COSTLY BENCH WARMERS

The Premiership's most costly bench-warmers have been revealed in a new list published by football website IMScouting.com. Heading the league is West Ham's injury-prone Kieron Dyer, who having played no more than two Premiership games since August 2007 has cost the Hammers an estimated £1.1m per game. He is closely followed by Manchester United's Gary Neville, who is only now returning to long-term action following a succession of long-term injuries. Since the start of last season, Neville has played just four Premiership matches, putting his estimated cost per game at £840,000. Manchester City fans won't be surprised to see the unfortunate Valeri Bojinov as their club's most costly non-performer. Since signing for the Eastlands club in the summer of 2006, Bojinov has played a mere four games due to injury, putting his cost to City at an estimated £480,000 per game. Other high profile names on the list including Tottenham's perenially-crocked Ledley King, costing an estimated £285,000 per game since last August. Louis Saha has cost Everton an estimated £87,000 per game while Dwight Yorke has been worth an estimated £58,000 a game since joining Sunderland. Football database site IMScouting.com created the list by calculating the ratio of estimated salary against Premiership games played amongst players at each top flight club since August 2007.

WHY DO THEY DO IT?

An Investigation into the Motives that drive Ghanaian Football Investors

Our league will commennece in about 24hrs and three teams will join the biggest teams to kick it off. two of the clubs are competing in the league fro the very first time, while the other one is a traditional club just back from the lower division wilderness after a decade absecne.
Every year people across the country get very passionate about the game so much. People fight in board rooms for control over clubs whose structure makes no business sense in a market that is thin in market size with very little source of auxiliary income. football is an expensive undertaking that offers little reward especially in a country like ours.
So why are so many people prepared to take the risk of investing in football?

WHY RACISM IS STILL RIFE IN THE SAPNISH GAME

On the weekend of the first week in Nov , Samuel Etoo fro the umpteenth time got racially abused by the fans Real Zaragoza.
Spain has a really bad example of failing to to clamp down on racism in the beautiful game. There numerous counts of abuses against Black players with the culprits ranging in outlook and orientation.Particularly for Etoo , it is distressing to see such a brilliant superstar ,well behaved and a great addition to the Spanish game receive such bigotry for no apparent reason most often.Racism is so rife even the top clubs are involved.And they are getting bolder, taking it into international games and Champions league games as well
the other day it was Athletico Madrid racially abusing not only black players of Marseilles but Black journalist traveling with them as well.
I pin this bad state of affairs down to one person ;Louis Aragones. This revered coach who recently took Spain to the Euro championships earlier in the summer made a couple of racial remarks and was left unpunished and this i believe has emboldened the extremists.The football community must clamp down hard on racism or else a few bad ones will mar this beautiful game

PLB PULLS THE RUG FROM UNDER THE FEET OF ONE TOUCH

Just this afternoon , the Professional League Board , that organizes the Ghana Premier league released a press statement in which they announced that One touch will no longer be the Title Sponsors of the 2008/09 league season which starts this weekend.
this development is not really a surprise since there has been talk in football circles that most of the people who call the shots in Ghanaian Football are not happy with the offer of OneTouch(whose new owners , Vodafone, are believed not to be too keen on sponsoring the Ghanaian league anyway)plus the keen interest from other potential sponsors that are willing to pay top cedis for the title sponsorship.
Ghana Football seems to be in for a nice walk to the bank due to the fierce competition among some of the highest growth sector corporations looking for opportunity to promote their brands.
Waiting in the wings are Glo and Zain ,both newcomers to the country's highly competitive telecom industry and willing to pay well for the opportunity to have their name associated with an event like the League which is covered nationwide plus the benefit of television coverage in the form of GBS.
A lot of money will be poured into football this season like never before and we all pray that it will be used to lay a firm foundation for the take-off of truly professional football in the Country.