Usi 9mm

There has been a lot of discussion recently about foreign takeovers of British football clubs. My opinion is that if football is a business, as we are constantly being told it is, it cannot protect itself from globalisation which is a natural part of free-markets. Having said that, we don't want any old Johnny Foreigner running our clubs. There must be a certain probity about the character of any potential investors.

I believe the two Birmingham clubs have done well here. I doubt any Villa fan would want to go back to the bad old days of Deadly Doug. Randy Lerner, as well as having a great name for a student of sex education, has humbly said he is a steward of the club and it appears that the club is finally moving in the right direction after many years of neglect. There are a few question marks over Carson Yeung, not least as to whether he will actually take over at St Andrew's, but he seems to have an understanding of the city and football and could be an important contact in the emerging superpower that is China, giving the city and the club access to the huge Premier League marketing potential available in the country..

Other cities have been less discerning however. Manchester City have allowed the former Thai Prime Minister, Thaksin Sinawatra with his questionable record on human rights to take over the club. Meanwhile in London, the probity of the Arsenal-owning hopeful Alisher Uzmanov has been questioned recently by quite a few blogs concerned at his recent efforts to silence certain online critics, which affected among others Tim Ireland and local councillor Bob Piper's fine weblogs.

Many club owners are now saying foreign investment is vital to be able to compete at the highest level. However, should we be more careful about the types of people who are taking over our national sport?

United Blitzed by Coventry

Coventry pulled of one of the biggest results in recent Midland's footballing history last night by beating the mighty Trafford Borough at the Theatre of American Dreams. Blues face them on Saturday in the league and so will need to be ready for the backlash, after going out of the Carling Cup last night to a Robbie Savage's new team, and beating Liverpool 0-0 at Anfield on Saturday.
Villa were also stunned by Martin O'Neill's former club Leicester, meaning that Coventry are probably the best chance of West Midlands success in the league cup this season.

It would be great to see the Sky Blues back in the top flight, and hopefully under Iain Dowie's leadership they will be making a return next season. Coventry used to be legendary at staying up. The 96-97 season epitomised this, with Coventry needing to win on the last day away to Tottenham, and Middlesbrough and Sunderland needing to lose. Somehow they pulled it off, and they finally went out of the top flight after 34 years in 2000/01 season after losing to the Villa.

As Ron Atkinson used to say, if the Titanic was built in Coventry, that wouldn't have gone down.

Martin O'Neill in at Villa

After what seems like months Martin O'Neill has been appointed manager of the Second City Superclub with the backing of all potential future investors. The People's Republic believes this could be the turning point in the history of Aston Villa, the point at which they changed from being also rans to a competitive Premiership team. The spreads are offering 45 points for a buy at the moment.

Get your money on now.

Al-Qaeda to Buy Villa?

Apparently a group of Arabs are involved in a fourth bid to take over the club. The People's Republic speculates it could be the Saudi king, the only person in the world who could improve Ellis' amazing record at the club. He's sacked more managers. And contrary to some stories, Cleveland Brown's Randy owner is still interested in buying the club - he just isn't interested in dealing with Ellis.

Is he a former Villa manager?

Feeling Hot, Hot, Hot!

Phew! The World Cup series of posts took longer than expected (and I was actually planning to have a round-up of the groups and the progress of each participant which I have now shelved). This is mainly because of a mini-heatwave that is affecting Birmingham (and my computer) at the moment, making it among the hottest places in the country just a week ago. Among the news I have failed to comment on are the sale of Emile Heskey and Jermaine Pennant at Blues, the fact that they are favourites for the Championship in the fortcoming season with Albion second, and an exclusive from West Brom: I have from a reliable source that Mr Robson will have 10 games to turn the fortunes of the club round when the new season starts, otherwise he will be shown the door.

Meanwhile at Villa there are enough rumours going on for an entire article to be devoted to it. In summary, some newspaper reports suggested that Villa players were unhappy at the cost-cutting going on at the club (apparently a physio was not allowed to claim back the price of a cup of airport coffee from the company's expenses, the Villa players had to personally pay a masseuse after the club stopped funding them and a new training facility was scrapped). This story transmogrified into one player egged-on by Mr O'Leary. This led to an investigation and a "parting of company with the club on amicable terms". While the search for a new manager goes on three interested parties are attempting to buy the club: an American called Randy who owns the MBNA brand of credit cards, local Solihull business man Mr Neville, and Sven Goran Eriksson's agent. Maybe we will see Beckham in Brum after all...

Elsewhere in the city the Dubliner pub was burnt down in an apparent arson attack a couple of nights ago. Worldwide, Israel has gone over the top in attacking everything that moves in Lebanon as the result of a couple of soldiers being kidnapped, and as usual America and Britain haven't got the leadership to tell them to stop. Question marks over the Metropolitan Police have resurfaced - ridiculously, no-one will be charge over the Jean Charles de Menezes incident, although the Met will be charge under Health and Safety Legislation (because they shot the wrong man) and a BBC documentary claims a senior policeman involved in the initial investigation of the Stephen Lawrence murder was bribed by a relative of one of the suspects. And we thought the serious crime squad was bent.

Anyway hopefully normal service will soon be resumed.

Blues for West Midlands Teams

Well it had to happen. The overpaid excuses of players that make up the current Birmingham City side got relegated a week ago today after failing to match Portsmouth's win over Wigan, a result which saw West Brom also go down leaving Villa as the only Midlands side in the top flight next season which is absolutely unprecedented (in fact it hasn't been a good season for the West Midlands teams generally; Blues, Albion and Walsall got relegated, Villa ended up with their lowest ever Premiership points tally, and Coventry and Wolves failed to reach the playoffs).

