Three and in – not just another football blog

In a professional career spanning almost two decades, Simon Smith has played for over sixty-seven clubs. The ultimate utility player, as his pace has diminished Simon has managed to reinvent himself time and again, from poacher to holding midfielder, centre-back to goalkeeper. Now that his website has been closed down, we have exclusive access to his weekly column.

I was as surprised as anyone to see Glenn Hoddle throw his hat into the ring for the vacant England manager’s job. I was similarly (but not quite so) surprised to find out quite how long it has been since he made those comments. They obviously overshadowed his short reign as top managerial dog but that’s hardly surprising. I think that, for me, it’s not so much the comments themselves that I find distasteful; it was the ignorance behind them that was so offensive. ‘England will play in the Christmas tree formation.’ ‘I think that the Christmas tree formation is the way forward for England.’ Even writing those down here make me feel dirty. There were many scapegoats for England’s dismal 2010 World Cup showing but I seemed to be the only one tracing our problems back to those catastrophic two or three games that set us back at least 50 years in terms of tactics.

Maybe this is just one man’s opinion, but I would rather have a manager who is tactically astute and analyses the opposition than one who arranges his players in a shape that he likes. They may look awesome in those aerial shots from the Goodyear Blimp but I think England should be setting their sights higher than that. Perhaps I’m being unfair though. Perhaps Hoddle would be an excellent appointment and we would have great success with a smiley face formation. Who am I to say that his (probable) insistence on a happy puppy playing with a kitten formation won’t get us out of the group stages at the Euros?

Some observers have also raked up his close relationship with Eileen Drewery and some less noteworthy comments he made about karma. Regarding the England job, Hoddle confused me on Monday when he said, ‘If I were to die tomorrow, my life would be incomplete.’ Wasn’t the whole problem that Eileen said everyone gets loads more?! Reincarnation is a complex issue. Roberto Baggio is a practicing Buddhist and I always found it tricky during my time in Italy to convince him to do anything he didn’t want to do. The whole ‘you only live once’ thing doesn’t really hold much water. I believe it’s the same for cats. Fair play to The Divine Ponytail though, he didn’t know a lot of English but he learned enough to utter just one sentence to me. ‘Perhaps in your next life you’ll be reborn as a footballer.’ Cracking banter, that’s the sort of thing only close friends can get away with!

Hoddle is clearly hoping to put his mistakes behind him and is worried that they will not cost him to dearly in the future. It is something that we can all relate to even if we don’t all create absurd paradoxes in our own logic while doing so. A few years ago everything was lined up for me to have a second spell at Luton Town. The bossman was new to the job and I think the chairbossman took a backseat when it came to signings so they were all happy for it to happen and I was keen to lay one or two ghosts to rest at Kennilworth Road. The fans were quick to fill in the bossman and chairbossman about my previous stint and had clearly not yet forgiven me. The protests were intense and very well attended.

I was a striker when I first plied my trade in Bedfordshire and I must say I wasn’t at my most prolific. I had one especially barren run that came to an end at a home match against Wycombe. I buried an easy chance and made straight for the fans. I punched the air and made it clear just how much the goal meant to me. I reached down to stretch my shirt for the badge kiss. I am still not sure what it was that made me sneeze, perhaps I’d overdone the pepper on my pre-match cheese, but I can see how it could have looked like spitting from a distance.

I know I could have done a job in my new role as a midfielder and I often think about what could have been. Absolutely no hard feelings this end and I just hope that Hatters fans have forgiven me now. I’m still available. If you provide the antihistamines then I’ll provide the solid keeper performances!

In other news I see that Wayne Rooney has broken the arm of a fan and it is good to see not only that it was an accident but that he has already been forgiven. Happy the kid is alright and he’ll have a heck of a story for the rest of his life! In actual fact the lad was a United fan in the home stand at Wolves so if anything Wayne was saving the stewards a job as he’d only have been evicted anyway. I know first hand the dangers of away fans sitting in the home end at a ground. More times than I care to recall I have heard boos emanating from ‘our’ fans whenever I touch the ball so clearly the police are doing a pretty shoddy job of separating the supporters. Good on Wazza for taking matters into his own hands.

