Category Archives: Premier League
Everton: Whatever you do, don’t look down
There’s a curious phenomenon which involves not thinking about something, because if you do then you automatically lose.
I won’t go any further into it for fear that you’ll all join me amongst the ranks of the defeated, but the frankly quite annoying craze does raise the question of just how far you could go if you managed to keep the negatives and their consequences out of sight and out of mind.
Death, taxes and the continued popularity of Justin Bieber can’t be avoided whatever you do of course, but sometimes it is better just to not think about where your actions are taking you because of the added pressure that they create. Success breeds success, but it also breeds expectation.
Everton’s fine start to the season has got some of their supporters thinking about a Champions League place already, just weeks after those same fans were facing the prospect of potentially losing manager David Moyes to Tottenham – one of at least half of the clubs in the Premier League who are better financially equipped for a top four place than the Blues.
That’s not to say that there are at least 10 better teams than Everton in the league at the moment, because clearly there are a lot less.
Second at the start of October is a superb and deserved position for Moyes’ side to be in, with the club’s success a testament to the fine signings made by the manager in the last two transfer windows and his ability to keep hold of his key players.
Outsiders may have seen the summer sale of Jack Rodwell to Manchester City as a severe weakening of Everton’s playing resources, but offer any Goodison Park regular the choice of selling him, Marouane Fellaini, Leighton Baines or Nikica Jelavic and they’d have driven Rodwell down the East Lancs Road to Manchester themselves.
That one of those players probably needed to be sold is due to the still curiously unreported financial situation at a club which, despite the progress on the pitch, is standing still off it under the ownership of Bill Kenwright.
The theatre impresario made a cameo appearance on Coronation Street earlier this year, and the majority of Everton supporters have long since come to view his insistence that there isn’t a suitable party out there to buy the club and invest in it as a tired old act.
It is for this reason and not for anything that they are doing on the pitch that Everton should just try to keep things ticking over at the moment. Getting up to the higher reaches of the table has been one thing, but staying there will be another once the might of the usual suspects kicks in.
Of course this would be the perfect time for investment to arrive at a club with a talented playing squad, passionate fans and a committed manager determined to succeed for both, but those supporters have long since grown tired of Kenwright’s caution and aren’t expecting radical changes any time soon. In the meantime they can just enjoy the fine football their team are playing.
And they could well go on playing it.
Visits to Wigan and QPR in their next two matches either side of the international break are unlikely to faze this Everton side, and neither will the Merseyside derby at Goodison Park at the end of the month – although the Blues do seem to have a knack of coming up short against Liverpool when many consider them favourites.
That is a negative thought though, and such things should be banned from entering Everton heads. Right now they are one of the big boys of the Premier League and they should go on thinking like that.
‘Taking each game as it comes’ is one of the oldest and most useless phrases in the football handbook, but as long as those games are approached positively then there’s no reason why good runs can’t be extended to be become good seasons.
Just try not to think about what’ll happen to Moyes, the players and the club if it doesn’t though.
Liverpool: The kids are alright, but is that enough?
As symbolism goes the image was a pretty stark one.
On a chilly Sunday afternoon when there were many more serious issues than football to ponder at Anfield it seems wrong to pay so much attention to the mere matters that were going on at pitch level, but just seconds into the second half there was a moment that spoke volumes for just where Liverpool are heading under Brendan Rodgers.
The 18-year-old Jesús Joaquín Fernández Sáez de la Torre – or ‘Suso’ to his mates and now the millions worldwide who watched his Premier League debut on Sunday – picked the ball up on the left corner of the penalty area and was suddenly face-to-face with the man he’d entered the pitch with seconds earlier.
Whilst Manchester United boss Sir Alex Ferguson had turned to Paul Scholes, 37, at half-time as his side sought to gain control of midfield now that Liverpool were down to 10 men, Rodgers had opted for Suso to replace the injured Fabio Borini.
