TFI, the FA Cup and ticket prices
Everything that could be written in ten days about football ticket prices has been written in the last ten days and, with that in mind, have some more related content.There is a more or less universal feeling that football is overpriced – if not ticketing, then all that comes with it; food, drink, replica shirts are all marked up football fans with, conversely, the quality going down (the Carlsberg and Fosters served at football grounds is somehow less appetising than it is normally).
Paradoxically, as a lapsed fan who does not go to many Reading homes games now as they cost too much for me, I feel as if ticket costs at the Madejski aren’t that bad – they’re too expensive for me in the sense there is more now I’d rather spend 25 quid on than watching another season of rudderless mediocrity.
If memory serves, tickets for matches when Reading were in the Premier League were similarly sensibly priced, despite the fact in a 24,000-seater stadium, the club could probably have got away with charging almost as much as they would like.
Furthermore, the young person’s season ticket introduced this year is also a massive step forward – if I had been a year younger, one would certainly now sit in my wallet.
Reading still have the wider football problem of overpriced tat and dubious quality food and drink, but the bottom line is you don’t have to pay for those, it is a choice (unless you have kids I suppose) and if one had to opt between relatively low ticket prices and low-cost extras, the preferred option should be obvious.
And, for non-season ticket holders like myself, the last week of this month allows you to go to three games in a week for £15 – a bloody good deal if ever there was one. £10 for a home FA Cup tie, a home freebie for friends of season ticket holders via a Reading scheme (a curious attempt to re-brand TFI – or The Fan Initiative) and £5 for an away day at Charlton Athletic, courtesy of an initiative run by the South London club.
All cheap, all good PR, everyone’s a winner.
However, the rub is, how many tickets would be sold for a cup tie against West Brom, a Tuesday night home league game against Rotherham and, from Charlton’s point of view, a match against a resolutely mid-table outfit, albeit while in a relegation battle, if tickets were priced normally?
From there, different tactics have to be used to sell tickets as the supply simply will not there – 13,000 for each of Reading’s home games in that week would be a reasonable target one imagines. In a 24,000 capacity ground.
Ergo, extra efforts have to be made to get people into the stadium and this fans vs customers argument works both ways; the cheaper it is, the more likely it will get your custom. Many economics terms sit uneasily in the realm of sport, but supply and demand works to an extent, especially if you’re not a fan of a Premier League regular where the lesser demand means fans who get fleeced will stop going and not come back or be replaced and the accountants are aware of this.
So, if Reading’s three games in a week were a cup tie against Manchester City and two Premier League games against say Newcastle and Aston Villa (two sides also in relegation battles like Rotherham and Charlton), that £15 fee for three games would probably be increased by 500%.
No harsh words should be levelled at clubs which slash ticket prices and run schemes to get more fans in their ground, especially kids, teenagers and people in their early 20s, but the wider context has to be appreciated that would these initiatives be run if most matches so far that season had been played at stadiums 90% sold out?
One suspects not.
Countless unforgettable moments from the London Games
In the build up to the London 2012 Olympic Games, the Guardian put together a superb series of articles entitled '50 Stunning Olympic Moments' which took in well known and lesser known achievements from the Summer Games over the last 29 Olympiads.
The past 16 days have seen plenty of new stunning moments that can be added to that particular list as London welcomed the biggest party in the world to their doorstep.
Every single medal awarded at these Games (every single competitor in the Games come to that) has had a story behind it that was told brilliantly by the UK media and their colleagues from across the globe.
In no particular order, here are some of my personal stand out moments from the Games.
The way in which Jessica Ennis won her heptathlon gold medal. The personal bests she set and the way in which she pushed past the rest of the field at the end of the 800 metres as if to say “Here I am, out of my way, I am Jessica Ennis, this is my gold medal, this is my time, this is my moment. Get out of my way.” To see a Britain that was favourite for a gold medal in track and field so ruthlessly and confidently see off her challengers was an inspiring change.
Sir Chris Hoy sealing his place in Olympic history by notching his fifth and sixth gold medals in the Velodrome. There is no such thing as a banker in sport, but Hoy is as close as you can get. Widely reported as one of the most honest and humblest sportsmen you can get, all but the most granite-hearted of souls could not be moved by his tears at both of his award presentation ceremonies.
Sticking with cycling, the achievements of Laura Trott; born prematurely with a collapsed lung and spending the first weeks of her life in intensive care. Fast forward 20 years or so and the petite Essex girl left all in her wake in the omnium and was a key component of the all-conquering, record breaking women's team pursuit team. If Hoy has set the bar for cycling at the Olympics, Trott could be the to set it higher in years to come.
More cycling, Bradley Wiggins redefining what a sportsman can be to a nation bored to death with grey, neutral presences. Wiggins is cool, unique, witty, eloquent, humble, modest and a man with the common touch. Added to that, he is the best road cyclist this country has produced and, despite the incredible competition, must be favourite to win Sports Personality of the Year come December, largely because of the second word in the title of that gong.
To the judo arena and possibly the moment that brought more tears and lumps in the throat to a nation in the whole Games. Gemma Gibbons lost her mother, the woman who introduced her to the sport, to cancer eight years ago. After making her way past all comers to the semi final, she won that round too and mouthed the simple words “I love you Mum” to the heavens. Touchingly beautiful.
More heartstrings touched over at the aquatics centre where Tom Daley secured a bronze medal in the 10m platform diving. Daley's trials are well documented and need no repeating but for a young man with the weight of the world on his shoulders to emerge with a medal is a tribute to his country, himself and his father who will be looking down proudly upon him.
More gold medals but this time over at Eton Dorney where so much heartache was erased when Katherine Grainger crossed the line with Anna Watkins to secure her first gold medal at the Olympics in her fourth attempt at trying and instantly putting aside the heartache of so silver medals at the last three Games.
And how have I gotten this far without mentioning the undoubted British star of these Games, Mohamed Farah. His broad, large toothed-smile, his slight Cockney accent, his self-deprecation, his silent determination and wit; a; true British traits. But this from a man born in Somalia who came to Britain aged eight years. His is a story of a modern British hero; multi-cultural, world-aware but still tied to home. The sight of his daughter skipping along the track to give her Dad a kiss as her heavily pregnant Mum aimed to keep up at the end of the 10,000metres was touching, only to be equalled by his madcap 'head-slapping' celebration to win the 5,000metres. A true hero.
Back to the Velodrome and a contest a decade in the making between arch-rivals Victoria Pendleton and Anna Meares ended in controversy, tears but sportsmanship as Pendleton congratulated her rival on the lap after the end of the race. A fine career ended in style if not the result dearly wanted but the message given to her fiancee at the end of the keirin provided an image of the Games.
Down to Weymouth and the king of the seas, Ben Ainslie. Beaten, bruised and battered after six rounds of the contest, he looked down and out but he was made angry and the rest is history. Four gold medals and a silver in five Olympics in the sailing for Ainslie; one of the best British Olympians ever secures his place in the pantheon.
What about in the boxing ring where Britain had it's best performance in more than 50 years and the record books were written with Nicola Adams taking home a gold medal. The part-time extra in various TV soap operas who couldn't find sponsorship to fund her dream for love nor money will probably have no hassle in finding some willing backers now.
So far, this is something of a Britsh-tinted affair (understandably so, I hope you feel too dear readers) but have some foreign flavour. 15 year-olds dominating in the pool, Usain Bolt securing his place in the annals of history, Michael Phelps joining him, Meares fulfilling her destiny, Brazil walking away with silver in the football, David Rudisha blowing away the field in the 800 metres, the outrageous nature of the USA's victory in the 4x400m women's relay and so many more.
Well over a thousand words and no mention of the likes of Ed Clancy, Jason Kenny and all of the all-conquering cycling team, Robbie Grabarz, Nick Dempsey, the dressage team, so many rowers, Alastair and Johnathan Brownlee, Alan Campbell, Zac Purchase and Mark Hunter, the kings of the canoes both sprinting and slalom, the hockey teams, more sailors, Peter Wilson, Jade Jones and so so many more.
All of these moments and more made this a Games to remember that, I am probably not alone in saying, wish could go on forever and ever.
Alas, they cannot, but memories last forever and one imagines that the BBC Sport archive of the London 2012 Games will get an awful lot of mileage in them over the next weeks, months and years to recreate the fortnight-long period when Team GB delivered but not only that, Britain did too.
What is your stand-out Olympic moment? Drop your thoughts below the line.
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Problems for Euro 2020
Forever in football the view on the horizon has as much attention paid to it as the event currently occurring; “sure Manchester City won the Premier League this season, but what are they doing to consolidate their position at the top of the tree?” commentators ask.
It’s one of the ways to maintain the crucial interest of the masses in the sport, by keeping the narrative going and thus keeping the revenue flowing to clubs, the media, governing bodies and all the key players in the industry.
Thus, we have the situation whereby UEFA’s biggest party of them all, Euro 2012, is fast approaching but the planning for the finals of the competition in 2020 has already had its first deadline come and go.
Midnight this morning was the point at which expressions of interest to host the competition had to be submitted to UEFA and so it came to pass that UEFA has three bids on their metaphorical table (or huge literal table) to ponder over these bids being from Turkey, a ‘Celtic’ option consisting of Scotland, Wales and the Republic of Ireland and Georgia, the latter two bids submitted right on the deadline.
So, there are three options for the right to host the 16th European Championships for UEFA to explore, scrutinise and eventually make a decision on in late 2013 or early 2014. All good news then?
Well, no.
Each bid has a huge, gaping problem with it that makes the worries over the state of the stadiums in Poland and Ukraine for this year’s tournament seem rather small-fry by comparison.
On paper, the Turkish bid is the strongest as it has the infrastructure (in terms of stadiums already built), a passionate fan base for the sport and it also missed out on hosting Euro 2016 to France by a single vote which shows its capabilities to host a tournament of this magnitude are acknowledged and respected in UEFA HQ .
However, two rather large problems severely cripple the Turkish bid. Firstly, there is the ongoing situation regarding corruption in their FA and match-fixing in Turkish football, a situation so severe that UEFA supremo Michel Platini has waded into the situation threatening to ban the country from European competition.
Secondly, Istanbul has also submitted a bid to host the 2020 Olympics. The rules of the International Olympic Committee prevent a country hosting a major sporting tournament in the same year as an Olympics if a city in that country is hosting the Games. The Turkish government is thought to favour the Olympics should a choice have to be made due to the subsequent commercial boost and reasons of realpolitik. The announcement of the Olympics host city is expected in September 2013 with UEFA’s decision following three or four months later.
The ‘Celtic’ bid is a strong one with the countries having a large number of appropriately-sized stadiums built and in use already, not too much geographical distance between the host countries for visiting teams and fans and a strong infrastructure of airports, railway stations and hotels in cities such as Cardiff, Glasgow, Edinburgh and Dublin for example. However, a three-country bid is particularly unprecedented (and a successful one completely unprecedented) and would cause difficulty when it comes to automatic qualification for host countries.
Lastly, the Georgia bid is the most underwhelming of the lot. UEFA criteria dictates that host nations must have two stadiums of 50,000+ capacity, three of 40,000+ and four of 30,000+. Georgia currently has one stadium with more than 30,000+ (Dinamo Tbilisi’s 57,000-seater) with a 30,000 seater expected to be completed by 30,000. Even in a country dealing moderately well with global economic downturn (more on which later), the ability to construct at least eight new stadiums must be doubted and, after the problems in Ukraine over stadium construction, UEFA may be unwilling to commit to East Europe again, despite its desire to branch the game out.
Clearly, UEFA are in possession of three bids that have as many problems as they do advantages. For some context, Euro 2016 had four bids at this stage, Euro 2012 had five initial bids submitted and Euro 2008 had six. Some of these bids had equally acute flaws as the current crop but that’s not the point; variety produces strength.
The problem, as this article by Keir Radnedge of World Soccer magazine eloquently explains, is very much of UEFA’s own making. To get more finals matches (and therefore more income), UEFA upped the numbers of teams in the finals from 16 to 24 as of Euro 2016 which subsequently requires more host cities and stadia to be provided.
All well and good when global and national economies are booming and states can afford the expenditure but that is far from the case in the current climate. Indeed, doubts have already been expressed over France’s ability juggle an adequate amount of host cities which, combined with the absurdly early deadline for interest in hosting to be announced by UEFA, has produced three severely flawed candidates. The large list of countries who ultimately decided not to bid really does tell its own story.
Clearly, it is still very early in the process which would allow UEFA to re-open the bid submission procedure and hope for an economic upturn to rustle up some more interest and a concrete bid or two but, not for the first time, European football’s governing body has shot itself in the foot.
This post appeared over at www.footballfriendsonline.com/blogs/
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The genesis of this season's success
I’ve just finished reading Graham Hunter’s insightful and interesting book “Barca; The Making of the Greatest Team in the World” where he takes a magnifying glass to everything at the Catalan club from the La Masia academy and the background politics to the lives and histories of key personnel like Pep Guardiola, Xavi Hernandez and Lionel Messi.
One of the key themes in the book is the huge impact that Johan Cruyff had on the club, particularly in his stint as manager in the late 1980s/early 1990s. The theory goes that the current success of the club under Guardiola’s management has its genesis in the almost complete overhaul of the Catalan club that Cruyff instigated.
The two key facets of Cruyff’s policy were the implementation of an offensive 4-3-3/3-4-3 formation on the first team with Guardiola in the pivote role and then ensuring that this formation was used at every level of the club youth development system (obligatory use of the phrase La Masia) to ensure that the best young players would be schooled to know how to play in their respective position and so slot seamlessly when they made the jump to the first team. Cruyff would go on to win a record 11 trophies at the club, including their first European Cup in 1992.
The influence on the current ‘Pep team’ is blindingly obvious as the formation and attacking intent is very similar (with Sergio Busquets performing the Guardiola role) and the number ofcantera graduates coming through the system who, upon graduation to the first team, slot into their respective positions with no fuss. From Xavi and Iniesta through Messi and Busquets to the current crop of Cuenca and Tello, the fruits of Cruyff’s labours are plain to see. Guardiola has since surpassed Cruyff’s trophy record.
In between these two epochs was the success of Frank Rijkaard’s teams which took the influences of the Cruyff formation in addition to the young generation coming through (particularly Iniesta, Valdes and Messi) from La Masia. However, the Rijkaard team failed as it’s generally seen that the team lost its hunger for success; a lesson Guardiola is keen to avoid and has to a certain extent, though time will tell.
In the same way that Rijkaard and Guardiola’s success can be traced back to the seeds sown twenty years beforehand(thus creating the ‘Barcelona way’), the successful season that Reading have had can very conceivably be seen in seeds sown by Brian McDermott’s predecessors starting over a decade ago. And this isn’t just promotion giddiness talking, going and comparing Reading to Barcelona.
Whilst there has been no large scale restructuring of the club ala Cruyff, key themes and elements of this successful Reading side can be seen in the last two times we were successful in this division, with refinements and evolution over the years.
The play-off defeat of 2002/03 team of Alan Pardew, the 2005/06 Championship-winning squad of Steve Coppell and this season’s incarnation under McDermott all share distinctive similarities in their respective on-field and off-field demeanours and styles.
The playing style of each team is very similar; reliant for creativity on wingers (from John Salako and Luke Chadwick through Glen Little and Bobby Convey to Jobi McAnuff and Jimmy Kebe), hard-working almost to the point of self-sufficient strikers (Nicky Forster, Kevin Doyle, Noel Hunt, Jason Roberts) and a solid, uncompromising, ever-present base of central defence and centre midfield to launch attacks from. If there is a ‘Reading style’ of football, this is it and it has been it for the last ten years since Pardew was manager.
The teams of Coppell that failed to get promoted in 2003/04, 2004/05 and 2008/09 as well as being relegated n 2007/08 all played in this manner and, despite McDermott being absolutely right in saying that he has created three different teams in his time as Reading manager, each of them broadly played in the same manner. Each time the system was found out, it has been refined but the same basic premise remains.
The other key reason for the successes of Pardew, Coppell and McDermott, and for the interspersed failures indeed, has been the utilisation of team spirit to create a ‘greater than the sum of our parts’ playing staff. Pardew’s style was to create something of a siege mentality, Coppell’s may well have been something of an accident created by some players that really got on well mixed with success (as in evidence by the capitulation of 2007/08 and the subsequent clear loss of team spirit) whilst this season’s team looks genuinely like they get on well and are a supremely united unit as in evidence by their celebrations together but, more importantly, their socialising together all through the season. We did say that about the 2005/06 vintage mind, when finding factors to attribute their initial Premier League success to.
Lessons from the 2005/06 team to the current generation, both in terms of positives built upon and negatives learned from, can also be seen in a similar fashion to how Guardiola has learnt from Rijkaard.
The way McDermott handled the media this season by playing things down and the fallback line of “we’re just concentrating on the next game” is a carbon copy of how Coppell spoke to the press and TV throughout the 106 points season. Meanwhile, the decline of that team and the way the team spirit fell apart is something McDermott will seek to avoid when recruiting players this summer.
The fact that McDermott has been around the club for so long and picked up the best bits of each of his predecessors can be seen as instrumental to this year’s success, in addition to Nicky Hammond’s years of service to maintain stability and preserve an identity on the playing side of the club.
Sir John Madejski in his role as Chairman has a very powerful say in the direction that the club will follow and his role in this evolution should not be underplayed either. His choices of manager and his desire to run the club on a budget have had a large impact on how the three teams analysed were made and developed. But additionally, his desire to not be an overbearing Chairman has allowed the distinctive Reading manner outlined earlier to flower by giving managers the time and space to refine the system that had become stale under their predecessors. *It should be hoped that Anton Zingarevich will continue this and quotes likethese give a good indication that he will.
Overall, this post isn’t about comparing Reading to Barcelona as every club enjoying success for an extended period of time (which Reading have relatively over the last ten years) can trace that success back through its ‘family tree’ to see where its roots lay and the evolution that the club has been on in that time by building on past successes and learning from failures in a stable environment.
The success of this season can be traced back through Coppell and Pardew’s team building, their style of play and their own personalities’, combined with the understated role of Hammond as a pillar of the club, all under the influence of Madejski’s stable ownership regime.
To say that this season has been the culmination of a decade-long project is wrong but the DNA this team possess has traces of Coppell, Pardew, Hammond and Madejski in it and whilst the success is hugely attributable to McDermott, his coaching staff and the playing staff, how they all got there and the way in which their success has been achieved has its roots a lot further back than the start of the season.
*Incidentally, the one manager who wasn’t given the time, Brendan Rodgers, was the one manager who seemed to attempt to branch out from the successful model of the last decade in his style of football and Madejski appeared to notice the mistake swiftly and rectify it.
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Thoughts and feelings the night after the night before
Nearly 24 hours on from the night before, promotion has just started to sink in and the memories from last night are still fresh in the mind.
What follows is a series of thoughts and emotions, some personal and some applicable to all Reading fans which are just as much to keep my memories and experiences alive for future reference as well as a typical ‘article’ on this blog.
So here goes…
The three ‘M’s
There are three people who deserved last night more than most and they all have surnames beginning with ‘M’.
Firstly, John Madejski who signed off his reign as owner of the club in fine style. He has his detractors but he has always had the best interests of the club at heart, to make us self-sufficient, to find the right investor and to keep us at a solid base level at the very least. Over the years he has grown to love this club, not as a businessman but as a fan and his joy from some pictures last night showed this.
Secondly, Jobi McAnuff was not everyone’s choice when he was appointed captain at the start of the season but he has showed just how inspirational he is. He isn’t a shouting captain but what he does is lead by example, covering every blade of grass, tracking back, providing jolts of quality here and there and being an eloquent speaker off of the field. The video going round of him and his reaction to being promoted is one of my favourites thus far. After a career spent in the Championship, he has served his time and on an individual level, has earned his promotion.
Thirdly, Brian McDermott who has built a third outstanding team at this level in two and half years at the club on a small-ish budget and having to sell his best players every summer. To bounce back from the play-off final defeat last year, to identify players like Kaspars Gorkss, Adam le Fondre, Jason Roberts and Hayden Mullins, to inspire his team, to make game-changing subs, to keep the pressure off them, he has done it all.
The whole club deserved last night but these three leaders each have their special reasons for last night.
Promotion to the top flight a second time
Nothing will ever beat getting promotion to the Premier League at Leicester back in 2006 as it was the first time we had done it but last night was damn close for a multitude of reasons.
Doing it at home and so the resultant pitch invasion is one, our game kicking off 15 minutes later the one at Ashton Gate thus giving us the knowledge of what we needed to do to make promotion a reality, the last five minutes of the game itself with the clearance off the line and Forest hitting the bar and the extraordinary run that led up to last night. Seriously, if you had said in November we would win promotion with two games to spare, you’d have been sectioned.
Atmosphere
More often than not, and rightly so, Reading fans and the Madejski Stadium gets a bad press for a lack of atmosphere and quiet home fans but last night, you could literally feel the floor shaking.
Admittedly, so it should be on a night when promotion is on the cards but the stadium really was rocking last night, particularly in the second half when the racket was unrelenting. The clap banner things were rightly neglected in the East Stand as you cannot make a solid noise with them (and the fact they’re a bit ghey) but elsewhere in the ground, they made a right din and looked good too when utilised.
It is very rare to come out of the Madejski with no voice but last night was one of those occasions.
Bus banter
Everyone has their own little stories from football that make the whole experience unique and special to them on a personal level. This is mine.
From 2004 to 2008, I had a season ticket sat next to my Dad and two of my uncles. By 2008, I had gone to university so took the decision to not renew my ticket and haven’t had the finances to do so since. Every game we went to then and every game I go to now, we get the bus from one of our local pubs.
However, I went to the game last night and I was sat close to them last night and we got onto the pitch together (and with other family members too, more on which later) before losing one of our number.
After half an hour or so on the pitch, we ambled out of the ground to find our bus back to the pub had departed without us. We marched on cheerfully to the buses back to the town centre, skipped onto one without paying (sssshhhhh) and took seats at the back of the top deck.
So ensued a superb journey to the bus station with non-stop singing of “West Ham United, it could have been you”, “we’re not going to Wembley”, “We’re the left side” and “We are going up” with a bunch of random fans I had never met before. Football has this effect of unifying people who do not know each other to make unforgettable and unique experiences for those people.
Purple Turtle
The unofficial Reading promotion party location for the third successive promotion now with Madejski and McDermott ending up there in the early hours of this morning, played the event well as the numbers built up which got the noise and singing back. One of the more unusual memories of a horde of football fans invading a decidedly alternative place is testament to the way football can cross societal boundaries, albeit as it is the one late night drinking establishment in Reading for celebrating,
Family and friends
As alluded to earlier, going to football has been a family experience for me for the vast majority of my footballing life with my companions to games usually being some combination of cousins or uncles.
Last night, sat within about a fifty metre radius of each other were myself, my cousin, my dad, three uncles and my cousin’s mate and when coming down the stairs to get on the pitch, I turned around to see another one of my uncles who was promptly bundled.
Sharing a massive group hug in Row BB Y26 followed by individually hugging everyone and jumping up and down and shouting was one of the best moments of the night, as was sharing the half hour or so on the pitch with them.
To top it all off, when leaving the ground in this group, I saw a friend of mine who has moved away from Reading this season so I do not get to see often enough. Immediately upon seeing him, I ran and jumped on him and the shouting and singing started again. Another golden moment.
