Premier League - business as usual

One of the major talking points this season seems to be the number of defeats that the top teams are suffering, with the Premier League nerds using the statistic to defend the English top flight from the accusations of predictability which have dogged the division for years. These defeats are not just against fellow top teams: Liverpool have lost to Fuham, Sunderlandnil and bottom club (at the time of playing) Portsmouth, Man United have lost to Fulham and Burnley (and could it be argued that the Liverpool defeat was not against a top club considering the reds’ season so far?), Chelsea have lost to Wigan and Arsenal have lost to Sunderlandnil with no holiday equipment involved whatsoever.

First of all, the number of defeats at the top should be further scrutinised. At the moment, when thirteen of the clubs have played eighteen games and most of the rest have played seventeen, the five teams in European places (Chelsea, United, Arsenal, Villa, Spurs) have suffered 20 defeats. Compared to the last two seasons, when the top five teams suffered only 26 defeats all season, it seems high, but during the previous seven seasons (back to the start of the decade) the top five were beaten between 34 and 41 times, with the lowest of those figures only coming in the season when one team (Arsenal) unusually lost no matches at all.

Taking the recent “big four” as a yardstick (although why on Earth Liverpool should be counted when they have never won the PL and Chelsea, United and Arsenal have won all but one of the titles I have no idea), perhaps there is a more noticeable change. At this stage of the season they have lost a combined 19 matches, which compared to the last two seasons (17 and 15 in total) is obviously off the clock. However, again in the previous seven seasons the same teams lost between 25 and 34 games all season, so perhaps the figure is not too high yet.

The five teams with the fewest defeats – not necessarily the same as the previous two categories, and indeed they are Manchester City, Chelsea, Villa, Arsenal and United – have 17 defeats between them at this stage of the season. Again, in the last two seasons the five least defeated teams had 26 and 25 losses all season, but in the previous seven seasons back to the start of the decade they lost between 34 and 43 times in the whole season.

The partial conclusion here then must be that although the top teams are losing more than during the last two seasons, it is precisely those two seasons that should be considered the anomaly and not this season, which appears to be following the longer trend.

Now let’s look at the teams in the relegation zone. Does this mean then that with supposedly more points being dropped at the top there will be more pressure for those in the relegation fight? During the past nine seasons the three teams relegated at the end of the season have managed between 18 and 23 wins between them, with the lowest three figures coming in Derby County’s disastrous season and Sunderlandnil’s two nightmares – the norm has been between 21 and 23. In order to survive it was necessary to reach between 34 and 43 points (taking as the limit the 17th-placed team’s total plus one point, ignoring goal difference).

As it stands at the moment, the bottom three clubs (Bolton, West Ham and Portsmouth) have managed 11 wins between them, although last weekend the bottom three included Wolves, whose win catapulted them to twelfth and would have been the 12th win of the bottom three. If we extend their figures to the end of the season as an average, the bottom three will have 23 wins and 36 points will be the total to beat. So no difference there then.

Perhaps the only difference could be – there’s that word “could” again, about the only thing that makes the Premier League vaguely interesting – the number of points needed for a top five finish and European football. In the last nine seasons the fifth team have needed between 56 and 65 points to guarantee playing in Europe the following season (again, taking as the limit the 6th-placed team’s total plus one point, ignoring goal difference). This season it could be as high as 70 points.

However, at the end of the day most of the table will be exactly the same. Certainly Chelsea, United and Arsenal – winners of 16 out of 17 seasons – will be in the top three or four as always and the weakest teams will be relegated. Everyone will have pretty much the same number of points relative to their final position in the table. There will have been the odd surprising result – like every season, so no change there – but at the end of the day we all know what the outcome will be.

It will take more than Newcastle going down to make the Premier League less than totally predictable.

The bottom line in the bottom five

By now everyone knows that Wolves manager Mick McCarthy made huge changes to the team that beat Bolton at home then Spurs away for the visit to Old Trafford. He has been dragged over hot coals and asked to explain himself by the Premier League board as well as criticised by anyone and everyone for apparently bringing the game (!) and the Premier League (!!) into disrepute. It is telling that the exception in all the criticism is the people in the hot seat – managers and former managers such as Alex Ferguson, Tony Pulis, Phil Brown and Alan Shearer.

The only apparent basis for the complaints is that the Wolves fans travelled to Manchester and paid £42 to see the reserves (which seems to overlook that fans at clubs like Liverpool pay more than that to see second-team action week after week) although a few people grumbled about the ethics of changing an apparent first eleven in order to gain some mid- or long-term advantage over the club’s rivals.

First of all a reply to a manager who is increasingly delusional and lacking in credibility, Arsenal’s Arsène Wenger: McCarthy was continuing the long-existing trend of utilising the whole squad in order to obtain the maximum number of points – there is no such thing as a first eleven any more, thanks in no small part to the (beneficial) influence of continental managers such as Wenger and their system of relying on the whole squad. The Wolves boss was by no means the first manager even this season to make wholesale changes to his team (Wenger whenever he feels like it) and he wasn’t the last (David Moyes against Borisov). Of course when you’re playing in European competitions too the decision is considered to be intelligent and competitive; when you’re a multi-million-pound manager it’s simply called “rotation”. When you’ve got a bench to die for anything goes.

Now to the fans: fans have dreams, but pragmatism is the only road for a club like Wolves at the moment. Sometimes in life you stay and fight and sometimes you have to walk away and fight another day. McCarthy's priority this season should be to keep Wolves in the top flight, and in order to do that he recognises that there isn't only one league, there's two or even three or four. He is in the bottom one at the moment and needs to guarantee success against his direct rivals, the likes of Burnley. That way preserves the long-term dream of being able to stand and fight against the likes of Man United, because the dream of just rolling up at Old Trafford belongs to the teams fighting to get out of the Championship – for Wolves it is last year’s dream. This year is different and although the fans can dream it’s time for the manager to be pragmatic. True, £42 is a lot of money, but the fans spent more on their Premier League shirt and they will want it to bear the same symbols next season.

Mark Hughes’ sacking yesterday really was something that brings the game into disrepute and it is also a warning to McCarthy – look after your own club and let the other managers look after theirs, because no-one will help you if you try and follow a blameless route and end up relegated. On the contrary, one slip will see you in the street.

As a footnote to this article, Wolves have just beaten Burnley 2-0 – they have left the relegation zone, leapfrogged Burnley and other direct rivals and are now twelfth. Some people have asked what would happen if Manchester United won the league by two points (I suppose they are assuming Wolves could have managed a draw) but I think a more relevant question is to ask the Wolves fans how they will feel if they survive by the points they have gained against Burnley. It’s all very well for snobbish, elitist and hypocritical managers to moralise from the rich end of the league, but Mick McCarthy has only one priority – keep his team in the Premier League. The fans know that, it’s just a shame certain journalists – and certain managers – are too inexperienced and too protected respectively to have any idea of the bottom line.

One rule for them...

(For only the second time, a different sport...)

If press reports are to be believed - and granted, that's a big ask sometimes - Tiger Woods refused to speak to police about the car crash as many as three times. If that's true, I challenge any normal citizen to try the same and get away with it. Life's good when you're rich and famous, isn't it?

Thems the breaks

In 1891 an FA Cup quarter-final between Notts County and Stoke changed the game forever. Notts County’s left-back handled the ball on the line...but penalties did not exist. Stoke were awarded a free-kick on the line which the county goalkeeper easily smothered. Notts County won 1-0 and eventually reached the final. This incident caused such controversy that later the same year the FA was obliged to introduce penalties.
Unfortunately for Stoke, the very next season they were involved in another game, this time in the league, which changed the game forever. Stoke were losing 0-1 to Aston Villa when they were awarded a penalty two minutes from time. The Villa keeper kicked the (only) ball out of the ground and by the time it had been retrieved the referee had blown full time. This incident caused such controversy that the law was changed to allow added time for penalties.
Both incidents caused huge upset among the football community, relative to the brouhaha surrounding France’s qualification for the World Cup. It was obvious that there was a problem and a solution had to be found for the good of the game. Of course, nothing changed for Stoke. They lost both games and the results stood.
It was unlucky for Stoke and all the other teams who had lost in these ways before the rule changes; similarly, it was very lucky for the teams who subsequently benefitted from the rule changes. Ireland were unlucky this week; as soon as the authorities change their archaic thinking – if the Victorians can do it so can they! – and introduce video technology other teams will benefit.
When the incident happened I was as outraged as everyone else. I swore at the TV, I tweeted, I facebooked, I blogged, I 606ed. But in the grand scheme of things, it’s another historic(al) incident in the football timeline. Shame for Ireland, but thems the breaks.

No, he cheated

So now we’ve all slept on it and Ireland are still out. The blatant cheating and the incompetence of the refereeing trio have got the world talking, and it seems a few people are on Henry’s side. So let’s have a look at a few of the things they are saying:
“Henry didn’t mean it, it was ball to hand” – but he touched it twice, and made no attempt to take his hand away from the ball on feeling the contact.
“It was the responsibility of the referee and the linesmen” – yes, but the referee didn’t put the ball on Henry’s hand. And it’s the player’s responsibility not to cheat.
“The defenders stopped playing to protest” – true, but that just shows how honest they are.
“Ireland should have scored more” – they scored enough for penalties.
“Who says they deserved to go through?” – everyone, including the French, because Ireland were better over two legs – Domenech’s France are rubbish.
“Henry is basically an honest guy, etc”- if he’d said yes, it was handball, I had to do it for my country, I’m really sorry for the Irish, then okay, but he disdainfully passed the buck to the referee.
“It’s unfair that he should be remembered for that goal” – no, it would be unfair for Gallas to be remembered for that goal, and again, he could have made things easier for himself by not resorting to cowardice.
“He couldn’t possibly say anything at the time” – Robbie Fowler did.
“Keane handled as well” – he did, but he didn’t protest when the referee blew for handball, he just walked away.
“It’s happened before” – yes, but not with as much at stake on one particular moment.
“Move on, get over it” – God bless them, Ireland don’t get many chances.
“It’s overreacting” – as one BBC journalist said, the English STILL bring up Mexico and that was 23 years ago!
“The referee basically had a good game” – no he didn’t, the four handballs (on both sides) and the two atrocious French dives went uncarded.
And here’s a cliché to finish off with – “the French are so arrogant” – actually, they have been absolutely fabulous to the Irish. I live in Dublin and today met a huge number of French people who were anything but arrogant. Mind, it would have been a different story if it had been against England...

