Manchester Derby, Poor Wittle Wigan and Martinez the Man

Well, I said I would try to post every Monday, Wednesday and Friday but the truth is I didn’t even try to post on Monday at all. I meant to, I really did but I had a double hangover on Sunday evening so I didn’t. I’m sure you all know the double hangover? Were you wake up on Sunday morning with the razor talon sporting demons behind your eyes and you think “Ok, I’ll go get something to eat, if I fill my stomach then this pain will go away.” Then you have a pint with your food, just to take the edge off, but then somebody wants to stay for another and another until you realise that you’re drunk again and you might as well carry on. Then you run out of money and go home about 8pm and you have to deal with sobering up into the middle of a double hangover with the prospect of work in 8 hours…well maybe you don’t know the double hangover, good for you if that’s the case. Anyway, then my car broke and so I missed a Monday, if anybody noticed then I’m deeply sorry. If you think that’s bad you should see how I am at my other job, my customers are both deeply unhappy and convinced that our answering service refuses to pass on messages. In fact we don’t have an answering service, I am just good at doing an impression of that slightly artificial sounding woman who always runs those things (I am a 26 year old man in case you were wondering).

 Anyway...I was going to write about the Manchester derby but you all saw what happened there right? I know it is something that is run into the ground by commentators and managers alike but I really think that momentum, or ‘flow’ is hugely important in football at the highest level. It is important that players (unless you are playing for say, Stoke or Allardyces’ West Ham when the opposite is true) are able to find a rhythm, if all 11 outfield players are dancing to the same beat then it is easier for them to time their runs, find their teammates and anticipate what they are going to do next. That’s why finals are so disappointing, the tension is simply too great for players to relax into the rhythm of the game and I think that we saw a bit of that in the Manchester derby on Monday. Still, as a spectacle it was full of tension and excitement even if the quality wasn’t so great. I was one of those who preferred United to win the title on the basis that the devil you know is better than the devil with hundreds of billions of pounds at his disposal and an ugly little mercenary cunt who is even richer and even cuntier than all the rest of the mercenary cunts up front. After hearing the City fans singing at the final whistle though I’ve changed my mind on that, they can have one, but just one then if we don’t get back to real football, well I don’t know what I’ll do...probably nothing to be honest...yeah, nothing, but I’ll be really angry.

What I really want to talk about though is Wigan, plucky little Wigan, itty bitty Wiggy Wiganny. Sorry about that, first instinct here in the bubble is to patronise any little team that has a measure of success just as you would a child who has managed to shit into a tiny plastic bucket, “Well done you little guy, look at that! In the pot! You aren’t covered in shit anymore, are you? Congratulations,” then you shake the young man’s hand I think, I don’t have kids but that’s what you have to do in football anyway.

I touched on Wigan in my last post, talking about how they are in form but it won’t matter because next season they’ll sell all of their good players. What I certainly didn’t expect was for them to pull out the kind of performance they did at the weekend. 4-0 is always going to be a big result, but against a form team like Newcastle, who were sublime against Stoke in their last fixture, it is huge. The thing is they fully deserved the victory, playing as a team and scoring 4 excellent goals. They deserved their victory against United and victories against Arsenal, Liverpool and Stoke too. They also deserved victory against Chelsea but unfortunately the referee in that game gave them a swift kick in the balls, waited for them to clamber back to their feet and then booted them in the balls again, before spitting on them…and laughing…then apologising.   

So what’s happening here? How can a team be as relentlessly dire as they have been all season and then pull out the performances they have just managed? Or to continue my metaphor from earlier, how can the little boy who has been toddling around with shit in his pants now smell like roses?

This isn’t a new situation for Wigan, remember last season’s miraculous escape? Hugo Rodallega does…

Maybe that’s it? Rodallega remembers but has he been around this season to remind his team mates (in a football way)? No, he hasn’t, because he’s been injured. I’m just now realising that the tone of this paragraph is perhaps suggesting that that is somehow his fault so I’m going to plough on with that completely unjustified sentiment…the lazy bastard has been sat on the sidelines stroking his poor sore wittle shins, or whatever injury he has (a proper journalist would have been bothered to find out, but then a proper journalist wouldn’t have missed a post through drunkenness...well, maybe a few years back he would).

