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Sam Allardyce – football’s Oliver Twist

25 Oct

It is a gritty, but nevertheless accurate, fact that the best looking orphans get adopted first out of the orphanage.  One would think that some sort of “cab-rank” rule applies when it comes to something as important as adoption.  However, apparently this isn’t the case.  Too Good is unable to explain why would-be surrogates apply an aesthetic rigour to their decision-making, but the facts remain to be as they are – the munters get left on the subs’ bench.

Sam Allardyce knows exactly what it’s like to be unloved on aesthetic grounds.  The man from Dudley is football’s answer to brutalism.  Sure, there will be a few outcriers who see a beauty in Big Sam’s interpretation of football, but most of us just think it’s a big concrete mess.  A style of play that ought to have been torn down and reconstructed at the same time as Manchester’s old Arndale Centre was.

As sure as those less appealing orphans are left with a life-time of emotional scarring, so too has Big Sam been rendered damaged and hurt from being consistently overlooked.  A big tear rolls down his big cheek every time he sees a coach with a fitted suit and a more fluid style of play get plucked from the orphanage of crap football teams and nestled into one of the warm, cozy homes of the premiership elite.

The impact this has had on Big Sam is palpably evident.  You only have to scratch the surface to see the wounds:

“I won’t ever be going to a top-four club because I’m not called Allardici, just Allardyce.”

Sam Allardyce.

These aren’t the words of a defiant underdog; unapologetic for his misunderstood genius.  This is a statement laced with the brittle nomenclature of a damaged psyche.  Unresolved emotional trauma that won’t loosen its grip.  Sam’s stuck in the orphanage, and those idiot Top 4 foster parents just keep on picking more superficially attractive managerial alternatives.

It’s the final two words of the quote that yank the heart strings quite so taut.  “Just Allardyce”.  Leave them off and Sam might just have gotten away with a droll observation, evincing a wry smile and a wink from the assembled hacks.  Throw in the last two words and suddenly you’ve got a desperate and isolated man, struggling to control a wobbly lip.  Just Allardyce.  Just Allardyce.  Just plain old Sam Allardyce, nothing to see here.  Referring to oneself in the third person is usually an example of arrogance.  When used for the purpose of self-pity it’s just plain upsetting.

How did he end up feeling so unloved?  Maybe the quote was a defensive reaction; natural for a man who was sacked from his first permanent managerial post by a chairman sat in a prison cell at the time.  Maybe it’s the sniggering he hears when, trying to sound tech-savvy, he makes reference to analysing games on his laptop.

Preston, Blackpool, Notts County, Bolton, Blackburn.  Big Sam’s career reads like a Who’s Who of places you wouldn’t want to live in the north of England.  Newcastle was supposed to be his big break.  A team with a huge following and, finally, some real money to spend.  This was destined to be the final stepping stone before Allardyce was installed at a Champions League team.  Sadly, it turned out to be a tiny Toon adventure, lasting barely eight months.  Newcastle fans sang “You should have stayed at the Reebok” and “Sacked in the morning” at him.

Those cruel words must have still been ringing in Allardyce’s ears when he was sacked again 24 months into his next position, this time at Blackburn.  Quite the transformation for a manger whose stock was soaring when he left Bolton in 2007.  Three years on and Sam was running out of filing space for his rapidly accumulating p45s.

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It’s hard to understand why Allardyce doesn’t resonate more with our footballing public.  Certainly, no-one can doubt his Anglo-Saxon credentials.  Here is a man so quintessentially couched in the British elements of the game that even his jowls look like a flat back four.  Maybe it’s the denial as to who he truly is, and what he truly stands for, that sticks in the craw.  There’s an air of intellectual honesty to men like Jack Charlton, Mick McCarthy and Tony Pulis.  Men whose brand of football is as unattractive as the ginger one from Girls Aloud, but who make no protestations to the contrary. 

Not so, for Big Sam.  I don’t know if he’s trying to kid us or himself, but there’s a level of hypocrisy bordering on wilful blindness with Allardyce.  He rails against accusations of direct, turgid football but then goes and signs a front two battering ram of Kevin Nolan and Andy Carroll[1].  He’s the dog that craps all over the kitchen floor and then gives it the old “What, me guvnor?” routine when his owner comes home.  You’re fooling no-one, Sam.  And no amount of references to being a “pioneer of using Prozone in football management” will persuade us to the contrary.

Allowing Allardyce the reins at a club like West Ham was the final straw for many.  Everybody loves the Hammers.  Easy on the eye, rich in history and never actually quite good enough to ruffle the feathers of other teams.  Yet here, at the club synonymous with Sir Trevor Brooking and Bobby Moore, we were forced to witness the convergence of Andy Carroll, Kevin Nolan and Carlton Cole in order to play out the logical end-game of Allardyce’s bleak philosophy.  It was like handing Peter Stringfellow the keys to a listed building.

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In the interests of balance, Allardyce has had his moments in the sun and we shouldn’t let that be forgotten.  “Bolton Wanderers finishing in the top 6” was a phrase few of us thought we would ever hear.  The last time Bolton were good enough to qualify for non-domestic duties, the concept of “European competition” was an entirely different affair that involved tanks and rationing.  Allardyce managed it, though. 

Again now at West Ham, despite the desecration of such holy ground, he returned the Irons to the top flight at the first attempt and finished 10th the following year.  In addition to usually one or both of Kevin Nolan and El Hadj Diouf, Allardyce brings stability to the table.

To quote Clive Owen in the motion picture Sin City, maybe Allardyce just had the rotten luck of being born in the wrong century.  I haven’t seen any footage of Allardyce in his playing days, but it is unlikely that he ever wore pink boots.  He’s an old-fashioned cannon in an era of drones and heat-sensitive missiles.  If he had been born thirty years earlier, he’d have probably been the England manager.

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The success of his time at Upton Park will likely now define Allardyce’s premiership career.  He did the business at Bolton, was booted out at Newcastle, and then walked into a lunatic asylum at Ewood Park (a spell from which we can conclude very little).  A positive report card at West Ham and you would have to concede that, on balance, his methods get results. 

Ultimately, though, I don’t think it is results that Allardyce craves.  It’s acceptance that he’s after.  It’s understanding.  It’s an arm around his Big shoulder.  More than anything, the ugly duckling from the midlands just needs a little love.  He just needs to be told “it’s not your fault” ten or eleven times, in the manner that Robin Williams did to Matt Damon in Good Will Hunting, so that he can have a good cry and release the demons that have plagued him for so long.

So here it is.  I love you, Sam.  Not massively, it has to be said.  And not in a particularly wholesome way, either.  But you seem to be able to consistently get results at a certain level within the game.  If I supported any team in the bottom half of the premiership, I’d be happy to have you as manager.  Newcastle were idiots to get rid of you so quickly.  And their fans sarcastically chanting “Big Sam for England” wasn’t right.  If I could have stopped them, I would have. 

I’d much prefer it if you didn’t sign players like Andy Carroll.  But such acquisitions are inextricable with your view on how the game needs to be played.  I accept that.  You could probably tone down the general levels of sarcasm in your interviews.  It gets weary season after season.  And stop talking about your laptop like you work for NASA – we’ve all got one.  But these are small things.  You’re not insufferable, Sam.  You’ll never irritate people to anywhere near the levels that Alan Pardew manages to achieve.  You’re not Alan Pardew, Sam.  You hear me?  You’re not Alan Pardew. 

You’re a good kid. 

Hopefully this provides you with some solace.

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“Please sir, I want two uncompromising centre-forwards.”

