How many more hits can any club endure before you begin to question the very fabric of our footballing establishment?

Sunday’s game at the Emirates was yet another example of why it’s become increasingly obvious the FA are determined United will not beat the lovable, media friendly scousers to that 19th title.

Michael Owen gets his achilles practically detatched from his leg a mere three yards from referee Chris Foy in the 88th minute at the Emirates yet the Merseyside born official fails to see it.

A day earlier a linesman doesn’t see Frank Lampard’s shot beat Tottenham ‘keeper Gomes, yet he pretends that he does. Then the other linesman in that game cannot see Salomon Kalou is a yard offside for the winner.

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Go back a few more months and Martin Atkinson fails to send off David Luiz for a second yellow card who subsequently earns a penalty that wins Chelsea the game against United. Did I mention the fact that John Terry committed a blatant handball in the area that went unpunished?

Go back even further Fulham are awarded a last minute penalty against Chelsea and Didier Drogba is three yards in the box when Clint Dempsey misses but the referee allows the miss to stand.

Jamie Carragher savages Nani enough to knock on the changing room door and apologise.

Michael Essien commits a red card tackle on Jermaine Pennant and doesn’t even get booked.

Don’t even get me f*cking started on the inconsistencies of f*cking sweargate.

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Last season, it has been argued by some that, Steven Gerrard gave away the title on purpose and was rewarded with the England captaincy for the world cup. Oh and Didier Drogba was awarded an offside goal to make sure Chelsea won the title with a win at Old Trafford.

Go on then tell me I’m wrong………..

Read more of Justin’s articles at the excellent Red Flag Flying High

A humble Pep Guardiola paid tribute to Manchester United and committed himself to Barcelona following Saturday’s emphatic Champions League win.Guardiola was on the touchline to witness one of the all-time great performances as Barca ran riot at Wembley, trouncing United 3-1 to lock up their third Champions League title in six years.

The 40-year-old, who was rumoured to be considering departing the Camp Nou should Barca win Saturday’s final, flatly denied those reports in his post-match remarks and said he was committed to seeing out his contract with the Catalan giants.

‘I will say it again, I have another year on my contract and I intend to work it out,” Guardiola told TVE.

”I feel privileged to have these players. Everyone has worked towards this. We are very happy. But I have to look inside of me. I am happy to be here as coach of these guys, but it is not an easy job.”

“We must congratulate Manchester United for the great match they have played. We are pleased because we know how hard it is to win the Champions League.”

“We had some time to prepare this encounter and I thought we played excellently tonight.”

“We went 1-0 up but we knew that with all of United’s history and stature in the game they would come back at us. In the end, though, we managed to control the match and we won very well.”

Lionel Messi, who has already attracted plaudits as the greatest player in the modern game, was hailed by his manager as the best ever after a scintillating goal in the 54th minute put Barca ahead for good.

“Lionel is the best player I have seen and probably the best I will ever see,” Guardiola said.

“He made the difference. Messi is unique, a one-off. I just hope he doesn’t get fed up. “

“When he doesn’t play well it is because something is wrong with his environment. Let’s hope he can continue playing well.”

The Barcelona coach was less sure if his side could be labelled the greatest of all time however, deferring to greats teams of the past led by the likes of Alfredo Di Stefano and Johan Cruyff.

‘I don’t know (if Barcelona are the best ever),” Guardiola said. “It is impossible to say.”

“I didn’t see the Real Madrid of Di Stefano and the Ajax of Cruyff. We try to play as well as possible.”

“I hope in the next 10 or 15 years the people will remember them and have enjoyed them.”

Samir Nasri has refused to commit his future to Arsenal amid rumoured interest from English Premier League rivals Manchester United.Nasri has one year left on his contract at the Emirates but can force his way out of north London early if he opts not to sign a new deal.

In that event, Gunners boss Arsene Wenger will be forced to cash in on the midfielder in the July transfer window or risk losing him on a free transfer the following year.

