Three and in – not just another football blog

‘My best moment? I have a lot of good moments but the one I prefer is when I kicked the hooligan.’ – Eric Cantona

‘Now we have to wait to see this issue decided and then the Manchester player and I will have to clear things up. Depending on who ends up in the wrong, one of us will have to apologise.’ – Luis Suarez

This Saturday lunchtime, Manchester United will travel to Liverpool for the fourth round of the FA Cup. United’s left back, Patrice Evra, is likely to receive the worst abuse seen on these shores since Sol Campbell crossed the North London divide. I write these words seventeen years to the day since I sat, an impressionable 10 year old, a few feet from my idol as he attempted to quite literally kick racism out of football. Pros and ex pros from every club supported Cantona, the general consensus being not shock that it had happened but merely surprise that it didn’t happen more frequently. A divisive Frenchman taking exception to racist language? Plus ça change. Thousands of words have been written about the Luis Suarez incident but nobody seems willing to accuse the Uruguayan of one significant offence. Being a racist.

Tony Evans, Times writer and Liverpool fan, wrote an excellent piece about his disappointment at the majority of LFC fans supporting the striker but still insisted Suarez had been guilty only of ‘using racist language.’ Indeed, this is the nature of the FA charge. Racist language. Even amongst the United blogs, highly critical of Liverpool and their talisman, most pieces contained a caveat insisting they were not accusing the striker of racism, simply of employing racist language. This seems to have been the case across the board. It’s the footballing equivalent of the argument we’ve all had in which the semantics of whether someone is/is being an arsehole are debated at length. Well, enough is enough.

Let’s try putting it another way; if a man rapes someone, we tend to brand him a rapist. Nobody says things like, ‘Oh yes, he did rape someone on that occasion but really he’s not that kind of bloke.’ But with the race issue it’s totally different. What a difference a letter makes. It’s much like the ‘not that kind of player’ defence used after a player has committed a dreadful foul ending the season of a fellow professional. Just once I’d like someone to come out and say, ‘He is that kind of player, this was an accident waiting to happen.’ Who is that kind of player? And, more importantly, who are these mythical racists? Where do they live? Nick Griffin has consistently stated the BNP is not a racist party so clearly it’s acceptable to say what you like so long as you simply deny the allegations.

For what its worth, I do think Suarez is a racist. Does this mean I think he rues the abolition of slavery? No. But, as the late Patrice O’Neill so memorable stated, not all racist walk around wearing pointy hats. Or, as another comedian, Bill Burr, pointed out, ‘real racism is subtle’:

Suarez admits using the offensive term word at least once. I have played in hundreds of football games in my life and never uttered a racial slur. In return, nobody has ever referred to me as a ‘yid’ during such a match and if they had I wouldn’t waste time analysing the precise nuances of their tone. The cultural argument holds no water since Suarez has played in Europe for years. The idea that it was jocular is a nonsense given the comments were made during a heated exchange with a Manchester United player during a spiky encounter at Anfield. A racist word was used in a bid to rile Evra, ergo the offender was guilty of racism. Michael Richards from Seinfeld is branded racist for his ill-advised rant at the Laugh Factory but at least he was attempting (utterly without success) to be humorous. Suarez was seeking simply to provoke. And he should not be let off lightly. Some have claimed an eight game ban is Draconian but most people would be sacked for a similar comment in the workplace.

Almost as bad as the incident itself was the response of Liverpool Football Club as they lurched from one PR disaster to another seemingly only able to dig a larger hole for themselves. First the preposterous sight of Suarez donning a T-shirt in support of himself greeted us. Dalglish besmirched his reputation as the finest player in Liverpool’s history not only by shifting the blame entirely onto Evra but also, perhaps the worst of his offences, wearing the shirt himself. Not a good look on a 60-year-old man. As Paul McGrath suggested, how much classier might it have seemed to warm up wearing Kick It Out tops? Clearly nobody had a word with the Liverpool PR department as Alan Hansen spent the evening using the word ‘coloured’ on Match of the Day before ‘God’ himself (Robbie Fowler) blacked up for a night out dressed as Lionel Richie and rather foolishly tweeted a photograph. Stay classy, Merseyside.

Liverpool seem concerned people think of the club as inherently racist. I do not. Football clubs aren’t sentient beings. It calls to mind Stewart Lee mocking the ‘values of the Carphone Warehouse’ as they attempted to extricate themselves from another race row, on Big Brother. The Carphone Warehouse values involve only selling phones and Liverpool’s are only football related surely. This persecution complex and martyrdom of the Uruguayan aids nobody. Ferguson didn’t instruct the United players to wear T-shirts all those years ago, he calmly weighed up the situation before making any public pronouncements. Dalgligh needs to realise, like Walter White in Breaking Bad, actions have consequences. Oldham’s Tom Adeyemi must have thought the trip to Anfield would be the highlight of his career to date yet it was marred by racial abuse from the Kop that reduced the young midfielder to tears. There can be little doubt that this would not have happened without all that came before. This is a simple case of cause and effect and the Liverpool manager has to shoulder some responsibility.