[1] While spending a short period of time in the U.S. playing for the Tampa Bay Rowdies, it may stun you to learn that Allardyce was a student of gridiron and subsequently applied many of the practices and techniques into association football.

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Space Cadet Hodgson steers his team of astronauts to the World Cup Finals

18 Oct

So, congratulations to Roy’s boys.  Obviously last night’s qualification is all just laying the groundwork for when Adnan Januzaj links up with the squad in 2018.   But let’s crack open the Babycham and enjoy a small celebration in the meantime anyway.  We’re off to Brazil!

Judging by the lack of dancing in the fountains of Trafalgar Square on Tuesday night, England fans appear to have taken the news in a measured stride.  Rightly so.  On a sheer numbers game alone, the fifth most populace nation in the European confederation really ought to be able to secure one of the thirteen berths on offer. 

Too Good has never been convinced that Roy Hodgson was a particularly good choice for England manager, but that’s for another day and another article.  Now would be an unkind and unjust time to shine a harsh light on that decision.  It’s touching that Hodgson has declared qualification as his proudest moment in football and he deserves praise for extracting an undefeated 10-game run through the qualifiers[1].

Poland had more than enough chances in the final group game to keep England fans entirely honest about their prospects in Brazil.  As many opportunities as England had at one end of the pitch, Robert Lewandowski could have had three goals at the other end in the first half hour alone.  The best of the bunch, whistling past Joe Hart’s post on 22 minutes, caught the palpably relieved Hodgson mouthing the words “f*** me” on camera.  While we all await Roy’s donation for the swear jar, I ought to confess I muttered something awfully similar.  It could have been bleak.

This was England’s last competitive game before tournament play begins next June.  There’s still quite a few things for Hodgson to mull over between now and then.  Too Good has a look under the bonnet of the Three Lions, takes a sharp intake of breath, and gives its tuppence on what’s running well and what needs a little tinkering with.

Strikers

Let’s start with something positive.  If Wayne Rooney and Daniel Sturridge can stay fit, that’s a great front pairing.  Both are genuinely classy players.  In Rooney’s case, world class.  England can count their lucky stars that Scotland narrowly missed out on laying claim to Wazza as a youngster. He is looking composed and on form. 

While still no stranger to rage’s hypnotic grip, Rooney seems to have calmed a little in recent years.  Perhaps, with a certain amount of good fortune, he may manage only his second ever international tournament unfettered by suspension, red cards or injury.

Sturridge has parachuted into international football with all the same lethal composure he has been showing in domestic competition.  England’s best chances of prosperity this summer will come from hitching our wagons to these two gifted strikers.  Which is just as well, given that the options up front fall off a cliff after that.  Best not to even think about it.

Midfield

As odd as it sounds, the centre of midfield needs a bit of careful thought between now and June.  There’s plenty of players to choose from, just no obvious pairing/triumverate.  Since he’s made him captain, you have to assume Hodgson will play Steven Gerrard if fit.  He’ll need someone to do the running though, as Gerrard is no longer the cavalry charge on legs that he once was.  A 36 year old Frank Lampard is unlikely to be a starting option by the summer, although academics of the game postulate that he and Gerrard never really gelled together anyway. 

It’s difficult to see Gerrard and Jack Wilshere playing as a two, but then a three-pronged central midfield runs the risk of sacrificing Sturridge and leaving a one-man Rooney-shaped attack.  This cannot be allowed to happen.  It is not impossible that Wilshere may find himself being accommodated in a wide midfield position for country, as he has found himself for club recently.

Some of you are probably already mumbling “Michael Carrick” under your breath as you read this.  The Emperor’s New Carrick has his proponents, but I swear to God he’s just wandering through the streets naked.  People watch Carrick never attempt anything glamorous and praise this as “assured” and “steady”.  I’m fine with him being slow of foot but he’s slow of ball too, and that’s unforgiveable in his position.  He practically needs a signed letter from the opposition that they won’t trespass into his passing lane before he attempts a first-time pass. 

If a designated holder is required, Gareth Barry is a better option.  I occasionally amuse friends and acquaintances by referring to Gareth Barry as “one of the quickest players in England”.  The fact of the matter is that when it comes to recycling the play, when it comes to keeping the football hurtling around at pace, and when it comes to dragging opposition players out of position because a player is willing (and capable) of risking a fist-time ball, there are few to match Gareth Barry.  Bloody well watch him if you disagree.  The difference between he and Carrick is a sense of urgency.  Critical when you have to unlock an opposition constantly readjusting and reforming their defensive shape.

Lest we forget, despite being consigned to the international scrapheap, Barry has been a starting choice in a Premiership midfield much better than the one Michael Carrick plays in over the last two years.  His loan move to Everton this summer was a very clear indication that Barry wants to guarantee game-time this season to ensure his world cup selection chances aren’t unduly hampered. 

Maybe Hodgson can conjure a formation that requires neither of the two, but Barry should get the nod if one is deemed necessary.

Defence

Defence is probably the area which will engage Roy’s worry the least.  The centre-back pairing of Jagielka and Cahill looks solid enough and we have sufficient full-backs to populate the remaining 31 teams in the competition.  At right-back alone, any of Kyle Walker, Glenn Johnson, Micah Richards, Chris Smalling, and Phil Jones could more than adequately do the job.  Teddy Sheringham recently mooted that even Steven Gerrard could do a job there.  The suggestion is one rich with temptation.  England benefiting from Gerrard’s range of distribution and general ability, while freeing up space for other options in the centre of the park. 

Indeed, Gerrard played right-back during extra-time of a particularly memorable evening in Istanbul a little while ago.  He did an excellent job, too; making vital blocks and interceptions.  Such hare-brained tactical juggling wouldn’t be without historical precedence for England, either.  Against Germany in the semi-finals of Euro ’96, another roving, goal-scoring midfielder was deployed at right-back.  David Platt.  Keep an open mind, Roy.

Goalkeeper

Eyebrows have been raised in the direction of Head and Shoulders’ poster-boy, Joe Hart, in recent weeks.  A few less mistakes from the England’s number one would certainly be most welcome.  But let’s be absolutely frank about this, Hodgson better damn well hope Hart doesn’t pick up an injury between now and the end of the season.  The thought of an untried Fraser Forster, John Ruddy, Ben Foster or Jack Butland donning the gloves in Brazil is enough to put any England fan off their pre-game caipirinha.  In terms of sheer lack of a viable replacement, only Rooney is more indispensable than Hart.

Conclusion

A favourite game of mine since childhood has been to speculate on whether I will live to see the day England win a World Cup. 

Historically, given my comparative youth and England’s odds usually being somewhere in the region of 10 or 11-1 at World Cups, I have always given myself at least a 50% chance of seeing England hoist the trophy.  It was a comforting thought; knowing that I had a better-than-evens chance of seeing us do the business before I set sail for the great penalty box in the sky.    

As I become a little more advanced in years, and England’s odds begin to creep out[2], I’m now not so sure.  Assuming I have maybe fourteen more tournaments left in me, would I say I have a forty per cent chance of seeing it happen in my lifetime?  Thirty per cent?  Twenty?  You’d be a bullish punter to still put it at 50:50. 

Sadly, when August rolls around, I suspect I will be looking at even longer odds again. 

You never know, though…

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Roy’s preparations for the summer are already under way.

[1] Although, to keep this in context, Italy have now gone 40 games without losing a World Cup or European qualifier.

[2] Betfair currently has England at a decidedly limp 23/1 for the win in Brazil 2014.

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The Blackwood Redemption

11 Oct

The celebrity version of the game show Pointless that aired this week gave us a beautiful glimpse into the most important aspect of any narrative.  Redemption.  Watching the protagonist rise again, having withered the storm. 