Thierry Henry is a cheat

Thierry Henry is a cheat and should be banned from the game.

The full penalty of the law 3

About time too. On hearing that Marlon King had been sent down - and why - Wigan chairman Dave Whelan did the decent thing and sacked the recidivist thug, vowing that he would never play for Wigan again. That's the right decision.

Unfortunately for football and for society King's agent Tony Finnigan has other ideas. He claims that King "has rights as a professional athlete", oblivious to the fact that women also have rights. "When you are a footballer you want to play football," he continued, ignoring the fact that when you are a woman you want to be able to go out and have a good time without being hassled by some violent misogynist.

Finnigan had more: "Let's say he does his time and comes out afterwards. Do you expect him to work for McDonald's? Someone will sign him to score goals." Believe me, he's going to do his time, no "let's say" about it. And when he comes out, society expects him to reform and keep his head down, not return to the £40,000-a-week salary which has probably contributed to making him feel he is above women and the law.

"This ain't a movie, this is real life. No-one expected this," he finished. Why didn't you expect it, Messrs King and Finnegan? Because you think women should just accept this treatment without complaint? Because you think women are objects to sexually assault at your will and then beat up when they refuse your advances?

Yes it is real life, and it's time both these men copped on to that fact. It's also time the relevant authorities did the same as Whelan and banned Finnigan from football. Nobody likes the Marlon Kings of this world, and nobody likes those who defend them.

How far will they go?

Now that we know the names of all but a few of the teams that are going to South Africa year, it would be interesting to know just how far they are prepared to go to win the competition. Will they give their all? Will they put their bodies on the line?

Will they cheat?

Whenever there is controversy in the World Cup, it always seems to surround the eventual winners, or at least the finalists:

1930 Uruguay-Argentina
In the first round Argentina kicked France to defeat with the referee’s blessing and then benefitted from more help from the referee against Mexico. In the semi-final Yugoslavia had a goal wrongly disallowed against the hosts at 2-1 down.

1954 West Germany-Hungary
In the first round Germany fielded a reserve side against Hungary in order to take advantage of the rules in operation at the time and play Turkey again and in the final there was a foul on the Hungarian keeper in Germany’s second goal and Hungary’s perfectly legitimate third goal was disallowed. Then of course there was the added advantage of Germany’s new boots – there was far less in the rule books about equipment then, so any changes were not available to all the competitors – and the controversy of the injections given to the German players has never been resolved either.

1966 England-West Germany
In the first round World Champions Brazil were eliminated by the English referees – this was the team that had won the previous two World Cups and would win the next one. In one quarter-final another superior South American team, Uruguay, was eliminated thanks to a phantom German goal, two red cards and of course an English referee. In another of the quarter-finals the German referee sent the Argentine captain off because he “didn’t like the way he had looked at him”. The semi-final venue was abruptly changed from Anfield to Wembley after England’s quarter-final victory to give the hosts a better chance of winning. And of course England won the final on the strength of another phantom goal.

1974 West Germany-Holland
There was more suspect English refereeing in the final, but by then both teams were there. Whether the better team won or not, however, is still open to debate.

1978 Argentina-Holland
In the second round a Peru team with an Argentine keeper, Ramón Quiroga, collapsed against their Argentine hosts, who needed four goals and were given six.

1982 Italy-West Germany
In the first round Cameroon had a legitimate goal disallowed and Italy went through on the strength of that goal, while Austria and Germany engineered a result with such bare-faced cheek that the fans booed their teams for the best part of ninety minutes.

1986 Argentina-West Germany
The Hand of God. Although the other goal...

1994 Brazil-Italy
In the quarter-final between Italy and Spain, with the Italians winning 2-1, Mauro Tassotti elbowed Luis Enrique in the face so hard that the Spaniard lost a pint of blood from his broken nose, FIFA banned the offender for eight matches and the Italian never played for Italy again. However, the referee gave no red card, no penalty and Italy went through.

1998 France-Brazil
In the first round Italy qualified top of the group through a highly controversial penalty against Chile, but fortunately their usual antics did not help them reach the final.

2002 Brazil-Germany
In the quarter-final the US were denied a penalty – and the Germans escaped a red card – after Germany’s Frings handled on the line with the score at 1-0.

2006 Italy-France
In the first round de Rossi was banned for 4 games for elbowing a US player; the US team was also denied a legal goal. In the next round the referee gave Italy as long as necessary to score against Australia (with the game locked at 0-0) then gifted them a penalty in the 95th minute. In the final France were denied a penalty in the 53rd minute at 1-1, and the rest is indeed history.

I’m writing this now in the hope that I can reach next summer’s tournament with the usual excitement and optimism. However, I fear that by the end of the month’s football I’ll be left feeling disgusted and betrayed when the usual suspects cheat their way to victory.

The wrong balls

As a Sunderland fan I found it quite amusing that we should beat Liverpool with such a controversial goal. It makes up for the times that we have lost because of the favouritism that referees show to bigger clubs.

However, credit must go to the Liverpool manager and fans that they did not harp on about the beach ball and indeed recognised that the beach ball had nothing to do with their not scoring during nearly one hundred minutes of football.

Now that the experts have answered the question raised about inanimate objects on the pitch - I'm back to the beach ball now, not the Liverpool display - there are a couple of other questions that have yet to be dealt with.

First of all, where did the referee find seven minutes of stoppage time in a second half with one yellow card and no deaths? Was this another case of a referee trying to atone for an earlier mistake, or was it just the usual gift to the bigger clubs when they haven't done their best?

Secondly, what on Earth was Glen Johnson doing? He did nothing about the beach ball, and he did even less about the shot, managing just a pathetic flick of the foot in defence of his goal. However, by far the worst part of his laziness - cowardice? - was the stance he adopted: both hands in front of his genitalia. Totally ignoring the two balls that lost Liverpool the points, he chose to cover his own. Instead of making himself big he curled up into a ball and gave Bent a free shot.

Now I don't care what happens to Liverpool, especially when they're playing Sunderland. But this guy wants to go to South Africa. Is he going to surrender a goal that easily at the World Cup? If that is the best we can do in that position, there is no chance of England's winning anything.

Falling off the wagon

Back in July I mentioned how football fatigue had got to me, and I said that the last match I had seen had been one of the CL semi-finals back at the start of May. I also said that I would be trying to ignore the football until the World Cup next summer, if I was allowed to do so, unless there was something at stake.

It’s only fair to admit how far I got. I watched the England-Croatia game, the final of the women’s European Championship between England and Germany, the Manchester United versus Besiktas game in the Champions’ League and the Everton versus AEK match in the Europa League.

There was something at stake in the England-Croatia game – qualification for the World Cup. However, more important than that was the fact that after four months without watching any football, I came to the game refreshed, and I finally felt a little bit of that excitement I used to feel as a child whenever England were going to be playing on the telly. The game was immense, but more than that I’m happy to have recovered just a fraction of that excitement.

There was most definitely something at stake in the other England game, and I enjoyed it as well – at least, I enjoyed it up until the point when I realised the boring, stuck-up German team and their unattractive football would prevail yet again.

The United-Besiktas game highlighted one important aspect of Premier League football. English fans claim to be the best in the world, but at the same time most of them claim that in recent years the grounds have changed and the clubs are trying to attract a different clientele. The Turkish crowd that night were without doubt the best fans I have ever seen in a football stadium, bar none. Manchester United generally play attractive football, but that night the real winners were the fans, and the match was worth watching just for that.

Everton’s demolition of the Greeks was also a joy to watch, because they played high-quality, high-energy football for the ninety minutes and never once appeared to be satisfied with the result. No diving, no pouting, no laziness. I hope they do well this season.

So it seems I was lucky in my choices – four excellent games with a lot to offer. However, I’m suspicious of such a good run. Maybe I’ll leave it for a while and come back to it in another four months. I’m sure it will be worth it.

Calling time on the cheats

I like children. They are normally much more fun than their parents, although admittedly I also know plenty of parents who are good fun too.

But if a child is running riot in a restaurant it is the parents’ responsibility to correct their behaviour. If the parents are arrogant enough to neglect that responsibility, if they refuse to see that their child is behaving in a manner which is inappropriate to the circumstances, then the owner of the restaurant should step in and ask the parents to act for the benefit of all the other diners.

I have nothing against Arsenal, I think Arsène Wenger is a fantastic coach who has brought many good things to the English game, and I shared the good feeling of fans everywhere when Eduardo came back from his horrific injury.

Opinions vary on Arsenal, as they do on every other club, player and coach in the game. Some people think Gerrard is the best English player of his generation while others would describe him as one-footed and predictable. Some fans believe Drogba is a magician on the pitch while others would say he is nothing more than a thug who relies on brute strength to mask his lack of skill. For some in the game, Ferguson is the greatest ever manager and a football genius the like of whom has never been seen, whereas for some he will always be the master only of mind games and intimidation.

Horses for courses. And some observers of the game would claim that all of the above have bent the rules at one point or another.

However, diving is cheating and everybody hates a cheat. If any player dives, regardless of who they are, they should be banned from playing (for whatever amount of games is considered appropriate). And they should be banned by their own coaches, especially as any player who has to resort to diving is obviously not good enough to hold down a place. And if the coach refuses to do right by the game, then the relevant governing body should step in and ban both player and coach.

