Cops & Robbers

Once upon a time there was a kingdom ruled over a by a central authority. Responsibility for governing was delegated among a group of chieftains from whom total obedience was expected, but who were unanswerable to the masses below them. The merit of and need for these chieftains was universally acknowledged among the people, but as their decision-making became less accurate and more erratic dissent grew within the proletariat.

A select few of the most venerable elders within the community took it upon themselves – without claiming to speak on behalf of anyone but those whose interests they directly served – to speak out against what they perceived as injustices. Yet because their objections were made on such immediate levels, only serving a select few, unity between the dissenters seemed impossible: petty squabbling over minor details was hindering overall progress. They were being robbed of what was most valuable to them, but bureaucracy and internal bickering was making their quest for justice ineffectual.

It’s a universal point of view held among fans that referees are robbers. That last minute penalty or the red card that never was hang over each of us like too many whiskies the night before for days after the incidents occurred, but when a dubious decision goes our way the referee’s ‘providence’ in giving it is immediately forgotten as the team’s performance and the genius of individuals take centre stage. To say that it is a difficult thankless job is clichéd to the extent of bordering on dogmatic.

That doesn’t mean however that it should remain that way: an unchallenged, rigid and assertive fact. If the right way is to be universally evident it must constantly be challenged and compared with the wrong, so that all are reminded regularly why one direction is being taken over another and why ours is the correct path to take. This requires a regular rigorous examination of the officials’ duties, responsibilities and equally importantly, their rights. Questions also have to be asked above the usual stations: to what extent are the people the referees work for making their job difficult and could they be doing more or less to help?

The officials are meant to be the authority on the football pitch; the black and white of the game embodied in a firm, considered cop, which can then be juxtaposed with the vibrant colours of all the teams, players and personalities they oversee. The players and managers are out to get what they want by means fair or foul – “you’ve got to die for three points” ECT – and it is up to the officials to stop them. At the moment though, I can’t work out who are the cops and who are the robbers.

(I would normally shy away from the brash Americanism of ‘cops’ and opt instead for ‘policeman’, but the former is unisex and rolls off the tongue better in conjunction with robbers, as well as seeming more suitable for the subject given the officials’ preference for the formal title of ‘assistant referee’ over the more articulate but inherently sexist ‘linesman’.) 

Straight to the crux of the argument then: we’re told referees cannot be held publically accountable for their actions because it will diminish respect for them within the game. In other words, by elaborating on and explaining their decisions and therefore accepting liability when mistakes are inevitably made, they are made weak and powerless. Their strength (apparently) lays in their infallibility, or rather the infallibility of the organisation they represent – broadly speaking, the official rules of Association Football.

This is the company line of a multi-billion pound industry in the 21^st Century: we know better than you and rather than question us, just accept it. There are ideological parallels between this regime and the ones being toppled weekly in the Middle East and North Africa, and after another week of civil unrest and murmurs of revolution you have to feel it’s a case of when rather than if change will come. When is technology going to be introduced to help referees?

FIFA claim that the reason no decision was made regarding the implementation of goal-line technology at a recent convention (aside from the fact they had more pressing business to discuss regarding snoods) is that no company could satisfactorily provide a quick enough relay of information between the official’s monitor and the ref. They said that the speed of play was integral to the modern game and this could not be sacrificed for vastly improved accuracy, accountability and consistency in officiating. While the game evolves, the referees are forced to stagnate.

While technology is constantly being integrated into the playing of football – lighter boots, (apparently) better balls, the most up-to-date and relevant tactical information available at any time – referees are expected to keep up with these innovations using the same tools they used when the Jabulani was made of a pig’s bladder: their eyes and their ever-popular common-sense. While I don’t necessarily agree successes in other sports mean it will automatically work in football but everyone else does seem to be looking forward while FIFA and the regional chieftains it delegates governing responsibilities to bury their toupeed heads in the sand and stand intransigently by officials. I mean, talk about the blind leading the blind.

A point was made to Robbie “BBC’s- working-class-face-of-football” Savage on 606 this weekend that the referee on the pitch be no more than the mouth-piece of a panel of video officials, in whom all the authority would lie, and who would rely all decisions to him. While this extreme would lead to the game becoming a bastardisation of American Football – with five minute stops for every thirty seconds of play – some attempt must be made to find a middle ground between this revolutionary standpoint and the archaic mistrust of anything new currently enforced by those in power.