Undeterred by the sense of occasion, the fact that this was his first act as a Premier League footballer nor that his side had seen a man sent off, Suso faced up to Scholes on the corner of the box, showed him the ball and then quick as a flash burst past a man more than twice his age. At that moment the great Scholes could probably feel his old bones creaking.
That Suso’s cross was only half-cleared and eventually – via the good work of Glen Johnson – resulted in Steven Gerrard firing Liverpool into a deserved lead only crystallised the moment more. These young Liverpool players, regardless of who they are facing and how many players they are facing them with, are fearless.
At 18 Suso wasn’t even the youngest Reds player on the pitch at the time, with that honour going to the 17-year-old Raheem Sterling. Jonjo Shelvey, 20, had somewhat harshly been sent off by then, whilst the injury suffered by the 22-year-old Martin Kelly would leave Liverpool with just nine men by full-time. Borini, 21, and Joe Allen, 22, were playing in their third Anfield league game since big summer moves to Merseyside, a switch made by 22-year-old second half substitute Jordan Henderson last year. The 19-year-old Andre Wisdom scored in the Europa League last week and could now be set for more appearances given that Kelly is out for the foreseeable future with an ACL injury. Many more young players at set to feature in the Capital One Cup at West Brom on Wednesday night.
The omnipresence of Gerrard and a late cameo from Jamie Carragher reminded everyone that this isn’t a total revolution just yet, but it is hard to think of a club operating at the levels Liverpool are that is currently putting so much faith in youth. As admirable as it is, the worry has to be that it is too much too soon.
The club’s failings in the transfer market have a lot to do with it of course, but Rodgers is on record extolling the virtues of his young charges.
As he and Ferguson have said in the past, young players will rarely let you down when called upon, but at a time when the club are coming to terms with a new style of play as well as new personnel with which to play it, the potential for errors has crept in. At this level such mistakes can and will be capitalised on, as United showed in coming back to win on Sunday.
The next three Premier League fixtures – away at Norwich and then at home to Stoke and Reading – have already been identified as crucial to Liverpool following their tough start, and the youngsters in the team are likely to have to grow up quickly if success is to be achieved in all of them.
There is no doubt that a great excitement builds when the likes of Suso and Sterling get the ball, but it is up to Gerrard and Luis Suarez to show seniority and help guide them. Allen, the excellent Johnson and the still acclimatising Nuri Sahin will prove important in this regard too.
Is it too much too young for some of these Liverpool players? That remains to be seen, but one thing that they are certainly not lacking in is confidence. If Suso can do that to Scholes, then anything is possible.
The kids aren’t United, they’re Liverpool, and this could just be the start of something special if it is given time.
Arsenal: Keep calm and carry on
The final 17 minutes of Arsenal’s outclassing of Southampton on Saturday said an awful lot about both clubs at the beginning of this Premier League season.
For the Saints, a team battered and bruised by the late, almost heroic defeats to both Manchester clubs and given a stark warning of the quality throughout the division when Wigan won convincingly at St Mary’s, it was all about just getting to full-time without experiencing any more damage on what had already been a harrowing afternoon.
In the event, they ended up conceding a sixth goal to their former favourite Theo Walcott two minutes from time, but the lack of celebrations from the winger after biting the hand that used to feed him were repeated all around the Emirates Stadium. The locals were desperate for Olivier Giroud to score.
That desire and anxiousness wasn’t a slight on the abilities of a forward who scored 21 goals in helping Montpellier to win the French title last season, but more a reflection of Gunners fans in recent times.
The £12million Giroud hadn’t scored in his first three appearances for the club, he didn’t find the net in his 17 minutes on the pitch against Southampton and followed that up with a goalless 76 minutes back at his former club in the Champions League on Tuesday night. Cue red and white panic.
If an Arsenal fan hasn’t got something to worry about, then he or she must be doing something wrong.
It isn’t their fault, it has been ingrained in supporters ever since summer-long transfer sagas surrounding the likes of Patrick Vieira, Cesc Fabregas, Samir Nasri and now Robin van Persie, all of which were destined to end with the player escaping the club in the same manner that Usain Bolt accelerates away from his rivals.
