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.