Uilleam

If there is one guy who knows a donkey when he sees it........

I've just been looking at Oddschecker, which gives us : Kevin Muscat - a best priced 2/1 (Billy Hills, and Bet UK), lengthening to 3/1 (Sky Bet), and several others at 5/2 and 11/4 Frank Lampard - best at 2/1 with BetVictor and Pari Match) lengthening to 4s (Bet 365), with the rest at 4/1 (one) and 11/4 Pascal Jansen - several price him at 2/1 (SkyBet, Paddy P, Betfair, Betfred); worst price is 4s (Joe Coral, ladbrokes) McInnes - best price 7/1 (Ladbrokes, Joe Coral, SkyBet) and lengthening to 10s (eg Bet365, Paddy P) These prices could move considerably, of course, if a couple of chunky bets were made, by a high roller (say @compo) https://www.oddschecker.com/football/football-specials/rangers/next-permanent-manager?offer_position=2&bk=OC&customer=internal

"It all started with a photograph of the private parts of a former player." Hardly Odysseus and Nausicaa, but when you call yourselves Ajax..... How Ajax went from Champions League overachievers to chaos Dutch club won neutrals’ hearts with 2019 European run but a series of events has led to poor results and fan rage boiling over Bart Vlietstra Wed 27 Sep 2023 08.00 BST https://www.theguardian.com/football/2023/sep/27/how-ajax-went-from-champions-league-overachievers-to-chaos It all started with a photograph of the private parts of a former player. No, this is not a piece about dressing-room “humour”. This is the story of the demise of Ajax, who in 2019 were seconds from the Champions League final and now sit 14th in the Eredivisie after the game at home against Feyenoord on Sunday was abandoned amid crowd trouble with the team 3-0 down. The goal scored by Tottenham’s Lucas Moura in the last minute of injury time on 8 May 2019 shattered Ajax’s Champions League final dream then but there could be no doubting the Dutch club had overachieved. For a team from a league snubbed by oil sheikhs and big investors, and where TV money is a relative pittance, it was still a memorable evening and an unforgettable season. Ajax were referred to as the Champions League winners in people’s hearts. First Erik ten Hag’s squad had survived three qualifying rounds, then resisted Bayern Munich twice in spectacular fashion in the group phase, thrashed Real Madrid 4-1 at the Bernabéu and beaten Juventus in Turin. This was achieved via amazing combination football and the superb technical skills of the budding talents Frenkie de Jong, Matthijs de Ligt, Hakim Ziyech and Donny van de Beek, while Dusan Tadic and Daley Blind were experiencing their second youth. The ideal blend had been achieved under the football director, Marc Overmars, and although the end against Spurs was bitter and brutal, people in the Netherlands were convinced it marked the start of a new era. Then came the day when Overmars – the former Ajax, Arsenal and Barcelona player – took down his pants in a toilet in an Ajax building, took a photo with his phone and sent it to a female Ajax employee. As if that wasn’t bad enough, it transpired it was not the only time Overmars had approached female colleagues in an inappropriate manner, and it led to his departure on 6 February 2022. His conduct had been the best-kept secret at Ajax, where everything normally leaks out, which perhaps says something about the masculine inner world of the Netherlands’ largest club and the blinkers they had on. Ajax thought they had become the Bayern Munich of the Netherlands, untouchable by the rest. In May 2022 they finished top for a fourth consecutive season. They had responded to the crushing Moura goal by producing more great Champions League nights against Valencia, Chelsea, Borussia Dortmund and Sporting. Their traditional rivals PSV and especially Feyenoord appeared to be years behind. But Ajax missed the transfer acumen of Overmars, who not only discovered gems in Europe but had built an impressive network in South and Central America. Antony, Lisandro Martínez, Edson Álvarez, Ziyech, Mohammed Kudus and Kasper Dolberg were eventually sold for huge sums, as were the homegrown talents De Jong, De Ligt, Van de Beek and Sergiño Dest. Overmars had been installed at Ajax in 2012 after a reshape of the club initiated by Johan Cruyff. For the first five years Overmars had to work closely with other former players such as Dennis Bergkamp and Wim Jonk and was prevented by the board from giving players a salary of more than €1m a year. At the end of 2017 he took control of Ajax alongside Edwin van der Sar when Bergkamp was sacked together with the coach Marcel Keizer. One of his best moves was to appoint Ten Hag, the coach he had previously hired at Go Ahead Eagles. Overmars broke open the salary ceiling to bring Tadic and Blind back to the Netherlands from the Premier League, and with that the re-emergence of Ajax as a big name in Europe started. Then came the scandal of the inappropriate behaviour. Ten Hag still guided Ajax to their 36th national title but he left in the summer of 2022 for Manchester United. Ajax replaced Overmars with a few inexperienced employees and asked Van der Sar, the general director, to help out with transfer decisions. The club sold players that summer for about €200m and spent about €100m, both records, but a disastrous season followed. It featured a record 6-1 defeat in the Champions League by Napoli, the dismissal of the coach Alfred Schreuder and a third-place finish under the inexperienced interim coach John Heitinga, which meant no Champions League this season. Van der Sar retired in the summer, saying he was worn out. He had appointed a new football director, Sven Mislintat, formerly of Stuttgart, Dortmund and Arsenal, who was instructed to sell heavily (€150m) and reduce the salary structure. Without Champions League income, Ajax had to make cuts for the first time in years. Mislintat succeeded, but the criticism was he acted largely alone. He signed 12 fairly unknown talents, some of whom had never played at the highest level. He relieved Heitinga, who was popular with the fans, of his position and appointed Maurice Steijn, who was inexperienced at the top, and asked for a few months of patience. But in Amsterdam they do not do patience. Ajax have made their worst start to a season since 1964 and to add to the sense of trouble it turned out that Misintlat had brought in a player, Borna Sosa, who was represented by the German agency AKA Global, which allegedly has a stake in the data company Matchmetrics in which Mislintat owns shares. The club has launched an investigation into the transfer. Ajax said Mislintat had declared his interest in Matchmetrics when appointed but that they had not known about AKA Global’s alleged holding in the company at the time of the transfer. Mislintat, the club said, had said “he will offer his full cooperation and share all relevant documents” with the inquiry. Everything culminated last Sunday in the match against Feyenoord, the arch-rivals who had been looked down upon with malicious pleasure in Amsterdam for years but who had overtaken Ajax by a massive margin last season, nationally and in Europe. Feyenoord took a 3-0 lead. Ajax fans from the F-side ultras shouted for the board and Mislintat to go and twice threw fireworks on to the field, forcing the game to be halted. There were riots afterwards around the stadium, with hooligans forcing their way into the main entrance and confronting the police and mobile units in a manner not seen in Amsterdam for a long time. That evening, Mislintat was fired. On Wednesday the club that would never allow itself to be overtaken by a Dutch rival must try to overcome a 3-0 deficit against the champions Feyenoord in 35 minutes in an empty stadium. The future? Some fanatical fans are hoping that Overmars, who is now very successful at the Belgian double winners Antwerp, will return. Many others think that is a bridge too far. The club is hopelessly divided, which can almost entirely be traced to that moment Overmars dropped his pants and took out his phone.

