Thursday, December 13, 2018

PLUS ÇA CHANGE

"Everton fans will boo Raheem Sterling on Saturday. Because he played for Liverpool. And dives a lot. And that goal where the ball had gone about a mile out of play. And his "jazz hands' run. But not because of the colour of his skin…." -NSNO Everton website

And here we are then, in the cold windswept streets of Theresa May's failed state.

A land where a pompous bigot like Jacob Rees Mogg can don a top hat and tails, spout bare-faced lies with a plummy lilt and be viewed instantly as a credible future leader of the country.

A land of poets and inventors, scientists, explorers and philosophers, of statesmen and biologists, pharmacists and fantasists, where the Industrial Age began and the Ice Age arrives. The land that invented computers, iron bridges, television, threshing machines, the telephone, the steam engine, bicycle pedals and Marmite.

And Association Football.

Chips and gravy too. Porridge oats. A meal to start the day with a fried egg, sausages and bacon involved. We carry on expressing ourselves in ways that open eyes and minds. Cats eyes, cash machines and DNA profiling. The list goes on.

And now, with Brexit and the shambolic political class that rule over us, we have invented new ways for the world to look at us.

Where once they looked for advice and for an example, they now titter behind polite handkerchiefs, point and shake their heads. What has happened to old Albion?


****

It is 1983.

From a distinctly rough vantage point on the windswept terraces at Stamford Bridge's delipidated away end - a low, sweeping curve of uncovered steps that are crumbling, uncovered and bordered by barbed wire topped security fences - it is difficult to make out.

The home fans are making their usual din. It fells uneasy and edgy. Then it happens again. It is clear that there are things being hurled towards the area of rough cinder between the back of the goal Alex Williams is defending in the name of Manchester City and Chelsea's finest gathered on the Shed End. Improbably, the airborne objects would seem to be bananas….

****

Watching football in the eighties was like that. Raw, dangerous, unreconstructed. Political correctness was far from being erected as a way of life in Great Britain and a loud, bawdy thugs' charter ruled the roost in English football grounds.The charlatans that now sit in the House of Commons screeching at each other on our behalf were just coming of age, but few of them were standing where I was. Football and football supporters were a no-go area with high walls of barbed wire arranged around them. We were cordoned off, shepherded by police to a safe area of society where truncheons and slathering dogs, fences and safety netting awaited us. Conditions were medieval and the behaviour they engendered often followed suit.

For Williams, the first black goalkeeper in the top echelons of professional football and talked about at the time as possibly England's first black 'keeper, it must have been a truly harrowing experience. Unlike the other black players in City's squad in the late 70s and early 80s, Clive Wilson, Roger Palmer, Dave and Gary Bennet, Tony Cunningham and Earl Barrett, Williams's job took him as close as possible to the baying hordes behind the fences.

It was a time of darts and golf balls with nails in, bottles and bricks. More or less everything went and, literally, more or less everything went through the air. Bottles of urine from Newcastle fans, clods of police horse excrement from Sheffield Wednesday followers, you never quite knew what was to be launched next. City's days in the second division, after ignominious loss of status against Luton at Maine Road in May 1983, brought them to grounds that were as decrepit as they were venomous. From the terraced wastelands of Carlisle to the dark pit that was Ninian Park, Cardiff, you travelled to support your team in the knowledge that, one way or another,you were in for a dramatic day out.

City too had their governors and young governors, Sergio Tacchini-clad casuals with an eye for fashion and trouble. The air was heavily lacquered with a brutish hostility, which was both invigorating and deeply alarming.

The abuse was vitriolic, whatever your skin colour, for players and away fans alike. Scallies outside the South Bank at Wolves would ask you the time to see if you had a Black Country accent or not. Racism was both casual and widespread. It had not been long since ITV had screened a sitcom named Love Thy Neighbour, where a white bigot living next to a West Indian family routinely called them every deplorable name under the sun for the nation's entertainment and then asked if he could borrow a cup of sugar.

Oh how England laughed at the banal awfulness of it all.

Football's queer vortex of passion and unpredictability, that tribal edge that has made it such an invigorating live watch down the years, also by its very nature brings out sudden bursts of behaviour that we weren't aware we were capable of. The mob, the noise, the feeling of being lost inside a baying wave of like-minded enthusiasts, just as Roy Keane, or Charlie George or Jack Wilshire pulls a funny face metres from where you're ensconced with your Wagonwheel and your bottle of warm Lamot Pils.