For a sport so regularly touted as the only global language, it is embarrassing how little public discussion there is between footballing bodies regarding how best to move the game forward. It’s ridiculous that the annual meetings on anything of real importance are held entirely behind closed doors by men (exclusively men) with a worse grasp of the real world than King Eric. When do you think Blatter last queued and forked out for those priceless derby-day tickets in the away end?

Instead, any discussion that does take place regarding referees invariably starts with character assassinations from managers who feel they’ve been fucked by the long dick of law. This is then met with a venomous media backlash and a pitiful slap on the wrist from the football authorities, before the cycle is repeated next week. It only serves to widen the gulf between the rulers and the ruled, the lawmakers and the lawbreakers, the cops and the robbers.

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Once upon a time there was a kingdom ruled over a by a central authority. Responsibility for governing was delegated among a group of chieftains from whom total obedience was expected, but who were unanswerable to the masses below them. The merit of and need for these chieftains was universally acknowledged among the people, but as their decision-making became less accurate and more erratic dissent grew within the proletariat.

All was once well in the realm, with exceptional harvests, an estimably advanced population and the wisest king in power, creating the highest standard of living available anywhere in the known world. Yet decadence crept in and the institutions that had once served the domain so well began to show unmistaken signs of decay. All is no longer well at in the kingdom of Old Trafford.

Rule number one of being a United fan: thou shall not question Sir Alex. Under his authority the club have achieved practically unthinkable things and his legacy is one which, even at a clubs of such a stature and proud history will take some beating. An integral part of his authority has always been his ability to delegate key responsibilities to key players and for them to enforce his will within the squad on the pitch. At Anfield on Sunday, his band of chieftains imploded.

‘Fergie-Time (noun): 1. Additional time at the end of addition time granted by the referee in order to allow Manchester United to score a late goal; 2. Cheating’. This concept best sums up the widely held view that the club are the Premier League’s Ocean’s Eleven: a smooth, suited and booted team of individual who take what they want from others with a certain amount of style, but a considerable amount of illegality.

Over the years the team’s style of play has been characterised by swift, incisive passing football involving the ball being pinged from defence to attack and back as many times as necessary before a breakthrough presents itself. Subsequently the midfield is the crucial component to success, hence why the majority of modern icons have been midfielders: your Beckhams and your Ronaldos. At the moment, the midfield simply is not good enough.

The cops in this analogy are the aforementioned chieftains to whom Fergie delegates, players are invariably found in the midfield – Paul Scholes and Ryan Giggs being the perfect examples. And as was shown on Sunday, they aren’t able to patrol the beat like they used to. This is through no fault of their own: both are in the twilight years of their careers and rather than being relied on from 65 minutes onwards to sure things up or provide an alternative threat, they are the arthritic spine of the team that is proving unsurprisingly brittle when presented with punishing labour.

The robbers in the United team are the love-‘em-or-hate-‘em midfielders – Keane, Beckham, Ronaldo, Nani – who make the difference when you most need it: pinching late goals, stealing dubious free-kicks and getting away manslaughter. And while Nani has done admirably in taking on you-know-who’s mantle of United’s best talent and worst person this season, he is but one man. He is still not quite the complete player, showing infuriating inefficiencies in his game – whether it’s failing to clear the first man with his corners or being absent defensively (although I wish he was on Sunday), but is at least getting there.

The bigger worry is the back-up divisions. Carrick continues to resemble a Geordie papier-mâché swan – pretty to look at for a time but with the spine of Withnail and the incision of Andy Parson’s wit– while Fletcher seems to have fallen foul of the dreaded Curse of the Scot – he’s silently brilliant while everyone thinks he’s shite but as soon as the public realise he’s decent he bottles it and becomes crap. Youngsters Anderson and Gibson would be a good player if former’s physicality and defensive ability could be hybridized with the latter’s shooting and passing, but are looking more and more like they lack the credentials to hold down numbers 4 and 8 in the eleven.

And the wingers are even worse. Obertan and Bebe are…terrible. I really can’t think of any adjectives suitable for such abject failures. Valencia’s return provides some hope for excitement on the flanks and the importance of a hard-working, reliable winger (i.e. Park) was painfully demonstrated at Anfield, but it would be severely stretching the truth to say that any of these midfielders – central or wide – will be able to steal from other teams now or at any point in the future. At the moment they’re robbing points from the team by playing so badly.

