As indicated last week, Teenage Kicks In, with Darragh Mullen, is moving to a new Thursday slot from next week. As from 17th September Fridays will be the day of the Fracas, a bringing together of the real stories in football into one mass mushy mess. The more clubs dragged in the better. To give you an example of how it would look below is what would have been in this weeks (yes I know it’s Thursday).
The Friday Fracas 10/09/10.
Participants: Leeds United, Manchester United (Rooney), Manchester City (Milner), West Ham United, Birmingham City, Leicester City, Sheffield Wednesday, Southampton, Yeovil Town, Crewe Alexandra, Croydon Athletic, England, Wales, Scotland.
So Amdy Faye, what is that about? 33 years old, one game in 18 months, agricultural in style at best, so why is Simon Grayson looking at him for Leeds United? Well it isn’t because we are short of a player, that is for sure, and it certainly isn’t to boost recent signing Adam Clayton’s confidence. Oh no Grayson is just doing what Grayson loves to do best, tinker with his squad, add a few more bits of aged average into the mix, a Calum Davenport here, maybe a Jay Demerit there, a Barry Hayles everywhere if we are really unlucky. Bates might be holding the transfer fees down but no-one is stopping the influx of frees, loans, free-agents or bosmans. It’s all part of an addiction referenced before on here and it’s a little sad. One gets the impression Grayson would love to have his whole squad on weekly contracts so he could ship out and in at will. The serious issue is how all this looks to the likes of Lees and Elliot, what it is saying to White and how the rest of the Academy are feeling about the future? Don’t tell Grayson but you do realise Mark Viduka hasn’t actually officially retired….
Meanwhile over at the home of Manchester United an army of personnel are waiting to comfort an adulterer simply because the thick scouse idiot plays decent football between his Tiger Woods style sexual escapades. No concern in Streford for Mrs Rooney just some for a player with one league goal in 5 months (a penalty) and one England goal in 12. An over-rated (international class maybe, world class never) loon of a petulant boy yet to understand the grown up world. Normally I couldn’t give a sod who sleeps with who but am more than happy to make an exception for footballers milking the endorsement markets (and the wife’s doing the same, oh how Littlewoods must love the timing of all this). As the John Terry “scandal” showed, image rights income take a bit of a battering if you put it about just a little too much, even more so when it’s with “the oldest profession”.
Meanwhile in the same England camp, Manchester City recent signing James Milner blots his copybook with the most bizarre comment I have heard for some time. Basically the Leeds born lad indicated that some high profile footballers might jack in the game if they can’t get away with their idiocies without the papers getting on their case. Now again, normally I’d have some sympathy for the rights of footballers to have private time but let’s get real, nobody to going to throw £5m a year away simply to get a Fleet Street hack off their backs! What does Milner think these early retirees might do? Farming in Orkney? Well if they were David Harvey maybe but if they are Stan Collymore they finish up polluting the airways with their airhead thoughts. Fact is Mr Milner, you and your England buddies are a privileged group cut off from the real world and quite frankly nobody is listening to a 24 year old who has let his agent move him from one massive signing on package to another every 2 years moaning on about privacy.
The other permanent moan that can always be heard is the cry of the distressed West Ham United fan. To be fair that moan does have to compete with David Sullivan’s embarrassing statements and transfer nonsense and Gold’s obsession with a move to Stratford. For a team he claimed was about to announce a series of expensive signings to add to their fill of non trying expensively bought and paid rubbish squad, to finish up with one crooked New Zealander and a Danish full back that is doing the rounds of PL clubs suggests someone’s mouth is out of control. Upton Park is no longer the home of the passing game it’s the waiting room for the South’s version of Everton, a once mighty club awaiting its destiny in a lower division. Sullivan and Gold are 20 years out of kilter, Grant is a non manager living off a so-called “nice guy” image and the squad is mercenary central (I note Kieran Dyer spent more time reading speeding summonses than playing football in the last year). Messy will not be the word when relegation kicks in.
Meanwhile over at Sullivan and Gold’s old club Birmingham City news reaches us that they owe around £5m to the taxman. In a bizarre parallel with Cardiff City it seems having a wealthy Asia based businessman owner isn’t the same as having funds! It seems that despite the publicity of last year about propelling the blues into the top 6, precious little investment in players or liquidity has taken place in the last 12 months since Yeung’s takeover and now the manager might be walking away because the club isn’t reflecting his value in their contract offer. The real issue here is distance, whether your owners are American or whatever, if your thousands of miles away you can’t bring any real benefit to the club unless you have £500m spare that can be spent without you needing to worry about it and only one club these days can do that!
The same principal applies to the new owners of Leicester City, still to be accepted as legitimate in the eyes of the Football League (bless em). Notwithstanding that the bloke bringing the Thai consortium in is presently under a charge of tax avoidance from his Portsmouth days (Mandaric, Storrie and Redknapp senior, what a hat-trick convicting them that would be for HMRC) the real issue is that the FL isn’t capable of standing up to anyone, it simply has a tick box procedure that will whitewash any worthwhile “directors and owners” test process. Combine that with the distance issues discussed in the previous paragraph and it is difficult to see where the short term gain for Foxes fans lies. Just to put the icing on the cherry on this takeover, who is the organisation pushing the FL to finalise the acceptance of the takeover? The Foxes Trust! No really; I despire.