Yes, Portsmouth may have got the rub of the green with refereeing decisions. Blues may well have had a decent run recently. But when you start the season as badly as we did, there was only ever going to be one outcome - and it happened.

Sullivan has immediately blasted some of the players, saying that Jarosik, Sutton, Butt and Melchiot will not be returning to St. Andrews next season. Sutton apparently earned £1.2 million (at £45k-a-week) for playing in six or seven matches. In a meeting on Friday Bruce was spared from the sack, apparently showing he has the hunger to take Birmingham back to the top flight.

Sullivan thinks we need to replace the overpaid players with some young, hungry players.

The People's Republic couldn't agree more.

Villa Rise from the Dead

Villa took bragging rights in the Second City derby on Saturday with a 3-1 win over the Blues, plunging them deep into relegation trouble. Ignore the claims of foul and offside for the first two Villa goals - Birmingham have been playing rubbish all season.

The real scandal is (as a good Catholic) the match was played at 12pm on Easter Sunday meaning I had to miss it as I went to Mass. I know that there was trouble in the 2-0 victory three years ago on a Monday night, when supporters got tanked-up after work and fights broke out all over town, but are we condemned to Second City derbies at 12pm on Sundays for evermore? We have 24 hour licensing now, and it may be the case that it is still harder to find a pub open on Sunday than Saturday, but can we not have it on Saturday even once? Churches together in Aston were afraid that their Easter services would be affected by the timing, as older people feared to venture out with the footie fans, to which West Midlands Police replied they have asked the FA not to schedule the Brum derby on the Easter weekend again. The problem is not that it is on the Easter weekend - it is that you keep switching it to Sunday at 12pm, which always clashes with Church services.

Let us stop this discrimination against Brummie Christian footie fans.

Brummies on a Cup Run

All-in-all, I think it was a good day in the FA Cup for Birmingham. City fortuitously reached the quarter-finals for the first time in 22 years after a jammy win over the old enemy Stoke, including two world-class saves from goalkeeper Maik Taylor to deny the Potteries side. Meanwhile across the city Villa almost pulled off a jammy win of there own, scoring against the run of play against Manchester City only to be denied by a last-minute goal from Richards, who is apparently a Brummie but sounded suspiciously like a Manc to me.

Especially after he swore in the post-match interview.

Footbal Fun 'n' Games

Birmingham's thumping 5-0 victory over the Portsmouth Pirates yesterday has brought back my love of football. There is just a chance we might stay up although it may unfortunately be at the expense of our neighbours West Brom, who gifted division whipping boys Sunderland a win increasing the Mackems points tally by a third - now they are halfway to breaking their record low points tally of 18.

Meanwhile in t'North of t'city Aston Villa have been having all kinds of fun and games. A consortium of Irish businessmen are in negotiations with Deadly Doug in a takeover bid (he must be going soft in his old age) but the funniest news came from the News of the World last week when fake sheik Mazhar Mahmood convinced England boss Sven Goran-Eriksson he was planning a takeover of the Second City sleeping giants, encouraging him to join him in a bid and getting him to admit he has the relationship with Mr Beckham to bring the England captain to the Midlands.

Meanwhile current manager O'Leary is fuming, claiming he has always given full support to the quiet Swede and that the England manager should not be commenting on joining clubs where there is already a manager. Perhaps if he'd been doing a better job as Villa manager, there wouldn't be so much speculation about his job?

Gotta love the Villains.

Another Successful Night for Midlands Football

Birmingham City scraped through to the quarter-finals of the Carling Cup last night by beating Millwall 4-3 on penalties, hardly an inspiring result given that the Londoners are currently bottom of the Championship. Meanwhile city rivals Villa lost 3-0 to the footballing might of Doncaster, the lowest positioned team left in the competition. Every cloud has a silver-lining however; they can now concentrate on their Premiership challenge. Their challenge being to stay in it.

With Chasetown losing 4-0 to Oldham in the replay last week it appears that the West Midlands sides have peaked too early. Time to go further afield, and support Worcester City in their televised home match against Huddersfield in the FA Cup 2nd round on Sunday.

Come on Chasetown!

It hasn't been a good start to the season for the West Midlands Premiership teams. With just over a quarter of the season gone, the West Midlands teams occupy three of the bottom four places, with only Sunderland providing some semblance of dignity for our local footballers. Add to this the recent defeat by Villa, and Robbie Savage smirking that his team are "above the bigger club in the league", it's enough for most Birmingham City fans to take up something less boring instead.

Thank God for Chasetown. They claim to have made £5000 from gate receipts last year, which is according to David Sullivan 1/18 of what Blues pay for their three main strikers (between them) each week. They made as much money from the match against Oldham Athletic as they earned in the last 15 years. A great performance yesterday saw them earn a replay against a team roughly a million places above them in the football league. Chasetown may have a hard time winning the replay, but at least it gives us something to be proud about.

Which is more than can be said for our Premiership clubs.

Bring on the Convicts

The People's Republic has been anticipating the beginning of the Ashes series with some excitement for months now. Rest assured that we will have a presence at the home of Brummie cricket, Edgbaston, which hosts the second test beginning on 4th August 2005. Until then, presumably we will have to tolerate a defeat at Lord's, where we haven't beaten the convicts for 71 years.

Bring it on.

Meanwhile, the People's Republic are still puzzling over Peter Crouch's £7 million move to Liverpool. When Graham Taylor brought him to Villa for £6 million a few years ago, everyone thought he was having delusions of finding the next Ian Ormandroyd.

How did one of the biggest jokes of English football become the star summer signing of the European Champions?