None either are displaying any of the mental credentials Ferguson looks for in future lieutenants, begging the question: who will inspire once Scholes and Giggs follow G Funk into creaky idolatry? If the cycle is broken now after twenty highly-effectual years, what are the implications for future generations?

Personally I think we need at least two, ideally four new players, with the immediate deficit in the middle of the park. An experienced, combative midfielder of the mould of Bastian Schweinsteiger and a promising young talent who looks like he might deliver (and preferably who Fergie has seen play), such as Rodwell or Henderson, both of whom United have been frequently linked with in recent times. Signing wingers can be very tricky, as Bebe, Obertan and Tosic before them have shown, and it seems looking at home as well as abroad can unearth gems: look at Johnson at City or Albrighton at Villa.

Crucially though, we cannot keep placing responsibility for playing in the most important positions on the pitch with incredibly talented, but undoubtedly aging legends, and supplementing this with strikers played out of positions on the wings. Rooney’s best form will be found when he realises he’s not guaranteed a place on the team sheet, not winding him up further (if such a thing is possible) out on the left, while Hernandez’s biggest assest (his movement off the shoulder of the last man) is wasted when he asked to provide rather than benefit from the killer ball.

Until these problems are addressed, the once unstoppable Man United machine will screech, stutter and eventually stop. If United’s cops and robbers are ever going to combine with the scintillating results of the past, the script needs to be updated, the cast changed and the deadwood cleared. At the moment Ferguson is in danger of making Ocean’s 13, a jaded, haggard vision of what was once great and is now almost unwatchable.

Catch-22

St. Francis Xavier said, “Give me the child until he is seven and I’ll give you the man”. The importance of a footballer’s formative years cannot be underestimated (even if there have to be some allowances made if a Sixteenth Century Jesuit Missionary’s words are to be considered relevant), and this is a philosophy on which Arsene Wenger has been building Arsenal. But as the six-year silverware drought continues, the questions are coming thicker and faster: where are the men these boys are meant to become?

Irrespective of your opinion of Wenger, you have to acknowledge, if not necessarily admire, his principles. Those labeled the future are nurtured, encouraged and protected – “there is no blame to apportion” he drawls dejectedly regarding the ‘misunderstanding’ between Szczesny and Koscielny. (Apparently both were confused as to the implications of a ball slowly rolling towards their goal in the 89^th minute of a finely poised cup final, and didn’t think to John Smith it at the first opportunity).

But after more than half a decade without a trophy, is it the players who continue to fall short of the mark, or are the principles inherently flawed? Can developing players purely for their skill ever breed success, or is it doomed to internal paradox, a Catch-22?

Clearly it’s not as simple as saying, concentrating on youth breeds naivety and playing the passing game doesn’t work: a dualistic approach between the two has done wonders for the Spanish game recently, led of course by Barcelona. And the excuses rattled out by the FA as to why England are perennially cack – that our kids are mostly inbred – aren’t relevant here because Wenger brings in talent from across the world: Wilshire from England, Ramsey from Wales, Nasri from France, Fabregas from Spain, Denilson from Brazil ECT. I think the reason why things aren’t working is actually that the players are too talented.

Humour me. Obviously talented footballers collect titles and cups. But they do so by marrying their raw potential developed through hours on the training pitch with a winning attitude and an understanding of how to succeed gained from an involvement at some significant level of success. In other words, ability alone is not enough; it must be supplemented with the right mindset and an experience of winning trophies. This is where Arsenal fall short.

They didn’t used to. The team Wenger inherited from Bruce Rioch in 1996 made the club’s last decade at Highbury one of the most successful in the club’s history and the Invincibles of these years laid rest to any claims that the Frenchman’s reputation was due to the work of his predecessors. His star players, Bergkamp, Overmars, Ljungberg, Pires and Henry (with the exception of Bergkamp who found his best form playing under him) were all signed by Wenger and they all played his way: avec va va voom.

The difference was though that the while all this foreign flair was flowing forward, the Clock End was fortified by five formidable home-grown wardens, who, as wooden as they are as pundits, knew how to defend, and knew how to win (and who, as talented as they were, didn’t exude ‘star’ quality).Whether or not they could play was of secondary importance (Lee Dixon got 22 England caps and an undoubtedly kushti contract with the BBC for mimicking the movements of Tony Adams); they could do their job.

