Arsenal red faces as Holding signs alone
ARSENAL’S official picture of defender Rob Holding signing a new four-year contract this week sums up the difficulties of announcing a month in advance that manager Arsene Wenger would be leaving at the end of the season.
The Holding snapshot was highly unusual in that there was no one else in the picture when almost every other signing moment coming out of Arsenal or any other major club has the manager or a senior official alongside the player. Arsenal say there was no one else around when Holding signed, although they admit there was also some sensitivity about including the manager in the picture when he’s leaving in a few weeks.
And an Emirates insider revealed that Wenger would have received a battering on social media if he had been pictured. However it still seems very strange that chief executive Ivan Gazidis, or another member of the management team, couldn’t provide moral support for Holding.
lMARK LAWRENSON was in the Liverpool team who won the European Cup at the Stadio Olimpico in Rome in 1984, yet the BBC Radio 5 Live football pundit was refused entry last night before Liverpool’s semi-final second leg because he didn’t have any ID. Lawro (above) was eventually allowed in — but it took some time. ONLY the MCC management and membership could spend three hours at their annual general meeting yesterday discussing numerous mundane issues, but devote less than two minutes to property developer Charles Rifkind’s offer for members and cricket fans to buy into ownership of the tunnels under the Nursery End that has attracted global interest. The meeting was even being held above those very tunnels.
MCC chief executive Guy Lavender said the Rifkind initiative didn’t impact on MCC plans.
lSUNDERLAND’S
horror season, which ended with relegation to League One and manager Chris Coleman’s sacking, is going to get global exposure in August when Netflix broadcast their fly-on-the-wall series on the troubled club. The production company involved were Fulwell 73, responsible for the Class of 92 documentary. The Sunderland access didn’t include dressing room talks by the manager, which are part of the upcoming Manchester City docu-series with Amazon, who paid over £10million for their access.
Meeting ‘like Ben Hur’
A NUMBER of Football League chairmen are fed up with the annual inconvenience of having to travel to Vilamoura in Portugal for the summer conference spread over three bloated days.
They claim that fewer club bosses bother to make the trip — sending junior operatives instead — and the event has become a junket for staff who always make the most of the freebie food and drink. One chairman said: ‘It’s astonishing how many Football League staff feel it necessary to travel to Portugal, it’s like the cast of ben Hur.’
An FL spokesman said: ‘It is important that as many owners/chairmen and senior executives are in attendance as is practically possible. We seek feedback at each conference and 85 per cent of clubs agreed the venue should remain the same.’
lNIGEL
GILLINGHAM, former Leicester Tigers lock who represents Gloucestershire on the RFU Council, caused some upset at an RFU roadshow at Stourbridge. Gillingham is part of an RFU team touring the country explaining a new system of allocating international tickets to clubs which will require them to input the teams and details of every match played from Under 14 to senior level. Asked why the proposal does not include mini-rugby, Gillingham said if kids played through mini and junior ruby, but then gave up the game before youth level, all clubs were doing was providing a child-minding service for 10 years. An RFU spokeswoman said: ‘Nigel apologised straightaway for his comment.’