Must be said that even us pros can be a bit wild when pulling the trigger in those pre-game warm ups! I’m still reminded of the time that one of my looseners ended up in the stands and caught a baby on the head. It must be noted that it was a mishit and also skimmed the advertising boards so it’s not fair to have a go at me about not having enough power in my shot to wake a baby. Admittedly (and thankfully) there was not enough pace on the ball to cause the baby any distress but it did wake her up so those chants were completely inaccurate. I’m not ashamed to say that they got to me a bit and I did miss a few sitters as a result. It was also selfish of me to deliberately over-hit every corner to try and make a point.

One to Watch

Now, I spend a lot of my time absorbing as much football as I can. I love how much Premiership and Football League football coverage there is out there but I also like to scour the more obscure leagues that a lot of people miss. There’s a lot of talent out there waiting to be discovered so I’ll bring you a ‘one to watch’ every now and then. This week: Lionel Messi. He’s only 24 but has already bagged a few goals for Barcelona. I really think he could become a decent player.

Follow me on twitter, @simon9smithpro

In a professional career spanning almost two decades, Simon Smith has played for over sixty-seven clubs. The ultimate utility player, as his pace has diminished Simon has managed to reinvent himself time and again, from poacher to holding midfielder, centre-back to goalkeeper. Now that his website has been closed down, we have exclusive access to his weekly column.

Thursday was no ordinary night in the Smith household. Instead of an evening slumped in front of Channel 5 watching Ice Road Truckers, Clarissa and I spent this most unusual of Thursday nights slumped in front of Channel 5 watching football. Manchester United were comprehensively beaten but their poor rich neighbours suffered the agony of an exit on the away goals rule. If there was anything to cheer the English it was the sight of Joe Hart heading up for a corner in the closing stages for the second time in a week. This desperate bid to save the game earned unanimous plaudits as his last gasp header so nearly sent City through but, as so often seems to be the case, there is one rule for the big clubs and quite another for the rest. Hart was applauded for his attacking instinct against both Swansea and Sporting Lisbon but at one point a few years ago I was doing it almost every week for Barnet and, without meaning to blow my own trumpet too much, far earlier in the game. Was I praised for attempting to break the deadlock in cagey encounters? Was I forgiven when the bossman made a substitution after we won a corner (something it’s generally established is a bad idea) and the amount of time that elapsed coupled with the crowded area caused me to forget myself and instead of nodding the ball into an empty net, pluck the ball out of the air with my hands and go to ground to help run out the clock? Was I able to re-establish my place in the side after the seven consecutive games in which I was still stranded in our opponents’ half when they scored? No, no, a hundred times no. Football can be a cruel mistress. Still, it wasn’t entirely in vain. I like to think of myself as something of a trailblazer and it seems Harty learned a thing or two from this old pro. I wish I could say similar about the game between Chelsea and Napoli the night before. With Chelsea 5-4 up on aggregate I really felt the keeper should have gone up for a corner late on. A goal from Cech really would have rounded off a special European night for Chelsea but sadly he remained rooted in his box. Pity, an opportunity missed.

People generally seem to think the away goals rule is a good thing but it is not without its faults. Take Thursday night for example. Without the rule, the 3-3 aggregate score would have meant the scratchcard of a penalty shootout. Everyone loves penalties, particularly the keepers. It really is a lovely moment when you stride up to your opposite number for good luck hug. Where else can I find a cuddle and a pat on the bum apart from when I buy my fish? I speak from experience when I say we are afforded very few opportunities to embrace as players and the fans tend not to like you spending too much of a game focused on finding an opportunity. They’ll never admit it but all footballers love a cuddle. It’s why refs let a lot of holding go at corners. This is not to mention that the accumulated effect of these cuddles is to combat homophobia in football in a far more effective manner than any BBC Three documentary.

