A Manager Isn't Just For Christmas

For me, a successful trip to the supermarket would involve walking the distance from my house to Tesco without getting flattened by a bus, picking up most of the items on my list, maybe snagging a two-for-one on Müller Rice and paying without the cashier instructing me to enter my PIN before my fingers have even been given the option. God I hate that.

I digress. I also get the feeling Roman Abramovich wouldn't entrust me with his weekly shop. Not only would he expect me to purchase the basics, he'd also want a couple of dinners from the Finest range, Parma ham off the bone, an informed yet expressive selection of New World wines, three different types of tomato and change from a twenty. In other words, he'd want it all and he'd want it well before the use-by date.

Back in the real world, the man no longer trusted by Abramovich to bring home the bacon is Carlo Ancelotti, double winner just twelve short months ago and now merely the picture lining a million fish suppers, his humble façade smeared with chip grease and stamped with the loneliest word in management: “sacked”. ‘That was a bit hasty’ seems to be the general public reaction to the Italian’s dismissal and I’d struggle to argue – after all, it’s not like any of the top Premier League sides truly fired on all cylinders this year. Lest we forget, this was a season where even the eventual champions were eminently beatable on the road throughout. Surely Ancelotti hadn't gone stale already? Well apparently he had and Roman has spoken. Metaphorically of course – the man has remained so relentlessly mute over the past eight years it wouldn't surprise me if Ron Gourlay calls his own mother for him.

So what exactly is Roman looking for in a manager? If it's Champions League pedigree then he's just fired a man with far more than most. If it's a long-term project he's after then scouting for a seventh manager in eight years hardly seems like the most obvious route toward stability. The recruitment of Fernando Torres and final day omission of Didier Drogba might have hinted at such forward thinking, but then why sack the manager that brought the Spaniard in after only finishing second? Unfortunately for Carlo, the warning signs were there throughout the season. Following the club’s refusal to renew Ray Wilkins' contract, the manager's office at Cobham must have become an even lonelier place than usual as Abramovich continued his fine impression of the pickiest lonely hearts hopeful in the universe.

Of course the purchase of Torres needn't necessarily be a reflection of the owner's intentions when it comes to current and future managers, and El Niño will obviously be available for the next lucky incumbent to enjoy. All the same, it's a pricey welcome present for someone who, in all honesty, Abramovich probably won't even plan on keeping around for long, like buying your new neighbour one of those impractically large fruit baskets before reporting them to the council for not putting the recycling bins out correctly. Chelsea is a strange footballing suburb these days – all price and expectation, and lacking in a little bit of decency and human touch.

Indeed, in sampling the online reaction to Ancelotti’s dismissal, I've found numerous comments from Chelsea fans – nestled at the bottom of articles and piled high on forums – claiming that, as exciting as the last seven or eight seasons have been, deep down they kind of pine for the days when a glamorous foreign signing came in the form of Jakob Kjeldbjerg.

So in light on Ancelotti's perceived 'failure', you have to wonder just how much enough really is. How do you measure success at the top of the English pile now that owner’s eyes are blinded by sparkly cartoon dollar signs? Roberto Mancini will be guiding Manchester City into the Champions League next term, yet even though he achieved this season’s prime goal and more, you get the feeling he’s not exactly secure in his position. Such is the precarious nature of next year's task, that a wobbly start will quite possibly see him turfed aside, his chair vacated for someone else to get comfy in whilst playing with Sheikh Mansour’s squillions.

But then maybe it’s all about how you sell the gig? Advertise the Chelsea job right, and it could be the most attractive vacancy in the land. Every manager knows they’ve got a trigger happy owner with more Euros than sense, that he’ll be inheriting a talent-rich squad to which he’ll be permitted one or two tastefully selected additions, and he’ll be out on his ear if he doesn’t hand everyone else a pasting by the middle of May. Don’t think of it as a new start, but more as a secondment – enjoy the wage rise and the corner office while it lasts, because before long you'll be back at your old desk with twelve month's worth of emails to sort through.

