If you are a fan of the Premier League not living the UK you really miss out on a daily giggle (and the occasional nugget of truth) if you don’t take the time once in a while to read the soccer coverage in the British tabloids. For instance today, The Sun, the tackiest of the tabloids (http://www.thesun.co.uk/) has come up with a story, headlined “Sparky Gave Sheikhs ¼ Million to Buy Bell”. In case you didn’t know, “Sparky” is the nickname that newly unemployed former Manchester City manager Mark Hughes has been saddled with since his playing days. The story claims that when the deal was being made to sign Craig Bell for fourteen million ponds the club was 250,000 short and that Hughes lent the club the money.

The wonderful thing about The Sun is that their writers never actually feel the need to back their stories up with actual sources. There is no mention of where this was dreamed up from.  Certainly Hughes was a fine player in his time and has been a good manager, but does he really have that much lying around to loan out? Hughes played in the days before the huge sponsorship deals and the exclusive photo ops with OK Magazine were around to help soccer players line their pockets.

Soccer players in England are big news, bigger than musicians, bigger than actors, most of the time they are bigger than royalty. Do yourself a favor once in a while EPL fans, read the Sun and the Mirror (after you check the real news on soccertools.com of course).  You’ll have to dig for the actual stats and match reports but you will learn that Darren Bent’s fear of spiders might derail his World Cup dreams(??) and that new Eastlands boss Roberto Mancini is ready to fight with Robinho on his very first day on the job (bit of a mismatch surely -- and terrible for those fancy Italian suits Mancini sports).  And that’s just today.