Deliver Us From Swedish Furniture » Sport

Manchester United – is playing the Swiss that exhausting?

tulip — Mon, 11 Feb 2008 18:27:48 +0000

Are we sure Sir Alex Ferguson is Scottish? After his little tirade about his players being ‘exhausted’ after their international duty I get the feeling that with this little bit of ungracious losing he is really an Australian. Oddly enough though, even they played like a bunch of muppets at Spurs and got a lucky point there, he did not mention the trip to the Middle East the team took to play in a meaningless game over there (sorry did I say meaningless, I meant ‘lucrative’). Teams go through these periods of getting poor results - all it takes is a few of those 50/50s to not quite go your way and then you drop some points, your confidence drops, which mysteriously means more of those 50/50s go against you…. Man U are going through on of these. Admittedly the whole Munich commemorations will not have helped, as much as you try to remain professional, they are still human beings and when confronted with the build up and nearly 80 000 people standing in silence with scarves raised aloft, it is going to affect their focus. However, in reality they were in one of these periodic mini-slumps before that. Spurs could and should have taken full advantage and City did take full advantage and they had a good quantity of their players away on International duty too. Will this be the end of Manchester United’s Premiership bid? Well that depends on what Arsenal get up to tonight, but even if Arsenal win there is still only 5 points between them. Arsenal still have to go to Stanford Bridge and Old Trafford, plus there are always dropped points along the way. However Arsenal are in pole position as I write this, not only in terms of points, but psycologically too.

Arsene Wenger has been hailing his sides mental toughness as he realises as well as Ferguson that winning the title is only partly down to skill and both sides are pretty much inseperable on that front. Winning the title is about getting the job done. Right now, you get the feeling that Arsenal simply believe they can win it more than Manchester United as the comments from the United camp about the International Friendly seem to show. Winning the FA Cup aside, Manchester United will be depserate to win next weekend to close the psycological gap that Arsenal have now opened up and prove to themselves as much as anyone else that they can actually do it again.

Lewis Hamilton can’t drive….

tulip — Wed, 19 Dec 2007 01:03:45 +0000

…for a month….in France. So, if any paparazzi are reading, it might be worth hanging around Ryan Air flights to Geneva to see if you can catch him on there

The FA Appoint Capello

tulip — Fri, 14 Dec 2007 18:50:16 +0000

The FA have finally picked the right type of person for the job. I never had too much problem with Sven, except his lousy friendlies when he would play a seemingly random selection of players with no sense of rhyme or reason, his policy of having a few too many favourites and his love of tabloid-friendly antics. However after the McLaren debarcle it amazes me that there are still people in the game wittering on about have to have an English manager. Quite simply there is nobody that fits the bill. In reality the national jobs tend to be taken on successfully by older coaches who can be pragmatic enough to work with players they do not see everyday and get them to play as a team. We have had too much of this rubbish from the newspapers saying that any decent coach should be able to get Lampard and Gerrard to play together, when in reality a decent coach would realise they do not complement each other and would find alternatives. The coach picks the best team, not always the best players. Capello is a man happy to ruffle a few feathers and egos to get results. He tactically out thought Sir Alex for years in the Champions League with Juve and the whole Beckham saga at Real Madrid also proved he was able to be pragmatic enough to accept when his judgement was off and correct a mistake – nobody gets it right all the time, but the best correct their mistakes quickly.

Within the English game who can we say has got a CV that can even be considered in the same light as Capello? In fact the only Brit that can fill the role in reality is Sir Alex, but he’s a Scot and the liklihood of him taking that on and being allowed back north of the border are minimal. As for this crap about not getting the chances, well you need to prove yourself first. Whenever you hear a coach going on about a young player they are always saying they need to ‘prove themselves’ and ‘take their chances’ but somehow they expect that with a record of a few years coaching a middle table Premiership side they can do the job on the international stage. If they are good at a smaller side, they will get the chance at a bigger cub, but they have to be prepared to do what it takes. Schuster at Real Madrid, did well in Germany and got the Real Job that way, Mourinho at Porto etc. The only British coach I can think of that has actually moved abroad to do this recently is Chris Coleman. Quite simply this is not an anti-English coach view, the simple fact is that the best, most dedicated coaches rise to the top jobs. The likes of the Premiership is where the money is, so the top coaches look here for the jobs, this means competition is much more fierce for those positions. The current crop of British coaches need to realise this or we will forever be coached by foreigners….and this will be on merit.

