Jimbo

His chin has looked suspect in previous fights, but as you say, this might be the wake up call he needs to change his style to a more defensive one, Thomas Hearns had a shite chin but that didn't stop him from becoming a 5 weight world champion.

Michael Laudrup

It would be like George Foreman making a comeback aged 64! He'd give him a good grilling...

What a magnificent week for the Premier League. Even Lewis Carroll would have found his ability to comprehend the surreal stretched beyond breaking point. A neverending version of Alice in Wonderland featuring 25 Mad Hatters and no Alice; nobody to say: “But you’re all just a pack of cards.” Such was the pitch of daily entertainment that Jamie Carragher's contributional most went unnoticed. He, like so many of his equally articulate colleagues, has delivered to the world a book, an autobiography. In it, the scouse monkey admitted to not caring very much when he played for England and would console himself upon defeat by saying: “At least it wasn’t Liverpool.” I think that's what he said. I saw only the English translation of his book, so maybe I’m misrepresenting him. If you want a clue as to why the national team is so useless, there it is. England has become an irrelevance to Premier League players, almost an encumbrance. It was elsewhere the real fun was to be had, from the old academy of football, Upton Park, via a bewildered Eastlands to that unconfined ship of fools that is St James’ Park. West Ham, enjoying their best start to a top division campaign in nearly a decade, somehow engineered the resignation of their manager, Alan Curbishley, by the expedient of selling his players having apparently told him they wouldn’t. Let’s be clear, Curbishley had his faults – a tendency to buy players who would easily qualify for the Paralympic Games being the first and most signal of them. The board might have had a glimmering of this when, for reasons which quite elude me, they sacked Alan Pardew. It seems the manager had a strip torn off him by one of his players in the dressing room following West Ham’s fortuitous victory over Blackburn last week. Curbishley had ventured to suggest that his team had seemed intent, for the second time in three games, on chucking away a two-goal lead. What nerve, what cheek, of a manager to say such a thing! One player shouted at him that the team had “kept you in a job” by their magnanimity in occasionally contriving to win matches. This was the club captain, Lucas Neill, who was well renowned for his consuming arrogance even when he played for Millwall. The same Lucas Neill awarded an outrageous wage packet by Curbishley when he arrived from Blackburn and which he earned by sitting on his arse for three months with a knee injury. That’s how top players are these days; they cannot be gainsaid, even by their bosses. And a good performance is an act of generosity, a benediction for which lowlife managers and fans alike should be extremely grateful. I’d be wary, if I were Slaven Bilic, of coming to Upton Park, caught between moderate players who think they are supermen and a board which, when you’re not looking, will flog your entire defence to your future relegation rivals. Stay in the sun, Slaven, forget the money. West Ham seems an oasis of sanity and rational behaviour compared to that hilarious narrenschiff chugging ever onward toward oblivion that is Newcastle United. The speed with which the city's favourite son, Alan Shearer, ruled himself out of the manager’s job gives some indication of the depths to which the club has sunk. Would you agree to become the manager knowing that all the while you would have perched on your shoulders like a malevolent little goblin, a certain Dennis Wise? A man who would seem to take great pleasure in doing precisely the opposite of what you wanted whenever the opportunity arose. And all the while, swilling his “alcohol-free” lager from the stands, a Buckinghamshire pile-em-high-sell-em-cheap wideboy masquerading as a real, proper Geordie, Mike Ashley - whay ay hinny, thou shall have a fishy on a little dishy, y’knaa. Mr Ashley wears a Newcastle shirt with 17 on the back out of respect for someone he considers to be a colossus of modern footballing excellence - er, Alan Smith. That sort of says it all. Again, Kevin Keegan has his faults - there's no messiah in here, just a mess, etc - but at least he has a soupcon of principle in a game that seems increasingly devoid of just that. What did Ashley think would happen when, two weeks after appointing Keegan to much popular local acclaim, he imposed the machinations of Wise upon him? Did he think Keegan would say, “Well, hell, Mike, that's a terrific idea, I wish I’d thought of that”? As Shearer pointed out, managers should be principally responsible for identifying the players to be bought and sold and communicating that advice to the chief executive who would, budget permitting, expedite such matters. Wise and Keegan were always likely to pull in different directions; few football experts will ever agree with one another on the competing qualities of players, the patent uselessness of Alan Smith excepted. In between the sniggering, you feel for Newcastle; a fine city perpetually let down by its football club. Earlier in the week a national newspaper asked the question: “Is Newcastle Britain’s worst-run club?” To general astonishment, only 83% said yes. You wonder what club those other 17% had in mind, unless it was Ashley multiple voting. Now, apparently, he’s had enough and is looking to sell up, leaving Newcastle managerless, with a bizarre and untenable executive structure and the lovely Joey Barton waiting in the wings for his two-footed comeback tackle against some hapless Mack-em player in the middle of October. All going swimmingly, then. Somewhere in this madness, spare a thought for the confused supporters of Manchester City, about to be swallowed up by a loaded desert territory. Most of the phone-in shows I heard revealed a certain ambivalence among the Kippax faithful; they like the tantalising idea of out-muscling their Manchester rivals (and the scousers), but are not too sure about playing their home games in Abu Dhabi. That was one of the suggestions mooted by the Arabs, and which I hope they will run by the FA at some point in time, but I suppose the FA would give them the all clear; after all, if they’d swallow the claims of Thaksin Shinawatra to be a decent businessman with the interests of Manchester City at heart, there is pretty much nothing they will not swallow. Half-time stoning to death of adulterers? I suppose that would lift the spirits as Ronaldo arrives for the cost of an African country’s GDP. All this stuff, in a week. Shows the health and vibrancy of the Premier League, I suppose the administrators would argue. Its unpredictability, its attraction to foreign investors. Yeah, right. Well, I’m off down The Den.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qS3-jd3j_Wo

