These are dangerous days for a football manager. The international break is the traditional time for chairmen to cull unwary underachievers. Blackburn Rovers manager Steve Kean should be afraid, very afraid.

He will have a lot of explaining to do later this week, when he flies to India to meet the club’s owners. Venky’s thought Blackburn would help them build a global brand. Instead, they’ve endured universal scorn, and Rovers’ worst start in 60 years.

The Blackburn owners tried to woo David Beckham, and ended up with David Goodwillie, a Scottish striker with an unfortunate habit of attracting the attention of Her Majesty’s Constabulary.

Kean’s cut-price recruitment policy has been undermined by the sudden collapse of moves for Greek-American centre back George John, of FC Dallas, and Hoffenheim’s Bosnian striker Vedad Ibisevic.

Blackburn are still without a chief executive, and a chairman. Kean’s reputation as an excellent coach is in tatters. Successful managers shape events, stamp their personality on the clubs they control. He appears weak, to the point of desperation.

Blackburn is a proud club, which doesn’t deserve to be a laughing stock. Fans cherish their heritage, as one of the founding members of both the Football League and Premier League.

They don’t like outsiders meddling in their business. The last time I highlighted the chaos, and predicted that Kean would meet a sticky end, I was ritually abused. Now fans are calling for him to be replaced by Mark Hughes or, intriguingly, Rafa Benitez.

Blackburn have won only two Premier League matches since January. The next four visitors to Ewood Park are Arsenal, Manchester City, Tottenham and Chelsea. Will Kean be in charge when Blackburn go to Fulham, his former club, on September 11?

Bookmakers, who do not allow sentiment to cloud their judgement, have him at 8-11 to be the first Premier League manager to be sacked this season. Enough said.

Everyone wades through raw sewage and expects to smell of roses.

No one cares about casual dishonesty, instinctive ­disloyalty and naked greed.

It’s football, they tell you. It’s business as usual. Get over yourself.

Well, sorry, it’s not that ­simple.

Sometimes, you are obliged to recalibrate, look at things with renewed clarity.

I hope you forgive the ­indulgence, but having spent much of the last fortnight talking to those whose lives were reshaped by the Hillsborough disaster, I’m seeing football through ­different eyes.

Everything changes when a stranger shares the ­enduring horror of having a boy die in their arms at a football match.

It forces you to reconsider what is important, and what is so much froth and ­nonsense.

The last few days before the transfer window closes are always frantic.

Strokes are pulled, ­promises are broken. ­Everyone lies. Unprincipled, undignified behaviour is the norm.

This year, it is worse than ever. It is a cattle market, contaminated by mad cow disease

Player power is rampant.

Luka Modric plays for ­Tottenham by appointment and still resents picking up £50,000 a week for making cameo appearances at the training ground.

Craig Bellamy will ­consider playing football for a living, if Manchester City pay up his £95,000 a week ­contract. Joey Barton accepts £12million over four years from QPR and behaves as if he is being treated like a ­plantation slave.

Don’t waste your sympathy on the clubs, by the way. They treat players like a slab of sirloin, if it suits.

They’ve turned evasion into an art form and apparently think nothing of inventing an injury to cover a conscientious objector’s blushes.

It’s amazing how many ­in-demand players pick up calf strains or low-level ­hamstring tweaks.

Tapping-up is no longer a secret vice. It’s a stage show in which leading characters perform behind an ­increasingly threadbare veil.

Players know who wants them, how much they will be paid and where they will be housed.

They’re on the mobile to prospective team-mates, to check on the manager, the dressing room gossip and the social life.

Their agents calculate their percentage and keep up the pressure on chairmen who tend to suffer from little-man syndrome.

It’s all about the art of the deal.

Ever wondered why Samuel Eto’o – one of the pre-eminent goalscorers of his generation – is playing for Anzhi ­Makhachkala in the Southern reaches of Dagestan?

A few numbers to digest. He will be earning:

- £1,458,333 per month

- £364,583 per week

- £52,083 per day

- £2,170 per hour

- £36.16 per minute

- 60p per second.

All after tax. Not bad work, if you can get it. It’s the sort that would appeal to investors in a commodity like Carlos Tevez, who seems to be at City under sufferance.

