A good friend of mine is currently awaiting news of whether he will lose his job. He works for a local authority which employs over 7,000 people and is looking to axe 600 by the end of March. That scenario is being acted out in both public and private organisations throughout the country as the financial crisis sweeping the UK tightens its grip.
PLENTY going on in football this week with the fourth round of the FA Cup and the final few days of the mid-season transfer window, but the big talking point has been the row over sexist comments made by two Sky TV pundits about female officials.
MOST young boys who dream of becoming a footballer want to be a star striker, and it is easy to see why – they grab all the headlines and quite often most of the money: Struggling Premier League side Aston Villa splashed out £18million (the deal could eventually rise to £24million) for Sunderland forward Darren Bent last week.
THE fixture list was extremely kind to Sky TV on Sunday, providing their football subscribers with three local Derbies in one day.
And the viewing public were not disappointed. Liverpool and Everton served up a cracking 2-2 draw, Sunderland and Newcastle battled it out for a 1-1 stalemate and in the Midlands, Birmingham and Aston Villa also tied 1-1.
THE sacking of Liverpool manager Roy Hodgson on Saturday morning was preceded a couple of days before by comments from the chief executive of the League Managers Association warning that clubs should not be “treated as the playthings of the super rich”.
Hodgson was one of four managers reportedly at risk from the axe along with Gerard Houllier at Aston Villa, Carlo Ancelotti at Chelsea and Avram Grant at West Ham.
STRUGGLING Championship club Preston North End learnt a harsh lesson this week – don’t mess with the football institution that is the Manchester United manager Sir Alex Ferguson.
Ferguson is one of the most revered men in the game, a manager with an almost unmatched honours list and a tough, powerful Scot with a demeanour that at times can be fearsome.