Gareth Barry AKA The Disappearing Man

Well the new season is now just over six weeks away and it is with this in mind that clubs are now gearing up for another nine months on the roller-coaster. Clubs are now back in pre-season training and those with major issues to resolve are now looking to do just that. Of course in the Premier League, no-one has more outstanding issues than Liverpool Football Club. Having sacked the hapless Rafael Benitez, who guided the Reds to a dismal seventh, Liverpool are faced with trying to claw their way back up the table with a small transfer budget in the face of mega-spending from the likes of Spurs and Manchester City (more of which later). The thing Liverpool need in these changing and challenging times is a safe pair of hands and they seem to have found it in the shape of everyone’s favourite Mrs. Doubtfire lookalike, Roy Hodgson. Roy certainly seems to like a challenge having ditched the relative safety and serenity of Craven Cottage for the madness of Anfield. The first decision Hodgson will be faced with is whether to cash in on Gerrard and Torres in order to raise the funds needed to revitalise a fairly dreadful squad. Judging by their form in the World Cup it would seem pretty good business to cash in on these two for a combined £60 million. This would allow Hodgson to buy numerous players meaning Liverpool can ditch the hopeless remainder of their team – namely Kyrgiakos, Insua, Lucas, Babel and N’Gog. So don’t moan and get cross Liverpool if your golden duo are shipped out as it could eventually lead to you having a better team. Anyway in my opinion Roy is a good appointment for Liverpool especially compared to the joker that he is replacing, but he will certainly have his work cut out to reclaim a place in the top four, let alone challenge for the title.

One of the teams that Liverpool will be looking enviously at are everyone’s favourite moneybags Sheikh owned club – I talk ofcourse of silly Manchester City. As interest in the World Cup dwindles (especially after that nonsense on Sunday – more of which shortly), Manchester City are getting into full gear in terms of blowing the vast wealth of their owner. First through the Eastlands doors appears to be Spain and Valencia forward David Silva for a reputed £25 million. Silva has been a regular presence in the transfer gossip columns as he has been linked with all of the Premier League’s big guns since his very good performances at Euro 2008. In the end though, unsurprisingly, it was Manchester City who were able to stump up the cash to bring him to England. A quick word of warning to City though, Silva has hardly played for Spain at the World Cup as Torres (who has been rubbish by the way) has kept him out of the national team. City also look set to sign midfield enforcer Yaya Toure from Barcelona which certainly does look a good piece of business. This is in light of Gareth Barry’s feeble impression of a holding midfielder at the World Cup so Toure for Barry sounds like it will certainly strengthen the City midfield. By spending this money whilst the other big clubs look to tighten their belts, City should be disappointed if they don’t at least put in a good challenge for the title next season and they probably should be looking to win it.

You may have noticed dear reader that I have focused this piece on the domestic football issues and I can hear you screaming at your computer screens, enough of this, I need you to make sense of what happened at the World Cup. Well I can only apologise to you dear reader, I am still trying to comprehend how bad England were against the Germans. Before the tournament I predicted that Germany would emerge victorious and that Mesut Ozil would be a player to watch. I am pleased to say that these predictions look increasingly solid, but I thought that England would be bound to win their group and so play the Germans in the final. This didn’t happen due to two dreadful performances against Algeria and America. After a 1-0 win over the mighty Slovenia (national population of 2 million by the way) everyone seemed to paper over these cracks and looked forward to the second round match with their old foes with confidence (very misplaced confidence as it turned out). England were truly dreadful in the game and should have lost at least 8-2 as their defence made the Burnley back four look competent. Equally at fault for the numerous times the German attackers had time and space to do what they wanted with the ball was Gareth Barry who was nowhere near Ozil at any point in the game and seemed to completely disappear. Lampard and Gerrard did their usual under-performing at major tournament acts and Rooney and Defoe were handled with consummate ease by the German defence (so much for Rooney being top scorer at the tournament as numerous tipsters would have you believe before the event). I am not even going to discuss the goal that wasn’t given as that only serves to over-shadow the true incompetence of the England team. I am not going to blame Fabio Capello for this as we should remember he is Fabio Capello – one of the most successful managers in the world. Therefore if these stupid players can’t play for him, they won’t play for anyone. For England to be saved they need to ditch this hopeless generation in favour of the likes of Rodwell, Cahill, Wilshere, Agbonlahor and Hart. After all surely they can’t be any worse. Anyway in conclusion I am glad that England have been put out of their misery as their performances were just so depressing, it was effecting my enjoyment of the World Cup as a whole.