Of course being injured is not really Rodallega’s fault and every team has to cope with injuries but the team that pulled Wigan out of the brown sticky stuff last year was built around him and N’Zogbia. The moody Frenchman with the lethal left has been shipped off to the misery that is Mcleish’s Villa this season, just like the season before it was Bramble to Sunderland (I know, but he had a renaissance at Wigan), before that Valencia and Cattermole, before that Palacios and Heskey (yeah, yeah, renaissance ok?), before that Leighton Baines and on and on...Martinez’s problem is that once his team’s start getting into a rhythm the club pushes the reset button by selling off one or two of the key players. Just take a look at this team, put together using Wigan old boys who are still playing.

                                                                       Carroll

Melchiot               Scharner                  Bramble                Baines

                                           Cattermole              Palacios

Valencia                                                                             N’Zogbia

                                                                    

      Heskey                      Roberts

Firstly, the keeper- Al Habsi is the best goalkeeper that Wigan have had since Kirkland was abducted by little green men (or injured, I forget) and is head and shoulders above Carroll. Other than that, maybe Moses for N’Zogbia on this season’s form but pretty much a team I would take over the current one any day.

Wigan chairman Dave Whelan always makes a point of saying what a great manager Martinez is and though previously I would have accepted that he was a competent manager with a penchant for attractive football, I always thought this was a bit of bluster. Whelan, as anyone who regularly listens to sports radio will attest, has a tendency to seek out a microphone and rhapsodise with some regularity so it is possible his assessment was based on his uncontrollable urge to say a lot of things as often as possible. After this most recent revival I’m starting to think that the old geezer might be right though. Wigan are playing the best football I’ve ever seen in a relegation scrap, it’s like watching Bruce Lee jumping into a punch up between 2 pissheads outside a kebab shop. You simply can’t produce victories against Man Utd., Arsenal and Newcastle (all with something to play for) by accident.

So where does that leave Martinez? Wigan simply do not have the fan base to maintain a Premier League team, the stadium is often half empty. Whelan has done a good job in running a business model whereby the club is sustained on selling on players at a profit and this is the way that a club with their income has stayed up as long as they have. Martinez, despite his honourable refusal of the Villa job in the summer, on recent evidence does deserve better and if the likes of Liverpool, Tottenham, or Chelsea come calling he may not be able to resist. I think a case could be made for him being a better option than all of the installed managers for those clubs. It would be sad to see him leave the plucky underdogs for whom he has shown such loyalty but the day is coming and the most likely scenario is that they will plummet unless they can find another manager able to make do with such a transitional team.

I’m off to lie down, I’ll post again on Friday unless I find my way into a heroin addiction or something.

Mahalo

Enough already on John Terry and the ticking time bomb of handshake DOOM

  Hi Reader, you mythical beast, I have a confession to make.  I have a problem and it’s starting to affect my day to day life. It’s John Terry, and the problem is that he exists…no, wait, no, that’s not what I meant to say. What I meant to say is I have a problem in that every time I sit down to write I end up talking about how much I hate John  Terry, just look back at all of my posts and you will see that the square headed one appears in each. This is really beginning to affect my writing, it’s ruined my unpublished novel about a 19^th century Geordie fish wife (all of the pertinent social commentary is undermined by a square headed village idiot type who knees all the main characters in the back every time they try to say something and generally tramps around rutting with fish heads) and it totally spoiled my Grandmother’s 80^th birthday card/ Birthday. So, I hereby resolve to give the Terry bashing a rest, I can’t promise not to slag him off again any more than I can promise to stop breathing but I will promise not to mention him in every post.

That being said, I have already mentioned him in this one so here is a bit more Terry bashing….