More than grass roots development and sharing the cash around, eradicating cheating from the game is the most important challenge facing football right now. If we allow managers to protect cheats, we might as well give up on the game before all the trophies are viewed with suspicion and all the kids spend their careers throwing themselves to the ground in an effort to imitate their heroes.

North of the border

And when that’s done, Benfica, Sporting and Porto can join La Liga, OL can join the Bundesliga and Grasshopper Club can join Serie A. Will that do you?

South of the border

Here are some recent football results:

Celtic 0 Arsenal 2
Manchester City 2 Celtic 1
Portsmouth 2 Rangers 0
Wigan 3 St Mirren 1
Hearts 1 Sunderland 1
Bolton 0 Hibernian 0
Blackburn 0 Hibernian 0
Hearts 1 Bolton 1
Hull City 0 Aberdeen 1
St Johnstone 1 Burnley 0
Kilmarnock 1 Burnley 0
Rangers 3 Manchester City 2
Dundee United 2 Blackburn 0

Four wins for the English, five wins for the Scottish and four draws.

There is a well-established idea in English soccer that if Celtic and Rangers do go south of the border they will be no more than also-rans in the Premier League. This is generally accompanied by the widely-held belief that the majority of SPL teams would be on a par with the English Championship.

Essentially this belief stems from the fact that the Premier League is reputedly the best in the world, and certainly the richest. Added to this is the fact that the Championship is so strong, being one of the best supported leagues in the world and one of the richest too. The promotion fight is generally regarded as one of the most entertaining spectacles in football – just look at how many times the leadership has changed hands from week to week over the last few years.

However, the other side of this received wisdom is the poor opinion football fans in general have of Scottish football. The SPL is a two-horse joke; the national team is a laughing-stock. Scottish players couldn’t hit a barn door. Scottish goalkeepers are clowns. So if all those Scottish teams came down to play – note that no English fan would ever talk about it the other way round – they would be also-rans. Perhaps Celtic and Rangers would be in the Premier League (and destined for so-called mid-table obscurity), with maybe four or five clubs making the Championship and the rest in the lower leagues.

Where’s the evidence for this?

If it’s a question of money, then undoubtedly the English clubs are much better off. Well, the dozen or so that have received massive cash injections from new owners are better off – but plenty of clubs in England are in dire financial straits. The PL itself is supposedly rife with debt. The SPL has just this year had to re-adjust its budget due to the huge loss of earnings from television rights, but if they were to play in England they would receive a greater share of television money. Foreign investors seem to prefer English clubs, but if all the clubs played in the same league then some rich businessmen would be sure to take a punt on teams from Scotland. Attendances are lower in Scotland, but they would undoubtedly rise given new opposition. After a few seasons there would hardly be any difference between your average Scottish club and your average English one. And in terms of quality, they have Elgin City and East Stirling, but we have Carlisle United and Rochdale.

Population is often cited as an important factor in football success. A mid-2007 estimate of the respective populations of the two countries in question had England with exactly ten times more people: 51 million to 5.1 million. The 2001 census had Glasgow in third place with about 630,000 people, Edinburgh seventh with around 430,000 people and Aberdeen twenty-ninth with some 185,000 people in the city. Falkirk has around 34,000 people; in Annan, there are barely more than 8,000 souls.

However, Birmingham is a city with a population just shy of a million people (with Coventry and Wolverhampton the Midlands boasts another 550,000) whereas Manchester has fewer than 400,000 people and evidently United are far more successful than both Birmingham clubs and all the other Midlands clubs put together. Newcastle, Northampton, Portsmouth, Luton, Preston and Milton Keynes have similar populations and not even the most ardent anti-mag could try to claim that Northampton or Luton Town have been anywhere near as successful as Newcastle United. Northampton supports a successful rugby union team, but then so does Newcastle. And the population of London supports successful clubs like Arsenal and Chelsea but Brentford and Leyton Orient also manage to survive.

Population doesn’t mean much if people aren’t going to the game every weekend. The list of average attendances for clubs in the 2007-2008 season has Manchester United first with about 75,000 fans, Arsenal seventh with c.60,000, Celtic eighth with c.58,000, Rangers fifteenth with c.50,000 and no other Scottish clubs in a top hundred which boasted fifteen PL teams, nine Championship teams and three who are now in Division One. Evidently English clubs attract more fans – but that would mean more fans in Scottish grounds too if the clubs were mixed together.

Perhaps there is only one way to judge how the Scottish clubs would fare – with results. Last night Arsenal beat Celtic in a Champions’ League qualifier with a deflected goal (off somebody’s humpback) and an own goal. Hardly the stuff of legend, for all the supposed superiority of the London club and previous to last night’s meeting the Scots came out slightly better in the usual pre-season friendly matches.

The usual attitude with friendly games is that if you lose it was an irrelevant event, but if you win important omens can be seen in the result. But is there such a thing as a friendly between an English club and a Scottish club, especially with this argument as the ever-more-important constant backdrop? No. However, if you insist, we’ll look at results that mean something.

In spite of the fact that the lack of competition in Scotland leads to fewer England/Scotland ties in Europe, there have been fifty-nine games including last night’s. So far England have recorded 29 wins to Scotland’s 13, with 17 draws. Not too impressive. But most of those games were in the sixties. From the 1997-1998 season up to last night’s kick-off the record reads England 4 Scotland 4 with 4 draws. Looks a little different, doesn’t it?

Of course you can’t really compare games from European trophies either because access to European competitions is based on the very assumption that this article is trying to question, that Scottish league football isn’t as good. Those twelve most recent games involved only two clubs, and ten of the ties involved only one, Celtic. And friendly games over the past couple of seasons have thrown up some strange results between some even stranger starting elevens.

This lop-sidedness in Scottish football makes two clubs richer and the gap ever wider. We’re back to money again. And it’s not just the big European leagues that make more money, even the Mexican first division and the J-League earn considerably more income than the SPL, and now with the Setanta affair the money will be even tighter. Crucially, the Championship earns more too, and indeed earns more than most countries’ top flights. And money does bring more talent and better facilities. Reputation is an important factor too, and brings in important TV revenues, which have been the thing that has set the PL apart from the rest for well over a decade now.

But again, if the clubs were mixed together the reputation would be for all of them, and the kudos, and the cash. At the end of the day the Scottish clubs may start off at a disadvantage but they would soon reap the benefits and would pull level.

The only way to find out is to put the leagues together and let them sort it out on the pitch. And in twenty years’ time come back and we’ll look at the statistics again.

The million dollar question

There seems to be no greater bugbear to the modern football supporter than seeing another team trying to buy success. Not even diving dandies or Scandinavian referees will provoke the bile of the average fan as much as the prospect of one team spending £100 million of one man’s money in an attempt to buy some silverware.

The two clubs that attract most contempt are Chelsea and Manchester City, but this phenomenon is by no means limited to England. Contrary to the belief of those who seem to think it’s confined to dark blues and sky blues rich men all around the world buy their way into football clubs in an attempt to buy glory that can’t be found in the business world – Patrice Motsepe and Mamelodi Sundowns, Xu Ming and Dalian Shide, Fernando Roig and Villarreal, the Tanzi family and Parma, Sergio Cragnotti and Lazio, Bernard Tapie and Olympique Marseille, Dietmar Hopp and Hoffenheim. Why buy another jet if you can buy a shiny bit of silverware?

This habit isn’t even something rare in England, where Liverpool, Manchester United, Aston Villa, West Ham United, Sunderland, Wolverhampton Wanderers, Blackburn Rovers, Derby County and Wigan Athletic are among the many clubs that have benefitted from a cash injection from some rich admirer over the last fifteen years or so. Neither is it a tendency exclusive to the Premier League as Peterborough United, Ipswich Town, Brighton etc, MK Dons, Darlington, Reading and even Truro City will testify.

Everyone’s done it – so what’s the problem? Perhaps the only people who don’t like it are those whose clubs have been overlooked by the sugar daddies. Or maybe there’s a hierarchy of preference – Irish money isn’t as good as English money, but it’s better than American money, which in turn is better than the Russians. And anything’s better than the Arabs, apparently.

Whatever the problem is, there is certainly a degree of snobbery involved – Arsenal’s shiny new stadium found no disapproval, and neither will Liverpool’s, whereas Manchester City’s flashy new signings, or attempted signings, are roundly criticised on every forum and in every journalist’s article. It’s as if there was a typically English class system at play in football. People talk of Arsenal’s financial stability and ignore the financial situation that Liverpool’s owners will have the club in of they go ahead with the new ground. “Financial stability” masks the snobbery about new money. Especially Arab money, apparently.

Let’s face it, when someone offers £200 million for your club, should the owner say no? And should the supporters say no? Even huge clubs like Newcastle are not exempt from trouble. Lifelong fans of Luton Town, Bournemouth, Rotherham, Chester City and a host of other car crash clubs will tell you that they would have loved somebody to come in with a huge wad of cash and save their clubs. Football is business because ever since the dawn of time somebody will make anything into business. Where there’s a demand for money there’s a supply. And football is about community, and too many towns have seen their team practically disappear because they had no money.

The other side to this story is whether or not money really can buy success. The universally reviled Chelsea and Manchester City appear to demonstrate the two different possibilities. In 2003 Roman Abramovich bought the companies which owned Chelsea and the club went on to win three Premier League titles, (finishing as runners-up three times too), two FA Cups, two League Cups and reach a Champions’ League final. While some would argue that the revival started in the late nineties with two European trophies and the influence of Vialli, Zola and Gullit, followed by excellent managers in Ranieri and Mourinho, there can be no doubt that money has played a part.

Manchester City were taken over by the Abu Dhabi United Group in September 2008, and while the Group have poured astronomical amounts of money into the club the players have as yet done nothing impressive. Of course impatience is yet another aspect of this financial phenomenon.

