Class 4 - 1 Naivety

Overrun and out witted. Out played and out classed.

Robin was injured, a thigh strain or a groin strain, doesn't really matter which one. The inconsequential fact of the matter was that he wasn't fit and he cut a forlorn figure sitting in the comfy seats at the Etihad.

So why would I begin to suggest that it was inconsequential to be without the best striker in the league? Had we have played Robin we might have had more cutting edge going forward. We might have made more of the scraps our forwards had to feed off in the first 65 mins. Maybe... A lack of quality up top was nothing to do with United's demise in the first derby of the season.

United fans sat baffled and confounded in the stands as United's most intelligent and consistent passer of the ball, Michael Carrick proceeds to play straight balls from central midfield into a harassed and uncomfortable front two. There was nowhere else to go, City defended superbly and strangled anything through the middle.

Rooney had his nose put out of joint from the get go, hassled into mistakes and overpowered by a possessed Vincent Kompany. The frustrated Merseysider conceded foul after foul before Howard Webb booked him. Having said that he was the only player whose head never dropped. Wayne's sumptuous goal made him the all time leading goal scorer in the Manchester Derby. It was ample reward for his endeavour, he was our best player today.

So we didn't miss Robin and Rooney played well, what then went wrong?

The same thing that always goes wrong when we lose to our second fiercest rivals. When we go two up top with a supplementary couple of wingers we get overrun. Fellaini and Carrick will dominate midfield battles against any number of premiership counterparts but they won't beat a midfield of Toure, Fernandinho and Nasri, because that's what they faced. All of their midfielders with the possible exception of Navas are comfortable on the ball anywhere across the middle of the park. Effectively letting City play the ball around with mesmerising fluidity. With their positions changing as often as the scoreline United's creative outlets were rendered obsolete.

A few weeks ago I listened to Gary Neville wear his tongue thin about how Paul Scholes was the best player he'd ever played with. During his spiel he went on to say that throughout his time at the club Fergie had emphasised that being in a United training session was a lesson in how to keep possession. It wasn't a sole focus but it was of fundamental importance.

Carrick has become the new Scholes, quarter backing United's attacks for the last two seasons. He's our most important player and as such hasn't missed a game for fucking ages. Regardless of what the Stretford End sing, regardless of his importance and quality, Paul Scholes he is not.

I digress.

Scholes in his pomp wouldn't have had any impact on today's game, reason being we played four in midfield. Away at the Etihad we have one tactic at our disposal. Pack the midfield, stifle their verve and creativity and then break quickly. It's paid dividends in away ties at the Emirates, the Etihad and the Bridge more often than not.

I think Fergie became aware that the team and squad he had assembled had the capacity to out class 16 or 17/19 of our premiership opponents season after season. The relentless trophy winning machine that was Ferguson's United had many strengths, but self-awareness was amongst their most invaluable. Today reminded me of the Champions League final at Wembley when Ferguson buckled under his own pride and felt our best could beat the World's best on our terms. Barcelona were a better team with better individuals and alas a midfield two of Carrick and Giggs had no answer to Barca's intelligence.

Moyes approached today with that same pride and probable naivety. Thinking he could put his best midfield up against City's best and come out on top. I personally don't think we have the players to keep the ball as well as Chelsea, Arsenal or City especially when put up against them. We have a squad packed full of players who can win League titles, who know what it takes over the length of the season but in these one off monster games we'll continue to come up short if we don't employ that self-awareness that defined Ferguson's genius.

On 70 minutes, Cleverley came on, Fellaini played in the hole joining the midfield while defending and supplementing the attack when we had the ball and United controlled the game and created more opportunities than they managed in the last 70.

Know your opponent's strengths and shield your own weaknesses and you'll have a formula for success away from home at the big boys.

And if I hadn't already made it clear, please don't play four in midfield away at the Etihad ever again Moyesy.

Remember how bad the International break was...