Easy to get carried away (sometimes literally if you were in the West Midlands in 1984).

In some ways, then, we have come a long way, but clearly not nearly far enough. Chelsea last weekend was just another stop off point for those who think it ok to use vile language to vent their feelings. While racism is clearly the thin edge of the wedge, the mere fact that people apologise by using the excuse "I meant to say Manc c***" reveals how mainstream gutter language has become, how facile it all seems to offer each other the foulest possible insults without a moment's thought. If we were brought up not to use the f-word in front of our elders, the c-word was an absolute no-go area a couple of decades back. Nowadays, it is used as commonly as hello and goodbye, by men and women, a badge of pride of how far we have evolved as a deep-thinking and profoundly balanced race.

If vile, insulting language comes so easily to us all in these enlightened times, the same stuff with a bit of racism laced into it must seem equally plausible to those whose moral compasses point that bit lower. We can sneer at the press for jumping on a bandwagon they helped give momentum to in the first place. We can point the finger at Liverpool fans and pundits for their wave of abuse when Sterling left their club, but we might all benefit from starting closer to home and get some of our own ideas straightened out first.










Saturday, November 10, 2018

DISPATCHES FROM THE OTHER SIDE 11


Notes on the 2018-19 title race with a different perspective. Writing with (and about) the enemy. By Sachin Nakrani and Simon Curtis

Moral Indignation and the Loss of Mojo


31st October 2018A week is a long time in football.

Good grief indeed. For Liverpool, what started as a campaign to treasure, the sense of finally being in a position to put in a proper challenge has begun to look like the toast that stayed too long under the grill. Certainly the strange heat coming off the Belgrade toaster seems to have frazzled Liverpool’s already fragile form a little more.

Suddenly, doubts are surfacing.

Still just two points off the top, but with a goal difference dragging an eye-popping 13 adrift of City, who have banged in six against each of their last two opponents, Liverpool’s difficult run of fixtures is beginning to pan out how it was feared it might in the previous edition of Dispatches.

The two four-goal salvos against Cardiff and Red Star have been put in the shadow somewhat by a draw at Arsenal and the lethargic cave-in at the Marakana. Suddenly, a crisis of confidence and team selection is rearing its ugly head. How swiftly fortunes change. A home fixture against the leakiest defence in the Premier League (Fulham) may serve as the pick-me-up needed, especially as that troublesome fixture list then resumes a distinctly tough look, with away trips to Watford, an absolute crunch game in Paris and the Merseyside Derby. There is no respite coming, so Liverpool’s fixture with Fulham now looks absolutely essential in shoring up what currently seems to be fading form and confidence.

City, meanwhile, plough on without ever having looked like they are properly into top gear yet. How this plays on Liverpool’s minds is critical. All this without Kevin de Bruyne. All this with the swishing vortex of press speculation there to distract the smooth process of winning first eleven fixtures. All this without really playing a single game this season where the symmetry and cutting edge has properly surpassed any of last season’s top moments.

Liverpool’s problems have transferred themselves from last season’s backward focus through to areas of the team that were in 2017-18 its strongest points. The defence now operates as a compact success story around the burgeoning talent of Virgil van Dijk. The goalkeeping doubts are over, but now that high pressure midfield that worked its socks off to such great effect last season, suddenly looks ponderous and ill at ease. New boys Fabinho and Naby Keita have not yet settled or do not get picked. A strange urge to persevere with Sturridge and Lallana looks like a disaster waiting to happen. Henderson’s feverish energy seems dulled.

Even more worrying was the fact that master motivator Herr Klopp talked of “lost mojo” after the Belgrade no-show. Now backed by heavy spending, Liverpool’s lively spirit and high-energy game was exactly what has helped make them the challengers they are considered to be this season. The widely-accepted influence of the Kop in previous seasons of success was suddenly replicated in foreign fields and used against Liverpool, as the Red Star fans kicked up a decent cacophony to wilt Liverpool’s concentration. 80% possession took the visitors nowhere in the second half. Had the blistering draw at the Emirates siphoned some of that famous energy away into the dark Belgrade night?

