Mark Hughes has set about business quite sensibly at QPR following their hare’em scare’em relegation avoidance in the last-day madness of the triumphant Etihad, so far bashfully turning down owner Manuel Fernandes’ offer of a fruitful expenditure in favour of the settled summer that fatefully evaded Neil Warnock last year.
In another caveat to the argument that players have too much power in the modern game that has been underlined by the contract disputes involving Wayne Rooney and currently Arsenal’s overly-ambitious Robin Van Persie, coming to the party is a player and a club with far less razzmatazz than Arsene Wenger’s annual wrangling with a trophy-wanting player, for Cesc Fabregas, Samir Nasri and Robin Van Persie who value medals and cups above loyalty, add ex-Gillingham striker Mark McCammon in the one-sided fight that is ensuring power is firmly on the side of the player.
One man who can empathise with David Beckham’s surprising omission from the Team GB Olympic football squad which came in a display of sensible footballing logic by coach Stuart Pearce, is Micah Richards, who has seen his name inconspicuous by its absence from national selection too many times to count. He is however, included in the void vacated by the Beckham fanfare for this August’s unique jolly in London, partnered with a chance to finally remove the everlasting stigma that has annulled his natural progression into regular international footballer.
In a matter of just nine months, Andre Villas Boas had seen his star fall at a rate of knots that could have left his name languishing in the forgotten world of the footballing ether such is the speed that football moves on from failure.
The volatile nature of football in which competition moves on like no other, reared its head in dramatic fashion again this week as the latest cycle of European footballing dominance, Pep Guardiola’s Harlem-Globetrotter-esque band of technical wizardry at Barcelona, began to come crumbling down around the imposing structure of the Camp Nou.
In news that may have gone unnoticed, the 61 year old John Still celebrated eight years in charge of Dagenham and Redbridge of League Two on Wednesday, a stint that has seen Still take the club from the humble surroundings of Conference mid-table obscurity, achieving an 11th and 10th placed finish before gaining promotion to the Football League in Still’s third year of stewardship
Olympiakos may have grabbed a 0-1 win in Panetolikos on Sunday night to extend their lead at the summit of the Greek Super league to ten points, but the destination of the title was given the trivial fate of being decided in the courtroom as bitter rivals Panthinaikos failed with a bid to overturn a punishment for crowd violence in the Athens derby in March.
With the proposition of UEFA’s big, bad Financial Fair Play ruling looming on the horizon, there was no better time than European cup quarter-final week to expose the various pitfalls and loopholes that the European footballing authorities should encounter when implementing rigid measures into place in the summer of 2013, to ensure European Clubs spend within their means.