Three and in – not just another football blog

For Spurs, breaking the top four monopoly in 2009/10 was a momentous achievement. And with it came a highly rewarding Champions League campaign, taking in a thrilling victory over the holders, Inter Milan, before bowing out to Jose Mourinho’s Real Madrid.

There was little disgrace in losing to the battle Real – a side that cost hundreds of millions to assemble. Harry Redknapp, never slow to justify his occasional failures, will doubtless make the same point about the tussle they’ve just lost to Man City over that invaluable Champions League spot.

A year ago, a Peter Crouch header ensured it was Spurs who embarked on that voyage in to the stellar climes of the Champions League. Last night, his own goal confirmed that City will replace them. The form of Kenny Dalglish’s Liverpool means that Spurs may now miss out on the Europa League too.

There is an air of inevitability about City’s ascension – it would require remarkable mismanagement to spend that much money without any discernible success, and despite his conservative tactics Mancini is clearly no fool.

However, I wonder if Spurs fans feel a tad uneasy about how easily they’ve relinquished a prize they fought so hard to obtain. Granted, City have spent money, but Spurs had something more valuable: poll position. For the last twelve months, they have been a Champions League club, and City haven’t. In the summer, that advantage enabled Spurs to pull in big names – the likes of Rafael van der Vaart and William Gallas, both of whom have been inspired signings.

And yet, in January, Spurs were strangely inactive, moving only to snare Stephen Pienaar from Everton – a good player, but not one who was not evidently needed. The weakness in the Tottenham squad has been clear all season: they have lacked goals from their strikers. Whilst the likes of Bale and Van der Vaart have chipped in, Crouch, Defoe and Pavlyuchenko have been erratic. Robbie Keane was shipped out to West Ham on loan, where his poor form has continued. And yet nobody came in.

Tottenham did make a few haphazard deadline day moves, throwing money at half the clubs in La Liga in attempt to bring in the likes of Guiseppe Rossi, Fernando Llorente and Alvaro Negredo. But it was unplanned and unproductive.

It was also unusual for Harry Redknapp, a manager known for his transfer market acumen. Perhaps he wanted to escape the shackles of his ‘wheeler-dealer’ reputation. Perhaps the Spurs board were more interested in raking in the Champions League money than investing it in the squad.

Or perhaps they felt it was pointless, and that City’s riches meant they would perennially be fighting a losing battle.

Spurs lost the fight on the pitch last night. But in many respects, it was lost off the pitch in January. With City now having both the money and the status they desired, it looks a long way back for Tottenham.

Pea-shooter a deadly weapon
18 goals from 37 appearances would be more than good enough for Javier Hernandez in his first season in English football. When you factor in that of those 37 games, only 20 have been starts, his record become even more impressive. The fact that the Premier League’s top scorer, Dimitar Berbatov, has fallen behind Hernandez in the pecking order speaks volumes for the Mexican’s potential.

It could get worse for Torres…
…in the short-term. Ultimately, it will get better. Form is temporary, but class is permanent, and there’s no doubting the Spaniard has that in bags. Last night, however, he seemed to crumble under the weight of expectation. Not only was Chelsea’s entire season in the balance, but the fact he hasn’t yet scored in blue is clearly strung about his neck like an obese albatross, and judging by his impact as a sub Didier Drogba would almost certainly have been a better bet. Not even facing his favoured opponent Nemanja Vidic could revive the Spaniard. I suspect we may not see the best of Torres until United have the title in the bag too and the pressure is well and truly off. Only then he can he concentrate fully on integrating in to the side.

It’s too soon to sack Ancelotti
If you believe some of the rumours on Fleet Street, not even a victory last night could save Carlo Ancelotti’s job. I have to say, I find the idea of sacking a manager who won the double in his first season after a solitary trophyless campaign ridiculous. Ancelotti has experience of reigniting ageing sides at Milan. There have been signs in recent weeks that he’s capable of doing just the same at Chelsea.

