Socialstorm: It's tough being Sheffield Wednesday right now

The news that Sheffield Wednesday chairman Milan Mandaric was close to selling the club to one of two £25m-bidding parties barely roused the national press.

However, as you can imagine, a potential takeover brought a much more stirring response from the Owls' own fans... very stirring indeed, if this forum post is anything to go by:

"With a possible takeover imminent SAY NO TO CHANGE we are Sheffield Wednesday our stadium is Hillsborough and we play in blue and white we have a great history changing anything would be heartbreaking our great grandparents would be turning in their graves I am however up for bringing us into the 22nd century but we are forever owls and won't accept change."

- Ryan Rye

Alas, Ryan's call to arms was met with nothing but cynicism...

"1 takeover resulted in a club changing it's colours

Chill out."

- EcclesallOwl

Oh dear. It's hardly a surprise that Wednesday fans are in a foul mood with their club sitting second-bottom of the Championship, with no wins in 11 league games so far.

The bad news doesn't stop there though, as Owls midfielder Jose Semedo received a straight-red card in the weekend's fixture with Bolton. Wednesday appealed, but guess what...

“@swfc: SWFC lose appeal on Jose Semedo, who will now serve a three-match ban #swfc” load of balls
— Ryan Trollope (@SWFC_Ryan) October 22, 2013

From one appeal to another. Wednesday striker Gary Madine was sentenced to 18 months in prison at the start of October for causing grievous bodily harm in a night club punch-up...

Sympathy appears to be in short supply:

#WhenWednesdayLastWon Gary Madine was a free man.
— emmmaaaaaa (@emz_swfc) October 21, 2013

What wit.

Phone battery has gone down quicker than Gary Madine
— Arron Smith (@ArronCFC_) October 21, 2013

Still, with all this going on, it would be easy to get bitter...

@Walkerpw If you get the same length of response to questions as the club's Gary Madine statement, you won't be there long.
— Charles Hoyland (@baggleyowl) October 17, 2013

... but most Wednesday fans appear to be just getting on with things. Let's not mince words - the Premier League is now a foggy, foggy memory indeed.

I'm sure a really positive takeover will go through and the Owls will all live happily ever after.

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Photo Credit: Daniel Bagshaw

Oh, the irony: France complain UEFA play-off seeding unfair

France are set to approach FIFA over alleged unfairness in the seeding system for UEFA's world cup qualifying play-offs - the very system which they fully exploited four years ago.

The second-placed teams from each European qualifying group will meet in the play-offs to decide who will go to the Brazil 2014 finals, with the match-ups decided on seedings, which in turn are based on FIFA rankings.  France are looking dead-certs for second place behind Spain in Group I with one remaining qualifier to play this week, but unlike the last time they took to the play-offs in 2009 Les Blues would be unseeded.

France - who place 25th in FIFA's hugely reputable and fully believable world rankings - feel hard-done-to because Group I is alone among the UEFA qualifying group in containing only five teams - the rest contain six.

UEFA's world cup play-offs can be a real slap in the face

The French are arguing that fewer fixtures equals fewer ranking points.  They may have a point - but they were not so quick to take football's governing bodies to task over these fine margins four years ago, in final stages of qualifying for South Africa 2010.

No, four years ago France secured a play-off tie against the Republic of Ireland through a seeding system described by then Irish boss Giovanni Trapattoni as "the death of football" and by then first-choice goalkeeper Shay Given as "totally unfair on the smaller nations".

France, as the seeded team, secured the second leg at home and thus the advantage of having any required extra-time period played at the Stade de France.  Few need reminding that extra time was required and that one member of the France squad decided to literally take matters into his own hands and steer Les Blues into the World Cup finals.

It should be interesting to see how many people France manage to rally to their cause.  After 2009 and Thierry Henry's infamously shameless handball-assist of France's winning goal against the Republic, the relative grounds for complaint in the present case should largely be cast aside.

Having got to the 2010 World Cup, they could have at least had the good grace to keep their heads down, get on with it and come home quietly whenever they were knocked out.  Instead, we were treated to the truly delicious farce of a squad 'rebellion' - see the uncomfortable but succinct summary from the BBC below:



It really doeesn't bode well when the whole affair requires two Youtube clips.  Stay tuned, the second half has some really crackers:

That second clip raises the question of how such a reputedly good squad have ended up needing to split hairs over FIFA ranking points at this juncture should surely have the French reflecting on what the hell their players have been doing for the last few years, rather than looking to blame the rules that have so colossally benefited them in the past.

This team said nothing while exploiting this seeding system four years ago - and for a long time before - while displaying a chronic inability to behave properly and playing well below par for several years.  They should be laughed out of wherever they take these complaints.