Few people have withered more storms than Richard Blackwood.  They say success is getting up one more time than you fall over, and nobody’s fallen over more times than Richard Blackwood.  From a critically and commercially unsuccessful pop career, to a critically and commercially unsuccessful acting career, by way of a critically and commercially unsuccessful comedy career.  Blackwood has stared into the abyss so many times they’re practically on first name terms with each other.  But he keeps coming back.  He won’t die. Every dog has his day.  Fittingly, Celebrity Pointless was to be his.

Blackwood was pitted against an absolute titan.  Only Tim chuffing Rice.  Only an Oscar, Golden Globe and Grammy winner.  The doyenne of the west end musical.  That Tim Rice.  No boxing board in the world would have sanctioned this fight but, sadists that they are, the British Broadcasting Corporation not only filmed it, they beamed it to a daytime television-watching public.

Blackwood had clearly had an apparition just before the lights went on, though.  He’d seen a chance to win back some of that lost respect.  All that was between him and a second bite at B-list celebrity was Tim Rice’s jugular.  And, my word, he absolutely went for it.

Much like his 2000 hit “1-2-3-4 Get with the wicked”, RB ran the show.  Rice was floundering from the off as Blackwood pulled out an impressive “unaware” when asked for an obscure word ending in “-are”.  A follow-up teaser on the land-locked countries of South America left Blackwood, the picture of concentration, unphased.  “Paraguay” put Rice into further trouble.  By the time a question on So Solid Crew came around, the Legend of the Musical knew he was on the ropes.  Of course Blackwood knew the bloody answer.  21 Seconds (To Go) was meat and drink to the big lad.

There’s something wonderful when, against all odds, the underdog stands up and says “you know what, I’m not having this anymore, not today”. Blackwood was up on his hind legs throwing punches like his career depended on it.

This was a man who, in May 2003, appeared on Channel 5’s Celebrity Detox Camp and self-administered a coffee enema, which involved him being filmed pumping 18 litres of coffee solution into his stomach via a non-traditional entrance.  Without ever achieving fame yourself, it’s difficult to imagine how far a star must fall before they feel compelled to appear on Channel 5.  Clearly, Blackwood was not enjoying a halcyon. 

Yet here he was, going to toe-to-toe with Tim Rice – an artist so successful he was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1999 and named a Disney Legend in 2002 – and besting him.  Allowing himself to dream for a minute, you could sense this critical moment would form the turning point in Blackwood’s as-yet-unwritten autobiography, “Blackwood Battling Back”.  The book could be ready for Christmas.  Britain’s answer to Will Smith on the cover, wearing that half-desperate, half-maniacal look of a man prepared to do anything, anything, to keep a career alive.

What Tim Rice made of being comprehensively beaten by a man wearing a skin-type muscle vest underneath a velvet blazer, we’ll never know.  All we know is he was helpless in the face of a Blackwood battering.

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I mention this warming tale because the big premiership teams are getting “Blackwood-ed” left, right and centre at the moment.  Davids everywhere are playing Goliaths off the park.  Not just a cheeky tweaking of the nose, either.  Some real whoopings.

West Ham United went to White Hart Lane on Sunday and pulled Tottenham’s trousers down.  They didn’t turn up and grab a plucky 0-1. They taught them a lesson.  While Spurs’ all-star cast and their gravel-voiced manager huffed and puffed, the team from the unfashionable end of London showed Tottenham  a clean pair of footballing heels.  Despite having not scored an away goal all season (nor having registered a win at the Lane in fourteen long years), the Irons put three past Spurs unanswered. 

And this is the point.  Upsets happen every year in football, but this season we are seeing unfancied sides also outplay their supposed superiors.  Everyone likes to watch an underdog prevail but it’s gratifying in the extreme when they do so in style.  West Ham were simply better than Tottenham.

Cardiff seemed to have Manchester City completely figured out when the teams met on Game Day 2.  They looked like they could soak up the pressure all day long and City continually over-exposed themselves trying to break the Bluebirds down.  As a result, getting caught repeatedly on the break led to corners being conceded and, consequently, goals scored. Pellegrini’s men looked like a ball of wool in the hands of a crafty Welsh kitten.

It was no better for Manchester United when West Brom came to visit. Having gone a goal down, United duly equalised and then a very strange thing happened – West Brom went back on the attack.  Rather than hang on to their precious point for dear life, as is customary for small teams at Old Trafford, the Baggies were having none of it.  They smelt blood in the water.  Here was a collection of rudderless yesterday’s men, they sensed, there for the taking.  West Brom duly took ’em.  It was as startling as it was heartening.

Before Arsenal became flavour of the month[1], Paul Lambert’s team of toddlers dismantled the Gunners 3-1 on the opening day of the season.  At the Emirates[2].  Gaby Agbonlohor tore them apart.  It was brutal enough for many members of the national press to start reading Arsene Wenger his last rites.

This was a Villa team whose courting of the drop-zone was last season’s biggest flirtation outside of Jose Mourinho’s unrequited ankle-flashing in the direction of the vacant Manchester United manager’s seat.  Yet, within six games of the new campaign, Villa had had already beaten Arsenal and followed it up with a victory against, you’ve guessed it, Manchester City. 

Scalps are going to be piled high this year and that’s a great thing.  Football thrives on its unpredictability, in both passages of play and results.  And it’s currently more unpredictable than it has been in quite some time.  Competition has replaced procession.  Big teams stumbling is not indicative of a league losing its talent; it means that the division is strong. 

Whisper it quietly, but this season we might even witness the majesty of a record low winning points total in the modern era[3].  Maybe it’s fanciful to conceive that Manchester United’s 75 point haul of 1996/97 will be “bettered”, but it’s pretty exciting to think we could dip below 80 – something that hasn’t yet happened this century.  The team that wins the league loses an average of 4½ games en route.  Manchester United, Manchester City and Chelsea have lost six between them already.

Diversity isn’t just a dance troupe.  It’s a concept, too.  One that is alive and well in the top flight of English football.  There’s strength and variety throughout the division.  We are all richer for it.

Blackers knows I’m just playin’.

[1] They’re now bookmaker’s 3rd favourites for the title, having leap-frogged Manchester United.

[2] It’s interesting to note that all three of the above-mentioned victories were masterminded by Scottish managers (Steve Clarke, Malky Mackay and Paul Lambert). 

[3] Since the inception of the Premiership in 1992/93.

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The lion, the witch and the midfielder who doesn’t track back

4 Oct

Industrialist and long-time owner of Juventus, Gianni Agnelli, once caught a young Michel Platini enjoying a crafty cigarette in the dressing room before a game.  “That worries me,” Agnelli said to Platini.  The riposte was instant.  “You only need to worry if he starts smoking,” said Platini, pointing at Massimo Bonini, the tireless midfield ball-winner in that Juventus team.

Younger readers, who know him only as the president of UEFA, may be surprised to hear that, as a player, Platini relied on trickery and cunning rather than hard work and honest endeavour.  “Le Roi” wasn’t the only one, either.  History is riddled with number 10’s who leveraged their undoubted talents in order to get away with the minimum of effort.  Back in the day, you practically had to promise your playmaker time off in lieu in order to cajole the lazy so-and-so into his own half of the pitch.  A football would need to be primed with hors d’oeuvres before Matt Le Tissier even considered putting in a tackle.  One man’s artistry is another man’s lazybones.

The extent to which the modern game can indulge such work-shy fecklessness has been cast into the limelight by the recent goings-on at Stamford Bridge.  Juan Mata was one of football’s outstanding performers last season.  In many people’s eyes, the best midfielder in the English league.  Yet despite being in everyone’s team of the year last time round, Mata can’t even get his own first XI this semester.

