Let's Stay Together

I'm going to begin with a confession. I've been a little bit down on football recently. It's still been there – still happening, still occurring in front of my eyes – but over the past few months I've become increasingly concerned that the spark has, if not gone, then certainly faded. I think routine has bred contempt. Saturday night comes and goes and there I slump in front of Match Of The Day and it's all very familiar – Lineker punning away, Hansen immaculately trousered, Lawro staring mournfully off into the middle distance like a man in his dotage failing to recall a cherished childhood memory. Alan Shearer might've been there too but I didn't really notice.

And there I would remain for the duration, watching but only half watching, listening but with an ear on other things. As recent weeks passed, I'd found that football and myself had stopped communicating – we'd pass each other in the doorway, enquire about each other's day, but in my heart I could feel a coldness setting in. Then, one lonely Sunday afternoon while the football was out seeing friends (no doubt complaining about my recent lack of attentiveness) I found myself giving in to a dark temptation. Reader, I watched the rugby. I can only apologise – it was a mistake, a moment of weakness. And while I want to say it didn't mean anything, I just can't stand the lies any more – in my heart of hearts, I feel that maybe it did. Football, I think we need to talk.

It wasn't just televised football that had left me treading water. Each time I clicked on a website or opened a paper (old school, I know) it felt like I was just going through the same old motions, finding myself gripped with a sense of grim inevitability. Everywhere I looked it was all racism this and fascism that, diving and cheating, match-fixing and hand-wringing, anger and administration. You name them, there they were – the grand, ominous signifiers of a game sliding towards soft oblivion and a fan slipping towards discontent.

Speaking of fascism (or not, whatever), what Paolo Di Canio's appointment as Sunderland boss stirred in me more than politico-outrage was a sense of sadness for his predecessor Martin O'Neill. I've always been a big fan of O'Neill. He comes across as a man of integrity, one who appealed to my fondness for an outsider, a decent gent with the aura of a slightly distant, dough-hearted nerd – the kind of man who might spend the post-Queen's speech hours of Christmas Day completing his nephew's Rubik's cube before retreating to the garage to continue work on that radio-controlled mechanism thingy for the cat flap. Sure he can be blinkered when things aren't going his team's way, but then which manager isn't? I hope he isn't away for long.

Even the furore surrounding Di Canio's appointment felt, to me, forced and somewhat puffed up – not quite manufactured, but still twisted out of all logical shape. Di Canio's (re)elevation to the status of footballing controversy de jour seemed fair enough on the surface. No one doubts he made signals to Lazio's ultras. It's irrefutable that he's made pretty blunt statements in the past, laying his political allegiances bare for all to see. We all know his history. But this all seemed to be OK as long as he was managing Swindon Town. Little old Swindon! With their lower league pluck and their “oh isn't the manager just nutty!” charm. But now he's in the Premier League and it's Big News. Whether his self-confessed fascination with Mussolini is similar to the “say what you like about Hitler, but he knew how to get results” pseud-bellendery that gets thrown around from time to time, or something deeper-rooted altogether, we will probably never know for sure, as it's his life and his politics, whether we agree with them or not.

His appointment has been framed as an affront to the good, working people of Sunderland. I wouldn't dare speak for the club's supporters, but I do wonder, if he keeps them in the top flight, whether he'll be lowered back down to the level of “lol, crazy foreign guy!” and the political fancies will be put on the backburner until the first time results start to dip? I guess it might be helpful if he took the time to really clarify his worldviews, but that's his choice – and we wouldn't want to get all fascist about it, would we?

Anyway, the coverage of the “mess” at Sunderland had only served to heighten my angst, and it was becoming increasingly clear that my relationship with football was reaching a critical impasse. Cohabiting but not communicating – the river of passion running cruelly dry before my very eyes – something had to give. Indeed, it was almost through force of habit that I tuned into Borussia Dortmund's Champions League quarter final second leg against Malaga earlier this week. Dortmund – very much this season's football hipster's team of choice (see Athletic Bilbao, 2011/12) – will always hold a special place in the hearts of my generation, their glorious 1997 Champion's League victory coming at the expense of a star-studded Juventus team and rounded off by Lars Ricken's iconic instant-impact strike. And that kit! Lovely wasn't it?

Dortmund's victory in '97, ironically enough, owed much to a squad assembled in no small part from ex-Bundesliga players returning home from Serie A, the league which had dominated European club football for the first half of the decade. The team that night included former Juve team-mates Jurgen Kohler, Paulo Sousa, Andreas Moller and Stefan Reuter, whilst two-goal hero Karl-Heinze Riedle and the great Matthias Sammer were recruited from Lazio and Sampdoria respectively. Their triumphant homecoming provided a slap in the face to Serie A's presumed (although probably correctly so) status as the best league in the world. Today many would argue that the Bundesliga stands above its Italian counterpart, but to see this current Dortmund team go all the way would be something to savour for sure.

