Howard Webb: he’s not from New York City; he’s from Rotheram. Over the summer he officiated the dirtiest World Cup final in recent memory and was roundly criticised for his over-lenience (despite showing thirteen yellow cards and a red), especially for failing to spot Nigel De Jong’s ‘sweet chin music’ on Xavi Alonso. At Old Trafford on Sunday however, he managed to keep one of the most historically tempestuous fixtures in the Premier League almost entirely above board and got most of the big decisions right. Well-done Howard.
In general, Lee Catermole aside, this season has been a largely well-disciplined one, with even the high profile red cards – Joe Cole’s against Arsenal for example – being badly timed rather than malicious. While the reverse could be said for the penalty-taking so far, this doesn’t come as a massive surprise to me (Graham Alexander isn’t around to bring up everyone else’s average and the ball’s probably too white to hit properly); I just can’t understand how Manchester United have forgotten to defend.
Don’t worry, the irony isn’t lost on me: after crafting a reputation and filling a multitude of trophy cabinets with the ability to score late, late, late goals, United have finally been getting a taste of their own medicine at Craven Cottage and Goodison Park in recent weeks. And all credit has to go Fulham and Everton for having the belief and drive to fight right to the end when it looked, in both instances, as if all was lost. But the harsh reality for Ferguson is that Chelsea’s four-point lead at the top of the table has been gifted to them, not by the Blues’ early season fixtures, but by his team’s inability to keep their discipline and close out the games for those two extra wins.
There are of course those who put United’s slow start down to the fact that they are finally losing their stranglehold on the English game. These people may yet be proved right, but if they are it will be through luck, now because of their knowledge of football. Man U always start slowly, and build momentum, make-up impossible points deficits and generally surmount the insurmountable (usually, even I have to say with a fair bit of luck and the odd refereeing decision here and there). Just because we’ve dropped four sloppy points it doesn’t suddenly make us Liverpool circa 1990 under Graham Souness.
It’s just difficult to understand. It’s not through lack of experience at the back that this indiscipline had developed. Johnny Evans is young but this is his third season in or around the first-team. Stalwarts Vidic and Evra are becoming as much a part of United as Mike Phelan doing Match of the Day interviews, while at right-back O’Shea or Neville have been the regular starters: not exactly the greenest of full-backs. They’ve been playing as a unit – with Evans deputising for Ferdinand more and more as the latter’s injury tendencies proliferate – for three or four seasons now, and the three homegrown players are products of the club’s youth system.
And it’s sure as hell not through lack of ability that these late goals are being leaked. Sloppiness is what it is, pure and simple. Not doing the basics properly. If you’ve made it as a professional footballer it stands to reason that you will have worked under scores of trainers, coaches and managers; the sum total of clichés must be massive and they should be as imbedded in your psyche as the need to wear florescent boots or cheat on your missus: keep the ball, it’s your friend, if you have it then the opposition can’t score ECT. So why have United forgotten them (the basics not the boots or infidelity clauses)?
Berbatov’s strike against Everton may have started with a backheel from Gary Neville (in his own half no less), but Arteta’s thundering leveller deep in injury time came about because, almost directly from the 3-2 restart: G Funk received the ball and lofted a nothing ball towards the opposition’s corner-flag; it was promptly launched back to Baines, he whipped it in the United area, Timmy Cahill inevitably won the header and the Spanglish midfielder was there to drive home.
Any one who has ever played football – or even had a bash on Fifa or Pro Evo – knows that if you’re seconds away from winning a match and the other team pull one back, the last thing you do is boot it back to them and give them a chance to launch one more attack. You play it square between the defence and midfield and the only time it ever goes into the corner is if someone runs it there. Where was Neville’s – the most experienced player on the pitch – composure and discipline?
Equally, what was the thinking behind putting Nani, arguably Man U’s least consistent performer in recent seasons (especially now Berbatov’s started banging them in this season) on a crucial penalty that could have put the game beyond a Fulham side who rarely lose at home? Why not put one of the more experienced or levelheaded players on it – Giggs or Owen for example – rather than cater to the ego of the erratic Portuguese winger?
Three points at Craven Cottage is not something that comes easily but if you’re going to win the Premiership it’s not exactly mission impossible. The spot-kick goes in and you’d think it’s game, set and match (although, in hindsight events at Goodison cast doubts over this assumption). Instead, Nani stepped up, Nani missed and United dropped points.
