Football Opinion

There has been speculation about Ashley Young moving to Spurs from Aston Villa all summer long.  I can’t really see why this has been the case and would be totally puzzled if it turned out to be true.   Firstly because Spurs don’t need him and secondly because there will be uproar at Aston Villa if they sell another of there better players.

Spurs arguably currently have the most effective wide players in the country with Gareth Bale and Aaron Lennon in the starting line up.  If they are not available then there is Gio Dos Santos, David Bentley, Modric and Kranjcar that can play the position at least as well as if not better than Ashley Young.  Danny Rose is also an effective wide man.   There just doesn’t seem a logical reason for signing him unless one of the Spurs men are leaving.

I haven’t seen anything from Young that makes him an improvement on the players already at Tottenham and when scrutinized his final ball is  not accurate enough to be paying silly transfer fees for.

Spurs have made two very sensible signings this summer.  To remain in the land of logic the best thing would be for Keane to depart and a talented forward to arrive. It seems unlikely to be Luis Fabiano and there are no other obvious candidates in the frame at the moment so perhaps Keane will be staying again.

Jenas is perhaps the other candidate to leave as he is unlikely to start many games.

Technorati Tags: ashley young, dos santos, modric, spurs, Tottenham

Spurs travel to Stoke City for the second league game of the season with 4 out of  the possible 5 front players injured on the plastic pitch in Berne Switzerland on Tuesday night.  All the forwards that played picked up strains and only Peter Crouch is fit possibly because he is the only one that didn’t play.

It is a bit difficult to predict the line up with Modric also injured.  If none of these players travel it looks like Harry might be forced to play Jenas as an attacking midfielder getting up to play in and around Crouch or possibly Kranjcar could play in the hole.

It looks like Spurs are getting stronger now with the arrival of Gallas and Sandro.  The weakness appears to me to be the fullbacks now. Ekotto can be great but has a few stinkers but how Corluka gets the nod over his rivals for right back is a bit of a  baffler.  He is tidy but slow and rarely delivers a decent cross.  He is too slow to overlap and often gets outpaced when defending so it ought to be a good time for Walker or Naughton make the breakthrough this season.  It is unclear why Spurs bought Kaboul back as they had already sold him once because he wasn’t good enough.

For Saturdays game perhaps only having one forward might be a blessing as going to Stoke is a job for the physically and mentally strong.  A packed midfield might just be whats necessary to get a result.

Technorati Tags: jenas, kranjcar, modric, peter crouch, spurs, Stoke City, Tottenham

If the rumours are true that Giovanni Dos Santos is about to get shipped out again I will be very disappointed.  He was far and away Spurs best representative at the World Cup in South Africa which you would think might earn him a chance to actually get on the pitch in a Spurs shirt.  One thing you can be sure of is that if Spurs didn’t already own him they would be linked with buying him about now. 

Now with David Bentley injured I would have thought it was a great chance for Gio  to at last get a chance to shine. If the World Cup is any sort of barometer Gio is one of the best young players in the world but nobody at Tottenham seems to think so.

 It always baffles me at this time of year when the revolving door starts.  You could start a team of ex Tottenham players that were not given much of a chance at White Hart Lane but have gone on be successful at other Premiership clubs. Pedro Mendes and Danny Murphy were both better than midfielders that kept them out of the Spurs side but they never really got a chance.

Let s hope Harry decides to give him a chance because there are a lot of Spurs fans that would really like to see him out there ahead of players like Bentley and Kranjcar.

Technorati Tags: tottenham spurs Gio dos Santos David_Bentley

The FA will not have missed the undoubted talent and unerring accuracy of Paul the Psychic Octopus. His football knowledge has seen no equal during this World Cup.  Despite the nation calling for patriotism to be reintroduced to our national team with the appointment of an English coach I think they may be drawn to appoint a German Octopus as the next England Manager.  They believe in employing the best man for the job above everything else. They have shown that they believe somebody that can’t speak the language is the best man for the job. They have also shown that they don’t object to England friendlies being turned to farce by another inept foreign manager . They have built a national stadium but were not that bothered about it having a decent pitch inside it. They have shown that they believe all English managers aren’t up to the job. I keep thinking they must be one step ahead of the rest of us with their ideas but I can’t quite see how.

