Look Away Now At The Big Game

This week, Look Away Now has decided to focus its attention on one match in particular; namely Tottenham’s Saturday teatime visit to Manchester United, a fixture close to the hearts of your humble writers. It’s an intriguing clash – the recent top-four crashers pitting their wits against the most successful English club side of the past twenty years, but one which, if you believe the current swathe of popular opinion, is in a state of decline. With players like Bale, Berbatov, van der Vaart and Hernandez in thrilling form, and with the league positions of the two sides more closely aligned than any time in recent memory, we think this one could be a real mouth-waterer.

Have no fear, we’ll be doing our usual trick of predicting our way through all of the weekend’s Premier League encounters too, but for now it is to Old Trafford that we head…

Saturday 30^th October

Manchester United v Tottenham, 5:30pm

Questions. Not the kind of thing Manchester United are regularly charged with answering, but this season they’ve been on the receiving end of far more than usual. And they’ve not just been nice, easy-to-pad-away dot balls either – they’ve received some real bouncers (excuse me going all Clive Tyldesley, it’s just that I love a good cricketing metaphor). Is Ferguson finally losing the battle of player power? Has he got the necessary talent to replace the aging limbs of Scholes, Giggs and Neville? Are Manchester City about to go from ‘noisy neighbours’ to fully-fledged title rivals? Will Sir Alex hire Carlos Quieroz again?

The lingering issue of replacing the old-guard is a curious one. Over the past five or so years, a raft of young upstarts have found themselves on the fringes of the team – Welbeck, Bellion, Miller, Richardson, Obertan, Campbell – without ever truly establishing themselves in the first team reckoning. Of the current squad, many supporters argue that there’s simply too much dead wood (Carrick, Park, Evans: I’m looking at you), players with undoubted talent but who, for one reason or another, have failed to kick on and reach that sacred ‘next level’. Unfortunately for these supporters, the aforementioned old-timers won’t be able to hang on much longer and soon enough the feeding tube will have to be pulled.

In terms of their opening form, United find themselves in a confusingly contradictory position: undefeated in nine games for the first time since the autumn of 1999, but lying five points off the leaders and found guilty of throwing away late points with astonishing frequency, a situation which must perplex as much as infuriate the manager. The Wayne Rooney affair (I mean the contract-related one, of course), coupled with those ever-looming shadows of ownership and debt, has helped only to up the pressure even further. Having said all that, United have not exactly become a bad side, just one unable to slip out of second gear, and this is a fixture that has been kind to United throughout the Premier League era. But then the Tottenham of today are a different proposition entirely.

Most Tottenham fans will be heading up the M1 hoping to snatch a draw from a Manchester United side that many consider to be on a downward trajectory. The optimistic among the travellers will be coveting all three points and the first win in the Theatre of Dreams^TM in 18 games. The history books tell a sad story for Tottenham: only two draws to be had in all those visits to compensate for the hours spent gridlocked on the M6, the service station Ginsters pasties and 20p a piss toilet stops. This fixture has left most Spurs fans feeling like the layer of scraped-off stubble that clings to the basin after a shave – it’s all over now, no more face time, just wash me down the sink…

Could this be the year to change that, with a depleted United looking to establish themselves again as title contenders just as everyone has begun to dismiss them as old nags, only good for glue? Hernandez has released some of the mounting pressure with his flurry of goals, and will certainly be the danger man on Saturday as he is prepared to fling his body any which way at any loose ball in the box.

Van der Vaart, Bale and Lennon will be instructed to get at the United defenders from the start and it is key to Spurs chances that they don’t let United slip into a rhythm and dictate the play. It will be interesting to see who dominates in the centre of the pitch; United lack flair in Scholes’ absence, and should Huddlestone get a grip on the game his passing could be key to Spurs’ attacking endeavours.

United will need no reminding of the damage that Van der Vaart and Bale can cause given space and it will be up to them to close them down, get the ball to Nani and let him run at Tottenham’s revolving back four. The history books suggest a United win, while the form book hints that this might be tighter now than any time in the last decade.