The away goals rule is not tantamount to a hate crime although it can also lead to nastiness. I recall at Arsenal losing 2-0 at home in the first leg once during a European knockout game. We failed to score in the away leg, drew 0-0 and went crashing out 2-0 on aggregate. Each of our 0 goals counted double but even that wasn’t enough. We were punished for failing to get any crucial away goals. On another occasion we were away first leg, got a decent 0-0 draw in Moscow, then at Highbury we were 3-2 up with seconds remaining. With away goals counting double it actually meant we were 4-3 down. Fortunately we got a corner and, eager as ever, I rushed forward. Bizarrely Anders and Smudger seemed content to keep the ball in the corner and the bossman was gesticulating that I should get back in goal. These guys seemed content to win on the night but crash out of Europe. A bizarre lack of ambition. Sadly Smudge was dispossessed and I was lobbed from the halfway line whilst desperately trying to get back. And who do you think ended up copping the stick for our exit? No prizes for guessing. Nobody else seemed to realise we’d have gone out anyway but that’s just the nature of sportswriting in this country I suppose. As a keeper, being a scapegoat comes with the territory.

Having said all of this, the away goals rule was implemented to encourage teams to attack away from home; this can only be a good thing. I simply think the rule should be uniform across the board. It should be implemented in the league as soon as possible. Further still, away goals should count double in the scoring charts. Nobody wants to see Pele’s scoring records last forever, that’s boring. It’s brilliant when these things are broken. Imagine just how many goals Van Persie would have got last season if this rule had been in place. I’m sure some very clever bods with their computers could work it out but even I can deduce it’d be a hell of a lot!

Everyone loves a keeper going up for a corner; along with an outfield player going in goal it’s pretty much the best thing about the beautiful game. In ice hockey the keeper comes out more often than not in the death throes of a game and in basketball the keeper goes up with every single attack. I really think this is the reason football has never gone huge across the pond. If away goals were introduced for league games then Harty and myself wouldn’t be the only ones going up for corners every game. And if there’s one thing we all love, from fans to managers, it’s an open game with lots of goals and very little focus on defending.

Follow me on twitter, @simon9smithpro

In a professional career spanning almost two decades, Simon Smith has played for over sixty-seven clubs. The ultimate utility player, as his pace has diminished Simon has managed to reinvent himself time and again, from poacher to holding midfielder, centre-back to goalkeeper. Now that his website has been closed down, we have exclusive access to his weekly column.

The use of goal line technology is an argument as old as Time (my sister’s dog) – somewhere between ten and fifteen years. How many times are we going to have to see a goal not given that should have been before the powers that be allow common sense to prevail? QPR are the latest side to be victims with their goal against Bolton ignored en route to another defeat. On a side note, it was great to see Owen Coyle not only come out to acknowledge it was a goal, but also to give the keeper credit for a good save. Keepers like Adam Bogdan and Roy Carroll make it look easy to claw the ball back from behind the line and not look guilty but that is not something you can teach. The thing is, not giving a goal isn’t always just the difference between getting relegated with 29 points and getting relegated with 30 points (just kidding Super Hoops. I look back fondly on my time at Loftus Road and wish you well).

