Where next for Mohamed Diame?

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Mohamed Diame seems to have a lot going for him. Born in Creteil, France, the 25 year old football player has caught the attention of many clubs this season. After impressing West Ham, Diame has been in the news several times, and may end up being a star player for one of the top teams in the upcoming years, thanks to his admirable performance.

At the start of the season, the Senegal International joined up with the Hammers, and this would have been yet another chance for the young player to show his skills, but it ended up that a little known clause in his contract allowed him a £3.5 million exit, and the midfield player’s long term future was then cast into doubt at Upton Park.

So despite impressing at Upton Park this season, it still remains to be seen whether Diame is the right choice for Arsenal. This is the main team that has been watching the young star, and Arsene Wenger has been criticised for not having a strong, dominant midfielder since the departure of Patrick Viera.

The skills behind Diame are well known, but he still may not have the passing abilities that would be required for such a position among the Arsenal team. They already have Abou Diaby back from his past injuries, and another young rising star is Francis Coquelin, already promised to the team.

Some analysts have said that Arsenal should look for more long term benefits by going to ball winning dominant players, and that Diame may end up clogging up the squad. Diame may just not be the man they need, yet everything is not lost for the young player, as many other teams may be looking his way. If Arsenal does pass on Diame, he most likely will not have look far to find other interested parties.

 

Big Sam feels robbed after FA Cup loss to Man U

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Sam Allardyce the manager of West Ham felt that a penalty should have been called but wasn’t when his team left the FA Cup with a 0-1 loss against Manchester United. The only goal was scored by Wanye Rooney in the third-round replay.

A penalty shot was missed in the second half, and it was due to referee Phil Dowd catching Jordan Spence getting his hand on the ball. While Allardyce wasn’t disputing that, he felt that the Hammers should have been given a penalty kick as well as Rafael seemed to also touch the ball illegally.

Allardyce told ITV that the was no doubt in his mind that Rafael committed a handball foul just like Spence’s. The only difference was that Spence was on the West Ham side, which was the away team. He implied that the referee was more lenient due to Rafael playing at home.

The manager continued by stating that this is nothing new at Old Trafford. While he acknowledged the ref was in a difficult spot to pick out the handball, he was in a worse position when he called Jordon Spence. Yet he managed to see that one.

On the other hand, United advanced to a fourth-round tie with Fulham, and Ryan Giggs of United said he was a relieved about it. Per his interview, he said that in the FA Cup anything can happen as many of the final results demonstrated. Nonetheless, he was please to get through, and he gave credit to West Ham as a tough opponent.

 

Chelsea back in the black for the first time in decade

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Chelsea had not been financially in the black since 2003 when Roman Abramovich bought the team, but when the season figures were released in November the club reported it had made £1.4m in the year to the end of June 2012. They claimed the profit was the result of a very successful season plus some better commercial deals and a substantial profit on transfers.

At the time Chelsea’s chief executive, Ron Gourlay, noted that the change from the previous season’s loss of £67.7m showed that the club was ‘on track’ to meet the financial fair play rules set out by Uefa. However, not all the figures were forthcoming at the time, and further accounting filed at Companies House revealed a slightly different prospect.

Part of that profit came from the cancellation of £15m in non-equity preference shares previously owned by BSkyB in a joint venture, and about £3.4m in dividends. Another £28.8m came from the sale of several players, including Yuri Zhirkov to the Russian club Anzhi, Nicolas Anelka to the Chinese club Shanghai Shenhua and Alex Anelka to Paris St-Germain.

Another figure that was added to the profit side of accounts was about £4.7m that had been earmarked for compensation of former managers; it was retained as profit when the intended recipients found other employment. If all these figures weren’t added in, the club’s £1.4m profit would have been changed to a loss of £19.9m.

Chelsea has made some great moves since Abramovich took over, winning the Premier League three times and for the first time taking the trophy for top club in Europe. However, the UEFA financial fair play rules are designed to force clubs to handle their financial affairs responsibly, and club secretary Alan Shaw said that still poses a challenge.

The fact that Chelsea didn’t make it into the final stages of the Champions League is likely to pose a major challenge anyway. It means that they will be playing in the much less lucrative Europa League in the spring, with an inevitable reduction in the amount of earnings.

Match ticket prices continue to vary greatly

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There are no rules laid down anywhere about how much a ticket to see a live football match should cost. It’s one of those ‘whatever the market will bear’ situations, and football clubs always need more money than they’ve got, so it is only to be expected that ticket prices will be as high as the management can set them and still get a sizeable, if not sell out, crowd.