The underlying problem

The problem stems from the fact that Jose Mourinho didn’t return to a very Mourinho-like team.  It says a lot about Mourinho’s sustained legacy that he could have taken over any Chelsea side up until 2012 (five years after he left) and he would have slipped back in like a glove[1].  But the arrival of Oscar and Eden Hazard in the summer of 2012 (with Mata already in situ) signalled that a fundamentally different Chelsea side had finally emerged from the Special One’s long shadow.  Chelsea had moved on.

Three attacking midfielders floating care-free behind a centre forward never looked like being part of a Mourinho team.  He could just about cope with one playmaker in the side.  Three of the buggers would be enough to give him kittens.  For an unrepentant pragmatist like Jose, there was always going to be an opportunity cost.

Mourinho teams are built with an iron rod running through the middle.  Players like Lampard, Makelele, Essien, Ballack, Mikel, Costinha, Thiago Motta, Cambiasso, Alonso, Khedira.  All strong.  All aware of their defensive duties.  All team players committed to the cause.  It wasn’t that you weren’t allowed skill.  It was just that you had damn well better work hard in a system before you thought about using it.

Nothing encapsulated the “Mourinho way” quite like the performance of his Inter Milan side in the 2010 ECL semi-final 2nd leg against Barcelona.  Reduced to ten men (unfairly), Inter were the very embodiment of team-work and an “all hands on deck” policy.  Strikers Milito and Eto’o worked their socks off as makeshift wide midfielders, dropping into the second bank of defence against the Catalan onslaught.  Together with Cambiasso and Chivu, they formed a wall on Inter’s defensive third.  Behind them, Walter Samuel and Lucio defended the penalty area as if they were two female elephants protecting their young.  There were no passengers, only warriors. 

Despite losing the game 1-0, it was enough for Inter to progress to the final and arguably remains to be Mourinho’s finest hour.  He is a coach very much wedded to what Brazilians call “futebol de resultados” rather than “futebol d’arte”.  Perhaps we should not be too surprised if there is no room for Mr Tumnus in Mourinho’s Narnia.

Square pegs

As Charles de Gualle once said, the graveyards are full of indispensable footballers who couldn’t fit a formation.

For five years at Old Trafford, Ruud Van Nistelrooy was more lethal than Dignitas.  However, as the team evolved, it became apparent that the need to accommodate his style of play was holding United back.  Ferguson packed him off to Real Madrid and the triple helix of Ronaldo, Rooney and Tevez went on to win the European Cup.

Glen Hoddle was the nation’s most talented footballer for a generation.  He’s got less England caps than Phil Neville.

For all his excellence going forward, Juan Mata is not an all-round player.  In the very best teams, and Chelsea’s ambitions are to be the very best, attacking midfielders don’t ignore their defensive duties.  Wayne Rooney is never neglectful of his responsibilities when United don’t have the ball.  It was noticeable how much Frank Ribery tirelessly tracked back under Heynckes at the business end of last year’s Champions League run. 

Under Pep Guardiola, Barcelona’s philosophy was to press high and aim to win the ball back within six seconds of losing it.  This required the whole attacking unit to swarm opponents the moment possession was surrendered.  Juan Mata does not seem to possess the energy levels for high tempo pressing.  Vincente Del Bosque’s no fool, but he never starts Mata for Spain – even in friendlies.

For all their cup success, Mata has been Chelsea’s player of the year in two of their worst seasons domestically for a decade (finishing 6th and 3rd). Winning league titles is the stamp of a great football team and Chelsea haven’t even challenged since he arrived.  Maybe Jose recognises this. 

Let’s not be too hasty in our judgment, though.  Great players achieve their status through humility and a willingness to work on all aspects of their game.  There’s plenty of season left for Mata to prove he can do all aspects of the job required. 

Mourinho isn’t likely to give up quickly on a player who is not only one of the best passers in the league, but also a genuine goal threat.  Mata scored a Lampard-esque 20 goals from midfield in all competitions last year.  That was more than Wayne Rooney.

Smoke and mirrors?

In any case, attacking midfield isn’t the position of concern for Chelsea.  As Too Good has twice tried to bring to Mourinho’s attention, having someone up front to convert their chances is the problem, not creating them.  The inclusion of Mata won’t solve this.  There’s a Chelsea striker who has scored 20 goals in his last 38 league games.  Unfortunately, none of the blue shirts Romelu Lukaku was wearing were embroidered with the Chelsea crest.  Maybe it suits Mourinho to have a bit of misdirection, creating a storm in a teacup around Juan Mata, while leaving the real problem out of focus?

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It would be nice if real football teams worked like their fantasy equivalents and you could just pick whoever you want.  A team of mercurial individuals forged by the brilliance of the man in charge.  But it never works when people try.  Where there’s a conflict in style of play, the manager should always be allowed to win out.  

Teams have to be moulded according to one man’s will.  Ultimately, Mourinho will pay the piper with his job if things go badly, so he should get to call the tune.  If a player can’t, or won’t, fit to the vision, they need to go.  Let’s hope this doesn’t prove to be the case with Mata – he would be a sad loss for both Chelsea and the league in general if it doesn’t work out.

Tummers needs to put a shift in.

[1] Andre Villas-Boas was actually assigned the task of overhauling the “Mourinho side” a year earlier (2011) but never actually achieved it.  He just benched Frank Lampard a lot. 

 

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The art of lion taming

30 Sep

The great Hungarian coach, Bela Guttman, once likened the job of football manager to that of a lion tamer.  “He dominates the animals, in whose cage he performs his show, as long as he deals with them with self-confidence and without fear.  But the moment he becomes unsure of his hypnotic energy, and the first hint of fear appears in his eyes, he is lost.”

Having taken ketchup and mayonnaise off the dining table at the Sunderland training ground, Paolo Di Canio did not reckon on the lions going straight to the CEO to bare their teeth.  All of a sudden, Di Canio found himself on the menu.

When they write the book on Di Canio’s 13-game Sunderland career, the rather short tome might well be entitled “Be careful what you wish for”.  I’m not sure if Sunderland gave any thought to what they were getting when they appointed the colourful Roman. 

Building on Guttman’s theme, I would argue that successful managers broadly come in two styles.  Either you want a lion tamer (Mourinho) or you want a surgeon (Wenger).  Now Di Canio might not be most people’s first choice for operating on a loved one’s vital organs, but you’d give him good odds on bringing lions under control.  The mad bugger would probably bite them back.

Sunderland must have known they were hiring an emotional chap.  This was a man who once sat down on the pitch and demanded for himself to be substituted after a succession of (legitimate) penalties appeals were turned down.  A guy who spontaneously decided to join in a half marathon when he saw one go by.

Di Canio did a great job at Swindon and he initially looked like he might do the trick at Sunderland too when he arrived, demolishing Newcastle 3-0 in his second game.  Few could stifle a smile when, adorned in an expensive Italian suit, he went sliding on his knees to celebrate the second goal that sunk the Toon.  There’s been little to celebrate since.  Did the Sunderland board think all this emotion would simply disappear during the bad times?

Watching Di Canio address the away fans last Saturday reminded me that managers used to enter into a much greater level of dialogue with fans. When Andrew (nee Andy) Cole was sold to rivals Manchester United for a British record £7million, Kevin Keegan personally addressed an angry mob of Newcastle fans remonstrating outside the stadium.  That takes a lot of courage.  At a fan’s forum in 1996, Harry Redknapp stared down a West Ham fan who opined that an 18 year old Frank Lampard (who was also present in the room at the time) wasn’t good enough to wear their claret and blue.  ‘Arry told the fan in no uncertain terms that young Frank will go “right to the very top”.  A bold statement to make of a chubby teenager still on the fringe of the first team.  It didn’t look quite so foolhardy last month in Ukraine when Lampard picked up his one hundredth England cap.