I have always been pro-technology and think it’s vital we don’t just stop at the goal line. I remember a similar decision costing us gravely back when I was a centre half at Reading. We were one-nil up with about sixty minutes to go when the ball clearly went out for a throw. Gary Peters got some stick for not playing to the whistle but the rules of the game state there needn’t always be a whistle for throw-ins.  Play went on and they took possession of the ball when it would have been our throw. Seven minutes later they score and we go on to lose the game. As soon as the equaliser went in, I was straight over to the ref asking for an explanation. My arguments fell on deaf ears as he claimed to not even remember the incident. Just eighteen months later we found ourselves relegated. So nobody can tell me these sorts of decisions don’t have a significant impact. People say that refs and linesmen do a difficult job and get all sorts of stick but were the officials from that game getting grief and abuse a year and a  half later when we went down? It’s not possible to know but it seems highly unlikely that they were washing horse manure and eggs off their car like I was. I tell you, if you’re on the wrong end of a decision like that and you spend your days on chat rooms and introducing yourself to fans in pubs, then the stick is unavoidable. They say that these things even themselves out over time but that would only be the case if football were played to infinity. We all wish it was, but it isn’t.

The other decision being discussed this week was the correct one made by Sian Massey who got the offside call bang on at the end of Man City’s loss to Swansea. What should have been a correct decision that is almost immediately forgotten became a chance for boorish bore Andy Gray to weigh in with a PR exercise in patronisingly dishing out praise to convince the world that he isn’t the man that he definitely is. I have never had Sky television and so my life had always been blissfully free of his ‘punditry’ although I am often saddened by my limited access to The Simpsons and QVC.

The first time I heard of Andy Gray and Richard Keys was when I was informed that my soon-to-air Talksport show was being cancelled. I had spent a year in meetings with various production companies and executives proving my worth and developing a vehicle that we all felt was acceptable. All of a sudden I’m told via text message that I’m being bumped to make space for people I’d never heard of. The worst part was that the news was broken to me by a lovely young shop assistant in the T-mobile shop who I sought help from when I couldn’t work out why my phone was beeping.

I did some research on Gray and Keys and found that they were embroiled in a great publicity storm following some off-air comments that were picked up by the cameras (If you also missed the story, there’s some stuff you can find on Ask Jeeves). I listened to their comments and was surprised to learn that in broadcasting such comments were common and that this stuff went on all the time. I had no idea that this was the way that people in punditry behaved but that is exactly what Keys and Gray kept insisting. Seeing as I had been shunted off Talksport in favour of them, I figured they must know more about the industry than I do and so I vowed to follow their example. I had some leads I could follow and a couple of meetings sorted out for potential gigs. I wasn’t proud but if talking to people in the broadcasting industry about smashing and hanging out of the back of things was the way to get my own Talksport show, then that is what I would do. I can now tell you categorically that this is not something that is rife within the broadcasting industry and for now I will be forced to stick to my role as outside analyst for five live as a regular caller to 606.

Anyway, my original point was that we need to embrace new technologies and that’s something I’m trying to do. I’m not that knowledgeable about social media (something my son tells me is summed up by the fact that I’ve been on Google Plus for six months. I was excited to be introduced to twitter and send messages to a lot of my old mates like Sav, Pat Sharp and Justin Bieber but it seems that looked like spam so I’ve had 25 accounts suspended. Still, I’m getting the hang of it and think this one will stick so give me a cheeky follow at @Simon9SmithPro. It’d be great to hear from some old fans.

In a professional career spanning almost two decades, Simon Smith has played for over sixty-seven clubs. The ultimate utility player, as his pace has diminished Simon has managed to reinvent himself time and again, from poacher to holding midfielder, centre-back to goalkeeper. Now that his website has been closed down, we have exclusive access to his weekly column.

I feel for Andre Villas-Boas, I really do. We’ve all been there. And I don’t mean the managerial magic roundabout. I know better than most what it’s like to be given too little time. And at Chelsea no less.

Picture the scene: Stamford Bridge, 1992. Tony Cascarino and myself are at the top of our game and scoring goals for fun in training. This was my first big money move as Chelsea had splashed out nearly £1.5 million on Paul Elliott MBE and Celtic threw me in too just to sweeten the deal. I was excited. My first game was a pre-season friendly at Boreham Wood. This was the big time.