Now of course they will have to use all their negotiating skills to get him as he will be much in demand.  They will have to offer him more than the current manager, that goes without saying.  £6 million a year is nowhere near enough for such a talented invertebrate. You have to pay top dollar if you want the best. He will also need a luxury tank in Mayfair and executive tanks at all Premier League Grounds. I am sure he has a bit of an entourage who we can make ridiculously wealthy too.  Perhaps he has a friend that we could make goalkeeping coach as they have plenty of arms. How much further would we have got in his World Cup if we had employed his selection process to pick our forward line.  He might have chosen some forwards that would get an occasional shot away! He might have chosen a team instead of ‘who is going to play with Rooney?’ I think the FA should appoint him immediately and take the lead in forward thinking management again.

Stop press :  I just found out that Paul was born in Weymouth which makes him English.  Logically that makes him even more qualified but this is the FA and they are not very big on English for England

Technorati Tags: paul the psychic octopus

Firstly of course Capello has to go  because he got so many things wrong , then went back on all the things he said he wouldn’t do, also crucially he isn’t English. He showed no sign of justifying the highest salary of the football managers at the World Cup. He looked like he picked the substitutions out of a hat.  So he can disappear immediately and take all of the rest of the Italian staff with him.

Secondly, John Terry can go too as he thinks he is bigger than the team and gets away with murder.  He played like a pub team centre half against Germany and really doesn’t deserve the special treatment that he receives.  He undermined the manager at a crucial stage of the World Cup and quite frankly any of the other centre backs would have performed better than he did against Germany.

Players that should never have gone to the World Cup in the first place like Jamie Carragher, Robert Green, Emile Heskey and Shaun Wright-Phillips.  Players with no England future David James and Ledley King.

Most importantly the people that appointed Capello at the FA need to go especially whoever sanctioned the change to the contract only 3 weeks ago.  These people don’t learn anything, don’t listen to the country and have nothing in mind other than money.   We need people in there that understand the principles of sport not business.  If you have a product that people can relate too the money will come naturally.  There was no clamour to appoint Sven from the public or Capello so why they feel they need to pay them ridiculous money is baffling.  These people have made our once proud nation the laughing stock of football.  How can you talk to players about pride in the shirt when we are not even proud enough to appoint one of our own as manager ?  We need to get these people out and get Englishmen in on sensible salaries not ludricous ones.

We also need to get Englishmen back into management positions in the Premier League and prioritising English boys as players to groom rather than importing them from all around the world.

Don’t forget this isn’t cricket. There is real passion for our country in football and we are in danger of diluting it.  The England cricket team may be happy to field a team of South African rejects but the football supporters are far more patriotic.  Lets get this sorted now.

Technorati Tags: capello, england, heskey, John_Terry

Who are we going to blame for the complete disaster that is our World Cup campaign?   The soft targets I expect if you read the national papers.  I often think they are like a cartel that picks a target and that becomes a common theme.  We know that the targets will be Capello, Upson , Heskey and the referee that missed our Lampard goal.  We also know that they will roll out rubbish like it might have been different if we took Walcott or Hargreaves. Now 4-4-2 is alien to Wayne Rooney who has probably played it in 95% of the football matches he has ever played in. He didn’t get a shot in worthy of the name in four matches for goodness sake.  The system isn’t the reason for that. We would have won if he had played up front on his own? Do me a favour. Why isn’t it as simple as Wayne Rooney played like Drain Rooney?  He couldn’t trap a bag of sand in 3 of the 4 matches.  Why is Upson the main culprit at the back when John Terry was totally, yes totally, missing from his post for all four goals ?  He was absolutely terrible. He played like the kid in the under 10s who thinks he is better than everybody else and can play where he likes.  Much as they will talk like team men both Terry and Rooney play like they think they are better than the rest and positional responsibility doesn’t apply to them.

Why don’t we have a manager that can speak our language ?  Why do the FA continue to repeat the same old mistakes of overpaying foreign mercenaries to pick players for a job which is of national pride.  The Sun headline today is ‘You have let your country down’  well it is not Capello s country and he shouldn’t be in charge.  The FA have to take a stance and bring patriotism back into football.  You wouldn’t need to offer a patriot a ridiculously expensive contract and you would have somebody interested in the country progressing.

Heskey was on a hiding to nothing and I feel sorry for him because virtually everybody thought he shouldn’t even be there let alone starting and the same on a smaller scale applies to Shaun Wright-Phillips.  Upson was always going to get caned if we lost too but in my opinion it is Rooney and Terry that let us down on the pitch the most.  Capello has also made some ridiculous decisions that left us with no goal threat and our best midfielder playing on the left wing. That failed in Portugal 2004 {six years ago] and we are still trying to make it work now.  However the biggest culprits are the FA for continuing with their non patriotic policies.  Don’t they notice that the passion of the supporters for their country? Don’t they know that even if we had won there is little merit in it if it is masterminded by somebody from an opposing nation? They are in danger of breaking the fans spirit by not applying basic sport principles to the national team.

