Stepping away from the debacle that is The Ashes, I have my attention rudely grabbed by Alex Ferguson. Sorry, Sir Alex Ferguson, in my opinion the most laughable knighthood ever. That is until the words “arise, Sir David Beckham” are inevitably heard, at least.

Doing his best impression of the three mice from the famous nursery rhyme, Ferguson sought to refute the entirely justified claim by, well, by almost everyone, that Cristiano Ronaldo is a diver by saying that he is “the most fouled player in the country”.

That he may be, but how many of these fouls are caused by the ripple of disturbed air from an opposition defenders snort of laughter at his feeble attempts to con the ref, rather than, say, actual physical contact is up for discussion. But apparently not in Sir Alex’s Govan-themed mansion. Read the rest of this entry »

We are all critics and as someone writing on a place of public access I am no better than any other writer or critic. Add to that the fact that I am neither English or a football fan beyond passing interest, and you would be forgiven for dismissing my two penny’s worth out of hand.

It seems to me though that there is one faction with more influence over English football at both a domestic and international level that goes unnoticed in it’s uncandidness: The English Media.

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Man Utd 2 v Liverpool 0

1) The first thing you can say about Liverpool, and in a way defends their poor start to the season, is that they’ve gotten their hardest 4 away fixtures out of the way before the end of October. If they could have written down the four toughest away matches of the season before the fixture lists were released, the names Manchester United, Chelsea, Everton and Bolton would unquestionably have been the ones on the list. By bad luck or interference of those fixture lists (who knows who compiles them or how random they really are?) the quirk is that they have got them all out of the way not even a quarter into the Premiership season. This, if you are being ultra positive, can enable Liverpool to go on long winning runs of form here on in…. Read the rest of this entry »

There is a rather large problem permeating the Football Association. Ignoring the fact that they have appointed a man who is publicly known to be their second choice as manager, there is a bigger problem that not only faces this generation of English footballers, the self-anointed “golden generation”, but if the problem isn’t addressed, also the next two or three generations to come. The problem is, that for all the F.A.’s demands that England should be the best in the world, there has been very little of anything to suggest that the F.A. has the ambition to match these statements.

Whilst countries such as Holland, Italy, Brazil, Croatia and even Ireland have taken the bold steps of appointing untested ex-players as national team mangers, England still fall foul of the age old conservativeness that has so long affected the picking of the team.

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With the next World Cup to be held in South Africa, giving Africa one extra qualifier, and probably the best chance for an African side to win the World Cup, what chance has an African side got of winning the ultimate prize? Pele famously said he believed that an African nation would win the World Cup by 2002. Obviously, he has had to revise that theory with every four years that pass, but when South Africa kick-off the 2010 tournament, which African teams will be in the running?

The World Cup in Germany was notable for many things, including the absence of the recognised powers in African football, that being Cameroon, Nigeria, and to a lesser extent, South Africa. Now, on the basis of their performances in Germany, would anyone argue that Togo or Angola are better teams than Nigeria or Cameroon? Egypt, current African Nations champions, did not qualify either, and it isn’t comparable to the non-qualification of Greece, who were shock winners in Portugal, and have never been viewed as a power in European football, whereas Egypt have long been one of the top teams in Africa.
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So lets look ahead prematurely to the Euro 2008 qualifying groups. In Scotland’s group, Group B, they have to contend with three World Cup quarter finalists in France, Italy and the Ukraine for the top two spots. This is ridiculous and compounded by the fact when you take a look at Group C, a group of Greece, Turkey, Norway, Bosnia and Hertzegovina, Hungary, Moldova and Malta. Not only did none of these teams fail to make it to the quarter finals of the World Cup, none of them even made it at all!!!

Surely the way groups are drawn needs to be looked at again sinc we have seen unbalanced groupings in Germany (two groups of deaths C and D and three weak ones A, B and G) and now this

“The decision to overlook key Liverpool players despite our magnificent achievement was frustrating,” Chief Executive Rick Parry told Liverpool’s official magazine.

“What do you have to do to be recognised by the powers-that-be? I don’t want to take anything away from the England cricketers and their wonderful Ashes success against Australia. But the fact that the inspirational efforts of Steven Gerrard and Jamie Carragher in helping us win the Champions League were effectively dismissed is little short of staggering.”

“Of course, we have been here before,” he said. “The achievements of the legendary Bob Paisley, the most successful English club manager of all time and three-times European Cup winner, were never truly recognised. My own bemusement now comes full circle to encompass the failure to recognise the achievements of the Anfield boys of 2005.”

Never a truer word spoken plus the fact that every member of the England Rugby Squad got a MBE including someone who played for 25 minutes against Uruguay and the physio. Paul Collingwood, who scored about 20 runs and took no wickets in the final test got one as did the England bowling coach who is an Australian!!!

Jonno

Add this to the fact that BBC1 (or MUTV2 as it is now known) are showing the Burton replay, meaning they have shown Man U play in 11 consecutive rounds of the FA Cup going back to the 2004 5th round. As well as two nights of George Best programmes (that included a show just on Man U and nothing to do with Best) and a programme on the Munich air crash this week.

Who is England’s most successful football club? I forget.