Jay-Z "supports" Arsenal

I'm sure you, in common with many of us, have had little sleep since the rumours arose that Jay-Z might Manchester City rather than Arsenal.

Now, we can breathe easily, and sleep again, as he's confirmed that he supports, in some way, Arsenal after all:

"After that game the press started reporting that I was a Manchester City fan, I am really glad all that has been cleared up and that everybody in the UK knows that I am an Arsenal fan," he explained.

Yes, it must have been terrible with some people thinking that you had a vague interest in a slightly different team to the one you're actually not really that bothered about but are a bit.

Jay Z went on to sound like he knew a little bit about this soccerball:

"It was about five years ago now," he said. "When Thierry Henry was at the club I saw him play and I just thought he was an amazing player. Ever since then I have been a big fan of the club, following you guys, and still today you play the beautiful football that Thierry did. I think he had a real long term-effect on the team."

I might be being a little cynical, but this sounds less like the way football supporters talk about football, and more like the sort of thing you'd say if you'd phoned someone up to give you something to say to make it sound like you knew about football.

Gordon in the morning: Perhaps he thought it was a bank holiday

Considering nobody expects much from The Sun's gossip column, somehow Gordon has managed to fail to even make the usual low bar this morning with an enormous piece about...

What is it about, exactly?

The story seems to be that The Sun has asked Arsenal if they'd let Jay-Z in for free, and the football team have said yes:

Club bigwigs contacted the rapper after reading in my pages that he is a big Arsenal fan.

I suppose at least four people are reading the column, then, Gordon.

I think the idea is meant to show how well-connected Gordon is, but frankly, it doesn't work - it's about as interesting as sitting in a pub listening to someone trying to blag their way in to something.

Mind you, it does generate this from Jay-Z:

He added: "The next time I'm playing in England I would like the Arsenal players to come and watch my gig and then come backstage afterwards.

"I know how hard professional sportsmen work so I want to offer an incentive for the guys."

I don't know what is more ridiculous - the idea that incredibly over-paid footballers need some extra incentive to do the fucking "job" they're paid to do, or that Jay-Z really thinks that going backstage to meet him at a pop gig is such a wonderful thing it's worth two extra goals at the very least.

I'll Stand By You

Cheryl Cole has been tattling with the News of the World (actually, GQ), revealing that she put the kibosh on Ashley's move to Real Madrid because she was worried about her career:

"I've worked just as hard as he has to get where I am and we spoke about it at length," Cheryl told GQ Magazine.

"Either I'd have had to move out there with him and commute, or give up my career at a time when we'd finally been accepted as a band and it was almost cool to like Girls Aloud."

Which is touchingly supportive.

Of course, it never harmed Victoria Beckham's career having to relocate to Madrid, although, to be honest, we've not been quite clear what her career involves.

Instead, to keep Tweedy happy, Cole went to Chelsea. Cheryl was "surprised" that this was received like a Satanist in a cathedral:

I almost begged Ashley to sign for Chelsea not really knowing what that would mean," she confessed.

"I know a bit about football, growing up in Newcastle, and I know it would be difficult for a player to go from Newcastle to Sunderland, for instance.

"But I didn't realise the extent to which moving from Arsenal to Chelsea would cause so much hurt between the two of us, and to Arsenal fans."

You might think that if you know so little about football that you don't realise an Arsenal to Chelsea move is going to upset fans, you probably shouldn't be advising your husband on the direction his career should take.

It is a difficult problem, and one that a lot of couples face at some point in their life - whose career should be the one that has to satellite around the others - but would it have been so difficult for Tweedy to be based in Madrid and still be in Girls Aloud? Sure, it would mean that the couple would spend a slew of time apart, but with band responsibilities and away matches and training camps and tours, surely they must be spending as many nights in Travelodges and Hampton Suites alone as they do together anyway?

Cheryl is aware that her move - besides getting Ashley branded a lion Judas and hated by a quarter of all Londoners - cost him a lot of money. But she's got an answer for that - he's overpaid anyway:

"I find what all footballers get paid obscene anyway, I can never get my head around it," she said. "But that's the market, it's not Ashley's fault. It's unfair to brand Ashley greedy because he has never been like that.

"Both me and him are from lower-class backgrounds. We were brought up on a council estate and in a high-rise flat without two pennies to rub together."

Hang about a moment - Cole isn't greedy because "it's what the market pays"? But isn't he part of the mechanism which sets the market price? Nobody forces him to take home £90,000 a week. He could quite easily say "that's a ridiculously obscene sum of money for kicking a ball about; please reduce it to a more sensible figure. Or at least something that's just slightly obscene."

Or he could give ninety percent of his wages to good causes. Or Cheryl could get her mate Nicola, the one what loves politics, to write an article calling for higher taxes for people earning those obscene sums. Let's be generous and assume all this is going on behind the scenes, and the couple don't just sit in their knickers in a hot-tub full of cash crying about those cruel market forces which force them to bank such large sums every week.

Because Cheryl is down to earth:

"I've never been the kind of girl who has to have the latest Chloé handbag," she insisted. "If I see a nice bag for £30, I'll get it."

This is, of course, the problem with being rich - it totally twists your value system. To Mrs Cole, buying a thirty quid handbag is a cheapo purchase. To people scraping by on part-time work and the minimum wage - like, for example, that toilet attendant she beat the crap out of - a thirty pound handbag would still represent a significant purchase, forcing a choice between the bag and other purchases, or a period of saving, or a slide into debt.

Thinking it shows she's got her well-clad feet on the ground, Cole's bag actually demonstrates the size of the understanding gap.

Still, back to the transfer hassle. Everything must be all settled, now, if she's able to talk about it?

"He has always told me never to talk about this, but I think people should know."

Ah. So having crushed his dreams, left him with what Cheryl calls "dead" eyes, and held up as a hate figure in the eyes of his former fans, she couldn't even respect his request to not make it all public.

And why should "people know"? She surely doesn't think that it's going to make Ashley's life any easier to know that he sold out the Gunners fans because his wife didn't fancy the move? Or does she just want the public to know that she's the alpha male in the relationship?

An end to shirts on the streets

Although the EU Court decision rejecting a street trader's claim that the unofficial merchandise he sold was a "sign of alleigance" rather than a breach of trademark refers to the sale of unofficial Arsenal stuff, it's significant for the music industry, too.

What the court has just done is outlaw all non-licensed product, which means that those tshirt and poster sellers who do brisk trade outside gigs, for example, are now outside the law rather than in a grey area. Of course, while individual artists would probably think twice before hammering down on such sales, the way the new Robbie Williams contract hands much of his merchandising pie to EMI suggests that in the future, it'll be the labels who call the shots. And we know what they're like.

Still, cheer up - it's not like official, in-venue merchandise is chronically over-priced already, is it?