littorally

You Are Not The Ref Anymore

Shoot Magazine is dead.

I spent a good chunk of my childhood in the seventies reading about how hard-faced weathered men with bad hair and worse beards liked to eat steak and chips before a match. Or maybe chicken, if they were progressive and in tune with fancy dan cutting edge foreign sports science. I’d sit for hours, contented, eating Angel Delight and rearranging the little tabs in the league ladders.

A Guardian obit quotes the best answer ever in the regular Shoot questionnaire. When Alan Birchenall of Leicester City was asked which person in the world he would most like to meet, the answer was:

Hitler (if still alive) – or Neil Diamond.

Class.

Tags: Football, shoot, soccer

Sunderland 1, Man City 2

Best player for Man City?

Mike Riley, the referee. Opta should credit him with two assists. Not much more to say, really. City were not really interested, and will be delighted with the three points.  They ought to cut out this going down like they’ve lost a limb business, though. At one point in the first half, their goalkeeper comes rushing out of his area, doesn’t get to the clearance, gets stranded, and so flops to the ground like he’s been shot. Old Mother Riley promptly blows for a freekick, and  Hart is ‘treated’ and allowed to stay on the pitch. As usual, Kenwyne Jones got mounted and embraced by the City defence in a way which wasn’t suitable for small children to see, and got nothing.

The normally calm Nyron and Evans looked a bit flustered today, I thought. Both full-backs impressed, Bardsley’s been an instant success, and Collins is a different player to last season - and has obviously been told to get forward more. Reid was constantly trying, even if it didn’t always come off. Richardson was anonymous, and Murphy a waste of space. He’s got some real skill, but shouldn’t come back into the first team until he stops being scared of going for a challenge or the ball. Chopra worked like a madman and deserves a start up front, not out on the right. And Keane should make his peace with Miller, so he doesn’t have to bring Leadbitter on as a sub.

Good travelling support from City, sold out their allocation. Only noisy on occasions though, seemed a bit on and off.

Oh, and Martin Petrov? Gloves? It wasn’t even cold, man.

Tags: appalling referees I never want to see again, Football, man city, sunderland

Sunderland 2, West Ham 1

That was fun. Nearly a full house, and the place went berserk when the Irish Jan Molby scored the winner in the 96th minute. Some thoughts from today.

- West Ham really deserved to be beaten. When it’s ten minutes into the first half, and Sunderland have a corner, and not a single WHU player is within ten yards of the centre line, let along in Sunderland’s half, you know this is a team that would settle for nil-nil. They time wasted from the start, dragging their feet over every goal-kick, every throw-in. Rubbish. Which was funny, because Andy Reid’s winner came six minutes into injury time. Why did was there so much injury time? Because of West Ham’s time-wasting. Ha.

- Referee was appalling. No consistency at all. He booked Reid for what he said was a push from behind, but let the West Ham defenders swarm all over Kenwyne Jones all match like he was a climbing frame. Last Saturday, Mascherano got sent off for persistent dissent. Freddie Ljungberg (who used to be a good player once upon a time) spent the whole game mouthing off to the ref. Didn’t even get a yellow card, and the only thing that stopped him was going off on a stretcher.

- People who leave the match early: hope beating the traffic was worth it.

- They may have a game in hand, but even so, how sweet is this…

Tags: Football, soccer, sunderland, whoateallthepies

It’s just wrong

When I went to bed last night, did I fall into such a deep sleep that I didn’t wake up for nearly two months, and it’s now April 1st?

That would explain the deeply, profoundly wrong proposal by the Premier League that there should be an extra game inserted into the season - against one of the teams already played against - and that this extra game should be held in which ever city around the globe that is prepared to stump up five million quid.

Sorry, I’ve just read that paragraph again because I couldn’t quite believe that I had written it.

Let’s look at why this is a stupid idea. Because it is. A very, very stupid idea.

1) Liverpool-Man Utd. OK, I can see a New York or a Beijing stumping up for that one.

Wigan-Fulham? Erm, Ulan Bator?

2) It’s just wrong.

3) Playing the same team again? WTF? That’s going to work really well, really really well, when a team on the threshold of relegation, desperately struggling to survive the drop, finds out that their extra game is in Tokyo against Arsenal. To whom they’ve already lost six points. Meanwhile, their fellow strugglers find out that their extra game is in Paris. Against Derby.

There’s no way of working this so it is not desperately unfair. In the current season every team knows that they have played the same number of games, against the same opponents, as everyone else. In the Premier League’s proposals to whore the game out to any despot with a fancy to put on a Premier league match to impress his mates, that won’t be the case. One team will play a more difficult season than another team.

4) It’s just wrong

5) All the dedicated fans who go to ever home game, or even home and away. Want to support your team? Plane ticket to Dubai for you then. Just after Christmas.

6) It’s just wrong.

7) For years, there’s been nothing but complaints that there are too many games in our season, that it’s more than other European teams play, that it explains England’s usual sub-par performance at international level, that it’s a factor in the amount of injuries…so the solution is to add a game to the season, book-ended by two long plane flights.

8 ) It’s just wrong

9) Oi, Keano, no.

10) It’s just wrong.

11) It’s not a long step from this to franchising, European super leagues, and all the other bollocks. Want all of football to look like MK Dons? Want to see the Sunderland Black Cats playing the Wigan Pie-Eaters live from Woomera? Step this way. Of course, if you do watch the Black Cats versus the Ginsters, it’ll be in quarters, to make room for more adverts. And it won’t be a relegation six pointer (well, of course, because Sunderland will be in the top four), because there won’t be any relegation any more. Got to protect those franchises.

12) It’s just wrong. Really, really wrong. Leave our game alone.

Tags: Football, premier league, premierleague, soccer, stupidbatshitinsane

We managed to wrong a few rights

The collected wisdom of Newcastle’s new manager.

Tags: circus, comedy, Football, Newcastle