Early Doors - Your morning briefing blog

McCartney: Gives you Wings

Thu Sep 04 09:05AM

George McCartney is now famous for three things, none of which has anything to do with playing football.

1-Getting in a scrap with Keith Gillespie on the Northern Ireland team plane.

2-That spurious transfer rumour linking him with AC Milan.

3-Being the unlikely cause of Alan Curbishley's departure from West Ham.

If you were a manager looking to make a stand, you would hope to do so over someone a bit sexier.

It's not that McCartney is a bad player - he was one of a handful of players to feature in every Premier League game last season - he's just not especially memorable.

Despite his off-field shenanigans and impromptu appearances in Gazzetta dello Sport, most football fans would struggle to pick him out of a police lineup.

Early Doors challenges you to name a single George McCartney highlight.

If you YouTube his name, there is only one non-Beatles result - grainy camcorder footage of him allegedly scoring in a pre-season friendly.

Then it's straight on to Paul McCartney playing 'Something' on the ukulele at a George Harrison tribute concert.

Even before they confirmed Curbishley's departure, West Ham issued a staggeringly pompous statement to defend selling McCartney having supposedly told Curbs they wouldn't.

"Unsurprisingly, this summer we received a number of significant bids for leading players - in itself emphasising the high number of quality internationals in the squad - and all were rejected," they harrumphed.

Hardly a ringing endorsement of McCartney, Anton Ferdinand, John Pantsil or Bobby Zamora.

Hammers fans immediately distanced themselves from the spat, saying they had nothing to do with Curbishley's departure.

Presumably these were not the ones booing the team off after a Carling Cup game that they won 4-1.

Harry Redknapp immediately ruled himself out of contention for the job, leaving the club's Icelandic owners to target the last man in football with any morals*, Slaven Bilic.

Bilic gets paid £200,000 a year to wear trendy suits, play guitar and manage the Croatian national team to remarkable success.

He would be offered 10 times that amount to take over at Upton Park but has so far insisted he wants to stay with Croatia until the World Cup.

ED suspects Bilic's reluctance to manage in England has as much to do with the Premier League's touchline smoking ban as does with his patriotism.

*Apart from this, obviously.

- - -

Yesterday's developments made Curbs a surprise winner of the Premier League sack race, with Kevin Keegan entering hour 73 of his talks with the Newcastle board.

ED suspects you could have made a mint if you had bet on Monday afternoon that Curbishley would beat Keegan to the dole queue.

It may be the effect of global warming but it seems to Early Doors that ambitious clubs are imploding earlier each year.

The likes of West Ham, Newcastle and Spurs would normally wait until the middle of October before letting the wheels come off completely - now they can't even make it to the first international break without plunging themselves into some crisis entirely of their own making.

- - -

Since arriving at Middle Eastlands, mercenary Manc Robinho has made every effort to eschew the Galactico lifestyle for more fitting Northern sensibilities.

According to our men on the street "Our Rob" ate breakfast at a roadside truckers' cafe in Fallowfield yesterday, before making his way to the Arndale Centre to buy The Smiths' back catalogue and stopping off on the way home to meet Mani and Bez at their local boozer for their pint of ale and pie special.

In the afternoon it all went horribly wrong however. Our Rob decided to join up with the Brazilian national team and despite the availability of myriad charter flights, Noel Gallagher's private jet and Abu Dhabi United's flying unicorn, decided to arrive by helicopter.

"I didn't want to arrive by helicopter because people will say that I'm getting carried away with success, but there was no other way," he said - with no hint of irony.

"Otherwise, I would have been late for training."

In a further revelation the Brazilian Nicolas Anelka explained his transparent reasoning behind joining long-suffering City.

"I wanted to go to Chelsea because they were the only ones who had made an offer," he said. "But I'm going to a big club who are going to fight for titles. Manchester City are Chelsea four years ago."

For City's sake, ED hopes that doesn't mean an Adrian Mutu-esque cocaine, hookers and "alleged" blood-sucking incident will befall Mark Hughes and his men, or that they'll sign Scott Parker.

- - -

QUOTE OF THE DAY: "The coach Mark Hughes will stay." Sulaiman Al-Fahim has pledged to buy 18 signings, but claims a flashy foreign manager won't be one of them. Bit early to be giving Sparky a vote of confidence, isn't it?

RUMOUR OF THE DAY: Paolo Di Canio could be bringing his unique brand of Roman charm back to east London - he has jackbooted his way onto the West Ham shortlist.

FOREIGN VIEW: It might all be 'going off' over here, but over in Spain it's a slow news week. Hence Marca lead with this: Real Madrid are the bookies favourites to win La Liga. Yikes.

TALKING POINT: Like a cheap, shameless, harlot, Early Doors is selling its soul.

Yesterday, claire881 wrote: "I will give £10 to quote me on the talking point everyday for a week... you have to look at all my posts and find the least boring one and post it!(you don't have to but it would be better than posting me saying "Morning") Do that and £10 could be paypal-ing its way to you!"

kantong_wokster then doubled the offer.

So let's start a bidding war. Early Doors will sprint a daily comment from the highest bidder every day for a week. To weed out any eBay-style fake bidders, ED will require payment before embarking on this wild goose chase. The cash will be sent on to a charity of your choice.

Send your bids to early.doors@yahoo.co.uk

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