Category: sport

Is the tide turning…?

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Was scrapping FA Cup replays a watershed moment?

Henry Winter adds his name to those fed up of the Football Association pandering to the whims and needs (of the boards) of the Big 6:

I am also one of these people, but I don’t quite have his pedigree:

Winter is the current Football Journalist of the Year at the British Sports Journalism Awards, where the judges said last month he “has a unique connection to his readership and football fans” and is a “voice of genuine authority and respected by those in the game”.
Winter is also the most recent Writer of the Year at the Football Supporters’ Association Awards.
His authority is long-held: in 2010 he was voted Britain’s top sports journalist in a Press Gazette poll of journalists and the general public.

When people like Henry Winter are (rightfully) getting upset about this untenable situation, then it’s about time the FA start paying attention.

Here’s another veteran football journalist, Alan Biggs:

The fans want replays. The fans love the traditions of the game. But by the end of this evening, it’s quite likely that every English club will have been eliminated from European competition this year, ahead of the semi-final stages, nogal. And we can’t have that happening again, because that means no more money for the Big 6 and the FA, both of whom are really struggling financially, so something else is going to have to change.

And the other 86 clubs and their hundreds of thousands of fans must just deal with it.

Let’s revisit the European Super League idea

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Remember about three years ago, when several (or more) of the top clubs in Europe thought that they should leave their respective leagues and just play against each other instead?

That idea included six clubs from England, whose bosses thought that they were too big for the puny challenges of the domestic arena, and clearly needed something bigger and better.

And more lucrative.

But the project fell apart pretty quickly amid acrimony, recriminations and legal action. The six EPL clubs involved apologised, got a baby slap on the wrist, absolutely no-one got banned from the Champions League as threatened by UEFA, there were no points deductions as threatened by the FA, and we went on with life as usual.

As soon as I heard about it, I was immediately against the idea of the ESL. It was clearly formulated by the boards of the teams involved with no thought for the grassroots support of the clubs, and the traditional values and history of football. And while there’s still some rumbling behind the scenes, and the idea does seem to have gone away for the moment, I’m still against it.

But also, I’m actually not.

That idea that the ESL would ruin the tradition and values of football, and that the project was only about making money for “the suits upstairs” rings a bit hollow when you look at where we are now, three years on, because actually it’s happened anyway, just in the domestic league setting instead of a continental one.

The “Super League” ethos and its money already clearly exists within the Premier League.

Liverpool’s three goals last night (the first one gifted by our useless keeper, the second an absolute thunderbeagle after a very helpful clearance, and the third one just showing how squad strength in depth (via – *gasp* – money) is such a huge thing), came at a cost of £190,000,000.

That’s far more than our entire club is worth.
Not just the players on the pitch last night.
Not just the squad.
The entire business – the ground, the staff, the infrastructure, the training academy, the women’s teams, the name, the history, those solar garden gnomes in the gift shop: everything. All of it.
Versus three players.

Erik Ten Haag took charge of Manchester United less than 2 years ago. He’s spent almost twice as much on players in that time than we have in our entire 135 year history.

Arsenal shelled out just under a quarter of a billion pounds on three players this season.

Chelsea: it’s just billions. Billions and billions. A never ending pot of cash that is carefully spent over almost complete decades to avoid breaking the rules… maybe.

“It’s not sport if you can’t lose”, said Pep Guardiola, in his criticism of the ESL idea back in 2021.

That comment was about the limited relegation possibilities for ESL teams, but it’s steeped in irony now, given that his club are facing 115 charges for breaking financial fair play regulations. Charges which they will likely never actually face given that they have more money than the Premier League, can afford some ridiculously expensive legal teams and are already adopting a Stalingrad defence*.

And even if they ever do get punished, it won’t be in any meaningful form, thanks to new regulations conveniently just announced by the EPL.

How can we, or anyone else without money (or ok, yes, any sort of regard for the financial fair play regulations), ever hope to compete?

We can’t. And that’s why the Premier League is broken.

And before anyone points out plucky “little” Aston villa and their amazing league position, well yes, it is great, but even they’ve spent almost half a billion quid over the last 4 years.