Ed’s prediction: 2-3

Matt’s prediction: 2-1

* * * * *

And now for the rest. Our apologies if you feel a little left out by the focus on Old Trafford – but then we never claimed this blog would shy away from blatant partisanship. If it did, exactly what kind of football fans would that make us?

Saturday 30^th October

Arsenal 2 - 0 West Ham, 3pm

Blackburn 0 - 1 Chelsea, 3pm

Everton 2 - 0 Stoke, 3pm   

Fulham 1 - 1 Wigan, 3pm   

Wolves 1 - 2 Man City, 3pm

Sunday 31^st October

Aston Villa 2 - 1 Birmingham, 12pm

Newcastle 1 - 1 Sunderland, 1:30pm

Bolton 1 - 2 Liverpool, 4pm     

Monday 1^st November

Blackpool 3 - 4 West Brom, 8pm      

~ Ed & Matt

Hello, You Must Be New Here...

Arriving in the Premier League must be a scary prospect. Exciting, sure, but bloody scary nonetheless, a bit like your first day at school. Or starting a new job. Or falling in love. Or, considering I’ve not even remotely thought this through, completely unlike any of these. Having personally never been promoted to the top flight of English football, I’m almost certainly not in the strongest position to judge. But stepping into such a competition must bring shocks to the system – the prefects and teachers are bigger and mostly hairier, the margins for error are considerably tighter and the potential for heartbreak is higher than ever before.

And I guess this is where my mixed bag of metaphors falls apart and spills its tenuous contents across the floor like so much rancid bin water. For while there are many people in the world who succeed at school, at work and at love, those footballing outfits who have been promoted to the top flight and stayed there are a scarce breed indeed, certainly in the Premier League era. Of the twenty teams seated at this seasons’ top table, only seven have been continuously stuffing their faces on BSkyB’s gluttonous bounty since it all began back in good old 1992. To this end, the state of the table as we enter the season’s second quarter makes for strange viewing. Check out that relegation zone! Look at the new guys struggling! Only they’re not, and what’s more you need to cast your eyes up to 14^th place before you find a pair of ears with even a hint of wetness behind them.

Of this year's new intake, Blackpool have made the biggest waves. From their opening day shoeing of Wigan to the shock humbling of Liverpool, they’ve been the talk of the town (although having a rent-a-quote manager like Ian Holloway hasn’t exactly helped keep their profile low). West Brom, meanwhile, have gone about their task quietly but with no little style; their usual brand of tight football complemented with a sturdier backbone than evidenced during previous top-flight campaigns. Newcastle are the curio of the three; the early 6-0 trouncing of a Villa side in then-managerial limbo represents three-quarters of their meagre four point home haul thus far. Away from St James', however, it’s been a different story – victories at Everton and West Ham (as well as Stamford Bridge in the League Cup) have eased them into the highly respectable position of ninth.

In fact together these three sides represent a neat cross section of the type of teams regularly found entering the Premier League fray. Newcastle are the fallen giant rising to its feet again, specifically one who will always have a place in Premier League history thanks to the exploits of Robson, Keegan, Shearer and Venison. The Baggies, meanwhile, are the epitome of the ‘yo-yo club’, hop-scotching between the first and second tiers of the professional game. And then there’s Blackpool, the loveable, beating heart of a cockle-warming rags-to-riches narrative. And we all like one of those.

Like Newcastle (and in stark contrast to Anton Ferdinand), Blackpool have excelled on the road – three wins from six in fact, contrasting with just a solitary point earned on their own turf. Received wisdom states that newly promoted sides should turn their homes into fortresses while simply getting what they can on their travels. Yet whilst Ian Holloway erecting battlements and digging a moat around Bloomfield Road is an immensely satisfying (and not necessarily all that far-fetched) mental image, the opening two months have brought about a subversion of the norm in this respect, not least when you consider West Brom are the only team to walk away from Old Trafford with so much as a point in hand.

