Hello everyone, welcome back to another blog post, it’s Royal Ascot this week in the Horse Racing world and The Ashes are well and truly rolling, although right now as I start to type up this piece rain has currently stopped any play from happening on day five so, fingers crossed we can get some sort of result, a win for England of course.
Anyways, I’ll be having a go every day this week on Twitter at trying to select some winners for Ascot, although I’m more of a jumps fan I have to say, it is the biggest week for the flat season so I thought that I have to have a go at least don’t I?
My first bit of news I want to discuss though is the news that Ruben Neves appears to be the next player to make the move to Saudi Arabia to play his football, and to be honest, it has caught me by complete surprise.
Neves is 26-years-old, and since joining Wolves from Porto in 2017, his dream has always been to play in the Champions League again.
After making his debut in the competition at just 17, which broke the record of the youngest Portuguese player to ever appear in the tournament, previously held by none other than Cristiano Ronaldo, he then went on to become the youngest player to captain a team in the Champions League, when aged 18 he led Porto to a 2-0 win over Maccabi Tel Aviv, never at any point looking out of place.
When he made the switch to the Championship to join Wolves, a lot of people felt as though he could’ve quite easily have joined a Premier League club, but within his first season he helped gain the side promotion to the top flight of English football and got his chance to prove himself.
His time at Wolves has always been surrounded with transfer rumours, Liverpool and Manchester United being two names constantly mentioned, alongside the links to Barcelona this season.
It seemed destined that he would move to Spain to join the five time UEFA Champions League winners, and even seemingly had an agreement in place, but that deal collapsed, and the middle east came knocking.
A £47 million offer from Al Hilal has been accepted, with a contract reportedly signed until June 2026, and despite the fact that all Wolves fans knew he was definitely going to be off this summer, not many, if any at all though would’ve thought that he would be off to Saudi Arabia.
To switch the focus away from the move though momentarily and to look more at the career Neves had at Wolves is also massively important, because in my opinion he is probably the best player to grace the pitch at Molineux in the 21st century.
Renowned for his brilliant long and short passing game, which at times seemed as though he was connected to a radar, mixed with some unbelievably filthy wonder strikes along the way, the one at home to Derby the obvious stand-out personally or the delicate dink he produced last season against Watford to chip Ben Foster, (GoPro better have been working that day Ben), Neves controlled the midfield, and the Wolves team, like a conductor does to their orchestra.
As a result he had Wolves playing multiple different tunes, if the game needed a fast tempo to it then he could speed it up, but if it needed a calmer and more gentle one he could equally slow it all down.
Under Nuno he was the piece in the jigsaw which allowed Wolves to play the swashbuckling type counter attacking football, and he will always be adored by Wolves supporters.
There is no doubt that any Wolves fan has anything against Neves for this move, because like I said, he has given so much to the club, but I can’t help but feel that it will leave a few feeling a bit confused.
The feel was that Neves would only move if it was a chance to play Champions League football again, and this move doesn’t allow this.
This move to Al Hilal, which is all signed, sealed and delivered, seems to move away from the one ambition of playing in the Champions League again that seemed to be so important to Neves that he couldn’t quite achieve at Wolves.
Since Ronaldo joined Al-Nassr, a move itself which seemingly caused a stir, we’ve seen Karim Benzema and N’Golo Kante join Ittihad, Neves now link up with Al Hilal, and Koulibaly also being linked with a move to the club, and my question really is how is our game meant to compete with this large influx of money that the middle east have?
Newcastle are now owned by the Saudi Arabia Public Investment Fund, a group also in charge of the Saudi Pro League’s four leading clubs, including Ronaldo’s Al Nassr, Benzema’s Al Ittihad and Neves’ Al Hilal, and the crown prince Mohammed bin Salman who chairs the group is part of the royal family in Saudi Arabia which is reportedly worth £1.1 trillion.
Of course though before Newcastle came along to the Premier League we had Manchester City, who were taken over in 2008 by Abu Dhabi-based Abu Dhabi United Group, an investment company for the Abu Dhabi royal family which is owned by Sheikh Mansour.