Now standing 20 yards away from your fans while muttering to yourself and pointing at your chin might sound like an odd way to communicate.  But Di Canio saw the need to have some sort of dialogue with the supporters who, in his mind, he was employed of serve.  They were angry and they deserved their moment to seek direct redress from the man in charge.  In his words, a chance for him to “absorb their insults”.

It didn’t matter to him that it looked strange.  It mattered that he believed it to be the decent thing to do.  I think the approach is an admirable one.  You want to flagellate me?  Fine, here’s a stick.

People have a tendency to put too much emphasis on things being weird. They’re frightened by oddities.  In the ensuing years, talking heads will remember Di Canio’s gesture as another golden moment of Football Madness.  Third rate comedians with regional accents will pretend to remember the incident and describe it with lurid glee.  People laughed at Phil Brown for conducting a half-time team talk on the pitch, forgetting that it had the desired effect.  Having shipped four goals in the first period against Manchester City, Hull kept the score even for the remainder of the game.  The facts didn’t stop Brown from being painted as the jester.  They won’t save Di Canio either.

Di Canio’s thought processes are not of the rational and calculated variety. He acts on feel and emotion.  To my mind, it is incredibly obvious that he was a creative player rather than a defensive player purely by the way he acts off the pitch.  His job as a footballer was to think when there was no time to think.  Just to use creativity and instinct to survive.  And he did it brilliantly.  

He did the same after the whistle last Saturday at the Hawthorns and was vilified.  Whether or not you think this type of behaviour is appropriate as a manager, rather than a player, is a perfectly reasonable question.  But if there is a single member of Sunderland’s board who did not expect something like this to happen with Paolo Di Canio in charge, then they ought to be fired for gross incompetence.  This was exactly the sort of thing that Di Canio does.  He knew the fans were angry and he saw two choices.  He saw sloping off to the changing room and ignoring them.  The cowardly option. Or he could address their anger.  The gutsy and, in his mind, correct option.  

Famously, Di Canio has a sense of fair play.  In the current instance, he was allowing the Sunderland faithful their right to fair comment.  Unfortunately, Ellis Short just thought “Christ, what’s Paolo doing now?” and promptly fired him.

Five games is not enough time for any manager.  Di Canio had achieved his initial brief which was to keep Sunderland in the premier league.  Having accomplished this, he ought to have then been given the time to mould the squad as he saw fit.  Not suffer the indignity of a sacking even before the dying embers of the summer sunshine have been snuffed out. 

One point from a possible fifteen doesn’t make for nice reading.  Although I suspect even the most optimistic Sunderland fan would struggle not to have foreseen at least one dismal patch this season.  After all, they sold their only two good players during the summer; one of them going on to score for West Brom in the fateful game that was to be Di Canio’s last.  An irony that ought not to be lost on the Sunderland board.

Di Canio or not, Sunderland are going to get gored this season.  He was right about the players – they’re not good enough.  Getting rid of the conductor won’t make the orchestra play any better.  Manish Bhasin is probably already reading up on the Black Cats for next year’s Championship highlights.  Sunderland are going down.  

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https://i0.wp.com/i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2011/05/20/article-1388957-0012022000000258-420_306x423.jpghttps://i0.wp.com/www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/multimedia/archive/00400/125075412__400410c.jpghttps://i0.wp.com/s3.thejournal.ie/media/2013/04/soccer-npower-football-league-one-swindon-town-v-coventry-city-county-ground-630x332.jpg

Sunderland executives were baffled as to where Di Canio’s spontaneous outbursts were coming from.

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Ashley Cole and Other Guilty Pleasures…

20 Sep

Everyone has a guilty pleasure in life.  Whether it be a crafty cigarette last thing at night, taking the wife for a spot of swinging or even, God forbid, watching rugby union once the curtains are drawn.  We all have a little something we seek elicit enjoyment from.  My guilty pleasure is Ashley Cole.

I’ll happily admit to regularly being out of touch with the sentiment of the nation.  The opprobrium that the general public reserves for Ashley Cole I do understand, though.  He’s not exactly a tour de force in public relations.  But watching children less than half his age shout expletives at him every single time he took a throw-in at Old Trafford the other week reminded me that I don’t actually mind the fella all that much.  I really don’t.

Discussion on England’s number one “No. 3” tends to surmise two things.  One, that he’s quite a dislikeable character; and two, that he’s a fantastic fullback.  I’m going to make the case that, one, he’s not really that dislikeable (at least, not within the somewhat forgiving context of being a professional footballer); and, two, that he is a fantastic footballer but not for the reasons most seem to think.  I suspect Cole’s number will soon be up for the national side[1], so now seems as good a time as any to take a look back over his career.  As a left-back myself, I’m going into bat for a fellow brother-in-arms.

Girls

Let’s get the non-footballing side out of the way first.  Cole’s epitaph is not going to refer to as him as an award-winning husband.  He’s a naughty lad and we ought not to try to defend him on this.  While wedded to the lovely Cheryl, Ashley was caught dancing the Underpants Charleston with more than one woman who was not his bride.  Of course, he’s not exactly the first professional footballer to have been caught with his trousers in absentia.  If Cole is to be judged by his peers, let’s at least be aware of whom his peers are…

The game is littered with sinful romancers but fans rarely seem to pass judgement[2].  Horny quadragenarian, Ryan Giggs, is the only thing that stands between Ed Miliband and the title of “Britain’s Worst Brother”.  Yet the randy Welsh swordsman is nothing short of revered throughout the footballing community.  John Terry seems to experience something of a Pavlovian reaction whenever he sees a team-mate’s girlfriend and Wayne Rooney will grab anyone so long as they’re at least ten years older than Giggsy.  Even Sir Becks once had a moment of weakness with the nanny.  The point being, if we are to pluck our heroes from the narrow spring that is faithful professional footballers, we’re going to have some rather slim pickings from which to choose. 

Money

Then there’s the suggestion that Cole’s greedy; premised on the now infamous quote from his autobiography that he “nearly swerved off the road” when he was informed of Arsenal’s offer of £55k/week during salary negotiations.  It is a testimony to Ashley’s gripping prose and well-crafted writing style that this quote has become so well known, since the book itself sold a meagre 4,000 copies. 

While we can all reach pragmatic conclusions on the merits of a millionaire publicly complaining about his weekly wages, Cole was at least expressing an honestly held view that is unlikely to be unique (if, indeed, a view more often kept private).  So at what point does it become vulgar to complain about money? 

If you earn the average UK wage that already puts you in the top 1% of earners worldwide.  I suspect this wouldn’t stop many of us from aiming a few metaphorical “teacups” at a few figurative “walls” if our paymasters offered us a salary that was barely half of our expected earnings based on the industry standard.  Certainly, the staff writers at Too Good would have my head on a stick if they weren’t rewarded handsomely for their journalistic prowess.  Prince or pauper, people want to feel fairly compensated.

Football

So let’s turn to the important bit.  Cole’s playing abilities.  We can certainly all agree on one thing.  He is an excellent (a consistently excellent) footballer.  One of England’s finest.  I’m not sure it’s always fully appreciated why, though. 

