The Stuff of Fantasy - Week 5

It was a Thursday, last August, I remember it being a Thursday because Thursday is the day when Lars Medelsvensson comes to give me his renowned Geriatric Massage (it's all he knows and besides, I'm quite brittle) and I remember this particular Thursday, as Lars finally returned my copy of  How To Stop Repeating Yourself And Influence People. I had just rolled over onto my stomach and put my face in his hole when the phone rang.


It rang for some time before I answered it, my daughter had changed the ring-tone to a voice message my wife left, nagging about semen stains on her new Gianni Versace designed sofa, (manufactured by the Italian furniture maker Gregori Salotti, which she compelled me to mention), as at the time one of the lads, having had a misunderstanding with his missus, was crashing at ours. Like all good husbands, I have, over time, built up a certain immunity to my wife's more berating inflections.


When I finally did pick up, I recognised the voice immediately. The unctuous intonation, the unmistakeable rapidity of agent speak:

"AlrightGafferit'sbeenagesHow'sthekids?How'sthedog?How'sthewife?SorryaboutthesofaSendmethebillYouknowhestilldoesn'tknowhowithappened..."

The slimiest, slickest of all football agents, Paul Stretford, who makes the Exxon Valdez look like a soggy bruschetta, who makes John C. Calhoun look like Martin Luther King, was on the blower, and already, I was wishing I had let it ring out.


After a seemingly interminable ten-minute conversation, I slowly put down the phone, as if it was fine china, my senses askew. Lars looked at me and knew something was wrong, he began to furiously massage my temples, and slowly, I came back to reality. Again he asked me what had happened, "what did he say?" though this time the apprehension in his voice was unabated. I looked at him, directly, the words seemingly finding alternative exits, because he was still waiting for me to say something. Craning, to make audible my incoherent whispers, I replied, "you heard me." The colour drained from his face and (forgeting the techniques he had leaned from my book) again repeated "they're fucking with Sir Alex. There's no going back now."

*

The following morning, I arrived early at the training ground. Unsurprisingly, my secretary informed me upon my arrival that several fellow managers had called already. She asked, innocuously, what they could all possibly be calling about and I, untypically enraged, replied that I was organising a leaving do for Bolton's mascot, Lofty The Lion, who was taking early retirement following an incident with Fulham's Billy The Badger.


It seems I wasn't the only one whom Stretford had called and after an hour or so of conference calls, Gmail Chats and Twitter DMs there was a definite split between those who were terrified of SAF and would support him and those of us who despised him and wanted to see him burn. Ian Holloway, firmly in the former camp, immediately went on the tele and robustly defended SAF or Furious as he is commonly known. His impassioned and robust championing of Furious, basically called for a return to what amounts to player slavery, he "belongs" to Man Utd and so forth.


The rest of us just sat back and watched it unfold. Schadenfreude the Germans call it.


As the manager of a top-flight fantasy football team, it is difficult for me to empathise with SAF in this situation. The maximum I can sign a player for is twelve months and every season I partake in arduous contract negotiations, where agents act as power brokers, and inflate and fuel the megalomaniacal tendencies of the modern player. It must be remembered that only thirty-five years ago players had no freedom of contract and only fifteen years ago players had no freedom of movement, even after their contracts had expired.


Holloway and his ilk should remember this before they call for their players' rights as E.U. citizens (and workers) to be curtailed.

Liverpool Crisis Predicament

What must be most worrying for Liverpool supporters...(Ahem!). Sorry, let me start again. What must be most worrying for supporters of Liverpool Football Club is manager Roy Hodgson's contention, in the aftermath of a two-nil defeat to Merseyside rivals Everton, in the 214th derby, is that this was the finest performance of his 17 game incumbency.

"[T]he second half was as good as I saw a Liverpool team play under my management, that is for sure."

There are two possible reasons why he made this statement. He either believes it, or as a man under (unprecedented?) pressure, he is attempting to use language to build momentum for his team, endeavouring to give them a starting point come Monday morning. If one accepts the former assertion and takes this statement at face value, then surely one must concede that it is a worrying foreshadow cast across Liverpool's season. If this is the best his team have played all season, and yet, were comprehensively beaten by a team who habitually finish below The Reds domestically, the performance alone can offer little solace.