Football fans are a special breed of the species; they have priorities of course, and at the top of those is seeing their team win an exciting and hard-fought match. It just doesn’t get any better than that – as long as they’re seeing this spectacle from a spot in the stadium. TV coverage is great and all, but it’s just not the same as being there. A lot of them are willing to pay the price, but apparently there are limits.

Last week’s events made it clear that maybe the limit on ticket prices is not the sky; maybe it lies somewhere underneath that supposedly limitless height. When Manchester City returned a third of its allocation for the match with Arsenal on Sunday, 912 tickets priced at £62 per, it may have precipitated a groundswell for a change in the rules.

Currently Premier League rules are that ticket prices must be the same for fans from away as they are for the locals. There is quite a controversy on the issue, with the argument that fans dedicated enough to make the journey at their own expense should not be further burdened with higher ticket prices. It’s a fact that without rival fans in the stadium, the levels of tension and excitement are noticeably reduced.

The Football Supporters’ Federation (FSF) is reportedly working with Supporters Direct, which is representative of rival football fans, to lobby for a price cap of £20 to £25 for away games. FSF president Malcolm Clarke said they would be launching a campaign in the next few weeks aimed at placing a maximum on the amount charged; he said fans have had just about enough.

FC Metalist sold by Yaroslavskiy for $300m

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Aleksander Yaroslavskiy is one of the Ukraine’s most influential businessman and was the main investor in the Euro 2013 contest. He is also the owner if the DCH Group and football club FC Metalist, and his announcement that he has sold the latter has sent shockwaves throughout Russian football. Neither the new investor nor the price paid was initially disclosed, but Forbes have estimated it as approximately $300m.

During the 7 years in which Yaroslavskiy was the president of FC Metalist, the club experienced the brightest stage of development in its entire 85-year history. The businessman has invested more than $ 570 million in the development of Kharkiv football and preparation of the city for Euro 2012.

Formerly 173th place in the UEFA club ranking, FC Metalist now consistently ranks among the top 30 clubs in Europe. Over the past six seasons the team won Ukrainian championship bronze medals six times. In 2007, after a 20-year break, Metalist returned to the European Cup arena: the UEFA Cup first, then Europa League, with victories over Bayer, Sochaux”, “Austria”, “Sporting”, Sampdoria, Debrecen, Besiktas, Galatasaray, and Olympiakos.

This season, the Kharkiv team also excelled with “the goal of the century” scored by Taison, and, as a result, UEFA has added Metalist`s striker to the symbolic European team. In addition, thanks to Yaroslavskiy, the Kharkiv club now has a training camp which, according to football experts, is comparable to the infrastructure of Barcelona and Bayern. And Kharkiv no longer needs to give its young football talents to other clubs – thousands of children are able to train in the academy of Metalist.

At home games the team enjoys the support of full stands, and, thanks to Euro 2012, Kharkiv fans were able to witness matches between the strongest teams in Europe, and with the brightest football stars, such as Michel Platini, or Cristiano Ronaldo, in their native city.

In his statement Yaroslavskiy named the reason for the sale of FC Metalist: “There is only one (and this is the main one) reason why I have to leave the club: The confusing claims of the city government on me as the investor and as a result, an unprecedented psychological pressure exerted on the team and staff. This unhealthy atmosphere threatens all that was created by hard work of many people.” So politically correctly the businessman referred to pressure to transfer the Metalist stadium – the home arena of the club, built for Euro 2012 under the direction of Yaroslavskiy in the format of public-private partnerships (30% of the investments from Yaroslavskiy, 50% from the state budget, and 20% from local budgets of Kharkiv city and Kharkiv region) – to municipal ownership.

Kharkiv journalists found out that the object was built for the money of the president of FC “Metalist”, which the state then gradually and with long delays was compensating. In turn, Gennadiy Kernes is also known for trying to cut popular Gorky Park under the pretext of preparing for Euro 2012, sparking violent protests of the “green”. And for the purchase of overpriced benches for Kharkiv subway and several other controversial decisions.

At the same time, in his farewell letter, Aleksander Yaroslavskiy wrote: “I do not leave Metalist to fend for themselves, I act in their interests. The change in the investor eliminates the personal factor while preserving the source of funding of the club.” In an interview to Forbes, he said: “This is not the first attack to me and to the club, these things had been happening for a long time.

The question is not just me. There is a team, there is the head coach, the administration. I can not always breathe courage and bravery in people. I am sure for myself, I am a self-sufficient person, and the players do not understand how this can happen. Many of them are foreigners. For them, things like that are just wild…. So I found a sponsor who will fund the club.”

The new owner of FC Metalist is the non-public young Kharkiv lawyer and businessman, 27-year-old Sergii Kurchenko. In his inaugural statement, he announced ambitious goals for the club, but his meeting with the head coach of Metalist, Myron Markevych, has not yet taken place.