Dead Legends – The Chinese Perspective

It’s been some time coming, but last night I finally found an article in Carson Yeung’s Hong Kong newspaper Sing Pao about McLeish leaving us for the Villa. The original translation I got for the article gave the headline as “Dead Legend…” I knew feelings had run strong but I wasn’t expecting this.

Of course, it was nothing more than a poor translation – it should have read “Former Legend.” I should make it clear in no uncertain terms that I do not believe Carson wants McLeish dead. It wasn’t much of an article really, as it was just a translation of what Tony Cascarino said about McLeish to Sky Sports News.

Other than that article, there is still nothing being said by the Chinese side of the operation about McLeish leaving us for “Ashidongweila”. I’m curious as to why this is – this is a man whose newspaper prints a stack of photos from some shindig for the newspaper’s 71st birthday, which it has to be said is hardly a milestone – yet a massive piece of news concerning probably his biggest asset has attracted virtually no attention from his editorial staff. The only reason I can see is that this news concerns a massive loss of face for Carson in Hong Kong, and rather than draw attention to it he’s acting as if it hasn’t happened. The only piece of news that has been used by his newspaper is one to criticise the departure of McLeish by someone in the game here; maybe it’s his way of trying to show that McLeish was in the wrong and he was in the right.

When a new manager is appointed, I shall be interested to note how big Sing Pao goes on the new appointment; I suspect there will be at least a minor story about who our new boss is. Should Carson appoint someone who is a well known name across the footballing world, say a Gianfranco Zola (which looks unlikely now), I’d expect a bigger story than if he appointed someone like Chris Hughton.

On a differing subject, if you cast your mind back to May, I wrote this piece about Carson Yeung arranging a co-operation deal with Qufu in Shandong Province, China. Last night, I read some more in Sing Pao about the proposed deals with the historic coastal city.

As you can see from the picture the signing was quite an event; with Shandong Province hoping to bring on board three hundred foreign companies, to invest a total of $700million (US). The article noted that Carson was present, but unlike the previous article it didn’t say anything else about him; it would appear Carson was small potatoes in comparison to some of the other Chinese businessmen present. As yet I have seen no announcement to the HKSE about this agreement, so I have to assume that as yet there is nothing set in stone barring a vague promise to do some business. As before, I will update on this story as and when more news breaks.