With the top four never changing, it is almost more entertaining following the Premier League when there are no matches taking place. So it proved this week, from the takeover and mega-spending at Manchester City to the Kevin Keegan saga at Newcastle and Alan Curbishley’s exit from West Ham.

Curbishley claimed that his position had been undermined by the men in suits selling players without his approval and that is the underlying sub-plot that links all three acts in this week’s Premier League soap opera.

Many of the rich men who now own England’s top clubs want a more influential role in their clubs. They want to bring in the players they would like to see wearing their club shirts, perhaps to help their global brands or to boost sales or awareness in their other enterprises.

It’s a policy that can leave a manager with a team he might not feel entirely comfortable with and it is one that is not necessarily going to bring success.

Putting together title-winning teams is a far more complex science than opening
up a cheque book. Alex Ferguson’s Manchester United are testimony to that.

Everyone wants to be as big as United, but they are a big club because, at the heart of everything at Old Trafford, Ferguson, a football man, controls a football team.

That’s not a coincidence.

PHOTO: Alex Ferguson takes his seat before United’s pre-season friendly against Peterborough United, August 4, 2008. REUTERS/Darren Staples

The soap opera that is the English Premier League continued on Wednesday with its first managerial departure — Alan Curbishley resigning as manager of West Ham three games into the new season.

Whilst Manchester City fans were still pinching themselves at becoming one of the world’s richest clubs, Curbishley has quit his post despite two wins from his opening three league games.

Curbishley was reportedly disappointed with the decision to sell Anton Ferdinand to Sunderland and said last week: “As far as I am concerned there won’t be any more players leaving before the window closes,” only for George McCartney to depart on transfer deadline day, again to Sunderland.

West Ham posted a statement, before Curbishley’s announcement, defending their transfer activity: “The transfers of Anton Ferdinand and George McCartney along with the release of Freddie Ljungberg were right for the club and decisions had to be taken based on our best long-term interests,” the statement read.

Anyone thinking the closing of the transfer window and the break for international matches would make the Premier League dull for the next 10 days have been proved wrong. All eyes will now revert back to Newcastle and the future of their manager Kevin Keegan who could soon follow Curbishley.

West Ham’s next manager will be their fifth in the last seven years since Harry Redknapp left in 2001, a stark contrast to the six managers they had in an 88-year period from 1902 to 1990.

Should Curbishley have quit? And who should replace him? Vote on that at our poll here.

FILE PHOTO: Alan Curbishley gestures before a West Ham game. REUTERS/Alessia Pierdomenico

Footballers. If we aren’t reading about their exploits on the pitch, more often than not we can read about their exploits off it. Much is speculation and the rest can’t be mentioned before the watershed, but as I recently read, it’s not always bad.

West Ham United striker Craig Bellamy is more used to finding himself in hot water rather than hot weather, but following a recent trip to Sierra Leone, the Wales international has formed the Craig Bellamy Foundation there.

Bellamy’s 600,000 pound football academy is set to include 14 new leagues, 68 new boys’ teams and employ 141 managers and coaches.

So it’s not all fast cars, big houses and sordid parties after all then? In fact, if the media turned their focus away from the usual suspects, they would see a whole host of top players participating in worthwhile causes.

Portsmouth’s Nwankwo Kanu formed the Kanu Heart Foundation after having surgery on a hole in his heart during his early playing days. His charity arranged treatment for 250 African children with heart problems in 2007 and hopes to help 1,000 more this year.

Reading’s Bobby Convey regularly visits the Royal Berkshire Hospital’s Lion Ward to spend time with sick children. He is not contracted or sponsored to do this and did the same thing earlier in his career while playing in the U.S. 

England international Frank Lampard is involved in a range of cancer charities, and has become an enthusiastic backer of Chelsea’s latest initiative with CLIC Sargent, Kick for Children with Cancer.

Speaking to the Telegraph newspaper about footballers ‘bad press’, Lampard said, “…People forget that we are young lads growing up. We all made mistakes. Life’s about learning from them. So many players I have come across are down-to-earth lads who want to help out.”

