The Archive

Fielding weakened teams does not necessarily have the desired for positive effect

There is no question that Steve Coppell is a major figure in the history of Reading. He took the club into the top division for the first time in 2005-06 with a record 106 points and throughout the following season they were comfortably in the top half. But after a 1-0 win over Newcastle in the 36th fixture that kept them seventh and with a chance of European qualification, Coppell was infected by one of the blights of modern football, false pragmatism.

The fans might have been excited by the team’s progress but the manager was keeping the lid on: “It wouldn’t be a problem getting into the UEFA Cup”, he said “because I’d probably play the reserves. As far as I’m concerned we have a European Cup final every weekend in the Premiership.” Reading took one point from their last two games, losing their next match 2-0 at home to already-relegated Watford, and finished 8th, three points adrift of the European places. The following year they went down, with their weekly European Cup finals including a run of eight successive defeats after Christmas.

Mick McCarthy indulged in some Coppell-esque dissembling after Wolves won their  two opening matches this season, to top the table for the first time since September 1962. “It will be a long time before I want to get into the Europa League,” he said. “If we look like getting in through the Fair Play League, I’m going to tackle somebody.” No doubt Wolves fans would be pleased if the team achieve the manager’s primary goal of staying up, but it is hard to imagine any of them would share his distaste for getting into Europe, something they last managed by winning the League Cup in 1980. Wolves had no trouble making progress in this season’s competition, beating Northampton 4-0 in the Second Round despite fielding an under-strength side. But all three clubs promoted to the Premier League went out: Swansea at Shrewsbury Norwich and QPR lost at home MK Dons and Rochdale respectively. Neil Warnock said he was pleased by his side’s result: “If I can’t get motivated for the competition I can’t blame the players if they can’t”.

Clearly some managers, fixated on Premier League survival, would welcome the opportunity to opt out of the competition as clubs were permitted to do in the early years. One of the beneficiaries of this were Birmingham City who won the 1962-63 League Cup in which only 11 of the 22 Division One clubs participated. Through winning last season’s cup, Birmingham returned to European competition for the first time in 50 years. They were also relegated, winning only two of the 12 League games played after beating Arsenal at Wembley. But the cup run does not seem to have been blamed for the downturn in form and relegation will not have been especially traumatic for fans of a club that has moved divisions ten times in the past twenty years.

In the coming months, some of the managers who gave up on the League Cup might consider putting out weakened sides for fixtures they expect to lose (something Mick McCarthy has done before) especially now they will no longer be fined by the Premier League for doing so. Meanwhile thousands of fans of Birmingham and Stoke, another side who took a cup seriously, will be taking in away matches in Braga, Kiev and Istanbul among other places. Tony Pulis and Chris Hughton could be partially excused for not prioritising all these games. For most of its existence the UEFA Cup was a simple knockout competition, but the recently renamed Europa League is needlessly bloated – teams  who took part in two qualifying rounds will have played ten extra midweek fixtures in just over four months. But even the later rounds have been an imposition for some managers recently.

When Bolton lost to Sporting Lisbon in the last 16 in March 2008 they were missing several first teamers, rested for what was looking like a relegation battle. In February 2009, Aston Villa were understrength when beaten at the first knockout stage out by CSKA Moscow. Martin O’Neill said his priority was to qualify for the Champions League but even with most of their first team rested, Villa only drew their next match and eventually finished sixth; O’Neill’s standing among Villa fans was fatally damaged in the process.

False pragmatism can only have destructive effects. When managers see certain matches as an inconvenience, they are in effect conceding them. But if their clubs can’t take what they do seriously, then eventually the fans will cease to care too.

From WSC 296 October 2011

While there is a certain inevitability about this home victory, it’s only August and these two clubs have very different expectations and requirements from a season in League One, writes Julian McDougall

Away, at Hillsborough. In the days leading up to and following this match, it is in the news again with speculation about relatives of the 1989 disaster victims getting access to crucial documents and Billy Bragg releasing a song about the phone hacking scandal called Scousers Never Buy The Sun.

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Cameron Carter explores how the concept of a Big Four is no longer enough

Consensus is a hard thing to come by. How, for instance, can we begin to arrive at agreement on the true source of the riots around England when the Football Focus team cannot even decide how many teams make up the Big Four? It used to be easier when it was just Manchester United, Chelsea, Arsenal and Liverpool. They were our Tesco, Sainsbury’s, Asda and Morrisons. There was no ambiguity at this time, no indecision. But the Premier League, like the world outside, has become a more complex place.

At the start of Football Focus on August 13 the concept of a “top six” was given its first airing, presumably constructed by BBC imagineers from the previous top four plus Manchester City and Spurs, while later in the same programme Eric Cantona was asked how he thought the “top five might finish”. There was still time before the end for Patrick Vieira to question how Wolves would do this season against the “top four or five”.

This matter had not been cleared up by the following Saturday, when Rafa Benítez considered how Everton would compete with the “top six”. It seems unfair that Everton have to face up to two more top clubs – that is, four more top games – than Wolves this season. One solution, albeit in an already crowded fixture list, is a pre-season mini-league featuring the nominal Big Six, to decide which teams are entitled to be formally named as the Big Four.

Otherwise, the worst case scenario here is that the Big Four expands incrementally, as more overseas investors buy into Premier League Sleeping Giants, until we have a ‘”Big 11″ by the end of the decade. At the point that numbers in the elite pool are greater than those outside it, we should all go down to the sea and wait for the world to be cleansed with fire.
For those of us awaiting the annual glory that is Lineker’s Marvellous Line, there was a credit-crunch, own-brand disappointment this year. Generally, before the theme music of the first Match of the Day of the new season, Gary stands before us in a glossy black shirt and, with dancing eyes, unleashes an adrenalin shot in the form of a carefully sculpted sentence prepared for him by a team of resting novelists.

