Squeaky bum time

Some of us passing Americans are simply sorry that Landon Donovan didn’t get a chance to extend his stay at Everton.

Everton never really had a chance because we started the season with key players injured (Arteta, Jagielka, Yakubu), had others coming off long-term injuries (Neville, Anichebe, Vaughn), or had others go down with injuries for substantial periods of time (Pienaar, Rodwell, Fellaini, Anichebe, Gosling). Coupled with the Lescott affair and not having the newer players (Heitinga, Distin) bed in until well after the start of the season, it took several months for the team to get going.

It also didn’t help that we dropped points against teams we should have beaten (Hull, Birmingham, Wolves, West Ham). Still, if we can get Fellaini back soon and keep everyone else healthy, I like Everton’s chances next season (4th is a reasonable expectation) – no distration with European football. And it would be great if Donovan came back – even better, Moyes finds it difficult not to play young Seamus Coleman more frequently.

Soccer, bah!

Where’s Bérubé now that les glorieux just eliminated the strongest hockey team the NHL had seen in years?

To go to the other extreme, the dominant Australian Rugby League club of recent years, the Melbourne Storm has just been stripped of two premierships and all its competition points for the current season for breaches of the salary cap rules, which limit player payments. That’s the kind of price that has to be paid for a competition where every side has a chance, as opposed to a series of exhibition matches after which the Big Two or Three or Four have a penalty shootout to see who will win this year’s Royal Rumble.

However, the ARL cap has been set too low across the board with the result that they are losing players to Rugby Union and Australian Football. Interesting times all around.

Arsenal lost hope last week

I know Santa’s not real, they tell me so, but at such moments I like to believe he’s the one bringing me such good things, and stopping to rain elf-urine down on the bad people en route.

The Eredivisie‘s going to be a squeaker too, with the last matches of the season on Sunday.

Having beaten Feyenoord last week, Shteve McClaren’s FC Twente have a point on Ajax, and both are away at mid-table teams. If Twente lose to Breda, who have the sniff of a Europa League playoff place to play for, Ajax can take the title on goal difference with just a draw against Nijmegen. (They’re +83 for the year, scoring an average of three goals a game.)

To go to the other extreme, the dominant Australian Rugby League club of recent years, the Melbourne Storm has just been stripped of two premierships and all its competition points for the current season for breaches of the salary cap rules, which limit player payments. That’s the kind of price that has to be paid for a competition where every side has a chance, as opposed to a series of exhibition matches after which the Big Two or Three or Four have a penalty shootout to see who will win this year’s Royal Rumble.

Interestingly enough, the National Football League also has a salary cap, but the same 5-6 teams are dominant every year, while teams such as the Rams, Lions, Raiders, Browns, Texans, and 49ers are lousy almost every year.

ObTopic: Third is better than fourth, but this year still stings. Stoke City in the Cup? Really?

Just because I haven’t seen any standings lately, who’s battling to avoid relegation? (Not all Yanks are clueless…in my case, just mostly clueless.)

The fact that the CL final pits one supreme tactician (Mourinho) against another (Van Gaal) suggests that it will be boring.

A terrible season from my point of view (Liverpool fan). Without PhilCollinsgate we’d have won the league last season, and I think the court case has had a lot to do with Steve G’s muted performances this one. Now we’re out of the top four, and Man City have the riches of Croesus, I see no way back any time soon and we could go the way of Leeds.

“Interestingly enough, the National Football League also has a salary cap, but the same 5-6 teams are dominant every year, while teams such as the Rams, Lions, Raiders, Browns, Texans, and 49ers are lousy almost every year.”

Not really true. Granted, the salary cap does not give every team an equal chance every year. What the salary cap does do is give even the worst team a legitimate hope of rebuilding and winning the Super Bowl within five or six years.

Teams at the bottom of the league get higher draft picks, and they restructure their salaries by cutting or trading their higher paid players. While they give up any chance of competing for two or three years, they can try to assemble a core of talented players on long-term contracts with the bulk of the hit against the salary cap either taken when the team is still rebuilding or pushed off as far as possible into the future. Done properly, the team will have a three or four year window of opportunity before it starts losing those players to free agency or before the salary cap costs that were pushed off into the future start to make the players too expensive to keep on the roster.

Teams with bad ownership or management can draft the wrong players, trade for the wrong players, and generally mismanage the process to the point where they remain uncompetitive for long periods of time (e.g. Detroit). Similarly, a team might prolong its stay at the top if it can somehow turn over its roster by replacing expensive players with cheaper players through good draft picks and trades. But under the current system, it is very difficult to stay at the top for long.