The Premier League is clearly hugely divided. There’s absolutely no chance of relegation for the “Big Six”, they buy all the best players, they win all the trophies, and they have pots and pots of money. For them, most games are pretty much a foregone conclusion. The only interesting matches are when they play each other.

And that’s exactly what the ESL was going to give us.

But with added Bayern Munich and Real Madrid.

So actually, why not go and do that and make domestic football better again?

Why are we allowing our domestic game to be ruined by letting these clubs to do exactly what they were trying to do anyway by inventing their runaway league? If that’s the way it’s going to be, let them go.
It’s broken and it’s not going to get any better while they’re still here.

Sadly, of course, that will never happen.
Because of – you guessed it – money.

[sighs deeply – gets on with his day]

* Ironically, Stalingrad were never invited to the ESL party.

Choke

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Looking back on the matches from the Easter weekend, I’m still annoyed. And it’s the lack of consistency in the refereeing in the Premier League that annoys me most. I don’t mind errors being made. Refs are only human, and they make mistakes.

You don’t expect all the players to go through the entire game without a single error, so why should we expect it of the officials?

But sometimes, there are some easy decisions that can be based on some really high profile precedents that are seemingly – and mystifyingly – ignored. The hands around the throat thing: it’s a red card. Unequivocally. It’s not hard.

It was a red card for Casemiro last February:

It was a red card for Rodri in September.

And… er… it wasn’t a red card for Calvin Bassey on Saturday.

And honestly, I really don’t understand why. Show me the difference in those three images.

There’s no point in crying over spilt milk, and that’s really not what I am doing here. I’ve seen enough decisions go for and against us over the n years I’ve been watching United to waste time, effort and pixels on that.

But we have a saying in our family: Everyone makes mistakes. It’s how you sort them out that matters.

And the most annoying thing is that nothing will be sorted out from this. Nothing will be learned. The next “hands around the throat” incident will result in a red card. Or it won’t. We really don’t know. Because exactly the same action is getting punished (or not) in different ways, despite the same laws apparently being applied.

Sometimes, things are tight (like those hands) and subjective and difficult to judge. I get that.
But this really isn’t one of them. Every Sunday league ref would get this one right.

And since the Premier League referees are full-time professionals with annual salaries well into into six figures, they really should be doing better.

Especially on the easy stuff like this.

He’s Not Wrong

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Sean Dyche makes a good point:

It’s true. Kids are very impressionable. When I were a lad, whenever we saw anything different or exciting in the football over the weekend, there would be loads of us trying it out in the playground on Monday morning. I wonder how many kids were “moving the ball” (and the foam) before taking their free kicks, after Ivan Toney did it, and after it was praised so roundly by all the pundits?

As we remarked at the time, moving the ball might have been seen as being “a bit clever”. But as soon as he moved the foam as well, well, it was clear that he knew he was cheating.

Sure, it’s not the biggest thing in the world, but it is symptomatic of the way that some bits of football are going. And the well-paid, “celebrity” pundits sitting in the cosy, warm studios are – for some weird reason – encouraging it.
So why not start with the small stuff and actually note that Toney was deliberately breaking the rules, rather than admiring his actions? Just say that it was wrong. You don’t have to want him to be banned for 8 months: he can do that himself.

Also, I quite enjoyed this quote because he’s basically taken three whole paragraphs to just say “Fuck you, Michael Owen”.

It’s something I regularly find very easy to condense into just those four words.

Oh, and also, one more thing: I put this graphic up on our football team Whatsapp group this morning and no fewer than six people agreed with it. All of them dads. We’re bringing up our kids right. Forza.

Not a good day

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Another bad day at the office for United. Except it isn’t an office and we’re growing tired of bad days and running out of time to have good ones.

Highlight of the day then was probably a visit to the Investec Cape Town Art Fair. And that was mainly for the people watching. Much of the art was suitably inexplicable and unnecessarily pretentious – especially in their titles:

although some of the actual artwork was really quite interesting:

And there were some eye-wateringly big numbers in numbers on the price tags.

I think this one was a neon Mother Theresa. (jks, obvs)

Yeah, so if those were the highlights, then you can see why I’m looking forward to my bed this evening.

We go again tomorrow.

At life, I mean. I’ll save my money on a return to the Art Fair.