Their current line-up gives off a comforting, home-spun feel. Robert Lewandowski, brought in for a snip at a reported 4.5m euros, is the envy of European football's nouveau riche, Mario Götze and Marco Reus are proper homegrown heroes, whilst Mats Hummels was pilfered from rivals Bayern Munich as a youngster and has come of age at the Westfalenstadion. It's a state of affairs which brings to mind the great pre-Bosman Ajax squad of 1995, a ridiculously talented collective which still reads like a who's-who of 90s European football: Davids, Kluivert, Van Der Sar, Seedorf, the de Boer twins, to mention but a handful.

The immediate close-season shade which followed that Ajax side's moment in the sun saw the team begin to splinter, its young talents lured away to – you guessed it – Italy (a couple, in fact, to Milan, the team they defeated to conquer Europe). With the continent's new transfer regulations allowing many to leave for no fee at all, Ajax's well-worn modus operandi was thrown into a tailspin, its side ransacked, the club's walls stripped for copper. For a club built on producing great players, leading them to glory, then selling for a handsome profit, it remains concerning that Ajax still haven't completely recovered from the exodus of their last great side. Players such as Shinji Kagawa and Nuri Sahin have already moved on from Dortmund in recent years and I imagine similar departures will occur this coming summer, but perhaps the Bundesliga's growing reputation will help keep them together for a little while longer yet.

But where was I? Ah yes, Tuesday night. With Dortmund on the brink of premature ejection thanks to a dubious offside call (and, to be fair, 180 rather underwhelming minutes' play) something great occurred. Trickiness was given the old heave-ho and in its place came the kind of route-one, long-range ballistics operation North Korea can (we hope) only dream of. The resultant injury time goal-explosion was a joy to behold; the celebrations at the final whistle a simple portrait of joy unconfined.

Facing the media post-match, Dortmund coach Jurgen Klopp could barely contain his delight, looking as disheveled as a city banker who just left his bonus behind the local bar, and so overcome with raw emotion that he even seemed to forget that he wears glasses. Grinning from ear-to-ear, mugging to camera, laughing uproariously and swaying back and forth, you got the feeling that at any moment he could have reached for his top hat and cane, twirled himself around the nearest lamppost and gone full-on Fred Astaire on us. Lord knows what he'll be like if they win the thing.

Chief executives of the Premier League, let's bring this man over here. On second thought, let's not. We'll only contrive to break his spirit and squeeze from him the zeal and childlike efflorescence he so exudes. It's what we do best.

Before heading back out the tunnel to gather his thoughts (which I assume remain scattered across all four corners of the ground – he's probably still got some stuck to his shoe) Klopp looked to the camera one final time and declared that this was “one of the best things I've ever felt,” before turning and disappearing into the cool German night. As I sat and watched, I realised that any man who failed to be moved by such an outpouring is truly no friend of mine. In that instant it occurred to me that football, for all its dark arts and cheap attire, maybe isn't so bad after all. The little things I fell in love with – the madcap managers; the late, great comebacks; the simple pleasure of triumph over adversity – are still there, still speaking to me, still singing me to sleep as the night draws in. I think the beautiful game and I are going to give it another go.

~ Matt

https://twitter.com/MattAwayNow

The Quick Fix

This past Monday it was revealed that Europol – not purveyors of brooding, angular indie rock, but rather European Union law enforcers par excellence – have been picking through the rotten bones of over six hundred professional football matches across the globe whose outcomes, it is believed, were fixed. The headline domestically is that a Champions League game played on these shores in “the last three or four years” is among them, as well as several World Cup and European Championship qualifiers and a selection of top-flight European league fixtures. Depressing reading for anyone hoping that high profile, top flight match-fixing cases of recent years were behind us, as the depth and breadth of these revelations appear to reveal a systematic, structured and skilled web of financial misdeeds. “It would be naïve and complacent of those in the UK to think such a criminal conspiracy does not involve the English game”, stated Europol director Rob Wainwright with all the warmth and compassion of a stairwell kneecapping. Not that I'm blaming him – he's only doing his job, and right now it's one nobody amongst us envies in the slightest.

What we really need in such a dark moment is something to cheer us up, and so before football takes itself out to the garage one final time with a draft excluder and a length of hose, we should remember that this Wednesday sees one of those rare occasions which one feels should embody everything that is pure and good about football. That's right, it's England versus Brazil and breathe, because everything will be OK. Or will it?

For as long as I've been aware of the sport's very existence, Brazil have been football's omnipotent deity. Fire up any football console game from the early-to-mid nineties and the best team was always Brazil, despite being in the midst of a real-life slump. Much like Real Madrid when it comes to the European Cup, Brazil have only topped up their trophy haul in the fairly recent past, but even when times were tough their reputation remained intact, their status as football's glorious overlords undiminished with the passing years. The likes of Germany, Italy and Argentina may have conquered the world in the meantime, producing players of inscrutable genius along the way, but they never quite usurped Brazil from it's throne.

