Too Good for the English Game

The Ministry of Defence recently announced that £5,800 of Viagra has gone missing from their supplies.  Quite why the army is using Viagra remains a mystery.  Suffice to say, if I was an Afghan insurgent, I’d be nervous.  There’s fighting dirty, and then there’s a passionate brand of “chemical warfare” that goes way beyond the pale.

Potency is critical, though; in all walks of life.  Whether you’re bearing down on goal or staring into the eyes of a terrified farmer with a hand rifle, you can’t be afraid to be the one that pulls the trigger first.  He who isn’t decisive risks his own mortality or, worse still, three points dropped.

Understanding this truism makes one type of footballer all the more curious.  For one genus of player is the very definition self-mollifying impotence.  The sort of unfortunate creation that, like the atomic bomb or Sally Bercow, we wish we could un-invent.  I speak, of course, of the Non-Scoring Striker.

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The closest equivalent to the Non-Scoring Striker in zoological terms might be the mule.  An evolutionary dead-end.  Or, for those of faith, one of God’s mistakes.  Either way, one thing is certain: while content to live out its own existence, the Non-Scoring Striker will not spawn any progeny.  No child in the land tells his father he’s going to be the next Cameron Jerome.

For clarity, I have nothing but love for this unexpected creature.  Sport, famously, is about the taking part.  The Non-Scoring Striker has just as much right to be out there as any other type of footballer.  But it is nevertheless the case that, like candy floss and women called Gretchen, there’s just no explaining their existence.  What is the point of the Non-Scoring Striker?  If Jamie Mackie falls in the woods, would it affect the scoreline?  One suspects not.  Does David N’Gog matter?  I couldn’t swear to you, hand on heart, that any result in the history of football would be any different if Mr and Mrs Altidore hadn’t engaged in one particular knee-trembler during the Spring of ’89.

Yet the game is awash with them.  Kevin Davies.  Carlton Cole.  Jon Walters. Victor Anichebe.  Alan Smith.  Luke Moore.  Anyone with the surname Ameobi.  These are players who couldn’t sort out their feet in front of goal any sooner than they could sort out the Middle East.  Each one of them a millionaire.

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There’s no doubting who was the doyenne of the floundering front-men.  That would be Emile Ivanhoe Heskey.  Truly, Heskey was the magnum opus of misaligned marksmen.  A man who reached exalted status among the Non-Scoring Striker fraternity by amassing 62 full international caps.  Just the one cap less than Alan Shearer.  Nobody couldn’t put the ball in the back of the net quite like Heskey couldn’t.

Heskey was a curate’s egg of hold-up play, knock-downs and fifty-fifty challenges.  Crucially, though, never any end product.  Ever.  It was like playing an enthusiastic Catholic girl up top.  An “everything but” scenario that was lively but, ultimately, gave rise to frustration and a nagging feeling that everyone was wasting their time.

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The barn-door is always open for new members at the Non-Scoring Strikers’ Convention.  Danny Welbeck recently had a narrow escape from this most regrettable of clubs.  A measly two goals in forty games last year playing up front for the runaway champions was ominous stuff.  Welbz was about to be branded with the cruellest of hot pokers.  One can only imagine the sheer terror the poor lad must have felt; mentally tethered to a “cow’s arse” while the death laser slowly moved up towards his misfiring “banjo”.  The nation breathed a collective sigh of relief when young Danny rediscovered what the French would call his raison d’être.  Nine priceless goals this season have saved his soul and with it, undoubtedly, his sanity.

The strange thing in Welbeck’s instance is he only needs to peer across the training ground for a perfect case study on how the job is supposed to be done.  Javier Hernandez has the instincts of a born killer.  A man who, the very moment his team gains possession of the football, charges unthinkingly into the opponent’s penalty area.  No “ifs”.  No “buts”.  Like Ryan Giggs when he pays a visit to his brother’s house, there’s only one thing on his mind.  Get in there and do the bloody business.  Welbeck really ought to have been taking notes.

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So what happened to these godforsaken souls?  Did something get wrongly emphasised at a critical stage of their development?  Too much of a weighting placed on the team, perhaps, rather than the score-sheet? And is there a cure for NSS?

If I had my way, I would sit all of these Non-Scoring Strikers down and show them a tape of every single one of Filippo Inzaghi’s 219 senior goals.  Alex Ferguson once described Inzaghi as being “born offside”.  I find it strange that, of all people, Ferguson – a man who hand-picked some of the best strikers of the last 25 years – could so badly misunderstand Inzaghi.  Did he not grasp that, after getting caught offside for the sixth time, on the seventh time around Inzaghi would spring the trap with such precision and beauty that he would find himself in absolutely acres of space and a one-on-one with the keeper (something of not inconsiderable assistance for a gentleman with no discernible pace)?  Could he not see that Inzaghi had a level of conviction in front of goal that would see him gladly locked up for the sins of scoring a brace away at Livorno?

A few years ago now, Super Pippo scored perhaps the most beautiful goal I have ever seen.  He had received the ball deep into the penalty area and was immediately confronted by two defenders in close proximity.  With little time to react and no momentum in his favour, Inzaghi flicked the ball against the thigh of one of the defenders, and then jumped between the two of them (there was about a yard gap) into an area he roughly predicted the ball may ricochet into.  Having gotten suitably close to the ball with his two-footed leap, he was just about able to then attach his shin to the ball coming up on the half volley in order to propel it goal-wards.  As you might imagine, such an attempt on goal did not carry a great deal of force.  However, the effort was just about sufficient to beat a thoroughly foxed goalkeeper and, magnificently, crossed the goal-line without even having enough pace to go on to touch the net.

There are a number of ways one could try to describe the single-minded brilliance and the level of desire required to score a goal like that.  However, it might just be simpler to conclude that it was not one you would anticipate Jeremie Aliadiere scoring any time soon.

You can follow Sonny (@_SonnyPike) on Twitter or subscribe to Too Good for the English Game by clicking the “Follow” button at the bottom-right corner of this page (this button is mysteriously unavailable on the mobile version of the website).

A challenging proposition.

Some people love a good cry, don’t they?  There was a young fan on television a few years back, bawling his eyes out because Spurs had been knocked out of the Carling Cup third round.  I remember thinking to myself, if the third round of the League Cup is enough to set him off, the lad was going to be in a world of trouble when he’s old enough to understand the concept of affordable housing.

The whimpering young Tottenham-ite is not alone, though.  Many of us seemingly need to let it all out on a weekly basis.  Whether it be on a Saturday evening, watching Simon Cowell and his band of vocal moderators dash another young person’s hope of becoming a singer.  Or blubbing along to “The Biggest Loser”, a show in which the tears flow by the gallon when an out-of-work Texan truck driver briefly dips below the 300 pound mark.

Football could be doing a lot more to make people cry.  Clearly, some folks aren’t able to have fun unless they’re getting their money’s worth from a hanky at the same time.  So let’s give them something to well up over. 

Thankfully, our emotive brothers from across the pond are way ahead of us on this one.  The Doodle Dandies have long since introduced an award into their sporting spheres that is guaranteed to have us all bawling like a mum at a wedding.  The Most Improved Player award.

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There’s an obvious pitfall that the Most Improved Player award ought to try to avoid.  It needs to swerve becoming a back-handed compliment along the lines of “I see you’re not quite as rubbish as you used to be”.  At my first Sunday League club, there was always a prize at the end-of-season gala called “The Clubman Award”.  With damning inevitably, this award bore an annual route into the feckless hands of whoever had been the most unused substitute that year.  The keen-spirited sap who, on the rare occasions of being called into service, was often required to do so sporting the indignity of the wrong coloured shorts; or a “closely-approximating” civilian t-shirt.  Sadly, the nearest this pocket Pele usually got to the action was being roped into running one of the lines.

