Wednesday 14 October 2009

Notts Unravelling

For sheer entertainment value the ongoing events at Notts County take some beating. To recap on developments so far this week:

Sunday – County blow a two goal lead against Torquay, but live on Sky and in front of a pack of reporters from the nationals.
Monday – Ian McParland is sacked before the clocks go back, a surprise only to those who predicted he’d be gone by the end of August.
Tuesday – the vacancy is linked with ex Inter boss Roberto Mancini, who is “thought to have ambitions to manage in England”. Love to see the look on his face when he takes that call.
Wednesday – Sven turns down approach from North Korea to take them to South Africa, or was it South Africa to take them to North Korea?

This all has the feel of a perfect storm of everything that is wrong with modern football being played out as a parable before our eyes.

Greed (“So Sven what first attracted you to the millionaire Notts County?”)

Shadowy Owners (yet to be actually identified, sheltering behind faintly preposterous acronyms like QADBAK, which sounds like it might be the Iranian secret service or maybe the new 4x4 from Daihatsu)

Silly Expectations (talk of a five year plan to get to the Premier League – always a five year plan isn't it, never fulfilled)

Ridiculous Signings (“So Sol, what first attracted…” – ok we’ve done that one already) - not forgetting the Clueless Chairman (the brilliantly named Peter Trembling, whose moniker doubles as a job description).

For fans of a club who less than a year ago were soundly dumped out of the Cup by little old us and must have been watching Eastwood’s rise a trifle nervously, this must at one stage have seemed like salvation.

What fools, the arrival of Eriksson should have been ample warning that something was amiss. From Man City to Meadow Lane via Mexico, quite a career shift and the only reason he wound up there was Big Phil beat him to the Uzbekistan job.

Having Eriksson on the payroll is looking increasingly like the death rattle and we can only hope his next port of call is youth team coach at Diamonds.

For the rest of us the comedy just keeps on coming. Indeed it would come as no shock to eventually learn that the whole thing is an elaborate hoax cooked up by a Forest fan called Dave from Beeston.

No comments:

Post a Comment