Like Australia with cricket or America with all those sports the rest of the world only pretends to care about, Brazil remains to this day global shorthand for footballing superiority. Ask the first stranger you meet who claims to neither know nor care about football, and they will still be able to tell you two things – that all footballers are preening, overpaid man-children, and that Brazil are the best in the world. Even when they aren't the best, they sort of still are, if you see what I mean. At times it feels almost de rigueur to wax lyrical about Brazilians.

All of which brings me to a terrible dark secret I'd like to share, which is that when it comes to Brazil I've always been left with a sense of, if not disappointment, then certainly anticlimax. Despite winning more World Cups in my lifetime than anyone else, I can't shake the sensation that the reality of contemporary Brazilian national teams falls some way short of what I expect them to be. I'm keen to turn this situation around, but to do so I should really go back to the start, so allow me if you will to indulge in some personal footballing therapy. I won't be charging for the session.

The summer of 1994 was my first real experience of Brazil as a footballing powerhouse, emerging from the thermometer-bursting heat of USA '94 triumphant thanks to a team favouring function over fireworks, constructed around the pragmatic but hardly mouth-watering defensive ideology of coach Carlos Alberto Parreira. Chief schemer Rai began the tournament as captain, but after scoring in their opening game, his prominence in proceedings drifted, finishing the tournament as an unused substitute having played only bit-part roles during the knock-out stages. In his absence the midfield remained a largely flair-less affair, dominated by Dunga and Mauro Silva, fine practitioners of their chosen fields, accomplished disruptors and constructors, but hardly names to set my youthful heart a-flutter. It was the front two that really got people talking – in a time of celebrated strike partnerships the pairing of Romario and Bebeto stood out as a sort of exotic Shearer and Sutton, replacing knock-downs with one-twos and basic hands-aloft celebrations with tightly choreographed post-goal paeans to newborn future-heroes. But that wasn't enough for me. That summer I fell in love with Baggio, Stoichkov and Hagi but not with Brazil.

1998 was much the same, although the attacking talent was far superior. Boasting Rivaldo's merciless bow-legged conjury, Roberto Carlos' thunderous tree-thighed wing charges, and of course the mercurial goal snaffling of the Original Ronaldo, this side had the tools and the talent but something never quite clicked for me. Their play felt intrinsically mechanical; a modern day blockbuster reboot of a cult classic, a strangely sexless scene-for-screen remake of something glorious and hallowed and lost. As a fourteen year old I remember racing home from school to catch Brazil in the opening game of France 98: a classic David & Goliath face-off between 'plucky' Scotland and these quick-limbed alien maestros. I've always found myself cheering for the underdog, but even as I leapt with delight as John Collins stroked home his equalising penalty, something deep within me still yearned for this Brazil team to ignite, to ascend to the footballing heavens in a blaze of warm light and dazzling step-overs, to hand out a lesson of pure sporting brilliance so epoch-defining it would echo through the deserted hallways of time long after I hoped off this mortal coil. Scotland's eventual undoing was a Tom Boyd own goal. With the greatest of respect, it was tangibly unsatisfying to see Ronaldo, Rivaldo et al put manfully in their place by Colin Calderwood and Darren Jackson.

In fairness they hit their stride eventually, but having reached their second consecutive final, it all went a bit wonky in Paris. Something murky and unpretty – something distinctly chaotic and abrasive – unstitched the mental fabric of that side on the eve of their big moment, allowing a Zidane-inspired French team who had steadily been gaining traction over the tournament's course to steamroller their way to victory, elating the natives and ushering in the modern era of muscular, all-action football-athletes: the age of Vieira and Henry, the remorseless, custom-built supermachines that have strode before us from that day forth. Four years later Brazil would emerge victorious in Yokohama, dually aided by the loose-limbed elastic impudence of Ronaldinho and the holder's mental implosion, but since then they haven't got further than the quarter-finals. Now ranked 18th in the world (behind Switzerland, Ecuador and Greece), even by Fifa's dodgy arithmetic they're struggling to be heard above the din.

I'm doing my best to not sell recent Brazil sides short, for they have produced some fine performances and a host of marvellously talented individuals. And yet it is the images I'd seen of Brazil sides of yore – the scratchy newsreel footage of Pele, Jairzinho and Carlos Alberto weaving hitherto unknown patterns; finding new angles of attack, coining fresh, elaborate entries in football's ballooning lexicon seemingly on the hoof – which left the young football fantasist in me feeling left out, like I'd turned up late for a great party. Despite the victories, despite the physics-defying set-pieces (this one, not this one), something felt amiss. Try as I did to move past it, the fact remained: this was not the Brazil I had been promised.

Bless us, we try our hardest to reignite that awe-struck spirit, but it always feels like we're faking it a bit, giving off a vaguely unpalatable sense of trying to reanimate a dead legend. Tournaments, clean-shirted studio anchors inform us, only really begin “tomorrow, when the Brazilians come to town”. We expect a trouncing; an exhibition of ancient ball-magic by a band of beatific pint-sized soccer nymphs. When they do arrive – not via hoverboard or spaceship or unicorn, but rather the humble coach – what we get is a rather limp, beige 2-0 victory, courtesy of a penalty and a header following an admittedly well-rehearsed corner routine (probably). Not that this will discourage us, for the action will inevitably be soundtracked by lustful commentary box gasps of “samba time!” as Gilberto Silva completes a routine five yard pass. It all feels a little like a faint-headed hen crowd chucking underwear at a Take That tribute act, the unsaid truth being that maybe we are trying a bit too hard to recapture something that just isn't there any more.