Mansour bought the club for £200 million, and has a reported net worth of around £16.8 billion, which did make them the richest football club in the world for a while until Newcastle’s new owners came along.
City of course have ran into problems, facing pending investigation from the Premier League over alleged Financial Fair Play violations, but they have stamped their authority down on football worldwide, becoming the first team since their red neighbours Manchester United in 1999 to lift the treble this season.
I’m not saying for a second though that this is necessarily bad for football, you see how happy Newcastle fans are now with this backing from their owners, for me I just don’t want to see the world of sport become money orientated, which you could say it always has been, just not on the scale of things that it is on now.
To switch sports as well, in 2021 we saw a new professional golf tour develop called LIV Golf, owned by a group called the Public Investment Fund, controlled by the Saudi Arabian crown prince himself, Mohammed bin Salman.
Throughout 2022 they recruited top golfers from the PGA Tour such as Phil Mickelson, Dustin Johnson and Cameron Smith for large sums of money, and as a result the PGA banned them from taking part in any of their events.
It seemed as though the professional golfing scene had suffered a clear split, where golfers could continue to play on the PGA Tour, or move away to the newly formed LIV Tour, and the PGA Tour themselves even started lawsuit proceedings against LIV for what they did.
However, at the start of this month we saw a shocking development, the PGA Tour announced that they would merge with the LIV Golf Tour operate together, meaning that Saudi Arabia had effectively taken control of top-level golf.
Boxing, Wrestling, F1, Snooker and Horse Racing are all other sports who have had events held in the middle east, which makes you ask the question, what could be next?
It’s a topic that won’t go away that’s for sure, but I want to switch up the focus now in this piece and seemingly stop crying over Neves leaving Wolves.
Mainly because due to the fact that this piece has been written over two days, we now all know that England have lost the first test against Australia in agonising fashion, by two wickets.
The first part of this blog was written during the afternoon session when things were just starting to heat up, and when Joe Root caught and bowled Alex Carey to leave the Aussies eight wickets down I thought it was game over, yet how wrong was I.
For me though, the full test match was exciting from day one, and that’s what you want as spectators because for years now people have been complaining saying test cricket is too boring, and that new formats like The Hundred are going to be the way forward for the game.
What England are creating under McCullum and Stokes is this entertainment factor whether it end in a win or a loss, the reality is they will never just try and play for the draw.
On the first day in particular we saw how England could’ve continued to bat on and possibly rack up another 20 or 30 runs, but the attacking mentality meant they declared instead and put the pressure on Australia to bat out the rest of the day.
Through reflection you can easily argue that those extra runs would’ve been vital yesterday but like I said, you can’t be certain that if they did continue to bat that they would’ve got many more runs, and secondly they could’ve then ended up batting too long and the game might have been drawn.
No one likes losing of course, and Stokes and his team will be hurting at the moment, but they won’t be short of belief going into the second test match that’s for sure, and they will be making sure they bring the entertainment again so the people going to watch should have their popcorn ready.
One thing that won’t be happening yet though is any parties, although I’m sure the government seemingly don’t need much of a reason to throw one, slight nod to Partygate there you may have noticed, but the Aussies would have enjoyed that win because they worked unbelievably hard for it in that last partnership.
I could right now seamlessly move into a segment all on Boris Johnson and his time as Prime Minister alongside all the scandals, but instead I will leave it all alone, I’m rather too late to the party on it all anyways.
Speaking of parties though, Jack Grealish had one hell of a time celebrating Manchester City’s treble didn’t he?
And why shouldn’t he I ask? They became the first team since Manchester United in 1999 to win the famous treble, Premier League, FA Cup and Champions League all in one season, which is a fantastic achievement even for a side such as City’s.
The backlash he has received though for enjoying himself after such a long season, don’t forget he was also involved with the World Cup in Qatar at the end of last year, is quite frankly nothing short of frustrating.
People seem to forget that these sport stars and celebrities in general are not robots, I know shocking, and that they are human and are allowed to do things which any normal person would go out and do.
If your telling me that no one else on the face of this earth has been on a four day bender then I just wouldn’t believe you, and if you don’t celebrate your successes then what’s the point of achieving them in the first place?
