Beef Bagel

Poor old Princess Boateng. One minute it’s all white dresses, ‘i dos’ and drunk, embarrassing family members and the next she’s whisked off on a honeymoon to romantic N17, where her husband has just signed his life away for a modest £15,000 per week. On the other hand, we get a 20-year-old cheap to run £5m player, who in six month’s time will do anything just to be out of the house, even if it’s to spend a season in the reserves or sit on the bench. Sounds good to me.

So, come 3rd August, the day after his wedding, the young German midfielder - of the attacking variety it can now be confirmed (my mistake) - will be donning the Lilyewhite strip and training alongside the likes of Gareth Bale, Darren Bent, Younes Kaboul and the younger prospects for the next campaign. There he is, getting close to the cockerel…

…always good to see.

All that remains is for him to actually be good and then we’re laughing. But time is on his side and he’ll have at least two seasons for him prove his worth with our glut of options in attack and MJ’s rock solid belief that JJ is the next Dennis Bergkamp, I shit you not.

But as Oog has said to me on a number of occasions, this is all very well and good but the likes of Mido et al are not our problem; it’s the first team we have to improve and I don’t mean to sound like Veruca Salt but where is our left winger? Where is our defensive midfielder? I want an Oompa Loompa now.

Yet another left wing option looks to be disappearing down the toilet bowl and round the u-bend to sunny Spain.

“I have not renewed my contract with Lyon and have not agreed anything with Valencia.

“There is nothing more I can say but playing in the Spanish league does attract me.”

So said Kim Kallstrom to Swedish newspaper, Aftonbladet, which they expect us to believe is the Swedish for The Evening Sheet but you and I know better that it’s yet another of Scandanavia’s little jokes on the rest of Europe with their made up languages, in revenge for us having more sunshine than them.

Kallstrom isn’t necessarily the answer for us anyway as he prefers to play behind the strikers but, well, it’s just nice to feel loved sometimes. Speaking of which, the Lady Bagel returned from her week away last night and it was very nice to be loved many times over, and then again this morning.

Of course this isn’t by any means the end of the saga as Valencia have made a proposal that provoked this reaction from Jean-Michel Aulas, chairman of Lyon:

“I do not know whether we can call it a proposal? We have received indirect offers from agents indicating that Valencia would pay us a transfer fee over four or five years. Do I look like an idiot?”

Is that trick question?

Another deal baulked at, this time by ourselves, was the straight swap suggested up in Northland of Kieron Dyer for Didier Zee; i.e: a £60,000/week, 28 year-old, injury prone player in a position where we have strength, depth and width for that matter, for a more reliable, cheaper to run, defensive midfielder, who - fingers crossed - has just got to grips with the Premiership.

Without any other incentives, that’s a no-brainer and a definite no-goer. Dyer’s good but the deal just isn’t viable and better still is to see that Levy & Co are in no doubt either. Case closed.

Another case closed, in what now feels like a biannual event now, is the snubbing by Stewart ‘Do we really want him anyway’ Downing. He said:

“I knew I would not go to Tottenham and settle. Maybe one day I’ll move on, go to a bigger club, but I’m happy here,” which reads as ‘never coming to us’ and is fine by The Bagel.

So, in the face of all this negative talk, where is the love, apart from on an all too rough, loose weave carpet in front of some Turkish film that I only watched the first 20 mintues of? It’s in the West Midlands, unlikely as it sounds.

Yes, there is one player who still loves us and has loved us true for well over a year now. He’s handed in his requests time and time again, he’s torn the armband from his shirt and laid it down before his keepers. Yes, Curtis Davies is not taking ‘no’ for an answer.

He’s not necessarily coming our way but according to all and sundry, and I’m never quite sure if that refers to rice and popadoms, we’re first at the negotiation table. Whether Daniel Levy crept round to the Emirates and slashed all their tyres or Damien Comolli nipped down to Portsmouth and started one of those famous French trucker blockades on the A3, I do not know but they managed to get to the Hawthorns before anyone else.

 So, if they offer the £9m that will do the trick, and I believe eventually they will, it’ll just be a question of Davies passing the Yiddo Test. After all the pushing and pulling, it’s got to happen this time and once it does we can be no better set at the back. Look at him here…

 

…textbook British defending. Never underestimate defensive training in the lower leagues.

“Remeber Charlie how I told you that a bagel comes out of a gun?”

The Bagel.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 1st, 2007 at 2:10 pm and is filed under Bagel News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.