Archive for the ‘ Sport ’ Category

Barca setting the standards

Barcelona’s 3-0 victory over Valladolid on Saturday evening completed an unbeaten first half of a season for the first time in their history and highlights the growing disparity between La Liga and the Premiership.
Looking at the top of the English game none of the teams in the top four can say they have had a great first half of a season. Chelski have stumbled, United have failed to fire, Arsenal took an age to get going and the other four teams scrambling for top four status are unable to get a proper grasp on the position.
The situation could have been made perfectly clear if the Scousers win and Spurs trip up, Rafa’s team will sit in the final Champion’s League position despite one of the worst runs in the team’s history.
It is hard to say whether the quality of teams in the Premiership is of an overall higher standard than La Liga, thereby making it more competitive or if the top teams in English football are at the start of a slippery slope which will see them topple from the top tier of European football.
Barca decimated United in last year’s Champions League final. They outclassed England’s three-in-a-row champions with a display of skill unseen in the English game.
The closest we get to see such displays is from Arsenal though they lack the grit and determination that make Barca an all-round team.
There is no doubt that some of the teams in La Liga do not pose much of a threat to Barca. Almeria, Xerez and Tenerife would not strike fear into the hearts of any English club but Burnley, Portsmouth or Hull would unlikely keep Messi and Co awake at night either.
The argument that the Premiership is the strongest league in Europe is a contentious one. It is without doubt the most exciting, offering more twist and turns than Harry Redknapp answering questions from the tax man. There are goals aplenty but to go with it, enough terrible defending to make Paulo Maldini cry.
The question really comes down to a matter of quality – and there is a serious lack of this in the Premiership. It is clear for anyone to see that Barca and their rivals Real Madrid hold the power in Europe at the moment and all the top players in the world will look for a move to Spain before any other option.
With Real looking to pry Rooney from United’s grasp in a similar way they took Ronaldo to the Bernabéu, the possibility of the Premiership becoming a second or third rate league looks increasingly possible.

2010
01/26
CATEGORY
Sport
TAGS


Leave a comment

Parallels between Rafa and Fergie

This week saw a strange parallel occur in Manchester and Liverpool. Sections of the fans of both United and the Scousers called for the heads of their respective managers.
This, however, is where the comparison ends.
In Scouseland, Rafa is under pressure from an increasing majority of fans, former players and managers to go quietly into the night and step down at Anfield. Fergie on the other hand is subject of a ridiculous rant of a small minority of United fans, whose aim is to get the Glazers out of Manchester.
What Johnny Flack and his pals at the Manchester United Supporters’ Trust believe they will achieve by asking the most successful manager in the history of club football to resign in protest is beyond me.
On the other hand it is quite clear what the Scousers want to achieve by calling for the head of their portly manager. Another week in the life of Rafa sees another series of blunders and cock-ups.
From Babel tweeting his head off about being dropped from the squad to his side’s capitulation at Reading and Stoke, it is surely only a matter of time before the Spaniard bows to the pressure and leaves Liverpool.
Although it may not be that simple. Rafa knows that he is on a good thing at Anfield and for his employers to sack him would cost a fortune, as he signed a five-year deal only last March.
Up the M6 in Manchester, Flack & Co. seem to believe ousting Fergie will make the Glazers suddenly decide they will pay back the £700million debt and leave the club in trust to the supporters – with Flack as the new CEO.
This is a ludicrous idea and even if Fergie lost the run of himself and agreed to step down in a show of support to the fans, the Glazers wouldn’t bat an eyelid before installing another manager as if nothing happened.
The Glazers are not in it for the love of United. They are in football for money and the sooner United fans come to accept this – however painful – the better.
It is a new world and we have to face facts. Football is run by the money men and whether it is tycoons from America, oil-billionaires from Russia or a property consortium from the Middle East it is a fact and has been for some time.
The only thing that United fans can console themselves with is that at least they don’t have Rafa in charge and a squad of incompetent fools playing for them every week.

2010
01/21
CATEGORY
Sport
TAGS



Leave a comment

All aboard the band wagon

With almost a complete lack of Premier League football being played in the past week, the media seem to have changed their focus to off the field activities.
United’s impending implosion is making for many column inches in the national press and the blogosphere but for me, an ordinary United supporter, talks of bond issues and spiralling debt is not what is worrying me.
I realise that the Glazer’s came in and bought the club with a 100percent mortgage and are using club profits to pay off the interest on that loan. I realise the £48million profits announced on Monday include Ronaldo’s transfer fee – why wouldn’t it? Surely there would be more questions asked if the accountant doing the accounts left such an amount out of the figures.
In an ideal world the club would belong to the supporters in the same way Barcelona belongs to the Catalan fans of the club. This however is not an ideal world and the Glazers are the best of a bad lot in my opinion.
Consider having the Hick-Gillett alliance running you club. Not only do the pair hate each other, they have consistently failed to provide Rafa with funds in the transfer market – although this could be more to do with the Spaniard’s lack of success in said market.
Fergie has consistently maintained that anytime he has gone looking for money to buy a player he has seen his palm crossed with silver by the American family.
Only this week have we seen Tom Hicks Jr. step down from the board of Liverpool FC for calling fan Stephen Horner an ‘idiot’ and ‘f**kface’. While I may have some empathy with the views expressed by Hicks Jr., sending these messages to a fan of the club you run is not exactly clever.
Across the city at the Council House the Abu Dhabi United Group signalled their intentions early on when they made up to eight ridiculous bids to lure the world’s best players to the club on the last day of last January’s transfer window.
The fact that Robinho signed says as much about his loyalty as it does about the interfering nature of the City owners. Mark Hughes was not in charge of transfers then and he is certainly not in charge now.
So while United’s model is far from ideal, it is United’s on-field performances that should be worrying United supporters – but the less said about that the better.

2010
01/12
CATEGORY
Sport
TAGS


Leave a comment