Buzzin Championship Football

help for heroes

All 72 Football League clubs will be taking part in the Football League’s ‘Help For Heroes’ week which runs from March 6th until March 14th.

The aim of the initiative is to raise awareness and much needed funds and to show support for the efforts and sacrifices of our Armed Forces.

‘Help For Heroes ‘ is the official charity partner of the Football League throughout the 2009/10 season and during this week all 72 clubs will be supporting the charity, with special events and collections.

All clubs will be involved with the following:

• Stage a designated Football for Heroes match at their home ground
• Provide a promotional photo featuring managers and players with Help for Heroes banners and balls
• Emerge from the tunnel behind a Help for Heroes banner
• The respective captains and the match officials will pose for a photo at kick-off with a Help for Heroes banner
• Both managers will wear Help for Heroes wristbands for the duration of the game
• The home team will sign a Football League Help for Heroes ball which will then be auctioned off for the charity

In addition to this, clubs across The Football League will also be holding bucket collections, providing discounted tickets for our heroes and staging cheque presentations from previous Help for Heroes games.

Lord Mawhinney, Chairman of The Football League said: “The contribution being made by our armed forces around the world is truly humbling. As a nation we do not thank them enough for the sacrifices they make. The Football for Heroes week will provide an excellent opportunity for supporters to show their appreciation for the outstanding work being done.”

If you were supporting at many of the League clubs on Saturday you may have already witnessed the collections and special events taking place. The Football for Heroes fixture list will continue this week at the following games:

Monday 8th March
Colchester United v. Brighton & Hove Albion
Tuesday 9th March
Bury v. Darlington (TBC)
Crystal Palace v. Bristol City

For more details of the charity and how you can help visit ‘Help For Heroes’ here.

The Football Association launched its latest campaign in its Respect programme to coincide with the England v Egypt International at Wembley last night, with its ultimate aim to reduce anti social behaviour, both on and off the pitch.

Despite Wayne Rooney showing signs of frustration with his team mates during the game, he did manage to control himself impeccably in front of the referee and only the continual booing of John Terry let some members of the crowd down.

The FA’s two latest films ‘Are You Losing it?‘ address the issues of anti social behaviour in the form of abusive behaviour from fans  at a match and also an over bearing adult screaming and shouting at his child from the touchline.

The Football Association say that they are making progress in their Respect Campaign with an increase in the number of qualified and trainee referees this season, a drop in the number of dissent cautions throughout the Football League in all divisions and referee assaults down by 25%.

The Respect programme has become a compulsory module in the FA’s training courses for all new referees and coaches coming into the game each season.

On the down side there is still much work to be done; 800 grassroots games were abandoned in 2008/09 season due to player or spectator misconduct and 1 in 4 parents would not consider confronting an offensive spectator for fear of physical retaliation.

You can help further improve the game by joining The FA Respect Campaign here.

It’s what every premiership club dreads – Relegation to the English Football League.

Many top flight football clubs are faced with the prospect of being earmarked for relegation during the festive period. With the Premiership tables being crammed full of football clubs with wealthy backers, it seems somewhat a dreadful situation for them to know to have spent millions on players and managers only to see results fall flat. Ultimately relegation looms. We can just look at Newcastle United for such a classic example last season. Newcastle was a sad story of mismanagement which actually started off as being quite promising. A rich multi-millionaire in Mike Ashley with a long standing clothing business bought the club in 2006 but where things turned sour was the continuation of the infamous revolving door policy for managers which led to all kinds of instability in the dressing room. Players lost interest and the club’s results slid until they were demoted in 2009 to the Championship via a lack lustre performance against Aston Villa – a match they had needed to win.

A club like Newcastle United, who enjoyed 16 years of the premiership football and they have begun their Championship campaign with gusto, much to the surprise of sports pundits. Some football bookmakers on the online betting circuit had faith in seeing the Toon promoted with odds of 15/8 back in August 09. Not bad considering that Newcastle United had just dumped its talisman, Alan Shearer, in favour of the untested Chris Hughton as manager at the time. However, the last thing a club would want to know is the betting odds; the first priority for any ex-Premiership club was to get rid of the excesses and there usually are plenty of them in player wages.