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Photo credit: Bryan Clayton

Twitter: Six stages of Januzaj

There have been ructions on Twitter in the past few days about a certain 18-year-old Man United player - Adnan Januzaj.  You would think that the future of all mankind were tied to this fellow's life choices and - bless them - some fans have got a little emotional about it all.

Here's a highlights reel of that storm of waffle, and the six stages of Januzaj that everyone went through.

1) Panic:

With Adnan Januzaj's regular appearances and hot streak of form, some asked why it had taken until now for Man U to get him signed up for life.

just sign the contract alr januzaj!
— Zhongjie (@zhongjiezj) October 8, 2013

2) Gloating:

 Now, we all know that everybody loves Man U - still, some found it in their hearts to sneer at the prospect of the Reds losing such a gem as Januzaj on the cheap.

i can already see januzaj in his real madrid kit now
— 47 goonz. (@jonolukeslater) October 8, 2013

3) Poor humour:

A valiant stab at witticising the melodrama, unfortunately from someone who was picking their nose in school during that lesson on Proper Nouns.
 

The only reason for England to want Januzaj is Scrabble™.
— FöurAllStar (@fourallstar) October">https://twitter.com/fourallstar/statuses/388408934333419520">October 10, 2013

4) Doomsaying:

 

It wasn't long before Sergeant Buzz-Kill rallied his troops.  With key international qualifiers coming up, the doom-merchants couldn't afford to miss such a golden opportunity to run morale into the ground.

The fact that people are practically drooling at the prospect of Januzaj playing for England really shows the state of our national team.
— Cam. (@DiscipleOfPirlo) October 8, 2013

5) Jealousy:

The odd Liverpool fan still hadn't come to terms with the fact that it is no longer the 1980s.

This hype about this Adnan Januzaj is doing my head in. He scores a couple past the team bottom of league and suddenly he is brilliant.
— LFCTillIDie  (@jamie_maginness) October 8, 2013

6) Perspective:

 

Finally, someone of sound mind brought their thoughts on young Januzaj to the table.

Don't see all the hype on this Januzaj lad, might have the skills and flair but put me back into centre mid and i'd fucking snap him in two.
— Roy Keane (@RoyFuckingKeane) October 8, 2013

 

Unfortunately, this tweet won't embed because the account appears to have vanished.  Search that Twitter handle, however, and you'll find a couple of quality reTweets that people managed to fire off before the account shut down.

The Januzaj soap opera looks set to power on until either Januzaj picks a country to represent or international diplomacy breaks down and acts of war are declared.

Focus Game: Djimi Traore's Sounders flounder versus Vancouver

MLS: Seattle Sounders 1-4 Vancouver Whitecaps

Highlights here (they refuse to be embedded): http://www.mlssoccer.com/video/2013/10/10/highlights-seattle-sounders-vs-vancouver-whitecaps#ooid=hnMjJuZjq5zO7570mrG2n_voGzheM6Q_

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I'm sure you've all been wondering just exactly what that Premier League journeyman Nigel Reo-Coker is doing with himself these days.

 

This game between Seattle and Reo-Coker's Vancouver side showed that the former Villa and West Ham man still has all his old... class, as he went on a glorious late-game plod up the pitch to score his first goal of the season. 



Seattle Sounders FC pose unenthusiastically

I watched these highlights in a library and, despite the 3-1 scoreline, I was practically on my feet as Nigel went clean through.  Never mind the keeper's helping hand, it was a special moment.

 

The game also featured the familiar faces of Jay DeMerit (Vancouver), Obafemi Martins and Djimi Traore (both Seattle).  Kenny Miller didn't make the squad for Vancouver due to a groin injury; much as I relish the opportunity to have a poke at the former Scotland star it must be said the little scurrier has adapted smoothly enough to MLS life, bagging 8 goals in 20 games for the distinctly average Vancouver in this, his first full season.

Given the esteem in which both Martins and Traore are still held over here, we might be surprised to learn that Seattle are actually well in the race for the Supporters' Shield (i.e. 'top of the league') - although we might be less surprised at this 4-1 drubbing - off the back of a 5-1 defeat away to Colorado.

Here, we don't see Traore (yellow boots, centre-back) do anything quite as spectacularly wrong as he did in his Liverpool days, but when you're as far out of position as he was for Vanccouver's second goal it must be difficult to get yourself on camera at all.  Fortunately for Seattle, it was only through suspensions and international call-ups that old Djimi got anywhere near the team.

 

I think I have exercised admirable restraint in waiting until this point to lazily link in Traore's classic own goal, scored while playing for Liverpool in 2005.  In the interest of fairness however, this video shows that maybe America has changed him... it does also show that brilliant own goal.