The team
Anyway, enough personal memories, back to the football.
Last night was another one of those team performances that has epitomised our season where we gritted our teeth and got through it through sheer force of will as a strong unit, this time for the ultimate prize.
Two moments stand out in this regard; the three players on the line to block Forest’s goalbound effort with five minutes to go showing the commitment of every single player in that team (the fact that one of those players on the line was Jimmy Kebe only adds to it).
The second moment of showcasing the team spirit of this incarnation of Reading is Jem Karacan discharging himself from the Royal Berks, still visibly worse for wear, to join in the festivities like being pushed around in his wheelchair by Noel Hunt in his underpants. He got a hug off McDermott and McAnuff, naturally as his captain and skipper, but also from Benik Afobe; a player who has only been at the club a matter of weeks but is clearly a big part of the team judging by how much he wanted to see Karacan. A clear embodiment of the team’s attitude and unity.
The club
Lastly, as has been said elsewhere “I love this club”. There is a Reading way (explained here) and the connection between the fans, the players, the management and the owners of the club are clear to see and this factor enhanced the feelings of last night, topped off by Madejski’s speech at the Turtle in the early hours.
I’m probably biased but the way we go about things as a club is quite unique and long may it continue to bring nights like yesterday.
We are going up. And that is all that matters.
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All but there
The great, but also not so great, thing about football is that it can make your weekend or make going into work the next day that little bit easier. Having an emotional investment in somebody or something does that to you as putting a bit of yourself in is the gamble and whether it pays off or not, in euphoria or disappointment, is the outcome.
With football, putting your faith and emotional investment into a team has a pretty straight forward payoff; more often than not there will be a win or a defeat that affects your mood and subsequent desirability to be around the following day or so. There are three set outcomes unlike emotional investment in a fellow person which has at least 1,145,189 different outcomes.
However, as the season wears on and some wins become more equal than others, the impact on one’s mood becomes more profound. Suffice to say, after last night’s result, work today and tomorrow and the day after that and the day after that has been and will be a lot easier to bear.
The simple reason for that is, for all intents and purposes, we are there; we are promoted to the Premier League. It does not feel right at all saying those words as anyone who has read this blog before (here, here and here are three examples) knows this blogger is naturally ultra-pessimistic and uber-cautious when it comes to anything Reading FC-related.
This probably stems from experiences such as the 2008/09 capitulation to play-off defeat, missing out on the play-offs in 2003/04 and 2004/05 after promising starts and the horrendous ‘9 draws in ten games’ closing stages of the 2001/02 season where guaranteed promotion was almost blown. The one common factor in each of these years being the incredible start followed by the pressure getting to us/other teams working us out leading to a flattering to deceive season where so much was rightly expected, followed by crushing disappointment (almost, in the case of 01/02).
This year, on the other hand, it feels…it feels different as, in keeping with every season under Brian McDermott, we’ve hit our stride as the season as worn on, not tripped over our own shoelaces. Thus, the level of expectation hasn’t been there all season and we’ve managed to sneak up pretty much under the radar to now top the league at a time of the season that is very much our time.
But it’s not just this change of pattern in how our season has panned out that’s got this blogger feeling unnaturally and unerringly confident.
The main reason for this is the manner in which Reading have gone about their business since the start of 2012. As written about before, tight wins built on a solid defence only look really convincing when looking back at them towards the end of an ultimately successful season.
It was quite conceivable to say that Reading were a lucky team back in February when winning by the odd goal and keeping it tight at the other end. However, two months on from then and it clearly isn’t luck anymore, no matter what managers such as Nigel Adkins and Sam Allardyce say about all the goals we score being lucky. No matter what anyone says, a 46-game season evens out the impact of random chance.
The run we’ve been on since November, but from January particularly, has been built on quality, resilience, confidence, team work, determination, spirit and a plan. A plan based on a refined version of “smash-and-grab” remains a plan as it entails a strong defence (as exemplified by the best defensive record in the league) and the ability to get goals when it matters, as shown by the spread of goals across our squad which is a strength and not a weakness in the manner in which we play.
Furthermore, these last two weeks has shown that this team can take the pressure at this stage of the season. 12 points from four games against West Ham, Leeds, Brighton and Southampton is beyond any fan’s expectations and the latter two superb away wins have come with huge injury problems in the squad.
There remains a tiny seed of doubt but common sense says that the form team in the league for two thirds of the season should not blow it from a position of six points clear with nine left to play for and I have no reason to doubt common sense, despite the inbuilt pessimism garnered over the years.
This team is the most effective at gathering points remorselessly whilst sticking to a plan at this level (and arguably in the country right now) and we will get promotion this season which sounds easy to say with three games left to play and such a lead that we hold but the past’s ghosts don’t shift easily.
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How good is Brian McDermott's transfer acumen?
The Reading sixteen involved away at Brighton on Tuesday night consisted of four Steve Coppell signings, two from Brendan Rodgers regime, three products of the youth system and seven Brian McDermott signings.
Due to McDermott’s long association with the club at various levels, he would be well acquainted with all of those players but with less than half being his own signings*, just how good has McDermott been in the transfer market in his time as manager of the club?
With a background in player scouting, McDermott should have a well trained eye when it comes to recognising the requisite skills he requires in a player to fill a problem position or to improve the starting XI but does the hard evidence support this theory?
Below are a list of all of the players McDermott has signed as manager or during his time as caretaker of Reading, grouped into three categories (success, failure, somewhere in between) and a sentence or two explaining why I feel they fall into that category.
Successes
Andy Griffin- signed January 2010 initially on loan but permanent deal made permanent that summer- added much needed experience to a shaky defence and provided a consistent, dependable presence
Zurab Khizanishvili- signed January 2010 initially on loan to end of the season which was made a year-long loan that summer- see above and also built a superb partnership built with Matt Mills last season that our post-January form was built on
Ian Harte- signed Summer 2010- probably initially seen as a one year solution to the left back hole vacated by Ryan Bertrand’s departure but has been just as important this season defensively and in terms of goals and assists
Mikele Leigertwood- signed on loan January 2011 until the end of the season, made permanent in Summer 2011- the turning point of our 2010/11 season and has been just as huge a presence in the centre of midfield this season
Kaspars Gorkss- signed August 2011- brought out the best in Alex Pearce to create arguably the best central defensive pairing in the division and chips in with some handy goals too
Adam le Fondre- signed August 2011- qualified success has he has yet to cement a permanent place in the starting XI but can think of three games this season off of the top of my head he has won us all three points (Watford and Milwall away, Leeds at home)
Jason Roberts- signed January 2012- in a similar fashion to Gorkss, has allowed someone else to shine (Noel Hunt in this case) and has been just as important for his experience and bringing a focal point to our attack, as well as being a focal point for a media coverage come to that
Matthew Connolly- signed January 2012- qualified success again due to his injury problems but brought in as cover for the last four months of the season and has been solid when called upon
Hayden Mullins- signed March 2012- same as above, brought in to add squad depth to see our thin squad through to the end of the year and has been capable at right back and centre midfield
Failures
Gunnar Thorvaldsson- signed January 2010 to end of the season- qualified failure as he was only on a short-term deal to provide cover and was never expected to make it long term at the club
Marcus Williams- signed Summer 2010- genuine mistake by McDermott but one that was quickly realised hence signing of Harte and offloading of Williams after one season
Matthieu Manset- signed January 2011- see above, potential seen but failure to get required fitness levels saw the striker replaced and quickly shown the door
Bongani Khumalo- signed on loan July 2011- see above again, genuine mistake that was alleviated by Gorkss signing and his hasty departure from the club
Somewhere in between/too early to tell
Ethan Gage- signed January 2011- young and on the cheap with time on his side
Erik Opashl- signed January 2011- see above
Cameron Edwards- signed May 2011- see above
Ryan Edwards- signed May 2011- see above
Joseph Mills- signed August 2011- potential is there and has a good tutor in Harte but injury problems hampered progress thus far
Cedric Basseya- signed September 2011- cheap punt that looks like being a failure but for next to no cost
Karl Sheppard- signed January 2012- young and promising striker for the future
Tomasz Cywka- signed January 2012- cheap cover signing that could still prove useful
Benik Afobe- signed March 2012- a short-term loan deal to diversify our attacking options a bit in the run in that hasn’t paid off 100% as of yet
Using crude numbers, that’s nine successes, four failures and nine somewhere in betweens which works out very favourably when the majority of the latter players are young professionals who were probably not expected to have an impact at this stage of their Reading FC careers.
There appear to be three very important points to take from this (admittedly subjective) analysis.
Firstly, McDermott’s ability to identify early on when he has made a mistake when signing a player and making moves to rectify it very quickly, as can be seen in the Williams, Manset and Khumalo signings where they were shipped off after less than a season with us and replaced with players who have paid off (Mills, to a certain extent, Roberts and Gorkss).
Secondly, McDermott’s nose for a potential short term problem developing, solving it and that problem then becoming a long term strength. As can be seen with the signings of Griffin, Harte and, in particular, Leigertwood, McDermott appears to take cheap punts on experienced players who still have something to prove to fill a gap but these players seem to become key components not only in the starting XI but around the club as a whole. It is very conceivable that given time, Gorkss and Roberts will perform a similar role as could Mullins and Connolly if they are given permanent deals. Whether the same will happen to the vast majority of players in the ‘in between’ list who were signed with a view to the future remains a key question regarding McDermott’s otherwise impeccable transfer market record.
Thirdly, the very small amount of money spent on the 22 players listed. With exact transfer fees hard to come by it is difficult to estimate how much the total cost of these signings has been but it is safe to say it is not a great deal, particularly compared to the outgoings seen at Reading the last few years.
McDermott clearly has the skill to pick out, on the cheap or loan, a player that not only has the footballing skills to improve the team but also the personal skills to contribute to the team spirit in evidence at the club during his tenure. Team spirit is the illusion glimpsed in the aftermath of victory, Steve Archibald famously observed and victory has been a common theme of McDermott’s reign. But the “greater than the sum of our parts” approach, to this season’s team particularly, is a key reason why we are where we are and the fact that McDermott appears to be able to identify factors in a prospective signing that would aid this spirit is crucial to his whole managerial ethos.
As mentioned earlier, it remains to be seen whether the young players McDermott has signed will prove to be as successful as their more senior pro counterparts but the fact that this doubt is the only real, conceivable blot on McDermott’s transfer record so far is testament to the skill of the man after only two and a half seasons in charge.
*this is something of a red herring due to the number of injuries we had going into the game
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Does Fleetwood's impending records undermine ours?
There are a few other more important Reading FC-related things going on right now what with the promotion push, going top of the Championship for the first time in six years on Friday, away games at Brighton and Southampton this week, the continued fallout from the Leeds battle and the ongoing takeover of the club.
However, something a little lighter to alter the mood somewhat concerning our one remaining record in English football*; the most points accrued in a single season in any English professional league with the 106 points gained in the incredible 2005/06 season.
One of the common threads on internet messageboards since that season has been “106 watch” where the possible challengers to this record are ticked off one by one has the current season unfolds, leaving our record untouched once again.
This year, all of the contenders in the Football League have faded away and Premier League teams can never compete as they play eight games less in their season.
However, there remains an interesting challenger in the form of Fleetwood Town in the Blue Square Premier division who have racked up 101 points so far this season with four games remaining.
Despite games against second-placed Wrexham (second-placed but 11 points behind albeit with a game in hand) and play-off chasing Luton to come, Fleetwood should still manage to get at least two wins to go past our 106 point benchmark.
Fleetwood’s record this year is quite amazing, particularly away from home where they have picked up 56 points from a possible 66 so far and averaged nearly two and a half goals a game. Amazingly, they still haven’t guaranteed promotion as of yet due to the equally relentless form of chasing Wrexham who could also break the 100 point barrier and not even get promoted.
The wording of Reading’s record is “the most points in a single season in any English professional league” which eliminates the challenge of Fleetwood as, despite going full-time for the2010/11 season, play in a division in which all of the participants are not professional and largely semi-pro.
Furthermore, in recent seasons, there have been huge points totals accrued in the lower leagues as clubs like AFC Wimbledon and FC United of Manchester distort the playing field at the levels they operated, despite their good intentions as institutions. I also seem to recall seeing on the Sky Sports News sidebar a few seasons ago a team with a huge points to game ratio but cannot remember for the life of me what league it was or who the team were.
Clearly, the records of these teams and Fleetwood should they break the 106 barrier does not invalidate the Reading record due to the wording but does it put an asterix next to it due to the increasingly professionalization of the Blue Square Premier division and the fact that no club (not even Crawley last season with 105 points) broke our record since the division went to 24 teams in 2006/07.
It shouldn’t do but as it is the first time a team from a league recognisable to most football fans has broken the 106 barrier since the 2005/06 season and the record has been in the conscious of Reading fans, it might feel a little bit undermined.
*Edwin van der Sar broke Steve Death’s record for the longest time without conceding a league goal a few years ago. Death retains the Football League record in this field but that does not mean he holds the record in English football
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Robo-ref is no team morale builder
Another match weekend, another case of referees getting more than their fair share of the blame in key games up and down the divisions in England.
Firstly, we go to Stamford Bridge and the case of certainly one and possibly both of Chelsea’s goals in their victory over Wigan being wrongly awarded after both looked offside (according to the press, radio and TV of course), prompting usually mild-mannered Wigan boss Roberto Martinez to label the decisions “disgusting”.
Secondly, to the Madejski Stadium yesterday afternoon where a bad-tempered game with tackles from Leeds United players flying in almost worked as gameplan enough to stop Reading but could have easily resulted in three Leeds players seeing red (the card, the mist they had already seen). Disclaimer, this blogger is a Reading fan so may be somewhat biased though the evidence of the match clearly speaks for itself. In the post-match interviews, Leeds manager Neil Warnock said that it was hard for a referee to officiate in a difficult atmosphere where Reading players constantly surrounded him.
Clearly, these are two very different cases which can each be bracketed into the four main areas of contention when it comes to modern day refereeing; insufficient quality (Chelsea-Wigan), perceived big-club bias (Chelsea-Wigan), player influence on referees (Reading-Leeds) and blaming the officials whether justly or not (both games).
Many, many words and airtime minutes will be dedicated to whether or not the decisions were right, the standards of refereeing in contemporary football and players crowding referees but I feel as if the last point is somewhat overlooked in media analysis despite it probably being heard in 2/3s of managerial quotes.
As mentioned earlier, these are two very different cases involving two very different contexts with one being a pair of offside calls and another being about red cards but the contrasts can help outline a salient point that both cases demonstrate.
Casting aside important points such as the difference in team quality between Chelsea and Wigan which affects the chances of success for either side in the match, every managerial quote that blames the officials for their own team’s failure to succeed (and success is not just winning but a draw or even a close defeat depending on the opposition) is a manager’s attempt at deflecting pressure off of their players.
“My players were not good enough/are not good enough/ did not get their jobs right on the day, therefore we lost” is rarely used when it comes to a manager’s analysis of his team’s performance for reasons such as morale and team-building. Ergo, an exterior factor is identified and fingered with the blame and the key exterior factor is the officials as they have no right of reply either in the media or on the pitch itself.
Martinez and Warnock may well have been just in blaming the officials (for my money, the former is justified in doing so thanks to television evidence, the latter is not using the same evidence showing how reckless and dangerous some of tackles by Leeds players were) but the fact is that neither of their teams were good enough to achieve their goals on the day. The difference in quality between teams, perceived bias and so on are factors but the bottom line is, their teams were not good enough.
So here’s a thought; should technology be introduced in football to ensure that decisions on issues such as offsides, red cards, the ball crossing the line and so on are correct as often as possible, what exterior factor do losing managers blame to deflect attention from their team’s failings if the official's decision would be as near as makes no difference correct 100%?
Be careful what you wish for, perhaps?
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Thoughts ahead of Blackpool
A gloriously sunny day with temperatures touching 20C and a game of football to look lustily forward tomorrow can only mean one of two things; it’s August or it’s nearly April.
If it were August, we would be full of anticipation and dreaming that starry-eyed dream of glory and promotion before, nine times out of ten, those dreams are broken before the clocks go back let alone when they go forward again.
Nine times out of ten that is, if you support someone other than Reading. For someone my age, coming into this stage of the season with something to play for is to be expected rather than to be shocked at (not that I’d take anything for granted as a Reading fan). Over a decade has now passed since we haven’t had something to play for going into the last eight games of the season.
So yes, it is nearly 20C, it has been sunny all day long and we can look forward lustily to the game against Blackpool tomorrow, still with those glory-based dreams in our mind, unbroken by the bitter winter of football now passed.
But now, now its crunch time. The winter months build character in a squad of players but now is the time when that character and those lessons learned are tested to the extreme and many are found wanting.
Without wanting to put too much of a point on it, it is now crunch time big for Reading. At the very base level, there are eight games left to secure promotion. Insert squeaky bum time reference here, naturally. Eight games where the pressure is at its intense.
Factor in that of those eight remaining games, seven are against the current top twelve in the Championship and three of the away matches are at St Mary’s, Upton Park and St. Andrews. More pressure. It’s not exactly the easiest run in but you’ve got to prove you’re better than the rest and there is the opportunity; come through those with your dream still intact and you’ve earned your glory.
On top of that, Reading will be going into the game against Blackpool in a situation they haven’t faced in 11 games; coming off the back of a defeat in their last match (against Peterborough) in addition to being the hunted rather than the hunting in the race for the two automatic promotion spts.
Blackpool will be a similar proposition to the Posh; open, expansive attacking football. One look at the stats shows this with the Tangerines knocking in more goals than anyone else on their travels but also conceding the third highest away from home. However, it wasn’t the openness that did for us on Tuesday night but some uncharacteristic bad defending.
A similar proposition to Peterborough perhaps but there is the notable added advantage of being at home. We’ve lost just once in the league at the Madejski since the middle of November (and that in dubious circumstances vs Hull).
Looking at historical precedent, 70 points is very close to being the benchmark for a play-off place but the noises coming out of the club have been anything but settling. The players sound up for the run-in and determined to see it through and the bringing in Benik Afobe to bolster the attacking ranks sends out a message to those around us that Reading are up for the fight in the sunshine, just as they were in the rain and snow.
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Making a statement
Ten days ago, I wrote a meandering, dreadful piece of writing about the perceptions of the 1-0 scoreline in football. Really, do not read it at all unless you do literally have all the time in the world to burn.
The main point of the piece was to talk about how 1-0 wins in football are talked up by managers, pundits and commentators (no one-size fits all use of the word “media” here, friends) as “the sign of a successful team”.
This cliché is, inevitably, bollocks. The only time a series of wins by the odd goal looks good is come the end of the season, when hindsight becomes 20:20 and one can look back at that run of wins and say “yeah, that was where the confidence was built and promotion/title was really won”. At the time of those wins, confidence is never there, in the stands at least, to think a win is inevitable.
Much more confidence in your team comes from when you give another club a real dicking. It demonstrates a marked superiority, particularly when you add a clean sheet to the offering too. You can see both on the pitch and on paper that you are a lot better than a fellow team.
And so we come to Reading.
As we’ve quietly gone about our business since the turn of the year, picking up 31 points from 39 available (or 43 points from 51 since December 10th), we haven’t really destroyed anyone. Largely single goal or two goal wins have been the order of the day, built on solid defensive performances.
Whilst looking impressive, multiple games in which one unlucky break or piece of magic and the story could be completely different have, for myself at least, doubted how good we might actually be.
Nothing quite breeds confidence like some good solid numbers combined with an impressive performance. Winning well whilst playing badly is good and winning at the very least is also good but a superb performance married with a huge margin of victory is the business.
But, the game against Barnsley was so much more than some confirmation that we can destroy a team when we want to. There were a myriad of other factors to consider.
With our winning run coming to an end in midweek at Doncaster, it was interesting to see how we would bounce back from the smallest of setbacks. My own theory was that the pressure might have been released a bit as the overbearing nature of wanting to keep that run going would be lifted; an extended unbeaten run is a far more common occurrence than a long winning one. That would appear to have been the case.
Secondly, as is so often said, being the hunted is quite a different kettle of fish to being the hunter and Saturday marked the first time this season we were in that position with Reading going into the game second ahead of West Ham. Against a team in a decent run of form, we responded to this new challenge by hitting four goals, taking our goal difference above that of third-placed West Ham and briefly going top of the league.
On the other hand, our East London rivals have felt the pressure and slumped to three draws in a row. It would appear our squad has taken on the experience of last-years late-season pressure and how to cope with it.
There is still a long way to go this season and I’d still make us third-favourites for promotion thanks to our tricky run-in and the quality of our rivals but quietly going about our business is what we do and there still seems to be some reluctance to take our promotion push based on a “better-than-the-sum-of-our-parts” team approach. Long may it continue that way.
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1-0s and time-shifting perspectives
The final score in football is always the most important piece of information to come out of a game. The way in which the score is achieved is quite irrelevant. As long as you get the right result, that is all you need. Even West Ham fans with Sam Allardyce, perhaps the most contrasting manager to an assumed historical ethos around right now, appreciate that.
But the problem with scorelines are that they can be deceptive and misleading. A 1-0 win can come as a result of utter domination from one team and putting away just the one chance or utter domination from that same team and the opposition doing a “smash and grab”. That’s the thing with numbers; they only tell you so much.
In theory and on paper, a 1-0 win is the perfect scoreline for the victorious team. It would appear to indicate minimal effort expended to get the advantage and the prevention of your opponents from achieving their primary aim of scoring.
However, the now clichéd “football is played on grass not paper” argument is the correct one here as anyone who has ever sat through a 1-0 win will attest. That slender advantage is under constant threat; every time the ball gets even remotely close to your team’s penalty box your heart beats increases and your bowels get that feeling usually reserved for that split second between saying a chat-up line and finding out whether it landed or not.
This might just be my in-built pessimism, developed over 15 years of supporting Reading, kicking in but even with a resolutely and proven solid defence, a 1-0 win never looks secure until the final whistle. A team that’s conceded just the one goal in the last seven games or so should be able to hold on to the slenderest of leads as they’ve done it before.
Indeed, we have on the majority of the games in our recent winning run which looks great, once the results have been secured. Sat watching it, one can’t help but feel that the odds of probability mean the equaliser has got to come soon, even with the best teams.
It’s commonly assumed that 1-0 wins that are ground out in the middle of the season are what indicates a successful team on the march to promotion or a title. But they sure as hell don’t feel that way when these wins are being accumulated, even on a regular basis as Reading are doing right now.
Maybe just the Reading pessimism again, seeing as only in THAT season have I ever approached Reading games with a lot of confidence in a positive outcome, but I can’t shake the feeling we will get found out soon. I said the same thing last season mind and Reading are an awful lot more well rounded side than this time last year.
1-0 wins may well be the benchmark of a good team but you just don’t know if the team is really that good, at Championship level anyway, until the season is drawing to a close. Come the end of April, we may well be saying that this period right now is where we won promotion but, right now, each single goal lead still brings the same fear.
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All questions, very few answers
A weekend is a long enough time in football on the pitch;
build up to the game, pre-match talk, the match itself, post-match reaction
from the manager, TV analysis, Sunday press analysis and then Monday press
analysis. Throw in an off the pitch story and it suddenly gets an awful lot
longer. And madder too.
