The Study of English Football [Part III]: How the media restricts independent thinking is a post from: Just Football

Just Football's Study of English Football by Andreas Vou continues now with Part III and the role of the media in football. If you missed Part I and Part II follow the respective links:

It may be the most common quote about the media but that is because of its ability to some up one of the world's most powerful tools in just a few words.

Of all the places in England, Canary Wharf is perhaps the last one you might expect Sam Allardyce, "Big Sam" himself, to have made his home, three months shy of his 57th birthday. He loves it there especially, he says, his apartment, where a straight-talking Black Country lad who made his name in Lancashire lives next door to investment bankers.

Big Sam strolled to the dug-out for West Ham's pre-season friendly at Dagenham & Redbridge last week like Dean Martin walking on to a stage in Las Vegas – only with a better suit. He acknowledged the cheers with a breezy wave, joked with his coaching staff and was happy to pose for pictures with supporters and sign autographs after a 1-0 win.

There is something almost Riefenstahlian about the official site's daily descriptions of the squad's pre-season fitness regime; the luxuriating in the mundane minutiae of each training drill and the fetishistic depictions of lythe young bodies in the throws of physical exertion. So it is we learn that it was a mixture of work and play for West Ham United's players as the squad continued their pre-season training camp in Switzerland.

Sam Allardyce suffered defeat in his first game in charge of West Ham United, narrowly losing 2-1 to Swiss side Young Boys. The respectable result was the culmination of a hectic day three of the pre-season tour in central Switzerland, which saw the squad conduct two training sessions ahead of their opening Uhren Cup fixture.

The first time I passed through Switzerland I had the impression it was swept down with a broom from one end to the other every morning by housewives who dumped all the dirt in Italy...

Sam Allardyce is cracking the whip with his players by introducing triple sessions for the squad during these early stages of pre-season.

Don't be so gloomy. After all it's not that awful. Like the fella says, in Italy for 30 years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder, and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love - they had 500 years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce?

Toppling the Murdoch Empire: Could a Pub Landlady from Portsmouth help seal BSkyB's fate? is a post from: Just Football

While the News Corporation / News International phone hacking storm continues to rumble with menace, Theo Fan reports on another threat facing Rupert Murdoch, and how the fate of the televised game and BSkyB could rely on a pub landlady from Portsmouth:

Who will have the biggest impact on domestic football in the next 10 years?

Ministers are said to be closely monitoring allegations of inappropriate payments made by West Ham to a director of the Olympic Park Legacy Company, after the bitter public row over the future of the Olympic Stadium escalated yesterday. The Government is alarmed by revelations, first exposed on Friday, that an OPLC director was paid £20,000 while moonlighting as a consultant for West Ham, and has sought reassurances about the OPLC's processes and the decision to award the Olympic Stadium to West Ham.

West Ham United plan to sue the Sunday Times and Tottenham over allegations of corruption during their successful bid to take over the Olympic stadium. The club were awarded the right to move to the new stadium after the 2012 games, beating Tottenham in the process. A report in today's The Sunday Times claimed that secret payments had been made to an executive on the Olympic Park Legacy Company (OPLC), the body which unanimously made the decision, during the selection process.

It was full daylight at 7.40 this very morning in 1908 when an enormous pale blue fireball trailed by a 500-mile tail of bright light, shimmering, multicoloured bands hurtled across the Siberian sky and consumed itself in the greatest cosmic explosion in the history of civilisation. This cataclysmic detonation occurred four miles above the Earth's surface over a huge, inaccessible and almost uninhabited pine forest near the Podkamennaya Tunguska River in central Siberia.

This social media culture is wonderful. Twitter, for instance, brings friends closer, it's immediate, settles differences and it throws new people together. It can, writes Chris Lepkowski, be amazingly funny when people start to filter home from nights out. Yet, as the disgruntled football journalist from the Birmingham Mail points out, as far as the transfer circus and the media is concerned, they're not always the easiest of bedfellows.

Sam Allardyce has ­confessed he still dreams of becoming England manager, writes Tom Hopkinson in today's People. The new West Ham boss even ­reckons that a successful debut season in the Upton Park hot-seat will put him in the frame to succeed Fabio Capello. The 56-year-old is on a two-year contract and his priority is to take the Hammers back into the Premier League.