Still, poor old Carlo. He made a distinctly dislikeable team (and I say this as a Manchester United supporter) vaguely likeable, and brought a relaxed, it’s-only-a-game attitude to pre- and post-match briefings. He had an air of considered dignity about him. He’s been there and done it and doesn’t need to prove anything to anyone. He’s gone now – ditched with Gold and Sullivan-esque cold efficiency – but I imagine he’ll be just fine. His exit left little room for sentiment, but then I shouldn’t imagine he’d be willing to accept it anyway.

Sentimentality – or the lack of it – has become a bit of a recurring theme for departing coaches recently. A little over a week ago Avram Grant was relieved of his managerial duties having barely completed his handshaking ones at the Dave Whelan Leisure Centre, while Ancelotti was dismissed as he stepped out of the Goodison Park press room. “I have to wait and see what happens”, said the Italian only minutes beforehand. If there’s one thing you can’t criticise the Chelsea hierarchy for, it’s leaving a man twiddling his thumbs. What Abramovich perhaps needs to understand is that there may come a point where ruthlessness must be balanced out with a little bit of patience. History suggests that empires aren’t built in a day. Annoyingly for Roman, they can collapse with relative haste.

Unfortunately, sentimentality is possibly the one thing that may prevent Guus Hiddink from emotionally re-engaging with Chelsea now that the ‘position vacant’ sign is once again propped up in the window. We liked Guus – just as we liked Carlo – so his reappointment would be welcomed by the neutral. But there's a down side too. So perfect was the Dutchman's rescue job two years ago that he will be forever loved at the Bridge. If he returned and things 'went a bit Scolari’, he’d almost certainly retain the backing of the fans, but less so that of the man upstairs. Hiddink departed into the west London sunset a hero. Would he really want to waltz back in to face the cold light of day, the one which shows up all those little imperfections which under the orangey haze of victory appear more like charming blemishes than unsightly flaws? If he comes back and things don't go as planned, it'll be less bag for life and more sack for Christmas. And you can be sure Roman will be keeping the receipt.

~ Matt

Technology! There's Nothing To Be Scared Of...

And there I was hoping to enjoy a nice game of football. No such luck. As Frank Lampard’s speculative punt dipped harmlessly toward the Tottenham goal early on Saturday evening, you would think I'd be forgiven for assuming Spurs would greet the break with their lead intact and we could all make a nice cup of tea without those two hideous, haunting words – goal-line technology – so much as registering on our collective caffeinated consciousness. And then it all went Gomes-shaped. Flipping into off-mode, the Brazilian produced his best impression of, well, himself and within a handful of agonising seconds, the whole putrid topic came rushing back into my previously calm and would-be PG Tips-fuelled world. It truly is the debate which, like a prolonged bowel irritation, simply won't go away.

The post-match interviews did nothing to calm my angst, introducing me as they did to the dizzying phenomena of agreeing with Harry Redknapp. “We can put a man on the moon” mused Redknapp Snr, “but we can't decide if a ball crossed the line.” Apollo conspiracies aside, 'arry really does have a point. Those of us in support of goal-line technology have been screaming our “how hard can it be?” mantra from the rooftops for what feels like our entire football-watching lives and yet, seriously, how hard can it be? It was almost a relief that Chelsea's winning strike came from an offside position, as not only did it proffer a welcome alternative flashpoint for observers to get grouchy over, but it also dropped into my lap a neat example of the differing circumstances under which technology should and should not be applied.

I'll try my best to explain. When it comes to marrying artificial intelligence with officiating, the defining factor for me has always been the issue of how much human influence there remains to be exerted at any one moment of a match. Essentially, when Gomes stopped the ball on his own line, there was, quite simply, no more human part to be played before a goal could be awarded or not. His glove grasped the ball and that was it – the last possible point of player interaction on the field had been and gone. A watershed had been reached and all that remained was a solitary question of rule adherence: goal or no goal? Conversely, where Salomon Kalou's late winner is concerned, the point of contention occurred when player influence could still be exerted. Could a Spurs defender have intercepted Didier Drogba's sliced effort before it arrived at Kalou's feet? And even if they couldn't, Kalou may still have gone on to miss from merely yards out, showing the kind of human fallibility that Gomes exhibited, which would surely be the major subject of debate if only his blunder had travelled those few extra inches.

