WHAT’S HOT WHAT'S NOT
HOT WEST HAM UNITED
THE HAMMERS will have a remodelled attack next season after investing £40million in Marko Arnautovic and Javier Hernandez (right). Both strikers have undoubted talent and as long as manager Slaven Bilic explains to the former that one performance every three weeks isn’t good enough and talks the latter through the basics of the offside rule then West Ham should be OK.
GARY PLAYER
YOU can’t move at Royal Birkdale for swing coaches, putting gurus and mind mentors, which reminded me of a great Player quote. ‘Why would I take a lesson from a guy who couldn’t beat me?’ asked the legendary South African. Player won nine majors including three Opens.
DANIEL LEVY
THE Tottenham chairman has done it again. £54m for Kyle Walker represents another masterstroke in the transfer market. The last time he did this was when he got £85m for Gareth Bale in 2013. What Tottenham must not do this time is waste the money.
NOT HULL CITY
THE Tigers have hired a brave coach in the Russian Leonid Slutsky (right) but he is unlikely to find his own approach to life is mirrored by his employers. Hull, relegated last season, sold four big players in 72 hours this week, prompting Slutsky to say: ‘Sales are finished.’ He currently has 17 players available to him so he must hope he is proved right.
JOE ROOT
SO the England batsman now knows what being captain is really all about and it has to be said he failed one of his first tests. ‘I can’t believe he said that,’ opined Root after hearing Michael Vaughan’s withering assessment of England’s second innings collapse against South Africa. If England bat like that in Australia this winter, Vaughan’s words will sound comforting in comparison.
MONACO
THE Ligue 1 champions are the latest to make noises about illegal approaches being made to their players. Recently Stoke City owner Peter Coates said that tapping up ‘happens all the time’. So when will a club make a complaint about a senior player and see it through to the end? Never, that’s when. Football may as well declare open season and let everybody get on with it.