On Tottenham

Tottenham Hotspur have had a very good two weeks indeed. They have won twice in the Premier League with their main rivals for the top four (that is Arsenal and Man U) both dropping points. They've also got through to the semi finals of the League Cup with a very winnable tie against Sheffield United and a good chance of winning a rare trophy.

It's not a big secret that manager Mauricio Pochettino isn't very happy with his squad. But he has got the team well organized and is making the best of a difficult situation. Most of the players Baldini and Levy sign are completely useless. So it's no surprise to see a youth team player, Harry Kane, doing so well. Kane has been a revelation scoring 14 goals already this season and will surely be called up for England in the Spring. Pochettino is clearly good at bringing the best out of young players (e.g. Lallana, Shaw and Chambers at Southampton) and deserves a lot of credit for Kane's success.

Spurs could do with a couple of new quality players but they also need to get rid of a lot of dead wood (they have 33 first team players). A few players (such a Andros Townsend) need to go out on loan in order to play regularly and get their confidence back. However, with Levy, Baldini and now new Director of Player Development Paul Mitchell all involved in transfer decisions I suspect Pochettino will find it difficult to get what he wants (I hope I'm wrong, for his sake). Ultimately, it seems that Spurs' transfer strategy is confused. Is it important for them to recoup investments when possible (I understand this is important for Levy)? In that case, why have such a big squad of players, many of whom are wasting their time and losing value in the reserves. Are they trying to buy established talent (as the signings of Soldado and Erikson suggest) or are they trying to invest more in young players with potential (as they did with Lamela)?

Spurs have a fantastic young manager who I think will go on to great things. But they have to be realistic too. They are only 5th in the league on money spent since 2003 and only 6th in terms of net spend. If they want to be in the top four regularly they are going to have to spend like a top four team. But they are also going to have to treat Pochettino a lot better than they've treated previous managers by giving him support, time and a greater say over transfers.

Happy Christmas to my Christian readers. This blog will continue on New Year's Day with (hopefully) a new and innovative format :)

On Bullshit in Football

In his essay 'On Bullshit' in 1986 the philosopher Harry Frankfurt defines bullshit as a statement made by someone who does not care whether it is true or not, which is phony, excessive or disingenuous and which is often repeated mindlessly and uncritically. Frankfurt bemoaned what he saw back then as a modern trend in the media and in public life to spout bullshit.

Regular readers may have noticed criticism of lazy and poor quality football journalism as a trend on this blog. Unfortunately, this bullshit is too often parroted by fans, players and managers to the point where the discourse of the football world is seriously weakened.

Below I analyze what I think are three egregious examples of bullshit from the world of football. Sadly, I could have written about many more. 

1. [insert Manager's name] has taken [insert name of club] as far as he can.

Used as a reason  to justify sacking a manager. But it's a bullshit phrase. It carries the underlying assumption that a team's performance under a manager should constantly be improving (I.e. the team should constantly be making tangible progress). This is obviously an unrealistic expectation, it is perfectly natural for excellent managers to go through good and bad periods and good or bad seasons. 

2. [Insert team] have only won [insert number of points] from the last [insert number of games] and that's relegation form!

This is also used as an excuse to sack (or call for the sacking of) a manager, most notoriously Steve Clarke at West Brom in December, 2013 after apparently winning only 31 points in the previous 34 games. Please don't misunderstand me at this point, I'm not saying that form is irrelevant, instead  I mean that managers should be judged primarily by their league position on a season-by-season basis, not by their points haul over an arbitrary number of games. It's just disingenuous to look at points rather than league position. In some seasons 31 points would be enough to keep a team up and it would be mathematically possible to avoid relegation with just six points.

West Brom were 16th when Clarke was sacked, one suspects they'd take that position at the end of the season with Alan Irvine now. Moreover, in Clarke's only full season in charge West Brom finished 8th. They don't have a prayer now of doing that with Irvine. In fact, if they do I'll eat my hat.

3. Manchester United were [insert negative phrase] when Moyes first took over.

The idea that Moyes inherited a weak Manchester United team is not only preposterous, it's bullshit.