Very little shocks, these days. Everyone carried on as ­normal when Newcastle ­United were ­reported to FIFA by French club ­Sochaux.

Malian striker Modibo Maiga, the supposed object of the Toon’s attentions, ­promptly went AWOL.

Modric, effectively, did the same when whispers of £150,000-a-week on offer at Chelsea reached a ­crescendo.

His head was not right, ­according to his apologists.

Harry Redknapp, of course, played the game. Modric is a t’riffic boy. Never been a ­moment’s problem.

When he returns to the real world, the Croatian should have a word with John Obi Mikel.

He gave everything for Chelsea playing when his father had been kidnapped.

Modric should also have a chat with Wilson Palacios, who may yet leave Spurs for Stoke City.

He played on, when his brother was abducted and then murdered. That’s a tragedy.

They know all about those, on Merseyside

Read more: http://www.mirrorfootball.co.uk/opinion/columnists/michael-calvin/Michael-Calvin-transfer-window-greed-Samir-Nasri-Luka-Modric-Craig-Bellamy-Samuel-Etoo-article791832.html#ixzz1WK5Iy4eY
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Sir Alex Ferguson heads the Braveheart branch of the League Managers’ Association. He stops short of smearing his face with wode, and parading around Old Trafford with his claymore unsheathed, but loves nothing more than sending the English homewards, tae think again.

He’s an unashamed Scottish patriot. It complements his belief in the power of Manchester United’s mythology, and his insistence on respecting traditions established across the generations. But it presents him with a subtle problem.

By building yet another vibrant Manchester United team, with a sleight of hand that signals managerial genius, Sir Alex is helping to secure the future of the England national team. He may have finally forgiven the BBC, after seven years of self-imposed silence, but will he forgive himself?

It’s a rhetorical question, because the pleasure he derives from young players, fulfilling their potential, represents unique job satisfaction. Like all innovators in sport and business, the Manchester United manager thinks several steps ahead.

He recognised in Chris Smalling a player of versatility and intelligence, with the mental strength to overcome premature rejection. He saw in Phil Jones a natural leader. He was talking up Danny Welbeck, as an England striker, in the build-up to last summer’s World Cup.

The younger players, including Tom Cleverley, have bonded on and off the field. There is an easy familiarity with another new boy, Ashley Young, who quickly answered those who doubted he had the personality to flourish at one of the world’s biggest clubs.

Ryan Giggs, in his 22th season as a United player, acknowledges the difference the newcomers have made to the dressing room. The energy, and unfulfilled ambition, of United’s emerging stars will transfuse Fabio Capello’s tired team in the forthcoming Euro 2012 qualifiers.

Welbeck brings the best out of Wayne Rooney, whose form suggests this may be a landmark season. Already, the partnership of Smalling and Jones trips off the tongue. England cannot justify their new world ranking, fourth, but they do have plenty of reasons to be cheerful.

On behalf of all Sassenachs, Sir Alex, thanks.

To be honest, my head’s not in this piece. It’s GCSE results day. I’ve got a frantic wife and a sullen son to deal with. The last thing I need is to be sitting here, taking pot shots at pampered professional footballers.

Problem is, I know my place. It’s a dirty job, but someone’s got to do it. We’ve not all got the privilege of Luka Modric, who plays for Tottenham by appointment, at least until his future is confirmed.

The poor soul can’t cope with being popular, or talented. How dare we expect him to live the schoolboy dream, and take centre stage at Old Trafford? That’s above and beyond the call of duty. Truth is, someone’s offering him £150,000 a week. Allegedly.

Modric simply can’t be bovvered. There are too many voices in his head, too many people whispering in his ear. Tonight’s Europa League formality, against Hearts at White Hart Lane, is beneath him.

He has, by all accounts, fallen out spectacularly with Spurs chairman Daniel Levy, a notorious negotiator. Levy makes Sir Alan Sugar look like a limp-wristed wimp, and has turned Chelsea’s interest in the Croatian midfield player into a cause célèbre.

Harry Redknapp, of course, tells the world that Modric is a t’riffic boy. Loves Tottenham. Never been a moment’s problem. He’s kind to kids, dumb animals, and his old Mum. He’ll get his head right.

At least Samir Nasri had the professionalism to commit himself to Arsenal against Liverpool, before the Mexican stand-off with Manchester City reached its inevitable conclusion, with his £25million transfer.