He’s not a complete left-back.  And he certainly isn’t a wing-back.  In fact, he isn’t really fantastic at going forward at all.  He isn’t a goal threat[3] or, for that matter, a man with a great many assists to his name.  Despite being a striker in his youth, Cole just doesn’t have the attacking instinct that for years some people seemed to suggest he had (probably explaining why he never did get that “confirmed kill” when taking aim at the summer intern).  His forays in opposition territory certainly aren’t up there with some of the great attacking full-backs of the past 20 years (Cafu, Lahm, Alves, Carlos, Maicon).  The role of full-back has been redefined in recent years but Cole’s actually quite traditional in his employment.

Where he does deserve enormous credit is his defensive capabilities.  Cole’s level of anticipation in dispossessing strikers is unsurpassed.  He’s world class at double-bluffing a winger into taking a particular path and then pouncing on the ball.  Again and again he will fake interceptions only to retreat to where he has tricked the attacking player into going.  The preconceptions in his movement are almost as disingenuous as some of the compliments people hand out on Facebook photos.

He’s also a great last gasp defender.  Cole might not have notched many times in his career (bedposts notwithstanding) but you can count a great many goal-line clearances to his name.  He has a parkland animal’s ability to sense danger and scurry things into a safe position.  Balanced and never caught on the wrong foot, Cole is able to move with great haste but never in great panic.  If an expensive champagne flute was carelessly glanced off a table edge, the smart money would be on Cole being the one to catch it.

He’s blessed with great health too.  Only once managing less than 30 games in a domestic season over a fourteen year career.  Last year, aged 32, Cole played his most ever – a colossal 51 games in 6 different domestic and European competitions.  It is a testament to Cole’s longevity that he has clocked up over 600 professional games and is still going strong.  He’s a bit like Bruce Forsyth.  Timeless.  Not to everyone’s taste.  But you know what you’re getting and you can’t fault his commitment.

—–

Cole may never quite have been the best left-back in the world.  But England have had one of the best defenders going for the past decade.  We should celebrate that.  His views on the Football Association don’t make for polite reading, but he’s there at every training camp and every England game putting in consistently fine performances.  Unlike some of the fool’s gold in the golden generation, Cole always plays well on the big occasions.  He’s the one defender who consistently frustrated the greatest player these shores have ever seen, Cristiano Ronaldo.

So well done, Ashley.  Over a hundred England caps.  A European Cup.  A UEFA Cup.  One wounded intern.  Three league titles and more FA Cups than you can shake a stick at.  Here’s to a career that’s been rosier than your ex-wife’s posterior.  The Full-Back’s Union salutes you!

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Ashley was careful to caveat his marital vows.

[1] And I don’t think it will be Leighton Baines taking his place, either.  Luke Shaw looks to be the real deal.  Brazil 2014 will probably come a touch too early for Shaw (and Roy’s boys are doing their level best to balls-up qualification in any case…), but Too Good can easily see him as starting left-back for the European Championship qualifiers thereafter.  

[2] My favourite story of footballing adultery comes from north of the border in a wee town called Glasgow.  Andy Goram’s wife found out about his womanising when she discovered a lady’s footprints on the inside ceiling of the family car.  Such hatchback horseplay certainly didn’t deter Rangers fans from voting Goram as Rangers’ greatest ever goalkeeper, though. 

[3] Cole’s never scored a goal for England in his mightily impressive 100+ cap haul.  In fact, he’s only ever scored 17 career goals.  Barely a goal a season.

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Big Sam’s Big Sword of Damocles

13 Sep

When a 3 year old learns to use the grown-ups’ toilet for the first time, everyone cheers the clever little fella.  Similarly, the first time people saw the 6ft 4 inch Andy Carroll bring a size 5 football under control, misguided souls marvelled at a man of that size performing basic ball skills. “If he can do that, it’s well worth sticking him in the national team and firing forty-yard balls up to him”, a nation dreamed.  However, like the pre-schooler’s lavatorial prowess, the goodwill was soon exhausted.

Centuries from now, Andy Carroll will form part of a cautionary tale.  A parable warning of mankind’s boundless scope for lunacy.  Children will hoot like owls as their parents laughingly recount the story of how Liverpool fluffed £35m on a malcoordinated centaur.  The most expensive British footballer ever (at the time) managing just six league goals in two disastrous years at Anfield.

Watching Andy Carroll is like watching a 16 year old boy trying to unhook a brassiere. You’re willing him on despite (or possibly because of…) how cumbersome he is. He might get the hang of it one day but nobody is prepared to bet on it.  Kenny Dalglish exposed a horribly dated view of how football should be played when he purchased this two metre man-child and an orthodox winger (Stewart Downing) instructed to send high balls in to him.

It would be cold-hearted man who didn’t feel at least of pang of sympathy for Carroll at Liverpool as he vainly attempted to justify his astonishing price-tag.  He looked like a summer intern who had mistakenly wandered into an executive committee and been made to answer complex questions on the company’s debt to equity ratio.  But sympathy turned to sheer bemusement when Sam Allardyce announced he was prepared to waft £15m up the swanny to have Carroll gallop aimlessly around Upton Park instead.  Carroll has now broken the transfer record at two separate premier league clubs.  It just seems cruel for him to be fettered with another huge fee.  At what point does the poor sod have to beg to be let go for a nominal sum purely for the sake of his sanity?

It’s not even as though he is a robust athlete, in the Dirk Kuyt mold.  One that will give you 38 games a season of solid service.  He seems to spend most of the year racking up further fees on the treatment table.  If Carroll was a horse, his owner would have had more than a few furtive glances in the direction of the shotgun cabinet by now.

There is, though, in football, this curious inability to lower your previous transfer fee by any great amount.  Even when a player proves beyond all thresholds of doubt that they’re not worth such riches.  One might call it the Heskey Paradox.

Try as he might, big Emile couldn’t get his transfer value below £5m for love nor money.  No matter how many barn doors he circumnavigated from close quarters, clubs just couldn’t wait to shell out on the misfiring Midlander.  It was only aged 31 and with no sell-on value that Aston Villa, Heskey’s fifth and final premier league club, finally settled for paying less than the psychologically important £5m barrier.  Heskey must have wept with relief when the deal went through.

It’s almost as though a previous high transfer fee, even without it ever being justified, still carries some weight of its own.  “But he must be worth £15m, he was once worth £35m!” chairmen seemingly cry.  The dead hand of the former transfer fee lingers. It would be fascinating to see what kind of fee Fernando Torres would command on the open market now, three years after his very considerable ability seems to have deserted him.  You simply can’t sell a £50m signing for £10m.

In the meantime, Allardyce has turned to a free agent, Mladen Petric, as an option up front in Carroll’s absence (he’s injured again).  Petric didn’t cost the Hammers a penny, despite being a Croatian international with 45 caps and 13 goals to his name.  You wouldn’t bet against him scoring more goals for West Ham than Carroll, though, would you?

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Try as he might, Dalglish was unable to top spending £35m on Andy Carroll as his biggest misjudgment.

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Transfer Window

10 Sep

The transfer window has once again, in the excitable vernacular of Sky Sports News presenters, “slammed shut”.  The sticking plaster of new signings is no longer available.  Managers will now have to rely on old fashioned constructs such as tactics, training and motivation.  Credit cards back in wallets, gents.  Cones out on the practice pitches.