There was no doubt in anyone’s mind as to what the Clubman Award amounted to.  It was a crushing blow for any parent daring to dream they might be fostering the next Gary Lineker.  It was a plaque-based tribute to lousy genetics; insisting on pride of place on the mantelpiece.

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Care must be taken not to let the MIP be seen as the low-hanging fruit of the awards ceremony.  Like the Clubman Award before it, it mustn’t become some sort of homage to mediocrity.  And, of course, it needn’t be.  Arguably, for instance, Gareth Bale could have been a two-time MIP winner based on the monumental leaps he made to his game in 2010/2011 and then again in 2012/13. 

But the winner doesn’t have to be a world-beater, either.  That’s the beauty of it.  Last season also saw the culmination of a journey for Rickie Lambert that went from stuffing beetroot to stuffing Scotsmen.  He was another strong candidate for the 2012/13 award.

Properly calibrated, the award should operate independently of a player’s ability and look only to the improvements made.  The aim being to perform a standardised test of actual improvement over and above expected improvement (thus normalising the gains one would assume a younger player will achieve from season to season, without unnecessarily discounting them from the award).  In theory, then, the award is just as likely to be won by the best or the worst footballer in the league, and everyone in between.  With that in mind, let’s have a look at who is in the running for the 2013/14 MIP.

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Jordan Henderson has to be a contender.  Henderson could be forgiven for wondering how much of a Liverpool career he was actually going to have in the summer.  The ground beneath him was beginning to splinter, and few would have been surprised if Brendan Rogers packed Henderson into the same crate marked “For shipping” as those other gurning parochial oddities who failed to light up the centre of the Anfield park, Jonjo Shelvey and Jay Spearing. 

Six months on and he’s almost undroppable.  He still gallops around the pitch like a zebra who’s just taken a well-meaning syringe to the buttocks from the park ranger.  But he’s now complementing his very considerable lungs with a generous dollop of panache.  His passing has come on a treat and some of his final balls into (usually) Luis Suarez have been first class.  Six premier league assists for the ever-present Merseyside Mackem demonstrates how his technical side has progressed.  If Henderson continues with the good work and wins the Most Improved Player accolade, then perhaps author and former Manchester United manager, Alex Ferguson, can present him with the award.

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Aaron Ramsey must be another MIP hopeful.  If people really do want tears weaving their way down cheeks like a mazy Chris Waddle dribble, then Aaron’s your man.  There wouldn’t be a dry eye in the house if Ramsey won the award.  Many players wouldn’t have recovered at all from the sort of injury Ramsey cruelly suffered at the Britannia Stadium in 2010 and yet look at the season he’s having.

He’s managed an incredible goal every other game from midfield and has been committing defender after defender with wonderful flair on the ball.  Jack Wilshere has almost become an after-thought at the Emirates; forced out to the graveyard slot of left-midfield in order to accommodate the brilliance of Ramsey and Özil in the middle.  But, on their own, Ramsay’s performances don’t tell the full story…

Before the start of this season, Ramsey’s career looked destined to be played out in the shadow of an imaginary career that he would have had but for that Ryan Shawcross tackle.  He was his own nearly man.  It was grimacing to watch as the haunting spectre of an entire career never to be fulfilled was laid out in front of him.  And yet, now, going in to February, Ramsey is probably only the width of one Uruguayan’s brilliance away from the main Player of the Year award.  It’s fantastic to see.  Here’s to a dream turnaround continuing and I hope he puts four past Stoke in March.

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While we’re at the Emirates, what about Mathieu Flamini?  A man who, in August, was effectively valued at zero when Arsene Wenger went down to the footballing equivalent of Battersea Dog’s Home and saw a familiar face drooling through the protective wire.  No prominent league position could have been maintained without the snarling Gallic warrior poet doing the lion’s share of the nasty stuff that Arsenal have lacked in recent years.  If the Gunners look sturdier this year, it is noteworthy that his addition, free of charge, is the only change in the defensive half of Arsenal’s pitch.

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When Phil Bardsley was photographed last May lying down in a casino covered in £50 notes, Paolo Di Canio was not in the least bit amused. He declared that Bardsley would never play for Sunderland again.   For a manager who went on to sign 14 unproven players in the summer, fell out with all of them, and then had a “heated discussion” with 5,000 travelling Sunderland fans in front of live TV cameras, you might be forgiven for thinking that Di Canio would have had sympathy for man who likes a bit of a gamble.  But it wasn’t so.  The right-back was out on his ear.  Some way short of assuming the role of peace-maker, Bardsely took to social media to poke fun at Sunderland’s opening day loss.  Having been unable to find a new club over the summer – further hindered by breaking his foot during pre-season – it would be fair to say that Bardsley’s career was not in the ascendancy.

Bardsley is what you might affectionately call the unreconstituted type.  His game is based on those classic British qualities of grit, determination and an ability to put the willies up foreign wingers.  Helpfully, he has the physical characteristics to play this role to a tee.  Such is his heavy brow and Neanderthal features, you wouldn’t be surprised if, at some point in his life, Bardsley had lost a family member to a swooping pterodactyl.  And having outlasted the woolly mammoth, the dodo and the fragmentation of Pangaea, Bardsley wasn’t about to let an emotional Roman with a questionable temperament consign him to extinction.

Bardsley was straight back into the team on Gus Poyet’s arrival and has been indispensable ever since.  With a solitary point to their name, Sunderland were dead and buried when Di Canio exited.  Bardsley’s uncompromising defending has helped them into a position where they now have a fighting chance of survival.  What’s more, this “traditional” full-back has been doing it at both ends of the pitch.  A derby win against the Toon was followed up with a victory over Manchester City, with Bardsley scoring the only goal of the game.  In the League Cup Semi-Final, First Leg against Manchester United (his alma mater), Bardsely forced Ryan Giggs into an own goal that had the Black Cats dreaming of Wembley.  As an encore, Super Phil then scored the critical goal in the Second Leg.  Sunderland now look forward to a first cup final appearance in 22 years. 

Despite being written off as prehistoric, Bardsley has shown a Darwinian ability to adapt that is key to any premiership footballer’s survival.  Strong MIP material in anyone’s book.

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Sport is one of mankind’s most noble pursuits.  It manifests a desire of people to improve; whether it be against the clock or against others.  Which is why, for me, the Olympic motto cuts far more powerfully than any medal ceremony.  Faster, Higher, Stronger.  Despite sounding unerringly like a Viagra advert, these words remind us that the only real failure is not making betterment itself your aim. 

Most sportsmen and women will, by the nature of things, never be the best at their sport.  However, there is a lot to be said for recognising those who have made the greatest strides towards reaching that pinnacle, whatever their start position.  Expect to therefore see a “Most Improved of the English Game” trinket being handed out at the Too Good awards ceremony in May.

Hankies at the ready.

You can follow Sonny (@_SonnyPike) on Twitter or subscribe to Too Good for the English Game by clicking the “Follow” button at the bottom-right corner of this page (this button is mysteriously unavailable on the mobile version of the website).

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A man who knew a thing or two about improvement.

There’s something different about born winners.  Take Tony Blair, for example.  Post-war Britain’s longest-serving socialist prime minister was so excited at the thought of getting a promotion when the then Labour leader, John Smith, passed away, that he galloped straight home and made love to his wife, Cherie.  That takes a certain mindset.  Here is a man who is not only sexually aroused at the thought of his own political success, but who is even prepared to then brag about it in his memoirs.