After the inevitable parting of the ways became official whoever was left, particularly those who were viewed as replacements, simply had to hit the ground running. Supporters already felt let down by former heroes, and so they didn’t want to see mediocre performers enter in their place.
The longing for Giroud to be a success will go on, but fans should be mindful not to freak out too much as they hope for every touch from the new man to end in the back of the net. They should simply take stock, take a deep breath and take a look at the talents elsewhere.
The other two new additions illustrate this perfectly, and as long as Lukas Podolski and Santi Cazorla keep on impressing to the levels that they have been so far then maybe even the Arsenal fans who are thinning on top wouldn’t mind losing the hairs they’ll tear out of their head whilst worrying about Giroud. And they will still worry.
Podolski, Cazorla, a seemingly reborn Gervinho, Mikel Arteta, Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain, Tomas Rosicky, Abou Diaby Aaron Ramsey, Walcott for now, and potentially even Jack Wilshere one day, maybe. All of whom add up to a potent attacking force before you even consider a French international forward who could very easily turn out to be a roaring success. Throw them in alongside a now much tighter defence and suddenly Gunners fans have every reason to be rather content with life right now, if they allow themselves to be.
The Giroud side issue will be solved soon enough – the forward is too good a player for it not to be – and when it is then Arsenal fans might be best advised to avoid finding something else to worry about, to just to play it cool, to keep calm and carry on.
They have the good fortune to follow a very good team which will only improve the more that its shiny new components are allowed to click together.
It’s getting there, so just try to sit tight and let it happen.
Why Wayne Rooney could take a leaf out of the Paul Scholes book
Around this time last year, when we thought we’d seen him kick a ball and/or opponent for the final time, we were hearing from one man an awful lot more than we were used to.
You suspect that it was a little forced, and that Paul Scholes didn’t exactly want to hold court on issues ranging from life under Sir Alex Ferguson to the trophies he’s won to the reason why he retired from playing for England so early, but when you’ve got an autobiography to sell there are certain sacrifices to be made.
It’s doubtful that Wayne Rooney sees them as sacrifices though.
The international break – a break he has sat out following the nasty thigh injury he picked up against Fulham – has seen Rooney plugging his latest book My Decade in the Premier League, the third autobiography from his money-spinning deal with publishers Harper Collins signed in 2006.
The reviews haven’t exactly been stellar, with the book’s serialisation offering up the ‘fascinating’ insights that Rooney once returned to training following a summer holiday unfit and overweight, and that he could barely stomach seeing Manchester City winning the league last season. Stephen Hawking’s A Brief History of Time it isn’t.
Whilst the book does offer us a timeline of Rooney’s career ever since he joined Manchester United in 2004, it will be unable to shed light on the most interesting period of those eight years. Namely right now.
Ferguson – who is believed to privately see Rooney’s injury as a blessing in disguise given that he once again returned from his summer break in less than top condition – made huge statements in the summer with the captures of Shinji Kagawa and Robin van Persie, the former a shining light in one of the most entertaining sides on the continent over the past couple of years and the latter a prolific goalscorer who is already well on his way to becoming a Premier League icon.
The question of where these purchases left Rooney was almost immediately raised, and although Manchester United’s strongest team would still surely find room for their No. 10, the belief that the forward is undroppable rather quickly evaporated. Suddenly Rooney would have to work harder than ever before.
So perhaps it isn’t the best time to be rolling out another book, specifically one which points out that one of your major flaws is an apparent aversion to staying healthy when out of your manager’s gaze.
Such decisions are likely to be taken out of Rooney’s hands of course, but at a time when actions need to speak louder than words, the forward is creating an awful lot of noise.
Scholes quickly went back to letting his football do the talking following his return to the game and to the Manchester United team back in January, and Rooney could do worse than follow in his team-mate’s footsteps when it comes to ensuring that the chapters in future tomes will be successful, Old Trafford-based ones.