My name is Sam Allardycias, King of Kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!

...and for my next trick FC Basel will take Radoslav Kovac from this club and actually pay money for the privilege. You read that correctly. Radoslav Kovac is off to Switzerland and it's not to join Dignitas.

West Ham have moved a stage closer to occupying the Olympic Stadium after a high court judge rejected applications from Tottenham Hotspur and Leyton Orient to challenge the decision to select West Ham as the preferred bidder for the stadium after the 2012 Games. Hotspurned and Disoriented were both seeking judicial review of the OPLC's decision taken in February and the Government's endorsement of their recommendation, as well as that of the Mayor, and also Newham Council's decision to agree a potential £40m loan to fund conversion of the stadium in a joint venture with West Ham.

Sam Allardyce is often mocked as a manager with ideas above his station, writes Paul Doyle in this morning's Guardian, so it perhaps surprised his detractors when he agreed to descend to the Championship to take charge of West Ham. True, he was unemployed until the relegated east London club came calling, but for a man who was once interviewed for the England job and who last year suggested he could win doubles with Real Madrid or Internazionale every season, if only they were savvy enough to look beyond his reputation and hire him, there must have been a temptation to wait for an offer from a better-placed club.

Tottenham Hotspur and Leyton Orient face a crucial week in oppostion to West Ham's Olympic Stadium move, writes Paul Kelso in this morning's Telegraph. The clubs will discover within days whether their challenge to United's tenancy of the Olympic Stadium has been successful after a High Court judge spent the early part of this week considering their case.

Up this corridor. Round this corner. Down the next corridor. The next corner. Kevin Keen at my heels. To the office. The empty desk. The empty chair. Avram's office. Avram's desk. Avram's chair. Four walls with no windows and one door, these four walls between which he etched his schemes and his dreams, his hopes and fears.

A sudden blow: the great wings beating still
Above the staggering girl, her thighs caressed
By the dark webs, her nape caught in his bill,
He holds her helpless breast upon his breast.
How can those terrified vague fingers push
The feathered glory from her loosening thighs?

One week in and already the close season is slowly imposing its languorous silence on West Ham related news. The footballing world becomes an abandoned chateau this time of year with its inhabitants scattering for a change of scene. The football fan is left to stroll through the echoing salon, the immense panelled dining room and numberless bedrooms; none sealed or closed but all kept in a state of suspended life, the beds made, the floors not exactly clean but swept occasionally, the decorations faded but intact.

He that will not apply new remedies must expect new evils; for time is the
greatest innovator.

William D. Leahy said the bomb wouldn't go off; Lord Kelvin thought that heavier-than-air flying machines were impossible; Charlie Chaplin was convinced cinema was little more than a fad; Neville Chamberlain promised it would be peace in our time and Bill Gates insisted 640K ought to be enough for anybody.

Sam Allardyce had been West Ham United's manager for precisely eight hours when first notice of the funhouse he has taken over was served. While he was speaking live on Sky Sports, news broke that Tony Fernandes, the Malaysian businessman who is team principle of Formula One's Team Lotus, had tweeted to claim he had offered to buy the club from David Sullivan and David Gold.

Sam Allardyce has been sworn in as the 14th full-time manager of West Ham United. Following weeks of speculation, the official site announced this morning that 'one of English football's most prominent managerial names' has put pen to paper on a two-year contract. Allardyce has taken charge with immediate effect and spoke straight away of his desire to get the Hammers back into the Barclays Premier League at the first attempt.

I saw her wince, I saw her cry,
I saw the glory in her eye.
Myself I long for love and light,
But must it come so cruel, and oh so bright?

Sam Allardyce could be confirmed as the new manager of West Ham United as early as tonight, reports Jason Burt, as the Hammers board successfully changed the 56-year old's mind about turning his back on English football management.

Dave Jones has emerged as West Ham's preferred choice to lead them out of the Championship, writes Sami Mokbel in today's Mail. Jones – whose future as Cardiff manager is under review following the Bluebirds' failure to win promotion to the Premier League – has been linked with the post in the past and the odds on him taking the job were dramatically slashed last night.

West Ham United's dismal season ended in hugely disappointing fashion when the only team already relegated before the final games of the season suffered their 19th defeat of the campaign. Sunderland owed a rare win – only their third in 14 games – to goals from Asamoah Gyan, Stephane Sessegnon and Cristian Riveros.