With no shortage of suitors – he has reportedly attracted interest from United, Manchester City and Real Madrid – Nasri is in no rush to decide on his future.

The France international, who will line up with Les Bleus in friendlies against Ukraine on Monday and Poland on Thursday, said all contract discussions were off until after those matches.

“I don’t know if I will sign a new contract,” Nasri told TF1’s Telefoot in France.

“Anyway, the discussions are ongoing. For the moment, I don’t think about this. We will speak about it after the match with Poland.”

”Do I want to go to Man United? First, we should see if it’s real and if it is concrete.”

Wenger could be in for a busy transfer window, with Cesc Fabregas and Andrey Arshavin also expected to attract interest from rival clubs.

Liverpool boss Kenny Dalglish is confident injured duo Steven Gerrard and Pepe Reina will be fit in time for the start of the new season.The pair have not travelled with the rest of the squad to China for the first leg of the club’s pre-season tour of Asia.

Gerrard is still recovering from surgery to heal a groin injury that ended his season in March and goalkeeper Reina is not yet ready to return to football after a double hernia operation last month.

Speaking at a press conference in Guangzhou as his side prepare for their first friendly on Wednesday, Dalglish said he was confident both would be fit to kick off Liverpool’s English Premier League campaign against Sunderland on August 13.

“Steven is injured at the moment and that’s why he’s not here with us,” Dalglish said.

“He has made a fantastic recovery from his operation towards the end of last season.”

“He just needs to get the final couple of niggles out of the way and then he will be fit for the start of the season against Sunderland.”

“I know people are disappointed he isn’t here with us but the disappointment would be far greater if he couldn’t play the first game.”

“That is why he has stayed at home, to rest and to have the best chance of being fit for the start of the season.”

“The same situation applies to Pepe – he had a double hernia operation in June.”

“He isn’t fit and so had to stay at home. He should be ready for the start of the season.”

Twitter is full of information, and some of it is quite useful. Last week I learnt that the £13.3m due to Porto to trigger the release clause for the new 33-year-old manager, Andrés Villas-Boas, took the amount spent on hiring and compensating managers and coaching staff alone at Stamford Bridge to an estimated £69m since Abramovich bought Chelsea in 2003 (or to put it another way, £1 for each time Villas-Boas has been compared to Jose Mourinho in a tabloid).

Shock, horror. All that wasted money, spent on people that don’t even contribute on the pitch, oodles of cash that could have been spent on another preening narcissistic galacticos or two.

Or is it a waste?

What does £13.3m get you nowadays? Not Phil Jones, not close to Jordan Henderson. Just over half a Joleon Lescott, a quarter of Fernando Torres, or ¾ of Ashley Young with a year left on his contract. A new roof on the main stand perhaps, maybe a whole new identikit stand, or you could build 1/70th of Wembley, or even better, purchase three chicken burger meals there. The alternative is you could get one of the most highly-rated young managers in the world. It’s a no-brainer really.

For a couple of million Wigan got a manager who kept the club in the Premiership on a shoestring. Bargain. Harry Redknapp cost £5m to buy-out, and got them in the Champions League. As Henry Winter wrote in the Telegraph over two years ago: “it is surely time that managers, a club’s most significant recruit, started moving for compensation more commensurate with their impact.”

When you think about it, that amount spent on managerial and staffing changes by Abramovich is not that severe for an 8-year period when the success of the club depends on the choices. It’s fair enough to criticise the choices he has made, by not giving managers a chance to succeed, but the spending on off-field staff is not that illogical. A bit more patience and he could have saved a lot of money. But let’s not forget that during that time he has pumped £739m into the club in total.

The fact is that the manager of a club, any manager, is always more important than any individual player at his club. His influence shapes results more than anything else. Why wouldn’t he command a fee? If a club wants a player contracted to another club, they must agree a fee to buy out that contract – it seems logical the same rules apply if trying to poach an in-work manager.