Think about it morons, they won the title by eleven (!!) points that year. It simply doesn't make any sense to say they were a weak team. Journalists knew this so they used a roundabout phrase such as 'in need of strengthening', 'ageing' or 'not a good team' to imply it instead. Either that or they said that United were lucky to win the title that season (the Premier League is 38 games and luck evens itself out over that time, it is impossible to be lucky to win it) or they said something like 'the rot of mediocrity had set it' (a phrase which is so vague it is meaningless). Most ridiculous of all, some journalists said that it was only Ferguson's brilliance as a manager who won them the title. This makes it sound like Fergie was on the pitch himself, in fact of course it is the players who do all the work, score the goals and carry out the managers instructions. To imply otherwise is....

If you want to have your say then please leave a comment below. Please also like and share on Facebook if you others might like to read this. 

Next Thur happens to be Christmas Day, and the Thursday afterwards is New Year's Day, but I will be blogging as usual on both those days, so speak to you then :)

A rant

I've been trying to experiment with different formats and styles of posting. In this post I'm going to just rant and see what happens.



If you are one of those people who supported Suarez leaving Liverpool, you have no right to now criticize Rodgers. In fact, if you do so you are a filthy hypocrite because the one and only reason why Liverpool are doing so badly at the moment is because they just lost their best player due to your (and others) overreaction to the biting incident at the World Cup.

Why is it that Suarez is good enough for Barcelona and Spain, but not good enough for Liverpool and England? The way Suarez was hounded out of the Premier League was absolutely disgusting and purely based on bigotry. Shame on you.



The Stoke fans who booed Aaron Ramsay at the weekend are absolute scum. Why did you boo him? Because he had the temerity to get his leg broken by one of your players? Pathetic!



Arsenal have won 28 major trophies in their history. Arsene Wenger has won eight of those. Whatever else you think about him, he deserves a lot more respect than he has been getting recently
from Arsenal fans and from the media.



The recent Adebayor revelations are incredible and neither he, former Spurs manager Andre Villa Boas nor Spurs chairman Daniel Levy come out of it well. Apparently, Adebayor and AVB had a bust-up when the former refused to take off his hat at the request of the latter during a team meeting. This led to Adebayor being dropped and humiliatingly forced to apologize on a raised platform in front of his team mates. However, the falling out with Adebayor is reputedly one of the reasons why
AVB was then later sacked by Levy.

Adebayor should have taken his hat off and shown his manager some respect. A manager will instantly lose the respect of his players if he allows someone to get away with insubordination. Levy should have known this and should have fully backed his manager. Lastly, AVB probably should have immediately quit when he realized he didn't have Levy's full support.

Frankly, I think it's high time that Levy got sacked himself.



I hope you've been enjoying my blog. Please leave a comment below or on Facebook. If you think your friends might like to read then please share.

I will continue to blog over the Christmas and New Year period, every Thursday as promised.

Trash Talk about Man U

I've decided that this blog is most fun when I use it to talk trash. So this is me talking trash about Manchester United fans.

About nine months ago an acquaintence denied to me that he was a Manchester United fan. I found that strange as I had always had him down as one. I remember talking to him about how good Cantona was a while back. I seemed to remember he had put posts up on Facebook celebrating Manchester United winning trophies, etc. But perhaps I had made a mistake? He was so insistent that he made me doubt my own memory.

Anyway, fast forward to this week as he is returning to the UK after an extended period abroad and asking on Facebook about getting tickets for Old Trafford. He is a Manchester United fan, of course, but denied it to me back then because he knew I would just take the piss. Now they're doing a bit better he comes out of the woodwork.

The last eighteen months have revealed that most Manchester United fans are pretty pathetic. When Ferguson was in charge they enjoyed being associated with a successful brand and they enjoyed lording it over others. As soon as the talismanic Ferguson left (the lexical item 'talisman' is overused in football journalism, but I think in this case it is appropriate) the magic was gone and a lot of the fair-weather fuckers deserted them. Manchester United are not a special club and they don't have a divine right to win. But Ferguson was a special manager and they were the lucky club who happened to get him.

I have heard it said that some Manchester United fans thought they somehow knew more about football than other fans because they supported Manchester United. It's like they thought they were somehow superior because they 'supported' a club which had been superior since most of us could even remember.

Manchester United attracted a lot of insecure bottom-feeders as fans. Their downfall last year was probably the most richly deserved failure in Premier League history....no, in football history....no, in the history of all of sports! And I am not ashamed to say that I loved every single minute of it.

On Southampton

Southampton fans keep on complaining that no one ever talks about them, so here we go.