So why so handy on the road? Perhaps the expectation of stepping up a level in front of one's home crowd, and the nationwide media coverage it entails, has caused our new boys to freeze, only to thaw on their travels when most observers expect them to receive their fortnightly hiding. But form, like the unobtainable temptress, is a fickle beauty, and fixture lists are of course prone to throw up early-season anomalies. In which case, is there some deeper-routed explanation or two for these impressive first few furlongs?

Each team boasts a not-necessarily-young but equally hungry manager. Erstwhile coach and occasional caretaker Chris Hughton is thoughtful and reserved, meticulously and methodically circumnavigating Newcastle’s traditional route of bluster and heartache now that he's finally made the transition from band-member to front-man; a sort of Dave Grohl in management terms. Holloway certainly likes to bring the crazy, playing the put upon underdog with the exasperated face of a man pushing at an ocean, but it's fair to say that each of the Football League clubs he’s led has been the recipient of not just his home-spun sound-bites but also a refreshing brand of lateral thinking. And while it would undoubtedly be a turgid cliché to say Roberto Di Matteo brings a dash of continental flavouring to the party, there does seem to be a good mixture of sensible and saucy on the menu at the Hawthorns these days. With a playing career cut short by injury, those perched behind the home dugout must be able to almost taste his desire to succeed from the touchline.

On a broader scale, maybe some of the fear is evaporating. Last season Birmingham, Wolves and Burnley all donned their smartest casuals and strolled in bold as brass, with only the latter sent packing by the bouncers. Or perhaps, conversely, it's the problems of those around them. West Ham and Wigan, for example, are established sides in a deep malaise, situations offering not just hope but actual, tangible, look-it-up-on-Ceefax league positions to our newbies. Or maybe it's just, as usual, about the money. As the rich somehow manage to get richer and simultaneously further into the red (depending on which page of a club's finance report you read), does the current flurry of belt tightening and bottom line-scrutinising play into the hands of the have-nots?

When it comes to the bottom half of the table, you could posit our prudent times have let those slipping in the door believe they have as good a chance as anyone. Is the demand on established sides to invest, succeed and live up to the Premier League lifestyle – the lure, the lucre, the razzle and the dazzle – weighing too heavy on the old guard's shoulders? Where the promoted sides are concerned, with less expectation to succeed, so sure are the neutrals and the bookmakers of the impending doom of instant relegation, we might be witnessing a new willingness to simply go for broke. Money and pressure, or the lack of it, do strange things to the best of us.

~ Matt

The Look Away Now Poetic Prediction Corner

If we’ve learnt anything from the week just gone, it’s that football ain’t nothing like predictable. Show us a person on Monday morning claiming Paul Stretf… sorry, Wayne Rooney, would be walking out on Manchester United and into the lustful arms of a 200k-per-second deal with Man City three days later, and we’d have shown you a certified maniac. Or a genuine savant, in which case get your hands off, he’s ours.

We’d be even more possessive of them if they’d managed to call today’s drama too, as Mr Rooney decided to have a proper look at the cows in the other fields, take a sup of their milk and flip City the bird. Not quite sure what that means? Us neither. But the end result is that England’s handsome young prince is staying put… for the time being at least. We’ve been reminded this afternoon that Cristiano Ronaldo signed a fresh, sparkly new deal at Old Trafford two years prior to shimmying his way to the Bernabéu, allowing United to eventually claim back top dollar on their investment. Has the cloud of smoke and bullshit really dissipated or just become hidden behind a few rays of October sunshine?

Let’s be honest, there’s been plenty of grubby goings-on this week: the Rooney shenanigans aside, we’ve seen some depressing cash-for-votes nonsense in the FIFA hierarchy and the usual smattering of arrests and related sordid rumour. And we haven’t even mentioned Gazza. Until now. With these grim thoughts in mind, isn’t it time someone returned a bit of class and light-heartedness to this fair sport of ours?

