What on earth is going on with football at the moment? It's been remiss of me not to comment on Craig Murray's blog being taken down. He made comments about Alisher Usmanov, which resulted in the Russian billionaire steel magnate's lawyers writing to Craig's hosts, who immediately took down the blog. Even more remarkably in many ways, other blogs have been collaterally affected including Tim Ireland, who is back in action now though.
The situation has been brought about by Usmanov's desire to takeover Arsenal. This has been resisted by the board at the club, principally on governance reasons. The state of play across London with Chelsea turning into the southern division of Hearts has given them strength in that conviction. Arsene Wenger addressed this when he spoke of English football "losing its soul" last week with all these big money takeovers.
Despite talking about morals, he focussed on the impact of money rather than some of the more troubling aspects of the oligarchs we've seen lately. Indeed, Wenger's own close friend David Dein is heading up the operation to bring Usmanov to the helm at the club. Chelsea supporters have for years taken a nonchalant stance as to where their sugar daddy got his billions from.
Then we come to John Reid becoming the chairman at Celtic. Continued...
Here is the latest on Craig Murray's website - just hours before it was due to go back on line with a new web host, it was subjected to a hacker's attack, who knew what they were about -
http://www.chris-floyd.com/Articles/Articles/Back_From_the_Hack%2C_and_Once_More_Into_the_Breach/>Back From the Hack, and Once More Into the Breach
by Chris Floyd
Empire Burlesque:
High Crimes and Low Comedy in the Bush Imperium blog
02 Oct 2007
all the best!
ps
A brilliant result tonight for the Gers!
Posted by: joe90 | 02 October 2007 at 10:08 PM
Tonight,
the Celts (Chairman and War Criminal John Reid) are to play Slimy Berlusconni's AC Milan.
The match is to be broadcast live in the UK by Rupert Murdoch's media organisation - and both team strips will be sporting adverisements, and who knows, we might even be subjected to those flashy electronic advertising hoardings!
Can football get any more corrupted than this?
The great Jock Stein refused even to put numbers on the Celtic shirt, under a UEFA directive, placing them on the shorts instead. To look at the Celtic shirt these days, it has just been defiled and vandalised - it's a sacrilige!
It's pub owners I feel sorry for. Murdoch and the other private broadcasters charge them a fortune for football coverage - if pubs don't show the football games then they get no customers in that night!
ps
do not adjust your browser, Usmanov does actually looks like this -
http://msnsport.skysports.com/story/0,19528,12040_2775350,00.html>Usmanov wants no hostility
Come back Robert Maxwell - compared to this lot, you were just an amateur!
pps
BBC Radio Scotland football commentators at the weekend, referred to a quote saying that Celtic was now in a "safe pair of fists" under the new chairmanship of War Criminal Reid!
These BBC and journalist types cannot stop themselves from glorifiying western violence and aggression.
Posted by: joe90 | 03 October 2007 at 04:05 PM