OFFICIAL BOLLOX ROUND UP
Today’s top story concerns our Bosnian hitman Edin Dzeko, who is reportedly being sought out by Inter as long-term successor to Diego Milito.
The DSSC reckons that the 26-year old is on a three-man shortlist which also includes Marseille striker Loic Remy and Internacional’s Leandro Damiao.
“Both are wanted in England with Newcastle maintaining interest in Remy and Tottenham hopeful of signing Brazil international Damiao at the third attempt for around £15million,” writes Jones.
“City are reluctant to sell Dzeko without finding a replacement first.
“Edinson Cavani at Napoli is one target but the Italians' excessive valuation of £50million is proving prohibitive.”
That isn’t the only publication forecasting a move for the Uruguayan striker, as alleged quotes from City coach Angelo Gregucci, as reported on ESPN.co.uk, give the rumour another layer of credos.
"I don't know if the club will lay siege to Napoli for Cavani, but every club with a player of the highest level will know they'll be courted by bigger clubs," Gregucci told Radio CRC. "Mancini decides the transfer targets along with the new directors.
"If you ask the clubs who can afford Cavani, for example Real Madrid, Bayern Munich and Manchester United, then I think they'd want Cavani just as Manchester City want him.
“However, what the player wants is the predominant factor in negotiations and it seems to me that Cavani is happy at Napoli."
Inter Milan line up £25m swoop for City's Bosnian striker Dzeko
Inter Milan are weighing up a £25million move for Manchester City striker Edin Dzeko.
The Italians have drawn up a shortlist which includes Marseille striker Loic Remy and Internacional's Leandro Damiao.
Both are wanted in England with Newcastle maintaining interest in Remy and Tottenham hopeful of signing Brazil international Damiao at the third attempt for around £15million.
City are reluctant to sell Dzeko without finding a replacement first.
Edinson Cavani at Napoli is one target but the Italians' excessive valuation of £50million is proving prohibitive.
City assistant coach Angelo Gregucci has confirmed admiration for Cavani adding: 'I don’t know if the club will lay siege to Napoli for Cavani, but every club with a player of the highest level will know they’ll be courted by bigger clubs.
'Mancini decides the transfer targets along with the new directors. If you ask the clubs who can afford Cavani, for example Real Madrid, Bayern Munich and Manchester United, then I think they’d want Cavani just as Manchester City want him. If he should want to undertake a new adventure, then he will tell the club and I expect they’d let him go.'
He added: 'Cavani is among the world’s top five strikers and is doing great things. Napoli invested heavily in him, but the player's intentions are decisive.'
City forward Luca Scapuzzi has joined Serie B side AS Varese on loan until the end of the season. The 21-year-old has featured regularly for City's Elite Development Squad this term, scoring three goals in nine U21 appearances.DSSC
Manchester City striker Mario Balotelli will not be drawn into war of words with Silvio Berlusconi
Manchester City striker Mario Balotelli is prepared to shrug off comments aimed at him by AC Milan president Silvio Berlusconi.
Balotelli has been strongly linked with a move to Milan for some time, with speculation resurfacing during the current transfer window.
There would, however, appear to be little chance of the Italy international completing such a switch any time soon, with Berlusconi having openly criticised the fiery frontman.
When pressed on transfer rumours last week, Berlusconi said he was not convinced by Balotelli 'as a man' and has followed that up by branding the 22-year-old 'a rotten apple'.
Balotelli could have been forgiven for biting back at the Rossoneri supremo, given that he has only had positive things to say about Milan in the past, but his representative claims his focus is locked on returning to form and repaying City's faith in his ability.
Mino Raiola told Mediaset: "I talked with Mario and he was sorry to hear the words of Berlusconi. But Balotelli has asked me to be quiet because he appreciates that he is loved by the president at City.
"I know him well and he has a big heart. Berlusconi is free to have any opinion he wants, but it seems strange that he wishes to pass judgement on a person he doesn't know anything about."