Or maybe I'm being a bit harsh. The very same criticisms I've aimed here could hold equally true of both Holland and Argentina, nations which produced great sides of yesteryear but who – despite the presence of some exceptionally gifted players (think Batistuta and Messi, Bergkamp and Sneijder) – have yet to produce a side to define the current era. Perhaps, tempting though it is, ages and generations shouldn't be compared, because the contrasts will somehow always show through clearer than the similarities, a state of affairs that can only, inescapably lead to dissatisfaction.

I hope I don't sound ungrateful or spoiled saying all this, because despite everything when I settle down to watch Brazil take to the field it's always with wide eyes and a butterfly stomach. When I pull up a pew my intention is still to worship and, as mentioned earlier, football has bigger things to worry about than living up to my dizzy expectations. So tomorrow I plan to enjoy a Brazilian side preparing to host it's first World Cup in more than six decades, and I'll look on with that same anxious hope I always have, perhaps even comforted somehow by two things: the knowledge that the reality of what I'll be watching may never quite match up with the legend, and the acceptance that maybe that's the point of legends in the first place. Let's just hope no-one knows the score already.

~ Matt

https://twitter.com/MattAwayNow

The Forgotten Man (or, Why I Love Joe Cole)

Welcome back to the fold, Joe Cole. We've missed you. I say 'we' – I've missed you. Not that you've really been away, rather sort of fluttering about in football's great peripheral vision. Is it only me who feels this earnest longing, whose soul weeps into a deep, Cole-shaped void? I hope I'm not alone in my yearning.

To me it feels as if Cole's professional career has always been a bit of a struggle, even when it was going well. Fifty-six England caps, three Premier League medals, and yet the struggles have remained. Be they holding down a position for club or country, or reaching for the same orbit of superstardom as his erstwhile England peers, said struggles have oft involved large portions of time spent hugging touchlines instead of weaving magic through the centre of the pitches across the land. Struggling at the touchline of genius: that's our Joe. “Where's our Joe?”, people would ask. “Over there”, would come the reply. “On the touchline. Struggling.”

Cole's wilderness years – indeed, his career arc as a whole – seem sadly indicative of English football's unerring and unnerving capacity to figuratively and literally push true creative talent to the margins (see also: Scholes, Paul). It shouldn't have been this way of course. Having burst through West Ham's youth system, Cole went the way only a bona fide English talent can: thrust into the limelight, hyped beyond all recognition, then dampened and worn down, the rough penetrative edges of his cut-glass talent sanded and buffed, moulded into an useful attacking foil but nothing more. Gradually he became an efficient attacking bit part; always the supporting role, rarely the leading man.

In those early days Cole cut a romantic figure, full of jinks and tricks and wide-eyed promise, every bit the quintessential playground footballer – a prepubescent, pre-issues Ronnie O'Sullivan in a rumpled Grange Hill blazer. Cole always gave the impression of being that kid who spent his evenings practising with his weaker foot against the garage wall while his mates hung around behind the youth club cadging cigarettes and making knob jokes. For a while he triumphed, but somewhere along the way things fell rather flat.

It's easy to forget that Cole featured in 26 league matches for Chelsea during the 2009/10 season, the club's most recent league-winning term. But his importance to the team had by then faded considerably, his subsequent move to Liverpool signalling the low point of a period of prolonged stagnation. Following a largely forgettable 2010/11 season hindered by injury and managerial upheaval, our hero headed across the channel to Lille in search of his mojo. And whilst it would have been nice to see him return styled head-to-toe in black, waspishly flicking at a Gauloise and banging on about Satre to anyone pretending to listen, his year abroad may prove to be vital (if somewhat more understated), completing as it does a circular pilgrimage back to his spiritual home.

West Ham might just be the perfect venue for Cole these days. For those who aren't regulars at Upton Park, the discovery of a Sam Allardyce side playing some actually-quite-pleasing football comes as a vaguely confusing revelation, like overhearing an accountant recite Shakespeare or finding out your mum's really into psytrance. Cole's second debut for the Hammers coincided with Manchester United's FA Cup third round visit, the man himself coming within minutes of owning the day, robbed of the match-winning accolades by Robin Van Persie's already-familiar heroics for the visitors. But this shouldn't distract from Cole's performance – two game-changing assists and a sparkling all-round display fully meriting the standing ovation his late substitution received. Post-match he stood before the ITV microphones, eyes a-bulge with adrenaline and vigour, close-cropped hairline fading imperceptibly into his stubble, chin crimson-flecked following a nasty man-clash, every bit the embattled Eastend gladiator. Our Joe was back, and not before time.

