Archive for March, 2009

PL Reality

Mar 20th, 09 / Comments Off

 

Your reading a pre 2010-11 archived article

As moments to savour go this was one of the best for years, Man u 1 v 4 Liverpool, oh joy of joys for all right thinking football fans across the country. The wailing in deepest darkest Essex and Surrey not withstanding it was a good day for football. For the first time in years the top of the Premier League was “human”, well at least for an hour or so.

Sir Alex “best side lost” Ferguson must have wished he had more practice at puerile excuses. He could have tried “not my fault the Serb was rubbish” or even “we got confused by Torres because we are not used to strikers in Liverpool shirts” or even if desperate “we spent too much time trying to justify my mental retard of a striker’s pre-match knobhead comments to bother caring how to play our opponents”. Either way non of this matters really; the score is in the record books and could be the over-riding memory of the season.

That pack of dogs that calls itself the football press weren’t sure what to do…it’s a funny way to lose the plot beating Real Madrid and Man U in a week. The real issue isn’t Benitez per say (although some of his decisions can be described as erratic), its why for the third season on the trot will ManU win the PL despite not being the best side or squad in the competition. I kind off didn’t mind as much in 2007 when it was Abramovitch’s interference that robbed Mourinho of 3 successive titles. I minded more when a scandalous tackle robbed a young Arsenal team of a date with destiny in 2008. This season it’s a mixed emotion, a feeling Liverpool could have wrapped this up with just the small addition of a decent finisher, you know a link and shoot player, someone instinctive, like Robbie Keane!



Now I know this is heresy amongst some in the football world but I’m going say it regardless, the present ManU team is the most undeserving of then all from the last 25 years. The fact it won the CL last season tells us more about that competition’s obsession with finance than it does about quality European football. I’ll go further, Ronaldo is a 3-year wonder, by 2012 he will be like his Brazilian namesake, more known for his sexual idiocies than his form. Rooney is the new Best, destined to crash on a sea of exces, Ferdinand is starting to wear thin at the edges, a Ledley King style future awaits. Factor in the passing of the Giggs/Neville/Scholas ugly years, the inability of either Tevez or Berbatov to settle down anywhere for more than 2 years at a time and the reality of managerial succession creeping closer and you start to see why the only way is down for that club, hopefully Liverpool post 90 style.



One of the great disappointments of waiting for the decline of Salford City Mercenaries is the reality that those who aspire to replace them (with one noble exception) are nearly equally as irritating. I could cope with Chelsea winning things whilst Mourinho was king-pin but if the last 3 seasons teach us anything it’s the dangers of plaything football clubs. Only at Chelsea could the owner impose Shevkenco and Ballack on a manager and make them worse. I had hoped “Big Phil” was slowly sucking the life out of the pampered squad of overpaid whingers but the Russian seems to have cottoned on to that early.



Equally I don’t have too much time for Liverpool under Benitez, £180m isn’t enough for this lad, he wants full control of the club, fees, wages, laundry (ok he might devolve that one). Remember this is a club owned by people who can’t stand to be in each others company. Now I like a good Machiavellian plot like the next man, but you need to win the PL first before you brag about your knowledge of 5th century Chinese battle tactics.

The club I like to see do well is Arsenal, no £30m players every summer for the Emirates. Good squad building, a commitment to youth, a desire to play football the right way, what more could you ask for? Well less crap directed at the manager by the press would be a start. I don’t understand it myself but its almost a national sport. Arsenal lose and its “end of an era”, a million John Hartson’s line up to demand they buy some over-paid “experienced” player. Lets ignore that this Arsenal team have lost one game in 20 (and they went through to the QF of the CL after that defeat), lets forget the legions of players under 20 years old that can still wipe the floor with most of the PL teams, blank out the injuries to players like Fabragas, Edmundo, Walcott, Rosicky, Adebayor, lets focus on what matters to some, Brain Horton’s shoes and the Gallas/Toure love in.



I can understand that fan’s want to see a new “kid on the block” in the Champions League places, and lets face this reality, their hasn’t been a proper one since Leeds in 2000, with both Newcastle and Everton deciding they didn’t really want it enough in their occasional drift into the qualifying competition. What I can’t understand is why they want it to be at the expense of Arsenal and certainly don’t know why they expect it to be Aston Villa. Maybe my footballing prejudices are showing but in my book when you buy Emile Heskey your telling the world how unimportant scoring goals is to your game. Add the really bizarre idea you treat the knock-out stages of the UEFA Cup with less respect than you treat the Birmingham Senior Cup and you start to see why O’Neil’s gameplan was always going to fall apart. They put themselves in with a chance based on away form that was unsustainable and on the back of a second season kid. Well the kid has unsurprisingly hit the buffers and the lower top half nature of the signings (Friedal, Davies, Knight, Young L, Sidwell, Milner, Heskey, Young A) is shining for all to see.



I have no intention of insulting any discussion about the top of the PL with a reference to Everton and its ground-breaking 4-6-0 formation, they ain’t relevant in the same way Villa really ain’t. That may be harsh but its true. The top 4 remain the top 4, despite the enjoyment of last Saturday, ManU will again undeservedly win the PL. That hurts, if they also win the CL, that really hurts. (Deviation alert…I don’t give a monkeys how many times someone wins the PL, the record for winning the top division in this country started in 1888 and it’s the same if its called Div 1, PL or the Rupert Murdock memorial rip-off).