If you weren’t sure, the answer you’re straining for is ‘yes’. So this week, in the name of art/wilful tomfoolery, we’ve taken the brave and potentially hideously off-putting step of bringing you the weekend’s top flight predictions in the form of haiku. Yes, we understand the hazards of brazenly arranging a marriage of base football mutterings and high-concept wordplay, but this is our blog and we’ll make the executive decision to endanger its longevity if we want to.

So, without further ado, in the spirit of faux-mysticism and irregular rhyme schemes, and with more left-field verve than a Gareth Bale counter-attack, let’s make like Karl Henry and dive straight in…

Saturday, 23rd October

Tottenham v Everton, 12:45pm

Never one to bore

Hot Spurs chew on tough Toffees

Wise money on draw.

1-1

Birmingham v Blackpool, 3pm

Nice start, unlike Brum

‘pool away run to succumb

To Zigic, ho-hum.

2-1

Chealsea v Wolves, 3pm

Lupine assault fails

As toothless Wolves draw no blood

Chelsea score plus four.

5-0

Sunderland v Aston Villa, 3pm

Nothing to see here

Honestly, do not bother

Who’s next? West Brom? Great…

0-0

West Brom v Fulham, 3pm

What has Escher got

In common with Welshman Hughes?

Both know how to draw.

1-1

Wigan v Bolton, 3pm

Glamour clash it ain’t

But Wigan to suffer from

Coyle and trouble.

1-2

West Ham v Newcastle, 5:30pm

Blowing bubbles up

Hodgson’s arse. Look out Andy,

Your motor’s on fire.

1-1

Sunday, 24th October

Stoke v Man Utd, 1:30pm

Super Sunday? No

Just long throws and stoppage time

Death to Paul Stretford

1-2

Liverpool v Blackburn, 3pm

Not walking alone

They’ve West Ham for company

Sam for Kop? Dream on.

1-0

Man City v Arsenal, 4pm

De Jong smells young blood,

We watch mathletic passing

Hitting big brick wall

0-0

~ Ed & Matt

The Wayning

He sat there on the edge of the bed in his y-fronts and socks, looking out at the pale moon.

‘Don’t worry about it dear.’

He didn’t turn around, didn’t look at her.

‘These things happen.’

‘It’s never happened to me before,’ he sniffled.

She shuffled across the bed and placed her hand on his.

‘Alex, you should have known that time he sent me that text, you can’t trust him. Don’t worry, Bebe.’

***

End of an era? When you consider the loss of Scholes, Giggs, Ferdinand and now Rooney, all in the next year and half, it’s undeniable. It will be the end of an era. The question is can Ferguson rebuild the team after this crop of talent depart? The players required are out there, playing for Aston Villa, Spurs and Everton, but can United afford them? It has been suggested that, should Rooney leave, the Glazers will have to invest in a major player to keep revenues coming into the club at their current rate. This has to be the case: should they not invest, the club’s value will depreciate and they will in effect be in negative equity, paying off the vast loan they took out for a club worth less than they paid for it. Purely on business terms they will reinvest, but will it be enough money to fully restock the club?

Concerns have arisen that the necessary long-term planning would see Ferguson thinking well beyond his own retirement, and that he might not have the energy to oversee this kind of change again. Much of what has been uttered about United’s fate in the last few days’ press has been brewing for the last year; the Rooney revelation has merely lit the touch paper.

There is something of more universal concern reverberating beneath all this for all Premier League lovers. Another star may be tempted to move across the channel, in the footballing equivalent of continental drift, southwards to warmer climes, lower taxes and the increasingly star-studded squads of the Spanish Two. Are we seeing a tectonic shift in the make-up and influence of a Premier League that could conceivably lose Fabregas, Rooney and Torres by the summer?