Now I’m as career-driven as the next man, but if my boss keeled over tomorrow, I’d be surprised if my first reaction was to get an erection.  A born winner like Alex Ferguson, on the other hand, you can see him perhaps suffering from a bit of what might be called “Blair’s bulge”.

One man that you can bet your bottom dollar wouldn’t be aroused is David Moyes.  Moyes would be as limp as a marigold glove on hearing the news.  Such is the man’s negativity, his first reaction would probably to see if he can squeeze in an extra defender at the funeral.

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United’s form at the time of Moyeswatch 1 was not a calamity by any stretch.  It was a mere aberration.  One of those mid-level disasters, like the cat’s on fire, or you’ve ran out of mustard.  Things weren’t great, sure, but there was still time to slam the stable door shut before the Stallion of Hope bolted for good.

The scale of the disaster has moved on since then. The hamster wheel momentum of the Ferguson years has run out quicker than expected.  Old Trafford is not at amber alert anymore.  This is floating face down in the water territory.

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It’s difficult to see a way back now for Moyes.  He’s shown too much fear.  At the risk of paraphrasing Ken Clarke, there are “good” losses and “bad” losses in football.  Often the manner in which you lose assists the prognosis.  Go out in a blaze of glory, having slung the kitchen sink at the opposition, and you might earn yourself recognition for “having a go”.  Limp to defeat by being overly defensive and you’re much less likely to be pooled into the repechage for another shot at greatness.

Moyes might be the least positive man alive on 80 minutes of a football game.  He can’t wait to weasel Chris Smalling past the fourth official; shepherding him onto the pitch with all the disguised care of Andy Dufresne digging a tunnel out of Shawshank Prison.  Rooney and van Persie aren’t going to put up with this timid tripe.  Players on the front cover of FIFA video games won’t stand for being subbed off for Chris Smalling.  Star players need a pack leader in the managerial hotseat.  Not a scared-y cat who charges behind the sofa every time the doorbell rings.

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The man from Dunbartonshire is getting frantic.  Blaming referees has long been the preserve of a desperate manager.  After the League Cup semi-final first leg, a 2-1 loss against Sunderland, Moyes declared that he was “beginning to laugh at referees” for the “terrible” decisions they keep making.  It is very possible that such amusement is mutual.

Teams are absolutely salivating at the thought of playing United this season.  Three points at Old Trafford just used to be something you’d joke about down the pub.  You’d dream about it, sure.  But only in the way you’d dream about an evening with Martine McCutcheon and a well-sprung mattress.  Or five minutes in a windowless room with Sepp Blatter and a 6 iron.  Not anymore, though.  Teams are counting the days until they can go to Old Trafford and vanquish one of the many fine records that United have built up over the years.

First Everton win at Old Trafford in 21 years.  Done.  First Newcastle win at Old Trafford for 41 years.  Roger that.  First West Brom win at Old Trafford in 35 years.  Home and hosed.  First Swansea win at Old Trafford ever.  It barely needs stating that this is United’s worst start to a season in a quarter of a century.

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The nerves are transmitting back and forth between the playing staff and the fans like some sort of fraught game of one-touch.  Sharp intakes of breath around the stadium are becoming audible.  The impatient cries of “shoot” whenever United approached the Swansea penalty area in the FA Cup 3^rd Round did nothing to settle a team already short on confidence.  Moyes’ Boys must be thanking their stars for every away fixture in the calendar at the moment, just to escape the Theatre of Shattered Dreams.

For their part, the Old Trafford faithful are doing their best to take this sudden fall from grace with a sense of humour.  Having persisted for quite some time with that rather needling “35 years” banner, the Stretford End has realised that self-effacement is the better part of valour with their latest effort.  “The Chosen One” banner is hilarious.  Moyes is already forced to take his seat in the dugout for each home game staring out at the Sir Alex Ferguson Stand.  You would think that a 26,000-seater Homage to Crushing Expectation in your sightline would be overbearing enough.  However, as luck would have it, he can also turn to face the Stretford End and gaze at this badly backfiring joke, with him as the unintended punchline.  All it now needs is for the East Stand to be adorned with a picture of Roberto Martinez to complete the poor man’s panorama of misery.

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United fans also have to be careful to fend off a different demon.  Denial.  Conspiratorial tales are being bandied back and forth that seek to exonerate The Chosen One.  Pleas of mitigation that Moyes was set up to fail.  That Ferguson left a ticking time bomb for his fellow Scot to inherit.  An aging squad, falling to pieces, barely managing to scrape the league title by a meagre eleven points last semester.

I can’t believe I find myself in the position of defending Ferguson, but this accusation is a bit beyond the pale.  In 2011, Ferguson signed a goalkeeper barely out of his teens and endured a host of wobbly displays in order to bequeath to his successor a custodian that is now widely regarded as one of the best in the world.  He has brought along Rafael who, temperament aside, is one of the best young right-backs in world football.  Similarly, he has blooded Phil Jones, Chris Smalling, Javier Hernandez, Tom Cleverley and Danny Welbeck into the team and, to top it off, invested north of £20million on Nick Powell, Wilfried Zaha and Ángelo Henríquez for the future.  They say that a society grows great when old men plant trees whose shade they know they shall never sit in.  To be fair to Ferguson, the old sod has bedded in enough saplings.

Was there still a gap in midfield?  Yes, but that was what the Fellaini money was for.  £27.5million will get you a fantastic midfielder.  Or two very good ones.  In the end, all it got was one very tall one.

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This is a career-wrecker for Moyes.  He’ll never get another shot at the big time.  Another washed up nearly man, thrown on top of the pile of mediocre British managers, along with Mark Hughes, Sam Allardyce, Steve McLaren and a host of other godforsaken souls.  He’s in grave danger of getting a Linked In request from Peter Reid.

Critics are very good at letting you know when you’re on the slide.  “You were the future once” a young David Cameron sneered at the soon-to-be-past-it Tony Blair.  The bellows of laughter rang through the Commons and Tony knew it was one-year rolling contracts from there on.  Moyes’ career in management will be more than halfway through when the next job comes around.  Hopefully he was nice to people on the way up.

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In a study of 200,000 ostriches over a period of 80 years, apparently not a single case was reported where an ostrich actually buried its head in the sand.  I implore United fans not to bury theirs either.  Don’t try to tell yourself that “this is just something all teams go through”.  It isn’t.  David Moyes is doing a terrible job.  He’s on for an astronomical points swing with an almost identical squad.  Seven premier league managers have lost their jobs this season and none of them has done anything like as much damage to their clubs as Moyes is doing to Manchester United.  Last year’s run-away champions lie seventh in January.

There won’t be a Moyeswatch 3, that’s for sure.  For two reasons.  The first is on the grounds of taste.  I’m not going to sit here and preside over a footballing Costa Concordia.  There will come a point when it becomes undignified to pass further comment.  The second reason is I might struggle to get round to it in time.  David Moyes will be Sunderland manager within 18 months.

You can follow Sonny (@_SonnyPike) on Twitter or subscribe to Too Good for the English Game by clicking the “Follow” button at the bottom-right corner of this page (this button is mysteriously unavailable on the mobile version of the website).

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It’s impossible to tell what will trigger this man’s loins.

It occurred to me recently that the current batch of premier league referees provide a neat analogy for the cast of The Wizard of Oz.  Howard Webb’s obviously the lion.  A big lad, lovely demeanour, but cowardice runs through him like a river.  Webb needs the Wizard of Oz to sort him out with a bit of bravery.  And no prizes for guessing that Martin Atkinson is the scarecrow.  A clueless idiot with no discernible brain.