It was only announced around 48 hours ago through Reading Football
Club’s official website that a previously unheard of company is in the
preliminary stages of gaining a significant stake in the club. Blogging in
reaction to that announcement, this writer guessed
that it would be a while until any further news came out about this investment
and it was a while; less than a day.
Since then, two further statements have come out of the
club, numerous speculative news articles and countless pages of discussion
across the Internet.
Cutting through the speculation, let’s establish the facts
as they are at this stage.
Fact number one; a
new group called Thames Sport Investment looks set to buy a “significant” stake
in Reading Football Club. The fact that the company is yet to be registered
at Companies House and there is no evidence of its existence anywhere is
testament to the company being a new group.
Fact number two; Sir John Madejski will stay on as Chairman
until at least 2014 and will be Life President once he steps down from the
Chairman role. Madejski, therefore, will still have a role in the running of
the club until 2014.
Fact number three; the
main points to the partnership have been outlined and an agreement signed with
regard to these from all concerned parties. The deal is scheduled to be
completed by the end of March 2012. Until that point, there is no obligation
for the persons involved in TSI to be revealed.
Fact number four; TSI
will provide limited funds (although it is not stated in what form these
funds will be given; loans? Donations? etc.) for Brian McDermott and Nicky
Hammond to strengthen the squad this transfer window.
These are the sum total of the facts we know thus far;
essentially, what the original statement on Friday night told us. However,
there is an awful lot more to the story than the mere facts. Using nothing more
than a cynical eye and no insider knowledge, here are what appear to be the
assumptions about the takeover circulating around the media and Reading FC
messageboards.
Assumption number one; the man behind TSI is Anton
Zingarevich, son of a Russian print businessman who was educated to university
level in Reading and who was part of a wildly unsuccessful
attempt at providing investment for Everton Football Club. Very little
information is available on the man and his previous with Everton as a manager
of the Fortress Sports Fund might well suggest there is more to the group than
Zingarevich but that is also speculation.
Assumption number two; TSI will take a 51% stake in the club,
costing £40 million, and so become owners of the club. Like ‘assumption number
one’, the prevalence in this assumption seems to come from a short Daily Mail
exclusive published on Saturday (subsequently picked up by no other national
media outlet but both Reading-based newspapers) but makes logical sense as any
new in investor would presumably want majority ownership.
Assumption number three; as is the case with any takeover,
rumours about big spending immediately begin springing up, linking anyone and
everyone with the club. When the most concrete rumour is a loan deal
for an ageing centre forward, fans speculating about big money deals (this
transfer window anyway) would appear to be wishful thinking. What kind of
investment fund would pump millions of pounds into an operation that they aren’t
even owners of yet? A small good-faith payment is feasible but anything in the
millions, at this stage anyway, is surely unrealistic? Whilst the fun of
takeover talk is built on Championship Manager-style spending, some realism
must be taken into consideration, particularly when the identity of the
prospective owner is still pending, let alone his wealth.
Assumption four; I’m as big a defender of the way Madejski
has sought a buyer over the last five years as anyone. After 20 years+ at the
club, he was always likely to want to sell to the right people to continue the superb
work that he has done for the club and the town also. However, as
has been documented, the last few years have been difficult for Sir John so
perhaps his desire to sell has increased thus loosening his ideals for a new
owner.
Essentially, straight-up fact-wise, we know very little more
than what was said on Friday night, aside from the stage in negotiations Reading
Football Club and TSI are. The rest is largely conjecture and speculation on
conjecture. It’s very much impossible for any supporter to make a judgement on
the proposed takeover based on the facts we have at hand right now. But that
won’t stop anyone doing just that, myself included.
This Tweet
might well lead to some more concrete information tomorrow but it only raises
further questions. How are the Daily Mail getting so many stories on Reading
now? If Zingarevich is the sole member of TSI, how has he gone from being a
student with only his father’s money to spend to being able to buy a majority
stake in a Championship club inside six years?
All things considered, it’s an exciting time to be a Reading
fan but an equally confusing one.
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A Post-Madejski World?
It seems like an eternity since Sir John Madejski started
his search for new financial investment in Reading Football Club. That would be
because it was the better part of five years ago and merely a week in football
is a long time, as Carlos Tevez seems so eager to prove.
Anyway, upon promotion to the Premier League way back in
2006, Madejski stressed the need for a new financial backer at Reading; a billionaire
rather than a millionaire being the main headline grabber.
Fast forward some 60 or so months, all of which passed by
with very little news of any interested parties whatsoever, and we arrive at
the consequently surprising announcement made a mere two hours ago.
As the Reading Post
and Reading
Chronicle seemed it prudent to run the whole statement as the bulk of their
article on the subject, this blog shall be doing completely the opposite. If
you want to read the three paragraph long statement, go here.
Both the Chronicle
and the
Post seem to be convinced that the deal is the initial announcement for
large-scale investment in Reading Football Club, though cynicism would appear
to indicate this is a “we-are-not-quite-sure-but-watch-this-space-and-buy-our-paper”
play, with the lack of clear information
outside of the statement posted on the official Reading FC site as evidence for
this.
All we have to go on right now is a whole lot of conjecture
so here that is.
As pointed our rightly on Hob Nob Anyone?, the ‘Thames Sport Investment’ group is not registered
at Companies House and a Google (ever reliable as it is)
search brings up no relevant links aside from the official site statement,
the resultant stories from the Chronicle and Post (and subsidiary media outlets) and the Hob Nob
thread.
As a result of this and the “no further announcements can be
made until a binding agreement has been reached” paragraph of the official site
statement, would both appear to indicate that “Thames Sports Investment” is a new company and the next announcement
would come once it becomes a registered company.
One of the perceived stumbling blocks when it comes to new
ownership at Reading Football Club has been the role of Madejski in a new set
up at the club and the theory that he would want to stay on at the club in some
capacity. The statement confirms that he will stay on as Chairman for the
foreseeable future, despite the agreement with this new group.
For this observer, this would appear to indicate that the “Thames
Sport Investment” company is either a new holding company for Reading Football
Club with Madejski at its head or a new set of investors who have grouped together
and are awaiting approval for their company to be formed, with the blessing of
Madejski to work alongside him.
If the eventual outcome is the latter, this would work well
as it would allow the Chairman to guide the new investors in how the club works
and its identity, leaving the club in safe hands when Madejski should decide to
retire from ownership of the club.
On the other hand, if this new company is merely a restructuring
of his ownership of the club, it leaves the club in the same position as it was
before this evening’s announcement. However, why the fanfare of a statement if
this was the case?
One of the things that Madejski cannot be criticised for is
having the club’s best interests at heart, which is why news of a more
investment or a takeover has been so long in coming as it had to be approved by
Madejski that it was right for the club. If the “Thames Sport Investment”
company does prove to be a case of new ownership, this observer would feel
confident that they had the best interests of the club at heart, thanks to
Madejski.
It may well be some weeks however, before the ramifications of this statement become truly clear, though if any Reading fan is expecting a spending spree akin to Leicester as a result of this, its probably best to come back to reality.
A weekend is a long enough time in football on the pitch;
build up to the game, pre-match talk, the match itself, post-match reaction
from the manager, TV analysis, Sunday press analysis and then Monday press
analysis. Throw in an off the pitch story and it suddenly gets an awful lot
longer. And madder too.
It was only announced around 48 hours ago through Reading Football
Club’s official website that a previously unheard of company is in the
preliminary stages of gaining a significant stake in the club. Blogging in
reaction to that announcement, this writer guessed
that it would be a while until any further news came out about this investment
and it was a while; less than a day.
Since then, two further statements have come out of the
club, numerous speculative news articles and countless pages of discussion
across the Internet.
Cutting through the speculation, let’s establish the facts
as they are at this stage.
Fact number one; a
new group called Thames Sport Investment looks set to buy a “significant” stake
in Reading Football Club. The fact that the company is yet to be registered
at Companies House and there is no evidence of its existence anywhere is
testament to the company being a new group.
Fact number two; Sir John Madejski will stay on as Chairman
until at least 2014 and will be Life President once he steps down from the
Chairman role. Madejski, therefore, will still have a role in the running of
the club until 2014.
Fact number three; the
main points to the partnership have been outlined and an agreement signed with
regard to these from all concerned parties. The deal is scheduled to be
completed by the end of March 2012. Until that point, there is no obligation
for the persons involved in TSI to be revealed.
Fact number four; TSI
will provide limited funds (although it is not stated in what form these
funds will be given; loans? Donations? etc.) for Brian McDermott and Nicky
Hammond to strengthen the squad this transfer window.
These are the sum total of the facts we know thus far;
essentially, what the original statement on Friday night told us. However,
there is an awful lot more to the story than the mere facts. Using nothing more
than a cynical eye and no insider knowledge, here are what appear to be the
assumptions about the takeover circulating around the media and Reading FC
messageboards.
Assumption number one; the man behind TSI is Anton
Zingarevich, son of a Russian print businessman who was educated to university
level in Reading and who was part of a wildly unsuccessful
attempt at providing investment for Everton Football Club. Very little
information is available on the man and his previous with Everton as a manager
of the Fortress Sports Fund might well suggest there is more to the group than
Zingarevich but that is also speculation.
Assumption number two; TSI will take a 51% stake in the club,
costing £40 million, and so become owners of the club. Like ‘assumption number
one’, the prevalence in this assumption seems to come from a short Daily Mail
exclusive published on Saturday (subsequently picked up by no other national
media outlet but both Reading-based newspapers) but makes logical sense as any
new in investor would presumably want majority ownership.
Assumption number three; as is the case with any takeover,
rumours about big spending immediately begin springing up, linking anyone and
everyone with the club. When the most concrete rumour is a loan deal
for an ageing centre forward, fans speculating about big money deals (this
transfer window anyway) would appear to be wishful thinking. What kind of
investment fund would pump millions of pounds into an operation that they aren’t
even owners of yet? A small good-faith payment is feasible but anything in the
millions, at this stage anyway, is surely unrealistic? Whilst the fun of
takeover talk is built on Championship Manager-style spending, some realism
must be taken into consideration, particularly when the identity of the
prospective owner is still pending, let alone his wealth.
Assumption four; I’m as big a defender of the way Madejski
has sought a buyer over the last five years as anyone. After 20 years+ at the
club, he was always likely to want to sell to the right people to continue the superb
work that he has done for the club and the town also. However, as
has been documented, the last few years have been difficult for Sir John so
perhaps his desire to sell has increased thus loosening his ideals for a new
owner.
Essentially, straight-up fact-wise, we know very little more
than what was said on Friday night, aside from the stage in negotiations Reading
Football Club and TSI are. The rest is largely conjecture and speculation on
conjecture. It’s very much impossible for any supporter to make a judgement on
the proposed takeover based on the facts we have at hand right now. But that
won’t stop anyone doing just that, myself included.
This Tweet
might well lead to some more concrete information tomorrow but it only raises
further questions. How are the Daily Mail getting so many stories on Reading
now? If Zingarevich is the sole member of TSI, how has he gone from being a
student with only his father’s money to spend to being able to buy a majority
stake in a Championship club inside six years?
All things considered, it’s an exciting time to be a Reading
fan but an equally confusing one.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
A Post-Madejski World?
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
A mid-season review
Despite it not quite being halfway through the
season, coming after the Christmas/New Year run of games and the 3rd
round FA Cup exit, now would seem like an appropriate time for a mid-season
review of Reading’s season.
The one idea that can sum up the season thus far is the effect
of diminished and enhanced expectations; a theory best surmised in analysing
our exits at the first hurdle of both cup competitions this season.
Our defeat to Charlton wasn’t the end of the world and was
generally viewed as a chance to concentrate on our league form. On the other
hand, an emphatic (if not on paper but on grass) defeat to another in form team
from League One, Stevenage, has prompted much navel-gazing.
So, putting aside the difference in historical size of Charlton
and Stevenage, what caused such a large discrepancy in the reactions to the
respective defeats? It should be noted that seven of the thirteen players who
featured in our League Cup exit also made an appearance on Saturday.
The answer is the difference in expectations of Reading’s capabilities
between the two points in the season. The Charlton defeat occurred after only
one win in our first four league games and a 13th place in the
Championship. So a defeat to a high flying, inform team in the division below
us was almost to be expected.
Fast forward four months or so and a run of seven wins in
ten games, putting us into the play-offs, the expectations going into the
Stevenage game were much higher than they were ahead of the Charlton game.
Admittedly, a terrible “performance” on Saturday exacerbated the reaction but
sitting in 5th place gave many fans (and perhaps the team) a sense
of entitlement; an effect of enhanced expectations if you will.
The value of this in-depth look at these two games that were
not even in the league comes from our form in the Championship between
September and January.
Ten wins and six draws from twenty games in that period,
including wins over numerous rivals, has catapulted us from lower mid table bona
fide play-off contenders. A solid, and sometimes spectacular, centre back
partnership between Alex Pearce and Kasparss Gorkss and Adam Federici’s
underrated performances has allowed Reading to eke out results without needing
to score too many at the other end of the pitch.
However, impressive as four defeats in twenty games and 5th
place in the league is, there is a flip side to it. A commonly used yardstick
for promotion is an average of two points per game and no team in the
Championship is achieving this currently. This hints at a league in which many
teams are very evenly matched thus making our current 5th place look
a bit false; a result of outstanding current form rather than consistency. In
each of our last three seasons back at this level, taking into account the number
of games played, 39 points for 5th place is the lowest total required
at the turn of the year.
A top goalscorer with
six goals and the four main strikers contributing just over 50% of our total league
goals (17 out of 32) tells its own story on Reading’s area of improvement and
why they haven’t been able to push on to that magical two points a game mark.
At the start of the season, especially after the departure
of Shane Long, there would have been very few Reading fans who could have
confidently stated that we would sit 5th going into 2012. The fact
that we are is testament to Brian McDermott, for the second season in a row,
forging together a team and playing style that is successful. On that basis,
Reading fans should be particularly pleased with our season thus far.
But the concerns that were expressed at the close of the
transfer window, when we sat 20th in the league, still remain; overdependence
on Jobi
McAnuff and Jimmy Kebe for creativity, a lack of variation in the striking
department and a lack of depth in quality both at centre half and on the wings.
Impressive seasons from Federici, Pearce, Gorkss, Mikele
Leigertwood, McAnuff and Kebe have masked these flaws so far, as has the rather
average standard of the Championship this year.
All in all, Reading’s season has the potential to go one of
two ways still. If the above players can keep up their standards and one of the
strikers finds a run of goalscoring form, a play-off place is eminently achievable.
McDermott’s record in the second half of each of the last two seasons makes
this very plausible, if you believe in the repetition of history.
Equally as plausible however is a couple of injuries or a
loss of form to key personnel would lead to a reverting of type and a mid table
finish. The matches against Cardiff and Stevenage seem to hint at a relatively
small squad feeling the effects of a hectic Christmas/New Year period, although
a FA-cup free rest of the season may alleviate the impacts of squad tiredness.
Finally, no predictions will be made this time around; even
if they are proven emphatically wrong to the benefit of us all.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Kébé Conundrum
Another transfer
window, another “will-he-won’t-he” transfer/contract drama for Reading fans is
on the horizon this January with the news that Jimmy Kébé has been offered a new deal to replace the one
that expires this Summer.
A man that has enthralled, amused and
infuriated (sometimes within the space of five minutes) during his time at the
club presents a conundrum to Brian McDermott should he reject the new contract
offer; break the bank to keep him or cut your losses in the Summer and move on?
On his day, he is by
far and away the best winger to watch in the Championship. He has the ability
to tear apart any defence with a combination of pace, trickery and quality of final
ball. Anyone who saw his performance against Leicester at home last season will
attest to this; he was simply unplayable that day.
However, therein hides
the issue. When the last time “your day” was the better part of a year ago, the
word inconsistent fits you like a glove. Wingers are naturally inconsistent,
whatever level they play at, but the frustrating thing with Kébé has always been that he looks like he could do so
much more because he has so much talent. Arguably his best performance since
then was against West Ham this season but that can be pretty much put down to a
stellar half hour against a tiring ten men and the amusing gloss that his
sock-gate antics put over the entire 90 minutes of play.
Couple this
perceived lower standard of play with a natural body language that doesn’t
scream the effort and commitment English football fans love and theories that
the man isn’t trying hard enough or just seeing out is contract start to
flourish.
But, despite the
consensus being that Kébé has underachieved thus far this
season, the fact remains that he has scored once and notched up six assists in
the league and so is actively involved in just under a quarter of our total
league goals, a
ratio only bettered by his captain Jobi McAnuff. For reference, he netted
nine times and set up seven goals all last season and ten and five respectively
the year before that. While he isn’t scoring as many, he’s making up for it
with assists.
Clearly, Kébé is an important facet
of this team and, indeed, has been a key element of the three teams McDermott
has constructed in his managerial stint; contributing goals and assists aplenty
in each of those three very tactically and stylistically different teams. A handy
average of active involvement in Reading’s goal scoring in his career here as
well as the ability to occasionally tear a defence to shreds should mean
McDermott and Nicky Hammond should be doing all they can to keep Kébé at
the club.
If we take a wider angle though, Kébé’s
number of assists so far doesn’t even put him in the top
twelve assist-makers for the season in the Championship thus far.
Furthermore,
six out of that top twelve did not play in this division last season which
suggests that there is talent in the lower divisions capable of stepping up to
the Championship and excelling. With McDermott’s track record of picking up
signings (his number of transfer failures can easily be counted on one hand),
finding a replacement for Kébé may be easier than first thought.
The overarching issue here would be that it
would never be a like for like swap as there are very few players around right
now that can generate the excitement Kébé does when in full flow. A
replacement might offer the same contribution as Kébé in raw stats terms
but the positives that cannot be quantified (putting fear into opponents and
other psychological aspects) is a lot harder to replace. This talent, the very same
talent that causes him to be loved and hated in equal measure by Reading fans,
is the secret ingredient that makes the contract tug-of-war so interesting.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Barcelona still bug me
Four months ago, Barcelona completed their 2011-12 season cum procession when they beat Man United in the Champions League final thus sealing their 3rd win in that competition in six years to go with five further La Liga titles.
Best team of its generation? Oh yeah. Best team ever? Not yet but we’ll see, the potential is certainly there.
In the aftermath of their Champions League victory, I wrote a blog post explaining why, despite loving the footballing side of Barcelona, their corporate side meant I could never feel more than merely liking the club; not loving or admiring.
Many lovers of the club cite their role in keeping alive Catalan nationalism and opposition to Franco, their community role, their partnership with Unicef, the “Mes que un club” idea that marks them out as different from other clubs.
My argument was basically that they were no different from other clubs; same corporate greed, same big-spending, same dirty politics all wrapped up in a right-on, ‘left-wing’ marketing disguise. Whilst I don’t doubt they take their genuine interest in helping charities and that side of their business, it does make the philosophy a lot more attractive to sell.
After a trip to the Nou Camp, I feel no different.
I wasn’t surprised that the tickets for the ground tour or for a shirt were so pricey (22 and 80-odd Euros respectively) as its football; everything is ridiculously expensive though for a club who proclaims its community ethos, one would think the prices would reflect that.
The tour itself is nice enough, seeing the stadium bowl from the press box, the middle tier and pitchside, seeing the stadium innards such as the chapel, the dressing room and so on but it was the museum that caught my interest most of all.
Over 100 years of history, lovingly restored and displayed with replicas of all the trophies the club have won and memorabilia such as the whistle used in the club’s first game, various footballs and signed shirts and so on. A football nerd like me’s paradise.
However, as you read through the history of the club on tables that run the length of the museum, the one constant message that’s rammed home is the spiritual link between the club and the fans and how it cannot be broken. The pretentious, righteous, left-wing ‘right-on-ness’ that, speaking as a leftie, I cannot stand.
Of course it’s going to be biased, it’s the Barcelona museum, written by Barcelona people so it’s going to be unbalanced but the unrelenting tedium of how everything the club was for their community and fans became patronising and the message stale.
And then, at the end of the tables telling you the history of the club, you have a queue to have your photo taken and then superimposed into the Barcelona team, thus wrenching out more money from you for a tacky souvenir.
In a way, it’s even more patronising and downright bastard-ish than the Real Madrid or Man United marketing model as with them at least you know they are corporate, capitalist vehicles that are out to milk their fans for all they’re worth. Barcelona seem to attempt to hide it in a veneer of left-wing propaganda, that you’re buying into history and righteousness when it’s all just the same bullshit really.
The club does have a history of just behaviour in opposition to the fascist Franco regime in the past and it’s charity work in the present but one can’t help but feel it’s used to shift the “Mes que un club” philosophy for marketing purposes. One does wonder what brave individuals like Joan Gamper and Josep Sunyol would think of it all.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Reading's transfer window
In my preview for this season, I wrote that our fortunes for the year depended on what happened in the remaining month or so of the transfer window. What followed was a relatively busy month.
We saw the loss of last year’s star performer and top scorer Shane Long in a relatively expected move and in through the door came a man with way too many ‘S’s in his name (Kaspars Gorkss), Southampton’s third choice left-back (Joseph Mills) and the man with the most northern sounding name ever (Glenville Adam J. le Fondre).
I wrote at the start of the season that if we lost Shane Long then we would be in for a long hard season and, despite the arrival of le Fondre, I stand by that.
Le Fondre may bang in the goals at this level and his record elsewhere certainly shows he knows where the goal is but, increasingly in the Championship , being a goalscorer isn’t always enough. If a team plays two up front, one of the pair must be prepared to work the channels and work his socks off for the team. Matthieu Manset has shown glimpses of this but he is the only striker we have with the combination of pace and power to do it.
The signing of Gorkss should add a certain degree of fearless insanity that all backlines should have and one we have lacked since the loss of Andre Bikey. However, a distinct lack of pace is still in evidence in the defence as a whole and at centre back in particular, an issue that Gorkss, for all his positives as a very good centre half at this level, will not alleviate.
Mills looks like he is one for the medium to long term unless Ian Harte puts in some terrible performances over the next few weeks and Mills is required to step up.
Overall, the transfer window has not been unkind to us. Only losing Matt Mills and Long (as well as the releasing of the likes of Ivar Ingimarsson and Zurab Khisaishvili going back to his parent club) is not too bad when, quite conceivably, we could have also lost Adam Federici, Jimmy Kebe and Jem Karacan too.
Furthermore, each loss has had a like-for-like replacement brought in more or less as two centre halves have replaced the three that have left (with Sean Morrison being, rightly, expected to step up) and le Fondre replacing Long.
However, the issue that remains is one of faith of the fans. Money has been spent with the summer spending coming in at an estimated £1.5 million but faith comes into the equation when one asks if the replacements are good enough to plug the holes left by Mills and Long.
I do not believe the quality of the ins are as good as the outs though I would love to be proven wrong on this matter. However, that said, they are good acquisitions at this level and a top half finish with a possible play-off push is a distinct possibility should the team gel together.
We are notoriously slow-starters in this division these days but there is enough quality in the squad to pose a challenge to most sides in this league. The disappointment of course comes when one looks at the financial aspect of the ins and outs but that is another story and another can of worms.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Five thoughts from Reading Vs Millwall
First games of the season are notoriously bad parameters for judging the outcome of the season to come, as Reading fans know all too well. 2005/06 saw us lose out curtain-raiser to Plymouth but we didn’t lose again until February and romped to the Championship title. Two years later, an impressive defensive display allowed us to hold champions Man United but come the end of the season, we were relegated. Last season, a defeat to relegation favourites Scunthorpe opened a season which ended with a play-off final.