~ Ed

Uncle Roy Is Doing Battle With The Past, Present And Future

Eighteen months ago, Rafa Benitez’s Liverpool side were sitting pretty at the top of the Premier League tree, glittering and happy like a novelty Christmas fairy, apparently set to mount their first serious title charge in years. The preceding decade or so had spawned a couple of near misses under Roy Evans and Gerard Houllier, but it seemed different this time – there was consistency, some stirring individual performances, they were leading from the front and Harry Kewell was long gone. What could possibly go wrong? Well as we know, Señor Benitez subsequently tried to out-mind game the mind game master and things sort of fell apart from there on in. Still, even with a 7^th place finish costing Rafa his job in the summer, not even the resident mystics at Psychic TV could have foreseen that, come October, we’d be scrabbling for the thesaurus to express just how scandalously inept Liverpool have subsequently become.

Sunday’s gutless surrender at Goodison Park of all places heralded the first bout of sustained calls for Roy Hodgson’s head, the goodwill credit earned during his heady stretch at Fulham apparently already splurged. It’s a shame really, as Uncle Roy has always been a man out of step with managerial trends, as coaching spells in such diverse footballing backwaters as Neuchâtel, Stavanger, Örebro and Maidstone would testify to. As such, the thought of him successfully surfing the rough tide of upheaval at Liverpool is a comforting one, but one which, alas, seems ever more unlikely to materialise.

We here at Look Away Now have always been big admirers of Mr Hodgson, favouring his candidature for the England post back when Kevin Keegan was ludicrously given the gig, and felt that his disappointing spell in charge of Sunday’s opponents Blackburn (where he left them mired in the relegation zone after taking them into Europe the previous year) stood out as a mere anomaly on an otherwise spotless managerial CV. Yet examining his Premier League career in isolation makes for surprisingly dicey reading. The aforementioned highs and lows of his Blackburn tenure looked to have been offset by some genuinely wonderful over-achievement at Fulham, and yet now he finds himself coaxing mostly dire performances out of a decidedly average Liverpool team who, as each passing match concludes, leave us wondering if Benitez was actually getting far more blood than he had any right to from a particularly middling stone.

It would of course be a mistake to excuse Benitez from his share of criticism for Liverpool's current plight. During his Anfield stay he achieved some rightfully lauded (and even arguably under-appreciated) success – a first European Cup in twenty years and a further final to boot being the stand-outs, coupled with an FA Cup victory in 2006 and the aforementioned, albeit ultimately unfulfilled, tilt at the league two years ago. The problem is his legacy, the feeling that under his tutelage Anfield became too reliant on bog-standard imports at the expense of nurturing a side with at least half an eye on the future. Perfectly good players such as Craig Bellamy, Peter Crouch and Robbie Keane were jettisoned almost as soon as they joined after not adapting immediately to the quirks and peculiarities of Benitez's tactical vision. In fairness, it was a vision which, when executed correctly, worked, but for another to come in and pick up the pieces without major investment was always going to be a tough ask. Rafa's teams were dry and rigid. No wonder he's found a job in Italy.

Not to say quality players weren't brought in. Pepe Reina was recruited a rough diamond and gradually polished to a shine. Fernando Torres and Javier Mascherano’s recruitments led one to believe that the foundations of a consistently honour-challenging side were at last being laid. But never one to leave alone what ain't broke, players of enduring quality such as Xabi Alonso and John Arne Riise were inexplicably shipped in and out seemingly at random, like a desperate city banker with dollar-sign eyes frantically trading shares with anyone who’ll hold his despairing gaze. Others either never managed to justify their selection or simply trod (and in some cases continue to tread) water. A handful remain merely perplexing. Antonio Nunez anyone?

So what's next? Judging by the ever-reliable phenomena that is the Sky Sports News post-match vox pop, Kenny Dalglish should be handed the managerial reins post-haste, a move to no doubt spark some kind of mini nostalgia trip as he immediately brings in David Burrows and Steve Harkness to sure things up at the back. It remains to be seen just how much fiscal clout new owner John W Henry will bring to the club and how much time he'll give Hodgson to try and turn things around. I hope he gets Liverpool back up to speed – from a purely selfish perspective he's still a contender to replace Fabio Capello after the inevitable disappointment of Euro 2012. If it's not to be Uncle Roy, I guess there's always Big Sam. For Liverpool or England; he's not fussy.

~ Matt