MANCHESTER TITLE RACE
PTS +7 GD +4
GOLDEN BOLLOX 9-1-2010
Adebayor still in shock
Emmanuel Adebayor admits Togo could very well pull out of the African Cup of Nations after their team bus was machine gunned.
The Manchester City star and his team-mates had to duck for cover as their team bus was peppered with gun fire as they travelled to their training camp in Angola.
Two players were injured by bullets, a number of the management were also hurt and the driver was killed.
With many players in shock Adebayor admits they are considering pulling out.
"I think a lot of players want to leave, I don't think they want to be at this tournament any more because they have seen their death already," said Adebayor.
"Most of the players want to go back to their family. No-one can sleep after what they have seen today. They have seen one of their team-mates have a bullet in his body, who is crying, who is losing consciousness and everything.
"We are still in shock. If the security is not sure then we will be leaving. I don't think they will be ready to give their life."
Adebayor recounted what happened when the team bus reached the border between DR Congo and Angola. "We saw military people dressed like they were going to war and it was a little bit of a shock at the beginning but I thought, 'okay, it's for security, which is normal, because we are players here for a big tournament and we are like ambassadors for Africans, so it's normal that security is big'," he continued. "We went through the border and got into Angola and, I don't know, 5km away from the border we started hearing shooting on the bus, for no reason. At the end of the day, we got a lot of (people) injured. "One of our (reserve) goalkeepers got a bullet in his body. Our press and communications guy has got injured; he's not even conscious now, we don't know if he's going to survive or not. "These are the things we keep saying, keep repeating - in Africa, we have to change our image if we want to be respected but unfortunately that's not happening. "We have a chance with one of the biggest tournaments in the world, the World Cup. Can you imagine what's happening now? I'm disgraced and, I don't know, it's unfair." "The thing we don't understand is why they shot on our bus, that's the question now. There's no-one who has got a reason for that. It's not only one guy, or two guys shooting one time or two times on our bus. "Can you imagine, we have been in the middle of that for 30 minutes, even a little bit more. Our bus had been stopped and people had been shooting on our bus for 30 minutes. "If you can imagine, the silence on the bus was unbelievable." Serge Akakpo and Kodjovi Obilale were confirmed by their clubs as the players injured in the attack.
Napoli striker Edinson Cavani would be of interest to Manchester City
Manchester City assistant coach Angelo Gregucci admits the club would be interested in Napoli striker Edinson Cavani.
They are not the only ones, with the Uruguay international among the most sought-after talents in European football.
City are, however, one of the few clubs who could afford to put a transfer package in place which may tempt Napoli.
They have stubbornly refused to contemplate selling up until this point, but may be forced to reconsider that stance if big money is offered or the player expresses a desire to move on.
Should such an event occur, City can be expected to be among those leading the hunt for Cavani's signature.
"I don't know if the club will lay siege to Napoli for Cavani, but every club with a player of the highest level will be courted by bigger clubs," said Gregucci.
"(Roberto) Mancini decides the transfer targets with the new directors.
"If Cavani should want a new adventure, I expect they'd let him go."
City fail to sell a third of tickets for Arsenal trip
Manchester City have returned approximately 900 tickets for their game at Arsenal on Sunday.
City's allocation of roughly 3,000 tickets, which cost £62 for adults, did not sell out. As a result, the club have returned enough for Arsenal to put a whole block in the Clock End of Emirates Stadium back on sale to their own supporters.
As City is a Category A game the tickets were highly priced at £62 for adults, £23.50 for under-16s, and £26.50 for over-65s. City, unusually, have been unable to sell nearly one third of them.
Of the other Category A clubs, Tottenham Hotspur and Chelsea both sold out their 3,000 allocations this season at the same prices.
Last season, City sold out an extended allocation of 5,200 tickets priced at £20 and £10 for a Carling Cup quarter-final at the Emirates.
City may point to the price as well as the scheduling of the Premier League match, on a Sunday afternoon so soon after Christmas, to explain the low uptake
GOLDEN BOLLOX 9-1-2011
JOE HART would like to get those huge goalkeeping hands of his around the necks of the growing band of baiters hating Manchester City.