Every time we have an international break, SkySports (amongst others) commits a few hours to posing a series of repetitive questions to pundits who proceed to spew inanities in an attempt to tell us why we aren't producing Xavis or Iniestas. They talk about investment in grass roots football, unhelpfully pushy fathers on sidelines and cultural insufficiencies in coaching techniques.

duck faced douche

I hear them shouting from the sidelines; why aren't we producing more number 10s? Why don't our midfielders have the guile to unlock defences the way the Iberians do? Why are English wingers only equipped with pulverising pace rather than the bewitching trickery of our South American counterparts? Is there a correlation between our lacking guile and the influx of foreign players into our youth academies? Does money and fame so early in an Englishman's career stifle the work ethic needed to reach that player's potential? [People don't actually shout these things from sidelines but if they did, well... what a world]

While playing and watching grass roots football in England and on the continent distinct differences begin to appear... Grit is favoured over flair in England. At school or at your club you were told to work hard and stick to your man rather than practice your kick ups and your ball control. You were told to take a touch, get your head up and play it simple rather than hold the ball or beat a man. You were taught to finish by aiming hard and low between the keepers legs so that any miscue might still finish between the posts or be parried for a tap in because if you try a cheeky lob or to round the keeper and fuck it up... you're dropped. 

I don't know

This story isn't consistent with ALL the football I played or watched. There were rare coaches who saw things in players at a young age and encouraged them to keep working at these things in training and to develop their skills alone with a ball. Can liquid football graduate to the big stage?

Probably not - when it comes to a match day, the shit gets real and if a failed attempt at invention or flair costs us the game then we'll all be looking at you, you cheeky quim. 

I play as much five a side football as I can because our dismal weather and London's logistics make five a side the easier option. Five a side is a slicker quicker game, full of goals and opportunities to break quickly while employing trickery and guile more efficiently to unlock defences. The distance to the opposition's goal and the number of opposition defenders is minimised giving way to a far more open game. 

No relevance, just looks weird

Five a side tournaments and weekly leagues were where I saw the most mesmerisingly skilful displays of football I've seen outside of the professional game. I saw players flicking the ball over opponents heads before volleying past a keeper. I saw players deftly caressing the ball embarrassingly through a defender's legs without looking at where these defenders were. None of these kids were White British, they were of Asian or African decent. None of these kids would ever make it into the professional game because of their own trepidation toward trying this stuff on a Sunday League pitch and never being asked back or worse. Why?

Maybe they spent more time practicing their skills than they did running shuttles or in the gym? Maybe they didn't back themselves to inject this invention into an 11 a side game? In Spanish academies, players graduate from 5 a side football, to 7 a side football before they step foot on an 11 a side pitch. We need to start doing the same thing.

Until match days offer the same arena for flair as training we won't see anything change. How often do you hear pros waxing lyrical about the stuff they see their team mates do in training? Thing is there's a reason this stuff is entertaining, it's because it's unexpected. That same element of surprise is why utilising flair and invention can be the difference between success and failure. Ask yourself what is meant by having a cutting edge. If you think physical prowess and rigorous tactical discipline will cut it then you're living in the past.

The premiership is packed with physical specimens and disciplined operators. Theres no shortage of Englishmen with these traits. Players like Jones, Cahill, Smalling and Caulker roll off the production lines like nobodies business. Is it any surprise that the trend bucking Jack Wilshere's talents were nurtured in an academy full of foreigners at a club synonymous for nurturing youngsters with imagination? Even the excitement surrounding Wilshere's game is tempered by Guardiola telling us a few years back that Barca B have a dozen players just like him.

Who guffed?

So what about the money? The home grown player quota rules have made young Englishmen more valuable to their clubs. This is why our clubs pay so much money for young talent like the Hendersons (£20m transfer fee, £3.5m pa salary), Carrolls (£35m, £4.16m pa), Zahas (£15m, £1.8m pa) and Caulkers (£9m, I don't know what he's on but apparently it's loads - it's not) of this world. Does the early wealth of these players temper their development?

