Monday, 29 October 2012

Five Things We Learnt From Watching Football This Week - Week Nine


1. How hard is it to let football to do the talking?
Sky’s Super Sundays rarely delivers, but this weekend’s combination of a high octane Merseyside derby littered with subtext; and a full out attacking bonanza at Stamford Bridge were both ruined by terrible refereeing. At least the Everton & Liverpool game waited until the last few minutes before letting controversy mar it. This was not the case at Chelsea, where the Mark Clatternburg show completely took over what was fast becoming the game of the season. As it was, not only were we robbed of a final half hour of end to end attacking football, we were left once again to listen to the pundits, the managers and the media seemingly forget about how much wonderful football they’d seen and just discuss the controversies over and over again. This is the biggest shame about all of this. I want to hear people talk about the way Suarez tore through Everton’s defence. Or the way David Moyes team rallied themselves in fine style to come back from two down. I want to discuss the passes that combined to create Chelsea’s magnificent second goal, or the movement from Robin Van Persie in both of Utd’s openers. What I don’t want is half an hour of people going on about bad decisions. Decisions, it has to be said, that were so obviously wrong it barely merits a discussion in the first place. Indeed, you open the papers this morning and there’s little mention of the football in light of not only the existing incidents, but the extraordinary allegations that Clatternburg racially abused a Chelsea player. A friend made a good point yesterday on that. If he is found guilty will he be given a 4 game ban like John Terry? Unlikely. He’ll probably be sacked. In which case not only will football once again be guilty of terrible hypocrisy, but Howard Webb has a lot of responsibility as Fergies remaining 12th man…

2. But… we have to give refs more help.
All of yesterdays’ controversy could have been wiped away with three simple rule changes. Diving, the professional foul and offside goals all ruin games week in week out and none of the changes outlined below would slow the game down or take away the “power” from referees like FIFA claim.

i. Retrospective punishment for diving.
Refs are on increasing pressure to clamp down on simulation and it’s clear that was the message ringing in Clattenburg’s ears when he booked Torres yesterday. However, it was an impossible call and one he should never be in a position to have to make. Ref’s should never be having to guess whether people went down too easily or not, they should let the game flow and be able to assess the video footage after a match and if they think someone has dived, be able to issue a retrospective straight red card. This would cut out diving at once as right now, about three people would be sent off every game. It would also keep the power with the referee who would have time and technology on his side to make his decision.

ii. Change the professional foul rule.
One of my most despised rules in all of football, it the tackle isn’t cynical or dangerous, a player should not be sent off for what we saw on Sunday. A clash of legs, accidental collisions or a genuine mistimed tackle should not be punished by a red card. But what do you do when someone is clean through outside the box then? Simple. Award a penalty. They do it in other sports, why not football. All that has been denied is a “clear goal scoring opportunity” – so give them one.

iii. Allow for offside goals to be reviewed by the 4th official.
Within 20 seconds on Sunday, the 4th official would have correctly awarded Liverpool a goal and denied Man Utd one. For all the fuss about goal line technology, this is a much more common problem and one that offers exactly the same solution. Just allow a team to review it? The 4th official (or someone else) could communicate to the referee during the celebrations whether or not the goal was offside or not. It wouldn’t slow the match down and if you’re worried about assistant refs losing their jobs then say that each captain can review one decision a match. We’re all human, we all make mistakes, but what we saw on Sunday (especially at Goodison) were just total bottles from fallible officials under intense pressure. The time has come to help them, rather than just abuse them. Maybe this way we can start talking about football again…

3. David de Gea is all sorts of fun.
Say what you like about De Gea, he’s pure box office. Easily the most entertaining keeper since Crazy Jens left our hallowed shores, the young Spaniard is a mixture of the surreal, sublime and complete shit in every single 90 minutes he plays. On Sunday he managed to follow up an 80 yard pin point drop kick under pressure onto the boot of Van Persie, with a scuffed clearance straight to a Chelsea player. The next minute he was flapping at a cross before making one of the saves of the season to deny Torres. There is no middle ground with De Gea, his distribution is often extraordinary accurate and his shot stopping is as good as anyone in the world. Sadly his command of his penalty box is, at best, invisible and at worst disastrous. In short, you never know what you’re going to get next from him. Currently he saves at least one shot he has no right to save every match. Which would be great if he didn’t concede a goal he really should have kept out every match as well. Regardless of his performances, Fergie owes it to the league to play him every match. The division is much more entertaining with him in it.

