Yet another embarrassing week for football club’s PR teams as one video that spread throughout the internet caused quite a stir while the Champions can’t seem to get anything right at the moment. A late entry to this list came in a very recent friendly over in America where a referee told a manager to take a player off instead of sending him off.
3. MLS referee: Allen Chapman
Manchester United continued their pre-season in the United States with a match against Real Salt Lake on Monday. The friendly, and let’s remember it was only a friendly, was marked by unsavoury scenes as Antonio Valencia was eventually sent off by Chapman but not before the American referee had asked Jose Mourinho to take Valencia off the pitch. A few minutes before the incident, Juan Mata was forced off after a nasty challenge by Salt Lake’s Sebastian Saucedo. Therefore, because it seemed a correct and moral thing to do, Valencia proceeded to take out Saucedo from behind. The challenge itself warranted a red card but Chapman asked Mourinho to take his player off while Saucedo was receiving treatment. Mourinho resisted, so Valencia was sent off by the referee – doesn’t quite seem the way to do it, but that’s just my opinion.
2. Chelsea FC
This is already Chelsea’s second appearance on the shortlist for Wally of the Week this summer and I have a feeling it won’t be the last. Despite finally signing Tiemoue Bakayoko from Monaco this week, Chelsea have not had a good week. First of all, they sold Nathanial Chalobah to Watford on the midfielder’s request, how did the club get into that position? Fans on social media were outraged at the decision to sell him so cheaply at £5m but it seemed the youngster had had enough of sitting on the Chelsea bench.
Player power came to the fore again after Diego Costa, who has been pictured partying in Brazil wearing an Atletico Madrid shirt, and Nemanja Matic were excused of joining the squad for their pre-season tour of Asia. Neither even bothered to turn up for pre-season training at Cobham. These departures, along with others, have left Chelsea with just 17 fit senior players at the club and their search for a striker looks to be a long struggle after being linked with Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang and Sergio Aguero in the past few days. It looks like they could be in for a tough ride come the start of the season.
1. Arsenal FC
Where do I start with this? The club posted a video on their official twitter account to promote their tour of Asia but it wasn’t just any old video. It consisted of a few Arsenal players rowing on an animated boat with a backdrop of China and, I think it’s pretty safe to say, I don’t think any of them will make it as actors after they’ve retired. Alexis Sanchez appeared to be the cox in this video but I think the PR team deserve that name after allowing that to make it onto the internet. We’ll soon see if they sink by the time the season starts…