With that in mind, here are some thoughts from this season’s opener against Millwall.
1. Manset will be more than a handful this year
2. McAnuff was the right choice as captain
3. We are a dangerous side
4. Jimmy Kebe remains Jimmy Kebe
5. Leigertwood is our lynchpin
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
2011/12 nPower Championship preview
Clichés become clichés for a very good reason; the fact that they have a solid grounding in reality and truth. Usually anyway.
Thus, the cliché that the Championship (no marketing here) is the most hotly contested and difficult league to predict has an element of truth to it. However, certain patterns can be deduced.
For example, the last four winners of the league (QPR, Newcastle, Wolves and West Brom) all had a sense of predictability to their victories.
On the other hand, their respective fellow promotion winners were often just as much bolt from the blues as the winners were as predictable as death and taxation. Who could have guessed Norwich would storm to second place last year, Blackpool to complete a remarkable season in 2010 with a play-off victory or Stoke and Hull to gain promotion way back in 2008?
At the other end of the spectrum, relegation has more of a pattern to it with one ‘larger’ club usually accompanying the ‘smallest’ team in the league and a financial stricken side into League One. Cases in point, last season (Sheffield United, Scunthorpe and Preston, respectively), 2009-10 (Sheffield Wednesday, Peterborough and Plymouth) and 2007-08 (Leicester, Scunthorpe and Colchester).
All of which gives us only a few guidelines to predicting how this year’s league will turn out.
Favourites for promotion, and rightly so, are West Ham and Leicester (both 11/8 for promotion), the former for keeping the bones of a decent Championship side together after relegation and the latter for their much documented spending spree. West Ham’s fate may rest on how the rest of the transfer window pans out and Leicester’s on how quick Sven Goran Eriksson can get his team to gel.
Elsewhere, other pre-season favourites include Birmingham (7/2), Nottingham Forest (4/1) and Reading (9/2) all of whom are strange choices to be such strong candidates for promotion. Birmingham are in the middle of a rebuilding programme with the added spectre of the Carson Yeung saga, Forest are also in transition but in Steve McClaren they have a drastically underrated manager in this country and Reading have arguably weakened over the Summer with the loss of Matt Mills and will be further hampered should Shane Long leave.
The real play-off challengers lay in the next batch of clubs such as Brighton, Middlesbrough, Southampton (all 9/2), Blackpool, Leeds (5/1) and Ipswich (11/2). The two South-coast clubs are riding high on promotion euphoria, a new ground (Brighton), outstanding managers and lots of financial investment and one of those two would be my choice to possibly sneak a top-two finish. Ipswich, meanwhile, have made astute purchases of veterans (Lee Bower, Ivar Ingimarsson, Michael Chopra and Nathan Ellington) and youngsters (David Stockdale and Jay Emmanuel-Thomas), Blackpool have kept together much of their squad (aside from the big names) and have an astute manager whilst Leeds will benefit from a season’s experience at this level.
At the other end of the spectrum, clubs looking over their shoulders is difficult to call. Perennial favourites for relegation Doncaster and Barnsley (15/8 and 19/10 respectively) could spring a few surprises with Doncaster’s intentions announced with today’s signing of one-time next-big-thing Giles Barnes and Barnsley investing in solid defence cover. OverallCoventry are favourites for the drop (7/4) and perhaps rightly so with just one addition (Joe Murphy) to the squad that capitulated after Christmas least season added to the loss of Marlon King, Kieron Westwood and Aron Gunnarsson over the Summer.
Elsewhere, Watford (13/5), Crystal Palace (9/4) and Peterborough (2/1) are the other teams predicted to struggle this year for financial reasons (Watford and Palace), rookie managers (Watford and Palace) and the curse of the smaller club (Peterborough). That said; don’t rule out two clubs that always seem to come out fighting when their backs are against the wall and a side that scored comfortably over 100 league goals last season.
Mid-table mediocrity is nothing to complain about and for some clubs consolidation may well be the target for the season including Cardiff, Burnley, Portsmouth, Millwall, Bristol Cityand Hull who are all too good to go down but probably lack the quality to mount a sustained promotion push. That said, a lot depends on who can string together a run of good results and gain confidence from that so no-one can be ruled out.
A final disclaimer, this will all be wrong in nine months time when Peterborough storm to promotion and West Ham get relegated on the final day as that is whole the Championship operates so this has been something of an exercise in futility. Like most predictions really.
Champions: West Ham
Promoted: Leicester
Play offs: Brighton, Southampton (winner), Birmingham, Leeds
Dark Horse: Ipswich
Underacheiver: Nottingham Forest
Relegated: Coventry, Crystal Palace and Peterborough (financially stricken club, ‘bigger’ team and ‘smallest’ club in the league pattern in operation)
Top scorer: Shane Long, if he stays at Reading or goes to Leicester and not to a Premier League club(10/1) if not, an injury-free Nicky Maynard (14/1)
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Reading 2011/2012 season preview
Writing a season preview for Reading with so much dependant on what happens over the next 27 days seems a little bit pointless but nonetheless, here are some thoughts on the forthcoming campaign.
First things first, it is no understatement to say that the most important developments in the month of August for us will not be played out on the pitch but in the boardroom and at the negotiating table.
Without a shadow of a doubt, the targets for the season depend on whether Shane Long stays at the club or not. With the futures of other key players such as Adam Federici and Jimmy Kebe looking secure, Long is the last player with a question mark over his head. Should he leave the team looks an awful lot less threatening and a mid table finish will be the best to hope for. Should he stay, a play-off push is a reasonable target. He is that important. A front two of Long and Hunt/Manset is more appealing as Long’s ability to play 46 games a year masks the other strikers inability to do the same.
But here is the rub; the same thing was said at exactly the same point last year regarding Gylfi Sigurdsson and look how last season ended. Players stepped up, a new system was found and (relative) success followed.
Further mirror images of last pre-season? The lack of signings prior to the opening day of the season (Williams last year, Khumalo this), the lack of positive talk out of the club about possible signings (a tactic used every year by the club management to drive down a target’s price that both other clubs and our own fans have yet to work out) and the pessimism among the fan base.
However, what’s different this time around is not the lack of investment but the appearance of allowing the squad to stagnate and be weakened, particularly in central defence. The loss of Matt Mills would not be the end of the world if there was experience cover at centre back but this is currently not the case. If there were, there would be less concern about the paucity of our resources there and less anger about the sale of Mills not being reinvested.
Furthermore, despite the faith in Brian McDermott being well founded, it is not to be expected of a manager to dig out diamonds from his squad every season and if Long leaves, that will be needed again. Perhaps Manset with a pre-season behind him is the answer or a fully-fit Hunt but both of those are not entirely plausible right now. McDermott seems less pleased with the club’s monetary policy now 18 months into the job though that is a personal observation rather than anything concrete.
In theory, a staring XI of Federici; Griffin, Pearce, Khumalo, Harte; McAnuff, Karacan, Leigertwood, Kebe; Long, Hunt is competitive at this level with more than adequate cover in most positions with Andersen, McCarthy, Cummings, Robson-Kanu, Tabb, Gunnarsson, Howard, Manset and Church to name seven. However, once injuries and suspensions strike, the squad looks very inexperienced and slightly threadbare. It will take a lot of stepping up from the likes of Williams (Brett and Marcus), Antonio and Morrison as well remarkable progress from youngsters like Gage, Obita and Taylor to supplement the first team.
Beyond the issues of who will be playing for Reading come the start of September, the remainder of the transfer window is the acid test for the club’s ambition and targets. If Long was to be sold to a fellow Championship club (Leicester being an admirer), even for an exceptional price, this would smack of a club more than happy to plod along at this level and occasionally mount a play-off push. It could determine the medium-term future of the club as a whole. But is this a bad thing?
It’s quite a nihilistic view on football as success in sport is dictated by winning trophies and gaining promotions but is the prize worth the cost or is the journey better than the destination?
As unambitious as it seems, the Championship, for me, is the league to be in right now for the sheer unpredictability of every game. Yes, promotion is the end goal but it’s not the be all and end all as it was when we were promoted back in 2006. Been there, done that, got the T-shirt now keep giving me the entertainment we’ve had over the last four seasons at this level and it cannot be denied we have had entertainment.
But the fear is that we would drop back to the lower reaches of the table with relegation a distinct possibility in the near future. That is unlikely this season as there is enough quality in the squad (with or without Long) to comfortably survive but the lure of the club to future signings will be made or break this year and potentially in the next four weeks.
Overall, I predict us to finish in the top 12 but not to mount a serious push for the play-off places but as anyone that read this blog in February knows; I’m rubbish at predictions and this one could be null and void by the end of the month.
Four months ago, Barcelona completed their 2011-12 season cum procession when they beat Man United in the Champions League final thus sealing their 3rd win in that competition in six years to go with five further La Liga titles.
Best team of its generation? Oh yeah. Best team ever? Not yet but we’ll see, the potential is certainly there.
In the aftermath of their Champions League victory, I wrote a blog post explaining why, despite loving the footballing side of Barcelona, their corporate side meant I could never feel more than merely liking the club; not loving or admiring.
Many lovers of the club cite their role in keeping alive Catalan nationalism and opposition to Franco, their community role, their partnership with Unicef, the “Mes que un club” idea that marks them out as different from other clubs.
My argument was basically that they were no different from other clubs; same corporate greed, same big-spending, same dirty politics all wrapped up in a right-on, ‘left-wing’ marketing disguise. Whilst I don’t doubt they take their genuine interest in helping charities and that side of their business, it does make the philosophy a lot more attractive to sell.
After a trip to the Nou Camp, I feel no different.
I wasn’t surprised that the tickets for the ground tour or for a shirt were so pricey (22 and 80-odd Euros respectively) as its football; everything is ridiculously expensive though for a club who proclaims its community ethos, one would think the prices would reflect that.
The tour itself is nice enough, seeing the stadium bowl from the press box, the middle tier and pitchside, seeing the stadium innards such as the chapel, the dressing room and so on but it was the museum that caught my interest most of all.
Over 100 years of history, lovingly restored and displayed with replicas of all the trophies the club have won and memorabilia such as the whistle used in the club’s first game, various footballs and signed shirts and so on. A football nerd like me’s paradise.
However, as you read through the history of the club on tables that run the length of the museum, the one constant message that’s rammed home is the spiritual link between the club and the fans and how it cannot be broken. The pretentious, righteous, left-wing ‘right-on-ness’ that, speaking as a leftie, I cannot stand.
Of course it’s going to be biased, it’s the Barcelona museum, written by Barcelona people so it’s going to be unbalanced but the unrelenting tedium of how everything the club was for their community and fans became patronising and the message stale.
And then, at the end of the tables telling you the history of the club, you have a queue to have your photo taken and then superimposed into the Barcelona team, thus wrenching out more money from you for a tacky souvenir.
In a way, it’s even more patronising and downright bastard-ish than the Real Madrid or Man United marketing model as with them at least you know they are corporate, capitalist vehicles that are out to milk their fans for all they’re worth. Barcelona seem to attempt to hide it in a veneer of left-wing propaganda, that you’re buying into history and righteousness when it’s all just the same bullshit really.
The club does have a history of just behaviour in opposition to the fascist Franco regime in the past and it’s charity work in the present but one can’t help but feel it’s used to shift the “Mes que un club” philosophy for marketing purposes. One does wonder what brave individuals like Joan Gamper and Josep Sunyol would think of it all.
In my preview for this season, I wrote that our fortunes for the year depended on what happened in the remaining month or so of the transfer window. What followed was a relatively busy month.
We saw the loss of last year’s star performer and top scorer Shane Long in a relatively expected move and in through the door came a man with way too many ‘S’s in his name (Kaspars Gorkss), Southampton’s third choice left-back (Joseph Mills) and the man with the most northern sounding name ever (Glenville Adam J. le Fondre).
I wrote at the start of the season that if we lost Shane Long then we would be in for a long hard season and, despite the arrival of le Fondre, I stand by that.
Le Fondre may bang in the goals at this level and his record elsewhere certainly shows he knows where the goal is but, increasingly in the Championship , being a goalscorer isn’t always enough. If a team plays two up front, one of the pair must be prepared to work the channels and work his socks off for the team. Matthieu Manset has shown glimpses of this but he is the only striker we have with the combination of pace and power to do it.
The signing of Gorkss should add a certain degree of fearless insanity that all backlines should have and one we have lacked since the loss of Andre Bikey. However, a distinct lack of pace is still in evidence in the defence as a whole and at centre back in particular, an issue that Gorkss, for all his positives as a very good centre half at this level, will not alleviate.
Mills looks like he is one for the medium to long term unless Ian Harte puts in some terrible performances over the next few weeks and Mills is required to step up.
Overall, the transfer window has not been unkind to us. Only losing Matt Mills and Long (as well as the releasing of the likes of Ivar Ingimarsson and Zurab Khisaishvili going back to his parent club) is not too bad when, quite conceivably, we could have also lost Adam Federici, Jimmy Kebe and Jem Karacan too.
Furthermore, each loss has had a like-for-like replacement brought in more or less as two centre halves have replaced the three that have left (with Sean Morrison being, rightly, expected to step up) and le Fondre replacing Long.
However, the issue that remains is one of faith of the fans. Money has been spent with the summer spending coming in at an estimated £1.5 million but faith comes into the equation when one asks if the replacements are good enough to plug the holes left by Mills and Long.
I do not believe the quality of the ins are as good as the outs though I would love to be proven wrong on this matter. However, that said, they are good acquisitions at this level and a top half finish with a possible play-off push is a distinct possibility should the team gel together.
We are notoriously slow-starters in this division these days but there is enough quality in the squad to pose a challenge to most sides in this league. The disappointment of course comes when one looks at the financial aspect of the ins and outs but that is another story and another can of worms.
First games of the season are notoriously bad parameters for judging the outcome of the season to come, as Reading fans know all too well. 2005/06 saw us lose out curtain-raiser to Plymouth but we didn’t lose again until February and romped to the Championship title. Two years later, an impressive defensive display allowed us to hold champions Man United but come the end of the season, we were relegated. Last season, a defeat to relegation favourites Scunthorpe opened a season which ended with a play-off final.
With that in mind, here are some thoughts from this season’s opener against Millwall.
1. Manset will be more than a handful this year
Mathieu Manset arrived at the Madejski last year on the back of a half-decent half-season at League Two Hereford United. Nicknamed ‘The Beast’, he looked to have the attributes to be a good striker at this level; he possessed strength, aerial threat, good hold up play and a deceptive turn of pace. However, what he appeared to lack was fitness, often not lasting 90 minutes.
However, he looked much more in shape today and with a pre-season behind him, he could prove to be our new secret weapon this year. His hold-up play was fantastic today and, as in evidence a few times last year, he has one hell of a shot on him. With Long, Hunt and Manset as striking options (for now), we appear to have three strikers who could easily each get into double figures this season, each of whom no defence would enjoy facing.
2. McAnuff was the right choice as captain
Alright, there were not many other options for the role but Jobi McAnuff showed today why he was the man to replace Matt Mills as club captain. Whilst not being the vocal type, he leads by example. Not only was he a constant threat on the left-wing, he also showed his worth in a centre midfield role and was desperately unlucky to hit the post midway through the second half after beating two men with a clever shimmy.
Perhaps the best example of his ‘lead-by-example’ captaincy came in the closing moments of the game as he lost possession trying to set Andy Griffin free with a cross field ball but ran back fifty yards to close down the cross.
3. We are a dangerous side
We may already know this but there is a caveat here. For the majority of the second half, we were quite awful with very little attacking threat and looking average defensively, being beaten by long balls for fun.
Despite looking so poor, we still managed to score twice, hit the post and hit the bar. On another day, we might have been able to say “we won when we didn’t play at our best”, the clichéd sign of quality teams. A little bit more luck and the opinions on this game would have been wildly different.
4. Jimmy Kebe remains Jimmy Kebe
Wingers are rightly known as the most frustrating of players and Jimmy Kebe is perhaps the most frustrating of all wingers; stunning on his day, frustratingly wasteful other times. Today was more of the latter than the former. Continually, he would beat his man and put in a poor cross or not beat his man at all.
But, a winger is there to create goals and he did this once again, at last putting a dangerous cross in with the minutes ticking away that Manset headed home. That is why he is in the team, to create goalscoring chances and if he makes an assist or scores once a game, he is worth his weight in gold at this level.
5. Leigertwood is our lynchpin
One of the reasons our season turned around after Christmas last season was the acquisition of Mikele Leigertwood on a loan deal to bolster our centre midfield. He did such a good job he was promptly signed up full time before the end of the season.
He showed today how important he is to the balance of our side as a ball winner and ball player. He plays more defensively than his centre midfield colleague Jem Karacan which allows the Turk to bomb up and down the pitch. Leigertwood’s ability to do the simple things well (win the ball and play it short) but also to play a accurate long pass is the reason why he is so important to Reading’s balance.
Clichés become clichés for a very good reason; the fact that they have a solid grounding in reality and truth. Usually anyway.
Thus, the cliché that the Championship (no marketing here) is the most hotly contested and difficult league to predict has an element of truth to it. However, certain patterns can be deduced.
For example, the last four winners of the league (QPR, Newcastle, Wolves and West Brom) all had a sense of predictability to their victories.
On the other hand, their respective fellow promotion winners were often just as much bolt from the blues as the winners were as predictable as death and taxation. Who could have guessed Norwich would storm to second place last year, Blackpool to complete a remarkable season in 2010 with a play-off victory or Stoke and Hull to gain promotion way back in 2008?
At the other end of the spectrum, relegation has more of a pattern to it with one ‘larger’ club usually accompanying the ‘smallest’ team in the league and a financial stricken side into League One. Cases in point, last season (Sheffield United, Scunthorpe and Preston, respectively), 2009-10 (Sheffield Wednesday, Peterborough and Plymouth) and 2007-08 (Leicester, Scunthorpe and Colchester).
All of which gives us only a few guidelines to predicting how this year’s league will turn out.
Favourites for promotion, and rightly so, are West Ham and Leicester (both 11/8 for promotion), the former for keeping the bones of a decent Championship side together after relegation and the latter for their much documented spending spree. West Ham’s fate may rest on how the rest of the transfer window pans out and Leicester’s on how quick Sven Goran Eriksson can get his team to gel.
Elsewhere, other pre-season favourites include Birmingham (7/2), Nottingham Forest (4/1) and Reading (9/2) all of whom are strange choices to be such strong candidates for promotion. Birmingham are in the middle of a rebuilding programme with the added spectre of the Carson Yeung saga, Forest are also in transition but in Steve McClaren they have a drastically underrated manager in this country and Reading have arguably weakened over the Summer with the loss of Matt Mills and will be further hampered should Shane Long leave.
The real play-off challengers lay in the next batch of clubs such as Brighton, Middlesbrough, Southampton (all 9/2), Blackpool, Leeds (5/1) and Ipswich (11/2). The two South-coast clubs are riding high on promotion euphoria, a new ground (Brighton), outstanding managers and lots of financial investment and one of those two would be my choice to possibly sneak a top-two finish. Ipswich, meanwhile, have made astute purchases of veterans (Lee Bower, Ivar Ingimarsson, Michael Chopra and Nathan Ellington) and youngsters (David Stockdale and Jay Emmanuel-Thomas), Blackpool have kept together much of their squad (aside from the big names) and have an astute manager whilst Leeds will benefit from a season’s experience at this level.
At the other end of the spectrum, clubs looking over their shoulders is difficult to call. Perennial favourites for relegation Doncaster and Barnsley (15/8 and 19/10 respectively) could spring a few surprises with Doncaster’s intentions announced with today’s signing of one-time next-big-thing Giles Barnes and Barnsley investing in solid defence cover. OverallCoventry are favourites for the drop (7/4) and perhaps rightly so with just one addition (Joe Murphy) to the squad that capitulated after Christmas least season added to the loss of Marlon King, Kieron Westwood and Aron Gunnarsson over the Summer.
Elsewhere, Watford (13/5), Crystal Palace (9/4) and Peterborough (2/1) are the other teams predicted to struggle this year for financial reasons (Watford and Palace), rookie managers (Watford and Palace) and the curse of the smaller club (Peterborough). That said; don’t rule out two clubs that always seem to come out fighting when their backs are against the wall and a side that scored comfortably over 100 league goals last season.
Mid-table mediocrity is nothing to complain about and for some clubs consolidation may well be the target for the season including Cardiff, Burnley, Portsmouth, Millwall, Bristol Cityand Hull who are all too good to go down but probably lack the quality to mount a sustained promotion push. That said, a lot depends on who can string together a run of good results and gain confidence from that so no-one can be ruled out.
A final disclaimer, this will all be wrong in nine months time when Peterborough storm to promotion and West Ham get relegated on the final day as that is whole the Championship operates so this has been something of an exercise in futility. Like most predictions really.
Champions: West Ham
Promoted: Leicester
Promoted: Leicester
Play offs: Brighton, Southampton (winner), Birmingham, Leeds
Dark Horse: Ipswich
Underacheiver: Nottingham Forest
Relegated: Coventry, Crystal Palace and Peterborough (financially stricken club, ‘bigger’ team and ‘smallest’ club in the league pattern in operation)
Top scorer: Shane Long, if he stays at Reading or goes to Leicester and not to a Premier League club(10/1) if not, an injury-free Nicky Maynard (14/1)
Writing a season preview for Reading with so much dependant on what happens over the next 27 days seems a little bit pointless but nonetheless, here are some thoughts on the forthcoming campaign.
First things first, it is no understatement to say that the most important developments in the month of August for us will not be played out on the pitch but in the boardroom and at the negotiating table.
Without a shadow of a doubt, the targets for the season depend on whether Shane Long stays at the club or not. With the futures of other key players such as Adam Federici and Jimmy Kebe looking secure, Long is the last player with a question mark over his head. Should he leave the team looks an awful lot less threatening and a mid table finish will be the best to hope for. Should he stay, a play-off push is a reasonable target. He is that important. A front two of Long and Hunt/Manset is more appealing as Long’s ability to play 46 games a year masks the other strikers inability to do the same.
But here is the rub; the same thing was said at exactly the same point last year regarding Gylfi Sigurdsson and look how last season ended. Players stepped up, a new system was found and (relative) success followed.
Further mirror images of last pre-season? The lack of signings prior to the opening day of the season (Williams last year, Khumalo this), the lack of positive talk out of the club about possible signings (a tactic used every year by the club management to drive down a target’s price that both other clubs and our own fans have yet to work out) and the pessimism among the fan base.
However, what’s different this time around is not the lack of investment but the appearance of allowing the squad to stagnate and be weakened, particularly in central defence. The loss of Matt Mills would not be the end of the world if there was experience cover at centre back but this is currently not the case. If there were, there would be less concern about the paucity of our resources there and less anger about the sale of Mills not being reinvested.
Furthermore, despite the faith in Brian McDermott being well founded, it is not to be expected of a manager to dig out diamonds from his squad every season and if Long leaves, that will be needed again. Perhaps Manset with a pre-season behind him is the answer or a fully-fit Hunt but both of those are not entirely plausible right now. McDermott seems less pleased with the club’s monetary policy now 18 months into the job though that is a personal observation rather than anything concrete.