My point is that using any form of artificial expertise to verify an offside decision would nullify some remaining potential for human success and error – the entire point and requirement for sport to exist. In the case of a goal-line decision, the players have, offensively and defensively, done as much as they possibly can. Once you get to that point, let the technology do the rest. Similarly, the theme of potential influence should go for the poor officials too. Linesman Mike Cairns, the fellow at the centre of Saturday's goal award, has been heavily criticised for making a decision which he couldn't possibly see. He was level with the Chelsea defence, prowling for offsides – exactly where he should have been. He tried to do too much, making a gamble he shouldn't have in the process. If anything, Cairns overstretched his homo sapien faculties when really they'd reached the limit of their function.  

The idea is about taking the game as far as it can until human influence runs its course. Admittedly it's a tricky principle to pin down but it feels to me like a genuine way for technology to support rather than supersede officials. The money and the pressure and the scrutiny at the top level of the game should be reflected by a similarly heightened level of adjudication. Alas, where the game has stepped on, so the tools potentially available to cope with its acceleration have been wilfully ignored. This inevitably makes villains of good men while worse men shake their spears and blindly protect some vague sense of adjudicatory tradition, aspects of which have long become unfit for duty.

And really, we're the ones who suffer the most. This weekend's Goals On Sunday featured Jimmy Bullard and his lovely hair chewing the technological fat with former GMTV anchor Ben Shephard and Chris 'voice of sanity' Kamara. Freeze the screen you'd glimpse a chilling vision of the kind of sentence-mangling, point-missing pseudo-debate such incidents expose us unlucky souls to. Why does Fifa allow us to be tormented by such visual and aural atrocities time after time? Maybe they take some perverse pleasure in this sort of cruel and unusual punishment? Maybe they just hate us. Suffice it to say, I was soon reaching for the kettle.

Bullard commented that it’s tricky to draw a line as to where technology should stop, which – intentionally or not – alluded to the question of equal use across different levels of the game. As Martin Tyler so correctly commented later in the weekend, the argument that it would need to be the same in the park as it is in the stadium simply doesn't hold water. To the best of my knowledge there's no Hawkeye available at my local nets and no mic’d-up officials conversing over tries on my old school playing fields, yet grassroots cricket and rugby seem to be holding up perfectly fine thank you. These sports may face their own myriad problems, but not having the luxury of hi-tech replay systems for amateur fixtures certainly isn't one of them.

As with most things, there's a bigger picture to look at too. The introduction of insta-decision technology can also help apply a soothing balm over other inflamed patches of the game's epidermis. The ugly spectacle of players surrounding referees, harassing linesman and generally being sweary and belligerent is one which none of us enjoy witnessing and certainly paints the game in a unfavourable light to outsiders, and yet one of the times when this becomes most visible is when a goal – the most crucial yes/no decision in any single match, let's not forget – is allowed or not, usually under a broiling confusion of sightlines and inches. And where does that lead us? Back to the debating table, of course.

We should be booking and sending off such offenders!, pundits country-wide argue. We should be making an example of this sort of behaviour!, journos furiously scribe. Maybe so, but what if for once we decided to treat the cause instead of the symptom? What if we did the best we could to prevent these situations arising in the first place? If somehow we could cast an all-seeing, electronic eye across the width of the posts, we'd surely eliminate one of the most unseemly and controversial occurrences in the game. It would slow the game down!, various dissenters harrumph. Really? Never mind the twenty seconds it would take to make such a call, how about the ninety or more forever lost waiting for remonstrations and referee-chasing to subside? Players need to be role-models!, critics demand, handily forgetting that footballers ply their trade in a sport which, due to it's unwillingness to embrace certain aspects of the modern world, doesn't exactly project the image of a progressive future to which the young can aspire.

So why not smile for the camera? In fact, who says we even need a camera at all? A sensor in the ball and one in the goal, and football would have its own giant leap for Redknapp to be proud of. Sure we'd lose some of the drama and the pub-debate, but it's not as if football's vast well of talking points will ever run dry. We'd end up with a fairer sport, fewer beleaguered officials, a drop in disciplinary cases to answer and more time spent kicking a ball than arguing over it. Now there’s an alternative system to vote for.

~ Matt