If all you have to do is show potential and be English to earn these relatively astronomical sums then you've got to wonder whether the money might change them, might cloud their sense of drive and hunger to hit the heights. Imagine if there was a wage by age structure - imagine if you couldn't earn more than £100,000 a year before you were 23. I mean that's still a lot of money for anyone of an age younger than 23 but it's about junior players paying their dues. It's about returning to the days of apprentices like Giggs and Scholes scrubbing Robson's boots.

Nigel's got caysh

Marry together this myriad of factors with the ones I was too lazy to research and you're left with a multi faceted set of issues facing the English game. We won't win a World Cup in the next twenty years and we won't win a Euros either. Maybe we just need to get Cruyff to come in and restructure the whole structure of English football from top to bottom. Maybe we just need to not give so much of a shit because we all hate the international break and have dips in seratonin until our beloved club football restarts.

Anyway if you didn't enjoy that, shut up and watch this...

The Runaway Galácticos Phenomenon

From Real Madrid to Kettering Town and everything in between, how the Galácticos project has changed world football.

Florentino Pérez is a man best known for his presidency at the world’s richest club. He is the mastermind and visionary behind the adoption of a 60-year-old strategy that arguably got them there.

Madrid’s most successful period of dominance followed the initial conception of the Galácticos policy. The president in the 1950s was a man called Santiago Bernabéu Yeste, a familiar name. This man brought players like Di Stefano and Puskas to Madrid, names that have endured throughout the proceeding decades. These two players spearheaded a team that won the first five instalments of the European Champion Clubs’ Cup (the Champions League), an unprecedented achievement that has remained unmatched.

 

Real Madrid celebrate winning the first ever European Champion Clubs' Cup in 1956

In the1980s a rival philosophy emerged. It was called 'Quinta del Buitre' or the Vulture Squad. Emilio Butragueño was the star. Madridistas were treated to successive league titles from 1986 through to 1990. Then came Johan Cruyff's FC Barcelona in the early 1990s to cast a dark shadow over Spain’s capital club. Madrid, inspired by their new hero Raul, won the 1998 and 2000 UEFA Champions Leagues and the second Galácticos era had its catalyst.

Pérez opened the new millennium with a campaign to win the Los Merengues presidency. He built his successful bid on bringing Luis Figo to the Bernabéu from their Catalan rivals. £37million later the first Galáctico was purchased and so changed modern football. Madrid certainly weren’t the first club to spend big on new recruits. Between 1999 and 2001, Parma, Lazio, Inter Milan and Juventus took part in two seasons of riveting £30million transfers. Parma lost Crespo then Buffon to Lazio and Juve respectively. Lazio had funded Crespo with the £31million Inter gave them for Christian Vieri. These massive outlays can be explained. European football experienced a "transfer bubble" fuelled by rapidly rising television rights sales and a large increase in sponsorship payments between 1999 and 2002, and fees then fell away significantly, before rising again towards the end of the 2000s.

Pérez and his sexy Galácticos

The Figo transfer was sandwiched in between this activity in Italy. Madrid’s president wanted one of the world’s biggest names to come to the capital each year. Figo was first then came Zinedine Zidane for another world record fee of £46million before Fat Ronaldo joined from Inter in 2002. David Beckham became the last official Galáctico when he broke my heart by leaving the Republic of Mancunia. While the project enjoyed mixed success on the pitch, a year after taking the world’s most famous player from the world’s most famous club Madrid’s revenue stream took them to the financial summit of the game thanks to shirt sales, boosted marketing potential and global exposure (specifically in Asia).

Manchester United remained the most valuable football club in the world. United’s value usurped that of any NFL or NBA team. However in 2009, Madrid embarked on a third Galácticos recruitment drive. Kaka arrived for €60million, Ronaldo arrived for €94 million, Benzema and Alonso joined for a combined €66million. Over the next three years Khedira, Ozil, di Maria, Coentrao and Modric arrived for big money. This year has seen Isco and Illarramendi command fees in excess of €30million while Bale has cost lots of money and the football world's dignity. It was however the Ronaldo signing that boosted the financial worth of the club (specifically in America where Madrid consistently fell short of Manchester United in marketability terms) to the extent that in 2013, for the first time since Forbes started caring about soccer Madrid overtook United as the world’s most valuable football club and thus the most valuable sports franchise on the planet.