He’s rarely at a loss these days after an incredible three years which have seen him go from virtual obscurity to stardom as England’s No.1 choice between the posts.
But why so many people are attacking the club he loves is beyond him.
Hart, 23, says the popular portrayal of his team-mates a a gang of money-mad mercenaries is way wide of the mark.
He said: “I don’t understand why there is resentment.
“We have come in with a lot of money but I don’t remember reading in the rule book at the start of the season that you are not allowed to have money.
“I don’t understand what we are doing wrong. We’re not unsettling any other clubs. We’re minding our own business.
“I don’t think it’s got anything to do with our success because we haven’t been successful yet.
“Everyone has always got to see someone as the villain and I suppose we are at the moment.”
Hart is also happy to put the record straight after photographers caught Kolo Toure and Emmanuel Adebayor slugging it out in training.
He said: “It happens at every club. That’s football. We’re laughing and joking about it. We’re giving Kolo the Rocky shout and Adebayor the same.
“We’re grown men. We want to win. It’s a contact sport.
“Yes, we have a rumble but you can’t fight on the pitch in front of 60,000 so every now and again you need to have a little scrap in training.
“People have fights in work. If you went down the road to United’s training ground there’s probably the odd scrap. Go anywhere. That’s just the nature of the beast. If we all accept things we wouldn’t be where we are.
“It’s embarrassing, all this fighting talk, because it just shows we’re winners. We have got people in the trees trying to take pictures.
“I’m watching training and thinking they don’t want to watch someone score a goal. That’s not what they’re interested in. But as soon as the ball is in between two players you hear the camera shutters clicking.
“They’re just trying to make out it happens. It’s embarrassing.
“I’m embarrassed for what’s going on. The way people are targeting City.”
Hart will meet up again today with Leicester boss Sven Goran Eriksson and will thank him for giving him his big break at City.
Eriksson said back in 2007 that Hart would be England’s No.1. Even after fulfilling that prediction, the City keeper is taking nothing for granted.
He said: “It’s mad how it’s all worked out. But as high as you can fly, you can drop like a stone as well. That doesn’t scare me but I’m very aware of it.”
Bacary Sagna admits 'hatred' towards Pablo Zabaleta - but insists he's no gangster
Bacary Sagna ‘felt hatred’ for Pablo Zabaleta after the altercation that led to the two players being sent off during Wednesday’s goalless draw between Arsenal and Manchester City.
The Gunners defender twice pushed his head into the face of his Argentine opponent after an insult Sagna claims ‘pushed him to limit’.
Both players were sent off for the incident but Zabaleta yesterday had his red card rescinded. Sagna however, will have to serve a three-match ban, and claimed that the City defender’s constant jibes made him lash out.
Burst blood vessels: The fiery Frenchman and the angry Argentine exchange pleasantries
‘I have been having to take kicks from opponents for a good many weeks without referees cracking down on them,’ the 27-year-old said, who last weekend was the victim of a crude stamp by Birmingham City’s Lee Bowyer.
‘When Zabaleta swore at me I just blew a fuse. I can speak Spanish, and I understood the insults he aimed at me. I did not want to take them lying down - he pushed me to the limit.
‘I regret my actions, and I am the first to say that these types of gestures should be banned from the field of play. But I cracked up on Wednesday. I felt hatred for him.
‘But I am not a gangster. The sending-off will serve as a lesson to me for the future, and I won’t make the same mistake again.’