4. There is no defence for Southampton.
Fast becoming the new Blackpool, without the ability to actually win, Southampton look set to be an entertaining footnote in this year’s Premier League battle. Lying in 19th place already adrift of safety, they are actually the league’s 6th highest scorers. Sadly they have conceded 26 goals in 9 games. Indeed, their fans have witnessed 40 goals in all at an extraordinary average of 4.5 a match. At this rate they are on target to beat Swindon Town’s unenviable record of 100 goals in one season… in less games. The problem with Southampton is simple, they cannot defend in any way shape or form. Bale’s opener yesterday came from a looped cross which he headed in from around 16 yards, barely challenged. Before that, Saints had been carved open by the seemingly new technique of people passing the ball and running after it. They improved in the second half, but only because they had more of the ball. Indeed, given you can’t see how they’re going to improve their rearguard at this hour, the only chance they have of getting close to the 40 point mark is trying to keep the ball for the vast majority of the time. Saints possess some very good footballers and they should look to Swansea as their blueprint for how to keep the ball and also stay vaguely solid at the same time. If not, you fear for them not just getting relegated, but going down with an unwanted statistic hanging around their necks as well.

5. There are no winners at Norwich.
Norwich are probably the most regularly patronised club in the top flight. 3 minutes of highlights can’t go by without a nod to their director’s box or reference to Alan Partridge. Most football fans couldn’t name more than three of their players. This summer they replaced the departing Paul Lambert with the reliable, likeable Chris Hughton. On the evidence of Saturday however, neither manager nor club can be particularly happy with the way things have turned out. Norwich under Hughton are less expansive than they were under Lambert, preferring a tighter formation and reliance on the creativity of their wingers to cut inside. Villa meanwhile… are Villa. If Lambert has tried to improve the way they football, he’s failed. Which is a bit surprising given he’s only using about three players who were there under the McCleish regime. A predictably tight draw left both teams looking over their shoulders at the wrong end of the table and wondering where the attacking football of yesteryears had gone. Perhaps if both managers just swapped jobs things would be better? Maybe not. But a long, hard and potentially very disinteresting season awaits both clubs. Oh well, maybe Delia can spice things up instead…

(the author is aware that this last entry is mildly patronising to Norwich)

Monday, 22 October 2012

Five Things We Learnt From Watching Football This Week - Week Eight


Dzeko deserves more
8 of Manchester City’s goals this season have come in the last 10 minutes of their matches and no man has been more prolific in that period than Edin Dzeko. The Bosnian boasts the best goals per minute ratio of anybody so far and has won his team 9 ill-deserved points already, half their total haul. Mancini is a member of the “Rafa Benitez Rotation for Rotations sake” club but there is a time when you have to put you most in form players on the pitch and just be done with it. Right now, Mario Balotelli is nowhere near worthy of a starting position. The maverick Italian has been in fine form for his country but has been woeful so far for his club. With Aguero returning from injury, surely Mancini has to start Tevez and Dzeko for a run of games and see what happens. Indeed, when he started the latter for such a run at the beginning of last year he scored freely. Dzeko is clearly a player who needs an arm round his shoulder and consistent, regular game time. He is far too good to be City’s fourth choice striker. Initially cumbersome, he took time to adapt to the rigours of the Premier League but has now been his club’s MVP in four of their eight games already. If it wasn’t for him City would lie in 13th. Behind Liverpool…

Chelsea’s three musketeers can be as good as anyone
The preferred system for top clubs these days is a 4-2-3-1 with two screening midfielders allowing the protection for three attackers to float behind a lone striker. Barca & Spain have sometimes used a false 9 to turn this more into a more fluid 4-2-4-0 but in the most part, this is the system for teams to attack at will with the knowledge that they shouldn’t get caught too easily on the break. Barcelona currently have Messi, Pedro & Iniesta behind Villa whereas Real boast Ronaldo, Di Maria and Ozil behind Benzema. Chelsea, whilst nowhere near as strong as those teams in the other positions, have a trio themselves of Mata, Hazard & Oscar who have the potential to be as good as anyone. White Hart Lane is not an easy place to go, especially for Chelsea, but the passing, movement and creativity that these three produced on Saturday was mesmerising. Oscar & Hazard are just 21, yet both play like seasoned pros. Mata was Chelsea’s best player last season and since a two week break in September has come back even stronger still. Last week, he must have been the best player in World Football not to be selected for an International squad (such is the absurd depth of Spain’s talent). Mata’s second goal on Saturday contained a first time pass of such beauty from Hazard that all the Spaniard had to do was take four strides and pass it into the net. I dismissed Chelsea’s challenge at the start of the season, pointing to their defence and the complete uselessness of John Obi Mikel as the reasons why. Neither of those flaws have been corrected, but if Chelsea’s three musketeers can keep playing like this and scoring four goals every game… it will hardly matter.