Nobody really gives them a prayer of getting into the Champions League, but I'm not so sure.

Firstly, they have a well balanced team and their players complement each other well. Tadic and Pelle combine very well and Wanamaya is an underrated player who did very well for Celtic in the Champions League. Shane Long was an intelligent buy and he will score goals, why did Hull let him go? And Fraser Forster is an excellent goalkeeper despite the mistake on Monday.

Secondly, far too many teams underestimate them, and I think that will continue because everyone expects they will fall apart by the end of the season. Against the big four or five many teams drop back and defend with seven or eight players in the box, but against Southampton this doesn't happen. Sunderland, for example, didn't track back properly the whole match against Southampton and got beaten 8-0. They would never do that against the likes of Arsenal or City.

Lastly, although I can never forgive Ronald Koeman for his actions 21 years ago, I must admit he does look like a very good coach. That man has a nerve coming to work in England (of all places) after what he did but he has almost achieved a miracle to get Southampton where they are today and playing such good football. I believe he has the experience and the force of personality to possibly see Southampton through to the Champions League.

Please share if you like this. I will continue to blog every single fucking Thursday, right to the end of the season.

Tom

Qatar - A costly mistake

The decision to award the World Cup to Qatar could end up being a very costly one indeed for both FIFA, its President Sepp Blatter and Qatar itself.

- Qatar won the bid to stage a summer World Cup. Australia, the United States, South Korea and Japan, the other countries who bid for 2022 could all sue FIFA to recoup the cost of their bids if the tournament is moved. Had they known the tournament dates could have been moved they might have done things differently, or not bid at all.

- If the World Cup is staged at any time outside June and July then European leagues could sue FIfA because of the impact this would have on sponsorship and TV deals (i.e it would reduce the value of those deals for the 2021/22 season).

- A winter World Cup would clash with other big sporting events (notably the Super Bowl and the Winter Olympics). So reducing the value of World Cup sponsorship and TV deals.

- Sponsors are considering withdrawing their support of FIFA because of its perceived lack of integrity and transparency, particularly over the Qatari imbroglio.

- If Qatar lose the World Cup (there is a precedent for this, Colombia lost the 1986 tournament four years beforehand) they will have spent all that money and exploited all those South Asian workers for nothing.

- I will be boycotting the Qatari World Cup because of their terrible attitude to human rights and because of the secretive (and possibly corrupt) way in which the bidding process was conducted. I urge other football fans to do the same. FIFA, Sepp Blatter and the Qataris think they can get away with their outrageous actions, I think they are wrong.

Chelsea: The Big Evil

Five huge reasons to dislike Chelsea this season.

1. Mourinho

The most arrogant man in football. The London-based, pro-Chelsea media love him to bits, but don't let that fool you. He is widely hated in most other parts of the football world. None more so than Italy where he is a figure of hate from his time at Internazionale. He's a bully (see the Anders Fisk incident, Wenger or Ferguson never ever went that far), and he sets up his teams to play negatively.  

2. The Gamesmanship

Chelsea 2014/15 are masters of  game management and gamesmanship. The former in common sense, the latter is cynical and spoils the game. For example, against Arsenal, Ivanovic pretended to misunderstand the linesman's call of a throw-in to Arsenal and took the throw-in himself, this had the effect of disrupting Arsenal's rhythm at a time when they were on top in the game. He really should have been booked for that and referees really need to start being a lot tougher on them. Chelsea players are the biggest cheats of the lot, how they got away with some of what they did in the Liverpool game on Saturday beggars belief.

3. They've bought the title

However you dress it up, it's still Abramovitch's millions which are making the difference. Chelsea aren't playing well because Mourinho is some sort of alchemist, it's because they have the money to buy whoever they want. Mourinho is an excellent manager, but the tipping point is the money. 

At the start of the season I was concerned that Man City might run away with it and destroy the long-term competitiveness of the league. I was wrong. But if Chelsea do win the league this season then City will surely spend £200 million over the summer to be competitive again. The danger is that both these clubs will end up dominating (like Celic and Rangers or Barcelona and Real Madrid) and it won't be the best league in the world anymore.

4. The pro-Chelsea media

In the recent Chelsea - Arsenal game, Danny Mills on commentary didn't criticize Chelsea or praise Arsenal once in the game. Now, I'm not complaining, but I do think it's indicative of a pro-Chelsea bias in the media. You won't find one journalist or pundit with a bad word to say about Chelsea at the moment. Some are even saying that Chelsea have won the league already. You don't need me to tell you how ridiculous that is.