What about other clubs that have been blessed with rich benefactors? Cragnotti’s Lazio won one league title (and were twice runners-up), three Italian cups, two Italian Super Cups, the European Cup Winners’ Cup, the European Super Cup, and reached the UEFA Cup final, while Parma collected two UEFA Cups, the European Cup Winners’ Cup, the European Super Cup, two Italian cups, the Italian Super Cup and were runners-up in Serie A.

However, when Franny Lee moved in to Manchester City – there’s that club again – they dropped to the third division for the first time in their history. Randy Lerner’s Aston Villa, Jack Walkers’s Blackburn, Lionel Pickering’s Derby County and Jack Hayward’s Wolves did absolutely nothing compared to their earlier glories. John Madejski’s Reading came up but went back down again. Darlington ended up with a luxury stadium they can’t fill and George Reynolds ended up in prison.

Real Madrid are not bankrolled by one person, but Florentino’s first project was an abject failure compared to their gilt-edged past, while Sunderland – first with the Drumaville Consortium then Ellis Short have had poured money in and simply went from the depths of the Championship to the depths of the Premier League, and although it’s a miracle they didn’t drop straight down, the rise is generally regarded as being due to Keano’s management. (Sorry, that was the only way I was ever going to see Sunderlandnil in the same paragraph as Real Madrid!)

Success is relative, as the proud recent history of Wigan Athletic, Truro City and Villareal shows, and patience is essential for Brighton, Ipswich, Peterborough, MK Dons and the other newly blessed, but none of them can claim to have bought a stack of silverware with their rich daddies’ money.

If you want success, take Liverpool – Gillett and Hicks may have come in with their money in 2007 but Liverpool is a club that wins things with people, not money. Or have a look at Manchester United – the Glazers may have bought the club, but United were winners under Busby and have been winners again since Ferguson arrived. Again, money not people.

Your club will be more likely to enjoy success with the right people at the top. Herbert Chapman brought Arsenal their first period of success and Huddersfield their only success, Ferguson revived a despondent Manchester United, Bill Nicholson made Spurs great and Bill Shankly made Liverpool great. And they certainly weren’t swimming in cash.

So maybe cash isn’t the route to success. But we shouldn’t criticise a club for suddenly becoming the object of desire of some rich entrepreneur. Perhaps the fans object because they themselves are generally not rich people and do not wish to be treated as little rich boys by association when their club comes into money - it's considered more noble to struggle through life like Rochdale. But none of them would knock back a lottery win.

Of course there is a danger that the money is in the hands of the wrong man (Reynolds, Ridsdale, Shinawatra etc) – but this alone does not justify our being against a cash injection. There is also the argument about how money at the top starves those at the bottom – all the more reason why clubs outside the “top four”, and indeed outside the Premier League, should be allowed a piece of the billionaires’ pie too.

And we should stop behaving as if this was an exclusively modern problem because money has been a contentious issue in football from the very birth of the game as we know it. Accusations of professionalism levelled at Preston North End in 1884 opened a can of worms – Bolton, Villa and Sunderland were also paying their players – but the solution was not only easy, it was to the benefit of all. Just go with it and see what happens.

A really nice man

Bobby Robson was many things, all great, but the best of all was that he was simply a really nice man. There’s not many of them around, and Bobby will be sadly missed by everyone.

Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's ass

Cork City are to be wound up. Shelbourne lost their Premier League license in 2007 after five titles in six titles and in spite of reaching the third round of the UEFA Cup. Derry City suffered the possibility of going out of existence between 2000 and 2004 before finally raising the necessary money. Drogheda United went into examinership in late 2008 and had ten points deducted before the supporters finally managed to pull the club back from the brink. In 2005 Shamrock Rovers entered examinership and were also saved at the last moment by the fans.

And so on, and so forth. True, in some cases the problems have come from the usual property developers, disputes with local councils and incompetent financial management, and granted, the fans have saved some of the clubs – Bohemians is another club to be owned totally by its supporters. However, the fundamental reason behind the precarious position of Irish football clubs is the fact that the majority of Irish soccer fans pour money into the coffers of English clubs and ignore their local teams while they go bust.

I say English clubs quite deliberately. Everyone in Ireland has a soft spot for Glasgow Celtic, but there is a very real historical reason for that support and a very real connection between Ireland and (most of) Glasgow. At the end of the day Celtic is every Irish fan’s second club, whether they are the true fans who follow Irish clubs or the plastic fans who want to get close to England’s ass.

Let’s just pause a moment and consider what we are talking about. Do all French fans follow German teams? Do all Norwegian fans follow Swedish clubs? So why on Earth does the majority of Ireland follow clubs from some foreign neighbour?

Fans here will tell you that it is the result of the high number of Irish people who left to work in England, but as I have said before there are many Scottish people in England and they wouldn’t be seen dead supporting an English club. Others mention the huge Irish population of Liverpool, but there are infinitely more Irishmen or descendants of Irishmen in New York and nobody wants to follow the New York Red Bulls. Some people will talk about the number of Irish players who have crossed the water, but if that was the real reason then the fans would all have been following Reading for the last few seasons. Admittedly a lot of Irish people started following Sunderlandnil recently, but we don’t want them because they are not real fans – they don’t want the football, they just want the glory (!).

This phenomenon used to be confined to Liverpool and maybe Manchester United, but since the explosion of the Premier League you will see Leeds United shirts, Everton and Spurs colours, and Chelsea or Arsenal stickers on cars. I mean, what does Tottenham have to do with Ireland?

To a certain extent though, the fans could be said to be just following their instincts as well as the smell of success. Who wouldn’t abandon unfashionable clubs and jump on the bandwagon of rich men and silverware if somebody promised you eternal glory? It’s like the weak-willed man who is approached by a stunning woman dressed only in expensive perfume. His wife will be forgotten until he gets his trousers back on, and even then he’ll only be thinking up some justification which will involve blaming his wife for his own fall from faithfulness.

The modern television version of top-flight English football is a painted harlot that lures weak-willed foreign fans with expensive perfume with no thought of the damage she does to other women by sleeping with their husbands. The TV companies and the clubs and the governing bodies would argue that they are simply doing business but they don’t seem willing to recognise that with power and money comes a huge responsibility.

I’ll put it another way – it’s like that huge hypermarket that suddenly moves in down the road and puts all the small shops out of business. The hypermarket has every right to be there, and if the entrepreneur has enough money to build it, well fair play, but where will we be without all those small local shops? And what about the people who lose their jobs? Surely a person in the same business should accept that they have a certain responsibility towards fellow shopkeepers, and surely the Premier League and the TV companies should think about weaker leagues in neighbouring countries.

Smaller leagues the world over find themselves in more and more trouble as the global fan base chooses to follow the glittering prize of the Premier League, and as with all other aspects of the modern globalised economy the gap will not be closing any time soon. And there is no doubt that those fans would follow their own teams if they were more successful – remember the reception the Irish fans gave their boys in the Phoenix Park in 2002? – but success cannot be bought if the money is flooding into England.

It’s high time Irish fans started supporting their own home-town clubs instead of fawning over the English, but it’s also high time English football took a look at the effect it has on smaller leagues around the world, if for no other reason because eventually the money will dry up. And then no-one will give a damn about another tiny little nation on the edge of the world.

Boring, boring ...

It’s ages since I watched a game of football, and I suspect if I asked you to guess which one, you wouldn’t get it. It was, in fact, the first 85 minutes of the second leg of the Chelsea-Barcelona affair. There was a film starting at 9.30 on another channel and I hate missing the start of films. Besides, after Chelsea had failed to capitalise on their dominance (and the referee had made a series of bizarre decisions) I just knew that Barcelona would sneak it at the end so I turned over in disgust.

After that, I didn’t watch any more games for the rest of the season. No Premier League or other divisions, including the usually exciting play-off finals or Newcastle United’s compelling car crash of a season finale. No UEFA Cup final, FA Cup final or even the Champions League final.

The reasons are varied. Sunderlandnil rarely play live anyway and I’m not a Newcastle fan, or for that matter a supporter of any of the play-off teams, so I didn’t watch the domestic games. I never really watch the UEFA Cup final anyway unless there’s a British club playing; I’m certainly not interested in German teams or Ukrainian teams, and to be honest I can’t actually remember who exactly played in this year’s final. I was in Galway for the Ocean Volvo Race on Cup Final day, and I have to say that it was spectacularly good in every way, much better than 99% of football matches, so I was never going to waste such amazing weather sat in a sweaty pub.

As for the CL final, I watched a Russell Crowe film on DVD (“A good year” – not bad, especially with a good red in your hand). Again, I had a sneaking suspicion that Barcelona would win and the thought disgusted me to the extent that I couldn’t bring myself to watch. However, there was another reason much more fundamental than my dislike of that awful club, and it was the same reason that made me look for alternatives for all those other games too.

I was bored to tears of bloody football.

I can still remember intense feelings from my childhood – running onto the grass at Carr Lane Rec with my first ever pair of football boots and a composite ball in school PE lessons, or taking a brand new football out in thick snow and playing anyway. I can recall with perfect clarity being allowed to take the radio to bed if there were midweek games past my bedtime and listening to exotic names like Gothenburg and Besiktas, and I remember all those FA Cup final days and my mother draping coloured ribbons over the TV set for one team or the other. And I can remember oh so keenly the excitement that would build up before every England game.

Those feelings disappeared long ago, not just because I’m touching forty but because football isn’t the same as it used to be. Yes, I know, the world moves on and life changes and certain things stay in childhood so they can be cherished even more, but it doesn’t alter the fact that I don’t like the way football has gone. Television – and television money – has taken football away from one type of fans and given it to another. And while I have absolutely nothing in common with those fans, I can’t claim that it is necessarily their fault.