You’re probably thinking Michael Oliver is Dorothy, aren’t you?  The youthful, kind and exuberant one; improving the lot of all that surrounds him.  While this is undoubtedly true, no blog of mine is going to talk about referees without dishing out the bulk of the praise to Phil Dowd.  Dowd might look more Middle Earth than Oz, but his uncompromising, no-questions-asked style of refereeing is the one I like the most.  So Phil gets to play Dorothy.

However, one premier league official resolutely defies such simple type-casting.  He’s far too complex.  Never mind The Wizard of Oz, this character has all the contextual layers and differing personality traits of a Dostoyevsky novel.  They call this man Clattenburg.

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Most football referees are content just to implement the 17 laws and five technical standards of the game.  At which point, pleased at a job well done, they cheerfully head back to their bungalow and tuck in to a microwave meal-for-one.  But not this one.

Mark Clattenburg is so much more than a referee.  He’s a social reformer.  Like Rowntree or Bevan.  The sporting branch of David Cameron’s Big Society.  A forward-thinker who doesn’t need anyone’s permission to make this world a better place.

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To understand Clattenburg, you have to understand the journey he’s been on.  Clattenburg arrived on our screens in 2004 as a slightly rotund, ruddy-faced figure.  He had the appearance of a public school games master who might just as easily have been bringing to order a game of Eton Fives as he was a Third Round Replay.  Life had been good to the man from Country Durham.  A career that had begun aged 15 as part of the Duke of Edinburgh Award had taken him all the way up to the Select Group referees’ panel.  Clattenburg was in the big league; rubbing shoulders with the Ellerays, the D’Ursos and the Polls of the adjudicating world.

Then disaster struck.  In the summer of 2008, Clattenburg was dismissed by the referees’ governing body for reasons related to taking a string of companies under his stewardship into bankruptcy.  The timing of the dismissal couldn’t have been any worse – only weeks before he had been honoured with selection for the forthcoming Community Shield game.  Just as Clattenburg’s professional life was approaching its apex, a two-footed lunge in the business world had left his refereeing career in tatters.

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To everyone’s relief, the Professional Game Match Officials Board saw fit to reinstate Clattenburg in February 2009.  The old Clattenburg wasn’t back, though.  Instead, a different man emerged onto the field of play.  This one was slim, tanned and rocking a fashionable new mohawk.  He looked ten years younger.  Due to leaps in medical technology, the thinning top that Clattenburg had previously sported was gone.  And so too was the fear.  Richer for the experience of his financial mismanagement, Clattenburg wasn’t going to take any crap from these potty-mouthed footballers anymore.  Instead, he was going to educate them.

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The New Model Clattenburg first made his mark in a December 2009 clash between Bolton Wanderers and Manchester City.  Sick to the back teeth of one particularly irascible Welsh striker, the story goes that Clattenburg approached the City bench during half-time and asked: “How do you work with Craig Bellamy all week?”

We’ve all seen this ruse before.  It was classic “shaming in front of your peers”.  The sort of tactic you might use to stop a twelve year old from burping the alphabet.  Get his mates to start laughing at him, and maybe he’ll pack in the daft behaviour.

Clattenburg’s new role as moderator of the rich and famous didn’t get in the way of his refereeing duties.  He was still careful to ensure that he handed out two yellow cards to Bellamy in the second half.  Punishment that, having made clear to the City bench that he found Bellamy’s very presence intolerable, was perhaps of little surprise.

Good on him, though.  Craig Bellamy was a great servant to Manchester City, as he is to all his clubs.  But if ever someone epitomised the phrase “a whining arsehole”, it was Bellamy.  I regularly winced at Bellamy’s behavior despite looking at him through blue-tinted spectacles.  One can only imagine what the gentlemen with the whistles made of him.

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Wayne Rooney was the next miscreant in Clattenburg’s sightline.  In a match against Wigan, Rooney was seen to land a clear elbow on James McCarthy’s face as the two of them charged down a loose ball.  Any ordinary referee would have sent Rooney off.  But then where did being “ordinary” ever get any of the great social reformers?  “Ordinary” didn’t implement a national health service, free at the point of care for a post-war demographic, did it?  “Ordinary” didn’t provide universal suffrage and equality for women in the workplace.  “Ordinary” sure as sugar wasn’t going to tame this Nike-sponsored tearaway.

For a tough tiger like Rooney, sending him off would have been the worst possible thing to do and Clattenburg knew it.  Boys from the wrong side of the tracks love getting suspended; it’s a badge of honour.  Thankfully, Clattenburg had another trick up his sleeve.  The most powerful weapon of them all.  Love.

Rather than give Rooney the 4,000^th red card of his career, Clattenburg took everyone in the DW Stadium by surprise and fixed England’s Number 9 with a hug.  The rationale was obvious.  Wayne didn’t need another early bath; what he really needed was a friendly squeeze from an authority figure.  I was acting up in the playground once and, instead of the usual 100 lines and a short stint outside the headmaster’s office, a rather matronly teacher opted for the more creative punishment of giving me a hug.  Mortified beyond belief, I was as good as gold for weeks.  And so, it transpired (for a while at least…), was Wayne.  2-nil to Clattenburg.

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And so to recent events.  Lifestyle coaching was probably the last thing on Adam Lallana’s mind as he contested various decisions in December’s clash against Everton.  However, noticing a marked uptick in the acerbic nature of Lallana’s dialogue from previous encounters, Clattenburg hit back with a warning about letting success go to your head.  “You’ve changed.  You didn’t use to be like this before you played for England,” remarked Clattenburg, with all the nervous energy of someone sensing they were about to be dumped by a loved one on the cusp of fame.

Lallana ought to have known better than to try it on with an official who was by now well known for refereeing the man as well as the player.  There was a subtle but very obvious undertone to Clattenburg’s retort.  We all knew what Clatts was really trying to say.  “Shut up, you floppy-haired chopper.  You and your pre-pubescent beard only got picked for England because it was a friendly and Theo Walcott was injured.  You’re a mid-table player at best and I have a much better haircut and tan than you”.

Being a cry-baby, La La went straight to his mother and grassed him up.  But the powers that be weren’t having any of it.  The Football Association told Lallana to dry his eyes and stop being such a sniveling hypocrite.  Or words to that effect.

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Like anyone else in the education sector, Clattenburg knows that he’s dealing with the leaders of the future.  Today’s mouthy winger is tomorrow’s first team coach.  That racist centre-back you dealt with a few weeks back will be the manager of side battling against relegation one day.  Getting through to troubled youths at the earliest possible stage is key.  Solve the problem early on and they won’t spend the rest of their lives causing trouble for themselves and others around them.  Adam Lallana may not know it yet, but Mark Clattenburg is probably the only reason why Lallana isn’t in a young offender’s institute.

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Twelve months from now, when Lallana is still languishing on a tiny handful of international caps, Clattenburg has nicely teed up the narrative for a great running joke.  Every time Lallana treats him to another foul-mouthed tirade, all Clattenburg has to do is gently enquire on how his England career is progressing.  Sometimes, in a room full of arseholes, it helps to be the biggest arsehole.  If I were Clattenburg, I’d whisper “superstar” in his Lallana’s ear every time I whizzed past him in my shiny black outfit.

Graham Poll tells a story about how Kevin Keegan once stormed into the Officials’ Dressing Room after a particularly feisty encounter.  Keegan’s blood was racing as he launched into a rant about various mistakes that Poll and his assistants had supposedly made during the game.  Poll sat there quietly until Keegan eventually ran out of steam and headed back towards the exit.  At which point, just as Keegan was on his way out the door, Poll politely enquired, “Kevin.  Did it hurt when you fell off your bike in Superstars?”