Another weekend in the bubble, another handshake controversy, because in the bubble a handshake is akin to an implicit peace treaty and avoidance of said handshake will undoubtedly result in consternation, violence and inevitably, death. Chaos theory dictates that this handshake refusal inspired acrimony will trigger a chain of events ultimately leading to the breakdown of society followed closely by the destruction of the planet through some kind of huge explosion. This will leave us all clinging to small chunks of our former planet, drifting past each other in the vast emptiness of space with arms outstretched trying desperately to shake each others hands for the smidgeon of comfort afforded in the slightest piece of human contact. Then returning to solitude for an eternity of contemplation of how we let this happen. Or at least you could be forgiven for believing that this will be the course of events given the media storm that inevitably surrounds these things.

This week’s HANDSHAKE GATE is brought to you once again by that loveable rogue John Terry. It seems that people often have a problem with shaking Mr. Terry’s hand, perhaps he is a cheeky prankster who wears one of those handshake buzzer-ring-things as a hilarious jape…oh no, wait, I just checked my notes and it says here that he is the biggest cunt in football, must find a way to remember that, perhaps by mentioning it in every blog post I make. Well, this time the problem is to do with Anton Ferdinand and Terry’s alleged racism towards him, charges that Terry strongly denies. He is so confident in his innocence that he instructed his lawyers to delay his trial until after the European championships, thus avoiding any potential suspensions from the FA until after what will probably be his last tournament for England.

The excellent Arseblog, as well as sharing an appropriate opinion on England’s former captain is spot on about this handshake thing, arguing that the whole pointless exercise should be stopped. I also don’t think anybody should be forced to shake another person (or John Terry) by the hand. This enforced sportsmanship ritual defeats the entire object. Despite what FA chief Richard Scudamore may think being told you have to shake somebody’s hand does not make you respect them, take away the legislation and you avoid these little media storms with the happy side effect that when handshakes happen they will be sincere expressions of respect rather than an affected obligation.

Anyway, there is actually some football being played this weekend to keep you interested in the long periods between hands being shaken or left to dangle outrageously from the ends of arms. There are big games for top and bottom so in the age old Match of the Day tradition I will start with the top. Utd. Vs. City for those of you living in your own little bubble is Monday night so more on that on Monday morning. To be honest to avoid the hype for this one your personal bubble would have to be hermetically sealed.
Even if you took a laptop in with you, chances are lack of oxygen will have made you very blue and very dead by now and so you have strayed out of my target audience. I’m sorry I just don’t cater to dead people, unless you are Undead and inclined to comment, in which case welcome! Take a hunk of my thigh and make yourself comfortable….

…I digress, this is a problem I have, apologies.

Stoke vs. Arsenal Next down in the table are Arsenal with what is on paper the trickiest game in their run in. Stoke ostensibly have nothing to play for but these are 2 teams with buckets of bad blood between them, conflicting styles, Aaron Ramsey’s leg and the ensuing public fall out of Pulis and Wenger have seen to that. Unless Newcastle can beat Man City or Chelsea in the run in I think that Arsenal need 6 points from their last 3 games to secure 3^rd spot and so a point in a ground on which they have previously struggled would not be a disaster.

Tottenham vs. Blackburn- 2 similar teams in many ways, both on a down slope in terms of form but both still with much to play for (Champions league qualification and premiership survival respectively). Midweek results for Chelsea and Bolton may prove disheartening for both teams as they could impact on their targets, a real test of mettle for potential future England manager Redknapp and the much derided Kean as they try to motivate their sides. Expect a scrappy match as both teams fight to turn their seasons around.

 Wigan vs. Newcastle 2 form teams of late and 2 teams still with plenty to play for, this could be the game of the weekend. If Wigan had played like they have in recent games all season then they would be much further up the table. They have the same problem every year, Martinez finally gets the team playing according to his philosophy, they pull themselves out of the relegation zone, then the season ends, they sell all of their best players and are back to square one. Newcastle have been stupendous for the last couple of games and will be hoping for Champions league football to keep their squad together.