Another plus for managers is that their shelf life too is potentially better. Alex Ferguson has had 25 years at Manchester United alone now (and counting), longer than the whole of a footballer’s career. That shelf life may be about to increase too, as a trend is emerging for younger managers. Roberto Martinez and Boas are signs of this, though Boas has always intimated that he doesn’t see himself managing to a ripe old age, due to the pressures of the job.

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It is not quite that simple though. There is one big difference – when a club wants to get rid of a manager under contract, they have to pay him off – if they want to get rid of a player, they’ll get a transfer fee. Contracts for players are there to protect an asset, so that should they leave recompense is received. Managers on the other hand can resign from a contract, walk away and take another job. It is no wonder that Birmingham are furious at Alex McLeish joining Aston Villa, and want compensation. There seems little doubt he quit knowing he was a shoe-in for the job at Villa Park. But when a manager leaves a club to which he was still contracted for another club, he will be deemed to have terminated his contract early (a breach of the contract) meaning that the club will need to be compensated for this loss.

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For those reasons, it would be ludicrous to suggest that managers’ fees should be higher than players. Players are tied to contracts far more securely, and this partly explains the sort of fees being bandied about at the moment for their services. But it is perfectly sane to expect managers to cost clubs too. It is the single most important signing a club can make.

And thus, transfer fees for managers may soon become the norm. Perhaps Chelsea will themselves have put a release fee into Villas-Boas’s contract. Perhaps soon we’ll be discussing the market values for managers like we do with players – their age, loyalty, track-record, wages or injury record (less likely). If that does happen, it won’t be long before we’ll see the first £20m manager and soon they’ll be having strops at not earning as much as those they manage. I’ve even seen it suggested online that managers, like players, should have transfer windows, and they would not be permitted to move outside these periods. It seems football is about to get even more expensive.

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Arsenal chief executive Ivan Gazidis has admitted that Arsene Wenger has a ‘substantial’ transfer budget at his disposal reports the Guardian.

Gazidis says the Frenchman has more than enough to buy one ‘world-class’ player but concedes that they must consider the ‘efficiency of spend’ as they don’t have the resources of the big spenders in the Premier League.

Gazidis said: “”They’re not there to compete with the Manchester Citys of this world and, frankly, if they were, Manchester City would just increase their bids again.

“You’re just never going to be able to compete with limitless amounts of money but we’ve got a substantial amount of money that we can invest.”

Despite supporters becoming restless at the lack of in-comings Gazidis insists there is no practical or ideological barrier that is holding Wenger back from spending the money.

He made it clear that the Arsenal manager has identified the squad’s weaknesses and will be supported financially to fix the problems.

Wenger has already brought in striker Gervinho and young right-back Carl Jenkinson for a combined £11.6 million and Gazidis claimed that Wenger isn’t opposed to spending big on a player.

“We still will be active in this window,” Gazidis told the Guardian. “We haven’t finished our business at all. We’re just not conducting it publicly. We’re working hard privately. We understand where the weaknesses have been.

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“If we found an established, world-class player and we thought the economics made sense and he would add to what we could do on the pitch, then there’s no philosophical objection to that,”

Harry Redknapp believes that the potential sale of Luka Modric could in fact help Spurs in the long run. The Tottenham manager doesn’t want to lose the Croatian but feels his exit will enable the club financially to bring in three or four players that will strengthen the team as a whole.

Elsewhere in the papers this morning Fernandes is on the verge of QPR takeover; Reina warns Liverpool that they must break Champions League cartel, while Jack Wilshere’s injury adds to Arsenal’s woes.

