anathemadelight

The PL is of course renowned for the humility and piety of its players. He'd stick out like a sore thumb. Really, he would.

Players private lives should stay that way as far as I'm concerned, and as far as the captaincy goes I think he should keep it. But if what he's done has affected his relationship with the rest of the team, if they've lost respect for him or no longer have faith in him, that's another issue altogether. If they don't want him to be captain then he shouldn't be. Same goes for England, I suppose. But I don't really care about England. [Though I think image may end up being way more important on the England front.]

Well he's gone and failed another one today. I'm beginning to actually feel sorry for him now.

For the Win.

He's injured.

Seriously. I'm not sure we can do very much worse without him.

Absolutely. I can understand why people are upset, but at the end of the day if we broke the rules we deserve the punishment. Isn't that what we've been telling Mutu?

Here are some lawyer's opinions from the Times.

Regardless of how well he plays, or whether he keeps his head down and doesn't say anything ridiculous, I cannot bring myself to stop disliking Nicolas Anelka. It's beyond reason; I almost feel guilty sometimes. Almost. The opposite is true for Didier. He could kill puppies and I'd still find a way to love him.

Does anyone know details of the deal? Does he have guaranteed playing time?

I almost completely agree with you, sam. The difference between Mutu's case and some of the examples like Barton and Gerrard though is that Mutu signed a contract specifically stating he would not engage in a certain kind of behavior and by doing so he breached a contract worth millions. Considering the way society views alcohol vs. hard drugs, I'd be surprised if players contracts typically took a hard line against alcohol use, which may be why players are subject only to soft fines. Clubs could probably sue players more often for a lot of their on- and off-pitch behaviour, but the time, money and negative publicity it involves probably makes them feel it's not worth it. And if it's a valuable player like Steven Gerrard you can absolutely forget it. For me that doesn't excuse how unwilling individual clubs, UEFA, and FIFA are about enforcing their own rules. The situation between Atletico Madrid and Marseille in the CL last year is a good example. Madrid fans racially, verbally and physically abused OM, French reporters, and OM's travelling disabled fans, but their stadium ban was commuted so Liverpool fans wouldn't be 'inconvenienced'. Please. I'm glad Chelsea stuck to the standards they had set, but yes, Mutu can't pay this fine. He's worth something around 10m Euros I think. I don't know if they can or not, but I hope he and Chelsea can reach some sort of alternative deal.

From the Court of Arbitration for Sport website: Lausanne, 31 July 2009 The Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) has today dismissed the appeal filed by the Romanian football player, Adrian Mutu, against the decision rendered by the FIFA Dispute Resolution Chamber (DRC) on 7 May 2008 in which he was ordered to pay EUR 17173990 in compensation to his former club, Chelsea FC, for breach of contract. Wow.

The Chelsea Blog @ Ole Ole (http://www.oleole.com/blogs/chelseablog) is good, though they don't update very often.

I think Ballack would do it whether you wanted him to or not.

Poor Franco. It's getting a bit ridiculous.