All football fans tend to be tarred with the same brush but it’s a broad spectrum. The fact that Emmanuel Adebayor is the Spurs player who has had monkey noises directed at him when his team-mate is Gareth Bale illustrates just how stupid supporters can be. That said, I can recall a time when racial abuse was commonplace in the stands, not least that remarkable night in 1995, and I found it genuinely heart-warming to see Suarez booed away at Wigan. Broadly speaking, as a society, we have moved from booing black players to booing racists.

This is a bigger issue than just Liverpool and Manchester United. John Terry meets Anton Ferdinand again this weekend standing by his assertion that he was simply incredulously repeating the racist abuse the QPR defender was accusing him of. Gus Poyet then needlessly weighed in to do little more than sully my generation’s memory of him as wonderful player. The Terry defence is as ludicrous as Matthew Simmons (Eric’s detractor in the vile leather jacket) claiming he was simply shouting ‘Off you go for an early bath.’ André Villas-Boas, like Dalglish, responded to the allegation by immediately stating he would support his captain ‘no matter what’. I don’t understand this. Surely if it’s proven that Terry hurled racial abuse at an opposing player then he should lose the support of his manager. Particularly given England’s Brave’s status as the pantomime villain of British football. And I write as somebody who takes the ball to the corner flag to wind down the clock when playing computer games.

Despite the quotation at the top of the page, Suarez has singularly refused to issue an apology to Evra, opting instead for a Jeremy Clarkson style ‘I’m sorry if anyone was offended by my comments’ cop-out. Or should that be Kop-out? And so the fires continue to rage. If I can be permitted recourse to one final bit of stand-up comedy, there is an old Eddie Murphy routine in which he talks about walking along the street behind an elderly white couple. Feeling nervous, they stop to let Eddie pass. The anecdote concludes with the comic asserting, ‘Well I was so offended I just went ahead and mugged them.’ When the Liverpool fans abuse Evra on Saturday as a direct result of him reporting a racist incident that damaged their club’s reputation, they will be making just as much sense. And we all know where such taunting can lead.

Lawrence Gray-Hodson

Every so often Lawrence Gray-Hodson, a man who made his name in the upper reaches of Division 2 in the 1970s and 80s as well as being a former Scotland and England international, writes a column exclusively for Three and in.

This week he opines on Roberto Mancini’s touchline behaviour
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You’ve got to ask: what is Roberto Mancini? Is he a dapper, scarf-sporting, handsome footballer manager who loves a good ragu, or is he a magician?

If it’s the former then he should get on with the job he knows best: alienating players and getting his team to win matches. Too often in recent weeks though he seems to be on the sidelines wishing he had a deck of cards to play with.

Clichy gets fouled, Mancini flicks the eight of clubs at the ref. Oh look, a trip on Milner and there’s Mancini with the ace of diamonds. Edward Dzeko finds himself flattened by a beautifully timed two-footed tackle and there’s Robert Scarfino shuffling the entire deck. And despite all these cards being different they have one thing in common. Their colour.

They’re all red. Or yellow. Perhaps it’s the continental influence but seeing Mancini waves cards around like that on the sideline makes me sick to my stomach although not quite sick enough to get sick. Maybe sick enough to do one of those burps where a bit of sick comes up but you swallow it down quickly again.

I remember back in my playing days we’d never have dared wave an imaginary card in the air. It would have been a sign of weakness, almost as if waving an imaginary card meant you had an imaginary friend called Aubrey with whom you played in a make-believe world called Cissy Town. Once, when we played Leeds in the cup, our right back Jack Morgan got kicked in the knee by Billy Bremner.

“You’ve gotta book him for that, ref,” said Morgan.

The ref did nothing and after the game, in the player’s lounge, Bremner and Jack Charlton leathered the tar out of him. Normally you’d defend a teammate but this time we stood back and let them pummel him. It’s one thing shattering a bloke’s kneecap, but asking the ref to book him was going too far.

And this brings me to Mancini’s rank hypocrisy when it comes to tackling. Oh, it’s ok for Vincent Kompany to jump in with two feet but as soon as Glen Johnston did it he was opposed to it. It reminded me of people who say ‘Yes, we should allow tinkers to settle with their caravans in fields near housing estates’, but as soon as these noble, pot-selling people come into their area they’re up in arms.

I’d like to see a new rule brought in to wipe this scourge from the game. Any foreign manager who waves an imaginary card ought to be given a red card themselves. They just don’t understand the game here. It is different when Wayne Rooney does it. He’s got a rapport with the refs, they speak the same language, Rooney has grown up knowing where the line is and never quite crossing it.