Considering the current crop on the other hand – full-backs Sagna and Clichy offer much going forward, but are definitely culpable coming back while centre-halves Vermulen, Djourou and Koscielny have clearly had the phrase ‘the art of defending’ drilled so deeply into them that as soon as they’re up against it and their bowels start to loosen, the latter half of the phrase is dropped, and their defending is made to suffer for their art. They know no other way. Wembley on Sunday evening: case in point.

In isolated incidents, Wenger’s reluctance (or inability) to attribute blame for the successive faltering of his rear-guard can come across as paternal loyalty to his fledging Beckenbauers. But the longer the drought continues the more it looks like stubbornness to adapt his principles. They know no other way because he is not teaching it to them.

Maybe he thinks adaptation is impossible and change unthinkable? Or alternatively believes a change of fortune is inevitable and success unavoidable with the talent he has available? Either way, viewed through the perspective of six years, Arsenal’s sustained inability to fulfill their considerable potential and bring home the proverbial bacon surely says more about the manager than the players.

By encouraging such a pure form of football, the means overshadow the ends. Talent becomes not only the foundations of the team, but its floor, walls, ceiling, doors and windows. And despite constant complaints that Premier League referees allow a form a football founded in Warwickshire rather than Cambridgeshire, the fact remains that it’s not just the hamstrings which are flimsy in North London: the requisite backbone of true champions is conspicuously absent. They don’t have the cojones when it counts. When the big bad wolf huffs and puffs, the house falls down.  

There is no evidence to suggest that the team fielded against Birmingham – especially with the obvious inclusion of a fit Fabregas and possibly Walcott – cannot win anything. But whether they will surely depends more on the manager than the players, and whether he is willing to sacrifice style for a smidgen of substance?

Look at Barcelona. Their first-leg defeat to Arsenal in February was billed as the battle of the purists, yet in for all the football both play when in possession, it’s what a team does without the ball which really defines them. Not just pressing the ball and closing the opposition down, but niggly fouls to break up play and more than the odd word in the ref’s ear.

The Catalans do both aspects equally well. Without doubt, all their players can play. But if judged purely on personality and not footballing ability there are people there you wouldn’t want to get in a fight with – Pique, Puyol, Dani Alves, Mascherano, Busquets. As formidable as they are on the ball, none of the Arsenal players have the same intimidation factor (Vermulen would be intimidating if he was ever fit, and Diaby if his style of play didn’t suggest a passion for silk shirts and fine wine rather than bar brawls) or ability to influence the ref at crucial points of the match.

This Machiavellian ability to manipulate games at the right times, as well as being able to recognize when the right times are, is essential to winning games, but does not seem to be part of Wenger’s psyche anymore. Back when they were winning it was – Viera and Petit were more than capable of putting a boot in, complaining and kicking the ball away, all in one swift movement – but now when the Gunners are in control of a match they’ll play their passing triangles right up until the final whistle.

There’s also a sense that the Barca players’ passion matches that of their manager: it’s not that he’s plucked them from obscurity and preened them in the limelight, or that they are solely responsible for his appointment and successes; both thrive off each other. Despite his admiral loyalty to the club at which he made his name, you have to sense that Fabregas is inevitably going to swap red and white for red and blue. Once a player signs for Barcelona however, if they’re part of the manager’s plans they’re not going anywhere fast. More and more there is a sense that Arsenal is club to make your name at, not to win trophies at. Would Cashley Cole have swapped the style of Barcelona for the riches of Real Madrid?

Maybe because tiki-taka seems to be a pre-formulated idea which already incorporates less-attractive elements to ensure its success, whereas Wenger’s philosophy has an ad-hoc element of being made up as he goes along and the players come through – i.e. now they have Wilshire in midfield we’ve heard a lot less about horror tackles in midfield than we did last season, with the principle injustice now being the opposition’s physical approach to defending – but the Catalans definitely have the winning mentality to supplement their undeniable skill. Arsenal, as of yet, have not discovered it.   

Like it or not, the blame for this has to be laid at the manager’s feet. Even as a neutral on the day and a United fan by trade, I wanted Arsenal to beat Birmingham solely so that Wenger could be vindicated. We all want to believe that style can triumph. That they didn’t, and especially that they played much of the game with nerves evidently raw, merely served to confirm the problem with breeding players so extensively and so purely: they never will become the men Francis Xavier promises, but continue instead as pretty Peter Pans in pubescent purgatory until they leave. And then they win things at their new clubs. Case in point: Brrrrapsley.