 

 

The fact that Traore was manning Seattle's defences in this game might well have you tempering your enthusiasm for Vancouver's hat-trick hero Kekuta Manneh, the 18-year-old MLS rookie.  And you'd be right - Manneh  has only scored twice in 3 starts and 14 substitute appearance prior to this.  We might have to hold off on the Januzaj-style hype for a few weeks yet.

Seattle will now have to wait another game to book their play-off place, if they can recover their nerve after successive hammerings.  With experienced heads like Traore around, who could have any doubts?

Plenty of reasons to keep an eye on the MLS as it approaches the business end of its season.  The full Seattle-Vancouver match report can be found here on the MLS website.

 

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Photo credit: SkotyWA

Authorities misunderstand football support as 'Yid Army' digs in

You'll have probably heard about how Spurs fans reacted in Sunday's home match against West Ham to threats from the FA and the Met Police regarding their continued use of the word 'yid'.

Wading into an already-saturated debate as I may be, there is nevertheless a methodological point in the 'Y-word' controversy that requires some attention, having been swept aside by the storm around the word itself.

The problem is the approach of those who desire the eradication of 'yid' not only from football but from all sectors of society.  They believe that the moral correctness of their view is so powerful as to negate the need for strategy or understanding of the supporters they are lambasting.

Thus we cannot be surprised that despite the irrefutable nobility of the cause Spurs fans continue to sing 'Yid Army' - and now with even greater conviction.

 

 

Football fans don't like being dictated to by outsiders on matters of their club's identity and tradition.  Nothing gets the hackles up quicker on a football fan than someone telling them that they don't know what's best for their own club.  Particularly in this instance, what has been a longstanding tradition left to develop in isolation is now being dragged into the light and condemned.

The Tottenham Hotspur Supporters' Trust stated last week that they didn't believe that any Spurs fan "uses the term 'yid' in an offensive or insulting way," rather that it represented a "badge of honour and a call to arms".  Meanwhile, the Trust claims that "anti-Semitic abuse levelled at our fans by supporters of opposing teams, appears to have been dismissed by the FA and the Metropolitan Police".

Debate the rights and wrongs of the word all you want, but Spurs fans evidently feel misunderstood and ignored.  Here the pack mentality is going to kick in and a team's supporters will look after each other.  Spurs fans who don't care either way on the use of the term 'Yid' might suddenly find themselves a very vocal part of the 'Army' when they see another among their number threatened.  Who hasn't seen this at a match when police try to eject individuals for other perceived misdemeanours?

This closing of ranks has an obvious effect; the Police can threaten all they want, but the likelihood of seeing several thousand Spurs fans queuing round the block at the local magistrates' court come Monday morning is slim indeed.  Authorities' only recourse then is to shut out fans from games entirely - a whole other level of serious.

The arguments against Spurs fans are of moot value - tethered as they often are to broader agenda and campaigns into which the Spurs case doesn't fit very well.  For a sample, see here the views of Gordon Maloney, president of NUS Scotland, and Clarke Carlisle, chairman of the Professional Footballers' Association.

 

 

It is an unforgiving approach by the authorities that rather bulldozes through Spurs fans' articulated perspective.  Maybe this is a necessary evil in eradicating use of the word 'yid' altogether, but a total unwillingness to acknowledge the nature of football support will mean an almighty mess and great deal more controversy yet.

Had such extreme confrontation been avoided, it is more than likely that the term 'Yid Army' would have fallen into disuse as the society around football continues to expose discrimination as wrong and unpalatable.  Spurs fans might have felt less identification with the term as it became increasingly anachronistic.  However, it's an inescapable feeling that this whole furore - whatever the official outcome - has now perpetuated the use of 'yid' by Spurs fans for at least another generation.

Threats of arrest and disconnected bluster from those who don't want to understand football support are not the best ways of handling this issue.  I am not a Spurs fans and I won't pretend to know exactly where they stand on the use of the word, but this kind of barrage has never made a football support do anything in the past - there is no reason to expect that it will win favour with them in this instance either.

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Photo Credits: laurencehorton; childzy talk

"This is their worst league start for 65 million years..."

We have a winner!  The Most Tedious Period in the Football Calendar award can finally, unquestionably be given to this September-October quagmire.

We've got mass media outlets composing league tables - accompanied by headlines such as 'Cardiff go top with win' - after only two games.  You have the meaningless and sparsely-attended early group-stage matches in both (now-indistinguishable) European cups.  There's also not just one but two international weekends to grind through, stymying any attempts by clubs to build early-season momentum.

But the straw that has broken this old goat's back, that makes him want to trample broadcasters far and wide, is that oh-so-familiar line: "This is X's best/worst start for Y years!"