5. They've been lucky this season......so far.

Chelsea have had no major injuries so far this season. The other top four teams are all missing big players, (Manchester City - Silva, Arsenal - Giroud, Liverpool -  Sturridge). I notice though that Cesc Fabregas has 'done a Steven Gerrard' and pulled out of the Spain squad this week because of an 'injury', don't worry folks, he'll be back in time for the next Chelsea game. 

But Chelsea's primary weakness is their lack of options up front. Should Diego Costa get injured,  they only have Loic Remy and an aging Didier Drogba.  

Nothing personal against the charming Mr. Costa, but we can only hope.

  

Things no football fan would ever say.

Things no football fan would ever say.



I really miss the eighties when players used to wear those really short shorts.

I think football was better in the seventies with Ron Chopper Harris, and that.

I actually think David Pleat is a really good pundit.

I like Neil Warnock.

I'm really hungry, I could do with some couscous salad, or something.

Being England manager is a really difficult job, I know I couldn't do any better.

I thought the referee had a great game today.

I went to the Emirates to watch the match at the weekend, I thought the ticket was very reasonably priced.

I wonder why there aren't so many ethnic minorities in football.

I don't enjoy it when my team keeps the ball on the floor, I prefer them to play long balls and try to score from set-plays.

I think the media have been really unfair on Mourinho recently.

I've just finished Elective Affinities by Goethe, yeah, it's a really good read, actually.

I feel a bit sorry for Manchester United for what's happened to them over the last eighteen months.

I suppose if I think that players get paid too much I don't have to go to watch games. 

I admit, I like going to football to be boorish.



Postscript: I really do think that Chelsea's luck will run out on Saturday against Liverpool. Chelsea really aren't as good as they say, and I think their unbeaten run will end. 1-0 to Liverpool, you heard it first here, folks. 

On Hughes, Keane, Bruce, Robson and Solskjaer

Several of Alex Ferguson's ex-players have managed in the Premier League and they've all pretty much been failures. 

1. Mark Hughes

I'm not a fan.

Leaving Fulham the way he did was breathtakingly arrogant. He obviously has an incredibly high opinion of himself and is the quickest of all managers to blame the referee if he gets a bad result.

And I can't imagine how he could have done a worse job at QPR. He had a lot of money to spend and he bought a bunch of duds. The only conclusion which can be drawn from that fiasco is that he is completely useless!

2. Roy Keane

I think he should have been banned from football for life for deliberately breaking Alfe Inge Haaland's leg back in 2003. If you think that's hyperbole, some boneheads said that Suarez should have been banned for a year, or even for life, for his bite; consider the impact on Keane's victim (never played football again) versus the impact on Chellini (he had a red mark on his shoulder after the game) and get back to me.

Keane clearly has no respect for other people in the game (he's never apologized for the Haaland incident) I'm sure that comes across to players under him; that is why he will always be a failure as a manager, and good riddance.

3. Steve Bruce

Seems to have mellowed a lot, he's doing a decent job with Hull City. They play attractive football and seem assured and confident of a mid-table finish (although probably no more than that). This is in stark contrast to his time in the Premier League managing Birmingham, Wigan and Sunderland where he set up his teams to play negative football and always seemed to be on the verge of being sacked.

4. Bryan Robson

One of England's finest players in the 1980s, he was voted Manchester United's greatest ever player in a player's poll. But most younger fans have never heard of him and he has become something of a non-entity in recent times. He took Middlesborough to three major finals, but lost them all (no ex-Ferguson player has ever won a major trophy as a manager) and he also got relegated with West Brom.

5. Ole Gunnar Solskjaer

He had an excellent record with Molde in Norway, but struggled badly with Cardiff in the Premier League. For all his faults Malky Mackay looked like he would have kept them up, they were above the relegation zone when he was fired. But Cardiff actually regressed under Solskjaer and were deservedly relegated. 

Cool it!

One interesting sub-plot of the weekend's football was that of several managers losing their cool.

Arsene Wenger was petulant and obtuse in his post-match interview with BBC reporter Jacqui Oakly, deliberately misunderstanding the Gricean implicature in several of her questions. The interview caused Gary Lineker and several others to label him 'patronizing'. However, I doubt very much Lineker et al would have called him that had his interviewer been a man!!