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Players (and managers) need to get on board with the idea that, if they give it out, then they are going to have to learn to take it too.  Respect, as Adam Lallana is finding out, cuts both ways.

There’s a better person in all of us and sometimes it just needs a Tier 1 referee to tease them out.  Ask the footballer to retreat the full ten yards and you will have a correctly taken free-kick.  Ask the human being to retreat the full ten yards and you will have correctly taken free-kicks for life.  If all it takes is a few terse words from Uncle Mark to keep a multimillionaire 23 year old’s feet on the ground, then go for it I say.

I believe it was that other great social reformer, Mahatma Gandhi, who said, “Be the change you want to see in the world”.  We’ve all heard this quote, but how many of us actually put our good intentions into practice?  Mark Clattenburg is out there making the world a better place.  One premiership footballer at a time.

You can follow Sonny (@_SonnyPike) on Twitter or subscribe to Too Good for the English Game by clicking the “Follow” button at the bottom-right corner of this page (this button is mysteriously unavailable on the mobile version of the website).

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“Hey Adam, could you get me Stevie G’s autograph at the next England camp?”

As anyone who has ever watched Gordon Ramsay’s “The F Word” will testify, shock value is a cheap trick.  In Ramsay’s case, it wasn’t even a particularly successful trick as, by 2005, the British public had become largely anaesthetised to the shocking nature of the “F” word.  Had Ramsay upped the stakes and called the show “The C Word”, a few more eyebrows might have been raised.  The minute that Gordon demands someone passes him “the c**ting paprika”, we’re all sitting up and taking notice.

But, even then, the shock value would still ring pretty hollow.  A gimmick to boost viewing figures and nothing more.  Ramsay didn’t really want to swear at all those people; there was no anger in his eyes.  His contestants were just a load of middle-class berks, trying to impress a celebrity by showing him how well they could whisk an egg or grill some mushrooms.  How annoyed could he have possibly been with them?

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Too Good wouldn’t dream of treating its readers with such a low level of regard.  If there’s something shocking to be said on these pages, there had better be a jolly good reason for it.  And so it is with great caution that I make the following, rather jarring, announcement of my own.  Brace yourself…

I’m glad England have got a tough group at the World Cup.

You heard me.  Glad.

Such fearless pluck in the face of adversity hasn’t always been a quality I could lay claim to.  For years, I was terrified by the prospect of who England would get pitted against in major tournaments.  During the draw for the group stages, I could reliably be found peeping out from behind the sofa while FIFA dignitaries fumbled with their shiny balls.  The relief would wash over me when a Tunisia or a Trinidad & Tobago would be drawn into the same mini-league as England.

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Not any more, though.  This time around I wanted Blatter’s cronies to give me their best shot.

It’s not just wanton bravado either.  I think a tough group will help England to do well.  If you’ve seen Steven Seagal in the motion picture Under Siege, you will know that the best performances in life typically come from situations where the protagonist is forced to hit the ground running.  Being gently eased into a World Cup is no more helpful than being gently eased into a shark tank.  If we’re going in, let’s go in swinging.

I’ve been on a few first dates in my time, and the ones that went best were the ones where I was up against it from minute one.  Ice-skating.  Pottery classes.  Even vegetarian restaurants.  The more challenging the scenario, the more I would come storming out of my corner as soon as the bell tolled.  As a result of being jump-started into action, nothing seemed insurmountable.  Put my mouth guard in, smear my face with Vaseline and send me off for a three hour date at the opera.  I was fearless.

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Openers against Italy and Uruguay will alert the mind and prime the senses.  We’ll practically have steam coming off us by the time the knock-out stages arrive.  Think about it, if you have a game coming up against, say, Spain, what’s the better preparation for it – matches against Switzerland[1], Honduras and Australia?  Or duels against top class opposition?  This draw is a blessing, not a burden, and we should see it as such.  An opportunity to gain revenge on the Italians.  A gilt-edged chance to send Luis Suarez home early.  I wouldn’t swap these encounters for all the coffee in Costa Rica.

I’ve had a good look at the various algorithms that predict our chances of getting out of this so-called Group of Death.  Complex mathematical formulae have been pored over.  Eschewing the Black-Scholes valuation model, and throwing confidence intervals to the wind, I’ve gone for the one thing that I know will drill down into the truth.  A pie chart.

Tell us, magic pie chart, what are our chances of escaping the group?

There you have it.  Better than evens.  Don’t go giddily accepting any wedding invitations in early July just yet. 

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A bit of sheer terror is exactly what we need.  Lord knows the weight of expectation has buried many a previous England team.  Let’s get thrown in against some genuine competitors and see if that doesn’t charge the electrodes.  I bet you all the grooves in Gordon Ramsay’s chin that we’ll up our game as a result. 

Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go.  We won’t know what we are capable of until Joe Hart has pulled off a double-save from a weakly struck Andre Pirlo penalty.  We won’t know what we might become until Jamie Milner has run rings around a bamboozled Uruguayan left-back.  Quite simply, we cannot lay a finger on greatness until we emerge from a difficult group with Pele describing Jordan Henderson as his player of the tournament so far.

Some of the world’s greatest achievements were accomplished by people not smart enough to know that such feats were impossible.  As fortune would have it, Hodgson’s heroes are not smart.  What’s more, they have sold their fear for the bargainous sum of a tough group.  The pressure’s off and the history books have yet to be written.  England are coming.

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Like a bachelor on his third eHarmony date of the week, England just have to buckle down and get on with it.

I took a stroll around Too Good’s Advertising Department yesterday morning.  How anyone can do a day’s work wearing a pair of jeans that tight is beyond me.  However, amidst the restrictive garments and stench of Babycham, I actually learned a thing or two about business.

Chief Mad Man, Attros Flogsalot, was holding court about something called “The McDonalds Principle”. 

The McDonalds Principle apparently works thusly.  When a decision is required to be made by committee, no-one is permitted to simply say “that is a bad idea”.  Instead, one must say “I disagree with that proposal, but here is a better one”.  The aim being that, through incrementally better suggestions, you end up with the best possible answer the group could think of.

So for instance, if you’re discussing the need to buy a striker, one person might say “let’s buy Cameron Jerome”.  The next person isn’t allowed to then just say “don’t be ridiculous, Jim, I’d rather spend a long weekend glamping with Gary Megson than sign Cameron Jerome”.  No sir, that would offend The Principle.  He has to say something constructive, like “put the marker pen down, Jim, I’d sooner saw off my organs of reproduction than sign Cameron Jerome.  But, hey, why don’t we investigate Demba Ba’s release clause?”  And so, by each standing on the next man’s shoulders, you’re always building towards a better answer.

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One can only presume that UEFA doesn’t employ such a sound methodology to its decision-making.  If it did, we would never have ended up in a situation where international football is played on a Friday.  Friday nights?  UEFA ought to be given a medal for managing to find a time of the week when I actually don’t want to watch football. 

Nobody wants to be staring at a screen on a Friday evening.  I’ve spent the entire week reading BBC Sport and checking my Gmail.  The last thing I want is for my eyes to be trained on more electronic images.  I want to be out on the town drinking lager tops and eating peanuts!  Not bemoaning Kyle Walker’s shortcomings.

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England games on a Friday guarantee one thing.  An entire weekend of no football.  And I think this gets to the nub of most people’s general irascibility with the “International Break”.  It’s just so bloody long and empty.

I’ve never had to come off heroin after a lengthy period of usage.  But if it’s anything like the international fortnight, then I’m steering well clear.  For two interminable weeks, I lie on a mattress while an unconscionable sweat of sporting inactivity chills my body.  At one point during the most recent international break, I’m fairly confident a baby with Roy Hodgson’s head crawled along my bedroom ceiling.  – Look Roy, it wasn’t me who spilled the beans on that astronaut joke.  – Now come down from there.  – That’s not true Roy, I never said Andros Townsend was any good.