Technorati Tags: england, heskey, John Terry, Upson, wayne Rooney, World Cup, Wright-Phillips

The press who are currently crucifying Wayne Rooney should remember exactly who it was that kept telling us that Wayne Rooney could win the World Cup on his own.  The tabloids have built him up to proportions that far outweigh his ability.  His history for England shows no evidence to back up the ridiculous weight of expectation placed on the poor boys shoulders.   The evidence actually is that when the situation gets tense his brains go out the window.  He actually got sent off in the last World Cup Finals and we  ended up losing the match against Portugal and coming home.  He also decided to go and play left back  in Russia and gave away a penalty that cost us qualification to the Euro Finals. He has made big contributions to getting us knocked out of the last two tournaments.  So the expectation now should be that in a tense situation he is far more likely to do something stupid than good.   The press  and that loon Porky Parry on Talksport have added to his burden with their expectation forgetting that Sven had told us he could win the last World Cup . He didn’t even score a goal in that World Cup.

He will surely be selected as he is ‘Wayne Rooney Superstar’ but he doesn’t deserve to be on current form and his temperament is a big risk.

Crouch and Defoe is a partnership that works and would probably have been too good for Algeria.  Picking a team to play around what suits Wayne Rooney, when on the latest evidence he can’t trap a bag of sand, could yet prove foolish.

Capello would do well to underline the fact that England are not a one man team and can win matches without Rooney.  I don’t think the weight of expectation is fair on him or shows any sign of turning out to be justified.

Technorati Tags: algeria, capello, crouch and defoe, England World Cup, wayne Rooney

Fabio Capello has made few mistakes as England manager but he did make selection errors last time. Most stupid one being I don’t think that James Milner was a sensible selection bearing in mind he had been ill all week and there were plenty of other options.  I don’t think Rob Green or Heskey should have started either but now I think it will be difficult to drop either of them for different reasons.  If he drops Green for making a mess of a simple shot then he is being needlessly harsh on the boy which can have wide wider repercussions on his career [ like Scott Carson ].  It was a horrible error but can happen to anyone and doesn’t mean it will happen again.  Heskey , who would not have even been there for me,  was one of the better players against USA.  I would still bring in Crouch for him even though it seems unfair as he played better than Rooney. I got Heskey in the sweep for first goalscorer and tried to sell it but couldnt find anyone who thought the forward could score. For that reason Crouch has got to come in. We know Rooney is not ever going to get dropped so Heskey has to go back to the bench.

Wright Phillips was a strange choice as replacement for Milner as he has been out of the City side and not showing any form. I hope Fabio Capello gives Joe Cole his chance on the left this time as he is the best we have out there and always looks likely to do something.

So I am hoping for just two changes to the starting line up being joe Cole and Crouchy in with Milner and Heskey out.

Technorati Tags: england, fabio capello, heskey, joe cole, milner, rob green

There is a growing amount of people starting to watch football live on PC because of the convenience and low cost. Especially with the World Cup and games going on in work time it is a great way of catching games for a small annual fee.  There are a number of companies offering this service but I spotted one for £9.99 [$12.99] per year which gives all the matches you can watch plus access to radio stations and films from around the world. It is a fabulous package for very little money.

  This service is showing all world cup games but also will show all premiership, champions league, La Liga , Serie A etc games as well.  Really for the sort of money to join, if you are any sort of a football nut, you would have your moneys worth in under a week in my opinion.  That is why live football streaming is taking off

If you are anything like me you like your football on a saturday afternoon at 3 o clock  as much as anything.  TV stations never show at that time in the UK. With this you can watch your favourite team live at 3pm. Wonderful !

to find out more click on Watch Football Live on PC

Technorati Tags: watch-football-live-on-pc live-football-streaming

All the talk is of the Vuvuzelas that are unmissable at the South Africa World Cup but another unmistakeable ingredient are the orange heels on so many of the players boots in the games.  I have never ever seen so many players wearing the same boots in any football match before. Nike seem to be dominating the footwear department at this World cup with the unmissable orange and metallic purple boot that has been launched for the occasion.

I have been astounded at the amount of players from all countries that are wearing them.  I think it was the Algeria / Slovenia game that I thought maybe half the players or more were wearing them.  England had their fair share too wearing them.

If you want to get your own pair like Wayne Rooney they are called Mercurial Vapors.  You can find a link to them here at World Cup Vapors