"It was a good football atmosphere. I don't think it would have been impossible to perform to be honest. It was not that we had to be afraid or whatever. It was a football atmosphere. Whatever they sang, we don't understand. It was only loud…" - Jurgen Klopp

Lively backing for City v Shakhtar

If City’s week of goals was tinged with anxiety about the increasingly florid tails from Der Spiegel, they did not show any hint of being adversely affected. In fact, the crowd’s exemplary reaction at the Etihad on Wednesday night, where a full house noisily created its own "football atmosphere", shows all of this moral shuffling and slicing may have just the effect Liverpool were dreading.

The moral whirlpool kicked up by the German magazine’s “explosive revelations” is probably best put into perspective by Larry Ryan’s superbly balanced piece in the Irish Examiner.

Meanwhile, City go into the Manchester derby in a state of controlled indignation. The crowd is right behind them. Everything is coming together. The them-against-us doctrine so beloved of Jose Mourinho in the good old days may just have been created in its purest form by outside forces instead.

That can only spell trouble for the chasing pack.

  Simon Curtis



31st October 2018    When school children are taught the history of the Premier League - and lets face it, that’s definitely going to happen - it’s possible the past week will feature heavily in the dozen or so classes dedicated to modern Manchester City.

Bloody hell, it’s been a busy one. Twelve goals scored in two games, one of which resulted from a penalty-that-should-never-have-been and in turn led to further accusations of anti-City bias within the mainstream media. And then, of course, there has been the cloud that’s hung over everything: Financial Fair Play. 

The revelations, published across a number of days by Der Spiegel, have created a rabbit hole that I’m keen not to delve too far down. Something I do want to touch on, however, is the focus Der Spiegel’s reporting has brought on to the conflict that exists between “elite” and “new money” clubs, with the former seen by some as the enemy. Greedy protectionists in it for themselves. 

Fair enough, but what hasn’t been, and never is, addressed is how a club becomes “elite” in the first place? And once it has reached that status, does it not deserve some level of protection?

Take Liverpool. How did we become “elite”? Without boring your tits off too much, it started when Bill Shankly became manager in 1959 and through his genius and hard work, led the club from Second Division dossers to First Division champions. He then left and was replaced by Bob Paisley, who it turned out was also a genius. Then came Joe Fagan and Kenny Dalglish, both brilliant in their own right, with the latter also a brilliant player who played alongside a series of brilliant players during his time at Anfield. 

Since the 1990s, things have been less brilliant for Liverpool but we’ve still done pretty well (two major European trophies, three FA Cups, four league cups ... loads of belting songs) and ultimately all of this came about through bottom-up growth and sustained development. In other words, elitism earned. 

Supporters of Bayern Munich, Barcelona and Juventus, to name just three other members of the “elite”, could make similar arguments, and that’s where the resentment comes in. We’re getting on with trying to win things, which is hard enough as it is, and then come along the “new-money” clubs - Chelsea, Paris Saint-Germain ... Manchester City - to make things even harder. It doesn’t feel right, a shortcut taken to success, and to top it off, us “elite” supporters then hear two of those clubs have been in the kitchen cooking the books. Annoyed? Just a tad. 

I’m very close to the edge of the rabbit hole now so will take a step back and say no more about FFP. Instead I’ll move onto Raheem Sterling’s penalty incident against Shakhtar Donetsk. In summary: I don’t really care.

It’s interesting, and no doubt a talking point, but we all saw what happened and ultimately it came down to a mistake by the referee. To accuse City, and Sterling in particular, of foul play is a smokescreen. 

No other club or player would have held their hands up had they found themselves in the same situation. More so, few supporters would want their own club or player to do so either. Make no mistake, if Liverpool are drawing 0-0 with Fulham on Sunday and Sadio Mane falls over his feet in the box and is awarded a penalty, I want the penalty. Sportsmanship? There are three points on offer and the ref’s delivered them to us on a silver plate. Only a fool would turn down such generosity. 

Some of the headlines that followed the win over Shakhtar have caused outrage among
City fans and deepened the belief that journalists are out to get their club. As I’ve said in a previous Dispatch, that’s genuinely not the case, but in this specific case I appreciate the anger. Accusations of City lacking class and (ho ho!) not believing in fair play were unnecessary and overshadowed what was another outstanding display by Pep’s boys. Six more goals and, given United’s victory over Juventus on the same night, intrigue galore ahead of this weekend’s derby.

In normal circumstances, I’d want City to win. But these aren’t normal circumstances. Instead, Liverpool are in an actual fight for the title with the reigning champions while the real enemy - them in red and black - are coughing and spluttering a little way back. 

