Jump to content

 

 

Recommended Posts

KRIS BOYD will fly to Turkey today to seal a �£40,000-a-week deal with Eskisehirspor.

 

The Scotland striker will sign a three-year contract tomorrow after the Super Lig outfit agreed a �£1.75million fee with Middlesbrough.

 

Boyd, 28 next month, had the chance to move to Turkey when he left Rangers on a Bosman last summer before joining Boro.

 

His transfer to the Riverside turned sour and he spent the second half of last season on loan at Nottingham Forest.

 

Boyd's hopes of a permanent move to the City Ground ended when Billy Davies was sacked last month.

 

Now he is poised to follow former Gers and Scotland strike partner Kenny Miller to the Super Lig.

 

Boyd will join former Celtic frontman Diomansy Kamara at Eskisehirspor after his recent switch from Fulham.

 

Eskisehirspor finished seventh last season - four places adrift of Miller's Bursaspor - and want to push for Europe this term.

 

The club has become mired in the Turkish match-fixing scandal this week with technical director Umit Karan among 40 people arrested. Karan will be freed from custody today and will conclude one of the biggest deals in the club's history when he ties up Boyd, who is then expected to be unveiled in front of thousands of supporters tomorrow.

 

The top scorer in SPL history hopes the move can reignite his Scotland career under Craig Levein.

 

The 18-times capped striker has scored seven goals for his country despite making himself unavailable for selection between October 2008 and November 2009.

 

He returned for last season's Hampden clash with Liechtenstein and is eager to win a place for this autumn's Euro 2012 qualifiers.

 

Read more: http://www.thescottishsun.co.uk/scotsol/homepage/sport/spl/3681800/Kris-Boyd-nets-40k-Turkey-deal.html#ixzz1RPPOI4k5

Link to post
Share on other sites

As much as I dislike the fucker, Boyd actually did quite well at Forest so I'm surprised Boro have binned him. But after the way he treated us he can go to hell anyway. Or Turkey, as it's otherwise known.

Link to post
Share on other sites

KRIS Boyd can pick 'em, can't he? He signs up for the Gordon Strachan era at Middlesbrough and the whole thing collapses around his ears, he decamps to Nottingham Forest where Billy Davies shows him a bit of love - and then Davies gets sacked. Privately, he sends out the SOS to Rangers but Rangers don't want to know him anymore. As the saying goes, if he didn't have bad luck he'd have no luck at all.

And now he's gone to northwestern Turkey, to a club called Eskisehirspor (nickname: Red Lightnings) in the Super Lig. On the face of it, it's not a bad move. Plenty of cash for Boyd, a standard of football higher than the SPL, fanatical crowds (these lads show the Old Firm masses how to cause a proper stir), a new stadium in the offing (just as well given that their current ground holds little more than 13,000) and a new culture (sadly, no Monster Munch in Turkey) should the big man decide to embrace it.

 

Boyd has been a wanted man in Turkey for a few seasons now. Transfixed (or something like that) by the record number of goals he got while at Ibrox, Bursaspor were keen to land him before he eventually opted to join Strachan at Middlesbrough, a move that should have worked, but didn't. Strachan said that Boyd would eat up the Championship just as soon as he settled down, but he never did. He showed patches of good goalscoring form at Forest but Davies's demise put paid to his chances of a permanent move. Turkey, it would appear, was his only option beyond staying in the reserves at Boro.

 

The thing about Turkish football, though, is that it's going through what might euphemistically be described as a period of turbulence at present. Eskisehirspor are in the news, not because of the capture of Boyd and the buckets of goals he may score for them, but on account of their manager, Bulent Uygun, and their athletic director, Umit Karan, being banged up in an Istanbul prison last week pending a trial into a suspected match-fixing scandal in Turkish football. It's not just the Eskisehirspor guys who are in bother. There are many others in jail at the moment; chairmen and sporting directors and managers and former players and current players. This story is the talk of Turkey. Everybody from the man in the street to the prime minister have been talking about it.

 

You have to wonder if Boyd noticed the trouble his new club is in for looking at the fat salary they were offering him. But to summarise: The Turkish Football Federation (TFF) has suspected for years that match-rigging and bribery and fraud and all sorts of other illegal activity was pervasive in the domestic game. Only recently have they gotten serious about dealing with it.

 

At the beginning of June they banned 11 former players and coaches for life after an investigation into illegal betting between 2008 and 2010. That was just the beginning, though. Last Sunday, in an operation intended to get to the bottom of suspicious behaviour surrounding 20 matches in the season just gone, the police launched a raid on clubs and the homes of influential football people across 16 provinces in Turkey. The champions, Fenerbah�§e, were at the heart of police scrutiny. In April, Fenerbah�§e played Boyd's new club Eskisehirspor and the authorities are exercised about that match more than most others. What they have seen in their investigations so far, they don't like.

 

Sixty football people were interrogated in Besiktas last week. Thirty-two were then jailed awaiting trial. Some of the charges include "forming, directing and being a member of an armed criminal organisation" said a police spokesman in Istanbul.

 

In a statement on Wednesday police said they had seized eight unlicensed guns in the raids. It's not known what specific charges are directed at which individuals but prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdog, reacted thus: "Fenerbah�§e is not the only club that is being investigated. They (prosecutors] are talking about a large (match-fixing] organisation. We all hear there are serious documents (proving the match-fixing allegations]. I hope the investigation will be completed in a fair manner soon."

 

On Thursday, Eskisehirspor sacked Uygun and Karan. Where, precisely, this leaves Boyd's move to the club is anybody's guess, but there is no doubt that he is about to enter a very strange environment.

 

What is potentially toxic about his move there is the way the Turkish clubs are funded, or part-funded, by a wonderful deal from the television broadcasters.

 

Eskisehirspor, and the other clubs implicated in this affair, are hoping that punishment begins and ends with the organisation most in the police spotlight, Fenerbah�§e. But even if it does, there is a financial repercussion that could send a tremor through all of Turkish football. If Fenerbah�§e are found guilty they will be stripped of their title from last season and will be relegated. Given the terms of the broadcast deal - a whopping $321m a year - Fenerbah�§e's relegation triggers a renegotiation - and a whole lot less money for the Super Lig clubs that are left behind.

 

There is a piece of legislation in Turkish law called the Prevention of Violence and Disorder in Sporting Events and there is talk now that if Eskisehirspor are found in contravention of it they, too, will be dumped out of the big league. Where then for Boydy? Where then for Kenny Miller, too, for that matter? After spending so long in the doldrums in England, Boyd found what he hoped was a new dawn in Turkey. Alas, there's clouds on his horizon again.

 

http://scotlandonsunday.scotsman.com/sport/Tom-English-39You-wonder-if.6798960.jp?articlepage=1

Link to post
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.


×
×
  • Create New...

Important Information

We have placed cookies on your device to help make this website better. You can adjust your cookie settings, otherwise we'll assume you're okay to continue.