Sure, I was nervous. Who wouldn’t be? No easy games at that level and the Wood are no mugs. I figured the most important thing was to get through the first 10 minutes unscathed. Unfortunately fate (a.k.a. Dennis Wise) had other ideas.

At times of stress I can get quite gassy. I make no bones about that. This I knew. What I didn’t know was that the captain of Boreham Wood’s ’47 Athenian League second division title winning side had sadly passed away that week. This would quite literally be squeaky bum time during the minute’s silence before the game.

Well, we’ve all been there. However hard I tried to think about not farting, the more difficult it became to not fart. Eventually one popped out that was simply too loud to ignore. My situation wasn’t helped by Wisey comically covering his nose and pretending to retch. What irritates me most is that sure, it was a loud one, but fairly scentless. Dennis is a lovely bloke but part of me still hasn’t forgiven him for that.

The crowd went ballistic; largely I should add, as a result of Wisey’s mime antics. So this was what it must have been like in Galatasary. Welcome to hell. The Hertfordshire mob began chanting, ‘You’ve shat and you know you have.’ Before things escalated any further, the bossman came over and told me to disappear down the tunnel. I didn’t even get that opening 10 minutes. I wasn’t given enough time. Robert Fleck took my place and bagged a brace. Where’s the justice in that? He didn’t even kiss the badge.

A fortnight later and it’s Kerry Dixon’s testimonial at the Bridge. No margin for error this time. I eschew my traditional pre-match pound and a half of cheese and focus on the game in hand. It’s all about proving my worth and making sure I do enough to warrant a place in the side. Kerry, a tremendous servant of the club is bowing out after a decade and boy is he on fire. Twice he rounds the keeper and strokes the ball towards an empty net. I’m in the zone though and twice apply the finishing touch just to make sure. I’m on a hat-trick and there is a stunned silence throughout the ground. I can see the disbelief on the faces of some fans. They’ve clearly never seen a debut like it. Then, after half an hour, we get a penalty. Kerry plops the ball on the spot and pauses. As he looks with a tear in his eye into the stand behind the goal, I can sense his apprehension. Nobody wants to miss a penalty on their testimonial so I run up and take the weight from his shoulders. The keeper didn’t even move. Pure class. I expect to be mobbed. A hat-trick on debut. This is the stuff of dreams. But no. None of my team-mates embrace me. The Chelsea fans have broken their reverential silence and begin to boo. I’m touched as I realise they must be trying to steel me for future away matches where my prodigious talent will no doubt draw some stick. It goes on for what feels like forever and does begin to get quite nasty. I look over to the bossman for validation. My number’s up. I’m being subbed. A chance to soak up the adulation after a job well done perhaps? Far from it. The jeering continues unabated but sadly not loud enough to drown out the sound of the bossman assuring me, in no uncertain terms, that I’ll never play for Chelsea again. And I never did.

Sometimes, at a club like Chelsea, even a hat-trick isn’t enough. AVB was a good man with a good beard but ultimately it wasn’t enough. It annoys me that he got so much stick for losing the dressing room. That’s happened to me countless times over the years, Craven Cottage in particular is a labyrinth of windy corridors, almost impossible to find your way around. It’s not as though he was ever late for kick-off or anything.

What next for AVB? Well, Villas his middle name so I wouldn’t bet against him replacing Alex McLeish sometime soon. Some cynics will suggest there’s no link between name and club but I’d point out ARSENe at Arsenal and MANCini at City. Not to mention, when I’m down about the state of the world, I’m often cheered up simply by recalling the fact that, between 1998 and 2003, Wolfgang Wolf was the manager of Wolfsburg. And who would rule him out of taking on the Wolves job next? My own middle name is Randy so you’ll have to ask the missus whether I live up to that one!

With managers being granted less and less time, you have to wonder who will go next. Well, here’s this week’s betting tip for you all based on recent events. After West Brom beat Wolves, Mick McCarthy was sacked. After West Brom beat Chelsea, Villas-Boas was sacked. Who have the Baggies got next? Manchester United. With generous odds of 200-1 on Ferguson to be the next man to get the chop, you’d be a fool not to stick a fiver down.