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TWEET OF THE DAY
Liverpool are close to finalising a £6m deal for Blackpool forward Tom Ince, 20, after a breakthrough in negotiations.DSSC
Former England captain David 'Divy Spice' Beckham has been offered a two-year deal to join the Qatar Stars League. The Sun
Swansea boss Michael Laudrup wants Stoke striker Kenwyne Jones, 28, to replace Danny Graham, who is being chased by Reading and Sunderland. Daily Mirror
Laudrup is also lining up another cut-price deal from Spain with a £750,000 move for Real Betis midfielder Jose Canas. Daily Telegraph
Arsenal will this week make an improved five-year offer of £25m to Theo Walcott in a bid to resolve the 23-year-old forward's contract saga. DSSC
Manchester United's path to signing Crystal Palace winger Wilfried Zaha, 20, looks to be clear after Tottenham insisted they would not pursue the youngster. Daily Telegraph
Rafael Benitez has warned Chelsea's senior players that they must face up to the prospect of their inevitable departures from Stamford Bridge. Times
Manchester United striker Davide Petrucci, 21, and defender Scott Wootton, 21, are expected to move on loan to Championship side Peterborough United - managed by Sir Alex Ferguson's son, Darren - this week. Peterborough Telegraph
Reading have made an approach to sign Manchester United's 22-year-old England forward Danny Welbeck. Times
Manchester United's 34-year-old defender Rio Ferdinand is ready to snub deals from the Middle East, MLS and China and instead pledge his future to the Old Trafford club. Daily Star
Shakhtar Donetsk have offered Toulouse £12m for 22-year-old French striker Wissam Ben Yedder. Sport 24
Former Brazil international Rivaldo, 40, looks set to join the 15th club of his professional career after reaching a deal with Brazilian club Sao Caetano. The 1999 Ballon D'Or winner left Angolan club Kabuscorp last November. La Gazzetta Dello Sport
France forward Loic Remy, 26, currently at Marseille, would prefer a move to Newcastle over his other Premier League suitors QPR. L'Equipe
Blackburn Rovers have identified Gus Poyet as the man to replace Henning Berg as the club's new manager but have been priced out of a move due to the amount of compensation sought by his current club Brighton & Hove Albion. The Independent
Major League Soccer side Toronto FC unveiled new head coach Ryan Nelsen on Tuesday, only to acknowledge they are not sure when the veteran New Zealand defender will be free to lead the club. Vancouver Sun
Tottenham manager Andre Villas-Boas is still unhappy over his departure from Chelsea, blaming owner Roman Abramovich for not committing to the objectives. The Sun
A furious north east car cleaner has taken to Twitter to urge Demba Ba to pay his £40 bill - after the striker apparently ducked out when he moved to Chelsea. Metro
GOLDEN BOLLOX 9-1-2012
Inter Milan approach Man City for Kolarov
Manchester City fullback Aleksander Kolarov is resisting interest from Inter Milan.
Serb sources say Inter have approached City about Kolarov's situation and been given encouragement.
However, the player wants to stay with City until the end of the season before assessing his options.
A former Lazio fullback, Kolarov has always been regarded highly at Inter.
Four things The Daily Mail learned from FA Cup third round
Manchester City and Manchester United served up an FA Cup classic on Sunday as the Reds held on to beat the Blues and reach the fourth round. Here Ian Ladyman looks at four things he thinks he learned from the thrilling third round clash.
THE FA CUP IS NOT DEAD YET
Five goals, a controversial sending-off, a late surge and a comeback from a United great. Anyone who thinks this competition doesn’t matter should have been here.
CLASS REALLY IS PERMANENT
Paul Scholes’ return began with a poor piece of control that led to City’s second goal. But soon after that he was passing the ball in the same metronomic way he always did. Scholes made 71 passes in his 30-minute cameo, more than any City player and all but two team-mates (Ryan Giggs and Michael Carrick).
UNITED STILL HAVE A PROBLEM IN GOAL
During his time as David de Gea’s understudy, Anders Lindegaard looked as though he had the confidence and the ability to step up. On Sunday, Lindegaard looked as nervous and unsure as his club-mate, spilling Sergio Aguero’s shot in the build-up to the second goal and fumbling a late free-kick.
MANCINI KNOWS HIS OWN MIND
City’s Italian manager still makes some peculiar decisions. Yesterday he chose Aleksandar Kolarov ahead of Gael Clichy and rested England goalkeeper Joe Hart, who was not injured.
