Is It "Alves ‘Pooled or "Alves Fletchered"?

This is starting to rise to the level of a yawn as it happens almost weekly, but Alfonso Alves was robbed while Middlesbrough was out drawing with Portsmouth (courtesy of a late David James gift).

This makes the ‘Boro striker footballing victim #15.

The raid is estimated to have been worth £50,000 in damage and lost belongings. The 28-year-old returned home shortly after 6pm on Saturday to find his passport stolen along with jewellery, computers, Brazil and Boro shirts, documents, pairs of shoes, and about £200 cash.

But here’s where things take a turn for the unbelievable. The Daily Mail piece continues: “Liverpool midfielder Lucas, Alves’s compatriot, suffered a burglary in November, while other victims include Steven Gerrard, Daniel Agger, Pepe Reina, Dirk Kuyt…” blah blah a bunch of other Liverpudlians, etc.

Anyway, Alves’s compatriot? Uh, no way Lucas is Brazilian. Not a fucking chance. He’s worse than Denilson.

The Great Crystal Palace Cradle Crime

It’s a funny old game, well that’s the saying at least. Simon Jordan was not laughing yesterday though.

The animated Crystal Palace chairman is still fuming at the tribunal decision to allow John Bostock of his academy to join Spurs for a measly 700,000 pounds. So much so that he is selling up.

Back to Bostock for a moment. That’s not bad, right? 700k for a 16-year-old kid?

Well, let’s look at this way. You are not a Premiership side and you cannot afford Premiership fees and wages. What do you do? Well, you can either say “sod it” and claim your place in the Blue Square division, getting your thrills sitting on a mini bus to Forest Green, or you can invest in a top-notch academy and find your own future players. Well Mr Jordan did just that, ploughing his own cash into the club. He began rubbing his hands together, dreaming of a home-grown super team.

Cue the evil laughter… easy, right?

Not quite. You see, that heavy laugh was heard all across London and scouts for Tottenham Hotspur came sniffing around. They had good look around and then left, taking one 16-year-old wonder-kid with them.

How good is Bostock? Good enough for Barca! Have a look at this article I found from last year!

John Bostock just couldn’t resist the overtures of playing Spurs reserve games at Stevenage Borough’s mighty Broadhall Way, oh wait, no, it was probably the money, that and the delusion that he would burst into the Tottenham starting XI anytime before his 21st birthday. Regardless, Master Bostock is a Spurs man… boy.

John Bostock..Look out for him in 2013

The Football League’s tribunal decided that 700,000 pounds was a fair price for young master Bostock. Bargain, eh?

But wait a minute? How much did Aaron Ramsey head to Arsenal for? 5 million pounds.

Theo Walcott? 12 million pounds.

Suddenly it looks as if Mr Jordan has been shafted, doesn’t it?

The tribunal argued that its previous highest award was 400,000 to Charlton for Jermaine Defoe. What really sticks out here is that Palace rejected 900,000 pounds from Chelsea when Bostock was just 14. Palace then gave him his debut at age 15.

Palace Chairman Simon Jordan

I have never been a fan of Simon Jordan. He struts around Laaaandan Taaaaaahhn fondling his long blonde hair while admiring his fake tan. He speaks when he should be quiet and ALWAYS has something to say.

But I feel for him with this one. It’s an absolute disgrace. What kind of message is this sending to other clubs? Don’t bother funding academies, because the big teams will come and take the kids anyway. Where does that leave us? With not many young English players, that’s where.

In the end, all of this has been too much for Mr Jordan and he has decided to pack up his aviators and march his Gucci loafers elsewhere, and Palace are now for sale. Jordan has had enough. Quite frankly, who can blame him?

Mr Jordan had this to say:

“It’s my specific intention to find a buyer this season… I kept my sanity by pumping millions into my academy, feeling the saving grace of my club was finding players who I thought would be chomping at the bit and ready to play in the first team. But that’s been taken away from me as well. Bostock was one of the best players my academy has produced in the last 10 years and he has been sold for a packet of crisps.”

What else is left to say after that? Well done, the Football League! On Tuesday you all but buried Luton Town and with Bostock you have truly proved what’s important to you… and it certainly isn’t grass roots football.

I cannot wait to see what they have up their sleeves for tomorrow!

-Bigus.

Life is cruel.

Right now, they’re imagining those balls to be the heads of Blatter and Platini

It’s not hard to get a yellow card in the EPL. Heck, several of them are dished out each week by the discipline-givers, the order-preservers. If it’s not down to a card-happy ref hellbent on injecting himself into the game, it’s the peril and danger of dealing with the foreign flopping crowd, the porcelain superstars who fall in agony at the slightest hint of bodily contact. Just ask whoever has to mark Didier Drogba each week.

And yes, this simple yellow card has come back to haunt our brave American heroes at Fulham, for the final Fair Play standings were just released. It turns out the relegation-escaping marauders at the Cottage missed out on that unlikely UEFA Cup spot by 0.02 points, or, to put it more bluntly, 4 yellow cards.

Somewhere in Manchester, last week’s red card hero Richard Dunne just unclenched his squeaky bum.

Four yellow cards is so slight considering the grueling nature of the entire season. It’s 4 half-arsed lunges for a 50/50 ball, it’s 4 Drogba flops, 4 ticky-tack fouls, 4 separate incidents in which Cristiano wept.

It’s also a crying fucking shame, because I was really hoping that the farce that is the Fair Play League and its backdoor Europe entry could have been exposed, a bit like the times during the college football season when I crave a BCS in ruins and left for dead at the side of the road.

To think a team so close to being relegated could have actually had a UEFA spot. It almost boggles the mind as much as it did to see Bolton playing in Europe this season. So strange.

It’s also a nice slap in the face to Thaksin, to see his Euro dreams realized right after he kicked his girlfriend Eriksson out of the moving car.

I hope Man City can honor their UEFA spot with several scintillating 1-0 wins to the likes of Anderlecht, Braga, FC Cologne, and many others.

[thx Sean P for bringing it to my attention]