But which teams had a good window?  And who got a bit spend happy in the hot weather?  Too Good give its two cents on the best and the worst of the business conducted in football’s summer marketplace…

It is one of the game’s great curiosities that everything gets done at the very last moment in the transfer window.  Whether this is due to the relative infancy of a restrictive window[1], brinksmanship, teams getting caught in a chain of purchases, or a combination of all three, you would struggle to find another setting where hundreds of millions of pounds are spent in a less orderly fashion. Investments that will make or break a season (careers, even) are thrashed out via the charmingly obsolete method of facsimile while the available hours and minutes ebb away.  Too Good knows little about the fast food industry, but we would be more than a touch surprised if, minutes before shop opening hours, McDonalds’ franchisees were still frantically scrambling around for beef patties.

It was therefore pleasing to see Manchester City do their business early and effectively this summer.  Whether you agree with their signings or not[2], City’s ability to get the job done long before the September 2nd bun-fight was most gratifying.  Less than a decade ago, “Manchester City” and “businesslike” would show up together about as often as the phrases “John Prescott” and “twerking”.  More and more, though, the club seem to approach things in a timely and professional manner.

By contrast, it is a testimony to Scottish thrift that the first new manager of Manchester United in over quarter of a century couldn’t seem to liberate his wallet from his trouser pocket until the very last day of the window.  Even then, like many of his compatriots, Moyes must have been at the malt when he finally managed to prise open the purse strings.

Rare are the days I look to Robbie Fowler for thoughts and inspiration on the beautiful game.  However, like a broken watch, the former Scouse marksman was bang on for a brief moment when he said that “Marouane Fellaini is a good player … just not a Manchester United player”.  I couldn’t agree more.  There’s something unseemly about the league’s showpiece team signing a player who is best known for “causing a lot of problems” for opposition teams and generally being “a bit of a handful”.  These are not the deft words of precision football that are synonymous with Manchester United.  These are mid-table words. Words that aren’t necessarily bad in the right context, but Moyes needs to recognise that a change in mindset is in order.  Managing Manchester United is only the same as managing Everton in the way that an evening under the bed sheets with Jessica Alba is the same as one with Kerry Katona.  On one level, they’re identical.  But, on a fundamentally more important level, they really aren’t.  You’re shopping in Waitrose now Moyesy; buy the best eggs available.

Arsenal have put all of their eggs in one rather delightful, if a touch pricey, basket.  Mesuit Ozil will provide lashings of guile and vision in the middle of the Emirates’ park.  It must have killed Arsene Wenger to sanction a cheque of that size.  But Ozil is no Francis Jeffers or Antonio Reyes.  This is a German international at the peak of his career.   Wenger is a border-town boy, only falling within the French boundaries by the width of one of his spindly fingers. With Ozil joining fellow international team-mates Per Mertesacker and Lukas Podolski, all of a sudden Arsene’s beloved Gunners have a distinctly Teutonic feel.  And Germans have a habit of winning football matches.

Too Good would like to have heard another bleep of Wenger’s barcode-scanner that ensured Olivier Giroud stayed in a tracksuit and on the bench for the forthcoming season.  Maybe Yaya Sanogo will do this.  Sanogo is a raw 20 year old without a full season to his name.  But with an eye-opening 10 goals in 13 league appearances for Auxerre last year, Too Good is pinning its rosette for “Potential Find of the Summer” on the lanky French youngster.  This year might still be a little early for Sanogo.  However, if there is one place you would want to learn your craft when you’re a young French footballer with buckets of potential, it’s ensconced in the warm bosom of Monsieur Wenger.  All in all, good job, Arsene. 

Rather than buying a youthful striker with bags of potential, Chelsea instead chose to get rid of one.  Romelu Lukaku was farmed out to Everton for 12 months and four-time African Player of the Year, Samuel Eto’o (now nearly 33), has been asked to do Lukaku’s job instead.  Chelsea’s quota of out-and-out centre forwards therefore remains at a paltry three (Eto’o, Torres and Ba).  One old, one crocked and one that was never good enough in the first place.  If this doesn’t concern Jose Mourinho, it really should do.  Eto’o is the only member of the triumvirate that can be relied upon.  Even then, whether Eto’o’s undoubted ability is still there despite his advancing years is a question to be answered.

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I’ve been on enough dates in my time to recognise the look of someone who doesn’t really want to be somewhere.  All the best restaurants and sharpest chat-up lines aren’t enough when the object of your affection just doesn’t have their heart in it.  Tottenham Hotspur saw Gareth Bale staring into the middle distance and rightly got down to the business of demanding the biggest fee possible to compensate for their jilting.  £86 million is a phenomenal figure and Daniel Levy is to be praised to the hilt for squeezing Real Madrid like a sponge. Madrid’s adolescent attitude to money is exactly how I would behave if I was implicitly backed by the Spanish government and, as a result, Spurs have been granted a fantastic war-chest.  Sensibly, they took a calculated gamble on the sale of Bale and brought in a wealth of talented reinforcements based on the expected proceeds.  It is now up to Andre Villa-Boas to mold his new team and heave them that all-important one step further up the premier league ladder.

A wise footballing prophet decreed in May of this year that James McCarthy and Aroune Kone would be shrewd buys, available at affordable prices.  Someone agreed and, as chance would have it, that someone was the very person who managed the pair of them last season.  Everton now have more than a hint of Wigan about them.  Let’s hope it was the good bit. 

The Toffees may benefit from something of a managerial portmanteau this season.  On the one hand, they should still have the defensive resilience drilled into them from years of management under David Moyes.  Now coupled to this, the incoming Roberto Martinez will seek to overlay the attractive passing style that has become his trademark.  It will be interesting to see if these two schools of football connect or collide.

A lot of anticipation this summer surrounded the premier league’s increased purchasing power (due to the improved TV deal) and how it would manifest itself.  This was to be the transfer window where the premier league flexed its muscle and gave the other European Leagues a good look at their big shiny cheque books.  In the end, the dominance at the cashier’s desk was most keenly observed not at the high table of the premier league elite, but at the clubs at the lower end of the division.  Southampton, Sunderland and Norwich all signed key players from larger teams abroad.  Pablo Osvaldo (Italian international from Roma, £14.6million), Emanuele Giaccherini (Italian international from Juventus, £6.5m) and Ricky van Wolfswinkel (Holland international from Sporting Lisbon, £10 million) each gladly dug out their passports and left bigger fish for the lure of the pound and the premiership.  A seismic shift, if perhaps not the glamorous one some fans expected to see.  Great news, though, for England when the inaugural Platini Plate gets off the ground.

It remains to be a farce that the transfer window does not close until after the season starts.  Clubs cannot be expected to begin a campaign while an all-out fire sale is being conducted on their most valuable assets.  The window should shut before the first ball is kicked and avoid this unseemly game of musical chairs three games into the season.  In any case, shut it now most certainly has.  Time to take the plastic off the new purchases and see if they were worth the outlay. Game on.

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Clubs ready themselves for the final twenty four hours of the transfer window.

[1] FIFA made the transfer window compulsory in European leagues at the start of the 2002–03 season (as a result of negotiations with the European Commission).

[2] My own view is that Navas will prove to be a great signing and the other big three (Jovetic, Negredo and Fernandinho) will prove to be good-ish signings.

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Hypotheticals

30 Aug

In 2006, OJ Simpson, tried to release a book called, I kid you not, “If I Did It, Here’s How It Happened”.  Said tome puts forth a hypothetical description of the murders of Nicole Brown Simpson (his ex-wife) and Ronald Goldman, both of whom Simpson himself was tried for the first degree murder of and, ultimately, acquitted.  OJ was at pains to point out (as you would be) that he didn’t actually do it.  But if he did do it, the book explains how it would have happened.  As money-spinning tactics go, it seems a bit high risk to me. Then again, I was the one who didn’t think the Bounty ice-cream would ever be a success; so I can’t always be relied on for sound commercial judgment.