OK, last time I mention England and Euro 2008…I promise!

tulip — Sat, 24 Nov 2007 12:44:31 +0000

Well I think the good old BBC summed it up perfectly when they said

‘All hail the return of the Premier League: a world where Steven Gerrard is a superhero, Frank Lampard ventures into the opposition penalty area and Scott Carson is a very good goalkeeper.’

and now I hear Motty saying

‘The talk about overseas players is a red herring, we simply need our players better coached’

Thank god for that!!
It is about time we acknowledged that the FA is the root of the problem. I respect Trevor Brooking and his views on the coaching of British players, but how the hell is he supposed to do anything with such an antiquated, bureaucratic institution as ?the FA impeding him at every step. You only have to look at the vast list of directors, all well paid and sticking their oars in and simply complicating thing to see the problem. On top of that you have a series of people at the top with no background in football and, if the selection process for the manager’s job last time was anything to go by, no idea how to run things either. The thought of a ‘full root and branch investigation’ strikes me as simply another big, overblown waste of money. Will it actually address the fact that the people hiring in all the consultants to run this review are the problem? Will any consultant actually publish a report damning the very people paying the bills? There is talk of the Premier League being an issue – rubbish. We need to get grass roots sorted out. Teams are bringing over so many kids from abroad because we are not teaching our young talent well enough.
Now, apart from Gareth Southgate and Paul Ince, people have finally stopped waffling on about ‘must be a British manager’ and all the people that are the usual suspects British suspects have ruled themselves out. The simple fact is that none of them are experienced enough at the higher levels of competition. You can argue that Klinsmann did well with Germany, but he was a bit of an anomoly on that front, but now he has experience. So, we now have Capello, Klinsmann, Lippi, Mourinho and, after the Euros, our favourite from last time, Scolari all without jobs. I would not object to any one of those. Shearer though…he may be a decent coach in future (I like his punditry at least) but not now….have we learned nothing!

Is this the 1970s?

tulip — Thu, 22 Nov 2007 02:51:02 +0000

So we have oil prices rocketing, unrest in the middle East and OPEC makng waves, the Russians beign bolshy, the Americans with a very dodgy president and now we find ourselves with our football clubs doing really well in European competitions and the national side failing to reach the major finals….with Steve McLaren kindly stepping in to replace the Chopper. At least this means I might now actually be able to get tickets to go to the Euros. Pass the Party 7