Have we learnt anything from Gazza, Collymore and tragic Enke? Maybe all Balotelli really needs is help
By Martin Samuel of the DSSC
Mario Balotelli: have you ever considered he might need help? Not arm round the shoulder, hand round the throat, father figure, mentor-type help from Roberto Mancini. Not a cosy chat with the club chaplain, another media shellacking or a sports psychologist showing him how to visualise success and channel his negative energy into a positive outcome, either.
Professional help, by a qualified member of the clinical psychiatric profession, who might view Balotelli’s most extreme behaviour not just as another show of petulance or self-indulgence but, possibly, as an illness requiring assessment and treatment, with a basis in evidence and scientific analysis.
Only a thought. We do seem to have been here before, professional footballers dismissed as daft or dopey or maverick, before turning out to have rather deeper issues that the sport failed to address, either through ignorance or the need to protect a substantial investment that would be harmed by a negative diagnosis. Football’s attitudes to homosexuality are very much in the news and we have seen the figures concerning the number of players who, if national statistics are maintained, are secretly gay.
Give me a hand: Mario Balotelli before Manchester City's FA Cup clash with Watford
Yet according to the Mental Health Foundation, one in four people experience some form of mental health problem each year. This could range from minor depression or anxiety to more serious conditions and half of those suffering respond to treatment within 18 months but, even so, the chances of football being exhaustively full of shiny, happy people seems remote, even if the MHF overestimated.
Say the figure was one in 10, that would still, potentially, mean a participant in every team that played on Saturday, plus a whole roster of managers and coaches, will suffer genuine mental illness this year.
This week, we have seen happy Mario, all smiles at a Manchester City Under 21 game — on a day when most footballers with his gifts were gathered for the presentation of the Ballon d’Or — scoring twice and unselfishly handing over penalty duties to his young team-mates.
Last week, it was Angry Mario, lucky not to have seriously injured Scott Sinclair in training and almost coming to blows with his manager. His is a life of extremes.
This is not to say that Balotelli is mentally ill. There will be no cod diagnoses based on snatched reels of film or a succession of bizarre anecdotes from Manchester City’s training ground. No doubt a modern, professional football club is heaving with qualified people focused on the wellbeing of a valuable stable of employees. They may already have a very clear handle on the root cause of Balotelli’s random behaviour.
Maybe he just is, in euphemistic terms, a bit of a loon. Maybe he simply needs, as the headlines say, to grow up, get real, or sort himself out. Yet we held the same rigorous inquests when Paul Gascoigne was playing and, with hindsight, it really wasn’t our finest hour. Daft as a brush wasn’t the half of it.
In the first series of the comedy panel game, QI, the topic of painter Vincent van Gogh comes up, with the following exchange:
Stephen Fry: He shot himself and died of his wounds. He was... he was not a happy bunny, incidentally. And the reason he cut his ear... er, he’d had a violent...
Jo Brand: Well, it was... it was a bit more than that. I mean, he was, like, seriously mentally ill, rather than not a happy bunny.
Fry: Well, yes. Well... all right, if you want to put it that way. If you have to dress it up in your scientific way.
Brand: As an ex-psychiatric nurse, I feel I have to distinguish between the two.
Fry: Isn’t... isn’t that, as a psychiatric nurse, how you used to talk to your patients?
Jeremy Hardy: Not-a-Happy-Bunny syndrome.
Brand: Tried to commit suicide. Oh dear, Not-a-Happy-Bunny syndrome.
All good knockabout stuff, and harmless, but here’s the funny thing: even more than the professionally qualified Brand, presenter Fry would know firsthand about the seriousness of mental illness. He suffers from cyclothymia, a form of bipolar disorder, and made a documentary for the BBC entitled Stephen Fry: The Secret Life of the Manic Depressive.
How do you solve a problem like Mario? Balotelli was outstanding in Euro 2012, finishing joint top scorer after some superb displays
He is involved with the mental health charity Stand To Reason. He knows Van Gogh was more than just moody. And he meant no insult by it, much as those who thought Gascoigne was really Gazza, the daft Geordie lad, should not feel too guilty on discovering the searing reality of what was going on in a supposedly uncomplicated mind.