It was perhaps written that things would turn out this way. Cole, then still in his footballing adolescence, was an innocent victim of a terrible legacy, the collateral damage of the footballing market crash that was “The Golden Generation”, a man choked by the airless hope of a smothering label applied by a success-starved footballing nation. The aforementioned moniker synced perfectly with that particularly post-colonial hangover we English nurse: the uncanny ability to overhype and over-sell all that may potentially one day glitter. A crop of budding talents on their way through? So it is declared: this shall be The Golden Generation!

Despite necessarily relegating all future generations to, at best, runner up status (at worst, the level of base metal – The Copper Clan! The Lead Lineage!) the tainted, baggage-laden banner heading of Cole's peer group makes it easy to forget that he made his England debut as long ago as 2001. He has appeared at three World Cups – one more than David Seaman, two more than David Platt, three more than David May – and yet has scraped together a meagre three caps since 2008. Think back to England's midfield of 2006. There’s Frank Lampard, fellow West Ham alumni and now a Chelsea ever-present for a decade or more, celebrated as a club legend by fans desperate to keep him for longer than his current megadeal allows. Next, Steven Gerrard: the Kop hero who almost single-handedly dragged his side to a fifth European Cup and became England captain along the way. Then there’s David Beckham: globetrotting sports superbrand, replete with model wife and designer kids, who has put past indiscretions behind him to win over the cold heart of a nation which has since elevated him to Judy Dench levels of national treasure belovedness.

Poor Joe feels like the odd one out in all this, the runt of the superstar litter in many respects, a man whose time may have passed him by, overshadowed on-field and off by his glamorous contemporaries. Of course Cole is not blameless in all this. Questions have been asked throughout his career as to his application, his willingness – or lack thereof – to follow team orders. But I cling to the dream that Cole's best days could still be ahead of him. In that respect I see potentially something of the Andrea Pirlo's about him, a player who could be Cole's perfect role model. Pirlo himself started life as a floating, positionally ill-defined forward, but as times changed and the game evolved around him, he not only adapted his style to the ways of the modern era, but also helped shape it too, redefining (or perhaps un-redefining? No? Fine) the role of the midfield playmaker. In an age of zippy, sinewy, physically perfect, cookie-cutter midfield specimens, Pirlo makes for a remarkably cross-generational vision, a throwback to simpler times; a caveman-genie of patient, metronomic vision, hitch-hiking through time in a world otherwise belonging to the tweaked and the toned. And that's where Cole's possible redemption lies. In an era of flexible frontlines – of south-facing chance-conjurers and deep-lying thing-a-me-bobs – Cole’s experience as an attacking jack-of-most-trades could make him the perfect candidate for a late career renaissance.

Renowned footballer-politician Michel Platini famously commented that had Glenn Hoddle been born French, “he would have won 150 caps”, a sideswipe at England's failure to build teams around such unique creative talents. I have always felt the same to be true of Cole. Some would say that great talent is often not appreciated in its own time, which is all very well in some disciplines, but a little trickier when it comes to the here-and-now maelstrom of professional football. A great yet forgotten record can be dusted off and listened to with fresh ears, its aural spell cast on a new, accepting audience. But a long-since retired footballer has little to offer entertainment-wise once his time has passed, the footballer's eventual legacy paradoxically defined by the narrow parameters of the moment. The man's value is in what he can offer now – legacies and standing the test of time are all well and good, but the under-appreciated talents of a footballer are harder to reassess with the passing years.

Cole's time is still just about upon us, but he needs to use it wisely, lest his myriad talents be forgotten. He still has the chance to redefine his own legend, so that twenty years from now – when number nines relinquish their fashionable falsehood; when wingers invert themselves so much that they pop out the other side again – I can hold a Joe Cole retrospective and folk will travel from miles around to pay belated homage to his robust genius. “Where was our Joe?” people will ask. “Over there”, will come my reply. “On the touchline. Struggling… but that was only half the story. Say, do you remember Andrea Pirlo?”

~ Matt

https://twitter.com/MattAwayNow

Waiting In Vain

“Good evening, Mr Redknapp – we've been expecting you. Stay where you are, we'll send the lift down. No, no, don't worry about the car, we'll have someone park it for you. Remember to pop the window up – this isn't a drive-thru you know. Anyway, welcome back to the top table, it really is so good of you to join us again. I think you'll find everything much the same as you left it. Now then – waiter! Some drinks for our guest plea... oh, my apologies Senior Benitez...”

The above mixture of stock punchlines and clichéd character sketch is my own ham-fisted attempt at demonstrating the jarring disparity in reaction to the Premier League's two most recent managerial appointments. If dear old Harry Redknapp's return to top flight duty last week was somewhat less than surprising – supporters having been chanting his name during the dying hours of Mark Hughes' reign – Rafa Benitez's near-simultaneous reanimation was anything but. The re-emergence of Sandbanks' finest was always but a matter of time; Benitez's return – to an ominously chilling reception – was truly a shocker.