I was in a pub this afternoon and no word of a lie that Monica Bellucci girl was there. She was sat plain as day, leaning back against the wooden settle in a black dress at least two sizes too small for her sadistically oppressed breasts. I could see her bare honeyed legs and the sharp patella that gave a fetching inverted-triangle shape to her knee.

I am convinced that He does not play dice...

David Gold has insisted no stone will be left unturned as West Ham strive to ensure they appoint the right manager as Avram Grant's successor. Gold and co-owner David Sullivan are looking to bring in a replacement as quickly as possible so that the new man has time to start preparing for next season.

Neil Warnock has said he has the backing of Queens Park Rangers to "plan for next season" after a meeting with the board. According to today's Guardian, their support appears to rule him out of the running to replace Avram Grant as West Ham United's manager, a possibility that was understood to have appealed to co-owners David Gold and David Sullivan.

"They have no idea who's doing what and when," moaned Karren Brady on The Apprentice. While clearly putting her West Ham experience to good use on the show last night, the Hammers vice-chairman seems to be warming to her theme. Brady has hit back at claims Avram Grant was undermined throughout the season, insisting the Israeli was given everything possible to keep West Ham in the Premier League.

David Sullivan is a tough man to love. He dresses like a sun-dried Stalin. He's got the man-management skills of a frisbee. He wants to see the return of Norks on Sunday. He's friends with David Gold. And, after relegation with West Ham, snarks the Guardian's Fiver, he wants a return to chest-beating, badge-kissing, half-time-riot-act-reading, teacup-smashing Englishness in the Hammers dugout.

What if one split second sent your life in two completely different
directions?

48 hours on and the postmortem into the club's untimely demise continues apace. Writing in today's Telegraph, Henry Winter states West Ham's shambles of a season has soiled the name of a once-respected club.

Sit on your chairs, don't throw them...
West Ham's calamitous season endured another dose of ignominy last night after police were called to investigate disturbances that erupted after players were confronted by supporters at the club's end-of-season awards dinner at London's Grosvenor House Hotel.

A man's errors are his portals of discovery

One by one they walked off, the golden generation. Jermain Defoe shirtless; Joe Cole man of a match he would never wish to remember; Paolo Di Canio staring straight ahead, perhaps contemplating his pledge to commit suicide if West Ham were relegated.

The thorns which I have reap'd are of the tree
I planted; they have torn me, and I bleed.
I should have known what fruit would spring from such a seed.

Avram Grant was sacked as manager of West Ham United on Sunday night. He was informed by chairman David Sullivan, who left his seat in the directors' box early to wait for Grant in the tunnel as he left the pitch amid chaotic scenes at the DW Stadium, after West Ham's dramatic 3-2 defeat to Wigan Athletic.

The fight itself towards the summits suffices to fill a heart of man; it is necessary to imagine Sisyphus happy...

Avram Grant will refuse to walk away from West Ham United even if they are relegated this season, leaving the club with a compensation bill of around £3.

It's just after 9am the morning before he collects his Footballer of the Year Award, writes Ken Dyer, but Scott Parker is already at West Ham's training ground, changed and ready to test his troublesome Achilles tendon. On top of a cabinet in the club's media office stand three big bottles of man-of-the-match Champagne.

West Ham United continue to blow the bubbles of drowning men, wrote David Lacey in the Guardian. Any relief at having avoided a home defeat by Blackburn Rovers was soon overtaken by the realisation that they now have to win their remaining two matches to have any chance of staying up, and only once this season have Avram Grant's side won back-to-back games in the Premier League.

The life of everyone on board depends upon just one thing: finding someone back there who can not only fly this plane, but who didn't have fish for dinner...

It is at this stage of the season when a familiar but often bankrupt saying gets trotted out in assessing the relegation battle, writes Jeremy Wilson in this morning's Telegraph.

There are certain natures, purely contemplative and altogether unfit for action, which nonetheless, impelled by a mysterious and unknown motive, act at times with rapidity of which they would have believed themselves incapable. Thus, Baudelaire introduces us to Le Mauvais vitrier; the exemplar of what Poe coined The Imp of the Perverse, and as exemplified by David Gold's unpropitious comments in this morning's papers.