Posts Tagged ‘Stoke City’

Sniffer’s Sunday Shorts 28/02/10: “Circus in the town special” Leeds United, Sheffield United, Manchester City, Chelsea, Stoke City, Arsenal, West Ham United, Portsmouth, Chester City, England.

Feb 28th, 10 / 0 Comments

 

Welcome to the Sunday edition of Sniffer Nose, a punchier version of your favourite occasional column. This week we do a “Circus” special.

Retiring from the ring?

Well I had to start with my club Leeds United because they have been the club most associated with being a “circus” for the best part of a decade. Have we turned the corner away from that? Well Bates’s programme notes suggest the clowns in the boardroom are still around, the impending signing of a 37 year old non-scoring striker thug suggests we are still keeping animals and the way we have turned the prospect of stick-on promotion into a tight nervy affair tells us we still walk tightropes. On the positive side, maybe a lion will come along and eat the ring-master, well that’s the thing about the circus, it lights the imagination.

Chinese Crackers.

One thing about circuses is they do bring to people’s attention some of the wonderful sights you can find in the big wide world. Take the superpower China. Some clubs like Sheffield United spotted a marketing opportunity when the PRC opened up their domestic football league to foreign investment, the plan was simply, buy a team and promote the then PL side as a “global brand”. So where are we, well the blades are in the CCC and their investment, Chengdu Blades, has just been relegated from the top flight for match fixing. That will explain some of the panic about Sheffield United’s parent company recently made obvious.

Smiles to people’s faces.

Which, like a good circus, Manchester City achieved by not just winning at Stamford Bridge but doing it in style, in my opinion a worthy accompaniment to the main act of Wayne Bridge showing dignity whilst his nemesis looked a right plonker. There has been a lot of rubbish talked about Mancini in the press this last week but there is no way a mark Hughes side would have won there like that. If City can get Tevez and Adebayor to clink at the same time, 4th is assured.


Falling from a great height.

Like trapeze artists who have never met Chelsea’s John Terry and goalie Hilario managed to give us an exhibition of what happens when you pretend nothing is wrong (what do you mean you never saw the JT/Mrs Hilario rumours, don’t you have email/twitter). The Barking bozo is off his game to the extent he is about to reward those Chelsea supporters who cheer his every indiscretions and booed Wayne Bridge with what they fully deserve, a trophy-less season! Maybe the “team Terry” mob can get out their 2008 CL final video’s and watch as their hero reminds them of how close they came to winning something they never will, a JT bottling trip away!

Punch drunk.

In the old days circuses would also have prize-fights on show. These days for that kind of entertainment where violence is thrown around willy-nilly you need to follow Stoke City. Whether it was a “poor challenge” or an unacceptable one it was most definitely a career threatening one. Even a one-eyed moron could see that. So what form of life chants the name of the aggressor whilst he is still on the pitch and then boo’s the Arsenal team for a ground huddle after a hard earned victory? Well something lower in the life chain than moron or even feral, it’s called a local from Stoke on Trent! Think that’s a bit hard on the potters, well think about this, not only were Stoke beaten by a side they tried to bully, you were out played, almost humiliated in the chances created department. Very soon your tiresome quality-less midfield and long ball/long throw thuggery is going to be the most despised in football and I for one can’t wait!

Take a bow.

Even the most average circus has one outstanding act, the one in the PL is Arsenal. To get back in the title race given the injuries they have had to cope with is tremendous, all credit to Wenger and the team (something the press seem not to realise). If Chelsea or Manchester United had suffered the catalogue of misfortune that has fallen on the Gooners this season they would be 10-12 points behind not 3! I would hope that give that both the other two clubs in the PL title race are money swallowing manifestations of what went wrong with English football in the last 15 years all right thinking supporters from the other 89 league clubs are rooting for Arsene and the boys.

Bubble trouble.

Of course in the circus world your only as good as your last performance. Take WHU and their trip to Old Trafford in mid-week. You might think you take your best side and play your best players (assuming you’re not Mick McCarthy) but not Zola. He decided to rest Parker, their best player by a street this season of struggle. The logic of this is based around not wanting him to be suspended for the Bolton game. So basically, despite the need to garner every point the WHU manager has decided to prioritise the 6 pointers. Well it might work, or Bolton might win, Parker might get his booking anyway and you might still go down.

The ultimate circus.

Portsmouth FC, enough said. Except can we cut the “poor Peter Storrie” stories already please? The “for the sake of my family” stuff is the last bastion of the charlatan. Any abuse Storrie gets is entirely justified given he and only he is the continuity in the disaster after disaster of the last 2 years (and before when the over-spending really took off). We need to remember not only is he is on a charge of tax evasion so hardly a bastion of integrity, but also was CEO, not the cleaner or maintainer or ticket office worker, all of who are getting sacked. It has reached the point where Storrie, Grant, James and any other Pompay related football employee should shut up and start thinking about others.

Bear-baiting.