Meanwhile, back in the EPL, I root for a team that, in all honesty, probably does not have a single player who could get a place on the bench of one of the top teams, and there’s no realistic way they can get much better. I still watch anyway, because it’s still fun, but it would be more fun with something to create more competitive balance, just like it would be more fun without (say) diving.

Red- because Standard lost it before it was winter break & no, I’m not French speaking (although I speak French, more or less as badly as I speak English), but, whilst we’re at it: not all French speaking Belgians like to be subsumed under the umbrella ‘Walloon’ – there is an interesting asymmetry there

ejh- this is the definition of the Liga de las Estrellas – 18 teams that play Real and Barca in order for one of these two to win the title; it’s very much like England but they don’t do as if some of the other 18 teams have a shot at it. Anyway the prediction is spot on – the non-football of Barça will come in empty-handed, as will the Dutch in South-Africa (i.e. justice will prevail!)

Inter vs. Barcelona showed how negative negative football can be, whereas Les Glorieux’s defensive play in beating Washington was thrilling.

It’s only fair to point out that Inter had a man sent off after 30 minutes. Trying to defend a lead against Barcelona with ten men must be any manager’s nightmare, and any team that did anything other than defend for the remainder of the game would be a team managed by an idiot.

It is also only fair to point out that they were 3-1 up because they outplayed Barcelona at home; mainly because they tried to get the ball to the goal of the other side instead of from one sideline to the other.

Meanwhile, having beaten one of the most astonishing teams in history with a virtuoso tactical display

Catenaccio still lives apparently. 1 shot (not even on goal) and 14% of the possession during ninety minutes is anti-football IMHO and is fuel for the haters of the sport. I’d like to see the special one try that against Bayern – even without Ribery.

On the good news side, my beloved Red Devils are back in Bunedliga I.

Ughhh, so many people parroting back English media cliches, so little time.

1. It’s hypocritical to call La Liga a perpetual two-horse race between Madrid and Barcelona when it’s been one between Chelsea and Man Utd in the EPL for the last few seasons as well. In fact, the last time a team outside those two teams won the EPL was in 2003-04, when Arsenal won it (just before Chelsea’s real ascendancy under Mourinho), which coincidentally is the last time a team outside the Big Two in Spain won La Liga (Valencia). If you go back further, in the last 10 or so years, you see that in every imaginable metric of competitiveness (number of different champions number of different teams in the top four, point gap between first and last, first and tenth, etc) Spain blows England out of the water. Over the last 17 seasons of the Premier League’s existence, a shocking 11 have been won by Man Utd, compared to 6 for Real and 7 for Barca. And in the time that only Blackburn (in the first year of competition), Man Utd, Arsenal and Chelsea have won the title, Real, Barca, Valencia, Depor and Atleti have won it in Spain.

2. I totally agree with JoB – the fact that Barcelona passed the ball around a lot and had a lot of possession does not make what they did in the Semi-Final good football. It was aimless, pointless lateral passing that could not pierce a disciplined Inter defense that was a man down inside half an hour, and they resorted to flinging themselves to the ground shamelessly (Messi, Busquets, Dani Alves, a host more) and taking hopeless longshots or slinging the ball into the box instead of anything more imaginative. When Barcelona’s plan A fails they just keep hammering away at it in the vain hope that it will work. This has occasionally been their undoing this season despite their success.

Defense is not the opposite of football. A man down and already having to adjust for injuries, Inter were expected to defend. Indeed, they put in an admirable shift. It was Barcelona that made the game hopelessly boring by just keeping the ball and not doing a damn thing with it. In my opinion, if you can’t appreciate defense or tactics then you have no real understanding of the game.

a club whose sole virtue is that they are not AC

No club is AC. The correct term is “Milan”.

Cartagena, by the way, won 2-0 at Huesca, a game I watched from the home end but supporting the away team, on the grounds that if they couldn’t be bothered to reply to my email asking for ticket prices, I couldn’t be bothered to support them. A fairly poor game enlivened by a retaken penalty and a sending-off just afterwards, provoked either by a Cartagena player nutting an opponent or, more likely, an act of simulation.

A shame about the second goal, though, since before the game Huesca held the unusual distinction of having both scored and conceded the fewest goals in their division. The second goal meant they caught up with Hércules in this respect. Hopefully Levante, who entertain the Alicante side this lunchtime, will score and thus restore Huesca’s lead.

For the likes of Tilton I do sincerely hope The Special One does ‘a perfect game’: possesion at a single moment, 3 passes, something brilliant by the anti-Messi and done. We have suffered long enough under this one-sided treatment of soccer as The Harlem Globetrotters gone football.

