Loyalty, principles and the Monday that changed football

Football Food For Thought / Tareq Quiroz / 05 September 2008 / Leave a Comment

TQ had mixed feelings about the events that occurred on transfer deadline day on Monday that included Robinho and Berbatov going, Villa staying and two Premiership managers resigning.

It's official - the world of football has gone mad. It has been one hell of a week for the game we love and it's not finished yet. There are so many things going around in my head at this point that I am finding it hard to focus. Are Manchester City really the new superpowers in world football? And can it be that two of the Premier League's top managers have resigned on a matter of principles?

The overriding question in all this is how far will anyone go to get what they want? If we believe that the world's top players have a certain level of dignity then Man City's potential meteoric rise may never materialise. We will never really know exactly what happened behind the scenes on possibly the most dramatic Monday football has ever witnessed but it has thrown up certain doubts over whether Man City can buy their way to success.

Assuming it wasn't all a big smokescreen it appears that Dimitar Berbatov turned down the substantial offer from Man City to commit his future to the other half of Manchester. He might well say, and I would dearly like to believe, that he wouldn't have gone to Man City even if they had offered him another £50K per week. I really think there is some truth in that but that would then no doubt trigger the Spurs fans who would claim that if he was a man of principles then he wouldn't have sulked around the club until he got what he wanted. It's a tough call but I would edge towards the guarantee of silverware that Man Utd deliver was the biggest draw. The biggest of all being the attempt to win yet another Champions League trophy as they are current second favourites to do that at odds of [7.4].

I don't blame Berbatov for attempting to fulfill his dreams but the same can't be said about Monday's other big transfer deal. Robinho's move to Man City has left a sour taste in my mouth. I do not believe that he has gone to the club to achieve his footballing ambitions but more to benefit from the lucrative package offered to him.

A star of the game playing for possibly the biggest club in the world does not move to Eastlands to join the revolution. The Brazilian has already mistakenly called his new club Chelsea in an interview and it would be my guess that it won't be that much longer before he wishes that's where he was. Man City fans will no doubt expect him to be a raging success and any that really think that can always head towards the Premier League Top Goalscorer market where Robinho is currently available at [65].

Of course it is easy to criticise those that have made the move but what of those who didn't? David Villa has stayed at Valencia despite interest from a whole host of clubs - he has remained loyal to his current club. I think we may have unearthed a footballer with principles. He claims that he would never do to Valencia what Robinho did to Madrid and was more than happy to stay.

He could have kicked up a fuss and easily got a move to a European giant, where Champions League success is far more likely that at the club where he is. A man with loyalty is a man to be admired but in this case he is also a man who won't be playing in the Champions League this season. He will have to console himself with an attack on the UEFA Cup, where Valencia are currently trading at [17.5] to win the trophy.

If you can question the principles of some of the world's top players it is refreshing this week to see two of the top managers in the Premier League resign over issues they felt were not acceptable. Both Alan Curbishley and Kevin Keegan have indicated that their resignations are surrounding the lack of support they were getting from the board and more importantly they felt that deals were being done without their knowledge.

It is refreshing to see that these men have given up their posts without apparently all the wrangling over compensation and the only people to come out looking bad in all this are the board of both clubs concerned. These clubs are now looking for suitable replacements and there are some interesting market leaders already. Roberto Mancini is the current favourite to take the West Ham job at odds of [3.6] and surprisingly it is Gus Poyet heading the list for the Newcastle role at [7.6].

As a lover of the game it has been a week I would rather forget. Fortunately one of the great things about the game is that there is always something else around the corner to get our attention. I am going to concentrate on the International scene and put all this transfer madness behind me...until January that is.