Players who expressed no desire to play on were quickly shown the door. In the case of Newcastle, those players were Damien Duff (undisclosed), Obafemi Martins (£9m) and Shay Given (£6m). Obviously, the sale of high profile players would help cushion some of the blow of reduced income from TV and sponsorship deals. That coupled with a parachute payment which totalled around £12m for dropping a league down.

Compare this to being in the Premiership, where a club get £38m just for being in that league and that’s discounting other lucrative deals on top. Ticket prices are normally affected as well with 8-10% price reductions to try and entice disgruntled fans back into stadiums as well as keeping those all important season ticket holders. Right now, Newcastle can comfortably fill around 42-49,000 spectators for a home match which is nothing to be sniffed at. Newcastle United has always been credited for having a large hardcore fan-base and this season so far has proved nothing less.

Both West Brom and Newcastle have adapted well to life in the Championship whilst Middlesbrough have been the surprise strugglers despite the help of the newly recruited, Gordon Strachan. Newcastle had to do much more to bolster its chances for promotion at the start. Much to their credit, there work has so far paid dividends, with a club managing to keep a lot of its past season’s players who have so far proved that a class above the rest in this league.

A higher wage bill will probably be the price to pay for returning to the Premiership.  Some may argue that playing in the Championship has done Newcastle more good then if they experienced another hapless season in the Premiership. Just look at them now as they have got rid of some deadwood and now play with certain ambition in them that has led to back-to-back wins – a feat they could not achieve in the past few years in the top flight league.

The Premiership 2009-2010 season is just as tight at this stage with three out a possible 11 teams trying to avoid the drop. Like Newcastle United before them, Portsmouth have been handed the uphill task of trying to regain some kind of form against a dire backdrop of boardroom controversies.

Will they be relegated to the Championship? A betting man will no doubt put money on it.

paul hart qpr coach

Queens Park Rangers have parted company with suspended manager Jim Magilton, the former Ipswich manager left the club late on Wednesday night by ‘mutual consent.’

Claims that Magilton had head butted midfielder Akos Buzsaky following the game at Watford on December 7th were denied by the outgoing manager, but QPR have decided to move on with yet another new coach at the helm.

Former Portsmouth coach Paul Hart has been handed the job at Loftus Road and he will be joined by Mick Harford who will work as his assistant at Rangers.

Hart becomes the fifth ‘full time’ manager to arrive at QPR in the last two years, Harford is among the list of caretaker managers that have served during that same period.

What can Paul Hart bring to QPR that John Gregory, Luigi de Canio, Paulo Sousa, Iain Dowie and Jim Magilton couldn’t manage?

Portsmouth believed that Hart was instrumental in keeping the south coast club in the Premier League last season in what was a difficult season for the club both on and off the field.

However the coach was not offered a full time contract until this season was well under way and then within a few weeks of signing he was sacked by Portsmouth with the club at the bottom of the league table.

It is fair to say that Portsmouth have been a better team this season than their results suggest, but moreover it is impossible to assess a club that has struggled financially and seen many of its key players move away.

QPR do not have those problems, but they do face the problem of expectancy, they are a well financed club that expects to be fighting for promotion and are currently falling well short.

Personally I cannot see Hart or anyone else for that matter, getting a long enough run to win over the management at QPR and as I said when Magilton joined the club it is akin to accepting the poison chalice.

Jim Magilton managed the club for 23 games, Paolo Sousa lasted for 26 while Ian Dowie stayed for 15 games. Not a great record, and I believe the results of those constant switches can be seen in the results on the pitch.

Good luck to Paul Hart, a really nice guy who deserves a break, but I can’t really see him being at Loftus Road come the end of the season.

Watford Leisure, the owner of Watford Football Club, could fall into administration by close of business today if demands to repay loans of £4.9 million are not met.

Chairman Jim Russo and senior board members Vince Russo and Robin Williams resigned at the club AGM on Tuesday and immediately demanded the repayment of £4.9 million of loans to Valley Grown Salads, a business that the Russo’s have a stake in.

Watford FC will automatically face a ten point penalty if they do go into administration, dropping them from current tenth in the league on 30 points, to second from bottom of the Championship.

Former manager Graham Taylor has taken over as temporary chairman of Watford, but no comment on the financial situation has been made as yet.

Could former owner Elton John help his much loved club out?  Well he is planning a concert to help raise funds for the club in May next year, but that may be too little too late for the club.