In theory, a staring XI of Federici; Griffin, Pearce, Khumalo, Harte; McAnuff, Karacan, Leigertwood, Kebe; Long, Hunt is competitive at this level with more than adequate cover in most positions with Andersen, McCarthy, Cummings, Robson-Kanu, Tabb, Gunnarsson, Howard, Manset and Church to name seven. However, once injuries and suspensions strike, the squad looks very inexperienced and slightly threadbare. It will take a lot of stepping up from the likes of Williams (Brett and Marcus), Antonio and Morrison as well remarkable progress from youngsters like Gage, Obita and Taylor to supplement the first team.
Beyond the issues of who will be playing for Reading come the start of September, the remainder of the transfer window is the acid test for the club’s ambition and targets. If Long was to be sold to a fellow Championship club (Leicester being an admirer), even for an exceptional price, this would smack of a club more than happy to plod along at this level and occasionally mount a play-off push. It could determine the medium-term future of the club as a whole. But is this a bad thing?
It’s quite a nihilistic view on football as success in sport is dictated by winning trophies and gaining promotions but is the prize worth the cost or is the journey better than the destination?
As unambitious as it seems, the Championship, for me, is the league to be in right now for the sheer unpredictability of every game. Yes, promotion is the end goal but it’s not the be all and end all as it was when we were promoted back in 2006. Been there, done that, got the T-shirt now keep giving me the entertainment we’ve had over the last four seasons at this level and it cannot be denied we have had entertainment.
But the fear is that we would drop back to the lower reaches of the table with relegation a distinct possibility in the near future. That is unlikely this season as there is enough quality in the squad (with or without Long) to comfortably survive but the lure of the club to future signings will be made or break this year and potentially in the next four weeks.
Overall, I predict us to finish in the top 12 but not to mount a serious push for the play-off places but as anyone that read this blog in February knows; I’m rubbish at predictions and this one could be null and void by the end of the month.
Life (and cricket) is what you make of it
Perspective makes the world go round. Different interpretations of situations leads to different opinions and outcomes. More often than not, the two foremost opinions make the most sense.
Take the American debt crisis. The USA has a large spending deficit (some $13 trillion or so) which needs trimming. However, the perspectives of the Republicans and the Democrats lead to different preferred outcomes. The GOP wanted huge spending cuts which make sense as to fight a debt, you spend less. On the other hand, the Democrats wanted less drastic spending cuts as they reasoned that would leave a vacuum in the public sector that may well lead to further economic problems later down the line. Both sensible policies which were each watered down to a compromise.
Naturally, this leads me on to cricket and the latest Test between England and India at Trent Bridge.
The decision by MS Dhoni, the Indian captain, to reprieve Ian Bell after he was run out in bizarre fashion has been lauded by both newspapers and TV coverage; showcasing the unique sporting nature of cricket and the ‘Spirit of Cricket’ notion.
For the unaware of the event, Bell, having thought he had hit the final ball before the tea break for four, walked towards the pavilion, only to see Dhoni whip off the bails of the stumps, meaning Bell was run out. However, as was fairly clear, Bell leaving his crease had been a misunderstanding (although a somewhat ditzy moment for the batsman) and Dhoni withdrew his appeal for the wicket after the tea interval, leaving Bell to resume batting. As veteran Indian batsman Rahul Dravid put it “it didn’t feel right”.
The aftermath of the event clearly benefitted England with Bell going on to get a further twenty runs and provide the base to allow Eoin Morgan, Matt Prior, Tim Bresnan and Stuart Broad to meat out more batting punishment against the Indian bowlers to give England an unassailable lead and crush the Indian bodies and minds in the process. Finally, the resultant England victory means that they are more than likely to supplant India as the foremost Test-playing nation come the end of the series.
Here’s where the question of perspectives comes in. If the roles had been reversed with England calling back an Indian batsman and the decision contributing in large part to the loss of the Test and our place as No. 1 in the word, would the media have been so gushing in its praise of Andrew Strauss? Or would they deride him as weak and use the eternal comparison to the Australia of Steve Waugh (mental disintegration and all that) and whether they would have acted the same?
Shane Warne wrote this morning about the Australian-like attitude of this England team and the need to be mentally tough and demanding to command the No.1 spot in Test cricket for an extended period of time and the withdrawal of the appeal by Dhoni can be seen as a lack of this attitude in the Indian team which hastens their descent from the summit.
As Steve James put it in the Telegraph, the notional ‘Spirit of Cricket’ is just that, a notion and the aim of the game is to win. However, perspectives regarding the spirit of the game are seen differently by different sporting cultures and different media cultures (indeed, double standards) which dictate the unwritten conventions of the game. Where these conventions lie is a matter of debate and context surrounding the incident.
Perhaps if England had been the generous party and it had led to a crushing defeat, maybe the reaction would have been different.
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What Dispatches Told Us
One of the failings of sport journalism, it has often been said, is its unwillingness to call to account the powers in football. This is for a number of reasons not relevant right here right now. Which is why investigations into sport (from sport journalists or otherwise) are so important as it presents concrete evidence of wrongdoing. This is what Channel 4’s Dispatches programme set out to do on Monday night.
The investigation revolved around a ‘Football Fund’ called London Nominees which was based in Thailand and was fronted by Bryan Robson, manager of the Thai national team at the time of recording.
The reporters posed as a Chinese and Indian consortium looking to take over a lower league club, take that club to the Premier League and then sell on for a big profit. The initial investment would be £15 million (with an additional £10 million to be paid later) to London Nominees who would provide expert advice and contacts within the English game through Robson and a man by the name of Joe Sim.
SIm claimed to have a close relationship with Sir Alex Ferguson who would lend players to the club the Fund would buy to help the club rocket through the leagues, thus making the turnaround time between buying and selling considerably shorter. Sim also has contacts with the current owners of Leicester City, Cardiff City and former Manchester City owner Thaksin Shinawatra
As it transpired, London Nominees would not put in any of their own cash but were more and advisory company. Crucially, they advised that the ‘Chinese/Indian consortium) could take over more than one English league club if they wanted to; an idea also supported by Sim.
Overall, to this viewer, London Nominees appeared to view the reporters as very naïve and were exaggerating the ease with which quick money could be made out of football. For example, they stated that it would take “two to three years” to get a club from League One to the Premier League; possible but nothing in football is as set in stone as that. Furthermore, their “expertise” included singling out Sheffield Wednesday as a good club to invest in due to its huge fanbase and current league standing; an insight any football fan could tell you and not charge £25 million for.
London Nominees appeared to be a company designed to take money off naïve investors with their ‘expertise’ persuading investors how simple it is to make a quick pound in football, whilst keeping its nose out of the whole business as much as possible. Robson was keen to stress that under no circumstances should potential investors attempt to asset strip a chosen club (of its stadium etc). Not due to the club folding and the effect it has on the local community of that club but as it would not go down well “against his name”.
The programme highlighted the real problem of financial governance and regulation in football. London Nominees way of getting round the issue of not being able to own two league clubs was simple; create two special vehicle companies and loan money into each one from the fund. From this, it becomes difficult to track down where the money is coming from. As Greg Dyke, Football League Chairman put it; “it’s not difficult to track down the owners of a football club but tracking down the owners of the owners and so on” is next to impossible. When you throw in offshore ownership and the resultant lack of tax and ownership records, the job becomes more impossible still.
As Dyke observed “a loose alliance of 72 league clubs that mostly lose money cannot pursue the sources of investment.” There is simply too much money involved and too many avenues to chase down for organisations such as the FA or the Football League to make a real impression on due to financial and time restrictions. Government regulation may be the answer but where do you draw the line on government intervention into business? Sport is a different matter but as Robson said himself; “Football isn’t a sport anymore. It is a business.”
Furthermore, when potentially dodgy investors come a-knocking, it is not in the interests of football club owners to run background checks. As most clubs do not make profits, owners who can get out of the cycle by selling to new foreign owners (who think or have been told) that they can make a profit, it is in the interest of the club’s owner to sell up as soon as possible.
The most depressing thing of the whole hour-long programme? A throwaway line from Sim speaking of the need to get a PR company in after a take over as “the fan is a headache”. No business would dare say that about their customers but in football, that’s about par for the course; we are here to be exploited and let it slide.
You can follow the Layman on Twitter at http://twitter.com/#!/Dan_Whiteway
You can watch the Dispatches investigation here
This article appeared over at http://www.footballfriendsonline.com/blogs/
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Sport and society; Wembley and Lords
Anyone who questions the importance of sport and doubts its relevance to life as a whole is a person sorely lacking in perception and would also be in desperate need of a healthy dose of reality. Whether one likes sport or not is neither here nor there; the simple fact is that sport can both be a form of escapism but also a confirmation of ideas found outside the arena.
Sport as a representation in miniature of one’s character in life is a whole is a well worn subject, as is the socio-cultural impact of sport. However, this was all brought into sharper focus for me yesterday. What caused this dawning realisation? My very first live experience of cricket.
Having watched the sport on television for many years (the Karachi Test of 2001 with England sneaking a victory in the darkness is my first memory), it was a great shame I had never experienced the sport at first hand before with my only previous attempt to watch a game being rained off back in April last year. The plus side being I got a free roast dinner and a beer out of it from those lovely folks at Berkshire County Cricket Club (journalistic privilege at its finest).
Anyway, as part of my 21st birthday present, two tickets to the ODI against Sri Lanka at Lords, the home of cricket TM, were received. The tickets were in the pleb section (still 75 quid a pop!) although walking around before the match and at the interval, you could hear and see many chinless wonders dressed for a day at Ascot with “Mumma and Papa”. The class make-up was more weighted towards the upper classes though not completely.
As a seasoned football fan, coming to cricket was a huge change of pace. The lack of fan segregation and being able to drink alcohol in the stands made a huge difference to the atmosphere of the day that just would not happen at a football match. This was what got me thinking about the different societal views for differing sports.
The history of violence in football that led to the enforcement of segregation between opposing fans and a ban on alcohol on the terraces is what keeps these arrangements in place; whilst football is a more middle class spectator sport these days (for a number of factors which are not worth going into here) the fear of returning to the dark days of the 1980s remains.
For one reason or another, at football, I get very caught up in the aggression involved. Perhaps it’s the emotional investment you put into your team that’s built up for so long. Or maybe it’s the tribalism between towns and cities that ratchets up the tension. For my money, it’s the intensity of a football match where it’s all action crammed into 90 minutes of narrative that gets the adrenalin (and probably testosterone) pumping.
However, at cricket, I found myself a completely different person and fan; more sedate and relaxed and generally more jolly. For example, as the Sri Lankan batsman Dinesh Chandimal approached his century, I was willing him to get it as I felt he deserved for playing so well. To contrast, I wasn’t willing Scott Sinclair to get his hat-trick in the play-off final in May. Once Chandimal got his ton, I turned to the handful of Sri Lankan fans behind me to high five and congratulate them, again, something I wouldn’t have been able to do at Wembley (both physically due to segregation and psychologically).
As explained earlier, the intensity of a football match is so much greater than a cricket game which makes the blood boil less thus there is greater friendship between spectators. Certainly, alcohol has nothing to do with it as I certainly drank more at the cricket than I would do at any football game. This is applicable beyond personal experience too as many of the fellow supporters with me in the Mound Stand looked to be of a similar class to the average football fan and they weren’t beating the shit out of any Sri Lankan fans; on the contrary, many were happily chatting away to them (as happily as English people can be talking to strangers).
Another element is the contrasting tribalism of the two sports where one is regionally based and another is nationally based. Whilst not caring for patriotism and nationalism as a general rule, sport brings that out in me but it still hurts more when my local team lose than my national team.
But, to argue against that, I wouldn’t have been upset if Berkshire lost their MCKO semi-final yesterday (they won, for the record) which suggests the emotional investment in my football team is the dominating factor but that still didn’t stop me congratulating Swansea fans on the way back home after the Wembley defeat.
In conclusion, God knows why there is such a difference in fan culture between football and cricket; anything from emotional investment, the class make-up of the support, different kinds of tribalism, match intensity and a ton of other reasons could be to blame. But, what a lot of the reasons involve is issues linked to wider society and that is why sports matters and its relationship with wider society is one of the most interesting areas to explore.
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Tis the season for speculation
June to August; the time of the year where the words “Exclusive”, “a source” and “the breaking news yellow ticker bar thing” (seriously, what is the name for that source of misinformation?) are used as liberally as fake tan at an Only Way is Essex convention. Yes folks, its transfer rumour silly season.
It’s like Christmas everyday only with a marginally higher chance of disappointment as you open up the papers or listen to Jim “Three Phones*” White tell you who your club is going to say, only to reach the end of the day with no new signings. Or worse, you’re club has signed Luis Boa Morte.
Anywho, here is your copy-and-paste guide to transfer speculation and rumour and stuff.
Basically, transfer gossip can be split down into three groups; the ‘leftfield space filler’, the ‘saga’ and the ‘plausible but pinch of salt needed’. Using examples from today’s (Friday 1stJuly) papers, let’s put some these groups into context.
Firstly, the ‘leftfield space filler’; hese are the lowest of the low rumours. Often taken from an internet forum or perhaps just taken from a similar device Family Guy use to make their jokes, this rumour involves outstanding player ‘X’ to join big, rich club ‘Y’ from smaller, less rich club ‘Z’. The likes of Javier Pastore to Chelsea (The Mirror), Giuseppe Rossi to Spurs for £35m (Mirror again) and, in a slight deviation from the norm, John O’Shea to Arsenal (Mirror, once again). Insert your own joke here about the words “Big John” and “outstanding” in the same paragraph.
Chance of these deals taking place; 0-5%.
Next up, we have the ‘saga’. Pretty simple one this; long standing interest in player ‘X’ coupled with agent seeking a pay day and/or plenty of club sources for quotes to rock the boat equals plenty of column inches. In to this category come your Cesc Fabregas to Barcelona rumours, your Charlie Adam to Liverpool gossip, your Alexis Sanchez to any club with a chequebook in Europe hearsay, your Gary Cahill and Gervinho to Arsenal speculation and so on.
Chances of these deals taking place; 35-50% just don’t hold your breath until they are actually confirmed.
Lastly, we have your ‘plausibles’ which combine a little bit of the previous two groups as they have something of the drawn at random element to them but they can also envisaged happening. For example, Fernando Llorente to Spurs (Mirror) as *cliché alert* Harry Redknapp likes a deal and likes a striker even more. Or Steve Bruce signing Wes Brown for Sunderland (Mail) or Charles N’Zogbia to Aston Villa.
Chances of these deals taking place; 10-20% as they all make sense for their respective clubs to make them happen but whether they will or not remains to be seen.
In many ways, the latter are the hardest to gauge as you know they conform to the plausibility rule and are often rubber-stamped with words like “sources say” or “insiders tell us” to give them a glean of respectability.
Here however, is the rub. A source will never be named at a football club as that source may lose their job as a result of their leaks to the press and an unnamed source is about as trustworthy as those Wonga loans adverts. Furthermore, a ‘source’ may just be the teenager who works in the club store ringing up a red-top to say he saw someone who looked like James Milner strolling into Anfield. Again, not that trustworthy.
In conclusion, rather than waiting on Sky Sports News or the papers to tell you who your club is going to sign, wait until the news is on your club’s website. What to do to pass the time until then? Ring up The Sun and say you’ve spotted Titus Bramble outside The Emirates stadium.
*Interesting sidenote, White does not actually have three phones. Phones from the production team are placed on the desk to create the ‘iconic’ image. TV fakery, albeit not on the scale of that BBC one where the Queen stormed out of a room or the one where that guy landed on the Moon.
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Life in Footballing Limbo
If I could have back the hours I have spent trawling through the free transfer market on various ‘Football/Championship Manager’ type games, I would have enough time to read the works of Tolstoy, build a shed AND post regularly on this website.
Such was the joys of finding a big-name player or a hidden gem for a perfectly reasonable price of zero pounds and zero pence, time gradually slipped away and day turned to night whilst one perused the offerings.
In a similar way, real managers are doing the exact same thing now and like so many things in life, the Internet has changed how the process is done.
I imagine the old way of knowing which players were on free transfers would either be agents marketing their clients to managers or the PFA creating one big list which would be sent to managers up and down the country for them to browse and make enquiries from there.
However, nowadays, the PFA offers one big list of all the free transfers that are available and wannabe managers like you and I can have a root around and see what we can find (the list can be found here). The list includes all the details you could possibly want from the player’s position, his height and weight, his D.O.B and so on.
The list in itself is a treasure trove of half forgotten names and vague memories. For example, your team could pick up one-time Bristol City cult hero Adriano Basso. Or maybe “striker”Jérémie Aliadière, all 14 goals in 10 years of him. Or ex-“next-big-thing” Giles Barnes who is only 22 remarkably. Or the journeyman’s journeyman; Marcus Bent (released by Birmingham for those who lost tabs on his whereabouts). Or people’s champion Lee Bowyer. And that’s just the ‘A’s and ‘B’s of the list!
More players you may have heard of further down the list include John Carew, Pascal Chimbonda, Michael Brown, Pablo Counago, Sol Campbell, Kieron Dyer, Nathan Ellington, Jason Euell, Abdoulaye Faye, Daniel Gabbidon, Anthony Gardner, Eidur Gudjohnsen, Marcus Hahnemann, Marlon Harewood. To be honest, I’ve only reached the ‘H’s and I’m not going to list anymore as it is getting a little boring.
The great thing about the list is you can actually make enquires about players which leaves endless scope for pranks; making an approach to Kieron Dyer from the British Medical Association perhaps?
As fun as it is to get some cheap laughs out of some out of work millionaires (and boy, it sure is fun), the other side of the issue is slightly less fun. The list is largely populated by either Academy cast-offs, deemed not good enough for the clubs, or ageing lower league players who are trying to cling on to their professional careers.
These players probably are not rich and do not know much about how the world operates outside of football. If they fail to find a club (and with the financial situation as it is lower down the league pyramid, that is a distinct possibility), these players may have to go semi-professional or drop out of the game entirely to support themselves and their families. These players probably do not have agents and rely on the work of the PFA to find them a new club and a new beginning.
Whilst players that are bombed out at the higher level (such as Thomas Cruise from Arsenal) will more than likely find another club, players like veteran Guy Branston or 19-year old Sean Geddes, released by clubs lower down the leagues, will find it harder as they are competing for fewer spots as a professional at a football club.
Just another day in the cut-throat world of football really.
This post appeared over at www.footballfriendsonline.com/blogs/
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Reading season in review
Way back in August 2010, when Ryan Giggs was doing what he does in the privacy of not his own bed, Osama Bin Laden wasn’t hanging out with Spongebob Squarepants and Adam Johnson was the saviour of the England team, something depressingly predictable happened; Reading sold their star player.
With the departure of Gylfi Sigurdsson for a fee of around £6.5 million, a 20-goal a season gap needed plugging. The answer, of course, was to sign a 32-year old left back from League One for around 75 grand and hope someone else will step up to the goal scoring plate. Which is pretty much exactly what happened, in retrospect.
Essentially, Reading’s season can be broken down into thirds. The first third, in the wake of the loss of Sigurdsson, Reading were decidedly average as the management team looked for a new way to play as 4-5-1 without the Icelandic midfielder wasn’t going to work as we possessed no other player that had the talent to play in the hole. This period was characterised by uninspiring performances against the likes of Scunthorpe, a threadbare Portsmouth side and Middlesbrough.
The second third saw the team develop into a combination of great entertainers and draw specialists as the best starting XI began to take shape and Shane Long started to find his scoring boots. Superb performances such as the 4-0 win away to Burnley and the 4-1 win at home to Bristol City were mixed with roller coaster matches at the Madejski against Doncaster (4-3) and Norwich (3-3) contrasted with scoreless draws with Leeds and Coventry and a creeping fear that this team lacked the killer edge to challenge at the top of the league.
The final third of the season saw Reading become the most in form team in the league with just one defeat in the last 20 games (OK, they aren’t identically sized thirds), including eight wins on the bounce in March and April which saw us rocket into the play-off places with an outside chance of automatic promotion being reached. Whilst no opposition was really torn apart, the competency and professionalism of the performances were a sight to behold as was the power of Long, Noel Hunt, Jimmy Kebe and Jobi McAnuff to change games.
Ultimately, the play-offs ended in heartbreak, yet a-bloody-gain, but when putting the season in context, we have probably overachieved given the fact the club is now a selling club that has to pawn off its better players to survive, which will probably happen this summer too. A 5th place finish is not to be sniffed at, particularly on our budget whilst the continuing blooding of Academy youngsters into the first team is a sight to warm all fans’ hearts.
The team ethic of Reading is important to our relative success and has been for about 5 or 6 years but there are still stand out players. Long, with his 25 goals in all competitions, grabs the headlines and rightly so as he has all the attributes to be a top striker; pace, strength, a good jump, an eye for goal and the stamina to chase and harry for 90 minutes.
However, other players are in need of a mention. Kebe for being one of the most terrifying wingers in the league and being nigh on unplayable on his day (that day being Leicester at home in April). Mikele Leigertwood for strengthening the midfield and launching us on our superb second half of the season form. Ian Harte and Andy Griffin for providing shed loads of experience in a backline that was constantly changing throughout the year and the former for his threat for set pieces. Matt Mills, not everyone’s cup of tea, but somewhere inside him lurks a top drawer defender as his performance at Everton showed. Jem Karacan coming on leaps and bounds this year, probably aided by the presence of Leigertwood next to him, and showing his potential to be a very good box-to-box midfielder with an eye for goal.
However, despite the relative succes, the argument rages about the long term aims of the club; are we doing all we can to get to the Premier League or content to be a challenger in the Championship, balancing the books and hoping to get the best out of what we have for the foreseeable future? The summer’s comings and goings will go a long way to answering that but to take this season in isolation, one can’t complain with an appearance at Wembley and a FA cup quarter-final.
This post appeared over at footballfriendsonline.com/blogs/
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FA still just playing the game
Back in November last year, the Sunday Times and the BBC’s Panorama made allegations of corruption against certain members of FIFA ExCo committee; the power holders in the world of football governance.
In an attempt to smooth over the perceived damage the reports had done (though, in retrospect, the horse had long since bolted), the FA condemned the journalists’ responsible for these allegations, stating their belief that the leading officials of FIFA were clean and the organisation was corruption free.
It’s amazing what a slight as big as the rejection of your World Cup bid can do to your beliefs and ethical standpoint.
The FA are now compiling their own report on the alleged corruption at FIFA (in particular, four members of the ExCo committee) which the former FA Chairman Lord Triesman made at a government Select Committee hearing last month.
One of the allegations made by Lord Triesman refers to a request from the lovable, all-round nice head of CONCACAF, Jack Warner, where he asked for £2.5 million to build a school. This request was made in May 2009, a full 18 months before the World Cup hosts were announced.
If alarm bells were raised at this point of the lack of transparency in the bidding system, then they must surely have been cleared up by the time the investigative journalists from the BBC and The Sunday Times made their allegations, no?
Furthermore, in some sort of statement against the world footballing authority, the FA is to abstain from the election for the next President of FIFA (despite the allegations, still to be held on Wednesday, ridiculously). Surely, if you plan to make a stand against a body you feel is corrupt; abstaining is not the correct way to go about it. Backing an anti-corruption candidate, such as the US sports journalist Grant Wahl’s campaign, would have been a better option to back if the FA wanted to invoke the moral high ground defence.