This phrase plagues September and October.  It must be stopped.  We must rally, get a petition going, bombard the BBC with complaints - make them apologise.  Whatever it takes to get the media to actually do some work and fish up some real statistics.

Who defines the word 'start'?  It's a lovely, fluid concept that stretches from about game number 3 out to what feels like Christmas and the halfway mark, and allows the media to frame any particular three-game run as reflective of that team's entire season.

 For example, in the 2010/11 season, Stoke City had 12 points from 9 games.   It was very ominous; "Stoke's worst-ever start [out of three attempts] to a Premier League season."

Stoke City then won three on the bounce and, after 12 games, had 21 points.  Without a hint of irony or a shred of shame the BBC's preview of the next fixture read: "Stoke have enjoyed their best-ever start to a Premier League season."   Some bloody nerve eh!

We need a government-imposed rule on the precise length of a 'start' to a season - say, 8 games.  Then you've got a real statistic on your hands and, what's more, we can all stop talking about it nice and early in the season.

I know, I know, it may seem like a triviality; I should go back to pontificating about the dying art of tackling or the worldwide refereeing conspiracy to favour Man United.  Well, I will - but this really needed highlighting.

If these media companies would have you and I believe that statistics dictate all within football, they could at least have the decency to use proper statistics.  We shouldn't just be swallowing whatever groundless garbage they conjure up to suit the occasion.

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Photo credit: stringberd

Life after the Prem: Danny Higginbotham

It must be hard for footballers to believe sometimes.  But yes, there can be more to post-30s life than sinking, defeated, into a plush Sky sofa, muttering agreement with whatever Jamie Redknapp just said - or trying to get a word in edgeways on BBC's 606 programme, placating a deluded Toon fan while being shouted over by Robbie Savage.

The increasing influx of experienced foreign coaches in the Premier League has only further diminished the job prospects of any aspirational managers, while anybody who isn't a cockney or hasn't played for West Ham ('footballing academy', my arse) is up against the odds if they fancy trying to squeeze into the crowded Sky Sports studios.  Whether they might be better trying next door at BT Sport - whose cavernous new facility houses a four-man punditry-panel colossus - is by the by.

Because Danny Higginbotham is illuminating a slightly different route.  Since incurring a serious knee injury while at Stoke in 2011, the 34-year-old former Man United trainee has found fitness - and first-team football - hard to come by.  Not deterred, Higginbotham began dabbling in punditry with several broadcasters, distinguishing himself increasingly well to the point where he was a big feature in the BBC's coverage of this month's transfer deadline day.  He's even started writing a column for Stoke-on-Trent's Sentinel newspaper (oo-er).

All fairly standard so far, you might think.  But Higginbotham isn't embracing the comfortable life just yet, and unlike many of his peers has demonstrated that he is not too proud to drop down the divisions to wherever he can find first-team football and continue his playing career.  Through a battle for fitness he has meandered his way down to the Blue Square Premier (the Conference, if you're one of us old gits), where he now plays with Chester FC.

He is one of several players cutting this admirable path.  Rory Delap, 37, moved to Burton Albion this summer; James Beattie, 35, first played for and - as of the end of last season - now manages Accrington Stantley; Dele Adebola, 38, now plies his trade for Rushall Olympic in the Northern Premier League Premier Division; Barry Hayles, 41, is turning out for Southern Premier Division side Arlesey Town this season. City the season before last; Frank Sinclair, 41, is the player-manager at Conference North outfit Colwyn Bay.

But Higginbotham isn't just content with "getting my love of football back" at Chester - in the past few days he has declared himself available for selection for the national team of Gibraltar, who are the newest full-members of UEFA following a successful application in May of this year.

As Higginbotham explained to BBC Radio 5 Live: "The opportunity might be there to play against some very big European countries - what an experience that would be.  It was something I couldn't turn down."

However, there are serious issues beneath this feel-good factor that persist unresolved.  The restricted educational opportunities of people who had to prioritise their sport from such an early age represent an obstacle which the game has only begun to get a handle on in the past decade.  Not every player will enter their 30s able to reel off a newspaper column or articulate on live television the finer points of Chelsea's new formation.

This leads into the broader and undeniable problem of racial stratification - both within the game and in the society that feeds the game each new generation of players.  The number of black managers currently among England's 92 league clubs (three - can you name them?) is greatly disproportionate to the number of black players at the same level.  Thus the positive is tarnished somewhat - that such luminaries as Frank Sinclair are giving back to the grassroots game not because they want to but because it is the best they can achieve in the current environment.

Higginbotham's is a satisfying story, but its exceptional nature serves only to highlight the fundamental problems that football continues to ignore.


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Photo credit: Ronnie Macdonald; Ingy the Wingy