So shut up Lineker, you male chauvanist pig. 

 Wenger needs to be more careful though. Managers these days represent the club brand. Since Arsenal aren't doing well on the pitch he needs to try extra hard to be charming and engaging off it.

Crystal Palace manager Neil Warnock strongly criticized referee Craig Pawson for his performance in the match against Chelsea on Saturday. He said that the referee was influenced by Chelsea players surrounding him asking for a red card for Palace's Damien Delaney. Chelsea's habit of doing that is very nasty (more about Chelsea and their unpleasantness in another post) and I have some sympathy for Warnock's position here. Moreover, it is well-known that big clubs get more decisions in their favour from referees than small ones. It's easier for a referee to give a decision against little old Crystal Palace than it is against Chelsea because the backlash in the media if they get it wrong will be much, much less. 

Warnock might well be charged by the F.A, but I think managers at smaller clubs feel that they have to kick up a fuss sometimes in order to get decisions in their favour more often.

Gary Monk of Swansea could be in big trouble for some of his strong comments at the weekend, but some of his comments  were also entirely fair.

He called Victor Moses a 'cheat'. For me this is justified since he clearly dived, and diving is a form of cheating. Diving players ought to be called out more often. One of these days a dive will decisively decide the outcome of a really big match, and all hell will break loose.

Monk also said that referee Michael Oliver had 'cheated'  his team. Monk is a good young manager but has made a mistake here, questioning the integrity of the referee undermines the enture league and brings the game into disrepute. Monk deserves to be punished for this.

One allegation is that Oliver tried to 'even things up' after giving a dodgy penalty in Swansea's favour earlier in the match. If that has happened then Oliver has made a huge (though understandable and in some ways natural) mistake. Referees must never try to 'even things up' but must always try to call it as they see it, regardless of the circumstances.

One solution to these problems experienced by Warnock and Monk is that referees could be substituted after making a big mistake. The incoming referee would be able to perform much better than someone burdened by the pressure of knowing have probably made a huge error which could get them dropped or demoted later.

Your thoughts on this would be welcome.

The problem with Arsenal

Since the end of the Invincibles era Arsenal have consistently been dominated by other top clubs, particularly in the biggest matches. Arsenal and Arsene Wenger, have been subject to some harsh criticism from Arsenal fans and the media. So what has gone wrong since the Invincibles era when they were so dominant themselves? And is the main man Wenger to blame?

1. The Invincibles broke up too quickly.

By 2007, Gilberto Silva was the only Invincible left. I'm sure Wenger would acknowledge now that his policy of only offering one year contracts to players over 30 was a massive mistake as the club was quickly shorn of players who knew how to win. 

Ironically, Wenger recently gave a two-year extension to 33-year-old-and-injury-prone Tomas Rosicky who personifies many of the weaknesses which Arsenal have had in recent years.

As research for this post I watched some videos of the Invincibles season on YouTube. What struck me is how many times they scored from rebounds. Whenever a shot came in there was always another Arsenal player lurking in the box. Players like Pires and Bergkamp were world class at anticipating what other players were going to do and where they needed to be to take advantage. But they didn't stay at the club long enough afterwards to be able to impart this kind of knowledge to younger players. Wenger really should have kept some of those seniors on (even if  in a part-time role) like Ferguson did with Giggs and Scholes at Manchester United.

2. Arsenal aren't physical enough

There is a perception that Arsenal are physically a bit weak. That they aren't good in the air, they don't 'get stuck in' and they can be 'outmuscled'. After the recent match with Chelsea, some pundits said that Arsenal had been 'outmuscled'. But don't think any team can win a match by simply 'outmuscling' another. A player with high upper-body weight is necessarily also going to be slower. A team full of John Terrys would get nowhere in the Premier League even though it would be able to 'outmuscle' everyone else. Physical duels and keeping other players off the ball is a relatively minor part of the game, pace is far more important.

What can happen though is that a team can be intimidated by physical aggression and can end up losing more because of the psychological effect of the intimidation rather than through the physical challenges themselves leading to a decisive advantage. I think it's certainly true in the past that Arsenal could be intimidated by physical aggression, but probably less so now. 

Arsenal have also already conceded eight goals this season from crosses and corners. So a perennial problem with dealing with balls into the box remains.

