Posts Tagged ‘Everton’

Leeds United And The Other 91 Basket Cases, 29/07/10, including Everton, West Ham United, Bristol City, Sheffield Wednesday and Rotherham United.

Jul 29th, 10 / Comments Off

Your reading a pre 2010-11 archived article

 

 
This is Clarkeonenil’s regular trawl through the idiocy of English football.

Ah the relaxing sounds of normality, 9 days and counting and already Leeds United (defined as the club ownership structure) have returned with a bang to form. Sneaking out a statement on ownership, on a Saturday and with out fanfare, that is already heading for an all time achievement award from the Campaign for Plain English was just the start. Follow up with the weekly alienation of the support rant from Management Share Bates, the continuing fall out from the LUTV fiasco where the club is now trying in on for the Wolves game. Sprinkle in another week nearer the transfer window closing without the moths in club wallet being disturbed and all in all its business as normal. Wonder when the Supporters Trust and TenforKeninyourowntimenorush will reappear to comment on all this? No breath being held.

In terms of business as normal Everton are clearly running an amateur organisation (which explains the signing of Beckford), how else would you understand the Gosling fiasco. Not content with being unable to turn a verbal agreement into a piece of paper over 8 months the Goodison Park club are now trying to deny they screwed it. Well where I’m sitting this is a classic case of stop digging. Everton failed to produce the contract, bang to rights, Gosling goes to Newcastle United on a free. I and others might not appreciate football agents driving buses through regulations in order to secure a fat commission but in the end if a football club at any level above West Yorkshire Riding reserves doesn’t do the basics in administration (particularly at a level where players are million pounds plus assets) they get what they deserve.

Another club rumoured to be in for Gosling was West Ham United, fast becoming my tip for the next Portsmouth. Whilst one can see the point of making a general statement that your no longer a selling club (which is going to sound hollow less than 6 months after the exposure of £150m worth of debt) that isn’t quite the same as saying you will never sell specific players. No matter how pivotal to survival Scott Parker was last season when a club comes and offers you £10m for a 30 year old you snap their stupid Redknapp fingers off! The statements from Sullivan beggar belief, what happens if Grant decides not to play Parker, what happens if Parker wants to play CL football (yeh I know technically its not CL until the group stages but hey I’m a traditionalist)? Oh what’s that you say ,the papers say he does, their you go, unravelling already.

Grant is one of those managers that goes from highs to lows very quickly, another example is at Bristol City. Steve Coppell is an half decent manager but his record is erratic and usually the disasters come when his commitment to the job is tempered. The clues are usually some quite grim statement to the effect something isn’t right. Here we are with him just about to launch his Ashton Gate reign and already he is saying that the players are not committed to the cause. Now we don’t mind a bit of player ego bashing but we not sure that inspires us to believe he is about to replicate his Reading years rather than his Manchester City days.

Meanwhile in deepest South Yorkshire some kind of bizarre episode of lie to me is being played out. The board of Sheffield Wednesday (and its a mute point as to who is the board or owners at this juncture) would have the support believe that HMRC were just being hard-nosed when they issued a winding up order against a club that owes something in the region of £40m all told. Not withstanding only Southend United seem to believe payments to HMRC only have to take place after court appearances this tone from Hillsborough grates somewhat. In the end either the club gets 40k worth of home support every week whilst in L1 to help dilute that debt or it sells players and cut wages. Turning down bids from Nottingham Forest for a player you got for next to nothing (or more accurate £250k 3 years ago) is short-sighted idiocy, if for no other reason he (30 years old) gets to play in a higher division and the club gets to pay next months tax bills on time. I sense that Wednesday could be the new Cardiff City in terms of never facing the financial truth.

Which finally brings us to near neighbours (and technically presently in the same city) Rotherham United. This is one of those occasions where facts are difficult to obtain but intuitively you know something must be afoot. As I recall it Rotherham have 3 years in which to return to the town (although to be fair you could lob a brick from within Rotherham Borough and after two bounces it would reach the Don Valley Stadium). Now I’m no buildings expert but 2 years on and no evidence I have seen of construction (other than the Guest and Chrimes site being identified) and that’s before the thorney issue of finance in these constrained times, you can’t help feeling the deadline will be missed, by some distance. So what’s the plan now? Personally i just don’t see why the FL doesn’t accept the Don Valley as Rotherham’s meduim term home, after all they wouldn’t be the first, or the last, club to stray outside of traditional boundaries.

