Sports

What’s that sound? It’s Arsenal’s bosses laughing all the bank – if reports today that Barcelona have bid £30 million for Emmanuel Adebayor are anything to go by.

Arsenal boss Arsene Wenger is the master of the buy ‘em cheap, sell ‘em high policy, and he’s got the canny knack of flogging his star players before they burn out and turn useless. After all, not many agreed with his decision to sell Patrick Vieira to Juventus – or Thierry Henry to Barcelona – but both those hunches turned out to be proved bang-on. Neither player has been anywhere near as good since the day they left the Gunners.

But this deal for Adebayor could be Wenger’s best deal yet. The Togo striker …

continue reading

Forget the prospect of Ronaldo to Madrid, Emmanuel Adebayor to Barcelona, Gareth Barry to Liverpool, or even Ronaldinho to Man City - the biggest shock of the lot is Harry Kewell´s departure to Galatasaray.

"Welcome To The Hell" waved the giant banner that greeted Manchester United players as they arrived at a feverish Istanbul airport packed with passionate Galatasaray supporters. The players had to literally run a gauntlet of hate through a seething and antagonistic mass of humanity as they made it through to their awaiting team bus.

That´s a microcosm of just how passionate football fans are in that part of the world and you can bet your bottom Turkish Lira that Harry will be in for a rough ride if …

continue reading

Pride of Scotland Andy Murray´s dream run to the last eight of Wimbledon came to a ruthless end when he ran into Rafael Nadal.

It was men against boys stuff as the Dunblane strokemaker was blown away on Centre Court in straight sets.

Murray is being tipped by patriotic Brits to win a Major one day but the magnitude of the spanking dished out by the muscular Mallorcan clearly demonstrates how far behind he actually is. On that evidence he will never win a Major if he needs to get past a Nadal or a Roger Federer.

One of Murray´s favourite tactics seems to be to exaggerate his celebrations in an attempt to wind up his opponents. It worked a treat against …

continue reading

Who’d have thought the biggest, nastiest and most drawn out transfer saga of the summer would involve Gareth Barry, supposedly one of football’s nice guys?

But it does, because Liverpool’s attempts to sign Aston Villa’s captain have been going on since the end of the Premier League season, and they’re still going on. No-one’s talking about Ronaldo to Real anymore – if you want bitterness and bullying and moaning and stubborn stand-offs, the Barry to Liverpool story is where it’s at.

Here where we are so far. Liverpool offer £10million for Barry, Villa say no, we want £18m. Liverpool up it £1m. Villa say no. Liverpool up it another £1m. Villa say no, again. Barry returns from England duty to tell his …

continue reading

That age old phrase among golfers "driving´s for show, putting´s for dough" springs to mind as a cracking field that includes Sergio Garcia and Padraig Harrington gathers in Kent this week.

A Bodog insider played the Ash course just two weeks ago and declared it a very easy test for professional golfers from tee-to-green. Which means we can expect to see an absolute birdie barrage from Europe´s elite, or in other words a "putting contest".

Titled the European Open, the event sees the current Players´s Champion Garcia and reigning Open Champion Harrington lock horns for the first time on British soil since their nerve-jangling Carnoustie duel. But we don´t fancy either of them to win this.

Instead have a squint at a couple …

continue reading

And just like that, the media has turned on Lewis Hamilton. Here in the UK we often talk about the ‘build ‘em up to knock ‘em down’ mentality of the press, and now Hamilton is getting a taste of it. The F1 golden boy could do no wrong in his debut season – but now it’s open season in 2007-08. In the last two weeks, Hamilton has driven like a disaster zone. And the press haven’t held back in their criticism. Even so, the normally ice-cool kid from Stevenage has started to sound as if he’s losing the plot.

“There’s nothing you can do that can distract me,” he ranted last week. “You can keep on giving me penalties, whatever you …

continue reading

He´s got the pace of John Prescott wearing divers lead boots but that doesn´t seem to be any deterrent to Liverpool manager Rafael Benitez. And at 27 he isn´t going to be getting any faster, unless of course he knows any hooky professional cycling chemists.

Spurs are talking in terms of a swap deal for Peter Crouch plus cash.

I´ve always been an admirer of Robbie Keane but Benitez must have been on the methylated spirits if he thinks the Irishman will turn his club into Premiership contenders.

Andrei Arshavin or David Villa maybe, but not Keane. Anyone who knows anything about football will know that Keane´s valuation reached its ceiling when he joined Tottenham from Leeds for £7m in August 2002.

Then again …

continue reading

 … Lampard out? Well, that’s what most Chelsea fans will be thinking today after the news that Luiz Scolari has recruited one of his old Portuguese favourites on his first day in charge at Stamford Bridge. If that pic of a smarmy-looking Peter Kenyon grinning and shaking hands with Deco doesn’t spell the end for Lampard, we’ll crawl all the way from Beat Towers to Stamford Bridge on our knees in the rain.

Deco’s alright. Well, he’s a bit more than alright – after all, this is a guy who’s been playing his footy for Barcelona for the last few years, and doing pretty well for Portugal at international level too. He may be 30 and knocking on a bit, but …

continue reading

300 million tuned in to watch last night´s Euro final - that´s exactly 299,999,999 more people than watched Jay Z´s set at Glastonbury.

I´m sure Beyonce Knowles enjoyed it as much as all those Spanish fans who partied long into the night (and Liverpool´s fat cat American owners who can stick an extra 10 million quid on Fernando Torres´s head after he scored the deciding goal).

As Spain headed into the final most punters fancied them strongly on account of the great footy they had played throughout. But I wasn´t so sure, I had a feeling Luis Aragones´s slender side were going to get bullied off the park.

My mate Dave had been down at pitch level working as a cameraman for …

continue reading

Arsenal gaffer Arsene Wenger must have been chuffed to bits to see Cesc Fabregas’ performance for Spain against Russia the other night. Then again, perhaps he wasn’t. For you can bet Fabregas will now be on the wanted list of some of Europe’s biggest clubs – if he wasn’t there already, that is.

Fabregas’s clever passing destroyed Russia in the semi-final, and that won’t have gone unseen by the rest of Europe. For most of this summer, Arsenal have been battling to hold on to their best players. The Gunners have already lost Mathieu Flamini to AC Milan, Alexander Hleb has been tipped to join Barcelona, and both those clubs have also been linked with Emmanuel Adebayor.

“Many clubs do not work …

continue reading