IAN COLE does not receive £200,000 a week for compiling the sports quotes of the week, and is seeking assurances about the future of this website
“I asked to have a meeting with the boy and he reiterated what his agent had said, that he wanted to go. I said to him ‘Just remember one thing. Respect this club. I don’t want any nonsense from you. Just respect this club.’ I don’t know if he’s done that” Sir Alex Ferguson in an extraordinary interview on MUTV last Tuesday.
“My 2,000th game as a manager, is it? Feels like 10,000 this week” Sir Alex the following night as a Rooney-less United beat Bursaspor 1-0 in the Champions League.
“Players are pieces of meat, that’s how I look at it. When you’re time’s up you’re time’s up. Luckily for Wayne, he’s at a good age and he’s fit. My advice would be to tell him to make sure he looks after No.1” Roy Keane.
“I met with David Gill last week and he did not give me any of the assurances I was seeking about the future squad. I asked for assurances about the continued ability of the club to attract the top players in the world. For me, it’s all about winning trophies. Because of that I think the questions I was asking were justified” Wayne Rooney’s statement.
“Sometimes than the one you have in your own field. It rarely works out that way. It’s probably the same cow as you have – or it’s not as good” Sir Alex goes all Cantona on us.
“I’m looking at Alex Ferguson and thinking ‘What a magnificent football manager. How can he handle this?’ How he feels about Manchester United. How proud he is. Yet Wayne Rooney or his agent can manufacture a situation like this” Ian Holloway sounds ready to throw himself off Blackpool Tower.
“If one player in the team doesn’t trust the others, he should not play in the team” Patrice Evra chips in. There can surely be no way back for Rooney now…
“I felt I had to get my point across. We finally came to an agreement. It’s the best for me and for the club. I had some concerns. It’s been very complicated. It’s about the club and my career” Rooney, at 12.29pm on Friday, cracks under the “pressure” of being offered a £200,000 a week, five-year deal.
“Making the situation all the more perilous for a club already backed into a corner by the bizarre, debt-loaded American ownership is that they have built a monster pile of gambling chips and pushed them all against the Rooney number” James Lawton in a trenchant Independent column on the Rooney affair at Manchester United.
“He offered to resign and tore up his contract so it cost us no compensation. He walked away with no money and that is a measure of the man” Steve Gibson, the Middlesbrough chairman, reveals how the club parted company with manager Gordon Strachan.
“We made a deal among us that, come what may, we were going to turn up and play the game. We were the best team and we’re really pleased. It should be a nice bus journey home now” Steve Cotterill, the Portsmouth manager, after a 2-1 win at Hull – just a couple of hours after a deal is struck preventing the club from going out of business.
“We met them out shopping the other day. Wilson was with his mum. She was telling me through someone else that she’d come to England to watch him play and I haven’t been playing him. She was quite a big girl, so I’ve got to play him. I wasn’t going to mess with her” Harry Redknapp gives Wilson Palacios his first Tottenham start of the season against Everton.
“Let me ask you this. If a Stoke player had done that at Old Trafford do you think he would have been sent off? Yes. Exactly” Tony Pulis, the Stoke manager, is incredulous that Manchester United’s Gary Neville escaped a second yellow card for his scything challenge on Matt Etherington.
“England’s strategy should not be to hang on to the Ashes in a high-scoring series, if only by drawing it. It should be to attack the Australians while they are at their most vulnerable since 1987, in a low-scoring series, and to be two-up by Christmas, for then a peculiar chemistry would take effect” Scyld Berry, in the Telegraph, offers strategic advice to Andrew Strauss and his team.
“If mathematically I couldn’t win the championship then, yes, I would help Lewis. I said the championship was over immediately after this race, but we say a lot of things in the heat of the moment and I don’t stand by that now” Jenson Button, the defending F1 world champion, is 42 points behind leader Fernando Alonso with two races to go after finishing 12th in Korea and may have only McLaren’s pride to play for.
“Everyone keeps telling me how old I am but the motivation is there and the main motivation is London 2012. Someone showed me an interview I did where I said I’d be too old for 2012. But since then I’ve been getting the results, so why give up on something you’re still enjoying?” Beth Tweddle wins another gold at the world gymnastics championships.
“Better than our one. That looks like somefink from Ikea” Janet Street-Porter, culture vulture and sporting architectural expert, compares Beijing’s Birds Nest Stadium with London’s 2012 Olympic Stadium.
“It wasn’t designed to be over-physical and we just had 30 seconds of boxing. Jimmy just happened to get one during those 30 seconds. But if you’re worried about doing something you would end up not doing anything” Andrew Strauss explains why fast bowler Jimmy Anderson will start the Ashes tour with a broken rib.
Voting for the SJA’s annual British Sports Awards is now open. Only SJA members may vote, and they are allowed to vote only once, when they must choose their top three choice for Sportsman, Sportswoman and Team of the Year.
Voting forms are being posted to members with the SJA Bulletin autumn edition, or you may vote online.
Deadline for voting is November 9.
Tickets to attend the SJA British Sports Awards on December 8 are also now on sale.