So yes, I’ll be cheering on United. Yet in the back of my mind there sits the thought that, actually, it may be better if City win. Partly for the look on Jose Mourinho’s face that would follow and partly because, maybe, Liverpool haven’t got what it takes to be champions, after all. 

We’re playing well but not as consistently well as City, as seen starkly during the 2-0 defeat to Red Star Belgrade on Tuesday. It was a really poor display by Liverpool and another against Fulham could make this season less about being champions and more about finishing in the top four. In that case, United would indeed be the real danger, coming over the hill and pulling hard on our tails. 

Much to play for, then, at the top of the Premier League, and for the team at the very top, another big moment after all the others that have come and gone in recent days. 

Sachin Nakrani


Wednesday, October 31, 2018

DISPATCHES FROM THE OTHER SIDE 10


Notes on the 2018-19 title race with a different perspective. Writing with (and about) the enemy. By Sachin Nakrani and Simon Curtis

In Me ‘Ead, Son



31st October 2018I’m not sure I can keep doing these midweek trips for much longer”

They are the words I never thought I’d hear come from his mouth. But there they were, on a cold Wednesday night on the M6, spilling out as we made our regular service station pit-stop with a couple of hours driving to go.

He, in case you’re wondering, is Anil, a Kop season-ticket holder for almost three decades and one of the leaders of the supporters’ club I travel to Liverpool games with. He goes week in, week out, waves one of the flags before kick-off and absolutely adores being a Red. But he’s deep into his forties now and, understandably, he’s tired.

Travelling for long distances can be hard. It’s mainly sitting around and talking - certainly so on the coach we take from north London to Anfield and back - but nevertheless that can be draining. After a while you get fed up with it, as Anil was on the way back from Liverpool’s Champions League group fixture against Red Star Belgrade last week. We’d won 4-0, played some decent football, but now it was gone midnight and, as is always the case, our long journey home had been made longer by roadworks. Truth be told, we were all fed up; Anil was merely the first one to say it out loud as we took our mid-trip break.

Why am I bringing this up? Because it’s relevant in the context of the Premier League title race, and specifically in regards to the potential fortunes and failings of Liverpool and Manchester City in the coming weeks.

Following City’s 1-0 win against Tottenham - a decent game that took place on a less-than-decent pitch - Simon and I engaged in a somewhat spiky Twitter conversation. Without going into the details, I thought he was taking the piss and he insisted he wasn’t. Anyway, it led to Simon pointing out that for Liverpool, four of the next five games in all competitions are away from home while for City, four of the next five are at home.  This led to a bit more spikiness as I questioned why the need to include non-Premier League games in a conversation that was about the Premier League title race, to which he said something that got me thinking. “Because away trips to the continent have an influence.

He’s right - they do. It’s the travelling, you see. It takes it out of you. Leaves you feeling fed up.

Now, of course, when it comes to the effect travelling has on the brain and the body, there’s a big difference between a bunch of out-of-shape and overly-stressed blokes going up and down the motorway in a glorified mini-bus and a group of highly-trained and perfectly-prepared athletes flying first-class, but travelling is travelling. Some form of negative impact is inevitable. 

Ask Virgil van Dijk, James Milner or Sadio Mane if they’d rather play a series of games in early winter home or away and I’m sure they’d go for the former, especially given the furthest their main rivals for the title have to travel between now and the 24th November is east London. No early check-ins for Pep’s boys. No sitting on a plane, which even at its most comfortable can be a bit of an annoyance, or training and resting in completely unfamiliar surroundings. All those awkward and influential variables have been taken out of the reckoning for City as they look ahead to games against Fulham in the Carabao Cup, Shakhtar Donetsk in the Champions League and Southampton, Manchester United and West Ham in the league. 

Things can always be worse.

Liverpool, meanwhile, go to in-form Arsenal at the weekend before travelling to Belgrade for the return game against Red Star. There then follows a home game against Fulham before away fixtures against Watford and Paris Saint-Germain. Belgrade aside, none of those trips are particularly taxing but they are trips nonetheless, quite literally taking Liverpool out of their comfort zone for the best part of four weeks. 

I’m not going to lie, it’s a bit of a concern given how relentless City have been so far this season. At times they’ve been incredible while on other occasions, such as at Wembley on Monday, they’ve done just enough, but it all adds up to an ominous opening to proceedings by the champions. Now comes a slog of a stretch and pitted alongside Liverpool, they have the inside lane and the wind behind their backs.