Among the exceptions would be most of the divisions below the top one.

It should also be pointed out that in many European countries, the shrinking of the contenders down to two or three is a relatively recent phenomenon. Not so in Scotland, say, or Portugal, but very much true in England or France or Italy.

eponymous and athergall – As a loyal and righteous gooner I can tell you that great teams find a way to overcome injuries and adversity. I watched my Gunners face rafts of injury and injustice (the Rooney penalty at Old Trafford when replay showed Almunia never touched him); and yet still were in serious contention until last week, and by Monday evening should have 3rd place sewn up, improving a place from last year’s campaign.

Deliasmith Рwe gunners continue to show up and support our team without the fair-weather nature of other clubs. And remember we remain the only side never to have been relegated. We revel in our past glories and have faith that Ars̬ne Wenger will lead us back to the top once again.

Further, when Economic Fair Play rules come into effect, one will see that Man Utd which can only afford to continue to buy top flight players on debt (which is approaching unsustainable levels for the Glazers anyway) and Chelsea (which only survives on benefactor payments rather than support from the fans and sound training and management policies, will cause both sides great difficulty in maintaining the quality of play as they will no longer be able to afford to simply buy their way to the top of the table.

Floopmeister @37,

Who the hell brought up Rugby?

That would be me. You’ll pardon my enthusiasm, but my son’s U10 side and their U14 colleagues won their respective age groups in a massive youth tournament today, beating the best that Ireland, England, France, the Czech Republic and the rest of Germany could throw at them. Meanwhile the club I follow in the other code pissed away what should have been an easy victory and go into their final match even on points with their local rivals and ahead by only one less goal conceded. As their play has improved enough the past couple of seasons that they no longer provide the excitement of a relegation battle, we have to take our thrills from whether they finish ahead of Mainz. So I suppose yesterday’s abortion of a loss was, in its way, fan service.

The sport of choice for Men With No Necks

Front-row forwards are people too, you know; sensitive people, with easily-injured feelings. I only hope none of them will have read your cruel words.

ejh @36,

The correct term is “Milan”

Duly noted, and I shall lose no time in informing the entire German nation that they must no longer say “Ahtsay”.

Yeah! Steve McLaren is no longer a “wally with a brolly”. Great to see Twente become champion, more so because they denied Ajax it by one point, with the latter playing an almost perfect season – but not perfect enough. You’d have to have a heart of stone not to laugh at that.

Great to see Ajax loose. A good dress rehearsal for Barça being beaten on the last day ;-)

This would be a different Tilton Jr. from the little lad whose innocent eyes filled with tears when Bayern were mugged in broad daylight to universal amusement in 1999. Will you be forcing heartbreak on your own flesh and blood once again? You’re a hard woman, Mrs T.

Btw, the person upthread who complained about the lack of Englishmen in the Premier League – the Inter team that beat Barcelona contained precisely zero Italians. Chelsea at least have Lampard, Terry, Cole and Cole; Man U have Rooney, Neville, Scholes, Carrick and Ferdinand. Probably others I’m forgetting.
What’s more, I’m not sure a lack of Englishmen is a problem, necessarily. Doesn’t make me admire Arsene Wenger any less. Top-level footballers are part of a pampered international superclass, where nationality is interchangeable. Bring on the World Cup!

Let this passing American say that of course this is all terribly boring because Everton never really had a chance — nor did ManU, Chelsea, or Aresanal, for that matter — of being promoted. Qualifying for the so-called Champions’ League — which is noleague at all, but a part-time hobby — has nothing on a true promotion fight. And until there is a proper European league, the Premiership will remain a dull second-best substitute to league and even conference football.

And don’t dare dis Millwall, because the Lions are going up!

I’m disappointed by CT’s lack of Hoofdklasse hockey coverage.

Front-row forwards are people too, you know; sensitive people, with easily-injured feelings. I only hope none of them will have read your cruel words.

Are we assuming they can read, then?

:)

(Couldn’t help that – totally unfair and unjustified! I’m just hoping I can run faster than them with the handicap of my overlong prehensile neck).

Ughhh, so many people parroting back English media cliches, so little time.

1. It’s hypocritical to call La Liga a perpetual two-horse race between Madrid and Barcelona when it’s been one between Chelsea and Man Utd in the EPL for the last few seasons as well.

Oh, I missed this (perhaps writing a post while it was being posted). What cobblers. Firstly, how is it hypocritical, unless one has been touting the Premier League as a superior compeition? Secondly, what has it got to do with “English media cliches”? Especially if the critics actually live and watch their football in Spain?

What a day. Come on you Spurs!