Mancini is a new arrival. He needs to learn to respect the customs of the country he’s in. I mean, he wouldn’t go to Saudi Arabia, openly drink a bottle of Pinot Grigio and walk around with a sultan’s daughter who he insists wears a bikini. So why does he think he can wave cards and allow his players to do two-footed tackles?

I like the man, his smartorial elegance has brought a touch of the catwalks of Milan to English football, but leave the card tricks to David Dunblane.

United fan Darren Richman plays tribute to his club’s extraordinary manager.

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‘People say mine was a poor upbringing. I don’t know what they mean. It was tough, but it wasn’t bloody poor. We maybe didn’t have a TV. We didn’t have a car. We didn’t even have a phone. But I thought I had everything, and I did: I had a football.’

On the final day of the 2000/2001 Premier League season, Manchester United played Tottenham Hotspur at White Hart Lane. Coming as it did, just a few months before the remarkable 5-3 at the same venue, this match is not so well remembered. With the league already wrapped up, the game was largely an irrelevance for those of us standing in the away section. United lost 3-1 and, unlike our next trip to the Lane, very little about the occasion sticks in the mind. Bar one thing. For the duration of the second half, without interruption, the fans sang ‘Every single one of us loves Alex Ferguson’ ad infinitum. Forty-five minutes without a break, the longest sustained piece of chanting I have ever heard. You see Sir Alex Ferguson had talked about retiring at the end of the season. We had come to praise Caesar, not to bury him. Part thanks, part plea, the noise would not let up. And though received wisdom suggests repetition leads to a loss of meaning, on that particular day nothing could have been further from the truth.

Fast forward a decade. Three weeks ago Fergie celebrated twenty-five years at the helm. On the day that the North Stand was renamed in his honour, I texted a friend to remind him of another day, in 1998, when an acquaintance of ours had suggested it was about time the gaffer was handed his P45. This pal, a Spurs fan, texted back with the words, ‘I can’t wait until you have a normal, human manager.’ Quite. In his very first set of programme notes all those years ago, plain old Alex wrote ‘A man is very fortunate if he gets the opportunity to manage Manchester United in his lifetime and I can assure you that I have no intention of wasting my opportunity.’ Consider us assured. We used to taunt the City fans with chants of ‘25 years, fuck all.’ Perhaps we should replace the expletive with ‘it’ and direct the song at the man for all seasons.

I deliberately decided to postpone writing this piece in order to let the dust settle and the clamour subside a little. I have a friend who will only watch an American drama box set once the series has come to an end as he feels one should not judge things contemporarily. Much as I agree with the sentiment, Sir Alex ain’t off any time soon and I felt I had to write something this decade.

Though gushing, the bulk of the press coverage of this remarkable milestone focused on the myth rather than the man. The papers have always preferred archetypes and love to paint Ferguson as the furious masticator, angrily berating his players for any perceived inadequacies, not much of a tactician but a masterful man manager ruling with an iron fist. Though tempting, this somewhat misses the point. Cristiano Ronaldo, for one, has claimed he never saw a single example of the famous hairdryer treatment during his six years at United. Mark Hughes coined the phrase in relation to his old mentor way back when but people change and none with quite as much success as Sir Alexander Chapman Ferguson.

In that same set of programme notes, that mission statement, Ferguson, perhaps surprisingly, insisted he was not interested in the past, concluding ‘there is only one way to go, and that is forward.’ This is the man’s entire M.O. in microcosm. Alvy Singer was right, a relationship is like shark and does have to constantly move forward or it dies. It’s just that in this case the relationship is with a football club. It is a simple case of adapt or die.

To paraphrase another manager with a decent claim to be amongst the greatest ever to have drawn breath, Brian Clough, I wouldn’t say Ferguson is the greatest manager ever to have lived. But he’s certainly in the top one. Clough, of course, made the claim about himself and yet, for all his success, Fergie rarely talks about himself and the extent of his achievements. Even the twenty-fifth anniversary was marked only by his insistence on extolling the virtues of the great players he feels he’s been ‘lucky’ enough to work with down the years. Winning is everything, the glorification of the Ferguson name means nothing. For all the flak he has received over time, I cannot think of a decision he has made that wasn’t at least intended to be for the good of Manchester United football club. His outbursts are never about showmanship or a desire to be the centre of attention (an accusation that could be levelled at Clough on occasion and Mourinho more readily in recent years). Even the feud with the BBC suggested a man unfussed by how history will remember him. Or perhaps he realises it tends to be written by the winners.