I thought that tat -and track suits- were the domain of Mr Bisgrove

How spoiled we were when Steven Thompson led the line.

I'm sorry to say it, but Dessers makes Sebo seem like Harry Kane.

An emergency board meeting, directly after Kirk, today, surely?

Best use the wife's motor, then

Thought you were driving him....

With Barcelona now under investigation for bribing referees, I wonder if worrying about getting his collar felt is distracting his attention. (As well it might.)

Guardiola lost midweek, and lost today: with Barcelona now under investigation for bribing referees, I wonder if worrying about getting his collar felt is distracting his attention. (As well it might.)

Hey, @Rousseau Can we have another poll: Were you genuinely surprised at today's result? Yes No

It seems that -the essential- 3 points here will require a minor miracle, and miracles as someone pointed out (Hume, I think - David, not Basil), tend to occur in far away places, a long time ago.

It's a bit much asking grown men to play in wee boys' pyjamas.

Sunnyside up, I presume.....

None of them are on the square.

Ovine Attracted Persons, surely, or OAPs for short? Oh......wait.....

Yes, but which one has a "pyoor speshull relationship" with the Catalan pranksters?

"Barcelona are facing a trial on bribery charges connected to payments to a referees’ chief..." ALEX CAPARROS/GETTY IMAGES More than a Club, indeed. What then, shall we call them? Fraudsters? Swindlers? Cheats? Or is there a Spanish word? A Catalan word? But -oh dear!- what about Josep Guardiola's "legacy"? Of course, his current club, Abu Dhabi Town, faces c115 accusations of financial impropriety. Oh dear! What about his "legacy" there? It's a sorry, sorry day when Football cannot gloss over some trivial financial legerdemain. I hope the trial is in Madrid. Barcelona accused of paying €7.3m in bribes to referees’ chief Martyn Ziegler, Chief Sports Reporter Thursday September 28 2023, 9.30pm, The Times Barcelona say they made the payments to Dasnil to advise them on refereeing matters https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/barcelona-accused-of-paying-7-3m-in-bribes-to-referees-chief-tkrsjwzlc Barcelona are facing a trial on bribery charges connected to payments to a referees’ chief that could lead to a ban for the Catalan club. The prosecuting magistrate Joaquín Aguirre on Thursday launched proceedings against Barcelona and officials, saying the club’s payments amounted to “systematic corruption”. A guilty verdict would lead to Barcelona being banned from European football as well as facing domestic sanctions and comes at a time when the club are in the grip of a financial crisis. Spain’s football refereeing headquarters was also raided by police as part of the investigation into payments allegedly made by the club to a firm owned by José María Enríquez Negreira, a former top official with the CTA, Spain’s referees’ committee. The referees’ headquarters was raided by police as part of the investigation JAVIER SORIANO/GETTY IMAGES Prosecutors suspect that between 2001 and 2018, Barcelona paid millions of euros to Negreira’s company, Dasnil 95, to secure favourable refereeing decisions from corrupt officials. While the club admit making payments to Dasnil, they said the firm was paid to advise them on refereeing matters. The club deny all wrongdoing. Aguirre said he would investigate the club and several of their former directors for bribery. He added in a written decision that the fact that Barcelona paid “one of the CTA’s three vice-presidents through intermediary companies” is not in dispute. The payments, which lasted about 18 years, grew steadily “from an initial €70,000 a year to €700,000” and stopped when Negreira left his position in 2018, he wrote. “It stands to reason that the payments by FC Barcelona satisfied the club’s interests given their duration and annual increase,” Aguirre said. “The payments resulted in refereeing decisions sought by FC Barcelona in such a way that must have involved unfair treatment of other teams and consequently systemic corruption across Spanish refereeing as a whole.” Asked about the latest developments in