 

Michael Green.

The Other 91 Basket Cases

Sniffers Sunday Shorts 31/01/10: Leeds United, Chelsea, Manchester City, AFC Wimbledon, Fulham, Portsmouth, Aston Villa, Everton, Accrington Stanley, Togo.

Jan 31st, 10 / Comments Off

 

Welcome to the Sunday edition of Sniffer Nose, a punchier version of your favourite occasional column.

Bouncebackability.

Horrible word isn’t it and one which should prevent Ian Dowie from working in management again. But I wonder, has Simon Grayson been using it at Elland Road this week to describe what he expects after the Swindon Town debacle? Obviously we won’t really ever know, what we do know is the Beckford worshippers took bread and wine at the altar again against Colchester United and somehow Kilkenny has become the player to make way for McSheffrey (jury out on that so long as Doyle somehow keeps getting picked). Still a win is a win and the three way scrap for 2 spots continues. Gosh nearly two positive Leeds United references in successive “shorts”, best cut that out before we start.

Build em up, knock em down.

So what to make of the John Terry saga? Well I’d strip him of the England captaincy simply on the basis if you stupid enough to spend £500k on press injunctions you clearly have no judgement. Personally I couldn’t give a monk who anyone sleeps with but then I don’t get nominated as “Dad of the Year”! After Tiger Woods we seem to live in an sporting era where personal life morality issues are bigger than criminal ones and that’s the crux of all this: John Terry may have done a “Steven Gerrard” years before the scouser did but both of them have proved over the years they are unworthy to lead the country’s football team when it matters.

The dog that didn’t bark.

And I don’t mean Wayne Bridge (£100k a week to be second choice left-back at Manchester City, consolation enough me thinks). No this is about the complete absence of player purchases in this transfer window. No I can understand that Mancini might want to take some time to look at what he has already and I can understand the League Cup semi’s might have distracted a little but come on, he is a world class coach, the owners have limitless resources, he knows who the world’s best young players are, why hasn’t he got any yet? Maybe the answer lies in something we missed when Mark Hughes left Eastlands; maybe Brian Marwood just can’t close deals!

Timing is everything.

One of the positive (maybe) products of the way AFC Wimbledon was formed and grew was the emergence of the Supporters Direct organisation, which as we know is about fans acquiring ownership of the clubs they support (or its meant to be, not the case at every club). Now Supporters Direct has grown to the point where they consider they can hold a 2 day conference this year, wow that will be interesting. Wait what’s that, when is it? Err, the second weekend in June, you know, the Saturday England play the USA in the first World Cup group game and the first weekend of that 4 yearly tournament! Oh well, let’s hope the venue is more impressive than Kingsmeadow!!

Smalling detail.

So when is a transfer not a transfer? When it’s not happening until the summer. Take the transfer of Chris Smalling from Fulham to Manchester United for a reported £10m, nowhere can you find out if it’s a immediate transfer with a loan back or is it something that happens in June regardless of whether the defender gets injured or not? If it is the latter why have Fulham agreed to wait for the money or have the buying club paid up? Chances are it is a buy now and loan back but in a world where clubs can called fees “undisclosed” such confusion is inevitable, time the FA stepped and brought some transparency to proceedings.

Get on with it.

Another week’s worth of Portsmouth idiocy to entertain us, the CE isn’t really the CE anymore, he is refusing to resign because he won’t get a job anywhere else after the last two years, the club won’t sack him until the tax-fiddle court case is over because they don’t want to pay him up and are hoping a guilty verdict will give them that excuse. Meanwhile the manager doesn’t know whose coming or going but he does know that they are doomed. The owner still hasn’t seen Fratton Park (and who can blame him), you couldn’t think of a more impressive waste of £50m if you tried. On the plus side, the natives are revolting (insert your own joke here).

Get over it.

So the interviewer wants Martin O’Neil to comment on the away win at Fulham but the Northern Irish bloke only wants to wax lyrical about what a good passing team Aston Villa are. Hmm, bit of a hangover from Arsene Wenger’s comment about Villa being a long ball team is it? Well clearly but one does wonder why he cares so much? In reality all teams are more long ball than Arsenal (and that includes Barcelona), of the top 7 PL clubs Villa just pip Liverpool for the use of the long ball, they are not Blackburn Rovers or Bolton Wanderers but equally not Wigan Athletic or Fulham. The fact is Wenger is an astute tactician and if he says Villa played long ball then they played long ball, get over it O’Neil.