Barry Davies started the big curtain-raiser soundbite trend with his Rupert Brooke desecration: “Stands the clock at ten-to-three/and is there football still to see?” Since then, twinkly Des Lynam, followed in turn by the lad Lineker, made a point of letting us know that they, like ordinary people everywhere, were simply treading water all summer until a thrilling new football season began.

This time, however, Gary was seated, not standing, and his eyes before he vocalised spoke of a terrible new maturity, learned possibly from accidental exposure to non-sports-based world news on his satellite television. All he said was “It’s been an awfully long summer” before introducing his sidekicks and the games as if it were any old Saturday. The absence of knowingly familiar expectancy-building in this welcome was somehow more disheartening than all the other cuts so far imposed on the UK’s population since the general election. It is surely but a short step from excising unnecessary opening-day vivaciousness in our flagship terrestrial football programme to banning all forms of dance, theatre and social dieting as unpatriotic fripperies.

Dan Walker’s mania for dragging the Football Focus cameras around dressing rooms continues apace. On the opening morning of the season, to demonstrate possession of the Access All Areas wristbands, he swanned into the Brighton dressing room where he was rewarded with the sight of 13 Brighton players seated around the bench studiously reading the match programme. You might think the point of going backstage is to show a fly-on-the-wall slice of life, to give your viewership a rare glimpse of the daily lives of the men they only otherwise get to see on the pitch, on television or, very rarely, in the flesh, flushed with refreshment and demanding that the manager of the country club sets up the karaoke.

But no, Dan stole behind the scenes to discover a carefully stage-managed tableau of young men with heads bowed wonderingly over a difficult text, not dissimilar in composition to Rembrandt’s Anatomy Lesson of Dr Nicolaes Tulp. It was a lovely image, but surely with Robbie Savage in the same room, there would more naturally be towel-flicking and banter containing sexual swear words? A bit of advice, young Walker – if you are going to barge in on somebody, make sure they are unprepared. 

From WSC 296 October 2011

When reporting scandal and gossip the newspapers need to be careful about preaching fron the moral high ground, writes Nick Miller

Journalists often see themselves as fearless crusaders for the truth, holding those in power to account. So they have a sense of entitlement when it comes to access and information from football clubs. Managers and players are expected to reveal all, and if they show any reticence or attempt to keep any information to themselves, it is implied that they have something to hide. To pick a rather tame example, if a manager chooses not to answer a question about a rumoured transfer, he will be reported as being “coy” or “refusing to rule out a move for…”.

Arsène Wenger made a significant comment at a spicy press conference just after Cesc Fàbregas was sold. Asked whether he would sign Juan Mata as a replacement, Wenger said: “We will not do [a deal for] Mata. I don’t have to give a reason.” In the febrile atmosphere of the transfer window, most people concentrated on the first bit and ignored the second, but it raised an interesting point – why should he have to justify his decisions to journalists?

Of course, the standard line that journalists use in this instance is that “the fans” want to know, as if the only purpose of the press is to altruistically keep everyone informed – rather than to shift more papers/get more hits. But it can be argued that the fourth estate does not in fact deserve the access they desire.

On the first day of the Football League season, many reporters were locked out of grounds because of a dispute over how games were covered online. Clubs objected to the use of photographs and, of all things, Twitter, which was ludicrous, largely because their primary concern seemed to be protection of their own coverage through subscription websites. However, while media complaints were sometimes sensible and eloquently explained, it would be much easier to sympathise with the press if they didn’t routinely abuse the access they’re given.

Open up your morning newspaper and you’ll probably find half a dozen instances of the words of managers/players being misrepresented, taken out of context, sensationalised or just plain made-up. Being surprised that those in football don’t always welcome reporters with open arms is a bit like going to someone’s house, treading dirt into the carpets, throwing red wine up the wall and then expecting to be invited back.

A classic case recently was the Carlos Tévez transfer saga. Earlier in the summer Tévez told an Argentinean chat show that he would never return to Manchester after the end of his contract. Of course, most of the media then casually forgot the last six words of that statement, giving the impression that Tévez was on strike and expressing faux shock when he did show up at City. But the player had already said he wanted to leave, so there was no reason to mislead when there was already a perfectly good “line” to run with.

The round of injunctions taken out earlier this year by footballers to “gag” papers from reporting on their private lives inspired hand-wringing columns about the freedom of the press, but this seemed to miss the point. If the press waste their freedom on trying to tell us who Ryan Giggs is spending his leisure time with, they really don’t deserve it. It might not be ideal, but it’s perfectly understandable that football clubs don’t want co-operate with a group of people who are often so duplicitous. It would be unfair to assume that all journalists are like this, but they cannot be overly surprised when they are not welcomed in.

Of course, problems arise when access is denied on a whim (Alex Ferguson and Ken Bates being the obvious culprits). There is an obvious danger that clubs, or football’s governing bodies, could abuse the power they have and block access when there is serious wrong-doing afoot, such as vote-rigging or bribery. However, this is rarely the case.

The central problem is that we take football far too seriously. For 95 per cent of the time football journalists are not pursuing the public interest trying to uncover corruption and genuinely important social issues – they’re trying to find out who Manchester City are buying next. And, as a society, we can probably get by without knowing that.

From WSC 296 October 2011

Henrik Manninen explains how a raft of match-fixing allegations in the far north of Europre has swiftly ended an international experiment

“If I was wearing my cap the bet would be on, and if I took the cap off, there would be no business,” said Wilson Raj Perumal on his chosen method for catching the attention of players during a Finnish league cup game between Rovaniemen Palloseura (RoPS) and Jaro played on February 20 this year.

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