In a way having this pair of former favourites back in charge of Premier League clubs feels a bit like a whole bunch of recent history didn't happen, that we've really just been treading footballing water since they left their previous positions, so interwoven are their idiosyncrasies in the stitching of the Premier League era. Of course they've only stepped back into the milieu precisely because of recent events, namely the dismissals of Hughes and Roberto Di Matteo by QPR and Chelsea respectively. The scenarios they find themselves in, however, could not be more different.

Redknapp's appointment as QPR boss has been, if not the stuff of terrace dreams, then certainly a cause for renewed optimism around Loftus Road. His début game in charge saw the Hoops pick up their first clean sheet away from home in nearly 18 months, hinting that his new charges are already pulling their socks up. A similarly tight rearguard has also been the overriding characteristic of Rafa Benitez's first week in charge at Stamford Bridge... on the field at least. In the stands, the Spaniard’s reception has been eerily reminiscent of Manchester United's 1993 visit to Galatasaray, a Balkan away day remembered not-so-fondly for baton charges, tunnel brawls and the infamous “Welcome to Hell” banners adorning the airport hallways of Istanbul. Chelsea fans' own attempts at placard-based intimidation have been somewhat more prosaic – “Rafa Out” not holding quiet the same air of violent menace – but the underlying message remains basically the same: you're not wanted here.

It's a confusing situation from the get-go really. On the one hand there's the Rafa us neutrals know and (sometimes) love, the affable David-Gest-with-a-whiteboard figure, open and passionate but definitely vibrating on some frequency others can't quite set the dial to; warm-hearted, ever-so-slightly nuts, the kind of man who one imagines carries a selection of pens in his shirt pocket at all times, like a happy yet vaguely unhinged IT professor. And yet the turmoil of his appointment feels like some basic miscalculation in the binary composition of the season, a dreadful glitch in the very nature of football itself. Rafa managing Chelsea? Don't be so silly, he wouldn't dream of it! Look, he even said so himself. And yet here he is, doing his utmost to say the right things and act the right way in front of a baying audience who support the one team that got under his skin more than any other, the club which allowed us a rare glimpse into the dark side of the man.

Harry meanwhile has no such popularity issues, his sunshine-after-the-rain arrival creating a palpable atmospheric shift, spurring a renewed belief that despite their woeful start, he may be able to summon enough gumption amongst Rangers' ragtag posse of misfiring millionaires to salvage their season. He may not be everyone's cup of Tetley's, but he's nothing if not effective. Benitez's arrival, by way of contrast, has felt more like a unwelcome meteor crashing through the west London ozone layer, its deep impact sending a tidal wave of torrential disillusion crashing through Fulham Broadway.

Speaking of showers, one of Benitez's key tasks will be to get some return out of the goal-shy Fernando Torres, Chelsea's record signing and a man whose persistent and passable impression of a haunted Barbie doll has left supporters' hands a-wringing. Not that any of this animosity and pressure will necessarily bother Benitez unduly. Never a man short of self-confidence, 'Factgate' aside not much seems to faze our Rafa. He certainly hasn't been afraid to put his head above the parapet thus far. Despite his contract running only until next June (or whenever Pep Guardiola decides he's had his fill of coffee mornings with Fox Mulder), Benitez has openly stated his intention to gain a further twelve month extension. Good luck with that – although setting his stall out in such fashion does feel like Classic Benitez, always a man wanting to plan and build, favouring structure and order over ramshackle riffing.

Which does beg questions as to why he took the job in the first place. Cynics would point to numerous reasons – three million of them, in fact, spread generously over a six month period. Or perhaps he just really, really loves a challenge? Well, he's sure got one. But taking on the role of Chelsea manager is really more dark night of the soul than bright new horizon. Imagine that first meeting with Abramovich! What a feeling, heading into a Bond villain's lair; a sense of doomed wonderment pervading the air, dark-suited henchmen never more than a few feet away as a megalomaniac super-villain (white cat optional) stands at the opposite foot of a trick bridge crossing a piranha pond. Abramovich wouldn't have flinched, calming laying out his plans for world domination in apocalyptic detail, inviting Benitez to stand and watch, helpless as a wall of omniscient high-def screens spewed forth images of the West collapsing, interspersed with snippets of Chelsea fans venting into Sky Sports microphones and a satellite feed of a sad Di Matteo walking his dog. Probably.

One would imagine Redknapp's appointment to be notably less death-defying. While some may harbour a disliking the man himself, I suspect most of the QPR faithful fully accept that he may be one of very few managers around with the necessary footballing chutzpah to heave their ailing side back up the table. No, Harry's issues are very much of the on-field variety, but then he is a man used to playing the saviour role. When appointed Portsmouth manager in March 2002, the club sat 15th in the Championship yet just fourteen short months later were winging their way to the big time. His highs and lows since (both sporting and personal) have been well documented, not least by Harry himself, as his oft-mocked but nonetheless true “two-from-eight” soundbite will testify to.