The difference between the two managerial heavyweights is aptly summed up, oddly enough, with reference to Frank Sinatra. The idol of both coaches, the Forest legend once claimed of ol’ blue eyes, ‘he met me once.’ This soundbite is quintessentially Clough; pithy, witty, arrogant but brilliant. Sinatra did not meet Ferguson though. In 1989 the two were supposed to have dinner together. United lost away at Charlton during the day leaving the boss in such a foul mood that he cancelled dinner and went home on the bus. It is one of the few decisions Ferguson regrets to this day and tells one a good deal about the nature of obsession. Watch his interviews carefully and you’ll notice the word ’challenge’ recurs more often than any other and he’s much more likely to reflect on the final day on the 1994/1995 season than any of the twelve title successes. The man will be seventy on New Year’s Eve and has won everything there is to win yet is still driven by an obsessive fear of failure. I happened to catch a quiz show between players and staff on MUTV last Christmas and Ferguson’s side wiped the floor with Giggs, Neville and Carrick. Not the strongest opposition perhaps but the manager’s single-mindedness shone through as he barely consulted his team-mates and still stormed to victory. I suspect in that moment they knew how Mike Phelan feels.

It is almost impossible in sport to compare different eras. For a multitude of reasons there can be little doubt that the Barcelona of today would beat the 1970 Brazil side. Context is everything and this doesn’t necessarily make modern Barcelona the greatest ever football team. What is remarkable about Fergie is the manner in which he has straddled the divide and succeeded in an era of Clough, violence and pitches resembling the Somme all the way up to the present day. The game is almost unrecognisable yet the result is identical. Perhaps the most significant thing you can say about the man is that the story of the Premier League is his story, the one constant pushing the narrative forward. The hero or anti-hero depending on where you came in the lottery of life. The protagonist.

Ferguson has risen to every fresh challenge over the quarter of a century he has managed United. Initially he had to overcome Liverpool and the weight of history, then he had to take on Blackburn and Jack Walker’s millions, Wenger’s Arsenal came next with some of the finest football ever seen on these shores, finally he bested Chelsea and Abramovich outlasting even the ‘special one’. For the record, Mourinho himself refers to Ferguson only as ‘the boss’. Hard to believe there was once a time when there was actual discussion of whether Wenger was the greater manager. Now Ferguson faces City and possibly the greatest challenge of his managerial career. I wouldn’t back against him having the last laugh.

On Yom Kippur this year I went to synagogue with a book of Ferguson quotes disguised as a prayer book and read it cover to cover. Initially I felt bad about breaking the second commandment on the holiest day of the year but then I recalled I need only beware false idols. It brought to mind a Passover choon entitled Dayenu in which we list all of the gifts God has bestowed on us (brought us out of Egypt, gave us the Torah, yada yada yada) and conclude each line with the titular word, the rough translation of which is ‘that would have been enough.’ Even just one such wonderful blessing would have sufficed.

If He had brought us our first title in 26 years? That would have been enough.
If He had brought us our first European trophy since ’68? That would have been enough.
If He had brought Cantona to the club? That would have been enough.
If He had brought home 2 European Cups? That would have been enough.
If He had placed us on top of a certain perch? That would have been enough.

A successful manager need simply get it right more often than he gets it wrong. In football, you don’t have to be good; you only have to be good enough. Last season’s title triumph was perhaps the most pragmatic of the twelve but in a sense that makes it Ferguson’s finest achievement. One could even argue it was a transition year and yet still his side ended the season as champions. The team reflected their maker, as always, and proved extremely difficult to beat. Even in his finest hour, the treble triumph, unprecedented in the history of English football, United, as so often before and since under Sir Alex, left it late. It happens too often to be deemed mere coincidence, that never-say-die attitude comes from the top. Fortune favours the brave. Pundits have lost count of the amount of great teams the man has fashioned, four or five at last check and always with an eye on the future. Put it this way, if I had access to just one immortality pill then I’d give it to Sir Alex Ferguson and die safe in the knowledge that I did the right thing. Football? Bloody hell.

Last season, when Rooney requested a transfer and all seemed lost, Ferguson delivered arguably the greatest performance of his reign. One could have formulated a hundred different ways to handle that situation and none would have been quite so effective. Ferguson opted not for silence, anger or histrionics but instead for emotion. He displayed his fragile side and allowed himself to look vulnerable, quite unheard of prior to that press conference. Like Mel Gibson in Ransom, he turned the situation on its head and used the cameras to his advantage with all the cunning and guile acquired through years of experience. One can only hope that, when May rolled around, some of the Premier League prize money was used to buy young Wayne a dictionary in order to look up the definition of ambition.

I believe, as a fan, the most one can hope for is that come April your team is still involved in some important games. For the best part of two decades United have been there or thereabouts in the league during the latter stages of the season along with an outstanding record in cup competitions. I was born in 1984 and as a result, in pure footballing terms, I know nothing of pain. I say this not to gloat but because I actually realise quite how lucky I have been. I trust Fergie enjoyed a decent glass of red on his silver anniversary. Here’s to another 25 years.

Although the pressmen of the 90s loved to characterise Ferguson and Wenger as polar opposites with the cultured, professorial Frenchman at odds with the abrasive Scottish football man, nothing could be farther from the truth. By all accounts Wenger has very few interests outside the game and spends his time almost exclusively viewing matches whereas over the years I have heard Ferguson espouse on topics ranging from Shakespeare and American military history to the Coen brothers and classical piano. Astonishingly well read, I wonder if Sir Alex has ever come across the following quote, from Jonathan Safran Foer, a particular favourite of mine and one which I used last year in a piece about Ryan Giggs and Paul Scholes but bears repeating here I think:

‘If you love someone, you miss them while they’re still there.’