Despite the report being filed by the FA against FIFA, the English national body are still seeking to make sure (by abstaining) that whoever wins the election, they still have some say in the corridors of power, especially now that both candidates have allegations against them. It’s a simple case of saying to the winner “Well, we didn’t support the other guy, we’re still YOUR friend.”
Rather than making a genuine stand against the corruption they feel is there, they are still dancing along to FIFA’s tune. Rather than standing up and leading the fight to expel the corrupt (allegedly!) members of the ExCo committee, they are merely sidestepping the real issue. All in the name of self-preservation and to further their own cause, whilst also neatly trying to avoid scrutiny into their own affairs about why they were aware of ExCo members being “buyable” but still dismissing the allegations made by the Panorama documentary and ploughing on regardless with an £18 million doomed bid campaign.
Perhaps they would make themselves pariahs for the cause and this would leave them even more friendless in the world of football politics but the chance is there to make a real stand. Instead, we are left with a half-arsed, halfway house response, designed with the FA’s own interests in mind at both national and international level, which leaves real football people disaffected and disillusioned. Just like in November last year, the FA is leaving football high and dry in an attempt to look after itself and its position in a not dissimilar fashion to the people they are filing their corruption allegations against.
Elsewhere, after waiting a fortnight (presumably for the whole thing to blow over a bit), the FA-appointed regulatory commission has released its 86-page report into the Alejandro Faurlin case, which you can read here if you want some Sunday reading. Remember, the club were fined £875,000 for its role in the affair.
Essentially, the club was found not guilty of the most serious charge; of playing Faurlin for 18 months up until November 2010 whilst he was under the ownership of a third-party, a company called TYP. The commission found that an agreement was made between QPR and TYP for the latter to suspend their ownership rights throughout Faurlin’s first contract with QPR.
This is the charge with which QPR were found guilty of; failing to inform the FA of this agreement which the commission found gave the club a sporting advantage as it allowed them to observe whether Faurlin was good enough to play in the Championship before signing him outright.
This is where £800,000 of the fine comes from as it was the difference between the amount the club would have paid for him at the beginning of his contract (£200,000) and the amount he was worth once he had proven himself (£1 million) and how much QPR paid for him in November 2010 when his contract was renewed. The other £75,000 of the fine came from using an agent who was FIFA registered, but not authorised by the FA at the time.
The club were found to be acting in good faith towards the FA and it was deemed that a player such as Faurlin does not have the outstanding ability to dramatically improve a team’s performance.
What is strange is the club’s decision to say they originally signed Faurlin for £3.5 million when he first joined, a move the commission describes as either a “lie” or a “puff” to excite fans.
All in all, not the most shocking of outcomes but still an interesting insight in to how club’s operate with third-parties, particularly in South American football.
This article also appeared over at www.footballfriendsonline.com/blogs/
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Why Barca aren’t for me
Securing a third Champions League title in six years to go with five La Liga championships and numerous other trophies is certainly cause enough to dub Barcelona one of the all-time great club sides.
The quality and beauty of their style of play is indeed, a wonder to behold. They are so much better than anyone else in European football right now it is almost laughable. The magic of Messi, the ingenuity of Iniesta, the power of Puyol, the passion of Pique, the verve of Villa, the athleticism of Alves, the of Xavi. They are simply incredible.
If you are a football lover, then you cannot help but admire them. Despite the play acting and diving that they partake in, the sheer entertainment value of their play is wonderful as is the success it brings. They are a tactical evolution in football; bringing together a solid backline and a scintillating attack into one wonderful package with the added bonus of the majority of their players being trained at the club’s youth academy, La Mesia, steeping these players in the ethos of Barcelona football.
However, it is when people bring in the argument that Barcelona are something wonderfully fresh and different as an institution that gets my goat.
At this point, it is probably best to differentiate between the club and the team of Barcelona. The team represents everything to do with the playing side of Barcelona; the players, the manager, the coaches and so on. This side of it, I have no problem with at all. Indeed, quite the opposite; I adore the footballing ideology.
The club, on the other hand, represents everything above that; the president, the chief executive, the marketing men and so on. Here is where my problem with the arguments of Barcelona lovers starts.
Barcelona tend to be portrayed as an antidote to the corporate football in which we live in these days; a symbol of the days when footballers and their communities had a sacred bond and the 11 men on the pitch represented escapism for the masses of the classes in the crowd.
This is multiplied when you take into consideration the unique geopolitical aspect of Spanish culture; the rivalry between Castilian Madrid and Catalan Barcelona and the historical aspect of the civil war and Franco’s quelling of Catalan and Basque nationalism. Out of this, came the ‘Mes que un club’ philosophy of Barcelona as they became an outlet for opposition to the regime of the Generalissimo.
All well and good and something I rather enjoy as a football romantic, the history of a club and a community wrapped up together.
However, it is my opinion that this philosophy has been bastardised and adopted, given new clothes and been rebranded as the anti-corporate, almost left wing side of football, sticking it to the financial man that runs Real Madrid, Chelsea and AC Milan.
For starters, going out and splashing the best part of 80 million Euros on Zlatan Ibrahimovic, deciding it wasn’t working and then spending another 34 million Euros the next summer on David Villa can only be described as beating Real Madrid at their own game. Even the historic decision to finally sell the front of their shirts for sponsorship shows this capitalism creep; charging a charity $170 million over 5 years smacks of corporate capitalism to me.
Secondly, the dirty politics that characterises football is in evidence at Barca as much as it is elsewhere. That’s the role fan ownership plays; you get wannabe presidents coming along, promising the sun and making dirty deals. It’s as much of the Barcelona model as it is the Real Madrid model.
Lastly, whilst Barcelona are wrapped up in the history of their city as much as any other club, no other club markets that fact quite as much in an effort to sell themselves. Sadly, a once poignant message has been taking over by the marketing men.
So, by all means, talk to me about the wonderful football Barcelona bring to the table, but leave the ‘Mes que un club’ bullshit at the door, please. The football of Barcelona is something different and a joy to behold but above that, they are the same as any other club. The historic philosophy, for this observer, is just another marketing tool now.
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A fine tradition continued
A couple of months ago on this blog, I described what I termed "The Reading Way". Summing it up succinctly, I put it that each club has their own way of doing things and going about their business. Part of the Reading way was to put their fans through the wringer and to induce despair wherever possible.
As a result for all the last day heartbreak whether it was in regard to relegation battle failures (Derby '08) or play off final calamities ('95 or '01), Reading fans had developed a kind of self defence mechanism of refusing to believe that success was around the corner as the Reading way is to promise you that success but then have it snatched away at the very end.
This phenomenon is well explained here over at the wonderful Tilehurst End blog, examining the differences in the hopes that different generations of Reading fans had for the game yesterday. Broadly speaking, those fans who had been to Wembley or Cardiff before were much more pessimistic about our chances than those who hadn't. Once bitten and all that.
However, I'm sure even those fans that suffered the twin heartbreaks of Bolton and Walsall, were drawn into believing that maybe, just maybe, the mother of all play-off final comebacks was on when Matt Mills smashed home his header to make it 3-2 with 25 minutes to play yesterday afternoon.
However once again, the Reading way was in evidence. Even the most pessimistic of fans was drawn into the tantalising story arc that we were about to put away all those horrible play-off memories in the most glorious way possible. The optimists and the pessimists, the new fans and the old, the wet-behind-the-ears and the grizzled-seen-it-all-'super'fan' were united in this searing new found belief that the comeback was on.
But the Reading way was reasserted, the hope was taken away. Perhaps it was the moment Jem Karacan's deflected shot cannoned off the post and Noel Hunt couldn't stick away the rebound. Perhaps it was the slow reassertion of themselves on the game by Swansea after Darren Pratley came on. It was certainly the ball hitting the back of the net for that fourth Swansea goal. Whatever time it was, the faintest of faintest hopes that Reading generated in those 20 minutes after the break, was snatched away, leaving the game to be filed under 'Play-off misery'; the right post of the West stand Wembley goal was destined to join Tony Rougier's head and Stuart Lovell's right boot in the Reading FC play-off final hall of infamy.
The fairest result was the one which the game ended; we were second best for 70 minutes and made to look very average by a team that were simply better than us both on the day and throughout the season. We were even lucky to finish with 10 men after Zurab Khishanishvilli's foolish trip on Nathan Dyer for the first penalty wasn't punished with a second yellow card. No blame on the referee can be used here. We were done for pace on countless occasions and our inspirations during the second half of the season (Shane Long and Jimmy Kebe) couldn't make their quality show after being successfully shackled by the Swansea backline.
This wasn't the same kind of heartbreak experienced in 1995 or 2001 where we were the better team throughout the season than our opponents and cruel misfortunes of fate snatched away glory. This was a heartbreak built on hope rather than expectation; the hope of an exceptional second half of the season and an exhilarating period of 20 minutes at the start of the second half at Wembley and the hope that a team with whom we, the fans, have a connection with (as so many of the 18 players involved yesterday have developed at the club before our eyes) would get a shot at the Premier League and wouldn't be broken up in the style of so many play-off losers before have.
Perhaps it is our fault for being tempted into believing that the impossible might be made possible.
However, I wouldn't have it any other way. These disappointments are what makes a club and what makes a fan base. The hunger and the drive to avoid feeling that low again. The defeat in Cardiff was followed the next season by promotion; losing out on a play-off place at the end of the 2004/05 season (and seeing a promoted Wigan side celebrate at the same time) arguably made the 106 team in 2006. Taking that feeling and channelling it into something positive; make it happen next year boys and then it's another element to add to the unique 'Reading way'.
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On footballing elation
Happiness can come in many different forms and can have different lengths in how long it lasts. Find a fiver? Soon you’ll be cursing yourself for spending it on a couple of pints. Eat a delicious meal? After the last bite, it’s over. The most intense and natural form of happiness, the orgasm? Over before you know it, though the high remains for a while after.
Football is similar but the feeling tends to last longer. A win on the Saturday tends to make your weekend whilst a midweek win makes you go into work happy. The equivalent of the orgasm, in terms of intensity, is promotion; a huge outpouring of emotion in one fleeting moment (no innuendo) that continues to linger throughout the Summer.
Play-offs (and knock-out football as a whole) however are something altogether different; one off games are where beyond happiness occurs (and indeed, beyond sadness). This is the realm of elation and despair; where the pressure is so intense that the sense of relief at the end of it magnifies the emotion felt at the result by 100 times.
When Reading won promotion to the Premier League in 2005/06, it was such a foregone conclusion that there was no pressure when the eventual promotion and winning of the league was confirmed. Sure, the outpouring of emotion at the length of time supporting the club was finally rewarded with top flight football, but this was different, the happiness had already been coming out of every pore as the knowledge that promotion was assured sank in more and more. This was happiness and joy but not the height of emotion, for me anyway.
Promotion or a cup won (or indeed lost) is thus far more emotional and draining than a league being won or relegation occurring, provided these aren’t last day of the season events, the relegation at Derby proving this.
The last time, as a Reading fan, I felt like this depth of emotion was in the aftermath of the 2001/02 season when we played Brentford in, what was essentially, a play-off to see who would get the second automatic promotion spot to Division One; that was elation as the referee blew the final whistle and Reading fans poured onto the pitch of the Madejski Stadium after watching the game on a purpose built big screen.
Tonight was elation as it had the key ingredients of it being a one-off game and the prize being so huge as Wembley is still a wonderful reward by itself. Even being away from home, in a half empty Student’s Union, didn’t dampen the feeling.
What makes the feeling even more intense is therelatively short period between the play-off semi final and the final, compared to the winning of promotion and playing in the higher tier the next season. Thus, my current feeling oscillates between wondering how ecstatic I’ll be should we triumph but dreading the feeling should we lose. Only time will tell but 12 days is too bloody long nonetheless.
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Emphatically Wrong
For the last three months, I’ve been getting large amounts of stick from (in no particular order) my housemate, my cousin and various other mates for writing off the rest of Reading’s season way back in February.
The jist of my argument was that we were too one-dimensional and reliant on Shane Long, Jobi McAnuff and Jimmy Kebe with the rest of the team lacking creativity and being a bit too workmanlike to sustain a promotion challenge. Cue us going on an unbelievable run at the end of the season, with one defeat in 15 games catapulting us into the play offs.
Despite this, I still had the feeling that we weren’t quite good enough and that we were going to be found out at some stage by teams who would double mark our wingers and stop the service to Long thus neutering our attacking threat. Perhaps it was some sort of self-defence mechanism to not be allowed to believe that we had a chance to get promotion through the play-offs. After all, four times bitten, very much shy by now.
After tonight, one can’t help but think that this view was completely wrong. Tonight was the perfect away performance; this generation of Reading fans equivalent of THAT away day at Prenton Park where Tranmere were blown away three goals to nothing by Nogan, Lovell et al in the glorious 1994-95 season.
Spectacularly solid at the back, barring some scares, and devastatingly effective on the counter attack, one could not have asked for more from this team. Cardiff looked to collapse under the pressure of their own fans and their play-off history whilst this Reading team rose magnificently to the occasion; even with a full back at right wing and three of our four first team wingers absent.
From back to front, there were standout performances aplenty. Adam Federici dealt with everything that came at him, although most of it was indeed, straight at him. Zurab Khishanishvilli and Matt Mills, particularly the latter, had the dangerous Cardiff front pair in their pockets all game long. Jem Karacan and Mikele Leigertwood harried, hassled and if you will be hard pressed to find a blade of grass on that pitch not covered by one of them. Jobi McAnuff and Shaun Cummings, were exactly what they needed to be; willing to help out their full backs and providing a threat on the break, capped off by McAnuff’s superb coup de grace. And what to say about Shane Long? The man has simply been a revelation this year and his first goal showed the new class and composure he has found in front of goal and his penalty showed his guts and bottle. As in the first leg, he single handily terrorised the Cardiff defence, particularly the experienced Kevin McNaughton.
But the most important component is the manager. Pulling a play-off position out of a shoestring budget has been nothing more than a miracle but let’s not focus on the politics of it all. The team spirit imbued in this team is exceptional, has could be seen at full time whistle. Like in 2005/06, this is a team that generally cares about one another and this makes them more than the sum of their parts. The combination of academy graduates and experienced pros have gelled well together and the lack of a genuine superstar probably helps too. It is this spirit and probably lack of fear from the younger players that gave the team the edge over the frightened-looking Cardiff team.
So, ahead of the final? Despite myself, after tonight, I’m starting to believe that this team is the real deal. The grit and talent shown tonight says to me that this team has a chance in 12 days time but, come what may, this team has exceeded all expectations this season and it is testament to what McDermott has built that our season is still alive.
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Questions remain despite the fine
As the players, staff and fans of Queens Park Rangers rightfully celebrate their Championship victory, the club have also confirmed that the FA has fined them £875,000. This is as a result of the news the FA confirmed earlier today that the club have been found guilty of two of the seven charges aimed at QPR and their Chairman Gianni Paladini.
Thankfully, the Chairmen of both Swansea City and Cardiff City have both confirmed that they have no intention of appealing the decision which will allow the Championship play offs to go ahead as planned with no appeals process delaying the games.
This confirmation hints that the FA have made the correct decision as both clubs feel it is not worth pursuing the matter.
Two pertinent questions remain however. Number one, why did the FA release this information on the morning of the last day of the Championship, 45 minutes before kick off? Something dramatic must have happened between Friday afternoon (when the decision was meant to be announced but was delayed) and Saturday morning for the information to be released at this time. What or who forced the information out at this time?
And secondly, at what point will the FA announce what rules QPR have been found guilty of breaking? Will these be swept under the carpet on a day to break bad news?
The importance of this is not to be underestimated as the regulations that the club broke (explored here last week http://www.footballfriendsonline.com/blogs/2011/5/1/what-to-do-with-a-problem-like-faurlin.html) have either been broken before by other clubs in the past and so have precedent when it comes to judgement or the charge of covering up the third-party ownership when it came to registering Faurlin which can be seen as the most important, has never been broken before so the ramifications are huge for the future.
The fact that the punishment QPR have received is a fine hints to me that the charges they have been found guilty of is related to third party ownership as this is the same punishment West Ham received for the Tevez & Mascherano affair.
Should this prove not to be the case, when the announcement of which charges QPR have been found guilty of comes around, the ramifications for the future is huge as it may lead to claims alleged at the FA of hypocrisy should precedent for rule breaking not being followed.
We probably haven't heard the end of this.
In other news, a story explored in this column a couple of weeks ago regarding Birmingham City and the possibility of their place in Europe being taken away from them has been resolved.
The issue came from an independent audit all Premier League clubs must take part in as a result of the Portsmouth situation last year. Birmingham's auditor stated concerns about the ownership structure of the club and the club's recent share activities.
The most recent one of these activities was a share release with a deadline of this month that was meant to raise £17.3 million. The share release appears to have made £3.63 million, dropping the club's owner, Carson Yeung, stake in the club from 24.9% to 23.3%. Yeung put in an extra £4 million earlier this week but this would still appear to leave a £10 million hole in the finances aimed to be raised from the share release. Yeung also revealing the club's debt stands at £27.7m.
The issue appears to have been resolved with the club being granted its licence to play in the Europe League but this observer wonders how a club's ownership structure can appear clearer after the club's owners % of the shares has dropped.
And finally, news from the south of Wales where Cardiff City and Swansea City are set to change the way in which Welsh clubs are governed.
Historically, Welsh clubs have been dealt with the FA of Wales when it came to both on field and off field regulation but this looks set to change with the two Championship sides looking to submit themselves to the powers of the FA.
The issue comes from the Welsh clubs playing in English competitions but falling under different disciplinary procedures and different regulations from their English club counterparts. This produces situations (such as earlier this year when a post-match incident occurred in the tunnel between Cardiff and Reading) where English clubs are disciplined faster due to the different processes of the FA and the FAW, thus punishing clubs in different manners.
The actual shape of the reform is yet to be confirmed but it looks as if a peculiar discrepancy in the discipline process in British football looks set to be rectified.
This post also appeared on the Football Friends website athttp://www.footballfriendsonline.com/blogs/
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When does extraordinary in sport become ordinary?
At what point in sport does the extraordinary become merely ordinary in sport? Can it be pinpointed? What are the factors that determine it? How can a seemingly impossible record at one point in time, been seen as the benchmark for average (relatively speaking) not longer than thirty years later? Are there any records in sport that will be forever extraordinary and beyond being broken?
Of course, some achievements in sport will remain extraordinary for the foreseeable future and beyond that, probably until the very end of time itself. Bradman’s batting average, Jack Nicklaus’ record number of golf majors, Just Fontaine’s 13 goals in a World Cup Finals and Rocky Marciano’s undefeated 49-bouts in his career as heavyweight champion of the world. These records are so exceptional it would take a rare combination of genius talent, longevity and luck to beat them.
However, the only reason, for example, that Nicklaus’ record remains is because of the implosion of an extraordinary talent in the shape of Tiger Woods. Woods was on course to smash the 18 golf major titles of Nicklaus but for the damage done to his game after the revelations about his personal life which essentially heightens Nicklaus’ achievement even more for having both the skill and the mentality to achieve what he achieved.
However, that said, who would have thought pervious beacons of human sporting achievement would have been broken? Like the 10 second barrier in the 100 metre sprint. Likewise Roger Bannister’s four minute mile, widely perceived at the time to be beyond the capabilities of the human body. Juan Manuel Fangio’s five Formula One World Championships. Roy Emerson’s record number of tennis Grand Slams. Fred Trueman’s number of Test wickets. All of these landmarks have been broken by, or will be broken by, many different people many times, despite being the benchmarks for excellence in the past.
So does this mean that the original record was that outstanding or merely ordinary? Probably a combination of the two, outstanding in the context of the era in which it was set but it has since been overtaken by a new benchmark for excellence due to a number of factors.
The most primary of these factors is quite obvious as advancements in science and medicine have made their mark on sport over the last thirty years. This has allowed sportsmen and women to reach a higher level of performance for a longer period of time, allowing them to have a longer career and more opportunities to win things.
Despite the increased need to be truly extraordinary to beat opponents who have access to the same benefits of science, the statistics still say speak for themselves at the end of careers and this is compared to performances in the sport in the past. More (or less depending on the sport) equals better, the standard of opposition is not measured in the history books hence the hypothetical arguments such as how good would George Best have been in the modern era of increased protection for talented players or the vice versa of how would Lionel Messi cope in the conditions Best played in. The easiest way to judge and compare the quality of sportsmen and women in a historical context is through statistics as the previously mentioned situations are merely hypothetical. Stats are all we have got.
Perhaps the areas of sport which can be quantified lend themselves to this kind of judgement far easier as comparisons are ready made for the comparer. What about on field sporting achievements? The 30 yard screamer into the top corner of the goal? The six hit back down the ground over the bowler’s head? The perfect try (I don’t know what this would look like, as has been established this blog is not a follower of rugby)? The hole-in-one on a par three?
I would argue this comes down to the regularity of their occurrence and the perceived quality attached to their execution. For example, the 30-yard screamer in football is relatively rare and the better a player is the better the chance he or she can execute the technique consistently and intentionally, therefore more excellence is attached to it. Compare that to a six in cricket which can be achieved by any player with a bit of strength and a good eye and is an increasingly common feature in cricket through Twenty20, ergo, not so extraordinary anymore.
It is through these prisms we perceive what is and what is not exceptional in sport and these prisms are constantly shifting due to factors as wide ranging as scientific and medical advancements to the relative amount of occurrences of the achievement to own personal value judgements and favouritism based on knowledge of the context in which they are set and/or emotional attachment.
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How to solve a problem like Faurlin
Yesterday, or last Saturday if you are one of their fans, Queens Park Rangers won promotion back to the Premier League, ending an absence of 15 years or so. Or will they?
As you may have heard, it's been in the news a little bit over the last week or so, QPR have a FA hearing hanging over them regarding their midfield Alejandro Faurlin and alleged third party ownership. Overall, there are seven regulations the club are charged with breaching, including "providing false information when the player was registered" and making payments to an unauthorised agent.
At the time Faurlin was registered, the Football League had no rules regarding third-party ownership so they passed the case on to the FA who did have regulations in place following the Carlos Tevez affair. Faurlin was registered with the FA, however, the Association allowed QPR to buy out the third-party ownership in January of this year to allow Faurlin to continue to play legally while the case was pending.
This raises the question of how QPR managed to register Faurlin as a player with the FA despite knowing that there was a third party involved in the player's ownership, hence the charge levelled at QPR and Gianni Paladini (the club Chairman) of providing false information to the FA both at the time of Faurlin's signing and his contract extension in October 2010.
There is no precedent for the FA to follow when passing judgement on this case though similar previous incidents can provide context. For example, late last season, Hartlepool were deducted three points and fined £10,000 for fielding an illegible player, Gary Liddle, in a 2-0 win against Brighton, presumably being deducted that number of points due to the victory gained with Liddle in the team. Similarly, earlier this season, Hereford and Torquay were fined three points and one point respectively for both fielding illegible players in the same game, which Hereford won (again, hence the number of points deducted).
These cases show previous punishments for players being registered incorrectly; that the points accrued with the illegible player being deducted, entirely reasonable in the above contexts. As Faurlin has played in 80 games for QPR, if these precedents are followed, the FA would have to deduct all of QPR's points gained, with Faurlin in the team, up until the third party ownership was bought out by QPR in January.