Quite simply, there is too much football. There are live games seven days a week, with four of five games some days, and the news programmes and the newspapers and the internet are constantly bombarding us with more information that we don’t really need or want. On top of that, any prick can just start up a football blog and think the world really gives a damn what he thinks!

I remember one time I went to my local Irish pub in the centre of Madrid for a full Irish and a read of the Saturday paper. I got there at lunchtime – obviously a perfectly respectable time to be having breakfast – and sat in front of the 12.45 (UK time) game. Then I stayed to watch the 3 o’clock game. Then I decided I’d order some chips and dips and catch the 5.15 game too. Before that had even finished the Spanish games started, one at eight o’clock (their time) and another at ten. This football marathon finished at midnight. Twelve hours and five games of football after going into the pub I fell out into the street feeling like I’d eaten the entire contents of Willy Wonka’s factory. It had nothing to do with alcohol because I hardly drink – I was just sick of football.

That was towards the end of 2004, but I have to say that the problem had already been going on for some time. Funnily enough, I never tired of Spanish football, only the English game, and since moving to Ireland and it’s been getting steadily worse. So last season, come the business end of things, I was bored silly with the stupid game, the know-alls, the pundits and most especially the constant, never-ending, unavoidable, Orwellian coverage.

The result is that I’ve not watched a game since the 6th of May, and right now I am not feeling that pre-season excitement creeping up on me like I used to years ago. So I’ve decided not to watch any football – if the self-important brain-dead television executives allow me – until there is really something to play for. No pointless summer tournaments, no meaningless opening clashes, no muddy mid-table hoofing and no semi-finals, because next summer is the first African World Cup, and I would really like to enjoy the World Cup like I used to.

There’s another victim of modern football – the World Cup used to be every four years, now it seems like it’s every day.

The full penalty of the law part 2

You’re caught on CCTV, you admit you did it...but the court finds you not guilty. The British justice system is sending out a very clear message there.

Can only bad players be great coaches?

Last season English football threw up more than the usual crop of surprises, not least on the managerial front. United legends Roy Keane and Paul Ince shared a huge number of headlines, with the Corkman walking out on Sunderlandnil and his former club-mate Ince raging about the injustice of being young, gifted and English.

At the other end of the scale, one-time average footballer Alex Ferguson won yet more trophies while the formerly unspectacular Arséne Wenger again put out some of the most exciting teams in the Premier League. All of these facts combined to apparently confirm the widely-held belief in English football that great footballers can never become great managers, and in order to be a top manager it’s better to have been average at best as a player.

But is this really true? Top managers win trophies, so the obvious place to start looking is the list of managers who have won the most prestigious club trophy, the European Cup. Rinus Michels, Johan Cruijff, Jupp Heynckes, Vicente del Bosque, Frank Rijkaard and Pep Guardiola fly in the face of this theory by being legendary players who have won Europe’s top trophy. Other winners who were pretty handy players include Jock Stein, Matt Busby, Ernst Happel, Bob Paisley, Brian Clough, Giovanni Trapattoni, Emerich Jenei, Artur Jorge, Fabio Capello and Carlo Ancelotti.

That leaves only about half the winners in the “average player” category. Problem is that that category does include the likes of Helenio Herrera, Guus Hiddink, Louis van Gaal, Jose Mourinho and Rafa Benítez – who without doubt are top managers – whereas among the others there are one-hit wonders such as Rijkaard and Heynckes (only three major trophies each). Perhaps the theory is true after all.

From the list of UEFA Cup-winning managers a similar pattern emerges. Playing legends such as Dino Zoff and Franz Beckenbauer have won the trophy, alongside reasonably good former players such as Paul van Himst, Huub Stevens, Fatih Terim, Valery Gazzaev and Mircea Lucescu as well as the aforementioned Paisley and Trapattoni, and while the majority of the winning managers were average players, the category does include top managers such as Bill Nicholson, Bill Shankly, Bobby Robson, Sven-Göran Eriksson, Gérard Houllier and Dick Advocaat.

Having said that – although far be it from me to call these people one-hit wonders – legends Zoff and Beckenbauer do only have five major trophies between them, and by the same token Keith Burkinshaw, Klaus Ribbeck, Ottavio Bianchi, Luigi Simoni, Alberto Malesani and Bert van Marwijk were hardly world-beating managers. So we need to look at some more facts.

A look at the World Cup-winning managers simply confuses the issue. Of the seventeen winning coaches, eight never won more than that one trophy (although what a trophy to win!) and therefore it could be argued that they were not really top-flight career managers in the mould of Ferguson or Wenger. On top of that, at least three of the seventeen never played professionally, which shows that these statistics cannot be used in the same way as with the European trophies.

Just as an aside, it is interesting to note how many top managers especially early in the game’s development never played football but were seen as managers – possibly in the business sense – when they entered the game. Perhaps the most striking modern example of this breed of manager is Arrigo Sacchi, who never played the game professionally and indeed worked as a shoe salesman before going into football management.

The question of whether success as a player can be a help or a hindrance can also be looked at from a different angle, of course, that of top players rather than trophy-winning managers. Of the top seventeen names on the IFFHS list of best players ever – the top of this list at least contains more or less the right names, even if the order is eternally debatable – Zidane (you missed him out guys but don’t worry, I’ll stick him in for you), Pelé, George Best, Garrincha and Eusébio never managed while Michel Platini, Bobby Charlton, Stanley Matthews and Gerd Müller barely passed through a manager’s office. (Müller has never managed beyond second-team level while Matthews even oversaw the disaster of Port Vale’s being expelled from the league!) Maradona could also fit into the second category, as in effect he has barely had a chance to tell his assistant how he likes his coffee.

Of the rest, Alfredo di Stefano won five trophies – one of which admittedly was the European Cup-Winners’ Cup – but Zico’s five were harvested in Japan, Turkey, Uzbekistan and Russia, Puskás’ four in Greece and Australia, Lothar Matthäus’ paltry two were won in Serbia and Austria while Ruud Gullit has a solitary F.A. Cup. Oh, and Marco van Basten only succeeded in annoying everyone as Dutch coach.

Maybe the key lies here. I have just mentioned the greatest players ever to have played the game, better even than the great names I mentioned at the start, and they have never achieved more greatness as coaches. And a quick look at the equivalent list for managers reveals the other side of the coin – the only playing legend in the top twenty-five is “Franklin” Rijkaard.

This is the stuff from which clichés are made – in-your-face statistics about massive names become convenient sound bites for fat blokes in pubs to sound knowledgeable and have the last word. Ferguson and Wenger never amounted to much as players, Keano and Rice choked as managers.

However, I think it’s fair to say that after a more in-depth look at the facts that this theory is only half true – some good players become good managers, and some people should leave the game and take up crochet. But as with everything else in football half-truths and big names are extrapolated to become the whole; they are enough when you want to make a point.

One thing is for sure, the players we know as great now will never be given the chance to succeed in the modern climate where coaches are sacked after only a few games. Part of the success of Ferguson and Wenger lies in the fact that they were allowed to build their own destiny.

As for the English, how did our managers fare? Glenn Hoddle at number 26, Kevin Keegan at 97, Bobby Robson at 105. Thank God Capello’s at number twenty. Hang on, who’s that at number five?

How much?

In January it was announced in the press that Manchester City would bid around £100 million for Kaká. They didn’t, of course, they had nothing more than initial talks; it was just that the lower end of the journalistic market had inserted the “c” word (could) that they use all the time to make enough news to keep people interested in their bog roll newspapers.

And of course the media in general then replied to the “news” with rolled eyes and much self-righteous indignation and hands thrown in the air in shock at such an obscene figure. Not a day went by in January without an article or a journalist’s blog on the terrible state of the game and the lack of morals of the Manchester club.

Six months later Real Madrid are said to have offered a similar figure for Ronaldo – the one with no sense of balance as opposed to the one with no career left. So far there has been no shocked reaction on the usual internet sites, and it will be interesting to see if the papers tomorrow carry the same articles they printed in January – will they dare to talk about Real Madrid and Manchester United with the same disdain they showed for Manchester City and their Arab owners?

Of course there is no denying that the figure is obscene. No footballer is worth that amount, especially not in the current climate that the rest of us are living through. Let’s face it, this week £100 million will buy you an entire club.

My country is my club

I know quite a few Real Madrid supporters. Some of them I would even call friends, not in the modern social way but in the true sense, the traditional sense of being prepared to do anything for them at the drop of a hat and knowing I can rely on them to do the same. With regard to their being madridistas, well, there but for the grace of God go I, let he who is without sin cast the first stone, and so on. I imagine I should be as forgiving of their sins as they are of mine.

However, some of my lilywhite friends went one step too far last Wednesday evening for the Champions’ League final, a game I forsook in favour of an obscure but excellent film about Dylan Thomas. They decided to support Barcelona. I am not referring to what the plastic fans around me have done in jumping on the Barça bandwagon just because the team is fashionable; I mean they actually wanted them to win.

The explanation was simple: Catalonia IS Spain. They wanted the total number of Spanish European Cups to go up, and they didn’t care who won the tin pot on offer. And this is what I cannot fathom because the simple fact of the matter is that the Champions’ League is a club competition and as such has nothing to do with nationality.

How could you sit down and watch the match with these fans? The rules have been completely changed and you are on a totally different wavelength from these other fans; their attitude towards the game would have been far too confusing to be able to follow the action without a profound sense of something being wrong. In short, you are watching the Champions’ League and they are watching the World Cup.

I know that all English fans want English football to be the best in the world, but I am convinced that there was not one Manchester City, Liverpool, Arsenal or Chelsea fan rooting for United that night. I don’t like Liverpool FC. When Liverpool played in the two finals against AC Milan I was rooting for Milan both times. As it happens in 2005, when Milan started to bottle it and the amateur Liverpool team, in spite of the best efforts of Alonso and García to throw it away, won the cup, I tried to find consolation in the fact that English football had another trophy. It didn’t work. And nobody cares anyway.

