Three and in – not just another football blog

“It’s a results industry”, they tell us.  And they’re right.  Failure comes with a heavy price.  What’s less immeditately apparent, and less reasonable, is the price of success.

You could forgive Roberto Di Matteo for wondering why he bothered to get West Brom promoted in the first place.  In his first season in charge, he led them to second place in the Championship, thus restoring them to the Premier League.  In doing so, his style of football won plaudits from fans and journalists.  The Baggies had boing once more.

They made a decent start to life in the Premier League too.  After an opening day mauling at Stamford Bridge, they won at the Emirates and drew at Old Trafford.  Since then they’ve been patchy, with a record of 13 defeats from 18 games.  But then, yesterday morning, Roberto Di Matteo was sacked.

I think the Italian can be very proud of his 18 months in charge of West Brom.  As things stand, WBA are just one point behind neighbours Birmingham, whose manager Alex McCleish seems to be under little immediate threat of dismissal.  They’re also just three points away from an Aston Villa side who spent £24m on a striker this window.  Considering his limited resources, Di Matteo has done a good job.

Yes, West Brom are in danger of going down, but then they’re West Brom.  The ‘Boing Boing’ Baggies epitomise what it is to be a yo-yo club.  I understand they’re keen to stay in the Premier League, but going down would be no disaster.  Another few years of parachute payments and a track record of success in the Championship would soon see them back in the top flight.

Instead, they’ve gambled on short-term success by sacking a hugely promising manager.  Di Matteo needn’t worry: another appointment will come.  From now on, West Brom could find themselves watching a very different kind of football: the current favourite to take over is pragmatist supreme, Sam Allardyce.

Another issue is the timing.  Why sack a manager now, just a few days after the transfer window was closed?  If West Brom were really serious about staying up this season, they could’ve dismissed Di Matteo a few weeks back and given the new man money to spend.

I feel for Di Matteo, and I feel for the West Brom fans.  It looks to me like their chairman is trying to show them he’s eager to keep the side up.  In truth, he would’ve been better off supporting the manager he had with funds in the transfer window.

I don’t think I’ve ever felt sorry for Alan Pardew before.  But seeing him lose his star striker and best player with just hours of the transfer window to go, there was a tinge of sympathy.  Accompanied, admittedly, by a smirk.  Pardew did a deal with the devil when he agreed to work for Mike Ashley, and these sorts of bumps are inevitable on such a rocky road.

I’m sure, come the summer, he’ll enjoy spending the preposterous £35m fee Newcastle managed to get for Andy Carroll.  For now, however, he’s stuck with a paucity of striking options: the erratic (and now injured) Shola Ameobi; the fast but feeble Peter Lovenkrands; a man who took almost a year to score for the club, Leon Best; and the promising but unpolished Nile Ranger.

Desperate times call for desperate measures.  And that, undoubtedly, is what signing Jeremie Aliadiere would be.

When Aliadiere came through the renowned Clairefontaine academy, he received favourable comparisons with Thierry Henry and David Trezeguet.  As we speak, he’s been without a club for more than six months.  When Arsenal sold him to Middlesbrough in 2007, Aliadiere complained that Arsene Wenger had ‘frozen him out’.  Not so.  Wenger’s faith in him was unwavering: he received countless opportunities, including starting the 2007 Carling Cup Final against Chelsea.

The reasons Aliadiere failed to make the grade at Arsenal are the same reasons he finds himself a free agent now: inconsistency, and injuries.

When he signed for Boro, Aliadiere said:

“My career is beginning.  Now everything depends on me; the cards are in my hands.”

Well, it’s safe to say that since then he’s dropped the cards in a big puddle of poo, and is currently scrabbling about trying to find them.

When fit at Middlesbrough, Aliadiere failed to deliver, scoring just 11 goals in nearly 80 appearances.  The bigger problem was that he simply wasn’t fit often enough.  Aliadiere is one of that unfortunate breed of footballers from whom injury is something they have to learn to expect, not avoid.  His bones are as brittle as his confidence in front of goal.

To think he’s now on the verge of a Premier League return is remarkable.  He trained with West Ham this summer until that trial was interrupted by, you guessed it, injury.  Now, with the window closed and only free transfers permitted, the Toon could soon welcome a man who flopped so badly at Boro.

If he does sign, I wish Aliadiere all the best.  There’s no doubting that he did once have a good deal of potential, but at 27 it seems a little late to be “beginning” his career all over again.

Apparently, Newcastle’s alternative to Aliadiere is Francis Jeffers. I haven’t seen the rest of that list, but judging by their apparent taste for injury prone ex-Arsenal players, I should probably let Newcastle know that Christopher Wreh is currently out of contract with Indonesian Football League side Perseman Manokwari…

The clock struck 11pm on the, frankly, ludicrous, Transfer Deadline Day and neither the world or Jim White imploded. Much to the disgust of Rupert Murdoch.

