Gavin eager to take on Brook

April 9, 2015 by admin
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Frankie Gavin is ready to take on IBF welterweight champion Kell Brook.

First published

in National Sport

copy by Press Association 2014

Frankie Gavin is ready to take on the challenge which Amir Khan ducked by fighting IBF welterweight champion Kell Brook in a big British world title clash next month.

Press Association Sport understands a fight between Brook and Gavin has been agreed and could even be signed and announced officially by their promoter Eddie Hearn before the week is out.

Gavin will earn a career-highest payday – although nothing close to the multi-millions allegedly offered to Khan – when he challenges Brook at the O2 Arena in London on May 30.

The world title bid is a huge step up for Britain’s only world amateur champion, but the 29-year-old Brummie is confident his pedigree will give him an excellent chance of dethroning the unbeaten Yorkshireman.

“I’m not stupid. I’m not delusional. I’m going to have to perform out of my skin,” Gavin told Press Association Sport.

“But I’ve definitely got it in me to do it. I’m very confident Kell can be beaten and hopefully it’s someone with my skills who will do it.

“Nothing is signed or done yet but I know Eddie’s spoken to Kell and Kell’s up for it and I’m up for it. So we’re going to sit down and have another chat in the next two days and hopefully get it done.

“I think I’ve got the skills to upset Brook and take him out of his rhythm. It’s easier said than done but I’m going to be 100% ready, physically and mentally, and if I get that world title shot I’ll be ready.”

Gavin believes former amateur team-mate Khan has made the wrong move by avoiding Brook and instead choosing a safer fight against Chris Algieri as he continues to chase a shot at Floyd Mayweather.

“I don’t know what it is with Khan,” said Gavin.

“Listen, he’s a clever man, he’s got money, he’s done well, but I don’t think it’s a clever move to turn Brook down and fight Chris Algieri instead.

“It’s a no-win situation. He’s going to smash Algieri up whereas Khan v Brook is a very close fight. If Brook gets to him and starts landing shots, he beats Khan. If Khan uses his speed and rhythm, he wins it.

“Maybe Khan just doesn’t want to risk losing the Mayweather fight and he knows he won’t lose to Algieri so it’s safer.”

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How Blackpool became a laughing stock: the sorry story of an Oyston-made mess

April 9, 2015 by admin
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Blackpool had their relegation to League One confirmed on Monday
The Seasiders have endured a dismal season in the Championship
Events off the pitch have been as embarrassing as those on it
Chairman Karl Oyston and his family are at war with supporters
£27.7million has been loaned from the club to its parent company

Jack Gaughan for MailOnline

Published:
07:55 EST, 8 April 2015

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Updated:
01:07 EST, 9 April 2015

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In the first improvements for seasons, Blackpool’s ramshackle Squires Gate training ground adjacent to the town’s coastline was awarded a lick of paint and new welcome sign five years ago. Unloved and dilapidated, it was much needed and seen as some sort of progress.

Proof, perhaps, that promotion to the Premier League would ‘transform’ them forever.

The trouble was the roof still leaked and the sign came back reading ‘Blackpool Football Club Training Ground and Centre of Excellance’ [sic]. In a move that came as no surprise to those who know the club, that piece of literary genius still hangs front of house.

The badly-spelled sign still hanging at Blackpool’s training ground sums up the lack of care at the club

Blackpool were relegated from the Championship to League One on Monday after a miserable season

It is all a far cry from the days when Charlie Adam and Co were riding high in the Premier League

It’s indicative of this pathetic excuse for a professional football club. The lack of care and pride is astonishing, having to be seen to be believed. They will be a League One team next year after relegation was confirmed on Easter Monday with Rotherham’s win against Brighton.

Four years since they lit up the Premier League, players who turned out each week in the top flight still talk about buckets positioned inside in the gym to catch dripping water and one particular individual who’d rather have his breakfast at McDonald’s around the corner than eat what was dished up before training.

They washed their own kit. They changed in an environment that would have Sunday League footballers turning up their noses.

Relegation from the Championship had been coming from the day former manager Jose Riga turned up in Penrith for a friendly with a squad of trialists. Supporters say it’s been coming since Ian Holloway escaped in the back of his wife’s car back in 2012.