In club football there are no half measures. You always support your own club, always and forever, and you always hate your rivals. There is no truce. The only ceasefire is when the national team plays, but woe betide a player from a rival club should he make a mistake. If your country wins a game, it will be in spite of that rival. If the rival player scores the winning goal, it will be because of the pass from your club’s player. It is widely accepted as true that certain players – from certain clubs – cannot play on the same team.

In fairness to the Spanish, they have always been more than complimentary about English fans, who they invariably describe in their sporting press as the most passionate in the world. Now I understand what they mean.

Also in fairness to the Spanish, they are incredibly good at football – in fact they are much better than the English. And their national team, full of Real Madrid players and FC Barcelona players, won the last European Championship. England never win anything. Perhaps now I understand why that is too.

Newcastle United: second floor, going down

On Sunday Newcastle United – arguably one of the biggest clubs in English football – were relegated to the Championship after sixteen years of PL football, including six seasons of UEFA Cup football and two jaunts in the Champions’ League. If they do not come straight back up – and with the laughable situation at the top of the club and the woeful set of players who wear the shirt there is very little chance of their doing so – they should be worried.

Just weeks before Newcastle’s relegation, three former PL clubs were relegated from the Championship to the third tier of English football, continuing a worrying trend of top-flight clubs becoming third-class clubs in the blinking of an eye. Norwich, remember spent four seasons in the PL and played in the UEFA Cup, while Southampton and Charlton spent thirteen and eight seasons at the top respectively.

Bigger clubs than these three have come a cropper too. Leeds United spent twelve seasons in the PL with two seasons in the CL and five in the UEFA Cup, Manchester City eleven seasons, Sheffield Wednesday and Leicester City eight apiece (with one and two seasons in the UEFA Cup respectively), Nottingham Forest five (with one UEFA Cup season) and QPR four. So far the only one of these teams to return to the top division is Manchester City.

It’s not all pessimism though – Nottingham Forest were the team that took the longest to climb back out of the third tier, doing so after four years, but QPR spent just three seasons down there while Sheffield Wednesday went up after two seasons and Manchester City and Leicester did it in only one. Leeds will hope for some better luck in their third season in the third tier after two years of play-off heartbreak. At least it can be said that there is a definite split between 6th in Division Two upwards and 7th downwards.

Leeds perhaps are a case apart, and their rise and fall have been well documented in recent years. In spite of the financial controversy surrounding clubs like Southampton and QPR, it could not be claimed that any of the clubs above have been in the same situation as Leeds. However, one thing which does link all these clubs is the lack of coherence in the policy of choosing and keeping managers.

Since October 2006 Norwich have had five managers, Charlton have had four managers in the last three years and this century just about everyone has had a go at St Mary’s, including otherwise successful managers such as Gordon Strachan and Harry Redknapp.

With reference to the other clubs that fell from grace, it was the same situation. From August 1993 to their return to the top flight, Manchester City enjoyed the expertise of nine managers, including the likes of Peter Reid and Steve Coppell. From the sacking of Trevor Francis in May 1995 onwards Sheffield Wednesday have had fourteen managers, including men like David Pleat, Ron Atkinson and Paul Jewell. QPR have had ten managers so far this century.

Between 1896 and November 1994 Leicester City had twenty-six managers; since then they have had twenty more in fifteen years, including Martin O’Neill (1 League Cup, top-half finishes every season and two seasons in Europe). Nottingham Forest have had as many managers in the PL era as they had in the previous 100 years. And Leicester and QPR have had to contend with changes in ownership too.

Now let’s look at Newcastle United. Numerous permutations of ownership in the last decade. Three different chairmen in two years. Four managers this season alone. And as Shay Given remarked when he left the club, the back four has had more changes than the axe that killed Anne Boleyn.

In a sense it could be said that teams generally bounce when they hit the ground; West Brom, Birmingham City and Sunderlandnil are clear examples. The drop is so sudden for some clubs that they just need to drop a little further before they bounce back up. They just need a little longer to sort themselves out before climbing out of their problems.

However, the situation in which Newcastle United find themselves is frightening to say the least, and only a radical change at a fundamental level will enable the club to turn itself round. Either that or a spell in Division Two.

The strength of Frank Lampard

I’ve never met Frank Lampard. As with any other famous person, people look at Lampard on the television and judge him from afar. Some people love him, others hate him. For some it’s a question of colours, while others are able to see past the shirt and see, well, the bloke underneath.

I am no different from anyone else who follows football in that I also hold opinions on the players. I wasn’t at all impressed with Lampard the footballer in the 2006 World Cup, for example; on the other hand I felt a tremendous surge of affection for the man when he broke down after dedicating his goal to his late mother.

On the 24th April a London DJ called James O’Brien decided to judge Lampard for allegedly abandoning his children to a poorer lifestyle, calling him “weak” and “scum”. Lampard responded to the DJ live on the show, and the conversation was replayed time and again on various websites.

During the conversation O’Brien mentioned the “nature of the job” – but it isn’t the nature of his job to insult people, and it is the nature of his job to check facts and give the right to reply before calling somebody names. He also stated that “sixty million people can’t ring Frank Lampard” – indeed they can’t, but he could, and if the people can’t then all the more reason to check the facts first in order to avoid misleading the listeners.

O’Brien also stated that he would fight “tooth and flipping nail” so as not to allow his family to be split up – I have no reason to doubt that he would, but that doesn’t alter the fact that some couples separate and even divorce. I’m sure those couples – including the Lampards –also fight to keep their family together, but it isn’t always possible as any mature person will understand.

Many of the news websites that carried the story described the conversation as an “outburst”, Lampard as “furious” and the situation as being one in which the player “lost his cool” – but hearing the conversation I would say that he went nowhere near the red mist that has been described in the press. There was no ranting and raving, no raised voices or swearwords. He was calm and articulated his feelings well.

For what it is worth – and Frank Lampard needn’t give a damn what I think about anything – the man behaved with maturity and dignity, and as I am as guilty as the next person of judging from afar, I have to say Lampard has gone up in my estimation.

Like I said, I’ve never met Frank Lampard. I’ve never met James O’Brien either, but the difference is that I’ve heard of Lampard. Perhaps that’s the point – now O’Brien has had his fifteen minutes of fame.

Bring on the new rivalry

So, now the dust has settled on those Champions’ League semi-finals – it seems like yesterday that the draw was made and we were all excited about the prospect of four stunning matches; the impression that time is passing too fast is too vivid to ignore – and it is time to comment on the most intriguing aspect of the games.

Which referee?

I was referring to the comments made by Ferguson and Wenger before the first leg of their tie. Here’s a quote from Arsène: “I believe we have a better relationship now.” Here’s one from Sir Alex: “Arsène has always kept his principles the same and I think that’s great credit to him.”

What?

This is starting to sound like one of those American films where two curmudgeonly auld wans find themselves stuck in the same room at the home and spend two hours of celluloid trying to out-grump each other before finally, touchingly, begrudgingly breaking into a smile because they’ve finally cottoned on to the fact that nobody gives a flying twat anyway. Say, Clint and Morgan and some young thing who’s the granddaughter of one of them. And lots of pithy one-liners leading up to the anticlimactic climax where one of them dies and the other admits that we’re all only human anyway.

Have Ferguson and Wenger finally learned to grudgingly respect each other? Have they finally reached their dotage? If so, it takes half the fun out of the Premier League. Nothing interesting happens in the world of football on a Thursday or a Friday – no, the UEFA Cup is not interesting – so what better way to spice up the weekend than the latest back and forth of poisoned darts between two managers who apparently hate each other?

Bring on the new rivalries. But which ones? Wolves have made it back up at last, just in time for The Dour One to glimpse Keano running down the back stairs and into the Championship at Ipswich. Alex McLeish and Martin O’Neill have the chance to renew their former Old Firm rivalry, but there’s no evidence they hate each other. If Burnley make it up Owen Coyle will have the chance to take on David Moyes, but again there’s no evidence that they have anything but the utmost respect for each other.

Neil Warnock is still in the Championship with Palace; Alan Pardew is nowhere to be seen. Jose Mourinho probably won’t come back until there is a big enough vacancy. Of course, Arsenal haven’t won anything for four years, they were humiliated by United in the CL semi-final and the pressure is on Wenger. Is Arsenal big enough for Mourinho? If so, that might bring a bit of much-needed spice back to the Premier League.

Who are the real fans?

I support Sunderlandnil, and I always have done since my granddad and mother told me what it meant when I was still at infants’ school. At the moment they play in the Premier League, but in my lifetime the team that once held the record of consecutive top-flight seasons dropped as low as the third level. Hardly the same as trying to support the ‘Dale, for example, but nevertheless it is considered “supporting a real club” when your weekly dose of football is at best disappointing and occasionally rather distressing.

Does that make me a real supporter? I could claim to be, because I still support my home- town club and have easily resisted the lure of the silverware the big clubs win year after year. I understand the suffering and disappointment and the humiliation of breaking negative records.

Of course, season ticket holders have a claim as being the true ‘real supporters’, because whether they stayed in their home town or not they make the effort to go to every game, although inevitably, those who go to every game, home and away, will also claim to be the genuine article. Then those fans who do that and volunteer in the club shop will step up, and so on.

I work in Dublin, and in my workplace (which is predominantly female and non-football supporting) there are two Liverpool supporters, one Manchester United supporter, a Chelsea fan (admittedly from years back) and even a Spurs fan. However, I am the only English man in the company, and there is also one Scot. The Scot, from Glasgow, is an ardent Celtic fan (“I’m not prejudiced at all, I don’t care who beats Rangers”) and I support my home-town club too. What excuse do the Irish have? They debate the minutiae of the weekend’s matches as if it really had anything to do with them, as if they had any right at all to call themselves supporters of a club in a city that they may never even have visited. Sure, they go on about the number of Irish players who have gone to England – but many more Scottish players have done the same and you won’t find a Scot blindly following an English club solely on that basis.