No new signing will ever be greeted like this again... until he comes home

This spend to earn mentality has worked for Madrid in terms of marketability and it has spawned other Galácticos sides. Chelsea kicked things off in England in 2003 and since then have spent an average of £76million a season on players. Yeah.

Next came the Middle Eastern instalment of black gold in the shape of the Abu Dhabi's investment in Manchester Shitty in 2008. Despite the fact they only really started spending big around 5 years ago, City’s average seasonal spend for the last 10 years is a cool £70million. 

Anzhi Makhachkalashakalakakakakakaka and Zenit injected money into the Russian league in 2011 before Anzhi’s bubble burst this summer. 

PSG and Monaco provide the sexy French chapter to this story. 

It isn’t by any means a ubiquitous strategy. Clubs have remained competitive on the pitch without spending big.

While there are other factors at play it must be admitted that the result of this overspending is that to remain competitive in this inflated transfer market you’ve got to be willing to pay over the odds for good players (Fellaini cost £27million) and for the rubbish ones as well (Downing cost £19million). For some excellent examples of overspending on average to poor players see all but one of Kenny Dalglish’s piss poor signings in his mercilessly feature length film, How to Embarrass Your Club's PR Department and Destroy Your Reputation. 

The big spenders have changed the dynamics. Footballers are more expensive these days. I’m not going to talk about Bale because you’ve read and seen everything there is to hear about it. This transfer window has been the biggest ever for Premier League clubs, eclipsing the previous by £150million in gross spend. English clubs have spent £630million on new players over the last two months. All this while Kettering Town have received a winding down order. Go back and read the last sentence again. Kettering Town have not gone into administration, they have actually been told to WIND DOWN. A 141-year-old club have been asked to cease trading and are poised to go out of business because they don’t have the £20,000 to pay off their deficit. £20,000… Please notice the discrepancy between this figure and every other preceding figure.

Victims of the Galácticos phenomenon are not limited to smaller clubs. The previous decade has seen Arsenal FC go from being invincible to becoming the world’s greatest feeder club. Europe’s elite (and Manchester City) have systematically stripped the North London club of their best players since 2005, leaving the fans with an increasingly comical frustration with the club’s greatest ever manager. A look around the world of football since Madrid kicked off the financial revolution at the turn of the century only serves to further aggravate Arsenal fans who’ve seen all their best players leaving with little to no investment coming back in. I’m tempted to believe that the £42.5million spent on Monday night is a perfect illustration of Arsenal just looking to join the party. That’s not me having a go; forgetting the fact Ozil is a superlative footballer who makes Arsenal's starting 11 far more formidable, I just think the value in the signing derives from it's glamour. It's this same glamour that injects the quintessential element of optimism Arsenal have missed for years. Finally Arsenal fans no longer have to put up with their friends posting a link on their wall titled "Have Arsenal spent any money yet?" We were all getting sick of seeing NO used as a punchline every six months. 

Ozil’s arrival alleviates the pressure Arsene Wenger has spent 8 years steadily loading upon his shoulders while also tempering the anxieties of Arsenal fans. Buying their very own Galáctico could signify a huge turning point for the Gunners… the manager was hung out to dry on the first day of the season after losing to Villa, especially after his initial U-turn in transfer policy represented by the £40,000,001 bid for WWH (World’s Worst Human) fell embarrassingly flat on it’s face. However the Ozil deal is the perfect remedy; the opulence of the fee, the player and the selling club has saved Wenger. Wenger has resisted and criticised all activity that I would deem part of the Galácticos phenomenon, but his submission to the movement might provide a shift in the paradigm that has seen The Invincibles become London’s least humorous joke.

It seems there's no immunity left to the Galácticos phenomenon.