*

Modric sale may strengthen Tottenham, says Redknapp – Guardian

Chelsea set new pace in chase for Mata – Guardian

Fernandes on verge of QPR takeover – Guardian

In-demand Beckford wants to stick with Toffees – Mirror

Wenger faces further punishment – Daily Telegraph

Liverpool must break into Champions League cartel this season, warns Reina – Daily Mail

Redknapp believes Adebayor’s baggage ‘is perfect for Spurs’ – Daily Mail

Wilshere injury news adds to Arsenal’s woes – Mirror

Pulis insists that Shawcross is ‘not for sale’ as Liverpool show interest – Daily Mail

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City to sign Nasri inside 24 hours – Sun

Chicharito: De Gea will be fine once he masters English – Mirror

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Inter Milan playmaker Wesley Sneijder has admitted that he spoke with Manchester United over a potential transfer, and although a move would have been of interest, he is happy to have remained in Italy.

The Premier League champions were thought to be in the market for an attacking midfielder following the retirement of Paul Scholes at the end of last season, and the Netherlands international was linked with a move to Old Trafford in a protracted summer transfer saga.

In the end the 29-year-old has stayed at the Giuseppe Meazza, but has stated that he spoke with the English side.

“I felt that it was close, yes. We had several talks, the situation was such that Inter had to sell a player, Eto’o or me, and indeed there was interest. They are one of the biggest clubs in the world, so it did not seem like a bad thing – but at the same time I do not want to leave Inter,” the former Real Madrid man told AD.

Reports had indicated that the move did not happen due to the Dutchman’s wage demands, but Sneijder does not agree with this.

“Italy is great for me, and I cannot exclude that United got that feeling, for me a move was not an absolute must and there were a few things which meant it did not happen.”

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“For me it was not so much a financial issue, my feeling was that I was simply feeling very good at Inter, I love the club but also the Italian culture and the people, it fits me,” he concluded.

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Everybody loves a cheeky backheel and the finest examples stay long in the memory. There was Zola’s magical flick against Norwich in 2002 and Kanu’s delightful finish against Middlesboro in 1999. Now Daniel Sturridge’s gem of a backheel against Sunderland on Saturday has joined these classics.

There are a surprising variety of ways to score a backheel as this top 10 shows, none more unique than Laurent Robert’s effort for Newcastle, but despite this variety, all the goals are united by a deftness of touch and speed of thought.

While 9 times out of 10 a player is likely to get a rollicking from his manager for “Mickey Mouse football”, the moments when it comes off are priceless.

Now, the general standard of backheeled goals is pretty darn high so selecting a top ten is inevitably going result in a few classics going unheralded. The most notable absentees are Lee Sharpe’s flick against Barcelona in 1995 and Zlatan Ibrahimovic’s finish against Italy in Euro 2004. But hopefully the final 10 will blow your socks off. Enjoy.

10. Thierry Henry (Arsenal Vs Charlton)

Standing with his back to goal and a man up his backside, Henry stabs it with the heel straight into the bottom corner. As with most of these efforts the keeper has absolutely no chance.

[youtube xKOHq4za9bM]

9. Gianfranco Zola (Chelsea vs Norwich)

One of the finest imports of continental flair, Zola showed everyone what the phrase really meant with this delightful finish at the near post. Also some classic congratulatory player bum slapping in the video too.

[youtube 1Z4DAaQe7Q4]

8. Kanu (Arsenal Vs Middlesboro)

Nwankwo Kanu has always had good feet for a big man, never better than this stunning finish against Boro. This is the most classic type of backheeled goal which in no way detracts from how difficult it is to get right.

[youtube w4Fk2v49NBg]

7. Coridon (PSG Vs Porto)

In at number 7 because it’s slightly untidy, this acrobatic effort really is perfectly executed playground stuff that shouldn’t really be attempted in the Champions League, still I’m sure he was glad he went for it.

[youtube 7heyW6vmnYI]

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Continued on Page TWO

6. Roberto Mancini (Lazio Vs Parma)

Before the Man City manager became a huge scarf he did actually play football. Here he does everything exactly right, catching the ball perfectly and sending it straight into the top corner.(Very disappointing effort from the man on the front post though).