These aren’t difficult things to address: the gaffer’s surely spotted them and from now on I’d be surprised if any more late collapses or sloppy mistakes didn’t result in a few games on those moulder barker loungers they have in the Old Trafford dugout. The puzzle is why they haven’t already.
This is manager who, as legend has it, sent home Paul Ince from his first United training session after the midfielder, newly signed from Inter Milan, turned up at Carrington with a personalised number plate reading: ‘TH3 GUVN0R’ (“there’s only one governor around here” was the growled Glaswegian reply); he’ll have been livid the discipline he’s spent 20+ years developing is being blatantly ignored. Blatently he chews so much Wriggly’s Extra to stop him grinding his teeth down to his gums and looking like Mr. Herbert by the time his death and subsequent retirement are announced.
Lack of quality is never going to be an issue at Old Trafford; nor are we ever going to be short of a balance between youthful exuberance and senior experience. And all but the most ignorant United fans (so at least a few London burghs aside) will admit we are one of ‘luckier’ teams in the league at the moment. However, without the discipline to see out games we’re not going to win the league back. Simple as.
Teams who try to buy success often fail because of a lack of order amongst the Rolexed-multimillionaires, whilst teams like Stoke and Wolves become part of the Premiership furniture by being organised, committed and concentrating for 95 minutes. With Man U it’s as much a case of pulling the finger out as putting a stick a bit further up, and keeping it there until the final whistle. Shotgun not being the one who does Nani though.
You know what Scottish people hate most about the English? Our apathy towards their nation. The fact that their hatred of us, which burns everlasting, is largely unreciprocated.
Don’t get me wrong, it’s not a purely Scottish trait by any means; the English are just as bad. We’ll go on for hours about the times we’ve got one up on the Krauts, and how it’s the rivalry to end all rivalries, but if you talk to Germans about who they’d most cherish beating in a World Cup final, ‘ze Niederländisch’ (the Dutch) would be ze answer.
So while the Three Lions struggling against lowly opposition they should hammer every day of the week (like Algeria, say) would be met with howls of derision north of the border, the fact that Craig Levin’s men were seconds away from dropping points to a country whose entire population is smaller than the Hamden crowd on Tuesday, draws a largely sympathetic grimace from the majority of England fans, myself included.
Scotland doing badly gives me the opportunity to return some small portion of the abuse my ‘mates’ up here have given me over 13 years, but it also makes an already fairly cynical nation utterly depressed and thus lessens my enjoyment of back-to-back England wins. Stephen McManus’s 97th minute header however, left the Tartan Army more jubilant than if they’d won 7-0 so, for the moment at least, a fragile peace exists between Scottish football and myself. Long may it last.
It could have been so different though, because in all honesty Scotland should be well on their way to Poland and Ukraine by now with 6 points. You can only imagine the smirking headlines the Scottish Sun would have come up with had it been England being held in Kaunas, because the fact remains, if you’ve got the world champions Spain in your group, you need three points everywhere else to stand a chance of going through as one of the best runners-up across in qualification.
I couldn’t help but smile as I heard the laments from sections of the press up here and the Tartan Army in general that, ‘we were kicked off the park’, ‘the ref did nothing to protect us’, ‘those boys’re dirty, cheating bastards’ ECT. I’m sorry, but you can’t field a team with savages like Scott Brown and cheats like Alan McGregor in it, and then expect to be ‘protected’ from team that employs the same tactic every team in your domestic league does: if you don’t get the ball, make sure you get the man.
Hasler’s challenge on Alan Hutton on Tuesday was different – it was a disgrace and if ever there was a need for UEFA or FIFA to take retrospective action against a player, this is it – but having played Lithuania in the last four Euro qualification groups, and given that a number of the home side on Friday ply or have plied their trade in the SPL, you’d think Levin would be tactically astute enough to be able to exploit the obvious gulf in class between the two teams. I don’t remember the Lithuanian captain ever winning the Champions League.