However, if the latter - that he is using language in an attempt to redraw LFC's landscape - is more likely, is it possible to analyse his post match comments and from them deduce Roy Hodgson's state of mind and the performance thereof? One may dismiss the significance of such post match sound-bites, but as in all language, they are revealing.

"We didn't score goals and Everton did but I refuse to accept that we were in any way outplayed or any way inferior."

Not only are Hodgson's comments somewhat delusional, but increasingly contradictory. It is incongruous to suggest your team were not inferior against opponents who beat you comfortably (there are, every season, results which belie the performances of one or both teams, but this was not one of them), but in the following statement the Liverpool boss begins, yet again, discordantly:

“We are not trying to disguise this is a predicament, or whatever word you care to use. For any team to take six points from eight games at the start of the season is a predicament, maybe you argue being Liverpool the predicament is even greater. We do not in any way try to deny that." 

One notes the use of the words you and predicament in the above quotation. Hodgson himself chooses to use predicament, which insufficiently describes LFC's position. He uses it again and both times follows it with the accusatory use of the word you. The you Hodgson refers to is most probably the media, (but critics in general too), and is perhaps an attempt to establish a siege mentality in the dressing room, an us against the world state of mind, often a powerful psychological and motivational tool at a mangers disposal. José Mourinho is perhaps its finest exponent.


But in this instance, Hodgson has chosen the lump hammer instead of the chisel. The players know they are playing badly. On that basis, they also know the criticism to be justified. There is nothing to be gained by the manager's insistence that Liverpool face a predicament and not a crisis. 


He bookends the last statement with a declaratory we're in deep shit, but we are facing the challenge head on, when stating that the team are not 'disguising' or 'denying' the task in front of them. But that is exactly what he is doing. An analyst might refer to this as classic denial. "You may argue, being Liverpool, the predicament is even greater."


Hodgson's Liverpool are in a critical condition. His statements neglect the reality. His team lack cohesion, his players lack belief, not in themselves, but in his system, a system which has marginalised Fernando Torres. They are as leaderless on the field as they are in the dressing room. Joe Cole has yet to deliver anything other than huff and puff, while Alberto Aquilani continues his end of last season form on loan at Juventus. Paul Konchesky, has demonstrated that he is a poor replacement for the promising youngster Emiliano Insua, who has proven to be no more culpable on Liverpool's left flank than his vastly more experienced and higher paid usurper. Christian Poulsen is quite simply dreadful.


Hodgson's remarks are disingenuous. I am not suggesting he is a liar, merely that pressure and resultant stress warps our view. The scale and importance of the Liverpool's manager job is not measured by a 7th place finish last season (what would Liverpool supporters give for that this season?). Liverpool managers must contend with the infinite echo of the past. The tradition of success, the lionised predecessors and tragedies engrained in the psyche of the club inflates the position of LFC beyond market value or league position. At Anfield, reasonably or not, you are expected to win.


Hodgson's pallid team are a reflection of his inconsistent tone and uninspiring language. 'To get a result here would have been Utopia,' said the Liverpool manager following Liverpool's first derby defeat since 2006. 'I can only analyse the performance. There is no point trying to analyse dreams.'


It is comforting to know that Roy does indeed dream. In analysing his own performance, perhaps Hodgson should, in future, encourage his players to dream; to break the bonds of fear that his own unimaginative and meek tenure has fostered.

Are Ireland Trapped?

In the wake of such capitulation - not a surrendering of the heart but of the mind - having borne witness to the collapse of the established playing system as a viable winning (or as the emphasis suggests, not losing) option when playing teams of the highest seeding, there was, in the fleeting afterglow of Aviva, as the phoenix, a thought arisen from the ashes of despair, a moment when one allowed oneself to dream; of another way.


The withdrawal of Kevin Doyle, through injury, fostered an environment which allowed this embryonic notion to fully form.


McGeady infield off strikier Fahey-Whelan-Gibson Coleman to right-back O'Shea to centre what's that young left-back's name?4-2-3-1 4-3-2-1 4-2-2-1-1 4-1-2-2-1...


Wait.


The withdrawal of Kevin Doyle. Through injury.


Drop Robbie Keane? Play him deep?


And then it was gone. Kevin Doyle, a cliff face pummelled by two seas; on one side, his team mates, barrage him, in wave-like relentlessness with mediocrity, and he enacting Bethsaida, converts these bankrupt, frightened punts into field position, set pieces opportunities, go-forward momentum and above all sweet relief. From the other side he is kicked, elbowed, kneed, pushed and pulled; a great big fixed target. Is it any surprise he is injured?