Modric has been belittled by his surrender to external pressures. If I were his team-mate, I certainly wouldn’t trust him again. Such a lack of faith has huge consequences in an environment in which mutual respect is critical.

Perhaps Modric should have a word with John Obi Mikel. He gave everything for Chelsea, playing when his father had been kidnapped. He could also have a chat with Wilson Palacios, who is likely to leave Spurs for Stoke City. He played on, when his brother was abducted, and then murdered.

That’s a tragedy. Everything else is just froth and nonsense.

Loyalty is an alien concept to someone who has grown up in the anarchy of post-Communist Russia. There’s no need to feign allegiance to anyone, or anything, but yourself. That’s why Arsenal should not expect Andrey Sergeyevich Arshavin to sacrifice himself for the cause.

He comes from working-class stock, in St Petersburg. He slept on the floor of a cramped State-owned flat, lost his father at an early age, and was close to being uncontrollable at school. Football was his passport to a better life. He knew the rules. Legend has it he was so desperate to join Arsenal, in February 2009, that he paid Zenit £2.5million to release him from his contract. London offered him a global stage, a chance to take his career to a new level. He’s become a multi-faceted celebrity.

The Arsenal playmaker’s blog, which covers everything from the British Royal Family to behaviour of lobsters in the mating season, is required reading for students of the surreal. It showcases his talents as a fashion designer, and as an author. His book, 555 Questions and Answers on Women, Money, Politics and Football pretty much covers all the bases for the modern man.

But, as harsh as it sounds to fans who learned to love his idiosyncrasies, Arsenal have served their purpose. Arshavin’s stature – he was a figurehead of the successful 2018 World Cup bid – means that his post-football life is starting to take shape. He’s immune from the longer-term consequences of losing tonight’s Champions League qualifier against Udinese.

Defeat doesn’t hurt that much any more. Being substituted is not the blow to his professional pride it once was. Tellingly, at a time when Arsenal, and all they stand for, are coming under siege, he is not the sort of character to rally around the flag.

He has been a listless figure for much of the past year. The impudent, devastatingly direct, player who scored four times at Anfield soon after his arrival in England might as well have been a hologram.

He was, frankly, a disgrace against Liverpool at the weekend, wandering around with that increasingly irritating grin, which screams “nothing to do with me, squire.” Right on cue, he is being linked with a possible move to Juventus.

La Dolce Vita? He’s already living it.

Why wouldn’t you buy Everton, assuming you are a tycoon with the odd £100million to spare? Imagine the irresistibility of the sales pitch in the small ads.

For Sale: The People’s Football Club. Also operates as the School of Science. Great location, loyal customer base, one careful owner. Scope for global market penetration, if the current senior management team is given strategic support. For full particulars, please apply to Mr W Kenwright, chairman, Everton Football Club, Goodison Park, Liverpool, L4 4EL.

A no-brainer, you would have thought, when QPR, a club that lacks Everton’s tradition and potential, can be picked up by a businessman with an eye for the main chance. But something, somewhere, is not right. QPR’s win at Goodison Park at the weekend has induced doom and gloom.

It will get worse, much worse, if Everton slip on the economy-sized banana skin that is a home Carling Cup tie against Sheffield United on Wednesday. Simmering frustration, at the inability of Bill Kenwright to bring in suitable investment, will boil over.

Gratitude is regarded as a sign of weakness by too many people, at too many football clubs. I realise this is the delicate bit, because I am an outsider, but it’s time for Everton fans to appreciate what they have. Leaking confidential details of the club’s financial plight was neither big, nor clever.

David Moyes is one of the top five managers in the Premier League. He deserves a big five club. Approaching the 10th anniversary of his installation at Goodison Park, he is entitled to bridle at the thought of being handcuffed to a banker, demanding reduction of a £45million debt.

No one knows the limitations of his team better than Moyes. He questions himself before he questions others, and has looked back at his pre-season training diaries, for 2004-2005, to define whether he can do any more.

Retention of impeccable pros like Phil Neville is one thing. Competing in the Premier League’s version of supermarket sweep is entirely another. Everton are shopping at Lidl while their natural rivals are trooping off to Harrods.