Every single one of us loves Alex Ferguson.

Every so often Lawrence Gray-Hodson, a man who made his name in the upper reaches of Division 2 in the 1970s and 80s as well as being a former Scotland and England international, writes a column exclusively for Three and in.

This week he opines on Arsenal’s need for a new owner

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Much has been made of the troubles at Arsenal at the moment and it would be a blind man who could say that everything was ok at the Emirates Stadium these days.

The team are struggling to find any form or consistency and Arsene Wenger looks like a shepherd that has lost his best sheep and found a shaved dog with some wool glued onto him to make him look like a sheep. Many people say that Arsenal need a new manager, that Wenger is a busted thrush, but that’s the last thing they need.

Wenger is a genius. Who else could buy Kolo Toure for £250,000 then sell him for £14m all the while keeping his rampant bulimia a secret? Who else could have knobbled Spurs by buying Emmanuel Adebayor from Monaco, knowing his despicable nature would mean he ended up at White Hart Lane years later where he will most certainly destroy team spirit with his wicked, eastern european African ways.

Kroenke is the wrong man for Arsenal

No, what Arsenal need is a new owner. You might say ‘They’ve already got one’ but they need a newer one than that. Stan Kroenke might know how to get an end zone in the touch play, or attract many people who have sex with their cousins to his chain of supermarkets, but what does he know about English football?

As an American he’s already 54% less knowledgeable about ‘soccer’, as they call it, and that’s a scientific fact. Their brains simply aren’t wired to understand it, the way ours cannot comprehend the fact that tea parties are for little girls and doll-houses, not for running great nations.

There’s another billionaire lurking about too, Alisher Usmanov owns nearly 30% of Arsenal but to choose him as the man to take charge would be foolish indeed. Usmanov is simply too fat to own a football club. What if, during a pre-game dinner in the Diamante Club in Arsenal’s exclusive area, he had a heart attack brought about by his enormous girth? Then where would Arsenal be? At the whim of Usmanov’s heirs, that’s where, and they might decide that they don’t want to own a football club after all and simply knock down the stadium to build a multistory car park.

Anyone with a brain can see that the influx of petroleum cash into football is the way forward. Abramovich at Chelsea, Sheik Manhoor at Man City, PSG, Malaga and soon Man United will all be run by oil rich owners. So why not Arsenal?

And if the tendency is to look to the middle-east then I believe Arsenal should do it differently. The way they always have done. I remember when I played there once in a cup game in the mid-70s. We were treated so well by the club, giving us a plate of ham sandwiches and some bottles of Tizer in our dressing room pre-game. No other club in the land did that (although Barnsley always laid on some mini pork pies which were very tasty). It was that touch of class that set Arsenal apart, and that’s what they need to re-capture.

If I were Ivan Gazidis I would be on the first flight to Caracas and I’d knock on the door of Hugo Chavez, going nowhere until he agreed to see me. Venezuela has loads of oil to fund the purchase of new players and help bump up Arsenal’s ability to pay decent wages. And Chavez is a man used to fighting the power, upsetting the establishment.

I think he would dovetail beautifully with Peter Hill-Wood, the Etonian and the Revolutionary coming together to create a perfect environment of Conservative Bolivarianism with a Trotskyite flavour that, if you talk to anybody in the game, is the perfect recipe for running a football club. Brian Clough and Peter Taylor managed it in the 70s/80s with Nottingham Forest until Taylor’s Peripatetic leanings caused their split and, ultimately, Forest’s relegation.

Would Chavez sit idly by and tolerate the likes of Sebastian Squillaci as Arsenal got off to their worst start for 58 years? No, he would not. He would also provide the challenge that Arsene Wenger needs to lift himself out of this rut he’s found himself in. One need only look at what Chavez said about Barcelona president Sandro Rosell. “You are an imperialist pawn who attempts to curry favour with Danger Bush-Hitler, the number one mass murderer and assassin there is on the planet”, he said.

Does that sound like a man who would let Cesc Fabregas go for barely half his market value? I’m convinced he would get the most out of Wenger again and that long-awaited silverware would return to Highbury again. If not, it’s a car park or a hypermarket.

Viva La Revolución!

They say you can never go back.