Looking back, the Invincibles were a highly aggressive team. Arsenal actually received the largest fine in British football history for the violence during and after The Battle of Old Trafford in 2003. They were also masters of the dark arts of diving and cheating (see Pires against Portsmouth and Henry for France against Ireland). They were bad-ass.

Physical aggression has certainly been missing from Arsenal's game over the past few years and Wenger has got to take the responsibility for that.

3. Injuries

The Invincibles were lucky in that they only had one serious injury all year, to Ashley Cole. However, Arsenal have been very unlucky with injuries over the lean years. I even think that the Eduardo injury (and resulting trauma) in 2008 cost them the league championship that year.

4. Player Recruitment

Every manager gets things wrong sometimes and and Wenger has certainly made some mistakes in the transfer market (e.g. Jeffers, Reyes and Arshavin). But Wenger's real problem is that he is less able than his rivals to afford to make mistakes because of the financial resources available to him.

5. Financial resources

The other top clubs have more money to spend than Arsenal do, that's why they haven't been so successful. Simples. Arsenal are 10th in the league on net spending since 2003 with £6 million a season in comparison to £20million for Liverpool, £26million for  United, £44 million for City and £48 million for Chelsea. To put it another way, Chelsea have a net spend on transfers of 800% more than Arsenal in the last eleven seasons. Arsenal's net spending is lower than Stoke's, for goodness sake!

That Arsenal can even compete with the top teams is testament to Wenger's managerial genius. But his insistence shipping out older players and his refusal to ever adopt a more physical approach are testament to his arrogance.

If you like this blog please share it and spread the word.

Rooney - The Under-appreciated One

I think there is a case for arguing that Wayne Rooney is the most under-appreciated football player of all time. Of course, there might well be people who played in the 1890s who were highly under-appreciated but who I am completely unaware of.  But Rooney must definitely be up there.

At the time of writing Rooney has 41 goals for England, he has a good opportunity to add to that against San Marino on Friday. Barring serious injury Rooney will almost certainly break Bobby Charlton's all time record of 49 goals for England, probably around about the time of the 2016 Euros.

Rooney will probably also break Charlton's record for the most goals for Manchester United, he has 219 currently versus Charlton's 249 (however, Charlton scored his goals in 310!!! more matches than Rooney has played, to date).

The Premier League all-time scorers record may be more difficult for Rooney, but not impossible. He is currently joint third on the list with 175 goals versus Alan Shearer's incredible 260. If he scores 15 goals a season he will break the record in six years when he is 34. So it's touch and go if his legs will hold out or not.

Then there's the way he plays the game. Shearer was like one of those kids playing in the school playground who always stood next to the goal and waited for the ball to come to him so he could score a tap-in (at my school we called them the pejorative 'goal-hanger'). However, Rooney plays with passion, he plays aesthetic, skillful, energetic football. He's entertaining to watch.

Yet Rooney gets an enormous amount of stick from both fans and the press. He and his team mates have been booed on many occasions by England 'supporters' over the years. There are even some people who think Rooney should be dropped for England. 

I think the idea of dropping Rooney is absolutely retarded (in the modern sense the word is used). I'm sure Portuguese people don't go around saying Ronaldo should be dropped,  I'm sure Argentine people don't say Messi should be dropped and I'm sure Brazilians don't say that Neymar should be dropped, so why Rooney? Of course, he isn't quite as good as those players, but he's the best we've got.

Dropping Rooney would be truly ridiculous, England would be a laughing stock. But it doesn't surprise me that Rooney gets all this criticism, England have the most negative media and fans in the world, no wonder the England team usually plays so badly with all that negativity about. In fact, the problem with English football probably isn't the players on the pitch at all, but the parasitic tabloid press and deluded and demanding fans.

Sexy Football

Ruud Gullit coined the term 'sexy football' back in the 1990s. Sexy football was epitomized by another Chelsea great, Gianfranco Zola, whose penetrating run, (slipping the ball through the legs of  West Ham defender Julian Dicks along the way) and  low finish past the goalkeeper was the wonder goal which marked the change in emphasis in English football from physical exertion and aggression to skill. 

