Archive for July, 2006
Even at Chelsea there has to be some attempt to balance the books – and it looks like the Blues are prepared to sell two players before the start of the season.
Damien Duff has been moved down the pecking order at Chelsea with all the new players and manager Jose Mourinho has said that he is prepared to let him go – citing the players lack of playing time as the main reason why he wanted to leave.
Tottenham have been touted as the club most likely to sign him, although they’ll probably have to double thier initial bid of £5m in order to capture the player.
Elsewhere the pending purchase of (C)Ashley Cole from Arsenal, and Roberto Carlos from Real Madrid mean that the incumbant left back Asier Del Horno is likely to be on his way too.
Valencia are the favoured destination at this stage – and the fee looks to be a small one of less than £5m.
July 20th, 2006
Arsenal opened the doors to their stunning new £390m Emirates Stadium for the first time on Thursday with a training session watched by 20,000 fans.
Manager Arsene Wenger oversaw the session as stars such as Emmanuel Adebayor, Alexander Hleb, Manuel Almunia and £7million signing Tomas Rosicky were put through their paces on the pristine pitch.
Wenger said: “It’s a fantastic stadium and it needs a fantastic team. We believe we have a great team here and we want to challenge for the title and the Champions League … but we also want to add one or two players.”
The state-of-the art ground will host its first match on Saturday when a crowd of 54,000 will see the Gunners take on Ajax in Dennis Bergkamp’s testimonial.
Stars such as Ian Wright, Patrick Vieira and Johan Cruyff will take to the field as Arsenal bid farewell to the legendary Dutchman.
July 20th, 2006
Gamebookers have decided to help punters celebrate the start of the new season with a Eur 20 matched stake refund bonus on the first bet of all new customers.
It works like this : You join up and bet Eur 20 on Barcelona to win against Real Madrid. Gamebookers will then refund 100% of this stake on your first bet regardless of whether you win or lose.
So you’re first bet really is RISK-FREE !!
Get along and take a look at Gamebookers – before they change their mind !!
Conditions :
The bonus will be paid back on 00:10 CET the next day, and must be wagered three time at odds of 1.60 or more before it can be withdrawn.
July 19th, 2006
OK. I’m a Gooner – so I know that I’ll be a little bit biased but today I think that I read the death knell of Uk football competitiveness.
Buried deep within the transfer rumours today was an announcement that Chelsea are about to offer an astonishing £70m in order to land AC Milan midfielder Kaka.
DiarioSport claim that Chelsea owner Roman Abramovich is determined to land the Brazilian star, and will double any Real Madrid bid to sign the mercurial South American.
That’s right £70m for ONE player?!! Simply preparing to pay double whatever Real Madrid offer?!!
In Eastern European countries we often see a single side winning 10 league titles is a row – as they are favoured by a monied ogliarchy and are on a completely different level to the rest.
It’s not good for football in any shape or form – when the balance of power is tilted so dramatically – via non football methods.
If this report is true then Chelsea are now officially in a league of one … and the Premier League is actually just 19 teams playing for second place.
The Abramovich man must be stopped by UEFA this season.
In the meantime if you want to make a cast iron 50% profit in 9 months that is surer than any financial hedge fund then nip down to your local bookie and put your house on Chelsea to win the Premier League.
Best prices :
1.50 @ SportingOdds and 1.50 @ BetFred
July 18th, 2006
A round-up of how some of the teams are wheeling and dealing in the summer transfer merry-go-round.
Manchester United
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Want to buy Fernando Torres of Athletico Madrid for £25m but it’s not going well and ManYoo will have to get closer to the £41m buy-out clause as Torres still has two years on his contract.
Want to buy Patrick Vieira from Juventus for £8m. But it very early days on this bid.
Want to Sell Ruud Van Nistelrooy to Real Madrid or Bayern Munich but are hanging on for around £15m. They’re not getting any takers at that price. RvN has 1 year left.
Chelsea
———————-
Surprisingly little – but then Chelsea have already bought Andrei Schevchenko from AC Milan, Michael Ballack from Bayern Munich and Kaloo from Feyenoord.
Could be selling Damien Duff to Tottenham for £11m
Rumoured that owner Roman Abrimovich (not coach Jose Mourinho) wants to buy Roberto Carlos from Real Madrid. IT sounds like dodgy stuff to me.
Liverpool
———————–
The Reds have already bought Craig Bellamy and a series of tabloid rumours have mention players like Juve’s David Trezuguet, Real Madrid’s Guti and Feyenoord’s Dirk Kuyt.
Perhaps the most likely buy is Sevillas Brazillian full back Daniel Alves – but Liverpool do not want to pay the £12m asking price.
Liverpool are also bound up in rasing finances for a potential 60,000 seat stadium at Stanley Park. The latest estimate is €190m and rapidly growing every month.
Arsenal
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Bought Tomas Rosicky from Borussia Dortmund for €8m before the world cup.
Released both Robert Pires and Sol Campbell, and likely to sell Ashley Cole for around £16m who thinks that he is a martyr after being fined for illegally talking to Chelsea last season.
May bid for West Brom’s Curtis Davis but he only moved to West B rom in January for £3m (from Luton) and is now being priced at £10m by over-optimistic owners.
Others
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Bolton have picked up Dietmar Harmann on a free transfer, while veteran striker Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink will be playing for Charlton Athletic this season.
Tottenham paid £11m for Dimitar Berbatov and another £8m for Didier Zakora so we’ll have to wait and see whether this was good spotting of talent or a waste of money.
July 17th, 2006
Ok – I’ve had a week to get over the World Cup final now – and I’ve just about got over the jetlag of the trip home too.