That’s what made City’s most recent victory a kick in the nuts for Reds. Having seen Liverpool beat Cardiff on Saturday, we tuned in to the game against Spurs hoping - expecting, even - that Mauricio Pochettino’s men would do us a favour by at least securing a draw. But instead they were beaten having conceded an early Riyad Mahrez goal and then failing to take one of the clear-cut chances that came their way on a cold evening in north London. City, in turn, marched back to the top of the table. 

It was a less-than-sparkling performance by the men in purple but neither were they lucky to win. Mahrez’s goal was a peach while the two Silvas - David and Bernardo - were yet again excellent. Oh and Kevin de Bruyne came off the bench and delivered some lovely passes. Great. 

It was soon after the final whistle that Simon and I got into it on Twitter, and one thing he wrote that I most certainly do not agree with is the sentiment that City’s win will “deflate Liverpool completely.” No chance. The players are doing incredibly well despite not delivering consistently good displays while us fans - tricky motorway journeys aside - are absolutely loving what we’re watching right now. A proper team with proper players and a proper manager. Sorry Simon, but you don’t deflate that with a 1-0 win on an NFL college field.

One other thing - the fourth of City’s four straight home games in November is the Manchester derby. United are a bit of a mess right now but they’ll be well and truly up for that one, and if last season’s title party-crashing result at the Eithad is anything to go by, a win for Jose Mourinho’s men in red simply cannot be ruled out, whatever the circumstances.

For City, snuggled up under a blanket in front of a roaring home fire, it could prove the most awkward and influential variable of all. 

Sachin Nakrani



31st October 2018    There must have been a Koppite or two watching City’s smooth progress through Touchdown Territory on Monday and hoping for a loose divot or a parched bit of NFL trampled turf to trip City’s aristocrats up. Instead the ludicrously poor pitch came to City’s partial rescue, flicking a ball that Eric Lamela was about to plant in the net for a Tottenham equaliser playfully onto the Argentinean’s shins. The result, a ball over the bar instead of under it, will have produced more than just the isolated groan from those of a Liverpool persuasion.

Liverpool – fans and players alike – will have been looking to Spurs to upset the smooth progress of the league leaders. They will have been thinking that here was a venue, a team, a manager and now a wonderfully dilapidated pitch that could cause some serious bother.

That it did not and City sailed serenely back to the top of the league must have an effect.

My co-writer begged to differ after the game, but I put that down to the adverse effects of Lemsip. In the cold light of Tuesday morning, there was nowhere for Liverpool followers to gain succour. The highly publicised best-ever Premier League start continues to yield "only" second place. The dailies joined in on this theme and, if they dare to read the growing statistical evidence, Liverpool supporters will see clear evidence City are improving on last seasons record-breaking totals too.

But, Liverpudlians are a stout lot. The players are strong and positive. The fight goes on. It’s a marathon not a tea dance etc etc, but somewhere inside these little occurances start to eat away at your self-belief and the first step in the war of minds was taken on Monday night, when all the ingredients were in place and still the soup didn’t boil over.

City now embark on a potentially pivotal four-game home run, while Liverpool set sail for Paris, Belgrade and Hertfordshire. You can argue that it makes little difference, but I would disagree. It makes a difference alright and it is the little differences that will separate the great teams come the end of the season. Nobody expects any of the continent’s big hitters to be weakened by doubt at this stage of the season; nobody expects them to be frozen with fear or paralysed by turns of events so seemingly small and insignificant.

And yet the nagging thoughts persist.

What are you supposed to do? Ignore it? Turn it into a positive? The great philosophers, the coaching gurus would always have a bon mot to make everyone feel ok with themselves, but for all this to have its desired effect on the brain, a kernel of truth has to be seen. You cannot keep bashing on about doing your own work and seeing every problem as a challenge if bloody City just keep on winning away, even in London (a thing incidentally in this writer’s experience, they never ever used to do). Suddenly they cannot stop.

City’s numbers are beginning to look ominous. Skysports published a graphic showing many of City’s hugely impressive stats from last season are being improved upon this. If this continues, it will need much more than positive thinking to keep Liverpool close on City’s lightly stepping heels. 


And then there’s the small issue of City not actually hitting top gear yet. That’s not even worth contemplating, is it?