But, fielding an illegible player is not the only rule that has been broken by QPR; the issue of third-party ownership is also in play. The most obvious precedent for this is the Carlos Tevez and Javier Mascherano signings to West Ham United in 2006. The Premier League's decision in 2007, verified and scrutinised by an independent panel, to not dock West Ham points hints that a points deduction for QPR is unlikely. However, a later tribunal related to this case ruled that West Ham would have to pay £5.5 million in compensation to Sheffield United (who were relegated in the season Tevez played for West Ham) as the Hammers were liable for the loss (financial and footballing) suffered by the Blades.
If this is applied to QPR, this could open up a huge can of worms as the 2nd to 7th clubs in the Championship could claim that Faurlin's illegibility gave QPR an unfair advantage in finishing first in the league, thus denying other clubs an automatic promotion place or a play off place and the financial loss that comes from this.
Finally, the issue of concealing the true nature of Faurlin's registration to the FA (by hiding his third-party ownership) is a case without precedent for the FA to follow so it will be very interesting to see how this rule breach is judged.
The FA have also shot themselves in the foot by deferring the judgement so late in the season, with the hearing to begin on Tuesday and a verdict being delivered three days later. If the hearing had taken place as soon as possible after the rule breach was noted, as in the cases of Hartlepool, Hereford and Torquay, the ramifications would not be quite so huge as the outcomes of the season (promotion and relegation) would not have been decided already. Furthermore, should a points deduction not occur, the FA will face accusations of 'bottling it' and allowing clubs to break rules with only a fine (a certainty to be imposed in this situation at the very least) to punish them, which is below a slap on the wrist for modern mega-rich football clubs.
For my money, I have a funny feeling the FA are only going to hit QPR with a heavy fine and, possibly, a five point deduction which will look a bit threatening until you realise it basically has no impact on the outcome of where the title or promotion ends up.
The fact that the case involves Neil Warnock, a man who heavily criticised the FA for their handling of the Tevez affair back when he was Sheffield United manager, only adds an extra layer of intrigue to the whole story. Very much a case of watch this space.
This post also appeared on the website of Football Friends Magazine www. footballfriendsonline.com/blogs/
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The Reading Way
Every football club has a way of doing things in a distinct style that is very specific to their club; many claim they do things with class, Liverpool, Arsenal and Man United to name three though class is certainly not something that can be associated with big clubs these days, particularly the way these three intimidate referees, moan in post match interviews and general disrespect for both their opponents and the game itself. Even Barcelona, "mes que un club" and all that, are hardly beacons of all things sporting with play acting being one accusation that sticks.
Coming back from that tangent, where was I? Ah, yes, football clubs have an ingrained style of doing things. Man United, in the Premier League era at least, have a certain panache, on the field at least, when they are playing well, often with dazzling wingplay. Arsenal, under Wenger, have their unique passing style that, when it works, is undoubtedly the easiest style on the eye in English football. Chelsea, in the Abramovich era at least, often ground out results through steel and resolve, with honourable exceptions coming from the early Mourinho era.
These are all general observations from afar. The fans of these clubs will often have their own opinions after seeing their team play so often, particularly with lower league teams who don't get the same media coverage as the top teams. They know what supporting their club is really like.
For example, Reading often get given the tag of playing good football under Alan Pardew/ Steve Coppell/ Brendan Rodgers/ Brian McDermott and being a 'well-run' club with a good Chairman who supports the club financially but does not make them dependant on his cash. From a personal point of view, slight bollocks. Our football is nothing special, at times it is enthralling stuff full of passing and clever players on the wing (think Salako, Little, Kebe etc.) but at other times it has an element of hoofball to it, in keeping with the general standard of football in the second tier. The club is relatively well run with the Chairman putting his hand in his pocket when the club needs it.
But for me, the 'Reading way' is putting their fans through the wringer when it comes to the end of the season. For example, in the 15 seasons I've been supporting Reading, on 11 of those occasions, there has been something to play for on the final day of the season, whether it be the possibility of securing promotion, a play off place, a spot in the UEFA cup, setting a Football League record for points in a season (not quite so important) or avoiding relegation. There has very rarely been an occasion when there has not been something riding on the last game of a Reading season.
Furthermore, success or failure is never completed the easy way, aside from the truly exceptional championship winning year of 2005/06, heartbreak or heat attacks have been the order of the day. Promotion in 2001/02 only followed after a truly terrifying run (in context of course) of nine draws in the last ten games, blowing a huge points lead over Brentford in the process, culminating in a last day trip to Griffin Park where only a late Jamie Cureton goal secured a place in the then Nationwide Division One.
The season before that, after finishing third in Division Two with a team scoring goals for fun, a play off-semi final win against Wigan beckoned. A victory which only came about through a late, late Nicky Forster goal secured a final against Walsall which we contrived to lose only after a clearance from Barry Hunter rebounded off the head of a prone Tony Rougier in to the net from a full 15 yards. What followed on the motorway home, surrounded by coaches full of Walsall fans, still opens up wounds these days.
Relegation from the Premier League in 2007/08? Confirmed despite a 4-0 win at Derby, who promptly celebrated as if they had won the League, Cup and Britain's Got Talent all in one.
2004/05 and 2008/09 saw terrific starts to the season, only for the club's form to come down like the proverbial Christmas decorations in the New Year, leading to the bummiest of bum fights between us and West Ham for the final play off place in 2005 (which they won, both the play off spot and the final itself) and the Andre-Bikey 'inspired' collapse in the play off semis against Burnley in 2009.
So if you want to know the real Reading way, it's knocking a good ten years off your life expectancy through coronaries and infections from bitten fingernails. Which is why my hopes for our play off campaign this season are as high as a straight-edge Catholic priest. As they say, it's the hope that gets you, not the disappointment.
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The Managerial Boogieman
Aura in sport performance is a funny old thing. It is rare. It has to be built over time (but how it’s lost is another matter). It comes from the sheer identity a team or person forges for themselves in sport, not the absolute certainty that they will win, but the style in which they will achieve victory. For example, in my era, sportspeople or teams with said aura would be the Australian cricket team, Roger Federer, Michael Schumacher and the developing aura of Usain Bolt. All winners down to the core, all with their own distinct image; remorseless, graceful, ruthless and likeable in that respective order.
Meanwhile, behind the scenes in sport management, aura is a completely different thing. It is different as a manager or a coach does not have the ability to hit the winning run or pass the chequered flag; the vast majority of the job is done before and after the proceedings on the pitch/track/court/track. It is about fostering a winning mentality and spreading it to every corner of the team you manage, in whatever sport. It is about creating a persona that transmits itself to the minds of not only your team, who take strength from it, but to your opponents’ minds who are weakened by it. It is about being an equally good psychologist and strategist. It is about having almost a mythical, otherworldly status about you.
For my money, only one current manager or coach or team director in sport can lay claim to that type of aura. Personally, I would discount coaches in individual sports as so much of the talent comes from the player, the coach is a polisher. Innovators in Formula 1 such as Ross Brawn have fine technical minds and wonderful skills when it comes to building winning machines, but perhaps lack man management of talent. No contemporary cricket coach can be considered (though Andy Flower looks like a possibility for the future) as cricket is a separate entity in that so much rests on the role of a captain in the sport. No team dominates rugby (union or league) enough to have a coach lauded as a genius, besides, I don’t follow rugby to the extent to be able to comment with enough knowledge.
Which leaves football and its long lineage of managers with aura going back through Shankly, Busby, Clough, Paisley to name but four in the English game. Personally, the only manager that has the aura is one Jose Mario dos Santos Felix Mourinho. He has the ability to give any team a winning mentality, seemingly in any language and any country, taking Bela Guttman’s advice at not staying at a club for more than three years to heart. If he rocked up at Northampton Town he would probably turn them into winners. He creates a kind of boogieman image for himself where he diverts all attention, from fans or the media or other managers, on to himself, leaving his team to get on with playing the game, almost like a Ferguson-esque siege mentality taken to its extreme. He takes on all-comers and beats them to confirm his authority, as was confirmed at Real Madrid earlier this year.
Unprecedented success is only part of the aura making but Mourinho’s list of achievements is quite incredible, especially for one only a decade into a coaching career. League titles in Portugal, England and Italy, cups in Portugal, England, Italy and Spain, two Champions Leagues, the incredible 150 match unbeaten home record (stretching across nine years and four clubs) and countless manager of the year awards. Probably the one thing lacking on his CV is building a club in the same Wenger as and rebuilding teams in the long term that Ferguson has.
Other managers are up there such as Ferguson or Wenger or Guardiola or Hiddink as they are all winners too but each has their own respective weakness. Wenger? Too flawed with regard to his obsession with youth and failure to recognise his team’s flaws, second to none as a club builder though. Ferguson? All the success in the world, master of rebuilding teams but lacks the otherworldy-ness of Mourinho (perhaps he lacks the mystique as he is not foreign to be honest). Guardiola? Enviously successful but works in an environment that he knows and is his comfort zone. Hiddink? World traveller with success in most countries though more focused on national teams than day-to-day work at club level.
For me, Mourinho is one of the few people in the world, not just in sport, who has an aura to him, as if he doesn’t belong to this world, when I see him talking on TV and I reckon I genuinely would go a bit weak at the knees if I saw him in the flesh. He is the managerial boogieman with the mystical aura.
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Ruling out new financial regulations
Never in the politics of the governance of football has there been a time when rank hypocrisy has been in evidence. Ok, apart from differing punishments for Torquay and Herford compared to West Ham (regarding Carlos Tevez) for essentially the same crime. And allowing a very rich man with a below par human rights record taking over a club, whilst talking of the Fit and Proper Persons Test. And probably a few other cases too, at least.
Another example has emerged this week regarding Birmingham City and the murky world of football finances. Under new Premier League and FA regulations that were put in place following the fiasco that was the Portsmouth affair, clubs have to undertake external, independent audits of their finances, to be submitted to the Premier League.
By the 1st March each year, clubs must submit the details of these audits, with notes required from the auditors about possible problems and by the 31st March, clubs must also submit "future financial information" to highlight any possible funding and stability problems for football clubs in the short-term future. Should a club become a cause for concern, the Premier League can impose sanctions such as a ban on player contracts being improved or extended, the enforced sale of players or a withholding of a licence to play in UEFA competitions, such as the case of Portsmouth in this year's Europa League.
This is where Birmingham City comes in, due to winning the Carling Cup this season. The audits submitted to the Premier League for the club's accounts stated, despite a small profit being made, doubts about the club and its parent company (Birmingham International Holdings) as a "going concern", with the Premier League seeking more information about the ownership structure at the club and the recent share activity.
The holding company released under-written shares (shares that are guaranteed to sell and raise money) back in March which raised £6.8 million and another share release aimed at raising capital occurred recently, which were not underwritten and so not guaranteed to sell. These have so far failed to raise the £17.3 million aimed for and an extension has been made on the offer until May.
However, Carson Yeung, who completed his takeover of the club in 2009, has recently bought a further 8.66% of the shares of the holding company (from an unidentifiable third party due to the company being registered in the Cayman Islands) to take his total to 24.91%. Yeung provided assurances to the Premier League last year about club's financial stability.
The case of for Birmingham City is indeed a bit hazy as any audit that express doubt over a company's ability to function in the future needs to be taken seriously, but here's the rub. Bigger clubs in the Premier League should have far bigger question marks over their financial future but the auditors there do not seem to have raised these concerns.
For example, whilst clubs such as Manchester City and Chelsea can cite the whereabouts of their capital, foreign mega-rich owners, this causes problems for the future long-term financial stability of said clubs. If these owners decided to pack up and leave, the resulting loss of income would lead to an inability to pay costs at a club and place the existence of the club at risk. But, these clubs are also the ones which raise most income for the Premier League as they are the biggest worldwide brands in football and thus push up income from TV rights and give the Premier League more clout in Europe by doing well in UEFA competitions, so it would be damaging to them to enforce regulations that combat overreliance on foreign owners.
The new financial regulations of the Premier League should be applauded as they ensure that the ownership of clubs is a little bit more clearer and where investment in clubs comes from. However, it would also appear they only cover a very specific area of the financial affairs of football clubs, their ownership, and not the overdependence clubs have on rich sugar daddies that may very well go spectacularly wrong when the football boom ends.
That said, this blogger can't see Birmingham City being denied a place in the Europe League this season as some compromise will be found to save the PR face of the Premier League or the club's owners will find some accounting way around the regulations.
This post also appeared at http://www.footballfriendsonline.com/blogs/
Six games left to go and it’s all to play for
About six weeks ago or so I typed these words on this blog;
“Well, it's not going to happen. It just isn't. There is no chance of Reading making the play-offs this year as we have drawn way too many games when a win was what was needed and, as has been proven against the top sides, we just aren't quite good enough.”
I’ll take my humble pie with cream please. Since publishing those words, Reading have gone on a run of seven wins out of eight (the one defeat coming at Manchester City in the FA Cup) and a six match winning run in the league, scoring 17 goals in said league games. At the time of writing, Reading were six points off the play-off places, having played the same number or more games than all of the teams around us and were on a run of one win in eight games. You can see why I was so pessimistic, right?
However, that run of games included fixtures against five of the top 12. With the combination of confidence gained from another Cup run (like last year) our form has improved immeasurably, so much so that we are the most in form team in Europe, joint with Barcelona, incidentally the first time these two teams have been mentioned in the same breath without a negative word also present in the sentence. Reading now sit 5th in the league, six points clear of the 7th placed team Milwall, with an outside chance of an automatic promotion spot.
So what has changed? From the look of it, not an awful lot. The starting XI has been largely consistent, as consistent as a team that can confidently flip between 4-4-2 and 4-5-1 can be, with injuries to a large swathe of players including Federici, Griffin, Cummings, Mills, Pearce, and Hunt, among others, being dealt with admirably. It is a credit to the squad how well we have coped with our injuries and arguably our first XI is as good as out second XI these days.
The run of six consecutive wins has hardly been achieved against inferior quality opposition either; the cliché that there is no easy game in football rings most true in the Championship. These wins have come against Middlesbrough (in a relegation battle at the time), Ipswich (outside chance of play-offs at time of fixture), Barnsley (never an easy place to go to), Portsmouth and Preston (two of the other form teams in the league) and Nottingham Forest (one defeat at home in 18 months before Saturday).
Perhaps what has pushed us comes back to the strength of the squad and the spirit imbued by Brian McDermott and his coaching team. The ability of consummate professionals like Brynjar Gunarsson to play out of position at right back so well for so long, the commitment of men like Brian Howard and Zurab Khizanishvili to be on the fringes of the squad to come in and make their mark and the talent of emerging youngsters like Alex McCarthy and Shaun Cummings to stake a claim for regular first team starters. The fact that so many players have come out and said how much they enjoy being at Reading and enjoy coming into work everyday (Khizanishvili, Tabb, Leigertwood for example) is a real testament to the skill of McDermott as a man-manager and is very key to our recent good habit of converting draws into wins, though the old Archibald quote regarding team spirit may well still be in evidence as none of the mentioned players were saying the same thing back in February.
However, I still have the feeling in the back of my mind of waiting for us to be found out. I feel that there is something there for teams to exploit whether it be our slightly slow defence, our reliance on Long, McAnuff and Kebe for creativity or our batch of talented but inexperienced goalkeepers, but as of yet, no teams have really successfully done this, as only eight defeats all season will testify to. Perhaps this is a year in the Championship where the teams that will get promoted are the ones which can hide their deficiencies best and for the longest, or most important, period of games, as even the leaders, QPR, showed on Saturday, every team in this league can be torn apart.
Looking forward to the next six games, the combination of our scorching-hot form and relatively easy run-in, we should have a play-off place secured as three wins from games against Scunthorpe (A), Leicester (H), Leeds (A), Sheffield United (H), Coventry (A) and Derby (H) will more than likely see us home. Five of those games are quite conceivably winnable but the prospect of an automatic promotion spot is completely off this blogger’s radar as the nagging doubt of being not quite good enough remains, though more humble pie will be happily consumed all the way to May 7th should it actually happen.
Sky, BBC and Football League
It was announced last week that Sky Sports submitted a bid for the rights to broadcast 75 live Football League matches and the Carling Cup for three years from the 2012-13 season. No other broadcaster submitted a bid, it is believed. Thus, Sky Sports won a little bit more of English football’s soul.
The current deal, with the BBC, raises £88 million-a-year for the Football League, whilst the new live games deal is a full £23 million less than this, leaving a gaping hole in the finances for the League. Although a terrestrial TV highlights package is still up for grabs and is expected to raise a seven-figure sum.
Admittedly, the Beeb’s coverage of The Football League has so far been limited to ten games year live (nearly ALWAYS featuring the team that is top of the Championship or the South Wales derby) and a strikingly-mediocre Saturday night highlights package broadcast in the no-man’s land of after Match of the Day and before drunk revellers come home. Oh, and something called ‘Late Kick-Off’ on a Monday night.
Sky’s coverage was always more professional, albeit hopelessly overhyped but that’s beside the point for two reasons.
Firstly, it means that the only remaining live English football on terrestrial TV will be the FA Cup on ITV which is a great shame for football. The original deal was pretty poor for the BBC anyway as £88 million for 11 games a season (10 Football League and the Carling Cup final) was not worth pursuing and in a time of budget restructuring at the Corporation, a similar deal was never going to be on the cards. Furthermore, the Football League is not in a position to play hardball due to its own need for cash.
Secondly, the £23 million loss is going to have a large impact on clubs in the Football League, many of whom operate on a shoe string budget as it is. Though in no way comparable to the collapse if ITV Digital in 2002 where the Football League lost £80 million overnight, the squeeze will be felt throughout the League.
However, it is testament to the Football League’s ongoing regulation of finances, particularly at Leagues 1 and 2 level, that the new shortfall in TV rights can be more easily managed. The Football League estimates that 82% of player contracts in the league will have expired by the time the new deal comes into place, meaning clubs have more room to manoeuvre within their budgets.
One imagines it would be too much to ask of the Premier League if they could afford to spend a pittance of their own TV rights deal on helping out the Football League. Perhaps by backtracking on their ridiculous extended parachute payments plan, which encourages excessive spending by clubs whilst in the Premier League and perpetuates the idea that the Premier League is only for a select few clubs by giving them a huge financial advantage over their rivals whilst in the Championship.
The parachute payment money could be spread out across the Football League pyramid instead, though one would be pissing in the wind for a considerable amount of time until that happened.
In other news, a couple of weeks ago, this blog asked would you ever, under any circumstances, sue your club, in relation to the case of a Reading fan and a Gylfi Sigurdsson shirt.
Well, ask and the North East shall deliver! A case even more outrageous came out on Thursday courtesy of Niall Quinn, Dijibril Cisse and Sunderland where one of Cisse’s shots in training knocked a fan out who is now in the process of suing the club, according to Quinn.
It is because of people like this why you can see signs at football stadiums now saying “Beware low-flying footballs”, as some sort of disclaimer to protect itself from money-grabbing ‘fans’.
Seriously, getting hit by a stray ball is an occupational hazard of the football fan, like drunk people being sick in your cab if you are a taxi driver or having to perform sins of the flesh if you want to be one of Charlie Sheen’s goddesses.
In my time supporting Reading, I have been hit or come close to being hit by shots from Sammy Igoe and James Harper (among others), which may well explain the quality of this week’s blog post.
To the civil courts!
This post also appeared at footballfriendsonline.com/blogs/
This post also appeared at footballfriendsonline.com/blogs/
Mixing sport, politics and religion; tales from Bosnia, Poland and Ukraine
One of the great truisms in life, never observed obviously because everyone likes a challenge, is that religion and politics do not mix, proven time and time again throughout history. When you chuck sport into this mix, the chances of the outcome being positive areso slim it disappears when it turns side on.
On Friday, we were given a glimpse of this truth in action when FIFA and UEFA suspended Bosnia-Herzegovina from all world football due to the complex structure of the Bosnian football federation (the NSBIH). The federation has a rotating presidency (like the political structure of the country) whereby the post is shared by a Muslim (or a Bosniak, depending on what source you read), a Croatian and a Serbian but FIFA insisted that the NSBIH would have to fall into line with all other FIFA members’ federations systems by the end of March or face the consequences.
FIFA had taken a lenient stance on the situation due to Bosnia’s complex, unique and fraught past between the different ethnic groups in the Balkans as a whole but felt that enough time was given to make the change.
At a meeting of the NSBIH, 28 out the 53 representatives voted against the motion, largely because Bosnian Serbs opposed the single-president plan due to fear of jeopardising their autonomy. Thus, FIFA have banned Bosnia, who currently sit 4th in their Euro 2012 qualifying group, from all future international competition until a solution is found. Bosnia has also lost its membership rights with both FIFA and UEFA as a result of this.
Safet Susic, Bosnia’s national team’s manager, has lashed out at the ruling saying: "We can only hope that UEFA and FIFA will show some level of understanding for our political situation and come up with a feasible model because, quite frankly, I don't see another way,” adding that; "These people are incapable of running the NFSBIH properly, although this situation is partly a result of political orders because Bosnia is an ethnically divided country where a dysfunctional system has now caught up with football.”
In the past, FIFA has installed an emergency committee to run a federation for 12 months, as they have in El Salvador, Kuwait, Senegal and Samoa but this is a completely different situation to those countries due to historical and political context.
If football, and indeed sport, is seen to be a great unifying force for humanity one-size-fits-all rules and regulations imposed upon Football Associations by the governing bodies does not help disseminate this image.
Evidence would suggest the rotating presidency has not hindered the growth of football in Bosnia. A fluid 4-level system of league football is in place and has been established since 2001. The UEFA club coefficient for Bosnia for the 2010-11 season is 29th (just behind Norway and Sweden) and on the rise. The national team sit 4th in their group, a point behind Belarus and Albania and five behind leaders France with a game in hand. A talented group of players such as Edin Dzeko, Miralem Pjanic, Asmir Begovic, Sejad Salihovic and many more are making their mark on European leagues.
The political situation in Bosnia is fragile enough as it is with the fledgling state needing stability in all areas of life, not pointless meddling from power-hungry, greedy football bureaucrats, unwilling to loosen the rules to help a society develop and create a sense of pride in their football team.
Meanwhile, an investigation into hate crimes at football matches in Poland and Ukraine, the co-hosts of the 2012 European Championships, has uncovered some worrying trends.
The report, sponsored by UEFA, found nearly 200 serious disturbances in the last 18 months including anti-Semitic chants and banners at football matches, abuse towards black players (including from their own fans) and violent attacks against anti-racism groups.
Of the 133 reported incidents in Poland, 56 were to do with open displays of fascist or racist symbols and banners, 20 “anti-black” incidents and 36 anti-Semitic incidents of chants and banners. Ukrainian football fans were responsible for 62 of the incidents, including violence between neo-Nazi fans and left-ist supporters of Dynamo Kyiv and Arsenal Kyiv respectively.
The report, published today, paints a disappointing picture of the image of fans in the two countries, compounded by violence at last week’s friendly between Poland and Lithuania where 60 fans were detained after clashes with police.
Both the Polish government and UEFA have promised a crackdown on hooliganism, with UEFA’s director of Euro 2012, Martin Kallen, saying that there will be “changes in the next month.”
Despite more than 12 million tickets being requested for the Championships by fans before the deadline on Thursday, this report is not the news the Ukrainian and Polish FAs need right now to soothe fears that the first big football tournament to be held in Eastern Europe will not be marred by violence and racist behaviour.