Robbie Keane cannot play the solo role. Nor can he, in my opinion play a deeper role - akin to Gerrard under Benitez - as his style of play is that of a predatory striker and thus his runs are always away from the ball and towards goal. He is not a link man nor is he a creator. Failing that, can you drop your captain and record goalscorer? Can you leave out a player of his quality, when quality is what we are crying out for? Probably not.


Is it worth jeopardising the stability that Trapattoni has brought, that his system has brought, to an Irish team that was desperate for stability, in the wake of successive deteriorating campaigns from Kerr to Staunton? Probably not.


So four-four-two it shall remain. Trapattoni argues the aforementioned system is the one best suited to the players at his disposal. Perhaps it is, but is Il Trap picking the right players to best extrapolate from his conservatism, a way of retaining possession thus alleviating defensive rigours, or an attack strategy focused on creating rather than being hostages to fortune, relying on opponents' back-line errors - which become increasingly unlikely when Shay Given becomes your play-maker-in-chief - and the extent of your rival's defensive duties is heading away, long straight balls,unsophisticatedly launched in the general direction of Richard Dunne?


The problem I have with that is; he's not picking the best players available to him. Players that would improve the unfashionable, two in the middle, two up-top routine, such as James McCarthy and Andy Reid, are not in the squad. Ireland's formation causes the wide-men, most recently McGeady and Lawrence, to come infield as reinforcements for the outrun central duo.This invites opposition full-backs to circumvent the midfield, attacking with impunity, safe in the knowledge that O'Shea and Kilbane offer no threat of their own. Kilbane, who became such a liability at left-back in the World Cup qualifiers has been neutered, and as an attacking outlet, he has been sacrificed in favour of positional certainty, as if he zonally marks our left defensive flank the whole game, regardless of how it is actually unfolding.


At right-back, in green, John O'Shea is a different prospect to the one we see turned out weekly in Manchester red. At centre-back, where he has played well with Dunne for Ireland, he offers us more footballing ability than St. Ledger and is quite simply a player of higher calibre, even at centre-back. Drafting Coleman to the right is a more penetrative attacking option. As earlier stated, left-back is a genuine weakness and has been for some time. That Trapattoni failed to meaningfully examine alternatives, is a black mark against the Italian. His selection policy belies his expertise, in midfield for example, Paul Green is not international standard. Technically he is as poor as he is positionally.


For a team like Ireland, the belief is expounded by some, that success must come at a cost. The price we are asked to pay is football.


All that's left to ask is: what is football worth to you?

THIS IS AN AUTOMATICALLY GENERATED RESPONSE

Dear [insert name here], thank you for your comment. As a full-time professional top-flight fantasy football manager, Mr. Pronounced_Kwan does not have time to respond personally to all correspondence. However if you would like to include a photograph of yourself and your measurements, he may be glad to get back to you.


IF YOU ARE A MAN: DISREGARD 

The Stuff of Fantasy - Week 4

As a top-flight fantasy football manager, you may scoff, or roll your eyes, or bang your head against your keyboard on reading my weekly whinge, comparing my lot, to that of my material, reality-based contemporaries. My problems rank lowly on the wider social scale, I grant you. But plaiting players' trimmed pubic hair, in order to reduce the escalating sweeping-brush re-weaving costs, is a thankless task, and I think you will agree, a valid gripe.


Some amongst my peers, who snobbishly refer to themselves as actual managers, claim to envy me and my kin. They point to the guaranteed 100 million we spend at the start of each season, but overlook how every August, we must rebuild our squads from the ground up and have no money to facilitate the day-to-day operating costs of a top-flight fantasy club - I pay my players with Tea Time Express cakes. The Chocolate Sandwich being the most coveted.


Football folk love to complain - fans, managers and players alike. Just last week, one of the boys came to my office seeking my council. Admittedly, we got off to a bad start, as he walked face first into my glass pane sliding door (I like to give the impression that I'm one of those managers, whose door is always open, but in fact I can't stand most of the whiny brats). Once the smelling salts had done their work, he proceeded to unburden himself   - "I can't bring myself to make love to my pregnant wife, my dog keeps trying to lick my balls. Should I let him?.. blah, blah, blah." In the great tradition of King Solomon, I recommended he smear some Pedigree Chum on his wife's knickers and stop being such a tightwad and splash out on a hooker. You can't always put others first, I told him.