A slice of Iain Dowie’s Bouncebackability might at some point be needed by Klopp's men, although the difficulty for Liverpool is there is nothing to bounce back from. They are winning more regularly than they have ever done in the Premier League era. The goals are flowing. It is impressively easy. Against Cardiff, four goals were dispatched despite a low-key performance which did not drain the players’ energy levels unduly. Neil Warnock’s assertions that his team could never win at Anfield played true. Psychology at work again, but in reverse Warnock gear.

Football twitter - and footballers’ twitter in particular - is full of anodyne fripperies about “going again” and “keeping one’s chin up”, but it is what these individuals are really thinking that we need to know. Did Herr Klopp drop finally into bed and say to his wife in the dark “Do you know, I don't think we are ever going to get past these buggers”? We will never know, although the image is a troubling one and now I’m stuck with it.

If Frau Klopp turned wearily over to face his delicately lined features and whispered, “Liebling, setbacks are actually progress in disguise,” before falling into deep and rewarding sleep, then the power of positive thought may well still be alive and well Chez Klopp. Whether everyone else can remain quite so buoyant as the winter closes in around us, only time will tell.      
  
My own frazzled mind floats off to thoughts of what that master mind-bender Bill Shankly would have said in circumstances like this. Perhaps his most poignant quote “If you are first you are first. If you are second, you are nothing…” might be better left unsaid in the present circumstances.

Simon Curtis


Thursday, October 25, 2018

DISPATCHES FROM THE OTHER SIDE 9


Notes on the 2018-19 title race with a different perspective. Writing with (and about) the enemy. By Sachin Nakrani and Simon Curtis

Being Lucky



24th October 2018 – Liverpool’s turgid weekend win at Huddersfield seemed to contain very little of that magic Klopp sparkle, carrying instead a healthy portion of good fortune. A turning point? Or a team hanging on for dear life until things - and crucial players’ form – decide to take a turn for the better?

There were no lucky moments for the game to pivot on, as happened at the Etihad with strange refereeing and an even stranger second goal, but you got the distinct feeling that this was a Liverpool performance that would have warranted nul points had they been playing anybody but dire second season syndrome Huddersfield Town.

With Firmino and Mane missing, things looked rubbery and warped. Adam Lallana pranced and postured and Daniel Sturridge did broadly the same. Little Salah, carrying the weight of the world now he is the planet's darling, looked leaden once again. Cement in his boots, apart from one crucial frisky finish that reminded us all that he can still do it.

But doing it, on a regular basis, he is not and, boy does that make a difference to how forbidding Liverpool look.

The drubbing of Red Star Belgrade may well be the catalyst the Kop has been waiting for. More Salah goals (50 from 65 now), a lightening of step and things beginning to look good again. Luck, as Liverpool know, plays its part in these crucial, pivotal moments that can change a season for the better or worse, or kick-start a new direction. On this occasion, it was the luck of playing Huddersfield and Red Star, two of the worst participants in the respective competitions that Liverpool faced them in. 

The mind goes back to Mark Robbins for Manchester United at Forest and Adrian Heath for Everton at Oxford United, two cup games that saw ultimately iconic managers possibly one more defeat away from calamity. Messrs Ferguson and Kendall survived to become serial winners with their respective clubs, but it was close and they were lucky.

Luck played its part for the great Liverpool sides too. When you’re properly good, things tend to just drift your way. Subliminal bubbles build up in officials’ brains, causing delirium and the taking of decisions that they would not normally entertain.

The illegal challenge
The mind drifts again, this time even further back, to the throbbing cauldron that was Maine Road on the night of 14th January 1981. Yes, when luck goes against you, you don’t readily forget, even nearly 40 years on. If you're going to bear a grudge, bear it properly. 

Amongst Liverpool supporters of that generation, the name probably deserves a mere flicker of attention. For any City fans there that night, however, it is a name that resonates as forcefully and clearly as if someone had just hit you over the head with a bin lid.

ALF GREY. For it is he.

For Mr Grey was the upright, quasi-military-looking fellow, who managed single-handedly to whistle City out of a hard-fought, mud and feathers League Cup semi final with Liverpool.

This was the well-oiled Liverpool, the goal-scoring machine of the 70s that steamrollered all-comers. Even with proper referees you knew you were in for a torrid time. City, busy beginning a bad run against Liverpool which – quite incredibly -endures to this day, were on the up with new manager John Bond, who had been asked to wipe the memories of the failed Malcolm Allison experiment.