For the last few weeks QPR have been increasingly derided and mocked as hopeless failures-in-waiting; a stumbling, bumbling jumble of overpaid mercenaries and Championship-level journeymen; a mish-mash of drifting quasi-talents and mid-level huff-puffers. Now that Redknapp is in charge, many opinions are already on the turn, tunes changing from grimly pessimistic to “well they'll probably be fine now”, which says a hell of a lot about the motivational talents of one man.

Yet for all Harry's pep and persuasion, the hard math doesn't make for pretty arithmetic. QPR are already eight points adrift of the safety line and remain winless with over a third of their fixtures played. Chelsea, meanwhile, sit six points off the league's summit and – despite sitting on the brink of imminent Champion's League collapse – are very much in contention for major honours once again. But that won't be enough, for Chelsea's fans feel betrayed, taken for mugs via their love-hate relationship with the club’s owner, knowing that however unpopular his choice of coach may be, he can always take the whole thing away just by cancelling the cheque. Even money you won't be seeing any “Roman Out” banners at the Bridge for a while yet.

And so the merry-go-round continues to spin unabated – two managers thrown to the turf, two more hopping back on. All the fun of the fair I suppose, but we already know who will be going home the happiest. Picture a scenario where Chelsea finish, say, fourteen places and forty points ahead of their neighbours. While the latter's manager will be paraded through the streets a hero, the former's will almost certainly still be hounded out of town. That's how things are in west London these days. I say just sit back, relax and enjoy the ride. Welcome back, Harry; more ice please, waiter.

~ Matt

https://twitter.com/MattAwayNow

The Lame Duck

I was feeling bad last Saturday afternoon. A night (and morning) of drinking, combined with a few restless hours of couch-bound half-sleep, had left me groggy and slightly frazzled, my head feeling roughly akin to an aeroplane seat cushion following a long haul flight spent underneath Eric Pickles. By the time my body was readjusting itself to the world of the living – ten to five in the evening, to be precise – Mark Hughes may have been wishing he could similarly disappear from view.

It's been intriguing to watch 'the Hughes situation' (as Glenn Hoddle would probably term it) unfold over the course of the past 72 hours. Following QPR's 3-1 home shaming by Southampton, Hughes' immediate response was to produce an admirable post-match performance in front of the awaiting cameras. Bullish and shot through with a stern-eyed bravado, it was infinitely more solid than anything his back four had managed in the previous two months. Credit to the man – if he was experiencing thoughts of desertion, he was giving off very little sign of it. Nonetheless, the media speculation as to his level of job security has been shuffling uncomfortably close to DEFCON 1 ever since. He hasn't quite arrived at Steve Kean levels of public blood-lust just yet, but Sir Alex he certainly ain't.

The last three days have seen a drip-drop of mixed messages emanating form the vicinity of W12. Tapping away at my keyboard on Monday evening, fingertips flipping between barren word document and text coverage of West Ham v Stoke (perhaps the dullest use yet for the internet – although I'll never need an excuse to remind myself of this contender), rumours abounded that Mark Hughes was to be relieved of his position of QPR boss following high-level 'crunch talks' (a term I'm a big fan of, by the way – something in it's visceral onomatopoeia, the definitive break, something irreparably cracking in two, never to be rejoined. They aren't called 'wobble chats' or 'flop yaks' for nothing you know).

Speaking of sounds, conflicting ones continued to pour fourth as the rumour mill went into full churn. Despite a trickle of semi-convincing assurances later that night that Hughes would not be relieved of his woes – sorry, position – contradictory evidence was presented the following day as London's Evening Standard reported that Hughes had been asked to quit. He refused, apparently, and without chairman Tony Fernandes on hand to pull the lever, Hughes opted for at least a few more torturous nights on death row.

Hughes' fate now struggles to mask it's own queasy air of inevitability; his departure becoming an entity of it's own: something slowly forming and coming to life, cells multiplying and dividing, no longer an abstract concept but rather a real, living, breathing thing. Of course, post-Southampton, the Hughes sacking narrative really built up a head of steam. Note, for example, the BBC football front page on Saturday night: '“I will not quit”, says Hughes'. A defiant statement for sure, but also a telling one, indicating the loss of faith in his managerial abilities was now reaching some kind of anti-employability event horizon. But it also suggested that the canny Welshman had quite possibly fallen foul of one of journalism’s most sadistic bluffs.

In the hit US political drama/liberal wet-dream The West Wing, White House press secretary C.J. Cregg is asked during a routine press conference if the president had considered a particular course of action (a lame duck Congressional session, to be precise) to avoid some upcoming legislative hoo-ha or another. Knowing full well that he hadn't – it was a silly idea and anyway, Martin Sheen's President Barlet was a bloody genius, OK? – but aware that she could not prove this for sure, she offers to check and report back. Both she and her colleagues know she has fallen into a particularly sneaky journalistic bear-trap, because the moment the commander-in-chief receives this enquiry the notion in question will automatically, unavoidably enter his mind. He will have considered it – fleetingly, and perhaps even unintentionally, but consider it he will most certainly have.