The Premier League is a very different beast to the Championship
It’s always one of the strange things each year that the team who comes up via the play off’s tends to fair better than those who gained automatic promotion. People can talk about momentum all they want, but the truth is that some teams are just better suited to play in this division than others (in the same way that Darren Huckerby was the greatest Championship player of all time… and nigh on useless in the Prem). Last season Reading and Southampton eased to automatic promotion at the expense of West Ham, who eventually went up by the skin of their teeth via the play offs. Thus far this season West Ham have amassed 14 points and sit in 7th. Reading and Saints meanwhile, lie in 18th and 19th with seven points and one win between them. West Ham have bought some new players of course, but then so have the other two clubs and they haven’t been able to gel with anything like the sort of speed that Big Sam’s new players have. No, the simple fact is that you need to be a more physical, rounded team to survive in the Premiership whereby you can get by playing light weight, fast attacking football in the league below. West Brom were a yo-yo club for years before they realised this and added solidity to their passing style, learning that in order to make it in the top flight defence has to come first. As it is, I would rather pay money to watch Saints play football 100 times over than West Ham, but that won’t change the fact that come May, the former will be heading back down to the fiery chasm from whence they came.

Martin O’Neill is limping
Martin O’Neill did everything right. He started his career at a lower league club, forging an impressive reputation before stepping up to manage Leicester. Here, he guided the club through their golden years adding cup triumphs to impressive league finishes. It was the year 2000, Martin O’Neill was 48 and he was being talked about as having the potential to manage any club in the land. He opted to manage Celtic. Whilst an unqualified success in Scotland, there is an argument that five years spent managing a club who essentially nobody respects your achievements for, was a potential waste of time for a manager of O’Neill’s abilities. When he did return to England some six years later, he took over at Aston Villa and guided them to three successive top six finishes. A feat that looks even more impressive when you consider Aston Villa both before and after that period. Eventually he quit and spent a season in exile being linked to every major job under the sun. His eventual appointment to the club he supported as a boy, smacked of a final and sentimental move. O’Neill is now 60 and in danger of greatness passing him by. He started well at Sunderland but so far this season his team have retreated into their shells. Sessegnon is yet to get going, likewise James McClean. His team have created fewer chances than anyone in the league and scored fewer goals, a feeble six in eight matches. Nobody apart from Stephen Fletcher has yet scored at all. O’Neill needs to arrest this creative lull and fast. Johnson and Fletcher are good signings and his team have enough talent to push for a top 8 finish. It would be a crying shame if a manager of his abilities finished his career languishing in mid table with no trophies since a Scottish Cup with Celtic.

Hatred of other clubs is all relative
Many people who just insult my blog of my fans have asked me over the past couple of years why I dislike the teams I do and why some make me go all warm and fuzzy inside when I think about watching them try and defend (Spurs). There are of course, a myriad of reasons for this from the fans of the club to the managers, youth policies, transfer dealings and historical incidents. Ultimately though, you can’t always rationalise why you like the clubs you do. Whilst I try to remain impartial on this blog, there is little doubt that I favour writing about clubs that interest me in either their approach or ethos. As such, I have decided to once and for all clarify my stance on all the current Premier League clubs on the official “Hindu Monkey Scale.” The scale features eight categories, to which clubs fall into rank order within. Any questions, please contact the management…

Supports
Man Utd

Soft Spots

Spurs
Everton
Swansea

Sympathist

Fulham
Arsenal
Wigan
Southampton

Little Interest

West Brom
Sunderland
Reading
Norwich

No Interest (at. all.)

Aston Villa
Mild Disdain

Newcastle
Stoke

Total Loathing

Man City
QPR
West Ham
Liverpool

Unrivalled Hatred

Chelsea