Ray Parlour, Martin Keown will play in the FA Cup this coming season « Untold Arsenal: Arsenal News. 800,000 visits last month
By Tony Attwood
Ray Parlour and Martin Keown will play in the FA Cup this season, with David Seaman as the side’s goal keeping coach.
Budweiser has signed our old chums to play/coach for Wembley FC, the non-league side it sponsors, in the FA Cup, which it sponsors. Also.
Bud give the Racist-by-Association (see previous article) Football Association £24m or so over 3 years for the FA Cup.
Terry Venables (remember him?) is the club’s technical adviser. The club plays in the Cherry Red Records Combined Counties Football League and has also signed Graeme Le Saux, Claudio Caniggia and Brian McBride with David Seaman as the goalkeeping coach.
ESPN – the most laughable and appallingly awful of all TV stations with football on (oh don’t get me going on ESPN. Remember the time they covered Everton 1 Arsenal 6 and spent the second half showing pictures of ex-Everton players in the stand and saying what a shame it was for them to see their old team beaten) is doing a documentary on it all.
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And if you thought all this was odd… did you know that Rangers (the Glasgow Football Club currently on the edge) has supposedly been negotiating to buy Bury FC and move itself into the English league. Or so it says in the papers. This is the Guardian’s take on it today…
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“Reports claim Charles Green’s consortium, which took over Rangers last week, have looked into the possibility of acquiring the League One side.”
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I looked for silly stories today because it’s my birthday – (which is also the birthday of Woolwich Arsenal, so that’s nice – well I think it’s nice) and because the last piece was so serious, and I am waiting for Walter’s complete analysis of referees last season (and it is enormous.
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But the mention of Rangers must take us back to more serious matters. They are waiting for a vote on whether they are to be re-admitted to the Clydesdale Bank Premier League. Hearts and Dundee United have said they would vote against.
Rangers need 8 votes to get back in, and 12 teams including Rangers vote. So they can only afford four teams to say no, and so far two have said no. Nine teams left to declare, and Rangers need seven to say yes.
Inverness and Motherwell are both leaving the vote up to their supporters, which looks rather interesting and democratic. But I may have missed something in this, since I am English not Scottish – however it does look like both sets of fans will say no.
So what then? If Rangers do get back in, they still have to face the consequences of previous actions – including the court case they took to overturn the ban on signing players – a new punishment is needed there. So they could get in via the clubs’ vote and then immediately be thrown out as the new punishment for past misbehaviour. (I really think that going to law against that “no new signings” thing was silly – it really opened the gate for further, harsher punishments.)
But if Rangers do not get back in to the Premier League, it means Rangers would apply to the Scottish Football League – and hope to get into Division 1. But the League might say no, Division 3 it is. So their big local rival match would be Rangers v Queens Park.
But what does this mean for the TV deal – always an important consideration. That TV deal is based on mostly showing Rangers and Celtic matches, including of course Rangers v Celtic four times a year at least. I guess the TV companies could pull out – but they might say, “if it is just one year in Division 1, and then presumably a promotion, we’ll keep the deal in place.” So TV could determine what happens since the clubs don’t want to lose the TV money.
But on the other hand those clubs that will play in Division 1, might say no, hold on, that makes Division 1 a dead league next season, for a full strength Rangers with no restrictions on signings will be bound to go up. What are the rest of us playing for?
And is it relevant to England? I still think so, because I think we are going to see some of these happen in England too. Portsmouth maybe – but if not Birmingham maybe, and if not there will be others. You can almost see the queue of bankrupt sides at lining up.