It may be seem harsh to say the mark of when a boy becomes a man in football is when he wins his first trophy. Plenty of incredibly talented footballers have spurned recognized success for the glory of honour and loyalty to a club or cause. The problem with the Wenger Boys Mk. II (Mk. I for me died with the departure of Henry, signaling the paradoxical end of the Invincibles) is that the manager knows how to win; he just seems reluctant to do so again or to pass this knowledge on to his player. And this stubbornness is detrimentally affecting their development. Why, having seen first-hand just how much wily, hardened campaigners can do for you at the back is he so reluctant to sign an experienced centre-half and goalkeeper to lead the youngsters on the pitch?

This brings me onto the third part of my criteria for winning trophies: experience of doing so. At first glance it’s an archetypal Catch 22 – how can you win something for the first time if having done so before is essential to success? – but it boils down to one thing: integration.

Birmingham might not have won a trophy for forty eight years, but man of the match on Sunday Ben Foster picked up his third winners medal in three years. Similarly, Barry Ferguson MBE (I know) put in an excellent performance in the middle of the park (without covering himself in glory in the final third), drawing no doubt on his considerable experience of winning trophies in Glasgow. His manager shared these experiences. At crucial points in football matches technical ability means nothing; instinctively knowing what to do is everything, and Birmingham’s players and manager knew because they’d been there before.

Focusing on youth development is not automatically doomed to failure – far from it – but it is a policy that must incorporate aspects of the past with the future. The best example of this working over time is at Old Trafford in the 1990s (ironically enough during the same period when the experience of Wenger’s side made them one of the country’s most formidable forces) when the likes of Beckham, Giggs, the Nevilles and Butt were cutting their teeth. Crucially though, they were doing so in a team that featured Ince, Bruce, McClair, Hughes and Robson, who’d had the odd tastes of success – including the 1991 League Cup no less – and were hungry for more.

It’d be lazy journalism to speculate, twenty years on, that if the WB Mk. II had beaten Birmingham they’d go on to achieve the same success, but it certainly puts in to perspective both importance of the League Cup itself as a competition and potential platform for bigger things, and what winning a seemingly insignificant trophy can do for a side’s future. If a few senior players have those experiences it makes the difference and the cycle can become self-sustaining.

Arsene Wenger’s current footballing philosophy is the purist’s dream, but in the same way a incredible subconscious experience is frustrating if not recreated in reality, it can no longer be judged in a purely abstract context: it’s time for it to deliver in the real world. And in football – especially when considering some of the crème de le crème of young talent globally available – there comes a point when pragmatism has to overtake idealism. Trophies must be won if players are to fully achieve their potential. An individual and a team can only considered world class when they have the substance with which to supplement their style and ability.

A poignant example of this is Gerald Pique. Schooled by Barcelona from a young age, he signed for Man United at a time when his ability to deliver on considerable potential was in doubt. He developed aspects of his game that the Nou Camp and La Liga perhaps would not have catered for (how to mark Kevin Davis for example), experienced winning leagues and cups from the peripheries of the first team, returned to Barcelona. Within two years he was irreplaceable in the best club and international teams in the world.

During this time he learned from the old master and the young pretender undoubtedly set to replace the wizened sensei in Ferguson and Guardiola, two men who appreciate attractive football and the importance of developing youth, but also that bringing the best out of the best youngsters requires winning. Wenger could very easily be considered among the greatest managers of his time – indeed his successes with the Invincibles may have already earned this accolade – but his currently philosophy has been proved inherently flawed by the barren spell currently afflicting the Emirates.

Until the talent he is nurturing learn how to control games by developing what I have called a winning mentality and experience success at a significant level first hand, not only will they have failed, he will have too, and his failure will be two-fold – firstly as a manager who wins trophies and secondly as the manager for developing world-class players. The latter I think will hurt him more.

Only when the Wenger Boys Mk. II become men will his legacy in English and world football be truly immortal. Currently the only way to do this would seem to be diluting his hallowed principles regarding developing style above all else, and finding players who have won in order to complete his jigsaw of incredibly talent youngsters who have not. This though might subsequently dilute his philosophy, upon which his legacy is built. A Catch-22 indeed.