Not so sticky now.

If David Moyes is going to leave Everton at the end of the season after 8 years he clearly intends to go out on a high! The comment this week about qualifying for Europe might still be a touch ambitious but is now a little more probably after recent wins. The big test comes against arch rivals Liverpool and one can only hope they play the opponents and not the hyped occasion. Still nevertheless whatever motivates Moyes still is clearly working. Let’s see whether he really wants to make the next few months interesting, I’m sure Kenwright has Bates’s number….

Nosebleed time.

What in heaven’s is going on in deepest darkest Accrington? Stanley are 3 points off a play-off place, 6 points off a automatic promotion place and with games in hand on others around them. All this taking place despite massive resource problems and a limited playing squad. This website has praised John Coleman before, given that Brian Laws got the Burnley job you wonder what he has to do to get noticed by bigger clubs. Stanley fans won’t thank me for this but it really is time he tested himself on a bigger stage.

What a load of crap.

Togo banned from the next two African Cup of Nations by the African Confederation for the heinous crime of burying their dead from a gun attack. The ultimate insult and idiocy in football.

The Other 91 Basket Cases

The Original Grumpy Old Man: 2 down 1 to go.

Jan 13th, 10 / Comments Off

 

Welcome to a new regular column from an old favourite. The Original Grumpy Old Man (OGOM). This week OGOM looks at the relegation scrap in the PL and renames it the CCC waiting room.

This time last year, on a long forgotten forum dedicated to the idle, I wrote a long piece about the contenders for relegation from the PL in 2008-09 which I subtitled “The Hull Line”, basically stating any team that got above Hull City would stay up (at that point they were 8th or something) and until they did overtake the boys from the KC they remained in a relegation battle. As we know Hull City finished up just above the line themselves (by the skin of some very rotten teeth). This season and a similar number of teams stand in the midst of a 12 team melee with only the team most advanced of the pack, Fulham, looking relatively safe, this unfortunately makes coming up with a snappy clique for this seasons madness problematic, so I won’t bother.

Let’s however be clear, there isn’t just a 12 team competition to avoid the financial despair of relegation (sorry your suggesting there is another despair that goes with relegation are you? Well would have agreed with you once but it must be over a decade since anyone in the media looked at relegation other than a £30M+ disaster), there are two relegation groups of clubs, the first is where the fun is, the stick-on certainties, the clubs with financial issues already, iffy and complicated ownership structures and needing to offload players as we speak and there is a bigger group tossing the hot potato of the last relegation place around which is where the action will be.

This is the crux of the relegation issue; too many clubs are always in the waiting room to the CCC. Some clubs pop in and out every 2 or 3 seasons, some others don’t believe they are ever part of the club and thus when reality hits them Newcastle United/Middlesbrough style it’s more of a shock. In general however about 6-7 clubs will always be in the waiting room season in, season out, that is a third of the PL always worried about relegation (and we call it the best league in the world!). How do the supporters of such clubs cope with the tediousness of season after season striving for 15th? Where is the ambition, the thrust for success, well the term has been reassessed and now equates to just being there. For what exactly pray tell? The dubious honour of seeing your clubs wage bill for average players go idiotic? Pathetic it is and all due to the ridiculous chasm in finance between what is still really Division 1 and Division 2. Occasionally a club bucks the trend and raises the game a little, some fly too close to the sun and burn (Portsmouth) others hopefully, like Fulham can make it into a “outside contenders” club, small at the moment but hopefully growing by the season.

We shall not detain ourselves at this time with an extensive analysis of who is going to be the unlucky third relegated club alongside the stick-on two, its perm 1 from 10. Of that bunch, whilst it’s a shame Stoke City, Everton and Sunderland are in a league with too many poor teams to feel threatened and an act of faith tells you Wigan Athletic and West Ham United will be ok, you are still left with this group of road-blocks: Blackburn Rovers, Bolton Wanderers, Burnley and Wolves. After the decision to play his Sunday pub team at Old Trafford Mick McCarthy has made it difficult for neutrals to care for Wolves and the decision by Burnley to employ Brian Laws makes suggesting they can avoid relegation intellectually problematic. Equally the distain for Blackburn Rovers and Bolton Wanderers is so complete that you wish Gartside and Allardyce could work together again at a merged “Lancashire Lumpits” club so the PL could be rid of both of them. Basically I could waste my time and energy putting the case against all 4 but I’d rather just admit I don’t care which one goes, they are all worthy of relegation, and instead focus on the stick-on two (although if you push me for an answer to has to who will go I’d say Burnley made that decision easy for me today).