Which was banned from circuses centuries ago seems to have re-appeared in the old town of Chester. Thankfully for those of us who like animals the chief baiter has bit the dust, Now that the conference has expelled Chester City (not something anyone wants to see very season) and the taxman gets to close the club down in two weeks maybe the good people of the town can bring back a more refined form of entertainment. Just one little bug-bare, don’t listen to those that say you can’t use the traditional name, don’t “AFC”, be Chester City 2010.

The biggest show in the world.

Coming soon to a television near you live from South Africa. Now I am trying not to pre-empt the England performance potential in South Africa, I would like to be surprised, but I have come to one conclusion, if the likes of Ryan Shawcross are in the squad before proper footballers like J Cole it doesn’t bode well. C Cole before Owen? James before Robinson? Downing before anyone? No this does not have the making of bringing in late contenders for the plane. One ray of hope however, if Terry, Gerrard, Beckham and Heskey can join Cole A and Ferdinand on the injured list before the squad is announced it matter little who the back ups are, they won’t be the wasters of the so called “golden generation” who frankly have consistently been “clowns” in tournaments.

The Other 91 Basket Cases

Sniffer Nose 02/02/10: Leeds United, Manchester United, Stoke City.

Feb 2nd, 10 / Comments Off

 

This is Clarkeonenil’s regular comment column, cutting through the various passing issues of football and getting to the core principle in the shortest time.

Bits and pieces.

So what do we make of the January 10 transfer window in so far as it affects Leeds United? Well not a great deal really, in a division where only Norwich City and Southampton flexed their financial muscles we kept our money mostly in the secret Bates accounts. The “undisclosed” fee for Gradel is without doubt less than the Saints paid for Barnard, the loan signings seen to suggest we are still following the model that limits transfer spending to a minimum but encourages players to sign with high wages (we are probably paying the same ball park as a top 6 CCC club). Now this isn’t necessarily a bad thing if we knew it was part of a strategy for long term financial health and Bates didn’t constantly insult our intelligence with claims of a decent transfer fund, but as we all know neither is provable, now or for some considerable time.

Overall I don’t think I have been impressed or excited (at the time of the signing) with any player that has come to Leeds since the start of 2008-09. Even the successes of Becchio and Snodgrass from that time were accompanied by Showunmi and Robinson. All of Grayson’s signing have been a bit non-descript (and before the “IGWTettes” start that can be a good or bad thing, it’s about what they bring), the two that cost a small amount of money, Bromby and Gradel, are squad rather than first 11 players, the likes of Higgs, Crowe and Kisbnorbo are “horses for courses” L1 standard, Grella and Somma for the future (one hopes). Personally I still believe Williams is influencing the transfer policy but it’s for Grayson to exert his influence more if that is the case.

One thing is for sure, even with McSheffrey and Lowry, the latest instalments in the hit and miss loan policy, we look no better or no worse equipped for the 19 games to come.

Painful.

Despite the lingering memory of the third round of the FA Cup something is becoming clear with regard to the PL, it’s going to be won again by the only club that seems to care enough to win it, Manchester United. To me they were lucky to win the 3 on the trot they banked between 2006-09, you could make a case that their consistency allowed them to overcome a better team in each of those seasons, but this isn’t the case in 2009-10, they are clearly the best team despite Chelsea being top all season and despite a stuttering forward line. To say a fourth PL title on the trot to Old Trafford is bad for the game is understating it but it’s going to happen come what may.

Equally painful is the inability of the one club within the “traditional” top 4 you’d like to see do it to have a proper tilt at the title this season. I have had a kind of faith in Arsenal and Wenger to convert the beautiful football into substantive success at some point, but the point keeps slipping until it reaches today where the faith disappears and you can see them finishing 3rd forever. What is wrong with the best collection of talented under 25’s on the planet? No idea, injuries over the last 3 years haven’t helped, the creeping frustration of their fans neither but whatever the missing ingredient is it doesn’t reside in North London.

Wenger is as good a manager as SAF but even he must be questioning the difference between the two clubs after the demolition of last Sunday.

Equally painful.

Is watching Stoke City play away in the PL. I wasn’t that impressed with their anti-football style as they beat Arsenal’s 3rd team in the FA Cup but that was nothing compared to the dirge they served up at the Stadium of Light last night. It didn’t help that Sunderland were equally poor but the boys from the potteries took it all to a new extreme. You could see why they have only scored 4 away goals all season and are destined to score the least in the whole division, no ambition, no quality, nothing but a systematic assassination of the game justified (in their eyes) by the need to turn season 2 in the PL to season 3.

That is the crux of the declining brand (in entertainment terms) of the PL, a top end filled with the rich/debt filled and permanent, the middle occupied by clubs happy to be there and the rest believing that survival is an achievement in itself. Add Bolton Wanderers, Blackburn Rovers, Hull City and Wolves to the two clubs that so royally bored the nation last night and you have one hell of a turgid road block in what is described without irony as the best league in the world!

If I could will 3 of those quality-less clubs down it would probably be Stoke, Bolton and Hull but unfortunately we will still have at least one of them around next season being as ugly on the pitch as their North Midlands amalgamation of towns is in real life.

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