As some of you might know – I had front row seats to the World Cup Final in Berlin – as befits my status as a writer for this esteemed blog. OK – they were front row in the upper tier stand, and stuck behind one goal – but they were still front row seats.
What you may not know is that I got stuck into PaddyPowers offer of a World Cup outright bet on France at tasty odds of 12/1 and for most of the final I could see a return of €1,200 coming my way.
Of course, Materazzi, Zidane, the TV replay and a 4th official, put an end to that during extra time – and I had to watch in agony as Italy won the World Cup on penalties right in front of me.
So, after a long trip home I was amazed to find that my World Cup stake of €100 was sitting back in my PaddyPower account. Brilliant – but why?
Simply because the mad Irish bookie had been running a special promo – every punter who had an outright bet on the World Cup and who’s team eventually lost on penalties got their stake REFUNDED !!
According to the PaddyPower website that offer has cost them to the tune of €1.2 million – that’s a sizable refund … so it’s the least I can do to offer the man a bit of publicity and say “fair play” to him.
And that is why PaddyPower is one of our top 10 recommended bookies. Does your bookie stack up ?
July 16th, 2006
Newcastle were forced to settle for a 1-1 draw with Norwegian side Lillestrom in the first leg of their Intertoto Cup third round meeting at St James’ Park.
The Magpies looked sluggish early on and slipped behind on 21 minutes, but Albert Luque came to their rescue to level the scores with a fine goal on 50 minutes. Newcastle carried the greater threat in the second period, with Emre and Luque going close, but they failed to find the winner.
A first half penalty from Chris Sorensen handed Danish side Odense a 1-0 win over Scottish side Hibernian.
Spanish side Villarreal‘s European aspirations suffered a jolt as they were beaten 2-1 at home by NK Maribor. The Slovenian side were not overawed by making the trip to El Madrigal and took the lead through Milan Rakic.
It got worse for Villarreal shortly before the hour as Josica was given his marching orders. They did, though, haul themselves level 18 minutes from time through Diego Forlan, but Dragan Jelic popped to hand Maribor a famous win and first leg advantage with a goal three minutes from time.
A second half goal from Mickael Blomberg handed Kalmar a 1-0 win over Dutch outfit Twente who finished the game with ten men following the dismissal of Ramon Zomer.
Auxerre look set to progress after a 4-1 win over Farul Constanta. Lionel Mathis set the ball rolling with the opener on eight minutes and the lead was doubled shortly after by Luigi Pieroni. Mihai Gurita gave the visitors hope when reducing the arrears, but second half goals from Thomas Kahenberg and Alain Traore put Auxerre firmly in the driving seat.
Marseille‘s passage to the next round looks far less secure, as they were held to a 0-0 draw by Ukrainian outfit Dnipro.
Grasshoppers recovered from conceding an early goal to Gent to run out 2-1 winners. Michal Zewlakow gave Gent a third-minute lead, but Sreto Ristic and Vero Salatic netted in the second half to hand the Swiss side an advantage.
Lars Schlichting and Levan Kebadze scored second half goals as Ethnikos Achnas claimed a 2-0 win at Maccabi Petah Tikva, while Ried ran out 3-1 winners over Tiraspol and the game between Larisa & Kayserispor ended goalless.
July 15th, 2006
Top UK bookmaker SportingOdds are giving every new betting customer the chance to win a Ferrari for one weekend.
To be entered into their prize draw all you have to do is open an account at SportingOdds and stake £10 minimum.
Plus for every bet that you place after your first qualifying bet an additional entry will be added into the prize draw.
The winners of the Ferrari for a weekend will be announced on:
Monday 17th July
Monday 24th July
Monday 31st July
And there will be runners-up prizes of crates of Budweiser beer, and free bets rangind from £10, £25 and £100.
Check out the deatails at SportingOdds now.
July 15th, 2006
The battle to sign Ruud van Nistelrooy is on after Sir Alex Ferguson confirmed at least three top clubs are interested in signing the want-away Manchester United striker.
RvN has informed the Red Devils he wants to leave, a move that was widely anticipated following the 30-year-old Dutch strikers major fall-out with Ferguson at the end of last season.
Even though the Dutchman finished last term as third choice frontman behind Louis Saha and Wayne Rooney, and also ended the World Cup on the bench after falling out of favour with Dutch coach Marco van Basten, Van Nistelrooy remains in demand.
With Real Madrid, Bayern Munich and at least one other club signalling their desire to land the striker, United are confident they can raise at least £15million on his sale.
Where do you think he will end up?
July 15th, 2006
NZ Knights v Newcastle – Take Newcastle @ 2.10
OK – it’s a little obscure – and you might have to look hard to find a bookie that is covering this competition – but there appears to be a bit of early value in one of the four games on offer.
The Australian A-League will start it’s second season – and Last season it was very noticable that 7 of the 8 teams were very even … the odd team out being the New Zealand outfit who ran up a woeful 1-3-17 record to finish dead last.
In the off-season things have got worse for the NZ Knights who have lost their coach, and three of their top players (who have hopped across the Tasman Sea to join other Australian clubs).
Last season Newcastle won all three head-to-head clashes by scorelines of 4-0, 4-2, and 3-0 and I’ve seen nothing in the pre-season buildup to suggest any other result.
In the build up to this game the NZ knights coach Paul Nevin has been quoted as saying that the pre-season cup was just that, pre-season preparation for the real deal set to get underway on August 27th …and a number of the younger players given their chance to impress.
That all sounds like another Knights side that will be out of their depth to me.
Take :
Newcastle Jets @ 2.10 at CenterBet for medium stakes.
July 14th, 2006
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