FA blaming lack of English players in Premiership for England struggles

tulip — Mon, 10 Sep 2007 15:40:12 +0000

As I mentioned in my previous post, I was a bit dismayed about the comments of Trevor Brooking in the run up to the England vs Israel game. He and the FA believe that the number of foreign players in the league is harming our own aspirations. Really, why is this Sir Trevor? “Well,” he says, “take a look at Italy, almost all their players play in their league and they won the World Cup” Good point Sir Trevor, but statistically it’s a little irrelevant, it’s a bit like saying “I flipped a coin and it came up heads, so it must always come up heads” So, lets have a look around the other power houses in International football shall we….
OK, lets start with Germany. They had a good showing last time around with a young team and yes, the vast majority of them are playing in Germany. OK, they were playing at home, but let’s let Sir Trevor have that one. let’s move on. How about Brazil, France, Argentina and even Portugal? Can’t think of too many of their top players playing in their domestic leagues, can you? Now let’s take a quick look from the other side of the fence, what about other nations that have a strong domestic league with plenty of home grown talent playing in it. Well we have dealt with Italy and the Premiership, the other big domestic league is in Spain – the perennial under achievers in world football. They have been even worse than us with nothing to show of note in the international game. So the balance is, while not conclusive, in favour of the teams that have their talent playing in the more competitive leagues around the world.
Sir Trevor went on to then blame the acadamies of the Premiership sides for not taking in enough local talent. I’m sorry, am I hearing this right? Whose job is it to get kids up to a decent standard by the time they are 11-13 when they are likely to be taken on by one of the Premiership sides? Why should it be that other nations are producing kids with more technical ability than ours that means they get the palces in the acadamies? It’s the FA’s job to get these kids up to standard. The way we teach it is terrible. In Gianluca Vialli’s book ‘The Italian Job’ he points out that in Italy kids that want to play are taken off and given proper training, including after school. In the UK, everyone is sent out for a few hours on a Wednesday afternoon and it is made to feel like a torture. There is no way of taking the keen, talented and motivated kids off to do something to make them into the players the acadamies are looking for. One of my friend’s has a 13 year old son and his school has had one of the best local teams for years. They do not have football as one of the sports they teach, all the kids that want to play do so outside school hours.
The simple fact is though, that you need to sift an awful lot of dirt to find a nuggest of gold, the more you can sift, the more you will find. Luckily the nuggets will also catch your eye – OK this metaphor is getting a bit stretched now, let’s put it this way, the Gerrards of the world were obviously good from a young age and were then picked up. The teams need to stay ahead of their rivals and finding this talent is their priority, regardless of it’s source. Going back to my stretched metaphor, if you don’t find any gold in the stream you are sifting, there maybe more elsewhere, it helps to spread your efforts.
Now lets take a quick look at the other side of this arguement. The FA claim with the dearth of English players making the grade we are harming the national team. Sorry, but the competition means that only the good get to the top. The stronger the competition the better they need to be. If they are really trying to tell me that the current England first team is not good enough, then please explain why it is that the likes of Lampard and Gerrard are almost always in the running for player of the year awards? Look down the England team sheet and there are very few really weak spots when the team is fit. In fact there are very few spots where the team doesn’t have depth too. I mean Jamie Carragher is talking about retiring from the international game because he cannot guarentee himself a first team place.
So, why aren’t we winning? Well, we currently have a coach that has never won anything of note. He had an immensely lucky run to the final of the UEFA Cup, but what else? Had the FA not completely screwed up by deciding they needed to have a new coach before the last World Cup, we could have had a Scolari or a Hiddink. As Scolari rightly pointed out he could not accept a new job prior to the World Cup as he still had to motivate his team. Hiddink also rightly said, that they know what he does, if they want to offer him the job great, but he is not going through an interview process. I mean what do the FA think they are doing, recruiting a new intern?
The simple fact is that the Premiership is the most watched sports league anywhere in the world. It is no longer ‘ours’, I’ve walked around in Malaysia, South Africa and even parts of the USA and you see Chelsea and Liverpool shirts being worn and games on in the bars. The clubs and the Premiership itself have the onus on them to make it as entertaining and competitive as possible. The talent coming through from the grass-roots is the FA’s responsibility, so whinging about a lack of English talent coming through is basically complaining about not doing their own job properly. The FA still shares too much DNA with the organisation that for years refused to send a team to the World Cup and even fined Manchester United for playing in the early days of the European Cup. It needs a good kick into the 21st Century

FIFA Women’s World Cup 2007 has kicked off….

