Things Joleon Lescott Acquired This Month


Jimi Hendrix's First Record Deal


Royal Wootton Bassett

Crown Jewels of Serbia

Michael Stipe


'Why Always Me?' T-Shirt


This month was a modest one for Joleon - the financial crisis in the euro-zone is having profound effects even on the super-super-super-rich. In the grip of such fear, Lescott managed to limit his spending to a mere £250,020,015 of his estimated £24.6bn monthly salary.


He plans to spend the next four weeks exploring his new Wiltshire dominion with his vegetarian indie-God man-servant.

Vennegoor Vrijdag

by Jack Lang



Winning isn't everything,
Jan Vennegoor of Hesselink.


Jack Lang is all about poetry and futebol and Twitter.

Week Nine: la revancha del pass completion


Attempted
Completed
Completion%
Man. City
5460
4596
84.1758
Chelsea
5414
4505
83.2102
Arsenal
5289
4321
81.6979
Swansea
5043
4113
81.5586
Man.United
4918
3964
80.6019
Tottenham
4115
3278
79.6598
Wigan
3950
3085
78.1013
Liverpool
4744
3640
76.7285
Fulham
4384
3342
76.2318
West Brom
3970
2975
74.9370
Everton
3401
2525
74.2429
Newcastle
3887
2864
73.6815
Wolves
3990
2927
73.3584
Bolton
3911
2814
71.9509
QPR
3830
2750
71.8016
Sunderland
3829
2698
70.4623
Norwich
3633
2551
70.2175
Aston Villa
3439
2395
69.6423
Blackburn
3258
2189
67.1885
Stoke
3094
2074
67.0330

The Football League: A Hindrance At Best

There is, it seems, an increasingly popular distaste for the Premier League and its band of expensively-assembled foreign mercenaries. It is, to my eyes, entirely misdirected. It’s not the Premier League's fault that the influx of money into the division has had the apparently corrupting effect it has. By far the more important failure is that of the bloated, out-dated and debt-ridden Football League.

I say this as someone who was a Cambridge United season ticket holder for several years. I’ve seen games in every tier of English football bar the biggest one. This weekend, as luck would have it, will see me visit Stamford Bridge’s away section to see my first Premier League match. I say this in order to give the following context: I am not some EPL fanboy blind to the lower leagues’ existence or their merits.

There is a common argument that says two things make English football unique: first, the popularity of the game; second, its scale and therefore its accessibility.

On top of the ninety-two professional outfits in the Premier and Football Leagues, there are now several professional clubs in the fifth tier of the league pyramid. All-in-all, England has more football clubs than any other country: around forty-thousand according to FIFA’s 2006 ‘Big Count’. The Championship is the fourth best attended league in the world, behind only the Premier League, La Liga and the Bundesliga – and famously ahead of Serie A.

This popularity and scale, the argument goes, is irrefutable proof of both English football’s quality and its health. Actually, it is the exact opposite. We have the highest number of clubs in the world, but a staggeringly low number of qualified coaches. No world-class players or managers, but two or three clubs capable of winning the Champions League. The fact is, English football is diseased and has been for decades. The Premier League didn’t cause this. It has merely highlighted the fact further.

Its critics argue that the Premier League has long been in decline as a spectacle, that it will continue on its downward trajectory and that the quality of the national team will decline with it unless there is a revolution in youth coaching. A necessary step in solving all of these problems – arguably the most important one – is the extensive reformation of the English league system.

Unfortunately, blocking these reforms from happening are the scores of lower league clubs and their supporters who would suffer because of them. These clubs are vital components of the local community, they say, and their pain is passed on, intensified, to their loyal fans. Well, I say this: balls to the lot of them.

If English football really cares about emulating the achievement of 1966, then it should take all of the professional clubs in Leagues One, Two and below and dissolve them all immediately. Give all of their funding to Championship clubs. Next, transfer all of the youth players at these sides to their nearest Premier League academy for trials. Obviously there is a moral and legal issue involving the owners of these clubs and their compensation, but seeing as the majority of these clubs are practically insolvent as it is, the owners would be wise to simply sell the land that the clubs occupied and pursue other business ventures.

Next, enter all willing reserve sides into a division below the Championship, and allow promotion and relegation between the two as of the next full season. Clubs cannot be relegated from this new division, but may leave voluntarily if no benefit is being gained from a footballing or financial perspective.