Chelsea vs. QPR- I guess I made my feelings on Chelsea’s recent revival clear on Wednesday (see below) but time will tell if that Barcelona game proves to be indicative of the rest of their season. Di Matteo’s men haven’t shown any attacking fluency for some time, deadly finishing yes, but QPR will not be as open as Barcelona were on Tuesday so chances may be at a premium for tired legs. Also, unless Cahill has recovered from his hamstring injury they will be forced to play drained midweek heroes Ivanovic, Bosingwa and (admittedly slightly rested, not hero) Terry in defence. The hoops are fighting for their lives and landing some punches while they are at it as good results against Arsenal, Tottenham and Swansea have shown in recent weeks. If they can find a way to keep 11 men on the pitch I expect them to cause Chelsea difficulties.

 West Brom vs. Aston Villa Villa are on the slide. Remember a few seasons back when Villa played exciting football on the counter attack? They’ve lost a lot of good players and one good manager since then. The whole season they offered nothing in terms of entertainment or even just the result grinding obduracy of Mcleish’s time at Birmingham. West Brom, again, seem to have nothing to play for but the enduring misery of a local rival could be motivation enough to beat a team bereft of ideas.

 Sunderland vs. Bolton Sunderland have been pretty awful since their survival was secured. Bolton showed something in midweek to suggest they may battle their way out of this season intact after all. An away win as boring as this paragraph I suspect.

Those are the significant games, also playing are Everton vs Fulham, Swansea vs. Wolves and Norwich vs. Liverpool, all teams mired in mid table purgatory for the rest of the season. The fact I can’t be bothered to write up anything on these games should serve as an implicit assertion that nothing interesting will happen in the dead rubber games between these teams with one eye on their summer holidays. Come on Premier League, defy my italicised clichés. Prove me wrong Premier League. PROVE ME WRONG.

Mahalo

CROSSBOWS, INSANITY AND THE PREMIER LEAGUE

Welcome to the bubble. Let me just deconstruct that sentence for you, because first time it sounded a bit like an intro to a teatime game show on channel 4 were middle aged women and students are locked in mortal combat inside a massive Perspex sphere. You know the kind, contestants answering general knowledge questions to accrue enough points for weapons, poisons and the like (or something along those lines anyway).

I say “Welcome,” by force of habit as I would do usually to any visitor. Force of habit rather than necessity as I don’t think anyone is reading this yet. I think that until I receive some concrete evidence of intelligent life out there, until somebody shines a light into my little hole I might have to acknowledge the basic absurdity of what I am doing but not dwell on it. Something akin to telling myself, aloud, “You’re talking to yourself you silly man,” before launching into a massive epilogue about Ashley Young’s diving but then still being able to function afterwards as a semi normal member of society. Let’s see how that goes, this blog could well be a document of one man’s gradual descent into insanity which will prove to be interesting only after I have been shot for trying to clamber into the Queen’s Jubilee parade car whilst stark naked and singing ‘row, row, row your boat’ backwards in Hebrew. At this rate it may only take a couple more posts before that inevitable, crazy fog fills my vision...

The second part of that opening sentence (putting aside for a second ‘to’ which is more significant than you could ever dare to dream...)  “The Football Bubble,” is the title I’ve chosen for this blog (don’t believe me? Check the top of the page...see?), it wasn’t entirely random. My contention is that the world of Football exists within a bubble, a different neighbourhood of our universe which closely resembles the world we inhabit with some crucial differences. Reason, rationality, perspective, the laws of gravity and basic human decency are among the things that are distorted within the walls of the bubble. Walls that enclose us all, players, managers, club staff, fans, the press and the officials, thrown together and against each other in a mad, colourful Hadron collider of opinion, outrage and, let’s face it, temporary insanity. I guess I will try to sift through the mess for my own perspective.