This “average” United side could win a treble
I have to admit I’ve been waiting all season long for this United side to come a-cropper. Now they’re odds-on to win the Premier League, and in the semi-finals of both the FA Cup and Champions League. It’s a huge testament to a winning mentality instilled in the culture of the club by the manager. If he is able to claim all three prizes once more, 12 years after the Nou Camp, would Alex Ferguson finally decide to go out on a high?

The press enjoy the debate.  Sky’s Sunday Supplement’s hoard of pundits drool over their croissants the moment the subject comes up.  But does anyone else really care who wears the armband of the national team?

There are few neutrals who didn’t take pleasure in John Terry’s fall from grace a year ago.  The Wayne Bridge stories and subsequent removal of the armband were, let’s face it, funny.

However, the furore around returning the armband to Terry is nothing less than dull.  Let’s look at the bare facts: Rio Ferdinand and Steven Gerrard are both unavailable.  Terry is the natural choice to take the armband, and considering the injury records of his rivals, it probably makes sense to keep it there.

And does it really matter who wears the thing anyway?  In international football, captaincy has long since been a ceremonial role.  But even at club level it is becoming less significant.

Arsene Wenger has long suggested that the armband is a mere symbol – what matters is that the team shows collective leadership and responsibility.  Whilst his own side has generally failed to step up to that idealistic plate, it remains a salient thought.  And it’s not just a foreign school of thought: Alex Ferguson had no qualms about removing the armband from Ferdinand and placing it on Nemanja Vidic.  In the modern game, the iconic skipper has become an increasingly rare motif.

If you are going to create a fuss around a piece of cloth, you might be best to follow the example of Wales manager Gary Speed.  Whatever happens with Terry, he’s unlikely to remain a key component in the side beyond next summer’s European Championships.  In choosing Aaron Ramsey as his captain, Speed has brought stability and direction to his Wales side.

It’ll be interesting to see how their team-mates rally around the respective skippers this Saturday.

In his Five Things We Learned From Liverpool vs Manchester United article, The Guardian’s Daniel Taylor came down harder than Jamie Carragher on Nani, who was tearfully substituted after feeling the effects of a horrific lunge from the Liverpool defender.  Taylor insists:

“Bryan Robson never cried. Roy Keane never cried. Heck, we never even saw tears from Cristiano Ronaldo, the man who wrote the book on football prima donnas.”

It makes me sick, these foreigners coming over hear with their overactive tear glands.

Oh, wait.

I like Daniel Taylor’s work, but it does seem a little perverse to me that a journalist is quicker to criticise the reaction of a badly injured player than the perpetrator of a quite horrific tackle.  It’s symptomatic of the prevailing attitudes in English football that create an environment in which challenges like this take place.

Maybe it’s because I’m a soft Southerner, but I honestly can’t see what’s wrong with wearing a snood. When Samir Nasri & Co donned the tubular neck scarf for the first time, they can’t have imaged the reaction they’d provoke – partly because on the continent some footballers, like Gigi Buffon, have been wearing them for years.

Despite the insistence of certain managers, including Arsene Wenger, that the scarves actually provide a safeguard against injury, the old school of the British game have come out in force against them, with Alex Ferguson reportedly banning them from Old Trafford and claiming that “real men don’t wear snoods”.

That’s right, Fergie.  Real men, like Wayne Rooney, elbow people in the neck when they’re not looking and then run away.

Notts County manager, Ferguson acolyte, and self-proclaimed ‘Guvnor’ Paul Ince is the latest to speak out about snood-gate:

“Back in my time, and I sound old now, it was black and white boots and that was it.

Now you’ve got snoods, people wearing headphones when they are doing interviews, which I find disrespectful, pink boots, green boots, you name it they’ve got it, tights – they’ll be wearing skirts next.”

Terrible, isn’t it. The youth of today and their superfluous fashion accessories.