Follow me on twitter, @simon9smithpro

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!

Every week 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 looks at Arsenal’s defence

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Around this time of the year my thoughts turn to my father. No time is a good time to lose a parent but on Christmas Eve, mown down by a drunk santa who had been fired from the local department store for pilfering the Beefeater, is particularly hard.

I remember him as a good man with enormous hands and a smell which was a mixture of carbolic soap and Sweet Afton. He taught me everything I needed to know about life. Such as how to take care of myself. Despite the fact I’d had my nose broken twice by the time I was six it was a valuable education.

It didn’t go well at first. “Keep your hands up at all times”, he’d say and I’d try but the moment I let them down … *POW* … I’d get one right in the mush. I admit I became frustrated and rather tearful. No child likes to be punched in the face by their father even if it is for their own good.

As one lesson became more fraught, my tears mixing with the blood streaming from my nose and lips, my father, who was a real man’s man, lost his temper and yelled “Do you know what your problem is? You can’t defend. And until you learn to defend you’ll never win a fight”. I went at him, ball-headed, determined to land a knock-out blow but he back-handed me across the face and when I woke up hours later he’d gone to the pub.

All of which brings me nicely onto the subject of Arsenal. On Monday night Manchester United were my father and I was Arsenal. I really wanted to win but I just couldn’t because I couldn’t defend. So it is with Arsene Wenger’s men. On their day they can play some wonderful football but to me they’re like a blind acrobat on a tightrope wire. It just takes one small mistake and they’re splattered on the ground with their guts sprawled across the road.

They have no safety net. Alex Song, last year a defensive minotaur, snarling with his four legs and glistening muscular torso, has been transformed this time around into a sort of graceless attacking midfielder. It’s as if someone broke into his house and injected him with a massive dose of Carlton Palmer.

Young Jack Wilshere looks as if he has the talent and ability to be an England regular but his natural game is more offensive and he doesn’t really have the experience to play in the role he’s being asked. He’s a medical student being asked to carry out complicated surgeries and the patients are waking up to find their routine appendectomy has left them most of the way to a sex-change.

And then there’s the back four. Espagna, Koscielny, Squillaci and Clichy. Individually fine players but put them together as unit and there’s just too much … well I have to say it … Frenchness about them. If you’re looking for togetherness and unity in the face of adversity they’re hardly the right people, are they? If you can meekly surrender when your country is being taken over by Germans what chance do you have to get them to fight over a game of football?

What Arsenal fans wouldn't give for three English defenders like these

Since the great English defenders left the club Arsenal have been defensively weak. The team which went unbeaten had Campbell and Cole as regular members, backed up by the African enthusiasm of Kolo Toure and the menacing cannibalism of Laurence. It’s a tough job replacing home grown brilliance like Adams, Keown, Bould, Caton, Pates, Linighan and Stepanovs but I don’t think it’s unfair to suggest Arsene Wenger hasn’t tried that hard.

Anyone could have bought William Gallas but here was another Frenchman who played only for himself. As a nation they like to please and think, not with their heads, but their groins. You could almost see Squillaci let Rooney have room on Monday night so he might make the player’s acquaintance on a social level just so he could instigate an affair with the fragrant Coleen. And well she might when you consider the England striker’s behaviour.

“You’ll never win if you can’t defend” said my father. Equally you’ll never win if your defenders are more interested in masked orgies and wife swapping. And that’s an inescapable fact to which there is simply no answer. I spoke with an Arsenal fan down my local last week and he told me he was sick of the way the team couldn’t hold a lead and he wanted English defenders. “When we had English defenders we won things, Laurence. Why doesn’t Wenger realise that?”