I personally can never reconcile my love of the game with respecting the ManU of the last 17 years. I was never a fan of the post 58 demand they be treated as a “big club” or that post 68 they somehow changed English football. I have from a very early age disliked the mentality of the type of supporter they attract, have always found their away support anal and ugly. The way that club can turn a gentile player into a spitting vicious numpty is supreme and then there is money, £900m worth of debt! No theirs zero hope any right thinking football fan respects that. The counter –revolution needs to start somewhere, I suggest we make the government instruct all the local authorities to take into care anyone caught wearing a ManU shirt outside of Greater Manchester with compulsory mind drugs for the under 18’s caught. Drastic measures required.

We all live in hope it will all be different next season as a plucky English owned club or a competitive West Ham United (which of that is the weirder idea, a competitive WHU or an English owned football club??) fend of £200m worth of Blue Moon and a resurgent Arsenal. It might happen, it might not. If it doesn’t the cycle of distain remains. There is one truth I acknowledge immediately, if it isn’t ManU/Chelsea/Liverpool I dislike, it will be some one new with too much money, too many expensive players and too arrogant fans and for that continuity of contempt I will always be grateful.

Football through a hardened glare

The Better the Results get, the less I believe it.

Mar 10th, 09 / Comments Off

 

Your reading a pre 2010-11 archived article

The better the results get the less I believe it. Not withstanding the attempt Alan Shearer is going to make to prove English football management has got nothing to do with tactics, personality, insight or judgement and is really just about being an ex decent footballer who can “command respect” for 2 minutes (as previously practised by his old shove-push partner Roy Keane 12 miles down the road from Toon Towers) the real interest this week was the international games.



In a similar style to the Shearer model lives Diego Maradona (or cheat of god) who has found out that having a club management record similar to Iain Dowie’s PL one is no help when little Bolivia are pulverising your 2010 WC favourites tag to death to the tune of 6-1. One can only marvel at how we can have a WC where Turkey and Portugal can’t draw England due to the fact they aren’t going to make it. First team to confirm their hotels, Australia, something for messes Viduka and Kewell to look forward to as they avoid all form of physical contact in 2009-10. I’m looking forward to it already.



However what I’m not looking forward to it’s the year long over hyping of England’s chances that is guaranteed to be a mainstay of the sports media from the moment we dispatch the mighty Andorra at Wembley. 12 painful months of delusion topped off with the intertwined drama of the Beckham soap opera. As we speak betting firms have a full list of medical conditions to bet on which the special teams one will fall victim to (I’m putting a fiver on Alzheimer’s, which means he will be in better shape to contribute than he was in 2002 and 2006). Here’s an idea, lets pick the squad on your ability to play 90 minutes of football and leave Mr Posh at home!!

Now I assume that amongst my loyal band of readers there is a growing belief in the Capello magic. Five wins out of five, Zagreb and all that, a certain spring in the player’s step, even when they are made to wear collared white tea towels. To be fair, it’s certainly being stress free (strange but it’s the same with Leeds, the less stressed it is the more it worries me), lacking in any real drama in this qualifying period. Poor scribes, no-one to personality assassinate. And yet there lingers something loosely called the “something isn’t right” factor.

Ask yourself this, what, apart from the McClaren factor (still say he got a raw deal off the press) was wrong with England when Capello rode in? A goalie with suspect big game temperament, the right-back slot available to anyone who wanted it, a left back temperamental in form and style, centre-backs picked on who they were not how they played, the right-side midfield issue, the left-side midfield issue, the Frank and Steven can’t play together factor, the what is Rooney’s best position question, what to do with Joe Cole, where are the goalscorers and finally last but not least, who leads this bunch of retards?


Fast forward 18 months, what’s changed? The goalie is even more suspect in the big games now its Calamity James and not Rickett Robinson. Brown or Johnson for right-back, come back Hargreaves all is forgiven. Ashley is still a serial knob-head (is every England press conference for the next 10 years going to include an appeal not to upset Mr Cole as booing puts him off his adultery), Ferdinand and Terry are still getting picked despite the fact they are in truth half-dead from the numerous injuries they carry. Lennon or Bentley, a question for Spurs surely rather than England, equally if Downing is the answer to the left-side question then the question was whose the shittist player in the squad. Lampard and Gerrard not only still get in each others way they also have to avoid the bouncer put in the team to keep them from standing on the same blade of grass, Mr G Barry. Rooney still spends too much time in our half, fetching the ball, drifting off to Burger King, lunging in at passing defenders and trying to teach European referees the scouse for cunt! The J Cole question has changed, its now whose daft idea was it to let him pundit ala Shearer. As for goalscorers, well obviously with 9 league goals this season Carlton Cole is up there with the Owen’s, fair play to Heskey, took him 6 years but he finally realised against Slovakia the way to score a goal was not to even get a touch of the ball and we also have the Crouch scissor-kick machine, quaking in their boots at that striking line up is the big 8 of world football!! That just leaves the captain question which I always feel would be better decided by seeing who can read a game well rather than giving it to the one who most resembles Terry Butcher after repeatedly head-butting a wall.

Now don’t get me wrong, of course I’d like England to be contenders in South Africa, if only for the reason I’d love to see England in a WC final again before I die. But asking me to believe in this lot as 2010 winners, no chance. Major surgery was what was needed after McClaren and it hasn’t happened. Capello is riding on hope and a renewed confidence, the fault lines are still there and I fear come June 2010 they are going to fracture big time.

Still I’ll be watching.

Football through a hardened glare