And the implications of not beating teams like this stretch further than 2012. There’s no point in beating France home and away if you can’t then consolidate the result with a victory over minnows like Lithuania. In terms of FIFA rankings its one step forward, two steps back, and despite it being widely accepted that these rankings are utterly useless in determining a team’s quality – Gabon for example are currently ranked 34 in the world, one above Sweden, two above Republic of Ireland and seven above Scotland – it is crucial to maintain a good position in them. Otherwise what happens is you get bent over when it comes to the seeded qualifying groups for international tournaments and have to play the world champions. Twice.
Luckily for the English, the draw for qualifying was made before the World Cup, when everyone still regarded Capello as a tactical genius, our midfield as world-class and Wazza as the model professional. As a result, our toughest opponents – on paper anyway, and if there’s ever a nation who should be aware how little this means on the turf, it’s us – are the Swiss.
They, not unlike Scotland, went for the one step forward, two steps back approach by beating Spain in their opening World Cup game and then failing to bag against Hondurus. Their performance on Tuesday night only served to reiterate both how inaccurate those FIFA rankings are – the Swiss are 17th, above the USA who got the last 16 in South Africa, and Ghana who beat them and reached the quarters – and how many substandard teams there were at the World Cup compared with those who didn’t make it (Republic of Ireland for example).
From an England point of view though, you’ve got the focus on the positives. You can only beat what’s put in front of you and say that, so far, England have done pretty well. Not brilliantly, but expectations have been matched and the team took competatent, and if you offered me this description as a blueprint for the next two years, I’d definitely take it.
Having just said the positives need to be the focus however, I’m going to start with the negatives, because there’s actually only one: Shawn Wright-Philips still being selected. GET SWP OUT OF THE GODDAM SQUAD. Get him out of the country, revoke his passport, introduce a height restriction to playing for your country that includes Aaron Lennon but excludes him, whatever; just get him out of the squad.
The man is useless. He looks dyspraxic whenever he touches the ball, can’t pick a ten-yard pass to Darren Bent (who let’s face it, isn’t exactly inconspicuous) and yet continues to be picked alongside Lennon, Theo Walcott and Adam Johnson. Why? The only thing he's got is pace and it’s not like any of the above can’t shift. Difference is, they can shift with the ball rather than just buzzing around distracting everyone, like the visiting relative that your mum’s made you include in your mates’ kickabout despite the fact even she knows he’s shite.
It’s not like he’s in sparkling club form either. The lad Albrighton’s making waves at Villa and Rodwell’s breaking into the Everton 11, whilst Shawn’s floundering around at Eastlands trying to convince everyone (or anyone) that getting a start and bagging against FC Timisoara means he’s gonna be getting a regular game this season. It’s yet another reason to wonder whether Capello’s translator and English tutors a) exist at all, and b) don’t sometimes like to tell him to say exactly the opposite of what he actually intends to do.
If he’s rebuilding the team around youth, why’s a 28-year old who’s been there or there abouts, not done it, and couldn’t find a t-shirt small enough getting his game over some of the under 21s – Rodwell, Albrighton or Wilshere to name but three – who got to the final of their Euro tournament last year, and got beaten by, guess who, ze Germans (and what did they amount to anyway?).
Maybe it’s going to be one of those things that seems blindingly obvious in hindsight but, for whatever reason wasn’t clear at the time: a bit like no one clocking Freddy Mercury was gay (the cross-dressing videos; the leather and biker moustache; Queen? No? No one put two and two together?). Perhaps in 20 years it’ll be on Eggheads: who did Adam Johnson succeed as England’s right-mid? Must have been good if he was keeping our hottest youngster out of the team. Oh…
Right, now I’ve got that off my chest we can move onto the positives. All of the four who scored over the international break needed goals, for different reasons: Rooney to try and get himself off the country’s collective darts board; Defoe to continue to cement his place as the nations number 9; Bent to try and shake his potential tag as the next Emile Heskey (apparently the his goal against the Swiss on Tuesday was the first time he’d hit the target, let alone the net, in 9 appearances for England); and Johnson to make sure that even amoebas on Saturn realise he is the best right-midfielder we have, so that Fabio will hopefully cotton on soon.
Joe Hart too had two very important games, the first in which he sowed himself into the number 1 jersey for the foreseeable future, and second in which he fulfilled that intuitive instinct all English keepers have, the need to something inexplicably stupid at crucial points of a match. The subsequent backlash (although fairly minimal due to the nature and consequences of the ‘mistakes’) will hopefully remind him not to be a twat, to leave the keepy-uppies for when United next visit Eastlands, and remember to always check the pitch for divots, and the ball in case it’s too round to catch. Apart from that, he’s looking good.