The prize for Germany (although you get the feeling that they will consider thrashing England as prize enough) is a mouth-watering tie with Argentina as the two best attacks of the tournament so far go head-to head in what should be a cracker. In any event I hope the winner of the goes on to win the tournament as these teams have played with pace and real attacking flair and skill. Spain and Brazil are the other favourites but neither have impressed me as yet, although Spain did well to beat a desperately depressing and defensive Portugal who seemed to forget that they have the world’s best attacker in their team. The other second round ties were actually a bit dull as Brazil easily overcame Chile, Paraguay bored Japan to penalties before winning, Ghana overcame America and Uruguay did for South Korea. The final quarter-finalists are the very un-Dutch Dutch who seem to have abandoned total football for functional (one could almost say rather boring) football.

Anyway I am getting my lederhosen and my Maradona mullet ready to cheer on the winners of that quarter-final all the way to victory and I recommend you do the same.

Raymond Domenech - possibly the funniest person in the world

After the tedium of the first week, I think it is safe to say that the World Cup has exploded into life as it moves from the group stages to the knock-out rounds. Teams have been faced with do or die games to get out of their groups and stay at the tournament and the result of this has been some very entertaining games – at last! Amazingly these games have seen both of the finalists from the 2006 tournament fall at the first, and both in amazing fashion. As for England they have scraped through after the tedium of Algeria they improved greatly to beat Slovenia and now face a Sunday lunch-time appointment with their old friends the Germans – the possible result of which could be a penalty shoot-out.

Without a shadow of doubt my team of the tournament has to be France who took going out in ridiculous fashion to new levels. First up they drew with Uruguay before losing comprehensively to Mexico and South Africa to end up bottom of their group. However, the games only tell half the story as their hilarious coach continued to pick bizarre teams that included the likes of Sydney Govou whilst Samir Nasri was not even deemed good enough for the squad. As the games went on it became increasingly apparent that the French players didn’t care much for their coach and in the second game Nicolas Anelka went as far to tell him so; the upshot being that France’s premier striker was sent home. This was not the nadir of the French campaign though as the remaining players suspected a mole in the coaching team had leaked Anelka’s comments to the press in order to have him removed from the squad. Patrice Evra ended up doing a very good Magnum PI impersonation and deduced that it was one of the fitness coaches who was the aforementioned mole. The left-back and captain confronted the said coach and the ensuing row led to the players refusing to train. The sight of the hapless Raymond Domenech reading a players statement explaining their position was utterly hilarious. Obviously these shenanigans didn’t provide the ideal preparation for the French’s must win game against South Africa and unsurprisingly they lost and left with the grand total of one point and one goal. This was Domenech’s swansong and I think it is fair to say that he did not go gracefully as he refused to shake hands with the South African’s coach, instead repeatedly wagging his finger and looking cross. I can’t imagine there has ever been a top team that has ever endured such a disastrous World Cup campaign and I for one think the French should be applauded for providing such endless amusement in those first days of the tournament when the football was pretty tedious. The French debacle will of course provided particular amusement to the Irish who can console themselves with the fact that in the light of Thierry Henry’s handball, the French probably now wish that they had never qualified for the World cup in the first place. A thought though should be spared for Laurent Blanc who is faced with the task of trying to pick up the pieces from the Domenech era – all I can say is bon chance Laurent.

Italy also finished bottom of their group and in doing so failed to beat any of the mighty Paraguay, New Zealand and Slovakia. This is on paper as bad as the French performance (if not worse), but the Italians lacked the comedy infighting of the French. They simply looked an ageing team that had gone one tournament too far. Four years ago when they lifted the trophy in Berlin Fabio Cannavaro was the best defender in the world, but in South Africa he was given the run-around by the world-beating strikers of Paraguay, New Zealand and Slovakia. What turned out to be Italy’s final game of this World Cup will though take some beating when it comes to deciding the game of the tournament. Going into the game Italy needed only a point to progress to the second round but soon fell behind after gifting the Slovakians a stupid goal. Fear not though there was still plenty of time left for them to equalise, but it just didn’t come and in the second-half Slovakia did the unthinkable and went 2-0 up. This prompted Italy to throw everything at it and they soon got a goal back, before gifting another goal to the Slovakians. Italy had the final say though in scoring a brilliant second to set up an amazing last two minutes which saw the Slovakians trying to desperately waste time as their goalkeeper was inflicted with what appeared to be numerous life-threatening ailments before Simone Pepe missed an amazing chance right at the death that would have saved the holders. Whenever Italy go out of a major tournament they always point to being majorly wronged by a referee and in this case they were given the opportunity to do so again as they claimed a shot had gone over the line and a goal was questionably ruled off-side. In the end though Slovakia deserved to win and can now look forward to taking their place in the knock-out stages. As for Italy they will have to find some new younger players to provide the spine of a new team as this will probably the swansong for messrs. Cannavaro, Buffon, Zambrotta and Gattuso.