I’m climbing the bastard walls by Day 14.  The return of league football at midday the Saturday before last, a 6-goal Merseyside derby thriller, was like a syringe brimming with the goods being slingshot through my veins.

It’s funny because, as medical conditions go, IBS (International Break Syndrome) is a relatively new affliction.  In the days before Sky, two televised games in a fortnight was all you were likely to get anyway; so you were breaking even when the national teams circled their wagons.  These days, a paltry 180 minutes of live football over a fortnight feels like a slap in the face. 

Informing someone that an International Break is forthcoming tends to evince the same reaction as telling them that the clocks are going forward and they’re about to lose an hour’s sleep.  Or that they’ve underpaid on a gas bill.  You’re greeted with a look that’s equidistant between discomfort and misery.  The sort of grim facial expression usually reserved for a failed actress that has resurfaced in a pornographic setting.  Mind you, faced with the choice of either starring in a Too Naughty For The English Game sex tape, or spending another cold November fortnight with only televised games against Poland and Montenegro for my viewing pleasure, I know which side of the TV screen I’d rather be on.  Fetch me the tassels.

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These days, televised football is daily fare if you want it to be.  Assuming you’ve made arrangements with the necessary subscription providers, there are a total of 48 games of live football to be had in the coming week.  And that’s just from the UK service providers.  No wonder we’ve all got the shakes.

This can all get a bit much for the nearest and dearest.  Having watched both the 1:30pm game and the 4pm game on a Sunday, Lady Too Good is slightly exasperated as to why I’d want to watch a Spanish team called Elche at 6pm.  She’s never heard of Elche and she doesn’t understand. By the time I’ve told her it’s a double-bill and Bilbao are on at 8pm, she’s practically having kittens.  I have a sneaking suspicion that the only reason she hasn’t left me is, deep down, she has a grudging admiration for my persistence.

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So, for those of us condemned to a life sentence with the footballing needle, what can we do to make the international break a little more tolerable?  Well, here’s one proposal straight out the bat – why bother stopping the league schedule?  Just have the international matches played contemporaneously with their league equivalents.  Concerns are always being raised about young players at top clubs being given enough first team action.  Let’s give youth its day while the grizzled veterans are off conscripted on national service.

Naturally, rather than welcome the opportunity to blow the dust off Josh McEachran, domestic managers are more likely to blow a gasket at the above suggestion.  Surely there’s some sort of concession to be found though?  Throw us a bone, gents.  At least give us the e-Cigarette that is the League Cup to soften the comedown.  There’s no reason why these fixtures can’t be run be run side-by-side with the international game.

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Radio disc jockeys, TV commercials and Transport For London all make the same mistaken assumption; that I have a busy weekend ahead.  I really don’t.  I have five shirts to iron.  After that, it’s up to the nation’s broadcasters to cram as much live football into a 48-hour period as they can. 

It’s no use me wheeling out the old “I suppose I’d better creosote the fence this weekend” line, either.  I have no idea what creosote is. More pertinently, I don’t own a fence.  So, a personal plea, Mr Horne and Mr Scudamore.  When the next international break comes around, and we’re all working out which goalkeeper isn’t going to play behind Joe Hart this summer, don’t let us fend for ourselves for the remainder of the fortnight.  At least give us some methadone-soaked Capital One Cup encounters to keep the demons at bay.

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“Please. Just give me 45 minutes of West Brom versus the Villa…”

Discipline is everything in the journalism game.  If I find that our Copy Editor hasn’t neatly cropped the borders on an article, I’m angry.  If one of the Staff Writers doesn’t use the appropriate accolade to describe Gareth Barry, he or she will be shown the door.

This hard-line in achieving obedience stems from an exemplary upbringing.  Discipline was foremost in the Too Good household.  Get caught pinching the chocolate buttons off the sponge cake and there was a stern talking to on the cards.  A second act of buttons-based larceny would see Ma Too Good roll up her sleeve and leave no stone unturned on the seat of your Diadora-sponsored tracksuit bottoms.  To this day, my flanks still instinctively clench when I notice a topping has been removed from a home-made cake.

Discipline is needed now more than ever.  The world has become a lawless place.  We live in a society where you can pistol-whip prostitutes in computer games and David Dimbleby has a tattoo.  Gentler times these are not.

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Football, as ever in its role as mirror to society, reflects these changes in societal norms.  The game has become more cynical.  There was a Rubicon moment in the 2002 World Cup when, for the first time ever, England tried to wind down the clock by keeping the ball in the corner.  It was during the group match against Argentina.  As odd as it may sound, we’d never done such a thing up until then.  “Win at all costs” has always been the mentality for the professional game but, these days, teams really are examining every last nook and cranny for an advantage.

Keeping the ball in the corner is, at least, within the laws of the game (if not exactly bursting with Corinthian spirit).  It is the cynicism that has taken root regarding fully blown transgressions of the rules where football has truly lost its discipline…

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In the modern game, a curious abrogation of moral responsibility takes place when we see an opposing player go on the attack.  Sensing a hint danger, one of our own team’s players gently bundles the attacking player to the ground.  Not with any great force.  Indeed, with as little force as was necessary to complete the task.  Certainly not with any great aggression – it is perfectly possible that the fouled player will be picked up and dusted down for his troubles. 

A foul is given.  We, the viewing public, turn to a friend and, nodding sagely, declare that it was a “clever foul”.  Continuing the ethical vacuum, said friend looks back in our direction and, with very considerable solemnity, agrees that, yes, it was indeed a “very clever foul”.  To bolster their opinion, they too nod sagely.  We nod sagely a bit more in return and then, after a while, the nodding subsides and normal life resumes.

The foul was “clever” because, even if it wasn’t committed in the exigencies of great danger, the attacking team has lost momentum.  The co-commentator may even commend a team for doing a good job of “breaking up the play”.  It’s a Macabrian world out there and we’ve all collaborated. 

Such profound erudition in praising the “clever foul” overlooks one, rather important, thing.  It was a foul.  The clue was in the name.  It shouldn’t have happened.  It was naughty.  We shouldn’t be praising the antagonist’s behaviour.  We should be wagging a stern finger and telling his mother.

How did we allow the phrase “a clever foul” to pass so acceptingly into the footballing lexicon?  The answer is because we’re all complicit.  50% of the time that a clever foul is committed, it is to our own team’s advantage[1].  Do this enough over 90 minutes and it might help us get a result in a tight game; and that’s what makes it ok.  As Oliver Cromwell once put it, we’ve bartered our conscience for the bribe of all three points at Goodison Park.

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Well I’m not having it anymore.  A foul is only clever if the laws of the game allow it to be.  So let’s make “clever” fouls become just another stupid foul.  Mirthy transvestite, Russell Brand, wants a political revolution.  Good for him.  I want a footballing one.

Former Home Secretary, Jack Straw, once had the idea that if you committed three acts of criminality, it was fair to assume that you’d gotten a taste for felonious behavior and the best place for you was probably on the inside of a prison.  Journalists bestowed this policy with the moniker “Three Strikes and You’re Out”.  I like the sound of this Straw fella.  Straw would never have allowed a “clever crime”.  If you are able to reflect on a misdemeanor in the cold light of day and still think it was “worth” committing, the punishment wasn’t sufficient.

Football should follow suit.  If you commit three fouls in a game, you should be asked to leave the pitch.  Simple as that.