I just think we have to be careful with how we go about viewing those of a famous status, and not be too judgemental on things which don’t really have that much of a serious impact.
It’s his life and he can live it as he wants, so I say good on Jack for enjoying himself.
To be honest, I didn’t think I would see the day that I praised former Aston Villa star Jack Grealish with being a Wolves supporter yet here we are.
No grudges to be held as always, time to move into some Horse Racing now, but before I go into Royal Ascot, and how day one wasn’t great from me, I think it’s important to dive into some of the bans that are being handed out to jockeys under these new whip rules.
Last week on Sky Sports Racing, presenter Matt Chapman delivered the news that a number of jockeys had received lengthy bans, none more so that Kielan Woods who got 42 days in total.
Now just to put that into perspective for one moment, that’s six weeks without riding on a racecourse, six weeks without being able to pick up a riding fee, six weeks where Woods can’t do his job, all because of these new rules.
The new rules imposed back in February in both formats saw the amount of times that a jockey could strike a horse with their whip reduced from seven to six, and in the process making breaches of the rules have tougher penalties.
Woods received his ban after breaking the rules five times within a six month period, which could quite simply mean that he has hit the horse one time too many on all five occasions to get this suspension.
Again this isn’t me defending the fact that these animals should be hit too many times or in the wrong place with the whip but as I’ve always mentioned, the last thing these jockeys do is cause any sort of injury to their mounts.
Alongside him Jonjo O’Neill Jnr got a 21 day ban after recording a third offence within six months, while flat jockeys Marco Ghiani and Paula Muir were given 25 and 35 days respectively after also breaching the rule three times within six months.
I do believe that the BHA needed to be tougher in how they dealt with breaches, but these new measures have the ability to ruin livelihoods of some of these jockeys, who can’t just go and try and pick up some spare work in the meantime because this is their full-time job.
It’s tricky to weigh up because as always there’s two sides to everyone argument, but then when you add the Animal Rising group in on top of it all it seems to add even more chaos.
The aim of this group is to stop Horse Racing currently, with their motto on their Twitter page saying: “Help us protect animals and create a future for all life.”
Their appearance at Aintree for the Grand National though for me was just a step too far, protesting peacefully outside the venue is fine and I am ok with that because everyone is entitled to an opinion, but to then actually try to get onto the racecourse itself and put not just themselves at risk but the animals which they are wanting to be protected strangely enough is just mind boggling.
We saw at the Epsom Derby a protestor got onto the track and try to run up the home straight just after the horses had been set off, despite the group themselves trying to suggest that they let the race off after the man had entered the track, footage has shown otherwise.
For them to sit there and make the point that people in Horse Racing seemingly don’t care enough for these animals is just simply not true, the attention these horses get day in day out from their trainers, owners, jockeys and anyone involved with a racing yard is fantastic, and when something does unfortunately go wrong, which can happen in any walk of life may I add, no one feels it more than them.
As mentioned, the BHA have already taken steps to ensure more is done to protect horses during the races, you only have to look at any of Red Rum’s Grand National wins to see how times have changed so drastically with how small those fences are today compared to back then, and I just think this group could just continue to peacefully protest and try to talk to the BHA rather than causing the chaos they have caused at some events in recent months.
I’m not going to mention the Just Stop Oil protests, because while are all aware that climate change is a real issue that isn’t going away, I’m not quite sure what stopping people from getting to their jobs on time by walking down the middle of the road and blocking all access to places is going to achieve realistically other than potentially a serious accident.
Throwing that orange powder around as well like they did at the Snooker seems very childish from them, and don’t even get me started on how they managed to handcuff themselves to goalposts.
So a very lengthy blog piece, a variety of different issues discussed, all of them talking points which can possess so many different views and opinions as well, but what I’ve tried to do is base them off the facts and research that I’ve done the best as possible and not just make loose stabs in the dark on the matters and tried to reflect both sides to every point.
It would be great to hear from anyone who’s reading this piece and get some of your views on any of the points raised, and as always I’ve hoped you’ve enjoyed reading it.
I’m off now to finalise my day two Ascot picks, considerable improvement is definitely needed after yesterday’s performance, Alexa play Things Can Only Get Better by D:Ream…
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