So should we give footballers a break? Or should more players be putting some of their efforts and mountains of cash into worthwhile causes?

Do you know of any players worthy of a mention? Let us know.

Neil Maidment, London

PHOTO: Wales’s Craig Bellamy in action against San Marino in a Euro 2008 qualifier Oct 17, 2007. REUTERS/Daniele la Monaca

So Kevin Fylan has poured scorn on this season’s FA Cup, saying romance was “the last word” he would choose to describe what’s happening in the competition. Well Kev, as we prepare for this weekend’s semi-finals, let me say I couldn’t disagree more.

I’ll admit I’m something of a footballing Luddite, one of those old-fashioned fans who laments the fact that the days are gone when clubs like Derby County, Nottingham Forest, Everton and Aston Villa won league titles. The days when supporters had a genuine affinity with players. The days when Sunderland, Southampton and West Ham could win the FA Cup.

Although it’s clearly not their top priority, I simply don’t agree with the assertion that the FA Cup doesn’t matter to the Big Four. One look at the Chelsea line-up that went down at Barnsley indicates how much they were up for the Cup. Sure, they rested Frank Lampard and Petr Cech, but it was by no means wholesale squad rotation and you only had to see the look on Avram Grant’s face as he trudged down the tunnel at Oakwell to see he was far from ambivalent about his team’s cup exit.

It was a similar story with Manchester United as they were beaten by Portsmouth. Sir Alex Ferguson’s post-match rant was not the work of a man happy to be knocked out of the FA Cup.

When I was a kid the FA Cup was the pinnacle of the football season. It’s scarcely believable that until 1983 it was the only domestic match to be shown live on TV during the football season, and the media build-up to the game would last for weeks.

One of the best days of my life was the FA Cup final of 1980, when my beloved West Ham beat the favourites Arsenal 1-0 at Wembley thanks to Trevor Brooking’s header.

On May 8 in 1980, two days before the final, it was my eighth birthday. My Dad had taken my brother Bill and me to Upton Park to most home matches during the season, as well as the FA Cup semi-final against Everton, but due to a complicated voucher scheme we were only eligible for two tickets for the final and, as the youngest, I was going to have to miss out.

I will never forget the morning of my birthday as the presents were handed out in my parents’ bedroom. Every few moments I would grab an innocuous looking envelope with my name on it, thinking it was merely another birthday card. My folks would take back the card, put it back on their dresser, and hand me another present. Eventually I was handed the mysterious envelope. When I opened it and saw a Cup final ticket I can honestly say that I have never felt such unadulterated joy. I can still remember the feeling of pure childish happiness as I ran around the room in a circle, shouting and punching the air.

All these years later that moment still brings a tear to my eye, sentimental old fool that I am. That’s why I love the FA Cup. And that’s  why it still matters to me, and to old-fashioned fans like me.

Twenty-six years later West Ham made it to the FA Cup final again, at the Millennium Stadium against Liverpool. Sitting in the stadium 10 minutes before kick-off with my father, my brother, and his two sons, I was overcome with an unexpected welling of emotion as ‘Abide with Me’ was sung across the stadium.

I found myself weeping, something I had never done before at a football match. The fact that my team couldn’t hold on to a 3-2 lead and lost the match on penalties was hard to swallow, but my overall memory of the day is one of sheer joy at having made it to another Cup final.

TV viewing figures will probably plummet for this year’s final as the Johnny-Come-Latelys who think that football began in 1992 decide to give it a miss. I’m sure that next year the old order will be restored and we can look forward to a Cup final stalemate like the Chelsea-Man United snorefest of 2007.

But I really don’t care because on May 17th we will see the People’s Final. I for one will watch every minute of it and I’ll revel in the fact that for one day I can pretend the FA Cup is still the most important knockout tournament in the world.

I can hardly wait.

Jim Drury is a reporter/producer for Reuters TV

PHOTO: Barnsely celebrate a goal against Chelsea, March 8, 2008. REUTERS/Nigel Roddis