Sex sells, and sexy football sells too.  A noticeable trend over the past couple of seasons is that clubs are trying to appeal to both existing fans and potential new fans by placing a greater emphasis on attractive football. Tony Pulis was spurned at Stoke because of his style of play, Allardyce at West Ham has been coerced into playing more attractive football and Mourinho has made Chelsea more exciting to watch, for example. It is noticeable that Pulis wasn't mentioned for the Manchester United or Spurs jobs this summer despite recently winning Manager of the Year. The reason though is obvious; if Arsene Wenger is the lingerie wearing, husky voiced Gisele Bundchen of sexy-football managers then Pulis is Nora Batty. 

In fact, I would argue that in the long run, playing sexy football is actually more important than winning games and trophies. Franco Baresi won more medals during his career than Maradona and Gary Pallister won more than Paul Gascoigne. Yet Maradona and Gascoigne are the ones we can't forget while Baresi and Pallister just couldn't get us up (out of our seats, that is). Posterity doesn't remember numbers or statistics, it remembers sex appeal.

A fundamental misunderstanding which people have about the Premier League is that it is a results business. It is not; it is an entertainment business. So can we forget the obsession in the Premier League with getting results, winning trophies, qualifying for the Champions League etc etc and concentrate instead on sexy?

The disgusting campaign against Alan Pardew

I find the media campaign against Alan Pardew pretty disgusting. I don’t think there has been a concerted effort to get him sacked, but some of them really don’t like him, and journalists and pundits have a nasty habit of jumping on the bandwagon against someone. Garth Crooks on the BBC play-by-play analysis on Saturday said that Pardew’s position was ‘untenable’ when Newcastle went 2-0 down to Hull, then quietly changed his tune when Newcastle came back to draw the match. Fickle. But the idea that a certain manager is struggling can then become a self-fulfilling one as the players on the pitch start losing confidence and fans get on the managers back.

Pardew’s critics have some reasons for wanting him to be sacked.

1.      His record in 2014

Newcastle have only won only five games in 2014. Some say that this is ‘relegation form’ and that Pardew should be sacked because of this.

But shouldn’t managers be judged season-to-season rather than year-to-year? Newcastle had a good first half of 2013-14, but this analysis doesn’t take that into account. And Pardew’s good managerial record strongly suggests they’ll pick up this season too.

2.      His touchline behavior

Pardew has done several stupid and ugly things on the touchline over the years. Some pundits argued at the time of the Neil Meyler incident that Pardew should have been sacked (they overreacted badly, he was only given a three match ban for it by the FA, not a twenty match ban!). Robbie Savage said on Match of the Day that evening that Pardew’s position had become ‘untenable’(that word again); he seems to have a thing against Pardew. Although these incidents were unedifying, ultimately nobody was hurt and I think, frankly, some commentators and pundits have been rather sanctimonious.

3.      Newcastle have been ‘drifting’ or ‘stagnating’

If drifting or stagnating means staying in the Premier League, well I think many clubs would love to be doing this year after year.

Why he shouldn’t be sacked.

Newcastle United are a profitable club, that’s the way Mike Ashley likes it. St James’s Park is one of the biggest stadiums in the country and regularly sells out for match days. Then there is the transfer strategy whereby Pardew and his team find bargains and Ashley sells them for a profit. Ba was picked up for free and sold for just over £7 million, Debuchy was bought for £5.5 million and sold for £12 million, Cabaye was bought for £5 million and sold for £19 million. Pardew would have liked to keep those players but clearly Ashley wanted the money. I hate to say it, but that’s modern football. And if Newcastle United fans don’t like it, well they could blame Ashley, they could curse the whole damn world, but they can’t really blame Alan Pardew.

The man’s not perfect, but I’m sure he’ll keep Newcastle in the Premier League if he’s allowed to stay, and will keep them top ten most of the time (they have been top ten in three of his four full seasons). Given that Ashley keeps selling his best players, I don’t think anything more can reasonably be expected of him.  

Please share this on social media if you like it. I'm trying to increase the readership :)

A Manchester United pre-mortem

The ‘pre-mortem’, developed by the behavioral psychologist Gary Klein, is a tool used by business executives to spot flaws in their own planning due to the natural innability in human beings to do this well (a problem known known as the planning fallacy). It involves imagining a scenario a year from now where your business has gone bust or your project has failed and pre-emptively identifying the possible reasons why this might happen. In this post I will use a pre-mortem examination to try to pinpoint where Manchester United might go wrong again this season.

So, imagine that it is now May, 2015 and Manchester United haven’t qualified for Europe again suffering devastating losses to Manchester City, Liverpool and Arsenal in the process. What went wrong?