Some ten minutes later, having resuscitated him for the second time, I decided to put one of those marks, that folks who live in high-rise apartments, put on their windows to stop birds flying into them.


By now, most of the lads had gone to join their International squads, in preparation for the coming Euro 2012 qualifiers. With this lull in activity, I decided to settle back in my Concorde Executive Chair - with eight-motor pulsar massage system and built-in happy-ending technology - and occupy myself browsing the web (ahem).  I had only just set the massage control wand to my desired configuration, when the door slid back and Doughnut, my assistant, threw a copy of The Sun down on my desk. I thought it was just another instance of him anticipating my every need, until he thumbed through the paper, past page three and settled on an article with the headline:

"I feel sorry for Gillett 'n [sic] Hicks"

My heart sank (and that wasn't all), as my mind grappled with the words, Harry Redknapp and columnist. As I scrolled deeper and deeper into this repugnant bilge, from; "[a]ll they seem to have done is plough a fortune into the place and they stand to lose a fortune when they sell it," to the concluding piffle; "I'd love to know what the two Americans have done that is so wrong," every shard of his credibility disintegrates, until it is nothing more than a toxic pulverulent, to be greedily snorted by the moronic footballing status quo.


All this from a man, who has left in his wake, category 5 shit-storm levels of financial destruction, from Bournemouth to Portsmouth and back again. Some of you out there will see this as nothing more than a personal attack. Some of you may point to 'Arry landing the Nintendo Wii commercials at my expense (by falsely claiming that it was he who first introduced Wii Fit training regimes at club level, when I had done it at Quannegowes the season before) as the catalyst for this tirade. The Swiss Ramble is far more comprehensive and analytical in its determinations. For those of you who love football (and have an IQ above 75) I urge you to reject the unquestioning, vegetative and asinine tabloid culture that blights our understanding and the development of football in this country.

The Stuff of Fantasy - Week 3

The world of top-flight professional football, my world, often resembles the school yard. My mother used to say, "boys will be boys" and accepting this adage is vital, unless one enjoys reclining and blubbering, at £200 an hour, at the club brothel (the club also charges us for the use of the psychic and tarot facilities).  Over time one learns not to register surprise at the sordid depths the boys plunge to when trying to outdo one another in the my turd is bigger than your turd stakes. But of all the perversions of this life - the idiocy, the greed, the grotesque wealth - nothing dismays me more than the most abominable of school yard characters, that of the bully. 


It was only a matter of time before Arsene Wenger reached his breaking point, in a fashion akin to the Michael Douglas character, 'D-Fens' in Falling Down. Le Professeur snapped during The Gunners' draw at the Stadium of Light, where he lashed out, in a tirade of slender finger pointing (some reports suggest he went as far as poking), at the fourth official in the wake of Sunderland's late equaliser. Now it doesn't take an empathetic prostitute to notice the tell tale signs of a man on the brink. Psychologically that is.


This is the point in our drama where the audience hiss and boo, as stage-left, the villains of the piece enter. Sam Allardyce, a long-standing foe of Wenger's and Owen Coyle, relatively new to the big leagues and perhaps concerned for his celebrity, in a seemingly coordinated attack, put in a headlock, noogied and wedgied the Frenchman. (Sue, the club's solicitor, insists that I make clear I am speaking figuratively. Ms Yuras doesn't do metaphor).


Coyle, in the wake of a failed attempt to overturn the red card Gary Cahill received for a tackle on Marouane Chamakh, called Wenger a 'two-faced whinger.' Cahill's suspension, coupled with injuries to Vermaelan and Dawson have left me with only two fit defenders for the game this week. Coyle's defence at the hearing was that Cahill's two-footed lunge at Chamakh was as a result of him slipping on a banana skin placed in his path by Wenger. Coyle taking his role seriously even trotted out the timeless, if he's got something to say he can 'say it to my face.' 


Allardyce, who this week stated he 'enjoys jousting' with Wenger, hit-out with this observation:

"Arsene has most of the media in his pocket now and is almost - almost - affecting the officials so that you can't tackle an Arsenal player." 

Almost? So Big Sam is saying that Wenger is not affecting the officials. I'm sure the irony is not lost on most of you that this, by Allardyce, is his own attempt at manipulating referees. 