This is a rough plan, which I (clearly) have not spent much time on. However, the benefits to my eyes are numerous: most importantly, youngsters will not have to go to financially-stricken shitholes in order to earn their stripes. Away from austerity, short-termism and odious lower-league footballing theory, English youngsters might finally get the game-time and patience necessary to develop their games in the manner desired by the national team’s supporters. The fact is that these foreign mercenaries so vilified by anti-EPLers only dominate the top echelons because English footballers are miles behind in terms of ability. Where do the majority learn to play? At clubs existing on a day-to-day basis, where resources are thin and coaching ability is a distant second to relying on motivation and commitment - "passion", if you read The Sun.

With a bit of luck and a full tonne of Utopian thinking, the resources possessed by English football’s behemoths would allow them to cap ticket prices for reserve and youth-team matches. Fans who still gain more pleasure from watching “a game of football with a cup of hot bovril in the traditional English way” as well as seeing home-grown contemporaries rise through the ranks can continue to do so at these games.

Unfortunately, the top flight of English football is and will always be ruled by the team with the biggest budget. This is now an entrenched trait, and no amount of tinkering and reform will change it. However, an alternative is available. The fact that the standard of the alternative is basically obscene is overlooked by people ready to criticise an easy target. The Premier League is not without its faults, but make no mistake: it is the greatest thing to happen to English football ever – hands down. It has given us the financial platform with which to implement structural change, and now we must. It would benefit everyone.

City Evoke Memories of Barcelona on Ferguson's Worst Day

Watching Man City "s**t in the kettle", as Joey Barton put it, felt a lot like watching United's Champions League Final defeats to Barcelona. Not only because it ended with Alex Ferguson looking shellshocked - although the image's rarity makes comparisons between the matches pretty much inevitable - but because it was, to my eyes at least, such a familiar way for his side to lose, the scoreline notwithstanding.

United's players are all specialists in the Sacchian sense: the theory being that by each player being excellent at one thing, the team becomes complete via its composite attributes. City, by contrast, have a collective understanding and because all of their players (save Joleon Lescott) are at least proficient with the ball at their feet, they can play a more fluid, adaptable game. In short: in addition to their individual attributes, they share a common strength. Fergie was in a huge tactical hole at 2-0 and he brought on Jones and HernĂ¡ndez: a cavalier defender who brings the ball out from the back but doesn't defend, and a poacher with lightning quick reactions and a nose for goal, but one that can't control or pass a football. To their benefit, City have neither sort of player on their books. In the same way as Barça, City's shared strength gives them more than the sum of their parts, particularly in relation to United's stuttering, workmanlike style.

The introduction of Jones and HernĂ¡ndez brought to mind another familiar problem. For such a decorated manager, Fergie understands surprisingly little about tactics. Sure, he knows which players are suited to which roles and how to compose a well-rounded XI, but bringing on someone as one-dimensional as HernĂ¡ndez while simultaneously withdrawing Nani was puzzling at best. It essentially reduced his side to nine men. Another mistake which evoked the memory of a United-Barça clash was his choice of formation. One would think that four-band systems have trumped 442 enough times in big matches for Fergie to take the hint, but again he sent out two runners to stop three artists and was surprised when he lost.

Of course, many will say that it was a fluke and all Jonny Evans' fault, but they're wrong. It was his manager's.

A Friday Haiku

Without that anger
in his game, what's left? A man
who plays the whole match.

Week Eight: we are the 99% pass completion rate


Attempted
Completed
Completion%
Man. City
4965
4187
84.3303
Chelsea
4892
4091
83.6263
Swansea
4544
3724
81.9542
Arsenal
4623
3762
81.3757
Man.United
4429
3572
80.6503
Tottenham
3617
2893
79.9834
Wigan
3523
2768
78.5694
Liverpool
4170
3189
76.4748
Fulham
3840
2912
75.8333
West Brom
3443
2566
74.5280
Everton
2928
2164
73.9071
Wolves
3517
2579
73.3295
Newcastle
3397
2486
73.1822
Bolton
3502
2535
72.3872
QPR
3463
2484
71.7297
Sunderland
3450
2461
71.3333
Aston Villa
3101
2169
69.9452
Norwich
3161
2210
69.9146
Blackburn
2861
1905
66.5851
Stoke
2751
1822
66.2305