On Saturday evening the BBC asked Hughes if he “expected to still be in charge” following their latest defeat – an open-ended enquiry, not intended to judge exactly whose hands his future may be in, but one which nonetheless carefully placed a tantalising physiological probe. Others went further, openly asking Hughes if he would abandon ship, their initial questions coming vacuum wrapped with their own self-fulfilling answers. Step 1: Hughes is asked if he is intending to jack it all in and book himself on the first train back to Wrexham. Step 2: Hughes says he isn't, but the seed is sown, and even if he really isn't, it barely matters - a “will-he, won't-he” narrative is born anyway. “I don't run away from challenges”, responded Hughes, as the thought of running away from a challenge imperceptibly wormed it's way inside of his cranium like an unwelcome hanger-on at a party (albeit one where no-one's having any fun, the drugs have run out and the hosts are being disdainfully berated for just lying about the place, squandering their reputations and generally not giving a fuck).

Watching Saturday's game hungry and hungover as I was, it was obvious even through my hazy peepers that Saints manager Nigel Adkins was remaining disarmingly calm and collected in the face of growing media speculation over his own position. Adkins strikes me as a man of cool, trim focus – the kind of soul who, following a Friday night bender, would be up and about at the crack of dawn, doing his stretches in the hall before departing for a quick 2km run, whilst the rest of us gingerly sip water and pull the covers back over our heads, wishing the outside world to disappear. He's one of those people: all fitness and zing, a wet-eared deputy head with a charming lack of cynicism. I don't understand them, but I hold a grudging respect for them. Not for Nigel the cruel machinations of the press pack – this is, after all, a man not afraid to throw down some verse during a routine post-match interview.

When he isn't busting out the balladry himself, Adkins has got his class leaping on the table, seemingly allowing his own methodology to rub off on his team. Like Arsene Wenger when he first arrived on these shores, Adkins has the look of a man more likely to advise you on your stock options than to drill Nathaniel Clyne on the nuances of the offside trap. But also like Wenger, he seems intent on instilling a cohesive philosophy into his charges (although he could do with splashing out on a centre-half or two come January), and the prettier the results, the better. Following a brutal start to the campaign (which included meetings with last years top three in the opening four matches) the Saints, judging by their neat, triangulated pass-n-invent display on Saturday, are in pole position to become this seasons' Swansea. I'm not altogether sure where that leaves Swansea – last season's Blackpool? 2000's Barnsley? – but they seem to be having a lovely old time under Michael Laudrup so I'm sure they're none too fussed either way.

Adkins is of course a rookie in Premier League terms, as opposed to Hughes who, like his Everton counterpart David Moyes, can no longer be considered an up-and-coming, saucer-eyed (literally, in the latter's case) dugout prodigy, but rather a fully fledged, experienced manager. And with such experience comes the inevitability of being on the receiving end of a good old fashioned sacking every once in a while. Writing for the Guardian in 2011 about the similar circumstances of Steve Bruce's dismissal from Sunderland, Barney Ronay argued that a manager is these days little more than “a patsy, a head presented on a stake at regular intervals as an emblem of progress”, and so true has this been of QPR in recent years. A project grimly decorated with the blood splatter of boardroom fall-outs and behind-the-scenes power struggles, every few months or so the manager was dismissed – a convenient scapegoat, a move often more political than sporting (although no-one really needs the veneer of 'politics' to give Ian Dowie the boot).

But then a funny thing happened. It may be by design or pure chance, but QPR seem to have been getting their sackings right of late, with each recent touchline prowler performing their function then departing. Neil Warnock finally got the Hoops back in the big time, but when it became obvious that his old-school stylings weren't going to give them much hope of survival, he was cast adrift to be replaced by Hughes. Sparky had experience of the pressures of modern Premier League era, but perhaps crucially offered a cooler alternative to the Yorkshireman's terrier growl. When Manchester City were bought on transfer deadline day 2008, Hughes famously continued with his round of golf, pausing only between holes to check his phone to see which superstar forward he would be greeting at training the next day.

So it seems – much like in his playing days – that Hughes' composure shouldn't be questioned. But if Tony Fernandes' goal at Loftus Road is long-term stability, that now more than ever means staying in the Premier League. Loyalty is all well and good, but for QPR to drop back down to the Championship they battled so desperately to escape would perhaps set the club back years. One certainly can't envisage Adel Taarabt relishing another nine months of Tuesday night trips to Bristol City, sat alone on the coach as it rumbles back east along the M4 at midnight, just his headphones and thoughts of rejected transfer requests of yore for company.

Obviously by the time you read this Hughes could have been sacked, which may indicate that Fernandes is either another trigger-happy firebrand or that he has acted swiftly to stop the rot before it fatally gnaws away at his team's hopes of survival. Or he might still have a job. Whatever Hughes' fate, I would like to think that Adkins is this morning once again waking up bright-eyed and bushy-vocabed, still in a job, still thinking in paeans not prose, lacing his trainers and readying himself for another day of good vibes and neato positivity. Now that I think about it, those sound like just the things QPR need. Maybe he should wait by his phone. Actually, he probably doesn't have one. He looks the type.

~ Matt

https://twitter.com/MattAwayNow