What Ince doesn’t say is that in his day, he himself was guilty of carrying about a superfluous accessory that was otherwise thought to be a brand new addition to the footballer’s kitbag: the air rifle.

Perhaps Ashley Cole should consider offering his snoodlessness at defence.  And hope against hope that Paul Ince is on the jury.

The away goal is one of football’s most precious commodities. I remember when United were trailing 3-0 to Real Madrid in 2003. When Ruud van Nistelrooy netted a last minute strike to reduce the deficit, Clive Tylesdley’s joyous shouts of “AWAY GOAL!!!” made you think the Dutchman had converted a clincher rather than a consolation.

As it happened, United went on to get hammered in the second leg too. But Tyldesley was probably still running around the room after Van Nistelrooy’s effort: Away goals have taken on disproportionate significance in European football.

Last night, in a rematch of 2010′s final, Bayern Munich celebrated a 1-0 win at the San Siro thanks to a late late goal from Mario Gomez. After the game, manager Louis van Gaal was bullish about his team’s result. And, of course, that extra bonus: the “away goal”:

“It was a very good game, very attractive and everyone can be happy with the game, it was fun. It must have pleased everyone who watched it. Of course we have a better chance of progressing now because we scored an away goal.”

Whilst Gomez has most certainly scored a goal, and one away from home at that, it comes without the mythical properties that make the ‘away goal’ so valued: it cannot decide the tie. Their is no possible result in the second leg that can allow the ‘awayness’ of Gomez’s goal to prove decisive. It is, sad to say, merely a ‘goal’. Sorry Louis.

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Thanks to @Marcotti for bringing to light this strangest of reactions

If the noises coming out of South America* are to be believed, we are on the eve of the retirement of one of football’s greats.

After a weekend in which we drooled over a wonder strike from Wayne Rooney, the footballing fraternity prepares to bid farewell to a man who scored goals of such audacious quality on a fairly regular basis.

Forwards are often divided in to two categories: great goalscorers, and scorers of great goals. Ronaldo was undoubtedly both.

Yes, in his latter years he piled on the pounds. There was more gelato than golazo. But fat is temporary; class is permanent.

Kevyn Doran on Vimeo has put together this rather exhaustive retrospective. Take a glance at a career littered with goals.

*not all of the noises, of course. As continents go, it’s fairly noisy. But some of the noises, particularly those on twitter. Which don’t really make any actual audible noise. But you know what I mean.

First they came for Big Ron,
and I didn’t speak out because I wasn’t Big Ron.

Then they came for Rodney Marsh,
and I didn’t speak out because I wasn’t Rodney Marsh.

Then they came for Andy Gray,
and I didn’t speak out because I wasn’t Andy Gray.

Then they came for me
and there was no one left to speak out for me.

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Thanks to Darren Richman for this moving and poignant twist on Pastor Martin Niemöller’s words.

We at Threeandin all look forward to the launch of Keysy and Graysy’s new Talksport show on Monday morning.  Finally, they can be as sexist as they like without all that “political correctness” and “equality” nonsense.

Sky Sports, the BBC, and a whole bunch of people on Twitter have reached an understanding about who is to replace Roberto Di Matteo as West Brom manager.

In Di Matteo, the Baggies sacked a manager who had been impressively promoted from last year’s Championship, only to fail to fill his club with sufficient confidence he could keep them in the top flight.

In an ingenious twist, they appear to be replacing him with a manager who had been impressively promoted from last year’s Championship, only to fail to fill his club with sufficient confidence he could keep them in the top flight: Chris Hughton.

Having dismissed the Italian, one figured WBA might go for someone more experienced, or with a reputation for keeping teams in the division.  They haven’t.   They’ve gone like for like.

From the outside, it feels like they’ve made a change for the sake of it.  I’m sure a new face will bring a bit of a boost for a few games, but in the long haul, will it be any different?

Views of Baggies fans very welcome…

“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.