I am using this forum to jump to the aid of Arsene, not just because, I have three of his players on my books. Nor because he is capable of having a conversation without including the phrase, "pull my finger." And not because, like him, I am an educated man (I have a degree in Retail Floristry). Whatever you think about Wenger, he is an articulate, thoughtful guy and football all too often celebrates stupidity. 


As an Irishman working in England, I am cognisant of the insecurities of domestic managers, relating to their mistrust of their foreign counterparts. But we are not here to take the testosterone out of their not-so-beautiful-game. Craig Burley, on Radio 5 Live, complained that he has tired of Wenger "whinging" about tackles his players receive - because if we're not careful the good ol' leg break will disappear from our game forever, Craig?. 


Chestnuts such as, "he's not that kind of player" or "there was nothing malicious in it" dilute the agency of players and their duty of care to one another, to at the very least, not threaten the career of a fellow professional when trying to win the ball back. I for one (or two if you count Wenger) believe, in England, more emphasis should be placed on not giving the ball away in the first place, thus reducing the desperation that is prevalent in the majority of dangerous tackles. You know, my mother always said that I was a dreamer. I guess that makes this the stuff of fantasy.


P.S. For those of you interested in a career as a florist, the Retail Floristry program is offered through Mississippi State University (PDF).

The Stuff of Fantasy - Week 2

International week is upon us. This is what it must feel like when your kids all head off to college and your home, in all its emptiness, suddenly feels like a stranger's house. I liken it to the aftermath of a tornado, one moment you are in the midst of chaos, the next, an eerie vacuum. No shouting, no slapping of arses, no pinning Lucas down and farting in his eye and no Pavlyuchenco leading the boys in a chorus of Iron Maiden's Mother Russia. 


As I write this, sitting alone in the vacated dressing room, among discarded bottles of Olay's all over body moisturiser, reflecting on our 42 point haul for this week, again I am left to ponder what could have been.


What if N'Zogbia had played? I knew what I was getting myself in for when I signed him. Only last week, with the aid of a colour wheel, I spent an hour convincing him that our kit was fuchsia, and not bufty-pink as The Sun, that morning had referred to it. But this week our kit manufacturer wanted to try something new and it was the final straw for Charlie.


To some, Ann Summers as kit manufacturer came out of left field, but after long and rigorous negotiations 'Pilot Girl' and 'Gangster Girl' convinced me that ours was a union that would revolutionise the way clubs and their sponsors did business long into the future. I don't know what his problem is, Doyler didn't seem to mind.

I explained to the boys that the benefits are two-fold. Firstly, the reduction in the amount of fabric used to make the shorts is a real money saver and secondly the ladies love it, in fact we are considering a female replica jersey based on a similar principal. 

N'Zogbia committed the cardinal sin in football. He refused to play for his team. I told him that his behaviour disgusted me and that he'd be better off playing for the other side. He stormed out, but I didn't have that luxury - I had a game to prepare for. We went out there and gave it our best. We remain first and second in The League of Gentlemen and Mayo Div3a (South) respectively. The shorts had their good points, for one, the opposition were reluctant to mark us tightly at set-pieces, but some of the boys suffered horrendous grass burns.

As a top-flight fantasy football manager, I don't have much time to socialise. We are a privileged few and among my contemporaries there are those I call friend. In times of need, I am a shoulder or an ear or any other anatomical part they need me to be (though with Rafa it was often one of the latter. Glad to see the back of him, when he left for Inter that is). 

For example, in my post match glass of Chablis with 'Arry, he was very upset. In an interview he had just done with Sky Sports News, the reporter had referred to him as a 'wheeler and dealer' to which 'Arry promptly told him to 'f@!k off'. But what the reporter didn't know, which 'Arry subsequently confided in me, is that his wife actually ran-off with a used-car sales man. He told me how on the day she left, his missus wished 'Arry "could've been more like Bob (the used-car salesman)." Ten minutes later the door bell rang and she was back at the front door. Their car had broken down on the way to Bob's house and 'Arry, so hurt, so vulnerable, so emasculated, vowed to be ever the wheeler-dealer, if she would give him a second chance. And as Harold was no more, 'Arry was born. 

We sat together for some time after that, silent but for the occasional sob, digesting his harrowing tale. I asked what he thought of our new kit, and 'Arry slapped me in the face.