Of course England managed to avoid the fate of the French and Italians by scraping past Slovenia thanks to some hilarious last-ditch defending in the second-half. However, the fact the USA also won means that England ended up second in their group and so have the small matter of facing Germany in the second-round. This is the stand-out game of the knock-out stages and on past history it is fair to say that it is not beyond the realms of possibility that it will be decided by the dreaded penalty shoot-out. If this is the case England can take hope from the fact that the Germans have already missed a spot-kick in this tournament, but we all know that if this is how the game finishes, then the Germans will end up winning. Whatever happens I get the feeling that Sunday will provide one of those epic World Cup games that are talked about for years such as the semi-final in 1990 the Argentina games in 1986 and 1998 and the Portugal game four years ago – let’s just hope that the result is better this time as surely England are due an epic victory rather than a glorious defeat.

So onward dear reader unto the breach and I shall return next week to dissect the dramas of the weekend (and hopefully look forward to England v. Argentina in the quarter-finals). Before I go though I would like to give my award to performance of the week to Honda from Japan (not the car) who was brilliant in their defeat of Denmark and will no doubt be top of clubs wish-list this summer – expect to see him in a ground near you soon. So aurevoir and get practicing those penalties.

Peter Crouch agrees with the author that he should start against Algeria.

So one week down in the World Cup and I’m not quite sure what to make of it. In places, it’s business as usual, but then in other games we’ve seen total destruction of the apple cart.

The Good

Argentina. They’ve been pretty sensational so far. Much better then I expected. Having struggled through the qualifying I had tipped them to go out in the first round in a whirl of Maradona madness. But they’ve been excellent. Although, to be fair, I reckon I could do well as the Argentina manager. Especially with Messers Messi, Tevez, Higuain, Aguerro and Veron in my team (among others).

The Bad

Has to be the general standard of the football. At the moment, most teams seem terrified of losing. Anyone unfortunate enough to witness the Portugal v Ivory Coast game will attest to this. I’m hoping against hope that teams will start to get a little more expansive when the group stages conclude. The prospect of must-win games can surely only guarantee some entertaining games. However, I have distinct fears that we’ll end up with similar defensive mentalities come the knock outs.

My money’s on a lot of penalty shoot outs. Which naturally means that England will be knocked out in the Quarters.
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A football fan finds the excitement of Portugal v Ivory Coast just too much

Welcome to the first of my weekly reports on the World Cup. I should though begin with a couple of confessions, firstly, I am not in South Africa as no-one seemed willing to send me there to write this, instead I am in a flat in central Leeds (how glamorous), and secondly, I have not been able to watch all the games so sorry I can provide no enlightenment on Algeria v. Slovenia and Serbia v. Ghana. Judging by the vast majority of games that I have seen, however, I am going to take an educated guess and say that these were not the most exciting of games.

In the lead up to the tournament I predicted a tournament victory for the Germans, but I did not expect them to play by far the best football of the tournament. That is right dear reader from the games I have seen in the first week it is the Germans that look by far the best football team in South Africa. The Germans played Australia on Sunday night and provided a footballing master-class that was every bit as good as anything that can be expected to come from the much vaunted Spanish and Brazilians. Instrumental to their demolition of the Aussies was Mesut Ozil of Werder Bremen. Ozil has been the star of the show in the first week and his performance have put Ronaldo, Kaka and Rooney in the shade to such an extent that we can expect t his name to be across the gossip column for weeks and months to come until he moves to one of Europe’s largest clubs. The Germans look destined to go on and win their group and if they can keep up this attacking stylish football up, they may take some stopping to go and win the whole thing.
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Capello ponders how to tell Carrick that he's not coming on safari.

For some strange reason I love this bit in a World Cup Year. The country (England this is) is swept up in World Cup Fever. Every other advertisement has a football connection somewhere, builders start parading the flags they got free in The Sun on their vehicles and grannies across England start knitting jumpers of various shades of red and white for their “little Jimmy”. Optimism sweeps the country as the press hype up the teams chances and newspapers start offering free tickets to the Victory Parade.

It’s also the time when the England coach has to cut his squad down from 30 odd to 23. Some years it’s obvious, some years it’s not. This year is no exception. The obvious facts are, that Gareth Barry’s injury in the City match against Spurs last month has left such an enormous hole in the centre of the England midfield that it’s in danger of consuming the whole country. Some members of the press and the public think that Barry has had a poor season and is no good in an England shirt. However, it is no coincidence that England have looked disjointed and un-balanced without him. He is the glue that holds them all together.