All I can hope is that when October comes round and the next squad is picked, Mr Capello remembers these performances and doesn’t just revert to picking according to who’s paid most at club level. The squad’s actually looking like it might be gelling and the gaffer’s started picking people because they can play together – Jags and Lescott for example who were a makeshift pairing chosen because of their Everton days together – and putting folk in their right positions (starting with the captain); the last thing we need at this stage is fat-cats back amongst the birds. They’re struggling enough trying to understand Capello’s pigeon English.
Right, let’s get this out the way: I’m a Manchester United fan with no connections to Manchester. I know I know we were getting on so well; you’re not angry you’re just disappointed; I represent everything that’s wrong with football; how can I have any valid opinions seeing as I’m a just a glory-hunter, so on and so forth.
The short answer to these accusations is usually two cold fingers: jog on; it’s been fourteen years I’ve heard them all before. You support your team, I’ll support mine and we’ll just agree to disagree (or not to discuss it). This argument however it somewhat at odds with the spirit of rational discussion this blog tries to evoke, so let’s try again.
I support Manchester United because as long as I’ve liked football, I’ve been drawn to them. This isn’t to say some divine voice came to me and just happened recommend the most successful team in Premier League history; just that as an impressionable seven year old with no family history of football fanaticism, I chose the team who looked best to me. This ‘monkey-see, monkey-like, monkey-follow’ approach is one I suspect many others have adopted (whether or not they admit it) and this logic, or lack thereof, is, in an increasingly fickle footballing world, one guaranteed constant.
In today’s cosmopolitan society, being a lifelong resident of any one place is becoming increasingly uncommon, and while there always will be those who are able to call one place home their entire life, and therefore have the option of a simple decision as to what team to follow, others with slightly more nomadic residency patterns will not be so lucky.
It has since been suggested, once or twice, that I should ditch the Red Devils and support my local team, ‘cos that’s wot real fans do’. Well I was born in Hackney, so presumably West Ham would be the obvious option. But I only lived in London for a year before moving to Senegal, West Africa, and at 12 months old, I didn’t really feel like a die-hard Hammer (though I was forever blowing bubbles).
After six years in Dakar, however, my passion for football had definitely blossomed. So presumably I should devote my allegiance to ASC Diaraf? But while season tickets are probably easier to come by than at Old Trafford, getting to away games is a bit of a ball-ache, and The Football League Show’s coverage from the Stade de Diaraf is notoriously poor. And at that age, I was content just to play football, spending what TV time I was allowed in front of Wacky Races and Captain Caveman.
It wasn’t until I moved back to the UK and deepest Oxfordshire that I was exposed the phenomenon that is the Premier League. For someone who has spent their boyhood playing barefoot on arid scrubland and whose only experience of watching football as a five-year old casual viewer of USA ’94, the transition to ten games a week, long balls to the big man up front, derby, and pies and Bovril at half-time was quite a culture shock. Now I had found footballing Mecca, a country in which I could watch matches weekly and play daily, I needed a team.
A lack of parental guidance in this critical decision inevitably led to my peers being the decisive factor, and no one wanted to follow Chipping Norton Town F.C. We wanted someone on Match of the Day (the only place to watch decent football in the Cotswolds), with stars whose faces shone from Panini shinies. In 1996 there was only one option: David Beckham & co., and once the decision had been made, that was it, monkey-see, monkey-like, monkey-follow.
Football fans are masochists: we like to suffer because the more we lose, the better it feels when we win. The worse the club perform on the pitch, the better their fans are considered to be because they put up with more and therefore are more acutely aware of both sides of the emotional spectrum, enduring relegation battles, financial uncertainty and their best players leaving for pastures new when bigger clubs come calling; but also the odd Cup run, derby day victory and title top-ten finish.
Every club has its ups and downs and I’d be the first to admit that Man United fans have probably had the easiest ride in English football over the last twenty years. This doesn’t mean however, we’ve all enjoyed it in equal measure. Those who frequented Old Trafford whilst the Liverpool teams of the Eighties were at their peak are undoubted more entitled to enjoy their team’s success than someone who’s never been to Manchester and associate the name Busby with furniture.