Blackpool fans vent their disgust at the Oyston family, who own the club, on Tuesday night

Supporters have been protesting against the Oystons before matches and then not attending the games

Now the backdrop is of in-fighting, protests and broken promises. Nobody could’ve saved this sorry bunch. Tagging Blackpool as the worst club in England isn’t overstating any point. For a start, the statistics are astonishing.

Blackpool have won seven times in 70 games.

The club have earned 39 points from a possible 210.

In that time the Seasiders averaged 0.55 points a game.

They have conceded more goals (80) than any other Football League team.

51 different players have been used this season.

They are the only team in the top four divisions not to have won away this season.

Blackpool have the worst pitch, even boggier than Bradford’s. They’ve used 51 players – that stands at 53 if unused substitutes are added – in a single campaign. Their secretary, Chris Hough, has been employed as a kitman and seems more adept at objectifying women, namely popstar Rita Ora, on his public Facebook page.

The club’s secretary posted a sexually-explicit reference about pop star Rita Ora (right) on his Facebook page

Last month, it was reported that they’d failed to pay £221 in business rates on their training ground. It serves as yet more embarrassment for a club resembling a caricature penned down the promenade. Only at Blackpool.

On Monday, the day they suffered relegation, a picture surfaced of a woman in lingerie frolicking inside Bloomfield Road. It is not known when the snap was taken but it serves as yet more embarrassment for the club, who have not responded to numerous calls and emails for comment on a number of matters detailed here.

This picture emerged on Monday of an unidentified woman dressed only in lingerie frolicking at the club’s Bloomfield Road ground

Sportsmail has been told that at least one player moved out of the club’s hotel because he didn’t feel comfortable in the environment.

On the pitch, Blackpool have a job on their hands if they are to beat Stockport County’s lowest-ever points tally of 26 earlier this century. Fans are almost willing them to fail, to shine a light on a plight engulfing a once charming club.

The man charged with running them, chairman Karl Oyston, is charmless personified, awaiting his fate for labelling one paying customer a ‘retard’ before Christmas. It would be hilariously inept if not so obnoxious and ignorant.

He has little regard for his employees or customers, is stubborn to the extreme and has seen fit to sue supporters for allegedly defamatory comments made on internet messageboards read by a couple of hundred people.

Fans have stopped turning up because of that, and their deep mistrust in Karl (and his father, Owen, who owns the shipwreck).

Enough is enough. Supporters travel to Bloomfield Road each week to protest before games and then turn away – 500 of them choosing to watch non-League AFC Blackpool instead last month. It was a day when old mates met up for the first time in years, where they stood on the terrace and had a laugh in the sun.

What they now see is a team full of pros who do not identify with the famous tangerine shirts. There is no hope and no belief. As one of their protest banners says, this is the club that has been left to die.

On confirmation of their relegation on Monday, ex-striker Gary Taylor-Fletcher tweeted: ‘Feels like all we achieved will always be a great memory with f#%k all to show for it as a club.’

And when asked, former players and the estranged Latvian president Valeri Belokon charter the root cause back to one family.

The business is run in the strangest of ways. Oyston has been lauded for cautious release of funds in the past – most notably for his stance on agent fees – but is all too happy to cut corners, which creates an unsettling and ultimately disharmonious atmosphere. Even Wonga decided not to renew their shirt sponsorship contract beyond this campaign.

Blackpool chairman Karl Oyston speaks on his mobile phone during Tuesday’s draw with Reading

Owner Owen Oyston watches the match huddled under a blanket in the stands

Blackpool’s main reception at Bloomfield Road was pelted with eggs before their game with Reading

Sportsmail has been told one player opted to pay his own medical fees this year after limping out of a reserve game, such was his mistrust of the club. He had been returning from a previous knock which had been misdiagnosed and those minutes aggravated a much more serious injury.

Striker Steven Davies opted to drop down a division for a loan spell at Sheffield United and also questioned Blackpool’s medical department.

‘It’s been a grind,’ he said. ‘I’ve struggled with injury and misdiagnosed injury so, in the end, I had to be honest.’

But that is par for the course. They are a professional club in nothing but their stature within English football, and relegation back down to League One was hideously predictable. They will not come back in a hurry.

After all, this was a season in which they had just eight players in the week leading up to the first game at Nottingham Forest. Back slaps in assessment of that 2-0 defeat primed supporters for what was to come; they didn’t win a match until October.