Without Barry, England are left to make do with any of Huddlestone, Parker, Carrick, Milner or playing Gerrard and Lampard together (and we all know where that ends up). The rusty performance against Mexico last week shows that neither Milner nor Carrick really have what it takes, but then that should have been obvious before the game. Milner is better on the flank and Carrick has had a shocking season and shouldn’t really be anywhere near the squad. I, like every other proud Englishman, have my own opinion on this matter, and I will share it with you soon.
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Ok ok ok. I know I said I’d try harder. So here it is. Me trying harder.

Before the year runs out and I haven’t posted anything at all, I thought I’d better get my thoughts and expectations for the sporting year ahead. Sadly I’ve already missed the boat on the Australian Open, but if I had had chance to blog about it before the event I would have written about my hopes that Andy Murray would do well. You can imagine my delight that he did very well indeed. It is a shame that Roger Federer still exists! I did manage to catch Murray live in his second round match against Marc Giquel and I was stuck by how much more aggressive he looked on court. I had high hopes. I guess the only disappointment was that Murray couldn’t take that final set against Federer. I guess we all knew The Fed would prevail, but I had hoped Murray would take a set or two off him. Still, I have hopes for Andy. I have no doubt he will win a major one day, I just don’t think it will be Wimbledon. He seems far more at home on the hard courts of Australia and the USA.
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Andrew Flintoff gets five-for

It is with a sense of Titanic relief that I am writing about an England win.

I woke up at 4am on Monday (Australian time, about 7pm the night before in Blighty) and hurriedly checked the Day 4 score. I then tossed and turned for hours after I learned of Clarke and Haddin’s mammoth stand. My Inner-Australian was getting a bit lairy and hurling empty tinnies against the inside of my skull (I don’t know where he came from, he just turned up one day with his mates and an esky full of VB). Surely England couldn’t throw this away. Surely!? I kept running all the possibilities through my head. “If Haddin and Clarke add another 100….”

This fear comes from a very deep place in my psyche. It is born of 27 years supporting Manchester City and watching the England Cricket Team. If you’ve never been an England fan, or even a sports fan, you’ll never understand. But as the day’s play drew nearer, I sought reassurance from my fellow sufferers in England. They failed to provide any, so, thinking positive and before heading out the door to go to the pub, I declared to no one in particular that England would have it won by lunch. Positive thoughts.
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The Windies beat England via the D/L Method

First off a few apologies for my tardiness, I haven’t managed to write in a week or so, and as a result, I seem to have missed out on a few developments in the sporting world. So I thought I’d take the opportunity to give my thoughts on a few of them.

Cricket: T20 World Cup

The world’s fascination with cricket’s most explosive format has been underway in England for about a week now and has certainly thrown up some surprises. I was less than amused to be awoken last Saturday morning by a friend of mine (who is really Australian, but likes to be Dutch when it suits) who tried to goad me about the fact that England lost a World Cup game to Holland. Naturally, I assumed he was talking about football, and found myself correcting him, England didn’t play till Saturday night, and we were playing Kazakhstan.

Oh but yeah….the cricket. That embarrassing result aside, I thought England did well to go on and beat Pakistan and qualify for the Super-8′s. A fact that seemed to escape a few of my other Australian colleagues who tried to remind me that England lost to Holland.

Hang on! Did Australia qualify for the Super 8?

Shut up then.
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Bopara and Cook rack up the runs

So England continue their build up to the Ashes series with an excellent start against a very lackluster West Indies. It is encouraging that we are scoring runs again, and although the Windies are among the weaker sides in Test Cricket these days, you can only beat the opposition put in front of you.

It appears England have finally found a solution to the problematic number 3 batting position. I’ve blogged before about the options available at number 3, but I must admit I got this one wrong. I never saw Bopara as a potential number 3, more an alternative Collingwood if anything, but you can’t argue with 3 successive hundreds in that position. True, he doesn’t have the air of a world class number 3, but he certainly has the potential to grow into one. His future in that role will no doubt be decided by his performance in this year’s Ashes series. With his place now cemented, he will be keen to test himself against the best. Read More

Sir Clive Woodward

Sir Clive Woodward, the former England rugby union coach and manager, and now working with the British Olympic Association, is famed for taking ideas from the business world and seeking to apply them to sport. Some of them seem utterly counterintuitive at first, such as his assertion that after a loss the team should go out and get drunk, but after a win, the team should have an 8am meeting. But after a pause for thought, maybe they’re not so mad after all. What is worth analysing more: why something worked, or why it didn’t? A scientist may say both, but I know I would enjoy reviewing tape of a win more than tape of a loss, and I concentrate better when I’m having fun. So maybe Sir Clive’s not such a mad hatter after all.

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