City, fast out of the traps, were one-up inside three minutes, or at least that is what the heaving Kippax believed. Grey had other ideas, though, and did very much what Jonathan Moss did at the Etihad last weekend: he bottled the big decision in favour of the big club. Inventing a push from Kevin Reeves which nobody had seen, the man in black ruled out the goal and asked Ray Clemence if he’d like to take a free kick instead.

Oddly, this moment not only stained a chunk of my childhood, it has remained as a shadow across my life ever since. That City still cannot shake the Liverpool hoodoo only serves to make the whole shebang more personal, more evil-smelling and more painful. 

Of course, City didn't make it to Wembley. That disallowed goal and a late winner for the visitors, stemming from a free kick that only Alf Grey understood the geometry of, sank the Blues and the lung-busting draw at Anfield in the second leg did not suffice.  

But ask any Liverpool fan and they will remember instances like that at every ground they visited. Referees, administrators, they are all agog in the face of winners. Which special alignment of the planets allowed United to go 300 years at Old Trafford without conceding a penalty? Liverpool were similarly well treated in the 70s and 80s. They earned it, you scream. These things even themselves out, you stammer. Fruit and nuts, I reply. It is the simple dazzling light of the star manager, the whiff of victory from David Silva’s armpits that send them off kilter. After years of bitter defeat and gales of laughter as Mark Clattenburg and Chris Foy dealt swiftly with our fragile hopes, things are on the move for City now. Liverpool too, with Klopp’s charming teeth and that persuasive breeze of sound off the Kop, can still rely on soft refereeing skills to see them right when the going gets tough.

It is folklore and hokus pokus of this kind that keep us all chattering, of course. Some souls even think songs can win them matches. In the long run, however, the Premier League will be won by the best team, not the luckiest one.  

  Simon Curtis



24th October 2018    There are several ways in which a club knows it has hit the big time. Great players, great goals, great wins ... great trophies. Another is absolutely and utterly getting away with it against a smaller side.

Welcome to the big time, Manchester City.

Bloody hell, that was some display by Jonathan Moss at the Eithad Stadium on Saturday, failing to act on two shocking challenges on Burnley players, from Vincent Kompany and Leroy Sane, as well as allowing City a goal when it should have been ruled out given David Silva was practically in a different part of Manchester as he delivered the cross from which Bernardo Silva made it 2-0.

It would be foolish to suggest Moss’s non-calls affected the overall outcome - City were yet again excellent and would have triumphed one way or another. But the referee’s ineptitude no doubt contributed to the size of the scoreline, as well as posing a broader question - would City have got those decisions in a different era, specifically the one before all the money and trophies?

It’s possible. After all, referees regularly deliver shocking decisions in all manner of games and circumstances, but there was something distinctly distinct about Moss’s display - that of a man whose mind had been swayed by where he was and who his hosts where.

It happens to the best of us. Literally. As a Liverpool fan there have been numerous games over the years when I’ve looked on with silent surprise and relief as a referee has totally allowed us to get away with one. A penalty not given when one of our defenders has clearly tripped one of the opposition attackers in the box, a red card not shown when one of our midfielders has taken out one of theirs, an offside not called when one of our forwards is, well, offside. You get away with a lot more when you have a lot more kudos, and especially at home.  

Just look at Arsenal’s 3-1 win against Leicester at the Emirates - fully deserved but how did Chris Kavanagh, the referee, not see Rob Holding’s handball in the first half? He was in the perfect position. The only explanation is that in the critical half-a-second he had to make a decision, Kavanagh remembered where he was, mulled over the grief he’d get for pointing to the spot and decided to pretend he hadn’t seen an obvious offence. In short, he bottled it.

So City are not the first, and will certainly not be the last, big team to find a friend in the man who is supposed to be officiating one of their games with complete neutrality and professionalism. And, for sure, any team that wins the title requires a bit of luck along the way, no matter how brilliant they are. Think back to the Manchester United sides that won title after title in the 1990s - they were supreme but it was definitely a bit odd how the opposition never got a penalty at Old Trafford.

So City remain top and it only helps their cause that Kevin de Bruyne is back from injury. But Liverpool are right on their tails despite not playing particularly well and having the harder run of games, and the next set of fixtures could lead to a notable shift given Jurgen Klopp’s men are at home to Cardiff while those belonging to Pep Guardiola travel to Tottenham for a Monday night showdown at Wembley. 