At the end of the current season there will be two years left on the contract that Rooney earned after so much dramatic posturing at the end of 2010, with the entry into the final 24 months of a deal traditionally the moment when key, difficult decisions have to be made about a player’s future – unless you’re Arsenal of course.
Rooney will be 27 next month, and with United never likely to be able to get more money for him than they could command in the summer then a key decision might have to be made, a decision that could be made easier if Kagawa and van Persie turn out to be the success stories they are threatening to be.
When he’s fully fit Rooney will be back in the United and England teams, but as the man himself seems so keen to tell us, just when that will be is up for debate.
He can talk a good game, but Rooney now needs to get back to playing one.
Twitter, and its part in Liverpool’s downfall
In May, Twitter revealed that it has 140 million active users worldwide. They didn’t say how many of those accounts had ever retweeted a joke about Stewart Downing, but it’s safe to assume that it’s most of them.
Twitter is immediate. It is ruthless and merciless. It mocks misfortune, underperformance and the downright embarrassing. In short, it usually mocks Liverpool.
It was at it again on Saturday, as the Reds kicked off their Premier League season with a 3-0 defeat to West Bromwich Albion at The Hawthorns.
It was a strange game. West Brom probably deserved to win it but certainly not 3-0. Gary Neville, in his excellent punditry slot on Sky’s Monday Night Football after Everton had beaten Manchester United, noted that it was somewhat of a freak result. The Reds were comfortable until Zoltan Gera’s bolt from the blue gave the Baggies the lead shortly before half-time, and suddenly in a haze of red cards, penalties and missed chances the game was gone.
Other than the kit and a couple of new names the first league match of the Brendan Rodgers reign wasn’t overly different to many of Kenny Dalglish’s games last season, and the hysterical reaction on social media channels was much the same.
Even now at the time of writing, some four days after the game, a GIF image of Jamie Carragher being knocked to the ground by Romelu Lukaku has just popped up on a popular Twitter account with over 50,000 followers. It will be retweeted to hundreds of accounts and then passed on to even more, all in the name of laughing at Liverpool.
On Saturday afternoon a #RodgersOut hashtag appeared as the details of the match at The Hawthorns were being relayed to those who had seen nothing but the scoreline.
Those using it were largely doing so ironically – although Twitter does have an alarming capacity to introduce you to every village’s idiot – but it has long since been decided amongst the social media masses that this is how Liverpool fans react when their team loses.
Some do react like that.
It stands to reason that a club as big as Liverpool – surely the second most-supported in the UK behind Manchester United – will have a large selection of fans of all beliefs and mentalities, of which reactionary is certainly one. A few Liverpool fans make ridiculous comments, they get retweeted hundreds of times by those who like embarrassing the club, and suddenly thousands of fans are supposed to hold those same beliefs, be they naïve, foolish or in some cases – especially during last season – unashamedly provocative.
That these comments usually come from those who appear to rarely set foot anywhere near Anfield shouldn’t be discounted, but what should is the belief that all supporters feel the same way.
Liverpool – a club who have turned making bad decisions into an art form ever since sacking Rafael Benitez in the summer of 2010 – might just be a bit unfortunate that their most turbulent times have come during the social media boom, when every wrong move is laid out there for the world to see.
Inside Anfield there still remains a mostly intelligent support which realises just what a tough job Rodgers has in picking up the pieces at a club who nearly went to the wall in 2010.
Visiting teams are frequently applauded off the pitch when they’ve achieved a good result – as they seem to do more and more these days – but there is no doubt that the belief that the club’s support is respectful and knowledgeable has been diluted by the presence of fans on Twitter and across the Internet. As the team has faltered, so has the reputation of the support.
As a whole, the club have gone through tough times on and off the pitch since Benitez guided them to second place with 86 points in 2009, and it seems an awful long time before they’ll be back anywhere near that sort of haul again.
Rodgers even suggested that there will be more results like last Saturday’s to come before it gets better.
Expect to be reading about them in 140 characters or less.
FantasyYIRMA - Fantasy Football FPL 