This post also appeared at www.footballfriendsonline.com/blogs/
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For the want of Forty-Two Pounds
Would you ever take your football club to court? What would it take? Injury caused at a football ground caused by the club's negligence? Having your season ticket taken away from you for no reason by the club, leaving you out of pocket? Would you not take them to court at all because they are your club?
Well, a few weeks ago, a club were taken to court by one of their fans because of a football shirt and the matter of 42 of your English pounds. The case revolves around Reading FC, Gylfi Sigurdsson and a 13-year old boy's birthday money.
Basically, the teenager, who lives in Middlesbrough, bought a Reading shirt with 'Sigurdsson' on the back of it with his birthday money before the player was promptly sold to Hoffenheim a few months later.
James McGhee, the teenager's father, asked for a refund from the club and was refused. He then wrote to the club and was again refused. He then lodged a claim in court in Middlesbrough. Reading FC settled out of court, paying £72 to cover legal costs and the refunded value of the shirt, arguing that it was not worth the effort of travelling to Middlesbrough to fight the case.
Mr McGhee stated: "For anybody else in the same position who feels equally aggrieved, this just shows it is well worth pursuing it. It shows what can be done if you are prepared to fight your corner."
But is it? Is it really? Clearly, the only reason Mr McGhee won his case is because it would be stupid and a waste of money for Reading FC to face him in court, as would the PR problem of refusing to give a teenager his birthday money back.
This has not set any kind of precedent whatsoever, unless fans of the club based in Reading decide to travel up to the North of England, take residence there and then sue the club for the shirt they buy with 'Long' or 'Federici' or whoever it is Reading end selling this forthcoming Summer.
Furthermore, by the age of 13, you should be aware that football is not a sport with a semblance of loyalty from any of the people involved in it. The McGhee's argued that the club indicated Sigurdsson would not be leaving the club but surely every fan knows that football clubs are not honest 100% of the time or indeed 1% of the time.
Even furthermore, when you make an investment in a football shirt with a player's name on the back, you take the chance that said player may not be around for a long period of time and you might be wasting your money.
There is a life lesson about loyalty and the value of a pound here but I suppose if you have the time, money and inclination to take every event that goes against you in life to the law courts, you aren't going to learn footballing life lessons. It would appear this is more of a case of a slightly spoiled child getting their way rather than a genuine sea change in fan-football club customer relations.
This post also appeared at www.footballfriendsonline.com/blogs/
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Of Businessmen and Betting
Some people just aren’t cut out for certain jobs in life as specialist skills and talents are required for the rigours of certain professions. Hence qualifications being needed for jobs and regulation in place to monitor when work is not being done well.
This, of course, does not apply in the wonderful world of football governance and football club ownership.
The peerless Matt ‘Digger’ Scott of the Guardian reports that a Laurence Bassini will take over Watford after being sold 53.95% of the club’s shares, this despite the fact that Bassini has been declared bankrupt and lived on benefits for a six months or so in 2007 and has been a director with (according to Scott) twelve companies, ten of which were stuck off without filing accounts and another one which folded after only ever filing one set of accounts.
Furthermore, Bassini changed his name after his bankruptcy, from Bazini, refuses to reveal who his backers are for his takeover of Watford, despite the £3.5 million loan not being his money and the shares will be held not by Bassini, but a knee surgeon in Highgate by the name of Panos Thomas. For the record, none of the above sounds remotely suspect, whatsoever.
Again, just what is the Fit and Proper Persons test exactly for? This is the equivalent of a whale slipping through a fishing net.
Meanwhile, over in Nyon, the Professional Football Strategy Council (who?! I hear you cry) have had a meeting and came out with some points about the issue of betting in football.
Basically, these points state that betting companies are exploiting football competitions for their own ends and that there should be government intervention at a national and EU level to help alleviate this problem through compensation from the betting companies. They state that the organisers of competitions such as the Champions League and Europa League “should have the right, including intellectual property right, to consent to their events being used by betting companies and that such companies should pay fair financial compensation” They go on to say that this increased revenue will be fairly distributed down to the grassroots level of football in Europe.
But, taking into account the Professional Football Strategy Council consists of representatives of European players (through FIFpro), European clubs (through the European Clubs Association) and European leagues (via the European Professional Leagues group) it would appear the real target is to get these groups more money, by stating their desire to help the grassroots to mask the greed as, UEFA aside (the final representative of the Council) they do not have a rich history of fairer distribution of wealth in football.
Furthermore, in the points outlined in the press release (link here http://tinyurl.com/6ya2n4u), the aim to combat match fixing is only referred to twice, compared to financial issues which is mentioned in every bullet point. When you consider the current match fixing concerns over international friendlies held in Tunisia in the last international break and the concerns over games in the earlier rounds held in Eastern Europe in the Europa League this season, this should be a far more pressing concern for the Council. In theory.
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Misspent (Money on) Youth (Development)
f you were to give a small child, or an easily distracted adult even, a toy to play with, it would immediately discard the previous object of its affection in favour of this shiny, new, exciting alternative. The FA works pretty much in a similar way.
Around 30 years ago, the idea for a national training centre was proposed where the cream of English football talent, both playing and coaching staff, would convene to aid the development of English football as a whole. The centre would, the proponents of the project argued, enhance the standard of the England
But, over the last 30 years, various shiny, new, exciting ‘toys’ have taken the FA’s attention span away from the National Football Centre, ‘toys’ like one successful and two unsuccessful bids for major international football championships, rebuilding Wembley Stadium, various initiatives to tackle behaviour in football and so on.
And last week, we went completely full circle and the FA’s attention refocused back on to the National Football Centre, now called the St George’s Park National Football Centre, to make it more patriotic I suppose.
Since the FA acquired the land at Burton in 2001 for around £2 million, the organisation has spent £25 million on the project, this despite the fact that all work was suspended in 2004 to allow the FA to focus their resources on throwing more and more bundles of money down the Wembley bottomless hole.
Last week, the FA unveiled the latest incarnation of the project, to be completed by 2012 for it to host the British men and women’s Olympic football teams. The centre will house 12 outdoor and 1 indoor full-size pitches, including an exact replica of the Wembley pitch and a 142-room 4-star hotel and an 86-room 3-star hotel.
After the FA had to underwrite a £1.2 million shortfall on the project in November last year, it is hoped the Centre will be self-funding for the rest of its existence due to deals with its sponsor, Umbro and funding from the on-site Hilton hotels and conference facilities but let’s see just how many people want to have meetings in a rural location in Burton with a bunch of 16-year old footballers kicking footballs outside.
This is the latest attempt from the FA to produce a sea change in coaching in England from the top-down, with the Centre being the, well, centrepiece, of another initiative based on a change in mentality when it comes to youth coaching, emphasising on skill rather than strength and a ‘win-at-all-costs’ mentality.
This, obviously, is a step forward as the youth coaching system in England has been in need of an overhaul for many years, as anyone that has played football at a youth level will tell you. Asking a 11-year old to play on a full size pitch in a full size goal is pure stupidity as it encourages the biggest and strongest players dominate, leaving the smaller, skilful players lagging behind.
If a system can be put in place where youth development is based on more ‘pass and move’ type football rather than strength and how far a kid can kick a ball, the national team will be better for it. If the St George’s Park National Football Centre can provide a framework for youth coaches to implement at grassroots level, then it will be a success. If it can bring together all of the national teams, from Under 16s to the senior team, and give them time together to practice and become a team, England will perform better at international tournaments.
However, call it cynical, but like everything the FA does, it appears to be something of a knee-jerk reaction , this time to the public reaction to England’s loss to Germany in the World Cup last year and the outcry about technically outstanding the German and Spanish teams were compared to England. This coupled with the too many foreigners in the Premier League argument becoming louder and louder, seems like the FA’s reaction to these outcries; an idea that should have implemented years and years ago.
If the FA was serious about the future of youth development in English football, they would have tackled the problem earlier, rather than spending money on a white elephant like Wembley, which helped no-one but the FA as it gave them a showpiece venue for their organisation, whilst also being the most misplaced plan for profit making machine since Hicks and Gillett took over Liverpool.
Here is hoping this venture of the FA’s will prove far more successful, it was overdue and if it can have a ‘Clarefontaine’ effect, we could be looking at a golden future for English football. Perhaps.
This post also appeared on the Football Friends website at http://www.footballfriendsonline.com/blogs/
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The Fergie Paradox
They say that power corrupts and that absolute power corrupts absolutely. But perhaps a fairer observation would be that power warps one’s perceptions about oneself and absolute power warps those perceptions absolutely.
Take Sir Alex Ferguson for example; self-proclaimed socialist and son of working-class Govan in Glasgow. One of the key tenets of socialism is the necessity for everyone to chip in and help society and help each other though perhaps the Fabian Society (founders of the modern Labour party) forgot to add that referees and the media were not part of society, either that or some reading in between the lines is required to understand this fundamental truth.
Let us take this last’s week refereeing saga as an example. Last Saturday, Wayne Rooney committed an act of physical assault on another professional which the referee took no action over. Cue Mike Phelan (basically a human-shaped voice recorder loaded with Fergie’s opinions) to say that it was not the job of any of the management staff of Manchester United to referee the game, knowing full well that if the elbow was in the other face, Mark Clattenburg would be getting a few pointers on how to do his job. Doublethink is clearly alive and well.
For lovers of irony, the situation went full circle on Tuesday in the aftermath of the United-Chelsea game where Ferguson, aggrieved about perceived refereeing injustices against his team, promptly told the referee how to do his job and undermine him completely by saying he was basically biased, using the media to convey this serious message about the integrity of the world’s best league TM rather than perhaps, a personal letter to the FA or to the Referee’s Association expressing such concerns. Que sera, eh?
Which leads me on to the subject of the media. Another socialist ideal is that every person is treated equally and has access to the same opportunities as the next man. Unless you are a viewer of Match of the Day or a viewer/reader of whichever media outlet Ferguson refuses to speak to next, this week, MUTV. If you get your information from one of these outlets and want to know the information from the manager, well, screw you Ferguson kind of says.
Ferguson also controls his club like a personal fiefdom whereby certain members of the press are banned from club press conferences should a journalist publish a story disparaging towards the club or the man himself, fair treatment of all men indeed.
But the ultimate paradox about Ferguson is that he doesn’t seem an at all bad person; always being on hand to help out a fellow manager in need, usually being the first to call a recently sacked manager and giving fellow managers the fruit of the United youth system to polish.
Perhaps this serves to undermine his socialist ideals, where he seems to be more protecting and advancing the causes of people in a similar bracket to him (managers) and helping out similarly powerful friends, a (whisper it) Tory kind of outlook.
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As a follow up to a blog post last week, regarding IFAB ‘s (International Football Association Board) meeting at Celtic Manor and the agenda of the weekend, you will be glad to hear that some stuff has been announced.
Firstly, extended testing on goal-line technology is to be continued for the next year with a view to it being in place in the 2014 World Cup in Brazil, should a workable system be found. Using the system at the 2012 Euro Championships was ruled out although the five-man refereeing teams seen in European club competitions may be used.
Secondly, as of July 1 this year, snoods have been banned from football on the grounds that they are dangerous and players “risk hanging [themselves]” according to Sepp Blatter. Which begs the question, if hanging one’s self is such a risk, why wait until July to ban it? Furthermore, shoelaces are routinely used to hang oneself, they should also be banned. As should; necklaces for referee’s whistles, goal nets, football shirts and ties for managers as they all pose the same risk.
Lastly, the trialling of a spray to be used on football pitches to mark out the 10 yards a player can be from a free kick and corner when it is being taken is to be continued in South America, a concept I like. First of all, because it is practical (as the spray disappears after 30 seconds or so), secondly as it will help the game and help referees and thirdly as I imagine referee’s store the spray in some kind of Batman-esque utility belt. The belt will also come equipped with mace spray to ward off head-vein-throbbing morons who shout at referees for no reason.
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Crossing The Line
What’s your defining memory of the 2010 World Cup? The only truly great game of the tournament being a completely dead heat between Uruguay and Germany? The balls on Asamoah Gyan to step up and score the first penalty of a shoot-out after missing a last minute spot-kick which would have seen the first African side reach the World Cup semi-finals ever? Ummmmm, that’s about it, can’t really think of many others, wasn’t exactly a classic tournament.
FIFA’s defining memory of it was the realisation that goal-line technology must happen immediately after the Frank Lampard ‘goal’ debacle (in the game where The Sun was convinced England would have gone on to win, despite the fact they were beaten by a team consisting of a bunch of kids and Per Mertesacker).
Anywho, last month, FIFA invited any company who wished to try their hand at the Holy Grail of goal-line technology in football and last week, the trials took place. Unsurprisingly, every single company failed to meet the criteria set by FIFA.
The criteria were two fold; firstly, to be 100% accurate and secondly, to be capable of informing the match officials within one second of the event happening. To be completed in a month. Tough task. Furthermore, the tests were hardly realistic as they were conducted in an empty stadium, so no mobile phone interference and crowd noise, and on an artificial pitch. Little wonder the company most advanced in this form of technology, Hawk-Eye who has conducted extensive stadium testing at Reading, chose to sit this trial out.
Still, FIFA would be nowhere if it didn’t plough on with its agenda regardless of public opinion and facts, so the next stage of the process will be goal-line technology being discussed at the meeting of the International Football Association Board at Celtic Manor next week. Incidentally, check out the agenda for this meeting just to confirm your faith that FIFA is tackling the real issues in modern football, such as the shape of the goalposts, how far advertising hoardings can be from the pitch and snoods, inspiring stuff that must take place at a luxury hotel and golf course, I’m sure you will agree; (http://www.fifa.com/mm/document/affederation/ifab/01/37/65/97/fifa_v03_small.pdf)
But let’s not make this into an anti-FIFA rant; it’s been done before and the argument for goal-line technology being placed in football is pretty indisputable these days. The fact that technology has been used so successfully in so many other sports kills the debate stone-dead; a points decision in favour of technology.
However, technology could well ruin a fundamental pillar of the popularity of sport, the fact that in pure rules terms, it is the only sport in the world that is played exactly the same at the highest level as it is at the lowest level. Fernando Torres plays by the same rules on the Saturday afternoon at Stamford Bridge as Big Dave does on the Sunday morning on Hackney Marshes. Same pitch dimensions, same number of players, same goal sizes and so on.
The costs of goal-line technology mean that there will inevitably be a level of the football pyramid where the implementation of technology has to stop. Incidentally if FIFA made it in to law by the way, would they pay for the costs of installing it at the relevant levels? Or would it be left to clubs to foot the bill?
This would inevitably break the one remaining link from the very top of football to the very bottom that has been steadily eroded since professionalism emerged in football; the beautiful last remaining linkage between Fernando Torres and Big Dave would be gone and football would be a much less wonderful sport for it, though a loss of beauty and innocence is the price often paid for progress
This article was written for Football Friends Magazine, who's website is http://www.footballfriendsonline.com/blogs/.
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A Third of the Season Left to go but it’s Already Over
There are still twelve games left to play in the League this season. We are only six points off the play-off places. We have only got three games remaining against teams currently in the top half of the table. It might happen, you never know.
Well, it's not going to happen. It just isn't. There is no chance of Reading making the play-offs this year as we have drawn way too many games when a win was what was needed and, as has been proven against the top sides, we just aren't quite good enough.*
However, that is not to say this season has not been a success. At the start of the season, following the sale of Gylfi Sigurdsson and with some very little of the money being reinvested, I felt a good season would be survival, a great season would be a top half finish, both of which we are on course for. Furthermore, we are still in the FA Cup (but only if you are reading this before Tuesday at 10pm or are reading this in January 2012).
But,throughout the season, we have always been there or thereabouts when it comes to the play-off positions but since the New Year we have just been slowly slipping away, dropping points here and there whilst the top teams steadily accumulate points and cement their top 6 finishes.
At times this, year we have looked as good as anyone with a strong attacking three of Shane Long, Jimmy Kebe and Jobi McAnuff, backed up by an industrious centre midfield, a solid if not particularly pacey defence and a above average goalkeeper. That said, we have also looked, at other times, toothless up front, powderpuff and uncreative in centre midfield, dodgy at the back and a distinctly average keeper.
Mikele Leigertwood has made a huge difference in strengthening the midfield but the lack of goal threat up top, aside from Long, has been our undoing, leaving us unable to convert draws into wins in games we should be winning. Plus, the same problem we have had for our three previous seasons at this level, if teams double up on our wingers, we are effectively neutered.
It's a bit of a shame that, with still 36 points to play for, our season looks to be petering out but there we go. With a strong spine of the team, making the loan signing of Leigertwood permanent and some youngsters getting some experience, but more importantly, keeping our key players from this season, we could mount a challenge for the play-offs next year. All big ifs though. As the voicemail from the Chairman used to say on Ultimate Soccer Manager 98 "On to next season," though that was always said on the last day of the season…
*Though I'd love to be proved wrong on this and we make a big push for the play off places.
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Five Things We Learned From England VS India
Well, that was bloody tense wasn't it? The first classic match of the tournament, so what have we learnt from it?
1. Andrew Strauss is by far and away England's most complete batsman
Captain Inspiration in Tests is now Captain Inspiration in ODIs, with probably the best innings played by an Englishman at a World Cup, becoming the first England captain to score a century at a World Cup in the process. His innings was the perfect combination of aggression and circumspection, knowing exactly when to accelerate, when to hold back; when to get carried away and when to pull oneself back in. He has already scored more runs in two innings than in his entire 2007 World Cup and while his captaincy in this format still leaves a bit to the imagination, his form, more than anyone's, will determine how well England do in this tournament.
2. This England team has character
We already knew this but it's worth repeating, this team has cojones. Bouncing back from a poor all-round team performance against the Netherlands last week, and all the associated flak that comes with it, losing your best pace bowler on the morning of the game, getting pasted around the ground for 45 overs (the last five overs of the Indian innings we can ignore) and then every single batsmen putting his hand up (give or take) shows this England team has something no other English ODI team has had for a very long; bottle and plenty of it.
3. England's bowling still leaves a lot to be desired
Yes, Stuart Broad was missing and yes, Tim Bresnan took a five-for but this was still a pretty poor bowling performance from England. All but one bowler going for more than 6.40 an over shows a serious lack of control from England's bowling and a definite lack of personnel (apart from Bresnan) for Strauss to turn to when run stemming is needed. Michael Yardy certainly isn't the answer to the second spinner question, Swann's lack of threat and/or ability to keep an end quiet on sub-continental tracks is a concern and Jimmy Anderson's form must be worrying England's management. But, that said…
4. Indian bowlers weren't much cop either
Whilst there were no terrible performances from the Indian bowlers, their own economy rates were nothing stand-out terrible but outside of a brief period where Harbhajan Singh and Piyush Chawla strangled the life out of Strauss and Ian Bell and Zaheer Khan's late flurry, the lack of threat from the Indian bowlers was palpable, allowing Strauss and Bell to accumulate at a fair lick with no real pace and allowing the England tail to finish (sort of) the job. Perhaps it was quite a dead pitch, explaining both bowling performances, but time will tell whether the lack of real, express pace for both sides will prove an issue.
5. We were looking at two semi-finalists
We kind of knew this already but today's game showed the qualities, and indeed the flaws, of these two teams. Both sides have very strong batting line ups, capable of batting any bowling attack out of a game. India's bowling is better than England's, although still lacking a X factor, but England field more intensely (at times!) and more bottle but also the historical weight of failure. What is clear is that of the matches seen so far, this featured two of the favourites and on today's evidence, rightly so.
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Five Things We Learned From England Vs The Netherlands
1. Graeme Swann is by far our best bowler
Taking two wickets and going at a measly 3.5 runs an over after flying halfway around the world following the birth of your first child. All in a day (or so) work for England's premier spin bowler. We all knew he would be our best bowling option in this sub-continental World Cup but how much daylight there was between him and the rest was something of a surprise. Not only did he keep things quiet, he took the wickets of a set batsmen (Borren) and a dangerous one (Zuiderent) and should have cut short ten Doeschate's stay at the crease but for some calamitous fielding (more on which later). However, it must be remembered, we were playing the Netherlands.
2. England were due an off day
After the near faultless display of fielding in the Ashes series, where pretty much every chance offered was pouched, England were due an off day in the field, and boy what an off day. Anderson and Pietersen's hysterical-if-it-wasn't-so-tragic lack of communication, the numerous dropped catches and the pièce de
résistance, having a wicket struck off as there were only three fielders inside the circle at the time of the ball being delivered, only for the same thing to happen again a few balls later. Let's hope that this was just an off day and not something more serious, not that the two Andys would allow such a drop in standards.
résistance, having a wicket struck off as there were only three fielders inside the circle at the time of the ball being delivered, only for the same thing to happen again a few balls later. Let's hope that this was just an off day and not something more serious, not that the two Andys would allow such a drop in standards.
3. England's batsmen look in good shape
Every batsmen getting at least 30 should be cause for celebration as does capturing the third highest successful run chase in World Cup history. Strauss and Trott starred with some very impressive finishing work from Collingwood and Bopara, both of whom were in need of knocks. Hopefully these scores can be converted into 50s and 100s in the rest of the tournament although, it is worth repeating, we were playing the Netherlands.
4. England should have brought a second spinner of quality
Yes yes, we did bring Michael Yardy and James Tredwell but come on. Yardy, who is one of our most important players in T20, does not have the same wicket-taking and run-smothering impact in the 50-over game and Tredwell has very little experience at this level and spins the ball the same way as Swann. It couldn't have hurt to bring Monty Panesar or Adil Rashid along instead of Tredwell as other options, with Panesar's experience in the sub-continent and Rashid's batting ability both bringing something else to the table. Perhaps their fielding counted against them but they probably would have got the dolly Swann put down.
5. Losing the Associate Nations will be something of a travesty
The best World Cup memories this century have been of the Assoicate nations; Kenya reaching the semi-finals in 2003, Ireland beating Pakistan on St Patrick's Day and reaching the Super Eights in 2007. But the ICC has deemed these nations surplus to requirements from the next World Cup in 2015 which is a great shame. There are often some embarrassingly one-sided games, such as Kenya Vs New Zealand the other day, but there are some stormers such as England Vs the Netherlands. Sri Lanka and Bangladesh started out as Associate nations and became Test playing nations through the experiences of high-class 50-over games. With Associate nations only being allowed to play top-class 20-over games from now on, where is the incentive for growth into the other formats of the game, to diversify Test match cricket to new outposts.
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What Exactly is Administration?
Plymouth look set to become the 25th club in the top four tiers of English football to enter administration this century, probably not the most fun trend to come out of football in the 2000s, I'd give that accolade to rumblesticks but there we go.
Anywho, as a result, the term 'administration' has been bandied about so much that it's the meaning of administration have become just a little lost, a bit like the phrase "I did not see the incident". So, just what exactly is administration and what are the effects it has on football and the community?
First of all, let's explore the boring legal bit. Businesses that are taken to court (usually by Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs) and are defined 'insolvent' if they meet one of the following two conditions; it is proven to the court that the company cannot pay back its debts on time OR that it is proven to the court that the company's debts outweigh the overall value of the company's assets.
If the company is declared insolvent, an administrator is put in charge of the entire business to attempt to facilitate a sale and to provide the creditors with their money, who are often given a lot less than the money they are earned. Administration also prevents a winding up order being issued.