Despite Liverpool courting him, Man United rumoured to be sticking thermometers up his behind and Spurs amateurish efforts, Charlie Adam never left Blackpool. I’m glad. The thought of Charlie Adam as a £10m player would tarnish the image he has in Scotland.

We may have to have admit that he is quite good and that wouldn’t do.

Charlie Adam is a joke figure to the football folk north of the border. He is still that youngster who was unfortunately blessed with excess puppy fat, a face that looks like it had been put on fire then patted out with a shovel and teeth that no dentist would touch.

He first came to prominence when he went on loan to St Mirren. While watching Soccer Saturday his name would appear often as he scored 9 goals as St Mirren won the first division. St Mirren that season were a decent coupon bet.

Paul Le Guen then flounced into Glasgow promising Gallic flair, style and excitement. Adam got his chance under Le Guen at Rangers but Le Guen was also the master of his downfall (in fickle football supporters eyes, mind).

As Le Guen struggled to introduce any sort of cohesion to a team that flattered to deceive, the manager accused players of not being great athletes and suggested their diets didn’t quite suit the needs of a professional athlete. He claimed that the players regularly turned up for training worse for wear, drank Coca Cola and ate crisps.

It was christened Monster Munch Gate as everything, you know, must become a gate and not just be an incident.

Adam was the perfect foil for this ridicule. His shorts looked like they were two bed sheets sewn together and he was the prime example of someone who looked like they followed a deep fried diet to almost OCD levels.

From that point on Adam was never taken seriously. The Celtic fans sang songs about his sisters pants (we don’t know if he has a sister), which is still sung to this day, and even Rangers fans saw him as a joke figure.

It didn’t matter what he did on the park. He won Rangers Young Player Of The Year in his first full season and has scored more goals in the Champions League than Kris Boyd.

He fell out of favour at Ibrox when Walter Smith started questioning his work-rate and attitude of the pitch. Another nail in the Adam coffin. A parting of the ways was inevitable.

A loan move to Blackpool brought further mirth on Charlie. A donkey going to Donkeyville and a place where people live on chips and beer. I found it hard not to imagine him standing on the South Pier, eating candy floss and ice cream trying pull passing hen nights in a ‘Kiss me quick!’ hat.

As rumours that he might actually be a player started to surface they were ignored. The Scottish Media stated Smith was right to get rid of this bad apple (or kebab in Adam’s case) and that he was just another in a long line of failed Celtic and Rangers youth players.

How times change.

Last week he was hailed as the future of the Scottish national side and a young player called Jamie Ness, who has played a few games for Rangers, was called the new Charlie Adam.

Though I gasped a few weeks back at a pass he played for Blackpool I still see a fat bloke, with a sometime decent left foot whose sisters pants smell from the east to the west.

That will never change.

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The Lord of the Wing can be found, not eating Monster Munch, at The Celtic Blog

Player idolised by the fans ups and leaves. It hurts. I get it. We all get it. But burning your club’s shirt? No. Just no.

Burn Fernando, burn

It might have Torres on the back but on the front is the Liverpool crest. Kenny Dalglish said:

Players leave the club and players come in, though more have come into this club than gone. It’s no different now. People move on. The most important thing is the club.

It might be a symbolic gesture but anyone who thinks they’re doing anything other than disrespecting the club is entirely wrong. Protesting citizens setting fire to the flag of a warring neighbour or an oppressive regime, fine. Torres was a Spanish footballer (not genocidal despot) who scored lots of goals for Liverpool FC and on whom they have just made a profit of £30m. I fully understand fans feeling a bit betrayed by him  but to go as far as to set fire to the shirt is frankly pathetic.

Beyond that I think Liverpool have taken two big gambles in Carroll and Suarez. South American strikers who make a Premier League impact are few and far between. Those who have failed more than outnumber those who have not. He has a lot to do to prove he’s not the next Alfonso Alves or Matej Kezman, players who score a bucketload in Holland but flopped miserably in England.

Yes, he looked exciting in the World Cup but then Liverpool fans won’t need reminding that so did El Hadj Diouf before he joined.

As for Carroll, I’m just flabbergasted that anyone can think £35m on him is anything other than massively overpriced. Sure, there’s potential and Liverpool are making an investment in that, but when you spend that kind of money you expect the finished article. He has half a season of decent performances under his belt, a suspect temperament and a history of off-field issues.

It will require Steven Gerrard to supply him with the kind of service he got from Joey Barton at Newcastle. Whatever you think of the cigar-man his dead ball delivery is up there with the best. Dalglish can teach him a lot too but Carroll at £35m+ is the ultimate example of the ‘English tax’. Transfers of English players between two English clubs rarely represent anything like their real value.

In a world where David Villa is sold for £33m, Edin Dzeko for £27m, there’s just no justifcation, other than desperation, for the Andy Carroll fee. I’m not saying he can’t do a job at Anfield, but with that kind of a price kind comes expectation and responsibility and I don’t think Carroll can fulfill either of them well enough.