A tough assignment for City, who were immaculate in victory over Shakhtar Donetsk in midweek but may require a bit of luck  to succeed against Spurs. As Burnley can testify, it wouldn’t be the first time.

Sachin Nakrani




Thursday, October 18, 2018

HITTING THE BAR

Manchester City versus Burnley. 

Even in terrible times, the sight of Burnley heaving into view was always an invigorating moment.  

The mind turns to goals, barrowloads of goals, banged in from all directions in all conditions, mainly - it has to be said - by Shaun Goater. This is a fixture, when all is said and done, that has been kind to City for many a long decade. 

But, there is also something else that will not go away, despite the merrily flailing limbs of Paolo Wanchope and the shuddering posts and bars. In a roundabout way, it also features a bar too, although this one wasn't quivering after a Carlos Tevez thunderbolt

Despite Shaun Goater's annual party-piece, the avalanche of goals year after year, an act of weapons grade shenanigans by a Burnley player still comes to mind. Step forward - for it is near-on impossible to shake off the memory, Mr Kevin McDonald esquire.

McDonald's name will forever be associated with the 2010 Turf Moor fixture that saw City rush out of the traps and into a scarcely credible 5-0 half time lead. It had been 3-0 after just seven minutes, with many away fans still taking their seats. If Burnley had always been reasonably pliable opponents, on this occasion they were constructed from guacamole.  

With the home side trying their best to stay on their feet in the face of Roberto Mancini's increasingly rampant team and weather conditions that could fairly be termed inclement making the pitch look more and more like nearby Lake Windermere, it soon became clear that a possible abandonment was the home team's only real hope of salvation. 

Burnley were not helped by the presence in goal of Brian Jensen, a Dane built like an outside lavatory, who, as the BBC kindly  put it that evening, "seemed to be betrayed by poor handling". This was a phrase, often put in slightly less eloquent terms, that attached itself to the burly Jensen like chip paper to a brand new pair of Adidas Gazelles.

McDonald contemplates life in a northern town 
McDonald, however, had his own abandonment already in mind and, by half time, as his bedraggled team mates made it to the shelter of the steaming Turf Moor dressing room for a quiet cup of tea and a vol-au-vent with their famously laid-back manager Brian Laws, he was already harbouring a plan of his own to blunt the drama.
Laws, famous for fostering all-or-nothing team spirit at Grimsby, where he had once laid more than jazz hands on the individualistic Ivano Bonneti during a frank tactical appraisal of the Italian's forward play, leaving him with a fractured cheek bone, cannot have been overly taken with Burnley's first half showing. 

When he issued the magic words, "Kevin, If you don't mind too much, I'd rather not see you out on the park second half," McDonald's plan began to take shape. By the time Steven Fletcher bagged Burnley's consolation goal on 71 minutes to make it 6-1, McDonald had joined his father in the near-by 110 Club  and was watching the live action via its big screen, while delving heartily into a variety of salted snacks.

The intake of beer and peanuts helped crystalize some other basic thought processes, however, and McDonald's public repentance was soon being splashed across the morning's press in erudite and respectful tones: 
"I now realise it was naive, disrespectful and totally wrong of me to leave the ground at half-time on Saturday, It was a gross misjudgement and instead I should have remained at Turf Moor to support my club and team-mates.
"I acknowledge that I also showed a serious lack of respect to all the fans who were at the ground and who pay good money to watch their team play. I would like to apologise to the players, management and supporters and I have accepted my punishment. In closing, I would like to reassure all supporters that I am fully committed to helping the team as we fight to stay in the Premier League."
The under-21 international, bought at some expense from Dundee, was soon on his way, with manager Laws not far beyond him. Burnley finished the season relegated. Laws next post was at Shamrock Rovers, where you presume beer was not exactly frowned upon. 

McDonald  resurrected his career without the need for in-match pub visits at Wolves and now resides at Fulham, where he is an occasional starter in Slavisa Jokanovic's flamboyant side. 

****

Saturday, 3 April 2010  -- Premier League

Burnley
1-6
City
(HT 0-5)
Fletcher 71
Adebayor 4
Bellamy 5
Tevez 7
Vieira 20
Adebayor 45
Kompany 58

Raining goals








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