When you look at the incredible array of talent out there you can only come to the conclusion that Arsene Wenger is essentially the most racist man alive. Why would he choose Koscielny or Squillaci over the likes of Jagielka, Cahill, Ferdinand Jr, Upson, Bramble or Richard Dunne. Even when Ryan Shawcross begged with Wenger to sign him, by getting in that famous reducer on Ramsey, Wenger threw a tantrum and complained.

There was Shawcross showing Arsene Wenger exactly what his team was missing and instead of thanking the player and acknowledging it he bitched about so-called dirty play! The man is a stubborn old goat and until he accepts the fact that English defenders are simply better than foreign ones he won’t win another thing with Arsenal.

They used to call Arsenal the ‘Bank of England’ club. At the moment they’re Credit Lyonnais, a town more famous for its potato based dishes. And as the chips are down at the Emirates that seems more than appropriate.

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In a sensational twist today the footballing world was rocked to it’s foundations.

One time Rangers fullback, now Tottenham Hotspur striker Alan Hutton, has today been revealed as the man at the center of an nationwide smuggling cartel of what sources are simply calling. ‘The White Stuff’.

Hutton is no stranger to controversy of course. The Scot hit the the headlines off the park not long after he joined Spurs when he went for a quiet all day drinky poo bender with some family and friends in London. This soiree climaxed with Hutton battering the living monkey out of his old man in broad daylight.

This time though the consequences are likely to be somewhat more significant than merely leaving his dad needing medical attention. Experts told us that the cost of valeting his passion wagon could run into tens of pounds. The Metropolitan Police declined to comment.

Every week 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 it’s religion in football

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How many of us go through the day talking about religion? Not many, you might say, but stop and think about it. You come out of work to find your car clamped just moments after the parking meter has run out. What do you say? Not ‘damn’ or ‘blast’ but ‘Jesus Christ! You arsehole clampers’.

When you wake in the morning with a hangover you say ‘By the sacred heart of the holy mother of the crucified saviour, my head is pounding like Boy George’s rectum’. And it’s not just us folk of a certain generation who do it, it’s the kids. Don’t believe me? Ask them anything and they’ll begin their answer with an entreatment to the man above.

“Oh my God, you wouldn’t believe what happened when me and Tamarah drank all that Blue WKD last week!’. Oh my God, indeed. Even my Muslim pal, Mazhar, is known to blurt out the odd ‘Allah Akbar’ when he loses an argument over a few pints down the local.

It’s just part of our day to day vocabulary, even if for many of us it’s no longer a part of our lives. I was a committed church of England goer, attending service every Sunday. I’ll admit a certain selfishness to it. Despite having serious doubts about the existence of God I went along to pray for a move to a first division club which, as you all know, never came about. Disillusioned with the fact that God was content to leave my career in the doldrums I turned my back on him and stopped believing.

Not long after I finished playing I was at a dinner-dance and Ron Atkinson happened to be there. I went to speak to him, this was at the height of his fame, and he said something to me, his wrists dripping with gold, which stopped me dead in my tracks. “Who are you, son?”.

Hinduism was temping but ultimately not for me

Who was I? I’d never stopped to think about it before. It set me on a spiral of self-recrimination and doubt and I spent some time traveling around India and Thailand to try and discover the real me. There I spoke to many people of different religious. Hindu, Buddhist, Islamanian, Christian, all of whom tried to convince me their religion was the path to enlightenment. I was dubious and in the end discovered that path lay at the end of a charas pipe and between the legs of a young Australian backpacker called Anabelle.

One thing I can tell you, however, is that in all the years I was playing I never knew of a player to miss a game because of his religion. Sure, things weren’t as diverse back then as they are now, but we still had a few ‘curiosities’ in the team. We had plenty of Irish catholics but they never took St Patrick’s Day off. The English tradition of playing throughout the Christmas period would have been fairly ruined if all the Christians in the teams, most of the players remember, decided to keep that particular holiday sacred.