If you can’t go 90 minutes without unintentionally clattering people three times, you’re not in control of your limbs.  Even Andy Carroll, who at times resembles an inebriated Daddy Long Legs at the back end of a long summer, even he can refrain from unintentionally fouling people three times in a match.

There is almost always at least some intent when a foul is committed.  For all the “what, me, guvnor?” remonstrations after the event, players know what they are doing.  Like bankers, toddlers and the writers of South Park, they’re just seeing what they can get away with.  They’re using up the referee’s patience in a fuel-efficient manner.

Well no more.  Three offences in one game and you get first dibs on the shower gel.  Yellow and red cards remain in force just as before, so a nefarious player’s exit can still be expedited if necessary. 

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I know this all sounds a bit radical but try to approach the problem from afresh.  Fouling is cheating.  A boxing referee wouldn’t let one pugilist repeatedly punch the other bloke in the knackers.  If you land two low-blows, you have a point deducted.  Swing a third haymaker in the direction of your opponent’s tackle and you’ll get disqualified.  No arguments.  It’s against the rules and it gives you an unfair advantage.  Why should football permit circumstances where it is demonstrably the better option to foul rather than to play fair? 

You may love or loathe Cristiano Ronaldo, but he’s one of the most skilful players on earth and, for the sins of being bloody amazing, gets repeatedly kicked.  Weirdly, this is tolerated.  Ronnie sits there on the floor seven or eight times a game, bruised from thigh to toe, pleading with us to take action against his miscreants.  And we do nothing.  We walk on by like he’s asking us for spare change for a cup of tea. 

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Smoking would undoubtedly be outlawed if it was invented today.  Similarly, if we were to invent football again from scratch, I don’t think we would allow Ronaldo to be tripped and kicked quite so many times.  Sometimes it’s only the historical legacy which stops us from progressing.  If the rules of football were drawn up tomorrow, would we really create a landscape where it was possible to constantly foul the most skilful players on the opposition team?  I can’t remember the last time Cristiano Ronaldo or Lionel Messi went an entire game without being fouled.  Tellingly, I very much doubt they can either.  Why are we allowing this? 

Rules are only strong enough if they stop people committing the crime.  If you could murder someone and get away with a £50 fine and a few hours’ community service, people would be firing up their chainsaws at the drop of a hat.  The punishment isn’t sufficient.  It’s only the threat of 25 long years in the slammer which keeps our murderous lust at bay.  A deterrent has to be worthy of the name.  Believe me when I say I had a long, hard think about making it just Two Strikes and You’re Off.  Then we’d see a clean game of football.

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I’m a traditionalist.  I have no desire to see goal-line technology implemented and I wept openly during the dark days of golden and silver goals.  I wouldn’t recommend any rule change (and certainly not one as fundamental as this) without the greatest of caution.  But sometimes developments precipitate the need for change.

People have worked out how to cheat effectively.  The game has been enveloped by a collective awareness that it is better to foul on occasions than to play within the rules.  A calculated evil has taken hold where the spirit of fair play used to reside.  And we’ve accepted it without a whimper.

I’m convinced that the implementation of a “Three Strikes” rule would result in more enjoyable football matches; for both participant and spectator.  Games would have a much greater flow.  We would see more of what we’re meant to see in a game.  Football.  Artistry at both ends of the pitch.  Great attacking football countered by skillful and crisp dispossessions.

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Do you recall what made you fall in love with playing football?  Was it flying down the wing on the school field, sparks crackling from the man-made fibre of your Reebok two-piece?  Or was it craftily legging someone up who was attempting a dribble?  Would you have developed the same affection for the game if, every time you beat a man, the next player grabbed just enough of your shirt to hold you back?

All that it takes for evil to triumph is for the good to do nothing.  Pernicious fouling makes football less enjoyable than it otherwise would be.  We should do more to combat it. 

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Obviously we would need to replace Howie Webb with someone a little stricter.

As the Duchess of York, Sarah Ferguson, will testify, toes can get you into all sorts of trouble.  Put them in the wrong place and the whole world wants to know about it.  However, one toe-based activity has the ability to stigmatise like no other.  A reputation-tarnisher on a par with facial tattoos and fancying your sister.  This heinous activity, dear reader, is toe-poking.

Ah, the toe-poke.  Not since Jaws reared his pointy head above the shallow New England waters has such a beautiful creature been so cruelly misunderstood.  Allowing for community variation, you may identify this contemptible being as the toe punt, the toe bang or even the toe bung.  But you all know what I mean.  Those nasty little prods with the toe.  You may even have abused a football yourself in such an errant manner.  Perhaps during a misspent youth; somewhere in between stealing Lego bricks from playschool and that first cigarette.  Wash yourself all you like, my child – the dirt won’t come off.

Some people argue that toe-poking is genetic.  Natural, even.  And that we ought not to pass judgment.  “Nonsense” screams the moral majority.  These deviant souls must be cured.  “Kick with your laces, boy!”  Self-help groups have even been set up in order to rid you or, god forbid, a loved one of this terrible affliction.

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A boy at our school suffered badly from this ‘disease’.  Jamie Palmer, or “Podger”, as he was affectionately known, was a toe-poker of the highest order.  He’d lurk near the opposition goal just waiting to stick the tip of a Clarke’s size 3 on the end of something[1].  Reviled by juniors and infants alike, Podger was shunned for his ball-striking heresy.  It was the playground equivalent of voting BNP.

Some people say that taking heroin is the greatest feeling of warmth and security that you could ever know.  A practice that, while horrifying and ultimately life-threatening, envelops you in such joy that, deep down, you know you’ll never be able to let go of the needle.  I imagine Podger experienced a similar sensation when putting toe on leather.  Despite forming a one-man underclass throughout his days at Brooklands County Primary School, Podger just couldn’t stop.  Toe poking was in his blood.  This was his way of life.  He hadn’t chosen it.  The life had chosen him.

I couldn’t tell you where Podger is now but I can only assume that he is, at best, a fringe member of society.  A social leper.  An outcast who could not, and would not, subscribe to social norms.

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Call him a progressive, but Old Man Too Good never forced me down this narrow-minded path of thinking.  He didn’t see toe-poking as the act of a cloven-hoofed Beelzebub.  Indeed, Father and I would nod approvingly at such egregious use of the toe (only ever in furtive tones, you understand) when it displayed itself on The Big Match Live.

Like ladyboys and cloud computing, we knew that toe-poking would never gain the public’s full acceptance or understanding.  But there was something poetic in witnessing its implementation.  On Sunday afternoons we would watch John Barnes, using the skill of a painter and the strength of a rhino, burst through massed ranks of defence in a majestic flurry.  Barnes would beat one man, then another.  Some days even a third.  Thenceforward, the wizard of the Liverpool wing would roll the ball sideways to his strike partner, Ian Rush, who would toe-poke it into the net from seven yards.

A shy smile would break out on Barnesy’s face as he casually jogged back to the halfway line, pleased at a job well done.  Rush, on the other hand, would sprint away in jubilant ecstasy; punching the sky as though one of his blog articles had just gotten a hundred readers for the very first time.  He would hare towards the Anfield faithful who, in turn, roared with delight – their master finisher had done it again!

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For those of you I might be able to persuade on the issue, Ian Rush provided us with 382 bloody good reasons why the toe-poke is viable.  It’s a bona fide option, especially in the penalty area.  A toe-poke requires almost no back-lift and it’s easy to change the direction of the strike.  Ask any goalkeeper what they fear most and nine times out of ten they will tell you it’s a poke from short range.  Anticipation is everything for those crazy custodians and you just can’t read a toe-end.  It’s the most disguised shot in the book.  The scoundrel of the vineyard.