Fuck me, bad KO, first min. ouch.

First Round

Glass fucking chin, I knew it.

I hope for the sake of my opinion of Keegan it is all bollocks. This is what I'm scared of, what is going to be the reaction if Keegan has acted like the petulant child these reports suggest, instead of the martyr we expect/believe him to be? They are talking shit to make him look daft man. The press statement is a pack of lies which contradicts what they have said in the past, and to say things like kevin wasnt allowed to comment to the press about signings or players we sold - come on man its a fucking joke! I'm just worried is all mate. You aren't the only one, the pictures of Vittere and Jiminez at the Stoke match makes you think that this system was planned or in place when Keegan signed.

From the Chronicle, May 2008: "NEWCASTLE United chairman Chris Mort has promised Kevin Keegan that he will have money to spend in the summer transfer market. And perhaps just as significantly, Mort added that Keegan WILL have the final say on all transfer dealings, despite the talk of their being two lists of wanted players at the club – one of the manager and one of director of football Dennis Wise.

That must rate as one of the most juvenile and unprofessional things I have ever seen.

your collection james? That's just the tip of the iceberg dude.

Happy Birthday !

Entourage starts tomorrow night

The first one anyway.

What Keegan did next: I must admit I thought it was funny.

He can spunk that kind of money on piss, but can't buy Keegan a left-back

He has come out with some gems over the years, like he claimed eventually an athlete would run 100m in 1 second, and that race horses should have wingmirrors on their heads