Once again there were hundreds of empty seats at Bloomfield Road as the fans stayed away

Blackpool and Reading battle out their 1-1 draw amid the backdrop of nearly-empty stands

In truth everybody knew what would befall them. Riga – who left the club after a matter of months following series misgivings with Oyston – knew it. So too did the 10,000 who turned up each week. His successor Lee Clark was well aware he was leading a sinking ship.

It is not the fault of Riga’s signings, nor Clark’s careful tactics. This almost looked manufactured, and the men in charge of the team were powerless to stop it.

Spending, already modest in the extreme, was down. Riga had his list of targets turned down on the spot. What the club – still raking in Premier League parachute payments – ended up with was a rag-tag bunch of journeymen and youngsters. They even had the cheek to proclaim his appointment weeks before a ‘Riga Revolution’.

Nevermind that, devolution has been the order of the day since they were relegated at Old Trafford in May 2010.

And so to those texts, the ghastly exchange which could see Oyston banned from football activities for the foreseeable future. Oyston was provoked by fan Stephen Smith, but his responses offer irrefutable evidence of the sort of chairman who runs this club.

Oyston labelled said supporter a ‘retard’. Told him to ‘enjoy your special needs day out’. Banned him from Bloomfield Road because he was a ‘p****’. Nobody comes out of that exchange looking particularly clever but serious questions must be asked as to why a chairman who sits on the Football League’s board of directors would become embroiled in such a trivial row.

Blackpool are the only club in the Football League not to have won a game away from home this season

Manager Lee Clark inherited a sinking ship and has not been able to halt the club’s slide

Broken eggs on the floor outside Bloomfield Road

The FA certainly took a dim view of it and want to throw the book at him. He has until April 14 to respond to the charge.

But perhaps more worrying for Blackpool’s followers are the texts with another fan, where Oyston said he was on a ‘never-ending nightmare revenge mission’ and that the ultimate aim of the owners was to relegate Blackpool to the Conference. Humour? Banter? Maybe, but it doesn’t look at all pleasant in isolation.

There is no evidence to suggest that isn’t exactly what they want. Blackpool are a lilo slowly losing air. The pin was taken to them well before they dropped back down to the Championship.

Owen Oyston has owned the club since 1987 and paid himself a salary of £11million on the back of their season at football’s top table, claiming he was ‘owed’ that amount after the support he had afforded the town.

An associate of the disgraced Stuart Hall, Owen Oyston was jailed for rape in 1996, which led the Labour Party to decide accepting his sizeable party donations would not be fit and proper. He still has an active role as director of Blackpool. Owen’s wife, Vicky, acted as chairwoman when he was imprisoned. When Karl talks of ‘revenge’ he means for the way in which his mum was treated when fans protested for her to be removed.

That was then, and not a lot has changed. This has been a situation bubbling under the surface for years – they fluked promotion to the Premier League thanks to a special manager – magnified after assembling the worst squad in Championship history. What it has done is fully unite supporters.

The atmosphere on the Fylde Coast is toxic, even the staunchest Oyston sympathisers have turned against their ownership – most notably, perhaps, is the former chairman of the official supporters’ association, who washed his hands of the club last year.

And the bare-faced facts make it difficult to launch a counter argument. In official accounts published in March, Blackpool revealed monies loaned to their parent company, Segesta Ltd, now stand at £27.7m. It has been proven beyond any doubt that Segesta has been used to finance other loss-making Oyston-owned businesses.

The provocative numberplate on Karl Oyston’s car emerged in response to protests by fans

Blackpool fans have bombareded the pitch with tennis balls to protest against the Oystons’ rule

Then there are the antics of Karl Oyston and his children, who have openly mocked their paying customers. The posing in front of a ‘Blackpool cash cow’ banner – a year ago to the day. Then the pictures with tennis rackets in direct response to fans throwing tennis balls on to the pitch in protest at their ownership. The OY51 OUT registration plate in response to yet more protests. Sam Oyston, Karl’s son and manager of the club hotel, consistently posts photos to his Twitter of the family’s new Quernmore Park Hall residence.

The list is endless: this much furore should not engulf one business.

The contempt between the two camps is mutual. It’s the only thing they agree on. Incredibly, the Oystons have turned a placid fanbase into a hate mob. Thousands turn up each week to chant, scream and vent. The people who suffer are those who just want to go and watch football with their family and friends.

Blackpool are the Football League’s joke, but it is their owners who are laughing loudest.