As last season approached its dramatic denouement, giddy with excitement I decided to pick the best Manchester United XI of my time going to football matches (1988-present). Yes, these things are entirely subjective and mostly pointless but that doesn’t stop them being quite good fun. After due (or should that be Jew?) consideration, I went for Schmeichel in goal, a back four of Neville, Ferdinand, Stam and Irwin, a midfield comprising Ronaldo, Keane, Scholes and Giggs then Cantona and Van Nistelrooy up front. I picked substitutes too, primarily because I got carried away. On the bench then, Van Der Sar, Bruce, Vidic, Robson, Beckham, Solskjaer and Rooney. All under the watchful eye of Mike Phelan of course. It struck me that I really have been exceptionally lucky. No place in the squad for the likes of Cole, Kanchelskis, Evra, Sheringham, Fletcher or Yorke. Not the only notable omissions. I tweeted my verdict and immediately received a text from my brother, an Arsenal fan. ‘What about Hughes? You loved him as a kid.’ I did. I still do.

Now there is only one valid choice of favourite player for any United fan of my generation. King Eric. Le Dieu. But just as there is only one correct answer to the question, ‘who is your favourite Simpsons character?’ sometimes it’s worth thinking outside the box and determining a number two. And though he may not have even made my bench, best and favourite are not the same thing, and Sparky is unquestionably my Chief Wiggum.

Mark Hughes played for Manchester United from 1980 to 1986 then again from 1988 to 1995. During these two stints he notched up 467 appearances for the club and scored 163 goals. That tells the whole story in one sense but in another it tells you nothing. Those statistics are not the reason I loved the man and his tree trunk thighs. Age is a key factor. I am too young to remember Hughesy’s first spell at Old Trafford but his second neatly coincided with my burgeoning interest in the beautiful game.

One of my earliest sporting memories is the Welshman’s brace against Barcelona in the Cup Winners’ Cup Final of 1991. Both the competition and United’s goalkeeper on the day are no longer with us but to me it feels like yesterday. I can picture the second goal perfectly and regularly do. My mind’s eye always opts for the angle of the camera placed in the bottom right hand corner of the net. The ball breaks free, Sergio Busquets’ Dad (yes, really) comes charging out of his goal in those ridiculous tracksuit bottoms, Hughes knocks the ball past him but he’s gone too wide surely, Barry Davies thinks so, the 6 year old me thinks so, and then, from an impossible angle, bang, it nestles beautifully into that bottom corner. I didn’t know the game was against the former club at which he’d been deemed a failure, or that it was United’s first European trophy in 23 years, or that Barcelona were huge favourites on the night. It didn’t matter. Everything and everyone seems larger than life when you’re small and Leslie Mark Hughes seemed the biggest of the lot.

Fast forward to 1992. The inaugural Premier League season. I distinctly remember larking about with my toys on my own. In the next room my Dad is watching United take on Liverpool at Old Trafford. He had sat me in front of the European final but clearly decided a league game was less crucial in terms of building character. Still, the TV is on in here too even if I’m not focused on it. A cheer from the next room alerts me to the fact that United have pulled one back with ten minutes to spare. I look up and see it’s that man Hughes again. He’s lobbed Grobbelaar. It only dawns on me as I type this that it might just have been the first lob I ever saw. I put down Kermit and Fozzie and decide to watch the remainder of the game. Teams don’t come back from 2 goals behind surely? 90th minute. Diving header. Hughes, M.

Fast forward again, this time to 1994. I am by this stage an addict. I have seen lobs, headers, volleys, you name it. I’ve also seen my team win the title. As my Dad memorably told me ‘I’ve waited 26 years for this, you saw it in 2.’ I was blessed. And now United are on the verge double for the first time in their history. At this point I am well read on such matters and am aware of the fact that even the great Sir Matt Busby never managed to lead his side to the league and cup in the same season. Deep into extra time of the FA Cup semi-final and Oldham are 1-0 up. United look devoid of ideas. The ball is hopefully punted long, Oldham fail to clear, it hangs in the air for an eternity before Sparky strikes the sweetest volley you will ever see. Pandemonium in our household. We scream then run round the dining room table before collapsing in a bundle on the sofa in hysterics. He’ll hate me for mentioning this but it is the only time I can recall my brother celebrating a United goal before or since. Let the record show it was the goal that won the double. To this day if my team are behind late on I will implore them to ‘do an Oldham’.

We all have hundreds of such memories. People and places that perfectly evoke a time to which we can never return. Do I care that the lad from Wrexham went on to manage City? No. What I remember is my Dad’s VHS of the 1990 FA Cup final that I watched and rewatched at a time when live football on the TV was rare. Yet another double from Hughes. And the moment on the 92/93 season review video when Giggs skins his aging marker and the commentator says ‘it’s like a Mini trying to catch a Porsche’ then a pause as the young Welshman whips in a perfect cross for his compatriot to bury, concluding ‘and there’s the Rolls Royce waiting in the middle.’ Perhaps I think of those goals more often than the man himself, maybe that’s the nature of being a fan. Hughes was everything I’d like to be if I were a professional footballer and boy would I like to have been one. Strong, brave, a propensity towards scissor kicks and outrageous volleys that bordered on the staggering coupled with an incredible awareness and ability to hold the ball up. Calm and quiet off the field, quite the opposite on it. If my relationship with Wayne Rooney is much like Mad Men, almost impossible to love however hard I try, then Mark Hughes must be compared to The Sopranos. Pure, unadulterated enjoyment. And he had two spells for the club.