Kelis - Milkshake

Newcastle United's hierarchy came under scathing attack yesterday from both Alan Shearer and Richard Bevan, the chief executive of the League Managers Association, as Tyneside struggled to come to terms with life after Kevin Keegan. Indeed Joey Barton being banned for six games, rather than an expected 15, by the Football Association represented just about the only bit of good news for the club's directors. As Newcastle began the process of replacing Keegan, who resigned on Thursday, the board's modus operandi faced a twin attack, with Shearer not only ruling himself out but stating: "I'd like to be a manager at some point but I want to control who comes in and out of the club." Describing the internal structure at St James' Park as "strange" the former Newcastle captain, added: "If you've got three, four or five players waiting for you and you don't know who they are, then you've got the right to ask yourself, 'can I manage this club?' A manager lives and dies by his decisions. If he can't do that is there any point in him being there? It's dangerous when you go into a club and the director of football is not appointed by you." Shearer was clearly referring to Keegan's emasculation at the hands of Dennis Wise, Newcastle's all-powerful director of football, and Mike Ashley, the club's owner. He also expressed sympathy with disillusioned fans who have called for the removal of Ashley and Wise. "They are angry, hurt, and disappointed and everyone feels for them, me included, because we all want the same thing - success at Newcastle United," he said. "It's going to be a big task for [the board] because the fans are very angry." Bevan insisted that Ashley's largely London-based management structure was doomed to failure: "If you look at a football club when people are running it from different parts of the country, when you've got a manager who doesn't know who is being signed, who is leaving and who is coming in, it's a recipe for disaster. "Newcastle looked a bit like an orchestra with four conductors. It was going to break down sooner or later." As Keegan yesterday briefed lawyers to counter-claim against Newcastle for constructive dismissal, Barton also received a £25,000 fine and a potential additional six-game ban, suspended until the end of the 2009-10 season, for his training-ground attack on Ousmane Dabo, then a Manchester City team-mate, in May 2007. The midfielder is scheduled to return on October 25 and can expect a hot reception as Newcastle are at Sunderland. While the favourite to become Barton's new manager remains Gus Poyet, Tottenham's No2 and a close ally of Wise's, Zico is also under consideration. Even so, the former Fenerbahce coach and Brazil luminary seems a less likely candidate than one of Wise's old Chelsea pals such as Poyet, Gianluca Vialli or Gianfranco Zola. Another strong candidate is Marcelino García Toral, the Real Zaragoza coach. Dark horses include David O'Leary. The former Leeds United and Aston Villa manager is a close friend of Derek Llambias, Newcastle's managing director, and watched Newcastle's 3-0 defeat at Arsenal last Saturday as Llambias's guest. Despite his travails Keegan faxed information in support of Barton - who has served time in prison for a separate assault - to the FA's independent regulatory commission which included the former England manager Graham Taylor.

Just seen a leaked copy of episode 1 of season 3,

Matt Hughes, he should stick to UFC tbh.....

More than the odd eyebrow was raised when Dennis Wise chose to walk away from a promising managerial career at the high-profile Leeds United for an office job with Newcastle United in January, but the former Chelsea midfield player should have been hailed as a visionary. Wise was certainly ahead of his time in recognising that the trappings of the managerial office are not what they once were, a view confirmed by this week's remarkable events at Newcastle, West Ham United and even Manchester City. Wise calculated that a seven-figure salary for scouting and signing players was a better bet than a considerably larger one for the far more onerous job of turning them into a winning team, a rationale that makes suggestions that he is in line to replace Kevin Keegan seem rather spurious. Wise may be many things but he is certainly not daft, and through conversations with his friend Tony Jimenez will have concluded that the best way to ensure a lengthy stay at St James’ Park is to remain as part of the back-room team despite Keegan’s belated attempt to oust him, where he can wield power without having to take responsibility. For most managers these days the situation is reversed, as they are the first to take the blame for decisions they have not been party to. The most intriguing question is which other managers and former players will follow Wise’s lead into directorships, or other fancy job titles? Keegan, Alan Curbishley and even Luiz Felipe Scolari have discovered to their cost the limits of managerial influence, while Mark Hughes’s joy at being handed Robinho may soon be tempered by the knowledge that he is about to be given other players he has not selected or, as happened to Keegan and Curbishley, lose those he wanted to keep. Of the top ten Premier League clubs only Manchester United, Arsenal and possibly Aston Villa are run on traditional lines, with the manager the single most important person in the player recruitment process. The influence wielded by Sir Alex Ferguson and Arsene Wenger has taken decades to accumulate and will not be seen again, while Martin O’Neill is fortunate to be working with the far-sighted and sensible of the new breed of owners, Randy Lerner. The theme music to that 1990’s classic television programme Fantasy Football League began with a Barry Davies commentary asking who would be a football manager? It may not be long before that question is no longer rhetorical.