[youtube iW5WvVcMYCY]

5. Rafael Van der Vaart (Ajax Vs Feyenoord)

This is a stunning way to react when the ball’s played in behind you, the automatic reaction to throw yourself headlong past the ball and catch it with your feet isn’t particularly logical but it sure is effective.

[youtube aKiJLvOlXpQ]

4. Daniel Sturridge (Sunderland Vs Chelsea)

This certainly didn’t seem like the easiest way to get the ball in the net but it was definitely original and has the ever enjoyable bonus of the defender ending up in the net. A fantastically deft finish.

[youtube 9kmSxRHL3EM]

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Continued on Page THREE

3. Amantino (Roma Vs Lazio)

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This video has everything, fantastic goal in the local derby, classic dance anthem soundtrack and commentators going crazy, what could be better?

[youtube shoM-n4ec5o]

2. Laurent Robert (Newcastle Vs Fulham)

It’s hard to explain what the hell Laurent Robert is doing when he attempts this as there is no way this is the easiest way to hit the ball. Nonetheless he manages to put it away in breathtaking fashion. Not one to try in the playground.

[youtube sOiubzg_2_s]

1. Matty Burrows (Glentoran Vs Portadown)

Definitely from the Mickey Mouse school of finishing Burrows seriously risked looking like a prat with this effort but it came off and 5 million views later it’s still wowing people. Entirely intentional and inch perfect, it’s your textbook backheel lob. Very special.

[youtube KzAZTdyOXcA]

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Although they are not fully introduced until next season, Uefa’s Financial Fair Play rules have already changed the financial outlook for Premier League clubs. They are no longer taking their situation for granted and are instead trying to securing their long term future at the top of the English game.

Alarmed with the massive amounts of debt carried by Europe’s leading clubs, and the fact that only 20% of them turn a profit, Uefa President, Michel Platini has introduced the FFP rules to encourage a more sustainable business model. The rules, designed to ensure clubs live within their means over a rolling three-year period, prohibit clubs sustaining losses of more than £40 million during this period.

Football has become more of a business than ever before and as a result the recession and economic downturn are really starting to have an affect with most clubs experiencing a decline in revenue with ticket and merchandise sales falling. The consequence is that these clubs are looking at new ways to keep their costs down while still maximising their revenues.

While millions more was spent during this year’s summer transfer window than in the last, it still feels like the wind is changing in Premier League with a widespread policy of buying now as an investment for the future.

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This can been seen with the fact that more money was spent on English players that ever before and a higher percentage of transfer fees went to clubs based in England with an increasingly trend to buy young English players. Manchester United’s Phil Jones, Arsenal’s Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain and Sunderland’s Connor Wickham were just some of the young English talent purchased in the summer by top clubs in the country. As they fit into the new home grown rule and also have a higher resale value in the future, these signings make perfect sense. I think we have now seen the end of big wages and relatively high fees for footballers in their late 20s and early 30s especially at the top clubs in Premier League, minus the odd exception.

Despite the £485 million lavished by Premier League clubs during this summer’s transfer window, there was still an increased financial restraint on managers with numerous clubs attempting to reduce their wage bill by clearing out surplus players on loans and free transfers in an attempt to cut their overinflated squads. Loans moves like Adebayor’s and Benayoun’s were rarely seen previously and are yet another example of club directors trying to balance the books.

Not only are clubs cutting down their wage bills but they are also signing players on reduced contracts. Mikel Arteta took a pay cut when agreeing his ‘dream move’ to Arsenal but in return he got stability with a long term contract and this sort of deal is the future of the Premier League. No longer can clubs pay ridiculous wages to average players and instead a balancing act must take place which will help stabilise the game.

Cost cutting measures have already been introduced in the Premier League and the FA are now looking at ways to bring in appropriate cost cutting measures which will introduce more prudence into the division. UEFA’s rules have changed the business of football in the Premier League and we can expect a different landscape, where clubs only spend when they earn, to emerge in the next few years.

Let me know you what think below and follow me on twitter @aidanmccartney for more thoughts about the beautiful game.

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