Moyes will pull things round. He always does. But one day he will make the hard call, and walk away.

They say goalkeepers are mad, and up pops Tottenham’s Heurelho Gomes, to justify our most idle assumptions. He resembles an octopus that has ingested LSD, worries about life in inner city London, and probably belongs in a samba school.

For David de Gea, he is a vision of loveliness, a timely alibi. Nothing is certain when it comes to Gomes, but Manchester United’s beleaguered new goalkeeper will hope the Brazilian hangs around for the belated start of Tottenham’s Premier League season.

Being picked for tonight’s game at Old Trafford, an immediate test of Tottenham’s big four pretensions, would represent a huge gesture of faith in Gomes. It might also be the sort of mistake that triggers Harry Redknapp’s trademark twitch.

Gomes is capable of improbable, elastic saves. He’s also prone to errors that make him the poster boy for those blooper DVDs which while away the time when you are in a drunken stupor at Christmas.

To be honest, I thought we’d seen the last of him in the close season. His erratic form, as Tottenham’s Champions League dream dissolved, made him a liability. The signing of Brad Friedel seemed to be football’s equivalent of a hanging judge, wearing a black cap as he enters the courtroom.

Friedel is 40, has talent to spare, and does not have time to waste. He made a point of stressing he had not left Aston Villa to pick up the money and pick up splinters from the substitutes’ bench.

Shay Given, recruited to replace him at Villa Park, didn’t enjoy doing that at Manchester City. His season in the shade is a terrible warning.

There is nothing worse than being a second-string goalkeeper. You’re a member of the same tribe as the man who has your place. You identify with him, train with him, and grow to hate him.

If Friedel – or Tottenham’s apparent third string, Carlo Cudicini – doesn’t get an early opportunity, it threatens to be a long, long season.

Michael Kelly was a quiet man. He loved the lyricism of Lennon, the urban poetry of Dylan and Dalglish.

Liverpool Football Club was his only hobby, his ­abiding passion.

He worked nights in ­Bristol, as a warehouseman, and watched every game, home and away.

He loved Anfield, the ­ritual of football, a couple of pints, and home cooking, in the family’s terraced house in Old Swan.

Stephen, his younger brother, was a Blue. He often joked that “the only ­difference between us is the colour of our shirts”.

His life changed, ­irrevocably, when he found Michael’s body in a cold church hall in Sheffield.

His brother was the last of Hillsborough’s 96 victims to be identified. He was 38.

Stephen now works, ­unpaid, helping survivors of the tragedy. You can find him in the Hillsborough Justice Campaign shop, opposite the Kop.

He’s the one in an Everton shirt.

This is his testimony. I hope it haunts the bureaucrats and politicians who, after 22 years, took the despicable decision to make the ­families wait for the truth, contained in Cabinet papers.

“I will fight to my dying day for our Mike’s ­justice. I’m the last remaining ­family member.

“My Mum and my sister passed away, not knowing the truth. I’m 58. I’ve had heart ­problems. I might not see it myself the way the ­Government is going

“I want to go to my mum’s grave and tell her, ‘We won. Mike (below) was not a ­hooligan. He wasn’t drunk. He didn’t fight with the ­police or steal from the dead. He was simply at the wrong place at the wrong time.’

“That’s all I have to live for.

“If I had the chance to meet the Prime Minister, I’d ask him to put us out of our ­misery. Please do it. We need to get our lives back. We need to move on. There’s been so much ­silent suffering.

“There are so many people walking around, with a great weight on their ­shoulders. They have suicidal ideas, dark thoughts. We have an open-door policy. Some come in, have a cup of tea, and ­unburden themselves.

“It’s like opening the sluice gates. We can tell ourselves home truths.

“I was the same as them.

“Every time I hear the word Hillsborough – or see Kenny Dalglish on the telly – I think of Mike. I sometimes drive to the memorial just to touch his name.

“I’ve spent more than a third of my life struggling to come to terms with Hillsborough, but I still feel guilty.

“I woke at 6am today and the first word I heard, when I turned on the radio, was Hillsborough. It sent me into a downer. It’s the ­unexpected victims who ­affect you the most deeply. No one knew what Stephen Whittle [who killed himself over guilt at selling his Hillsborough ticket to a friend who died in the tragedy] was going through. I feel guilty we weren’t there to help ­before he took his own life. People have been worn down.