Short term, medium term, long term it’s all the same for Sheffield Wednesday, they are screwed. Whilst no doubt the rah-rah cheer-leading element of the support is celebrating the fact they got bailed out it remains always true they came within 24 hours of going under. The Co-operative Bank may have plugged the gap by adding to the £30m debt (remember that if your one of their customers and your being chased for £50) when no economic case exists to but that is hardly cause for celebration. Although it has avoided the threat of imminent administration, without fresh investment the club is likely to find itself in a similar situation in the near future. The Owls cannot even meet current outgoings and one month’s tax bill of around another £300,000 is already overdue. In other words doomed! To make matters worse Howard Wilkinson (bless him) is doing the “show they have the long term interests of the club at heart” routine on investment. Er no Howard, take the money and run, after all any new board can’t be as incompetent over the next 20 years as the various Hillsborough regimes have in the last 20.
Still Wednesday haven’t sacked the manager yet, unlike divisional rivals Southampton. Regardless of how unlikeable Alan Pardew is or isn’t he is certainly more than capable of getting a club out of League 1. The immediate consequence of a sacking after a 4-0 away win is two successive home defeats, clever that. It used to be the curse of English football that Chairman-owners would put ego over the managers’ ability (Clough at Derby County etc) no these days it’s paid Chairmen with little equity of their own who make these strange decisions. What Cortese thinks he is doing one can only guess at but what is already clear is another season of L1 at St Mary’s isn’t unthinkable anymore. It has all taken a shine off the legacy of Markus Liebherr.
Southampton of course fell into financial problems a couple of years ago due to the separation of the physical assets (the ground) from the football club. A few miles West down the coast and the directors of Yeovil Town are about to repeat that mistake at Huish Park. No-one knows what the rational of this move is, all questions are met with a defensive angry response, the fans, as usual, are left completely ignorant of what is really going on. Only a suspicious man would conclude that the large amount of undeveloped land around the ground might be a motivating factor but luckily the Somerset mob are a non cynical lot so it must all be for the good of the club yes?
A column like this can’t be all fists flying; sometimes it has to quietly reflect on how unfortunate something is. The fate of Crewe Alexandra is one such example, a most decent little club that has tried to live within its means over the greedy football years. Whilst the ground is decent for its level and the commitment to young footballing talent rare the truth is Conference football looks only a matter of time. No amount of articles about the next young talent coming through will disguise this. It could be on results, it could be the constant struggle to survive becomes too much, all in all Dario Gradi has a real fight on his hands to preserve league status for the railwaymen. Whilst it is unlikely history will record it this way the fact is Crewe are the ultimate victim of the PL and Sky revolution, where money and not player spotting talent is king and where the top division is almost an exclusive club. When the Alex do drop out of the league it is a real sad day for football.
When is a folded club not a folded club? When it’s being used as a money laundering operation by a nationally known cricket bet fixer. So despite not being able to play the next two league games or the FA Cup on Saturday and losing the manager and first team squad Croydon Athletic are given Rymans League assistance to carry on, whilst Ilkeston Town go out of business for owing £50k in tax! Whilst Kingstonian might get a bye they don’t get the receipts from the game they would have accrued from drawing their South London rivals at home in the qualifying round. All an exercise in futility pretending they might be able to play again, another club hits the buffers only this time in the most public and spectacular fashion. It’s the inconsistency that is so galling at non league level, each of the leagues runs differing rules, some clubs demoted, others not. You would think sometimes we didn’t have a Football Association.
Speaking of the FA, one England manager is starting to feel loved again (aw blesssssss). Now maybe I’m being harsh but I don’t consider a couple of wins, in a qualifying group where Montenegro constitutes the biggest threat, much of an achievement. Capello should take a look at how Germany, a team that ran rings around his team 3 months ago, dispatched Azerbaijan in real style this week. There is the rub with this England team, until we look like we can compete with Germany, Holland, Spain and Italy all the wins over Bulgaria or Switzerland don’t matter a dot. The manager is still the best paid international coach in the world, he remains under the microscope (promises to stand down in 2012 notwithstanding) until he conjures up a team capable of competing with the best, on the field not just in the world of media hype.
The world of media hype looks decidedly out of place in Wales. Personally I think any manager attacked by Robbie Savage is entitled to support but it seems the decision is made and John Toshack is off. So what to do next? Here is an idea, why not give the national team job to a PL footballer with no management experience and with a track record of somehow always missing friendlies? If that player has spent the whole of his career showing no tactical insights other than how to run with a ball all the better. Don’t consider the U21 coach with a decent record or the ex PL managers from your little principality, no go straight to Ryan Giggs, that should sort you out for not qualifying for anything again (actually I might be being unkind, Hartson also wants the job).
Of course not qualifying for anything is now the default position of Scotland, a country so devoid of footballing talent it needs a Ukrainian referee to find 3 more minutes of injury time than indicated on by the fourth official to beat the mighty Liechtenstein. Craig Levein hasn’t been in the Scotland job 5 minutes and already the look of desperation is clear to see. In this case it is just a case of small pool. Take away the average Scotsmen playing for Middlesbrough and your left with a right pile of dross. Levein can’t change that overnight, he can’t change that in 20 years. What he can do is slowly build up a team to punch above its weight. Alas all he is left with is picking old players like Weir, who ironically was the class act of the game. Hang on, maybe experience is the answer: Simon get that Senegal international signed up now!
Michael Green.
