Football's back and with the on-field sparring comes the inevitable off-pitch verbal jousting.
Whose mouth has made the news this week?
Football's back and with the on-field sparring comes the inevitable off-pitch verbal jousting. Arsene Wenger has been in a talkative mood as he finally concedes he did in fact see it, Mark Hughes is proving to be cattier than Garfield, while Anton Ferdinand is contemplating putting a glove down his sock in homage to the late Michael Jackson. I kid thee not...
"Sometimes I see it but I say that I didn't see it to protect the players and because I could not find any rational explanation for what they did." -
Arsene Wenger finally comes clean.
"Now when I say I didn't see something and I really didn't see it, you don't believe me. So that's the price I have to pay for that!" -
Wenger immediately rues making a rod for his own back.
"I went away with my girlfriend and we had a wonderful time, there was Rio' s wedding, which was great, but a sad thing was that my hero Michael Jackson died. Me and Rio had it all arranged to meet Michael in London. I was 10 days away from meeting my idol when he died, and it broke my heart. I've followed his career closely. He was an icon. If ever I am in a bad mood I can listen to one of his songs and I will be in a good mood again. I have been contemplating a tribute to him if I score this season, but I'm not too sure it will work out. I actually thought of putting a glove in my sock to pull out if I score, but it could be down there a couple of years, because I've not scored for a while." -
Anton Ferdinand. Each to their own and all that.
"The political debates around the American elections were fantastic, like in France. For me, it was Arsenal versus Manchester United." -
Wenger puts everything into its proper context. He's in no-way-whatsoever football obsessed...
"I went to Hungary on holiday for a month, too, because I wanted to understand how the Communist system worked. I travelled everywhere. I came back home convinced it would never work." -
The Arsenal manager reminisces on what he learnt as a travel-happy youth.
"You can't do it. Get on a bus if you have to." -
Harry Redknapp's solution for preventing drink-driving.
"Until we are considered to be intellectually equal, we will never be equal. In the 1970s you didn't have black goalkeepers or centre-halves - or not many. If you were a black player you had to play on the wing where you're fast and didn't have to think too much. These are all the misconceptions people had. My contemporaries and I are the management equivalent of those black centre-halves." - Tranmere manager
John Barnes.
"We can put a man on the moon, time serves of 100 miles per hour at Wimbledon, yet we cannot place a couple of sensors in a net to show when a goal has been scored. I thought Gary Johnson and his players could have shown more sportsmanship because they knew it was a goal, like everyone else. But I'm 60 years old and maybe I expect too much." - Crystal Palace manager
Neil Warnock considers the state of the world after the goal that never was at Bristol City.
"If it happened at Palace I'd offer Bristol City another game, but they are gutless and they won't. I swear on my daughter's life that I would do that because I believe in taking the moral high ground." -
Simon Jordan is a different breed.
"We have come to expect this from Warnock and Jordan." - The indignant response of Bristol City chief executive
Colin Sexstone.
"What troubles me was that the Bristol City players saw what was going on and by saying nothing, that's cheating." - The quote of
Jordan that has reportedly invited the FA's scrutiny. How tedious.
"There was too much wrong to mention." -
David Moyes' sums up Everton's part in the result of the opening weekend.
"When you throw yourself into that kind of tackle there's a chance you're going to get sent off. He's been in enough rodeos to know that." - LA Galaxy coach
Bruce Arena reacts to Beckham's red in baffling fashion. Rodeos?
"You can't help but start wondering whose fault is this? Why is it happening? That's a difficult question to answer when the club has accumulated almost £80m in player transfers in the last calendar year - so where has all that income gone? You look at your own wages and you naturally worry about the rest of the staff at the club. To think that perhaps one of them might lose their job because of the situation, you ask yourself: "Is it because of what I'm earning?" It is an uncomfortable fact that the salary of a staff member who might lose their job is dwarfed by the money being generated by the first team - in which case how can we not afford to keep them? The numbers just don't seem to stack up." -
David James considers the precarious plight of Portsmouth.
"Manchester City are doing a very good job and have bought some excellent players. I can understand why Mr Ferguson at Manchester United is a little bit worried." -
Rafa Benitez indulges in a little stirring.
"I am not surprised David feels a bit aggrieved with the situation, you always are when a big club comes along trying to acquire one of your better players." -
Mark Hughes digs into Everton's ribs. The 'big club' barb won't have gone unnoticed.
"I still feel the Premier League is the toughest in Europe." - Well, as the manager of the side that has just won the Premiership three years in a row,
Sir Alex Ferguson would say that, wouldn't he?
"It's important we do our best and kick lumps out of them." -
David Dunn plays up to Blackburn's reputation ahead of their opening-weekend fixture against Man City.
"To be honest, we are not equipped for the Premier League as things stand now." - Birmingham boss
Alex McLeish owns up.
"Maybe he was a bit bored." -
Manuel Almunia's explanation for Kolo Toure's exit from Arsenal.
"It probably shows a bit of desperation I guess, on their behalf, to be doing that." -
Ricky Ponting offers his unreserved support to Jonathan Trott.
"I didn't see the spring. Many people ask me: 'the spring came, did you not see it?' But I didn't see it hit me, I didn't see anything. The spring just hit my head and I slept." -
Felipe Massa has said he has no recollection of his dramatic crash.
"Thankfully they're knocking Edgbaston down. We couldn't see the pitch from our commentary box on Saturday. In my opinion that's a bit of a problem." -
Bumble pulls no punches.
"Every day is not a Friday; if you do not do well on a Friday it's important to remember that a Saturday will be coming along when everything can change." -
Mushtaq Ahmed backs Monty Panesar to bowl England to Ashes glory at the Oval.
"I'd be a liar if I said the prospect of playing at The Oval hadn't occupied my mind a lot." - It may have been on his mind but
Marcus Trescothick has said he will not make a comeback for England in the deciding Ashes Test.
