This may be a slight abuse of my power, but I'm passing on a responsibility to you.
The first time you hear a player, manager or director of a Premier League club complain of `burn-out', `fixture congestion' or
`being down to the bare bones' in the coming season, you have my permission to slap them around the face with your souvenir
86-page Really Important In No Way Money-Making Let's Sell Some Shirts Summer Jolly Around Asia Tour Programme.
Ah yes, pre-season. A time when the cobwebs are blown away and the disappointments of the previous season are forgotten.
Which is why Chelsea are in Moscow losing on penalties.
To be fair to Big Phil and his band of brothers, they'd already hammered three starry-eyed teams in Asia and went on to rout
AC Milan to take the coveted third place in the Russian Railways Cup, for which they presumably earned quite a lot more than
the price of a Return Day Saver to Vladivostok.
Manchester United played four games in front of their most important fans, those from Africa that buy replica shirts. Oddly,
after pitching up in Nigeria and finding no local opposition to face, United settled for a game against Portsmouth, conveniently in the same region of West Africa at the time. Odd that.
Liverpool have trawled around Europe, hitting as many countries as possible in what's become commonly known as the
`let's try and sell Andriy Voronin' tour, while Everton and West Ham have been losing in America in World Series of Soccerball matchups that wouldn't have done much for their confidence, and worse, proved David Beckham right to live it up out there instead of challenging Leon Osman or Matthew Etherington for a first team place.
In Hungary, for reasons best known to themselves, Arsenal ran up a comedy 10-2 scoreline last seen when Aaron Ramsey scored
eight in Class 5B's convincing win over Class 5A in a particularly memorable dinnertime matchup at his Cardiff primary school last year. The Gunners then played host to some proper teams, and lost to Juventus.
Is it really all worth it? Sure it's good to give younger players some first team experience but, at Liverpool for example,
surely the likes of Jay Spearing and Damien Plessis won't get a look in when Rafa Benitez finally signs Gareth Barry/we all lose the will to live?
Is it worth going so far away to play meaningless matches? Obviously in today's money-driven market it seems to be, but does there need to be so many games?
Like so many things in football, it just seems to be an excuse for the rich to get richer.
Columnist: Mark Jones, 2008-08-12.
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