Balotelli has been compared to Gascoigne. I’ve done it myself. Yet as time passes with seemingly little capacity for growth, there may be cause to wonder if the same mistake isn’t being made, twice. Of course, he can’t have problems, he’s a professional footballer earning millions.
We’ve travelled that path before, too. Stan Collymore was widely ridiculed when he withdrew from Aston Villa matches suffering stress. In his excellent autobiography, he admitted that mealy-mouthed underplaying of what was in fact clinical depression did him a disservice. It made him sound less like a human being with problems, more like an overpaid prima donna. Like money alone can ward off mental crisis.
Fry would be correctly perceived as a successful man, too, as was Spike Milligan, another renowned depressive. Money and lifestyle do not enter into it.
When Jamie O’Hara, the Wolverhampton Wanderers footballer married to a former Miss England and earning in the region of £30,000 a week, announced that he found life easier as a YTS trainee taking home £100, he was forced to close his Twitter account due to the level of abuse.
It wasn’t the wisest pronouncement in a recession, yet a wage slip will not protect O’Hara from feeling pressure, or having stress in his life, any more than being voted Germany’s goalkeeper of the year by fellow professionals stopped Robert Enke stepping in front of a train on November 10, 2009.
Enke, captain of Hannover 96, was treated for depression for six years, even prior to the death of his daughter, Lara, in 2006, a tragedy from which he never recovered.
Professional football is easier than coal mining, but it is not without strain. Every boy plays football, but the numbers that make a career from it are tiny. The select few must have ability and dedication, but also the mental resolve to be able to withstand almost constant public judgment.
O’Hara was having a lousy day, for whatever reason, felt he couldn’t handle it, looked back to simpler times and was brutally castigated. It is only struggling artists or the financially poor that are allowed to externalise suffering. Anyone else is just moaning.
So if Balotelli did have deeper issues, how could he still function for the League champions? The same way that many of the one in four British citizens experiencing mental health problems this year will get through the day.
We all know someone who is suffering depression, aggression, anxiety, grief, addiction, but they hold down jobs, they pick the kids up from school. And a lot of them are undiagnosed, tackling their problems alone. Gascoigne went through much of his professional life like that. He’d ask for brandy to be delivered, surreptitiously, in a coffee cup at Lazio’s training camp and we’d go along with it, thinking foolishly that he was a bit of a lad, rather than a young man whose circumstances were increasingly overwhelming.
He’d twitch and gurn and bounce between extremes of joyful confidence and chronic self-doubt and we’d think he was a right nutter, in the fondest sense, rather than an unravelling ball of nerves. Mancini, who knew Gascoigne, once said he was a level up from Balotelli’s eccentricity, but that observation is almost two years old now and one wonders if he is reconsidering.
Nothing seems to be changing. Balotelli gets into fights, confrontations, petulant rages and sulks, assaults his own team-mates and then gives away money or displays great kindness, humanity and normalcy. Little is consistent, his emotions see-saw and swirl as his greatest opportunities pass by. What could it be, why always him? Maybe he’s not a happy bunny.
LAHAD'S BINGO CIRCLE OF BOLLOX
Back in December we broke the news that the club plans to build a brand new iconic landmark around the circumference of the Etihad Stadium. Inspired by and dedicated to City fans, City Circle, as it will be known, is set to transform the home of the blues with thousands of supporter messages in the shape of personalised ‘Bluemoon discs’ spelling out the lyrics of the fans’ favourite Club anthem, Blue Moon.
The new tribute will see all four versus of the terrace classic written by Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart recreated from approximately 40,000 circular disks and is set become the UK’s largest permanent fan tribute. Each letter will span more than two metres in height. Blues fans can take their pick from a range of styles and prices starting from stainless steel, costing £60, coloured glass at £95, and a limited edition of hand cast bronze discs for £395.
Needless to say this would be a perfect place to honour the Fez & Nipple Tassel wearing one ....
MCF.net THREAD: http://mancityfans.net/mcfnet/viewtopic ... 21&t=44934
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