1    They made too many changes over the summer.

Seventeen players left the club and six came in over the summer. Having a high turnover of players makes success on the pitch difficult (e.g. QPR in 2012/13 and Spurs in 2013/14).

2    There are too many ‘stars’

Not everyone got game every week and this caused unhappiness and resentment among the star names. Players they got rid of in the summer such as Hernandez, Welbeck, Anderson, Nani and Cleverley were not stars but were happy to play in different positions and do a job for the team when required. Every big club needs players like that.

3    Louis van Gaal’s personality

Not a likeable man at all. He’s arrogant and abrasive and became a hate-figure among opposition fans and the press. Modern managers need to be media-savvy, slick and eloquent in order to successfully represent the club brand (Mourinho and Wenger are absolutely excellent at this, for example). Even Ferguson, in his later years, mellowed considerably and learned to play the media well. Van Gaal’s negative behavior put unnecessary pressure on the players. 

4    Crap fans

As happened last season Manchester United fans got frustrated far too quickly with the team when they weren’t playing well. This made the players feel nervous and caused them to play even worse. Fans need to support the team, even when they’re playing badly. If they don’t they’re not doing their job properly in my opinion.

5     A sense of panic

In 2013/14, under Moyes, Manchester United were gripped with an almost paralyzing sense of panic when things started to go wrong which then only served to exacerbate their problems. Unfortunately this sense of panic continued into this season. The huge amount of money spent on player recruitment created an almost intolerable pressure on Van Gaal to succeed. Profits are down and they haven’t qualified for the Champions League for two years in a row. They know that if they carry on like this they will start losing money putting into jeopardy the long term future of the club.

A Pundits League Table

It's an easy job being a football journalist or pundit. You can use action replays to spot when referees make errors, you can use hindsight to pinpoint managerial mistakes and you can take the moral high ground with the escapades of players thirty years your junior. There's nobody around to call you to account.

I'm not going to pretend that me and my little blog are going to be the ones to rein in bad football punditry. But this is my review of the top three and the bottom three Premier League football pundits.

1. Gary Neville

Eloquent and insightful, Neville is by far the best of the ex-player pundits. He is the best there is at giving fans a player's perspective. His analysis of diving, for example, has really contributed to my understanding of the game. Although he's respected more than liked by the average fan, he's one of the few football players who you could actually imagine enjoying having a beer with.

2. Tim Vickery

Prominent at this year's World Cup, Vickery is by far the best football pundit on the BBC. I like his confidence and his deep knowledge of the game. It's a pity they don't use him more often. Vickery never played football professionally (he is a journalist) but I think that actually helps him understand the game in a broader perspective.

3. Gabriel Marcotti

Clearly a highly intelligent man, articulate and clearly very passionate about the game. Marcotti works for cable channel ESPN, since the BBC didn't seem to want him. He talks about football in a cerebral, grown-up way. A thinking-man's football pundit.

And the three worst.... (Honorable mentions to Alan Shearer, the world's most boring man, and Peter Schmeichel)

3. Rio Ferdinand 

A wonderful football player, graceful and dignified he is more likeable

than many other players. He's won six Premier Leagues and the Champions League. However, he obviously isn't the brightest star in the night sky to put it kindly. Asking him to be a pundit is not fair, either on us or on him. Let him enjoy his retirement in peace, when the time comes.

2. Phil Neville

Barbara Slater, the head of BBC sport, seems to think that only ex-players can work as football pundits. She could not be more wrong, the majority of players don't have the personality or the communication skills to carry it off. A prime example of this is Phil Neville, completely overshadowed by his brother, he is a rubbish pundit. The decision to allow him to commentate on the England vs Italy match at the World Cup with no previous experience (the BBC received 445 complaints about how boring he was) was idiotic, something only the BBC could do. We deserve better.

1. Phil McNulty

Prescient, insightful, interesting......none of these words can be applied to the BBC's chief football journalist Phil McNulty. His continuous use of cliches grates, as does his boring, generic style.

 There is something faintly ridiculous about his columns too. a great example of this is the predictions he makes at the start of the season. Last year he hailed the fantastic business Spurs had done in the transfer window predicting them to finish in the top four. Of course, he got it badly wrong. And every single year since Thierry Henry left Arsenal he's been predicting them to finish outside the top four, he hasn't been right yet.