Nevertheless, the premise of the aforementioned yarn is an intriguing on.  Essentially, denying the possibility of a proposition, but then exploring it anyway.  Anyone who read my season’s opening article will know that, sadly, I don’t think Manchester City will win the league this year.  However, in the spirit of the former gridiron star turned wife-slasher novellist, I present to you “Manchester City Won’t Win The League This Year, But if They Do Win it, Here’s How It Will Happen”. 

As with all doomed projects, it involves a 3-point plan:

1.  Learn to stretch teams

A wives’ tale exists in commentary boxes that opposition teams can be tired out by playing possession football.  At the top level, this simply isn’t true.  It’s a misnomer to suggest that premiership teams can be physically worn to the ground.  At peak fitness, a professional footballer is conditioned to be able to last for 180 minutes of high intensity football.  Even allowing for marginal differences in the greater work expended defending rather than attacking[1], it just isn’t enough to have a tangible impact on the outcome of matches.

Teams can be stretched, though.  Pulled out of position.  Tired or not, if you’re defending not in the right place at the right time, even the biggest pair of lungs won’t save you.  If there is one thing City could learn from peering over the fence at their Carrington training ground, it’s how well Manchester United stretch teams.  Too many times last season, City were been unable to break down massed ranks of opposition defence.  The Bank Holiday clash against Cardiff showed that this was a lesson still to be learned.  Pellegrini’s men must work out how to find their way through a stodgy final third.

The reason why Manchester United never seem to have this problem is their fulsome embrace of wing play.  From Andrei Kanchelskis to Antonio Valencia, whenever the Old Trafford middle has looked congested, United take to the pitch edges.  Such was Alex Ferguson’s pious devotion to flanksmen he even tried to play Gabriel Obertan for a while.  City would do well to learn that if you can’t go through a team, you ought to try to go round them.

To this end, the signing of Jesus Navas is a positive step.  The benching of him on the hour-mark at the Cardiff City Stadium, however, was not.  This was exactly the sort of fixture where City struggle.  Away from home against a well-organised team fully prepared to play with a 10-man iron curtain between the ball and their goalmouth.  In any case, one winger isn’t enough.  Anyone who has tried to stretch a jumper knows you need to use both hands.  Stevan Jovetic might provide said width on the other side when Pellegrini decides to throw him into the fray.  Otherwise, selotaping Samir Nasri to a touchline might have to do.  But do it we must.

2.  Stop playing Edin Dzeko from the start

The Sky Sports narrative is clearly one of redemption for Edin Dzeko this year[2].  Underused and destroyed of confidence by mean old Mr Mancini.  Now blossoming in the soft hands and warm eyes of Manuel Pellegrini.  This is all very well if wasn’t nonsense. 

A comparison of Edin Dzeko against the dearly departed Carlos Tevez is as illuminating as it is damning.  Whenever Tevez and Aguerro were given the nod last year, City were unstoppable.  Whenever Dzeko was paired with either from the start, my full replica kit immediately started to feel clammy.  Dzeko’s not a bad option off the bench, for when all bar the kitchen sink needs to be sent goalwards.  But he’s not the starting centre-forward of a title-winning team.

It’s a bit sad at times watching Dzeko try to keep up with the speed of thought and delicacy of touch of messrs Aguerro, Silva, Tevez and now Navas.  It’s like an overly-eager instructor at Sea World is trying to involve a killer whale in one of the dolphin displays.  He’s willing enough but he simply can’t fit through the hoops.  One hopes that Alvaro Negredo can follow the routine a little better in his stead.  Otherwise, too many critical moves will break down around the big Bosnian this season. 

3.  Sign a bloody centre-back!

A bit of an obvious one, but nevertheless…

Going into a premier league season with three centre-backs was a folly that really oughtn’t to have happened.  Now we’re down to one fully fit one.  Given the not inconsiderable funds floating around Eastlands these days, this should be the easiest part of the puzzle to solve.  It needs to be solved quickly, though.  Ferran Soriano and Txiki Begiristain had better be wearing out their Nokia 3310s in order to rectify the problem before September 2nd.

All rise…

It’s too late for us to pass judgment on OJ Simpson’s innocence (and, in any case, Too Good’s entire legal budget for this year has been earmarked for a forthcoming Ashley Cole article…), but there’s still time for Manchester City to change their own guilty verdict.  A smidgeon of the transfer window remains and, better yet, the training ground stays open all season.  Use both wisely and, who knows, this strictly hypothetical tale might just become the truth after all…

Available for a reasonable sum.

[1] And even this is a proposition open to contention.  Strikers actually do more running than defenders in football games.  The average breakdown of distance covered for premiership footballers is as follows:

Striker:                 10 – 12km (6.2 – 7.5 miles)

Midfield:              11 – 14km (6.8 – 8.7 miles)

Defender:             6 – 11km (3.7 – 6.8 miles)

So it’s at least arguable that, in fact, attacking is more tiring than defending.

[2] Evidenced by him bizarrely receiving Sky Man of the Match against Newcastle.  In a game full of star turns (Navas and Aguerro, in particular, were excellent), Dzeko was given the award for a performance that could best be described as “busy but ineffectual”. 

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“Any goal’s a goal”

23 Aug

Do good things come to those who wait?  Or should I strike while the iron is hot?  Should I be wary of Greeks bearing gifts?  Or would it be foolish to look a gift horse in the mouth?  It’s funny how these titbits of advice so often come in polarising pairs.  Hindsight can be a virtue, but ex post rationale is unhelpful at best and actively misleading at its worst.  If I attempt a delicate chip shot and end up duffing it into the keeper’s arms, history may remember it as more prudent if I had just whacked it low and hard.  But this presumes my execution would have been any better with a low blast.  Believe you me, there is every chance I’d have shanked it wide.

I mention this because there seems to be an increasing trend in analyses that some goals are more important than others.  Specifically, the goals that prove decisive to the result.  These are the goals we should value above all others, prevailing wisdom suggests.  These are the golden nuggets of truth in an otherwise opaque world.  

The case in point is Gareth Bale.  In the 21 league games that Spurs won last season, Bale scored in 14 of them (nine of them proving to be the winner). Gareth Bale’s goals win football games.  Gareth Bale’s goals must be important, then.

This is all very well.  But did that make Bale’s goals any harder to score?  Does anyone know at the time which goal in a game will be the most important?  When Borussia Dortmund went 4-1 up against Real Madrid in last season’s Champions League semi-final, which was the most important goal?  The first?  Or the ultimately decisive fourth?  History would have little remembered Gerrard’s “consolation” goal in the 2005 Champions League final were it not for the two more that followed it up.  Now it forms part of one of the greatest comebacks ever.  

Any goal’s a goal.  Making sense of their importance after the event forgets the context that they were all scored in the instance of being.  Nobody knew ahead of time which egg would prove to be golden.  For every team that ran away with a game 5 or 6 nil, there were many other games where a team went 3 goals down then battled back. 

Orator and former goal-hanger of considerable esteem, Gary Winston Lineker, noted that, while the glory often lay with strikers, it could also be most dispiriting position on the pitch.  Even a great striker, averaging a goal every other game, essentially spends 179 minutes not doing what he is supposed to be on the pitch to achieve.  And anyone who’s ever tried to chat up a staunchly Christian girl in a bar will know exactly what three solid hours of failure looks like.

There’s a reason why people go utterly loopy after scoring a goal[1].  It’s because they’re all bloody hard to score.  They’re all, in the words of a famous shampoo peddler, worth it.  Don’t let anybody tell you otherwise.

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That goal you scored in 5-aside last night? Jennifer’s very proud of you.

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