tulip — Mon, 10 Sep 2007 15:03:32 +0000

…and Germany have trounced Argentina 11-0! It is looking like it could be an interesting tournament, with the USA, Germany and China fielding decent sides and a few of the others capable of an upset (although maybe not Argentina!) The thing that amazes me the most though is that I remember when it started back in 1991. No coverage, hardly any teams. Now you have a huge opening ceremony, coverage across most of the world’s media and even the petty pre-tournament squabbles and moans about the organisers. A few years ago you would never have had any of this, but it is a good sign. The game is now becoming truely professional, the peopel involved are there to win, not just to play, and people are also expecting the organisation to follow suit.
This brings me back to the UK and why we don’t seem to show up as a force in this game. In the UK football is the default sport, you actually have to go out of your way to play something different. The Premiership is the most watched league in the world and the mix of male and female is actually pretty good, nowhere near as male dominated as you might expect* as the grounds are actually not the scary intimidating places of old. However there are few of the teams with a genuiniely good womens team. Arsenal are the obvious exception, but I have blogged before about the farce of the Charlton Athletic women’s team getting disbanded when then men’s team were relegated from the Premiership even though they were the only team in the country that could even give the Arsenal ladies team a game. In contrast there is a healthy and growing game evolving in places like the US and Germany.
In all honesty I find it a bit strange. We have the FA going on about the lack of English players as being the lack of success for the England team, when we have a starting eleven where the majority would pretty much be guarenteed a place in the big sides around the world (I will blog on this at another time) but at the same time the FA does very little with the huge sums of money coming into the English game to promote the women’s game. It is still considered a small, part-time concern. In addition, why in’t the Premiership putting money into this as it is one of the few markets that are not nearly close to saturation – I mean how many more pubs are there that don’t show it, how many more Manchester United shirts can you sell in suburban London? In those old laws of diminishing returns, you have to spend a fortune for a small incremntal gain in the men’s game, but s small amount of cash should make a step change to the women’s game and could lay the seeds for a very lucrative sideline to the men’s Premiership. With the women’s game growing globally at the rate it is, it’s on of those situations that requires you get in now, cheaply, or wait and be forced to pay a lot more later.

* OK, it’s not that balanced as football grounds must be the only places in the UK where there is no queue for the ladies loo at half time, only the mens!

NewBodog.com – even better than the real thing!

tulip — Sun, 09 Sep 2007 16:47:01 +0000

I mentioned a little while back about BoDog losing their name in a very dubious legal decision. Well I saw this post and it looks as though NewBoDog.com is actually getting more traffic that the old. According to the article they are getting much more traffic, many more sign-ups and generally things are looking pretty rosey.

It does prove the old adage about no publicity is bad publisity and also shows that a non-generic domain name is only worth a limited amount. If you can’t back up the brand name with something, it very quickly loses it’s value.

British Gymnastics at World Championships

tulip — Tue, 04 Sep 2007 13:08:59 +0000

OK, this is time for a very blatant plug! My cousin, Becky Wing, is on the British Gymnastic team who are competing in the World Championships this year and have exceeded pretty much everyone’s expectations. They went along looking to qualify for the team event in the Beijing Olympics and ended up 6th, making it through to the Team Final’s on Wednesday, the first time they have ever done this!

So huge congratulations to all the team from me and go kick some serious bottom on Wednesday!

Oh yeah before I forget Becky has got a website detailing her gymnastics career to date, so drop by and say ‘hello’…

Top of the League, you’re having a laugh….

tulip — Thu, 30 Aug 2007 11:37:22 +0000

Ahhh, the joys of singing along in the Emirates, feeling the relief as Arsenal finally score after missing a penalty against Sven’s organised but dull Manchester City side. OK, so Arsenal fans aren’t known for their banter or singing. I mean the old chant from away fans was ‘Highbury’s a library….shhhhh’ but this doesn’t work so well now at The Emirates.

Anyway, reading through the Beeb site again they posted some of the best chants of the weekend, so I thought I would share my favourites….

“It’s neat, it’s weird, it’s Rafa’s goatee beard!” – Liverpool fans to their boss, and apparently made-man, Raphael Benitez

“There’s only one Gordon Ramsay.” – Southampton fans singing at Norwich (TV cook Delia Smith is a part owner….)

“F*** off back to London.” – Man City fans to Man United fans (running joke that nobody in Manchester actually supports United)
“F*** off back to Stockport.” – Man United fans reply (running joke that…oh sod it, you get the idea)

“You only sing when you’re rowing” – Cambridge fans singing to Oxford fans.