There’s an old joke that goes something along the lines of the following:

“Supporting Manchester United is like voting Conservative and masturbating.  Everyone does it but no-one will admit to it.” 

Toe-poking is the same.  If you’re at the back end of long hour of 5-a-side after a night out on the tiles, you’ve reached for the toe-poke and don’t pretend you haven’t.  You want your toe on that ball.  You need your toe on that ball.  You want the truth?  You can’t handle the truth.

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Finding a decent top flight toe-poker is as rare as hen’s teeth these days.  The golden age has passed.  It didn’t stop at Ian Rush and Gary Linker.  There were a few more toe-pokers hewn from the same sneaky timber.  Robbie Fowler, Kevin Phillips, Michael Owen. Franny Jeffers for all of a season and a half.  But eventually they all ebbed away in favour of the Rooneys and the van Persies.  Players too headstrong and proud not to put at least some kind of spin on the ball.  Nowadays it’s all insteps and the outside of the boot.  The game belongs to the show ponies.  Players who have too much in the way of swagger and commercial endorsements to stick a cheap toe in where it matters.

There was a time when Gary Lineker used to wear out the front end of his boots. Now all he exhausts is our patience.  Sir Gary was fondly remembered when he let his toes do the talking.  Switching to a more traditional form of oratory on Match of the Day has been his downfall.  Maybe part of the sadness in Gary’s Saturday night eyes is that he doesn’t see the next Gary Lineker out there on the extended highlights.  The position he knew and mastered doesn’t exist anymore.  He’s one of the last great calligraphers staring despondently at a myriad of font options on Microsoft Word.

Every now and then, though, the modern game forgets itself.  Once in a while, usually on the Monday night game, you see a crafty little toe-poke.  A mid-level striker goes rogue and nudges a ball goal-wards with the forbidden article.  He’ll probably get dropped for the next game.  Certainly, Nike will have torn up his boot contract before the final whistle is even blown.  But somewhere out there, deep beneath the orange tan and the self-satisfied expression, Gary Winston Lineker quietly smiles to himself.  There’s still place in the game for a little Old World charm.

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Not for the purist.

Welcome to Moyeswatch.  Not quite as glamorous as Baywatch, but we’re certainly seeing more boobs at Old Trafford than we’re used to.

The similarities between this year’s Manchester United and Baywatch are quite apparent.  Unconvincing performances in red attire.  Weak narratives in central areas.  Naive decision-making that necessitates last minute rescues from perilous situations.  There’s even a busty character called Anderson. It’s a wonder David Hasslehof hasn’t been sighted at the Theatre of Dreams.

Where possible, Too Good always likes to bulwark opinion with statistics.  So we’ve dusted off Microsoft Excel and compiled a graph.  The aim of the graph is to give an idea of how well Manchester United performed under Alex Ferguson:

United during Fergie’s reign

As you can see, the science shows just how consistently impressive United were under their former helmsman.  But what’s happened since Moyesy took over? What’s that done to the graph?  Well, let’s have a look…

United under David Moyes

Statistics can be used to prove and disprove all manner of things, but I think careful analysis of the second graph tells its own interesting story. “Vulnerable”.  These are not the words of an amateur pen waggler such as myself.  Far from it.  These are the proclamations of Mark Hughes.  A man so adept at football management that he was, by his own admission, too good to manage Fulham.

There’s a certain irony in Hughes’s caustic words having probably been learnt from the man Moyes is trying to replace.  The remarks confirm one thing for sure – it’s not business as usual this year at Old Trafford.  So much so that Match of the Day recently asked their interactive audience the question “will Man U finish in the top 4?”  One can only imagine the length of boycott that Ferguson would have imposed if such a question were asked of one of his teams.

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The signs were there on the opening day.  As odd as it sounds, the 4-1 score line didn’t tell the story of a Swansea team who comprehensively outplayed United for the first 45 minutes.  It was only the singular brilliance of Robin van Persie that turned the tide in United’s direction.  Since then, areas traditionally of strength for United have repeatedly had their soft underbelly exposed.  Watching Alvaro Negredo treat Rio Ferdinand like a rag doll in the Manchester derby suggests that, at 35, the bell might be tolling for the Master of Merk.  Vidic, too, has looked flaky; finding himself at fault for a number of goals this season.  Most notably, the Serb provided an expertly placed assist for Craig Gardner to score in the Sunderland game.

Moyes’ tactics haven’t helped matters.  If there’s one thing the new man might want to prioritise on his learning curve, it’s that you don’t substitute Wayne Rooney and bring on Chris Smalling in order to close out a 1-0 win at Old Trafford against a recently promoted side.  Shutting up shop against Southampton in front of 75,000 fans?  You’re Manchester United and you’re at home, for Christ’s sake.  It’s embarrassing.  The change smacked of fear, disorganised the unit and invited pressure on.  Southampton duly equalised.

After the 2-1 defeat to West Brom at Old Trafford, Moyes observed that “We didn’t defend well today at all.  But, in saying that, we didn’t attack well either.”  This is a bit of a problem for a team not exactly known for its midfield.  And it is the midfield that, incredibly, Moyes has contrived to weaken.  A £27.5 million acquisition ought to have shored up the deficiencies in the centre of the park.  This hasn’t exactly proved to be the case.

The centre of the Manchester United midfield has been something of a metaphorical black hole for years.  However, the black hole has now actually taken residence in corporeal form, in the shape of Marouane Fellaini’s oversized barnet.  A large black dot drifts aimlessly around the pitch where Paul Scholes used to be. 

The gravitational element of such an interstellar abyss is also present.  Fellaini’s first touch represents the event horizon, beyond which the football is sucked in and unable to escape until all trace of momentum has been lost.  You have to hand it to Moyes for pulling off such a poignant meta-physical analogy.  Rather than simply solve the issue, he has gone out and bought a player that manifests the physical embodiment of United’s problem.  £27 million is probably cheap for such a thought-provoking piece of modern art.

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Ferguson was recently quoted as saying it would be “incredible” if Moyes wins anything this season.  While there’s two ways to understand Fergie’s comment, one presumes that the festive book-peddler’s comments are an attempt to take the pressure off the new boy, rather than simply taking the piss. 

Either way, I disagree.  With the additional sparkle of Adnan Januzaj, he’s got pretty much the exact same squad that scorched the Old Trafford turf last season.  A team that, lest we forget, won the league by eleven points.  Surely, if anything, this is his easiest year?  A free swing with Fergie’s winning bat before he has to construct a team of his own.

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The conspiracy theorists would be forgiven for wondering if Moyes was deliberately framed as a post-Ferguson fall guy.  The tethered goat to be gobbled up by the Tyrannosaurus Rex of expectation.  But this isn’t the case according to the diktat coming out of Old Trafford.  Moyes is here for the long-term.  Six years at the minimum, so buckle up.

Ed Woodward and the Glazer family may yet find themselves with an interesting dilemma to mull over.  What happens if United miss out on the Champions League, this year or next?  Having made bold statements about longevity and continuity, should they stick with Moyes, however bad its gets?  Or should they swallow their pride and look for another “long-term” solution?  

My advice is to rip the band-aid.  I have no reason to be knee-jerk about things – Moyes can spend the next decade ploughing United into mediocrity for all I care.  And I’m all for managerial stability, but not when the wrong man was picked from the off.  Moyes isn’t the man to continue the legacy.  A quarter of the season has now gone – could you imagine United lying in 8^th position if Mourinho had taken charge?  It would never happen.  Not in a month of Super Sundays.

It’s going to end badly for Moyes.  Maybe not terribly.  But not very well either.  He just isn’t the best man for the job.  Rip the band-aid, gents.  Rip it off.

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