We have all met supporters of the big four who come from small towns and claim their small town teams as their second club – but they are not real supporters. Real supporters will always support the team from their home town first (or their dad’s home town if they are exiles) through thick and thin and never run off to jump on any big team’s bandwagon. Real supporters are not moneyed people from the capital who run off to Old Trafford or Anfield every other Saturday while their local teams, clubs like Leyton Orient or Brentford suffer as a consequence of the exodus towards success and the desire for reflected glory

One of my colleagues is from Waterford. He is an avid GAA fan, but he also supports Waterford United. That is a real fan. Anyone who decides to support the team from further up the road – or a totally different country – simply because they have recently been more successful, anyone who chases the silverware bandwagon and gives away their money to foreign clubs while their own towns starve is just a plastic fan.

Why do we hate teams?

I am a life-long supporter of Sunderlandnil, and yet again this season the club is providing more stress than enjoyment. However, apart from watching my own team teeter on the brink, I am also watching the battle for the title. And who isn’t? That’s the whole point of having a championship, surely, someone winning it? And like most fans I have my preferences, and I will spend a Saturday hoping that one team wins and another loses, for at the end of the day, “hating” one or more clubs is as much a part of any fan’s life as supporting their own.

As any fan knows, there is only room for one club. Yes, we all have other clubs that we follow for whatever reason – we once had a mate from there, or we went to uni there – but you can only support one club and you will never switch allegiance. However, when it comes to wanting another team to lose, the possibilities are endless.

First up, I have to say that I have nothing against Newcastle United. I am proud to be from the north-east and I have extolled the virtues of the region to the inhabitants of every place I’ve ever lived in, such virtues as Hadrian’s Wall, Holy Island, Durham Cathedral and Newcastle’s nightlife. Newcastle is a thriving, exciting city and its people are generous and welcoming, and I would hate to see the club go down for the terrible effect it would have on them.

There are teams that I strongly dislike and would love to see relegated year after year, including Mansfield (the miners’ strike), Fulham (their chairman) and Rangers (their sectarianism). And at the top of the Premier League, I am desperately hoping Liverpool fail to win the title.

This club is a recent (and perhaps temporary) addition to the list due to the direction the club has taken in recent years. Torres never did anything in Spain but fall over in the box, so it’s annoying to see he has finally decided to justify his wage, Xabi Alonso and Pepe Reina come from other sectarian clubs but my gripe rests mainly with former Valencia boss Rafa Benítez, whose only tactic of attempting to wind up opposition managers with cheap, incomprehensible shots meant that he achieved a feat that no other man ever has, that of making all the neutrals hope that Real Madrid would take the title ahead of Valencia.

These are my personal reasons for hoping a club loses a match or a title, and every other fan has their own, from local rivalry to an ex-girlfriend. However, there must be a deeper, more underlying reason for loving one team but hating many more. Why do we hate teams?

Well, as you only support one club that focus would be limited to 90 minutes a week, so what do we focus on when others are playing? Hating another team and hoping they lose can be extended to as many teams as possible because there’s no limit to hating teams, only to supporting them.

Hating teams is also closer to the true (and very limited) range of emotions available to the typical wannabe alpha-male, testosterone-charged males who tend to follow football. It’s cool to show aggression and even hatred in front of your peers, so the perfect vehicle is to hate another team. Expressing emotions is difficult for many men but these are emotions they are allowed to express in public.

It also aids in helping a person to demonstrate their loyalty to a group in order to belong. It is a useful tag so people can pigeon-hole us, and in turn we can express things we feel comfortable with in public. The aggression involved is a useful defence mechanism for men unsure of their standing in society and on a more localised level are unsure of the person they have in front of them, particularly if they fear that person may be intellectually superior (in other words they are worried about their own intellectual failings) in which case they will try and move the situation onto a plane they are more comfortable with, i.e. violence or hatred (and football).

Of course you have to support a team in the first place to be allowed to hate others, otherwise it’s not fair. There is nothing more frustrating than meeting a person who hates your club then claims not to support any club at all. There is no answer to their cowardice and the short conversation leaves you with a bad taste in your mouth.

So the season is coming to its inevitable close – the top four still are, and my team is living dangerously. And short of Sunderlandnil ever winning a title, the best I can hope for is that Benítez loses one.

Shearer: a canny lad

Okay, so we’re all clear with the fact that it wasn’t an April Fool’s Joke; Alan Shearer will lead his beloved Newcastle into the relegation fray. Respect to the man – the statistics show that he was one of English football’s greats, with nearly 350 senior club goals in well over 500 games and one goal every two games for England. More importantly, he seems like a genuinely nice bloke (although unfortunately I haven’t met him) in a time when that particular breed seems to be dying out.

On top of his remarkable playing career, his first managerial job is to see him thrown in at the deep end trying to save a huge club from relegation from the top flight, with all the disastrous consequences that that entails. I hope his decision to finally step up to the plate pleases the diehard Toon fans. It is certainly a decision which has overshadowed Roy Keane’s appointment at Sunderland.

To my mind it is a very intelligent decision, one which shows another facet of an already highly respected man, in that it is a very safe one. First of all, he has decided to become manager at a time when expectations have changed dramatically. Gone are the high – but not necessarily unrealistic – ones of the start of the season, which in the case of a club the size of Newcastle centred on a place in Europe, to be replaced with one single, clearly-focused expectation: stay up.

This being the situation, it is certainly difficult for things to get any worse for the club and its new manager. If Newcastle were to go down both he and especially the fans can blame the relegation on a number of reasons, none of which have anything to do with Shearer. If he saves Newcastle – and I sincerely hope he does, because let’s face it, they really are ‘too good’ to go down – he will be God. (They are too good, perhaps not as a team but definitely as a club, so please forgive the cliché.)

The smelly end of the stick is not taking over a relegation-threatened club, and Shearer is obviously too intelligent to fall for the alternative: taking over a mid-table club and not managing to move them anywhere after months of mind-numbingly boring football. At a club with expectations as high as Newcastle’s, not even Shearer would recover from the slating that effort would receive.

Good luck to him and the club – Sunderland have traditionally been in the top flight, but United really are a Premier League club.

Greatness

Another England match approaches and already the usual rubbish about the quality of the England team has started in earnest. It appears that a large number of England fans think their team is one of the top football nations in the world, a team that deserves to win at least one more World Cup. They even use words like “great”.

Great? According to what criteria?

This is a word which has been used with increasing ease in recent years when we are talking about the Spanish team, the English team, or even the Dutch team. Spain has just won a major tournament after forty-odd years of mediocrity, so let’s start with them.

In the 2006 World Cup they dominated a risibly weak group before bottling, as usual, against France. In the 2004 European Championship they went home after the first round.

In the 2002 World Cup they went out against lowly South Korea. According to the Spanish press, it was the referee’s fault, but then according to the Spanish press it always is. They should have scored four before the referee disallowed the goal; if he was so bad, how many goals did he take away from Spain? How many penalties did fail to award them from their many balls into the box?

In the 2000 European Championship they caved under the pressure and couldn’t score a penalty. And in the 1998 World Cup they lost to ... Nigeria. In 1996 they snuck through in the 84th minute only to be perhaps the only nation ever to lose to England on penalties. In 1994 they did reach the quarter-finals, but they had had time to practise because in 1992 they didn’t even go to the tournament.

Until very recently, Spain had one dodgy European Championship (watch the referee and the Russian goalkeeper) from over forty years ago and nothing else to show for their “greatness”. In the last six major tournaments they have gone home at the first time of asking twice. However, at least they have finally found their rhythm and beat all-comers to take the 2008 European Championship.

Their demolition of England recently underlined the gulf in class and suggested that if they can keep their heads the Spanish players really are on the way to greatness.

What have England done with their “greatness”? Ironically, it could be argued that they have a better record over the same time period than Spain, having reached three quarter-finals and one semi-final, losing three of those matches only on penalties and the other to Brazil. However, they also failed to qualify in 1994 and 2008, needed a play-off to go in 2000 and went out in the first round in 1992 and 2000. All England have to show for their prowess is just one dodgy World Cup from over forty years ago and nothing else to show for its supposed world dominance.

The same as yet another “great”, Holland, which has one European Championship from over twenty years ago, and nothing else. Even Greece has one of those. Since they won their only trophy, they have actually appeared in four semi-finals and three quarter-finals, losing four times on penalties, but they didn’t even qualify for the 2002 World Cup and did hardly any better in the last one. And if Cruyff’s team were so good, who won the World Cups of 1974 and 1978?

The ones who won were the ones who always win, the teams that really are great, the teams that have the best players, the ones who have the necessary quality and grit to do what’s needed on the day. Brazil, Argentina, Germany and possibly Italy are the great teams – add together what the other mentioned teams have won and they still cannot match what any of those four teams have won.

Am I being unfair? In the same period of time Brazil have won two World Cups and four Copa América and played two other finals (although the CA is played more frequently than the Euros), Italy has won one World Cup with a bunch of old men and played two other finals, Germany has won one European Championship and played three other finals and Argentina has won one Copa and played two other finals. Even France has won a World Cup and a European Championship and played one other final.

In total Brazil have five World Cups, Italy four, Germany three and Argentina two; between them they also managed to lose ten other finals. Even Uruguay has two World Cups.

In order to be great you have to win at least a couple of World Cups and dominate for a respectable length of time. For England to be great they need to win the next World Cup, the European Championship after that and then some. Then we can talk about greatness.

(I imagine they must mean “great” in comparison with “small” teams such as Northern Ireland, Nigeria or Croatia.)

So who do you support, then?

The other day my girlfriend asked me how fans decide which teams to support, and why a person supports certain teams over others. What a (double) question! But worse was to come. Can a fan support more than one team?