Which brings me to my point, I have a lot of problems with the way that football is covered in this country and though I don’t have too much experience to back this up I imagine that the standard is the same across the world. The standard of punditry in television coverage is atrocious and there is a fair amount of the written coverage and opinion in mainstream media which is just as bad. In January, and before that even, there was a queue of hacks and television ‘experts’ itching to tell anyone who would listen that the title was City’s and a few short days ago the same had already handed the crown back to United.

Well, look what happened, another round of fixtures and all of a sudden everything has changed around again. Now it seems that the oracles have polished off the smudge that was distorting their crystal ball and realised that that the magical force of momentum is back with City. Well, starting with Manchester United 4-4 Everton: What a game this was! Usually a score line such as this between 2 teams which are generally considered competent is indicative of the kind of defending personified by Titus Bramble in a Newcastle shirt. Not so today, I honestly can’t remember the last time that I saw so many high quality goals in one game. Starting with Jelavic’s superbly aimed header to open the scoring and followed by Rooney’s bullet header reply (all about Nani’s cross), Welbeck’s shuffle and stroke into the top corner, Welbeck and Rooney’s psychically linked interplay, another deadly finish from Jelavic, and finally a precise passing move for Pienaar to stroke home. 8 of the best and a thoroughly entertaining game, United were good but not as good as we have seen in seasons passed...something our friends in the media forgot when they proclaimed United’s lead unassailable after Arsenal 1-0 City. City did the business beating Wolves 2-0 as you would expect from a squad with the amount of talent at their disposal. Rumours of a Balotelli inspired implosion now seem like the mad ravings of a special brew fuelled lunatic. All of which demonstrates to those who had not already realised that pundits just don’t know, nobody does. The best pundits admit that, talk about what they think will happen and point to historical examples to back up their claims. Unfortunately though there are (I’m looking at you Talksport, the Sun and ITV)  others who seriously don’t have a fucking clue. They cover their ignorance by proclaiming nailed on certainties so they can brag if they get lucky and hope you don’t remember if they are wrong. Don’t they remember Arsenal coming from behind to pip United in 1997-1998? There are many more examples...is it just me that expects the experts to remember and share them?

All I’m saying is that we need to get some crossbows, camouflage paint and gear, find these people and hunt them down in the streets (only the really bad pundits I mean, I’m not a monster...Motty gets a pass) I really don’t think that’s too much to ask?

Ahem...excuse me whilst I fight the fog I mentioned earlier for a minute...

...and that’s better. Anyway, some talking points...

Best Game of the Weekend- Manchester United 4-4 Everton: no contest I think, for the  reasons listed above but honourable mention to El Classico with a dramatic finish leading to Real Madrid’s victory over Barca, effectively clinching the title and finally giving us a game to live up to the hype.

Worst Game of the Weekend- Arsenal 0-0 Chelsea: Worst one I watched anyway. Like El Classico expectations were high for 2 teams fighting for Champions League qualification but little invention or excitement in the play from what was basically a League Cup team from Chelsea (with a £50m striker...goddamn you, modern football). Arsenal didn’t move the ball fast enough in midfield without the injured Mikel Arteta and were wasteful in front of goal with RVP out of sorts still.

Team of the Weekend- Newcastle: That ‘M’ word, momentum is all theirs out of the contenders for the Champions League and you have to fancy them with the form they, and particularly Cabaye, Ben Arfa and Cisse have been showing. The former was exceptional on Saturday and the latter 2 have been playing like they belong in Europe for weeks. They have tough games with Chelsea and Manchester City to come but they are capable of getting the results particularly if Manchester City are out of the title race by then (they play United before).

Winners- Got to be Manchester City I suppose...IT’S BACK ON!!!!!!!!! (Excessive capitals and exclamations for emphasis of the sensational nature of football reporting alluded to earlier and in no way endorsed as an acceptable form of written communication by this blog)

Losers- Wolves: Down they go, never nice to see but the club did it to themselves. A lot of the sympathy they may have receive left with Mick McCarthy I suspect. Tough on the fans though.

That’s that then back on Wednesday to talk about the 1^st Champions league semi, I expect Chelsea to get found out finally but only time will tell...