the case, Barcelona coach Xavi said he “never” had the impression that the club received any preferential treatment. “I never had the sensation that the referees favoured us, ever,” he told reporters at a press conference a day before Barcelona’s game with Sevilla. Prosecutors in March opened a corruption investigation over the affair, naming Barcelona and four others: Negreira, his son Javier Enriquez, and two of Barcelona’s former presidents, Josep Maria Bartomeu and Sandro Rosell. They allege Barcelona paid more than €7.3 million to Negreira, who was a vice-president at the CTA between 1994 and 2018. The payments stopped when Negreira left the CTA after a reshuffle at the Spanish football federation (RFEF). When the money stopped, Negreira sent a letter to Bartomeu, Barcelona’s president at the time, threatening to reveal information that would “seriously harm the club” if it didn’t pay up. It was clear from the letter that Negreira “was aware that there had been illegal acts that favoured FC Barcelona that were quite serious”, Aguirre said. Simplemente hace trampa Només trampa

The same time as you.

Castore, eh? "Aston Villa’s women’s team ‘dreading’ having to wear sweaty kit.... they’re really conscious about how they’re going to look in this wet, clingy kit — for obvious reasons.” You may well laugh, but the gals make a couple of points. Aston Villa’s women’s team ‘dreading’ having to wear sweaty kit Manufacturer will try to adapt design after complaints from men’s and women’s sides that shirts do not wick sweat properly Charlotte Duncker Molly Hudson Wednesday September 27 2023, 3.00pm, The Times https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/aston-villas-womens-team-dreading-having-to-wear-sweaty-kit-6zhx7df0t Castore, Aston Villa’s shirt manufacturer, is working to adapt the club’s kit after complaints from both the men’s and women’s teams that the shirts are retaining too much sweat. Players have said that the design of the shirts is inadequate, claiming they got wet with sweat too quickly and felt heavy and uncomfortable to wear as a result. They say that Villa’s home shirts — the traditional claret and blue — are worse than the away strips. It is understood that Castore is aware of the club’s complaints and is working with them to try to find a solution. However, it is not anticipated that there will be a quick fix to the issue, as a redesign will be required, rather than simply ordering a fresh batch of shirts. Castore has been approached for comment. Villa start their Women’s Super League campaign against Manchester United on Sunday and, with some members of the team having concerns about the kit, there had been hopes that the issue could be resolved before the opening game. “This is going to be a big problem,” Jacqui Oatley, the football commentator and broadcaster, told BBC Newsbeat. “They’ve got four TV games coming up. Normally they’d absolutely relish those games and look forward to them. But they’re actually dreading it because they’re really conscious about how they’re going to look in this wet, clingy kit — for obvious reasons.” Carla Ward’s side played five pre-season friendly matches, which is when the issue arose. The team wore their training kit instead for a game against Villarreal, but it is understood that was down to betting regulations in Spain — Villa’s front-of shirt-sponsor, BK8, is an online betting site. Before next season there will be more changes to the Villa kit, with the club confirming that they are looking to redesign their crest for the second season in a row. The club underwent a consultation process last season to design the crest which adorns this season’s kit and training wear. However, they have now admitted that the new crest has not “had the impact which had been hoped when it was introduced”. Villa said they would canvas the opinion of fans before selecting a new-look crest for the club’s 150th anniversary next year.

Wear and tear on an old Lanarkshire road

Did I not like that?!?!

HELP PLEASE!! I left two tickets for tonight on the passenger seat of my car and some scumbag broke the window and left me another two. (Ah'll get mah bunnet and shawl.)