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.

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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?