They say you can never go back. Fuck ‘em.

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As the news of Bébé slipping back out of the Old Trafford door with as little fuss as when he quietly slipped in, it begs the question; How has his transfer to Manchester United been so easily forgotten about? This was a player who was homeless a year or so before the signing, which is novel enough as a multi-million pound industry story. But on top of that, and here we may find the root of the answer we seek, his transfer to Manchester United had a distinctly ‘dodgy’ aroma to it.

The player was signed by Guimaraes for just half a packet of Rolos, then five weeks later, after a couple of pre-season games, they sold him to Manchester United for over £7m! Without Ferguson having ever seen him play! During the midst of a difficult financial period for Manchester United in which £7m wasn’t far off being their record transfer fee!

But why didn’t Manchester United, with their Portuguese scouting system and former assistant manager in charge of the Portuguese national team, just sign him for free a month earlier? Did he really make his mark during those pre-season friendlies?

But what’s this? Just before he completed this big-money transfer, he was suddenly poached from his existing agent by Portuguese ‘super agent’ Jorge Mendes, also responsible for the sales of Anderson, Ronaldo and Nani to Manchester United? A man who knows Alex Ferguson well? And he owned £30% of Bébé’s ‘economic rights’, so made about £3m out of the transfer for himself?

That sounds a bit suspicious. Has he ever been involved in Alex Ferguson paying over-the-odds for a Portuguese player before now then? What’s that? He handled negotiations directly with Alex Ferguson and Peter Kenyon for the sale of Ronaldo to Manchester United for £12.24m when Sporting had already accepted a bid from Arsenal for just £5.5m? An extra near-£7m? It sounds almost as if someone or other may have made the transfer happen purely for potential underhand personal financial gain.

As does this Bébé one.

Just like another Ferguson family member was once accused of doing on a BBC documentary. Which led to Ferguson blackmailing the BBC. Which he’s still doing. And coincidentally, no press agency is asking any questions about the potential for dodgy dealings behind this recent transfer.

Interesting…

Somebody did something naughty last year. But we shouldn’t be allowed to tell you what it is because they have a lot of money and have bought one of those things you’ve only heard of recently. But you can know who the other person involved was, sure, she’s not that rich anyway. The slag. And anyway, she probably tried to blackmail our poor hero and then sell her story to some grotty tabloid that insists on calling the police ‘cops’. Oh yes, we can say that about her – besmirch her character, and why not? She’s clearly the ‘bad guy’ here. And she’s not allowed to deny it! Or tell her side of the story at all, in fact, because she doesn’t have as much money. Result!

In the first instance, this may sound unfair to you, but really you just need to stop and think about it. What if the naughty boy was a premiership footballer? The poor soul has to go and run around in front of a crowd of partially-unsympathetic football fans. They might chant nasty things about him! How would he ever get over such a thing? It could well still be on his mind as he drove his Ferrari home to his multi-million pound mansion. What if he was still thinking about it that night when he was eating steak in a gourmet restaurant? Or, god forbid, weeks later, when he’s lying on a beach in Hawaii trying to recover from months of a health & safety-defying workload of running around in the fresh air for several hours a day? Not so sure now, are you?

And all this, before you even consider possibly the most important thing. His family. What if his wife and children were to find out about him betraying them with another woman? It would destroy them! Won’t somebody please think of the children! Surely the provision of a secure and supportive family unit is the responsibility of the press, the courts and most of all, the unrelated single woman who has callously slept with a married man. How can she ever look his wife and kids in the face again?

Obviously there are no totally innocent parties here, apart from our unnamed hero, but surely we can at least all learn a lesson from this…

They seem suspiciously happy to expose themselves to abuse and blame for results they can have little control over (compared to the players, at least). Even if they’re successful one season, that only gives their future-detractors ammunition with which to accuse them of having ‘lost it’ in following seasons when they inevitably struggle to achieve quite the same level of success. Ferguson and Wenger, two of the Premiership’s most successful managers, have certainly had their fair share of such accusations during less successful periods. It seems the only way to maintain a reputation as a good manager is to ditch your team as soon as you win anything with them and get out of the country.

But before we all start wearing ribbons for them, let’s not forget that, by regular standards, they do have a really, really, easy job. They never even have to run!  The ‘pressure’ they suffer surrounds their long-term decisions,  that can be made over hours, with advice from colleagues and underlings, in the pub, in the bath, in bed. Not like the players’ instant-result/consequence pressure on the pitch, which could more conceivably get to you ‘in the moment’ and cause some ill-advised (not-at-all-advised, to be fair to them) decisions like poor passing choices, over-zealous tackles or yellow cards for dissent.