“They’ve lost jobs, ­marriages, families. At the time of the disaster, I was a taxi driver. I was driving around in a trance. People flagged me down – and I was driving past them.

“I was lucky. I retrained with the help of Social Services. We want no applause, but we can at least get people the right sort of support.

“To be honest, I’m worried what will happen when the papers are ­eventually ­released. I might receive some ­information about my brother that will tip me over the edge. There are ­hundreds of ­people – parents, brothers, sisters, grandchildren – in the same situation.

“The stress is enormous.

“We are not bad people in Liverpool. People made ­mistakes that day. Human ­beings make mistakes.

“If the truth had come out earlier, perhaps we would have forgiven… but we will never forget.”

Nor should we.

Please shame the Government into action, and sign this: http://epetitions.direct.gov.uk/petitions/2199

It was Mario Balotelli’s Homer Simpson moment. He was going through the motions of warming up on the touchline at Manchester City. Sergio Aguero was playing like a god who had descended from Mount Olympus.

Balotelli knew he was going nowhere. He let his arms hang languidly over his troublesome knees, watched intently, and was engulfed by the sound of a crowd which did not believe its luck. All Eastlands lacked was a speech bubble, above his trademark Mohican: “D’oh”.

Change is incessant and inevitable in football. Its victims tend not to recognise the dangers until it is too late. The Manchester City project has found a new hero, a player who offers value for silly money. All Balotelli brings to the table is silliness.

He’s a cult figure, who inevitably polarises opinion. His apologists suggest we should lighten up. So what if he behaves with the self-restraint of a Moonie on Meow Meow? His antics add to the gaiety of nations.

Those of us who look for more than cartoon caricatures now have the perfect reference point. Aguero is an authentic superstar, whose loyalty to Atletico Madrid testifies to his character. He visibly cherishes his talent, and applies himself with revealing ferocity.

Of course he will be high maintenance. Too many hangers-on use players like him as a meal ticket for it to be otherwise. Expect City to be forced to challenge perpetual rumours that they are offering Aguero a ludicrously paid sabbatical before he is repatriated to La Liga, and Real Madrid.

City might just have to win the Champions League to head that one off at the pass.

Balotelli, meanwhile, has a stark choice. He can be a headline or a hero. Roberto Mancini has little apparent need to continue to indulge his imbecility. Balotelli must prove his fitness, physically and mentally. He must repay the emotional and financial investment in his potential.

As mad as it seems, his time is running out, at the age of 21.

Football needs its Rocky moments, where the underdog overcomes adversity. In an age in which players are mini-corporations, and clubs are global marketing tools, it needs people like Norwich City’s Steve Morison to prove they belong in the Premier League.

Paul Lambert, the Norwich manager, has no doubts. He sensed the potential of a man shaped by rejection, the hunger of someone who endured the drudgery of clocking on at 4am for nine hour shifts at a paper-shredding company. Morison is Everyman, but his man.

The striker is now a Welsh international. Morison was named man of the match on his Premier League debut at Wigan, where he set up Wes Hoolahan’s equalising goal and showed signs of forming a productive partnership with Grant Holt. Lambert, a hard task master, praised him for his resilience, in carrying on despite a bad facial injury.

At 28, Morison is making up for lost time. He cried bitterly when he was released at 16 by Tottenham, in a cameo of the game’s callousness. He was instructed to listen for his name, which never came, herded into a group, and told never to return.

Instead of being crushed by more rejection, by Northampton Town, he salvaged his career in suburbia, at Potters Bar, Bishop’s Stortford and Stevenage, where he scored 89 goals in 157 games. That earned him a £130,000 move to Millwall.

He initially struggled with the pace of League football: “It was like, wow. There were a million things going on. It was so manic I literally couldn’t catch my breath.” But he eased gradually into the zone, where chances seem to come in a slow motion dream sequence.

Morison scored 40 goals in two seasons at the Den. Norwich were so keen on his physical and mental strengths they had four bids rejected in a week before he was sold for £2.8million. He had arrived, but knows he has a long way still to go.

That’s why you wish him well. He’s a shining example to anyone who has been told he is simply not good enough. As the hoary old motivational slogan goes: “ Believe, and you can achieve”