovery and waking up every morning not being able to walk to the fridge. It was a weight off my shoulders when I did finish because it was just so difficult being in so much pain.

‘Now I can do normal things. I can walk, cycle, row, although I can’t do anything that involves running. My ankle doesn’t hurt but because it doesn’t move any more, there’s no flexion. I use my knee and foot a lot to compensate.

‘If I really had to run, then I could, but I would have a terrible limp and I would look really stupid. I played in a charity basketball match and it was a case that the ball and everyone went up one end while I just stood at the other end until they all came rushing back.

‘I can kick the ball absolutely fine with both feet and I can mess around with the kids, which is really nice because before I finished I wouldn’t have been able to do that. And I can play golf and walk the whole course.

‘Obviously in later life I’m going to have trouble with my knees, my foot, my hip, arthritis in the different areas which take more strain than they probably should do, but I had no choice but to have the operation. It was the best chance I had to have a normal life of walking and playing with the kids.’

Ashton’s retirement was also a blessing of sorts for his wife Gemma, who shared the mental anguish but who could do nothing to ease her husband’s pain through the ordeal.

She said: ‘It is really hard because you want to be able to help your husband but there is very little you can do. He has coped with it amazingly well. I don’t know anyone who could have coped with it as well as he has. I never saw him get upset.

‘It’s been a different journey for him to the one the fans have seen. I think he has known himself for a lot longer than they did that he would have to retire. When it came to it, he had already dealt with that in his head. It’s definitely a change from when he was playing to have him around all the time, but really nice too, especially because our children are young.’

Being removed from the crowds and the adulation does have one advantage for Ashton. It takes you away from intrusion and insinuation like the whispering campaign during his Norwich days that said that he was gay.

He is not, but he wants to see football move into a position where it becomes a non-issue, so that others do not have to endure similar treatment.

‘When I first came to Norwich, I was 21 and on my own. Jason Shackell, Ryan Jarvis and Ian Henderson were really nice to me, showing me around the city, going to the cinema or bowling. Me and Shacks just went for a meal one night. The next minute it is, “Ashton and Shackell are lovers”. I always wonder who has got the time or the thoughts to do something like that on the internet. But you can’t stop it so why worry about it?

‘We’re in such a modern world now that things like that shouldn’t matter any more. I know that football’s meant to be a real man’s game, as they say, but it shouldn’t be anybody else’s business.’

There are no reminders of Ashton’s career on show in the living area of the family home, not his solitary England cap, nor his FA Cup runners-up medal from 2006, nor any photo of his peroxide blond hair atop a claret and blue West Ham shirt.

Even if there were, he would view them as third-party possessions, such is the detached perspective he now holds on life in the game.

‘Because I’ve gone from playing to not playing and not even being able to run, it’s almost like I never actually was a footballer, if that makes sense.

‘It’s really strange but that’s because at the moment the last thing I could do is play football. And I haven’t played for nearly three years now.’

When he does return to football, the likeable Ashton will be an asset, but that time has not yet arrived.

[eFestivals]

Man U have made a bid £17.5m bid for De Gea. At least they learnt their lesson from when Schmeichel left & Arsenal and get a decent replacement straight away.

surely you mean that there's stories of them being interested in him at that price....?

[TheGayTent]

Dean Ashton has agreed an out-of-court settlement with the FA in regards to compensation for ruining his career.

The former Hammers striker was forced to retire in his mid-20s as a result of a challenge by Shaun Wright-Phillips whilst both were on England duty in 2006 - since when the player has battled to receive adequate compensation.

27-year-old Ashton - who, given today's market rates, would almost certainly be worth in excess of £25million - called it a day in 2009 after being told that his career was finally over, following three years of operations and rehabilitation.

The level of compensation is, as expected, undisclosed; a statement on the FA's website this evening (30th March) read:

"The FA is pleased to announce that the legal proceedings brought by Dean Ashton following his unfortunate injury during training the day before his debut for England in August 2006 have been settled upon terms mutually acceptable to the parties and their insurers. It is a term of the settlement that no further statement will be made by any of the parties."

Ashton - who has already received a pay-off from West Ham United in the region of £2million - is now unable to partake in any sporting activity, having had his ankle fused together last year to prevent further degeneration.

West Ham are also in the process of suing the FA for the loss of Ashton.

[jump]

surely you mean that there's stories of them being interested in him at that price....?

[The Nal]

surely you mean that there's stories of them being interested in him at that price....?

[ralph250]

Regardless of him being a multimillionaire - in a football sense, a tragic waste.

[strummer77]

It says bid in the article.

[eFestivals]

It says bid in the article.

As the article clearly says, it's a repeat of a story from The Times.

I've not read The Times story, but according to BBC footie Gossip's summary of that story...

Manchester United will launch a fresh attempt to sign David de Gea, 20, after Atletico Madrid rejected their offer of £17.5m for the Spain Under-21 goalkeeper.

... so it sounds to me like something I get to see with festie and music stories all the time, of a 'maybe' turning into a 'definite' due to the very poor reading skills of the people who copy the story.

And while I know that while some stories are true and many aren't, after the last window and huge number of players that Utd were reported as signing that window - despite fergie saying there wouldn't be any and that proved to be true - I have far FAR less belief in such stories now, especially the ones where the writer proves they can't read properly.

[eFestivals]

Made enquiries at that price I reckon.

it's possible, but I reckon unlikely they'd have even asked about the possibility of the club selling.

An enquiry can't lead to any solid agreement - at least, not one that holds water - right now, but would give the club and the player the chance to hawk the player around and push the price up.

I can't see what benefit they'd be in Utd pursuing things at this moment, when nothing can happen until the window opens.