But does coming from Salford or Stretford automatically qualify you as a ‘real fan’? And does the credibility barometer subsequently decrease the further away from the North West you live or have lived at any one time? What trumps what, longevity of personal support or one’s family legacy? Is it better to have randomly picked a team and supported them for twenty odd years; or have followed your local team because season tickets have always been available through the family?
It does my head that people feel the later point is even worth arguing. Why should their elders’ sympathies afford them an unassailable moral high ground? ‘Well my dad supports them so I had no choice…’ ECT. Bollocks. You managed to rebel against everything else your parents told you between the twelfth and nineteenth years of your life, I’m sure you could have summoned the strength of character to defy them on this as well.
It’s the easy way out. British terraces have always been a place where parents and children bond but I asked why you support your team, and ‘because I way told to’ or ‘because my family do’ isn’t really good enough. ‘Because I grew up going to the games’ or ‘because I have great childhood memories of watching [team x] play’, fair play, you’ve had some input into the decision; but don’t lay into other people for who they support and justify your allegiances by saying you were told to do so by your family.
Worse still than those who feel that continuing family tradition trumps the seven-year old logic of pick a team you like and sticking with them, are the fence sitters: those that don’t claim any side as their own but are perfectly happy to tell you what’s wrong with yours. If you just follow football and don’t take sides, that’s fine, no problem; but don’t throw mud at me from your lofty perch, safe in the knowledge I can’t aim any back.
Understand that rationality often takes a backseat when it comes discussions about football, and your point may be both perfectly sensible and logically constructed but that doesn’t necessarily make it valid. Subjective and slanderous comments that can’t be answered in relation to a team of one’s own shouldn’t have to be answered at all. You’re not properly committed to the process and therefore and no right to be involved in it. If the stakes haven’t been matched, you can't play the hand.
Of course there are those who follow any number of teams intermittently depending on which one is winning, but equally there are also fans who support smaller teams simply because they think it will gain them respect among their peers an allow them easy digs at other fans. I chose United because they were winning when I first started watching the Premiership, but I’ve continued to support them when they weren’t.
I’m not from Manchester but I am from England, and when you look at their youth system’s contribution to the national side you have to say that there have been times when the national side has been more or less a United team-sheet. Compare that with the brief stint I had following Hearts when Vladimir Romanov took over, and you’ll see that a ‘local’ team is often entirely international in both its players and backroom staff (for example, Romanov sold the Jambo’s Scottish and replaced it with a cosmopolitan line-up with very few British players or staff). The question needs to be asked, if you follow your local team simply because of regional pride, then what are you doing cheering their foreign players?
I can’t believe that it’s just where the side are from that influenced your decision. Surely there was some aspect of ‘these guys player better football than that lot so I’m gonna follow them’ (because another guaranteed constant in the fickle work of football is that everyone has a ‘local’ rival)?
If you’ve spent enough of your life in one place to feel that a team is really ‘your’ local side, I’m happy and slightly envious of you. You may have harder time watching them on the pitch, but when it comes to talking about football you’ve got by far the easier ride. No justifications needed, you get to have a right old moan and no one can say owt against you. But just because I follow a successful team from a city I’ve never lived in and have no family connections with, doesn’t mean I’m a glory-hunter, doesn’t mean I know nothing about the pain and anguish fans are so keen to wear on their Climacool sleeves, and doesn’t mean I’m a dickhead.
I was a bit late to the supporters’ party, had to make an uninformed choice and have suffered and continue to suffer the consequences (as well as reap the multitude of rewards) of choosing Manchester United. Nothing you say about my choice is going to stop me following them and I would hope the same thing goes for you if you’ve got a team. And if you don’t, stop being such a pussy and get involved! Put your balls on the line and your colours on a mast!
Oscar Wilde wrote, “the cynic knows the price of everything and value of nothing”. Call us what you will, but no football fan should ever be accused of being cynical, because no matter how badly our teams play, how near they came to winning or how close they were to scrapping by; every real fan knows a bright day awaits, and when it comes it will be all the sweeter for past anguishes. That’s what keeps us talking to each other, despite our superficial differences: there’s not really any way you can fully understand or relate to the beautiful game without following a team, no matter who they are.