Membership of the stick-on group was set almost before the season started, Portsmouth and Hull City and in some respects well deserved it is. Starting with “the humiliated of Hampshire”, a club so in disarray it evokes sympathy from Leeds United fans. Al Faraj may well exist (stc) but he clearly isn’t spending cash, all of Portsmouth’s dealing seems to be predicated on borrowing money off banks. In the midst of all this remains the man who was there in their CCC days, there when the stabilised in the PL under Mandaric, there when the Gaydamak’s came in and the FA Cup was won, there when the wage bill went through the roof (John Utaka, a permanent substitute on £80k a week!!!), there when the money dried up, there during the Al Fahim debacle and is still there as they go from daily crises to daily crises, take a bow Mr Peter Storrie (stopping off at Criminal Court with Mandaric and Redknapp over tax matters).

On the pitch, two successive mistakes in employing L2 standard managers (Adams T and Hart) followed by employing a man who despite once managing Chelsea to a CL final has in fact spent most of the last 4 years doing the non job version of a Director of Football. Grant has not a dot of experience of battling relegation in the PL, he won’t be given the opportunity to wheel and deal, he is stuck with the sub-standard Smith’s, Webber’s Brown’s and Wilson’s of this world and also has to motivate a large group of foreign players who have been messed around something rotten the last 2 seasons. With the likes of James, Kaboul and Belhadji looking to find a club that pays its wages on time the chances of fluky wins at Coventry lifting the season are remote. Pivotal I think is this, their best player whilst being glued to the bottom of the league has been Jamie O’Hara, he is now back at Spurs and that is a miss Pompay can’t afford. In my book they have gone already, it’s just a case of how badly they go down, I suspect they will drag it out until April but will never once give their support any real hope. The fans can look around Fratton Park next season in the CCC and wonder what did those 8 years achieve? Well not a lot financially or in the infrastructure.

Meanwhile on the East Coast sits a basket case of a club desperately hoping Portsmouth beat them to administration. Hull City are a real mess, the owners have literally done a runner, handing over the club to Adam Pearson with a mandate to pass it on to someone else (and if he can get new owners to take on the insolvent debt levels then Mr Duffen and co will be very grateful!). In the meantime the club has publically stated they have to ship out a significant number of players (most of which have contracts that they are unlikely to get elsewhere) all whilst the same squad has struggled all year. Part of Hull City’s issue is what allowed them to rise in the first place, a disengagement between ownership of facilities (the council built KC stadium) and the football club. Factor in the towns relative isolation and its extensive social issues and it’s a wonder they even had last season as a PL club never mind this.

The present squad reflects how fortunate the Tigers were to ever go up and certainly to stay up. Contained within that ridiculously large group of players is very little quality and what little there is gets stifled by Phil Brown (who in my book would be lucky to manager of North Ferriby United if jobs were allocated on ability rather than mates in the media). Doyle, Dawson, Ashbee, Gardner, Barmby, Fagan and Folan, just 7 examples of players not good enough for the PL (and there are another 15 like that) who play alongside the has-beens of Boetang, Kilbane, Mendy, Barmby (yes in twice for a reason, he is both rubbish and past it) and Hesselink who play alongside the compulsory imported likes of Cousin, Sonko, Geovanni, Ghilas, Olofinjani, Halmosi and Altidore. Local young talent has no chance in that set-up, not when the likes of Paul McShane are around. Even the better players have issues, Bullard hardly plays due to injury, Zayatte wants out and Myhill is shell-shocked. Hull City are well and truly doomed, a repeat of their form this time last season and they are down by March. If that happens, put your mortgage on them being the first top flight club to fail to finish the season.

Personally I would like to see the PL bunch up a little, for the relegation candidates not to really emerge until February, for all 20 clubs that start the season to have some form of contention in their make-up. But alas the CL monies will continue to distort the competition for years to come. Whilst I can console myself that Manchester United, Chelsea and Liverpool may have financial disasters to come, that is not the same as expecting any of them to ever be in a relegation review. Over the next few seasons I hope we do see some unexpected names doing a Newcastle United and been replaced by clubs hitherto outside the largesse of the last 6 years. It wouldn’t do some of the cocky top half clubs any harm to have temporary seats in the CCC waiting room and it certainly would be good for English football.

Football through a hardened glare