So isn’t the role of manager, even with no transfer budget, stars sold, replacements touted, actually a pretty cushty job? Why should we feel sorry for them? ‘Aw, they’ve been treated badly’, ‘Made fools of in the public eye’, ‘Terrible pressure, terrible pressure’. These people (the ones we tend to hear about at least) are averaging £1m a year in wages. That’s almost £20,000 a week – not far off what a lot of the premier-league players (that we’ll never feel sorry for because ‘Look-how-much-money-they-make-it’s-a-joke’) earn.

But they have to work 80-odd hours a week! Including weekends! Poor darlings. The average football fan probably thinks about what their team needs to do/sign/sell/set-up/drop/promote for about half of that anyway. For free.

Which this week brings us to West Ham. Whatever could have enticed Avram Grant to the position that he ‘was advised by several people not to take’? Can anyone think what could possibly have possessed him? Despite the ‘terrible situation’ he knew he would find himself in at the currently-so-turbulent club? And why would any other sane person want to take over as manager of the club?

Admittedly, the way West Ham’s owners had touted Grant’s recently-vacated position to other managers behind their current employee’s back can’t have been much fun for him, and has already blown the club’s chances of getting Martin O’Neill on board. And did they think that sacking Grant minutes after the game that confirmed their relegation would do anything to help repair their image as Employers From Hell amongst the football-management community?

But the reality is that there will always be plenty of managers who are willing to take the position, however ‘difficult’ the circumstances, because it beats working for a living. Or punditry – which it turns out must be a lot harder than it looks, considering the ever-declining quality of ‘insight’ we’re fed these days from the BBC, Sky, or (god help us) ITV.

Maybe Grant’s instant-sacking was a move engineered to help the club’s long-suffering fans to release some of their considerable frustration in these disappointing times. We’d all like to be able to sack someone for not delivering our team to the Premiership title, Champions League & FA Cup treble, and the manager’s the only one you can’t sell, so why not? He gets his money, you get your fall guy. Everyone’s a winner.

But right after the game?

Maybe they just wanted to be able to get into the changing room before other Premiership suitors came calling for Scott Parker and offer him the job. Apparently he’s been taking the half-time team talks this year anyway, and I can’t see too many West Ham fans arguing with that appointment after the dogged performances he’s consistently turned in over the season. He’s a man that doesn’t crack under pressure, that much seems clear.

And coaching badges? We don’t need no stinkin’ badges!*

* Just ask Gareth Southgate.

Never a year goes by without the future of the current England manager and speculation over his potential replacements dominating at least one slow-sports-news week. It’s a go-to topic, like ‘Fabregas Wanted by Barcelona’, ‘Giggs is Really Quite Good, Have You Noticed?’ or ‘Terry Family Member Questioned by Police Over ——-‘

One of the recent speculators’ favourites, after getting Tottenham into the Champions League for the first time in their history, is the excitable Harry Redknapp.

On the one hand he seems to be a good man-manager, he’s tactically-competent, and has brought several teams from ‘lowly’ positions (as, in some cases, he’ll never tire of reminding us) to arguable over-achievement. And over-achievement is something the national side is yet to sample. You never know – they might like it – the media certainly would.

But for all his white-flag-waving at Manchester City, Harry also spends a lot of money to bring his teams success – not a luxury afforded to national managers – so would the quality at his disposal in the England set-up be enough to work his magic on? There’s certainly plenty there, with a decent crop of youth creeping in already, but would it be enough?

And would he be able to handle the ‘big personalities’? Harry’s got a bit of a history of falling out with players and though he’ll do his best to keep it internal, it’s pretty obvious when players like Bentley and Pavlyuchenko are only justifying big transfer fees by doing an extra-high-quality job of warming the bench. How would he react to being undermined by an ex-captain, or having a star-striker tell him to procreate off? And what if he, god forbid, froze-out a star player during a tournament? How would he handle the media-frenzy at every following draw or loss?

Perhaps the biggest loss he’d have to handle in moving to a high-profile team, would be his pressure-relieving tactic of telling everyone who’ll listen that his team don’t have a chance against their opponents but that they should just get credit for ‘having a go’. I’m not sure that kind of talk would be met with much sympathy when England lined-up against Denmark. Or Belgium. Or Liechtenstein.

It seems that Harry’s real talent really is, like many other lauded managers who suddenly lose all respect as soon as they fail to make the grade in a higher-expectation role (step forward Woy) getting the best out of average players. To take England to the next level we need someone who can get the best out of quality players. Someone the players ‘like’ purely out of fear of upsetting. And as far as I can see, there are only two working managers we’ve seen in the Premiership recently who fit that bill, and one’s far too Scottish to take the job.

I’m sorry to say it English-manager-demanders, it would be great if we had a home-grown manager capable of getting the results we’re all so desperate to finally achieve, but if we want to get anywhere with the current crop of Lamborghini-driving English talent, there’s only one man for the job. And he’s Portuguese.