Nouveau riche City prove you can't buy class

David Mellor
21 Jan 2009

Hats off to Kaka. He may be a bit weird but his decision to snub £500,000 a week in order to stay loyal to the club that made him is a shining beacon of hope in the amoral darkness of professional football.

City didn't sign Kaka, but did nail Craig Bellamy, surely proving to the sceptical that cynicism can be overdone and people do sometimes get what they deserve.

It's impossible to feel sorry for City.  At a time of global economic crisis, the reported bid of £108million in transfer fees and £25m a year in salary for a single player is obscene.

Ninety seven per cent of Standard readers in our poll last week thought no footballer is worth half a million a week, and they're right.

Had Kaka signed up, it would have raised the bar and given another enormous boost to football's already rampant inflation. Think about it. Robinho, City's previous saviour-that-wasn't, is on £160k a week, itself pretty monstrous when you think it's at least four or five times what the average City fan earns in a year. But if Kaka had come in for three times Robinho's wad, is it conceivable Robinho's people wouldn't have put in for a massive pay rise? Of course they would.

As it is, Robinho has apparently walked out, proving that just chucking money around on star players is no way to build success. 

There are some clubs that whatever they do, they're doomed to failure. Newcastle are like that and so too, to a slightly lesser degree, are Spurs. But history suggests the slam-dunk guaranteed failure of failures, even if the Archangel Gabriel were to be installed as manager, is Manchester City. They have never done anything much, ever, and my bet is they never will. As the Arabs say, it is written.

The curse of City has even knocked the stuffing out of Mark Hughes. He improved Wales' international rankings by more than 50 places and kept Blackburn competitive on buttons.  Indeed, I fancied him both for the England job and for Chelsea. As it is, he went to Eastlands and has become a little boy lost.

City may have billions but they've got no class, no pedigree and are more likely to become the world's richest relegated club than Europe's best-endowed world-beaters.

As Oscar Wilde famously said of the tragic end of Little Nell, you need a heart of stone not to laugh.

Harry Redknapp is getting an easy ride. After a bright start as Spurs boss, his near miraculous motivational powers were lauded to the skies.

Since when, however, Spurs have taken three points from their last six League matches, and are joint bottom almost, exactly where they were when Harry was appointed. But does anyone suggest Redknapp isn't the business after all?  No they don't.

Lucky old Harry. After the Pompey match, he couldn't wait to make Darren Bent the scapegoat.

"My missus would have scored that," Harry sniffed about an admittedly wretched miss. 

True, but hardly likely to build up Bent's confidence for the future. But who am I to question the man-management of a genius?

Time for Kevin the Teenager to prove he's the next Perry

While all those photos of a half-naked Andy Murray messing about with his muscles are, in the immortal words of Elisabeth Schwarzkopf, a German operatic soprano with an imaginative command of English, vomitacious, I still wish the lad well.

He has, after all, had to put up with a lot of jibes about being a gangly weakling, who lacks the stamina to sustain a Grand Slam challenge through seven matches in a fortnight, so he is entitled to show us the benefit of his gym work.

Anyone who dared to predict a couple of years ago that this mouthy, Kevin the Teenager lookalike would be the next Fred Perry, would have been laughed off court anywhere in the world.

But I reckon he probably is, and Australia right now is as good a place as any to prove it and become the first male British Grand Slam winner since 1936.

Beware false prophet

When the history of rampant opportunism comes to be written, there will surely be at least a footnote devoted to ex-Tory treasurer Lord Marland, now busily trying to oust Giles Clarke as chairman of the England and Wales Cricket Board.

Marland is nothing if not versatile because he popped up not so long ago pursuing the Football Association chairmanship, where he failed to make the shortlist. After a failed attempt to be chairman of English Heritage, and I dare say others we don't know about, Marland presents as a man desperate for a high-profile job, and any one will do.

I am far from Giles Clarke's biggest fan but the counties, who will decide on 9 February, might be well advised to cling on to nurse for fear of something worse, so leaving a rebuffed Marland to seek the presidency of the English Tiddlywinks Association.

Red-faced ref

That walking blunderbox Stuart Attwell was at it again at Brentford on Saturday, sending off home team forward Nathan Elder after eight minutes for an elbow so innocuous none of the Notts County players bothered to make a fuss.

Accident-prone 26-year-old Attwell, recently appointed one of only nine English FIFA referees, apparently can't even be trusted to do a League Two game properly. 

How embarrassing is that to his bosses? Except, of course, our clueless Football Association are way beyond embarrassment on anything.