Are U's getting the Scarborough pair?

According to the BBC Oxford United have agreed a fee with Scarborough for striker Steve Brodie and defender Paul Ellender, who alone is rated at £75,000. Scarborough are deeply in debt and recently transfer listed this duo in a bid to raise money to pay off the Inland Revenue and the VATman.

Boston United have also put in a bid for Ellender, who lives in Scunthorpe and so wouldn't have to move to play for Boston, which could scupper United's joint bid. Reports from Scarborough, however, suggest that Brodie has a sell on clause in his contract and that SFC are trying to juggle the paperwork to show the larger protion of the fee is for Ellender, which then prevents Brodie to his rightful portion of the transfer fee and this is what is causing the hold up.

Concrete news

Following reports last Saturday that concrete blocks above the players' tunnel moved under people's weight and were cracked, the club's safety officer, Tony Ashley, and the contractors inspected the area. The problem was that precast concrete slabs over the players' tunnel hadn't been packed properly leading to movement under pedestrian loading.

The cracking is at the end of a slab where some chipping of the concrete has occurred when the slabs were installed next to each other. The packing has already been rectified.

Statistics or damned lies

A report in the Oxford Mail that United's supporters are amongst the most violent in the land are not borne out by the statistics on which the report is based. Figures released today by the National Criminal Intelligence Service (NCIS) showed that last season 13 United supporters were arrested, a figure which places the club well below the average for the number of arrests in Division Two.

United's thirteen arrests included four drink related offences, four threatening behaviour, three breach of the peace, one disorderly conduct, and one for assault. This means that there were 62 clubs with a worse record than United and 25 with a better record, which puts us equal 26th BEST out of 92, or easily in the best third of the whole league. Not quite the scare story that the local paper reports (although Rage Online is not suggesting that we should be complacent about football hooliganism, or that it is in any way to be condoned: one incident is one too many).