I used to travel between the north-west and my native north-east quite a lot, and I remember that my favourite part of the whole journey, apart from the approach to Durham, was the view from the station at Stalybridge. The train would sit in the station for a couple of minutes and for that time you could see right across the valley. It was a fabulous view on a fantastic cross-Pennine journey, and ever since then my fondness for that view has manifested itself in the only way a football fan can express himself – I have followed (from a distance) the local team. Obviously.

I was born in Sunderland and I have always fervently supported the team, through thin and thin. Not having been around at the end of the nineteenth century, I have never really seen a successful side, but that makes no difference to the true fan. However, like most fans there are other teams whose results I follow, and the reasons why I follow certain teams –again, like most fans – range from the obvious to the downright obscure.

The obvious, for example, includes the fact that I always have a look at the teams from my native north-east, like Darlington, Hartlepool, Blyth Spartans and Durham City. I watch Southport’s results because I lived there for years when I was a child and I often went to see them at Haig Avenue when I was a teenager. Slightly less obvious is the fact that I check up on Macclesfield because I once went to see them mid-week with Southport. I have a look at Accrington Stanley because thirty years ago one of my neighbours, Frank Whittaker, was a massive fan and had been since his childhood.

Garforth Town appeared in a football magazine, and articles about Truro and Team Bath prompted me to watch their rise, although I can’t really remember when or where those articles were published. I do remember that I was given a football encyclopaedia one Christmas when I was a kid (foolish Father Christmas – my parents couldn’t get any sense out of me for weeks afterwards) and was attracted to the early success and hooped jerseys of Queen’s Park. I also now have a look at Annan Athletic every week simply because they’re the new boys. A friend of mine at university was from Doncaster (and they have a “nice kit”), so that’s Donny Rovers explained.

Then there’s the clubs that have suffered woeful decisions from the FA or the Football League or criminally bad management at board level, so that’s Scarborough, Luton, Bournemouth, Rotherham and Lancaster City explained. I must admit though, you have to be careful with this argument. It had me following Leeds’ results all last season.

A small comment here – I reckon most neutral fans will have been knocked sideways by the unfairness of the treatment of Luton, Bournemouth and Rotherham, and will have been delighted when they reached positive points. Good luck to Luton in the run-in.

I have been following Burnley’s fortunes recently, not just because they have been having a good season but also because I came across some fans who were pretty sound people. And I have to include a special mention for Portsmouth. I was taken to see them beat Spurs on Boxing Day a couple of years ago, and I have great memories of a fantastic atmosphere and top-class fans. Respect.

Even foreign teams have a look-in. I remember when I was a kid my mother used to allow me to take the radio to bed if there were random European matches which would finish past my bedtime, and I remember listening to exotic names like Besiktas and Real Madrid and imagining what those far-off, flood-lit places were like. I remember watching highlights programmes from half-empty grounds where you could see their frozen breath and all the fans looked like heavy metal Viking guitarists, and I still attribute my wanderlust partly to these images.

Not much else to say, really. Perhaps I should write an article about which teams I can’t stand and why!

Passion

I’d spent the entire night out on the batter in the centre of Madrid, drinking a week’s worth of alcohol, smoking a lung’s worth of fags and consuming plenty more besides. Now it was nine o’clock in the morning and I was stood between the goalposts and balanced delicately between drunkenness and a hangover. As the two teams stretched and spat and hoofed the composite ball to each other, the smell of beery sweat spread across the dirt pitch. It was already 25 degrees in the slim shade of the crossbar and was going to get worse. But I didn’t care. It was my debut in Sunday League.

No big deal. I was just another lad who couldn’t play football in another random pub team. I was talentless, and the sheer excitement rendered me more useless still. It wasn’t the perfect pass, it was any pass. I was an amateur player, but not only would I be prepared to do this for free, I had actually paid 5,000 pesetas in subs for the season to throw myself around on broken glass and syringes. Yet I was like a kid with new shoes, because there is nothing like playing football.

When I was a kid, football was an obsession. It was a privilege to be picked for a side, even in the playground. The best Christmases or birthdays were the ones when I got a new ball. The best days at school were the ones where we went down to Carr Lane Rec and clattered down the narrow passageway of the changing rooms in our tiny boots and out onto the muddy pitches. In my head I was Ian Porterfield.

Two jerseys dropped on the floor was a challenge not to be ignored. Two trees a certain distance apart could only be goalposts. A white chalk line was the gateway into paradise. And as I got older I stood by those chalk lines come rain or shine and watched anybody and everybody. Local teams, pub teams, I didn’t care.

But I was never really interested in first division football, despite the fact that my own team (Sunderlandnil) occasionally played in the top flight. I’ve always preferred the lower leagues or non-league football. While exiled in the north-west I went to see Southport at Haig Avenue on a regular basis rather than travel to Liverpool or Manchester.

The problem I have even with lower league football and especially amateur football in the post-TV revolution version of the sport is the fact that whereas before the players copied the feints and dummies and tilting runs of their heroes – and even Lineker’s plaster cast – now they copy the falling over and the twisted, indignant face of the diva.

What next? Will Sunday League players start shoplifting and drink-driving and punching people like they do in the Premier League?

Football is not about cars and WAGS and yachts, it’s jerseys for posts and even beery sweat and the dressing-room banter. Cliché? No more than the antics of modern footballers. And certainly no more than going down like a sack of spuds in the box because some over-paid ponce does it every Saturday.

Cutting out diseased words

(Just for once, a different sport...)

Kazakhstan, as any native is keen to tell strangers, is the ninth biggest country in the world. It has a huge number and variety of resources, not least its people, who are warm, humorous and intelligent. It is recovering well from years of Soviet control, and the capital city, Astana, is a remarkable mixture of the old and the very new.

One of its bright new toys is the Astana Pro Cycling team, a partnership born of controversy after the Operación Puerto doping case in 2006. It is enveloped in controversy once more with the return to cycling of Lance Armstrong, the person who has most polarised opinion in the recent history of the sport due to the constant accusations of doping.

One of the journalists who has levelled such accusations at Armstrong is Dubliner Paul Kimmage, a Times (UK and Ireland, as opposed to the NY variety) journalist with a history in professional cycling and firm anti-doping credentials. He has never wavered in his criticism of doping in the sport, and even a cursory glance at his articles on the subject reveal that his language has always been unequivocal and blunt.

CANCER

Late last year, however, his choice of language caused great controversy and polarised cycling and journalistic opinion almost as much as the object of his criticism. The context of the words is too long to reprint here, and is, to be honest, irrelevant to the argument over his language. Here is the last paragraph of what Kimmage said:

“This guy, any other way but his bullying and intimidation wrapped up in this great cloak, the great cancer martyr … this is what he hides behind all the time. The great man who conquered cancer. Well he is the cancer in this sport. And for two years this sport has been in remission. And now the cancer’s back.”

As anyone who has had even a passing interest in the sport will know, Armstrong beat testicular cancer in his twenties. There can be absolutely no doubt that Paul Kimmage knows this information too.

PERSPECTIVE

Let us take this away from Armstrong and cycling and drugs for just a couple of paragraphs. Let us imagine that the great Oscar-winning actor Helen Mirren was accused of some heinous offences within the acting world, some abuse of confidence of young, aspiring actors for example. The equivalent of Kimmage’s words would be to accuse her of being a “rapist” of the young talent while in full knowledge of her past.

Or let us imagine that another great performer, Owen Wilson, was accused of some equally appalling crimes which threatened to not only discredit but also destroy the acting world. The equivalent of Kimmage’s words would be to accuse him of “slashing the wrists” of his profession, again while in full knowledge of his past.

These two examples are quite obviously ludicrous to imagine, but it is important to take away the fire of the controversy in question in order to look simply at the language used.

COMMON USAGE

To describe something as a “cancer” in a figurative way is a very common part of our language, and is used as widely in journalism as it is in everyday conversation. However, just as natural as its usage is the way it slips out of a person’s vocabulary when that person comes into contact with someone who has been directly affected by the disease, not only when talking in front of that someone but also away from them.

Again, let us move away from the controversy for a moment. When my brother was diagnosed with epilepsy at the age of fourteen (I was nine), the word “eppy”, which was commonly used by the children around me to describe flying into a rage, slipped out of my vocabulary as my awareness of its real meaning was brought home to me. The same was true of any offhand reference to suicide as my awareness of this terrible phenomenon grew with events close to me.

The result of these changes to my vocabulary meant that not only do I not put my foot in it with a slip of the tongue in front of the wrong person, but I never use epilepsy, cancer, suicide, rape or mental handicap – to give just a few examples – in any humorous reference, whatever the context. And quite obviously, I never use them as weapons to attack someone, whatever I suspect them of having done.

PRE-MEDITATION

Kimmage’s use of cancer in his latest attack on a cyclist widely suspected of cheating was neither an accident born of ignorance of Armstrong’s past nor even a slip of the tongue. It was cynical and pre-meditated. Much more than the fact that it was childish, disgusting, highly insensitive and crass in the extreme, this pre-meditation is the damning point. Kimmage wielded this disease and the pain it causes countless families as a weapon in a personal vendetta, with no regard whatsoever for the distress his choice of words could cause.

Whatever Armstrong may have done – and I have the same disdain and contempt for cheats and specifically dopers as much as the next person, even if the next person is Paul Kimmage – there is absolutely no excuse for what Kimmage has done. And this is why I mentioned at the start that the rest of Kimmage’s words were irrelevant, because the accusations in question and the probability of guilt in no way justify that final paragraph.

My contact with Kazakhs has been enormously positive, and my enthusiasm for cycling, and the Tour in particular, has never been affected by the cheats and their execrable methods, but I would prefer to have nothing to do with the Astana team thanks to their connection with doping through Vinokourov et al until they have cleansed their ranks of such people. By the same token, I would prefer not to have anything to do with any publication that employs Paul Kimmage until he has apologised for his disgraceful outburst.