And even when Graham Smith, our robust centre-forward, embraced Zoroastrianism because of his Iranian wife he didn’t let the edict that men should not see each other naked stop him jumping into the big communal bath at the end of every game. If anything he spent more time naked, his scrotum flapping in the breeze like a battered pink teardrop. Like in any civilised country there’s a separation between religion and state there should always be a separation between religion and football.

This is why I find it astounding that Avram Grant is going to miss West Ham’s game with Stoke because of the Jewish festival of Yom Kippur. Let’s face it, Grant isn’t exactly in a great position to start taking days off willy-nilly. They haven’t won a game all season, they’ve conceded three goals in all four league games, scoring only two, and he’s going to stay at home and not eat for sins he hasn’t committed yet? How does that work?

Does he want to be a football manager or a rabbi? If I was a West Ham fan I’d be absolutely fuming that the manager of my football club has put his religious beliefs before the good of his football team. Isn’t God supposed to be forgiving? God is mercy. God is understanding and all that. These holy days were invented years ago before there was the possibility they might fall on the same day as the football fixtures. I’m sure God realises that three points against Stoke are more important than him, unless he’s more vain than Mick Channon.

What if all the Christians in league decided they wouldn’t play on Sundays? Sky’s Super Sunday wouldn’t be so super then, would it? And if Grant is available to work every Saturday, the Jewish sabbath, then it’s a bit much that he’s a part-time worshipper. If he can overlook the requirements of his religion when it suits him then he should be able to overlook them when it suits his football club. Can you imagine if one his players asked for the day off to go see the Pope? He’d be rightly told to focus on what was important, not some old German bloke called Benny.

If it were up to me I’d sack him on the spot. Sure, you might say it’s illegal to sack somebody because of their religious beliefs but we’re too PC in this day and age. What about those West Ham fans for whom football is their religion? They worship at the Cathedral of Upton Park, they pray at the altar of Carlton Cole and they’re afraid their team is about to be crucified by Pulis Pilate and his hordes on Saturday.

Avram Grant has got his priorities all askew, I’m afraid. He’d better hope his team saves his bacon because he’ll be done up like a Wrong Kipper if they don’t get anything from this game.

Shalom folks, until next week.

Every week 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 it’s footballers and doping.

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How sad was it to see young Theo Walcott carted off on a stretcher like some kind of victim of war to which we send our young men to fight and die? Theo Walcott might not have died but inside a part of me did. Don’t get me wrong, I like Walcott, despite what Alan Hansen says about him not having a football brain. I think he’s one of the brightest talents in England right now.

Hansen - hideously deformed

Arsene Wenger is an intelligent man and he simply wouldn’t choose a player who didn’t have a brain, even if Emmanuel Eboue must skirt the boundaries of that particular criticism from time to time. I’d take Wenger’s judgement over a man who earns £1m a year from the BBC but still hasn’t had that ghastly line down the middle of his forehead sorted out. Where is the man’s personal pride?

When I talk about a part of me dying, I look at how Walcott sustained his injury and I feel that footballers these days are just too brittle. I know many Arsenal fans will agree with me having seen Robin van Persie ruled out for the best part of two months after a nothing challenge in the game against Blackburn. I know, I know, too many youngsters these days don’t want to hear about how things were ‘back in the day’, and if that’s the case feel free to click over to the Faceblog or Twinker, but back in the day Walcott and van Persie would be playing for their clubs this weekend.

I remember playing a game against West Brom in the late 70s. One of those muddy, heavy pitches which was made all the worse by torrential rain. It was like trying to play football in a swamp but the game went on. Early in the 2nd half I nicked the ball away from Jeff Blockley who, in a desperate attempt to regain possession, hacked at my legs like a rabid mule. One only needs to remember the classic David Attenborough films to know how hard they kicked. Immediately my ankle swelled up like a balloon and when Blockley landed his foot got caught in the mud, his knee twisted and there was a sound like styrofoam being scraped against a wall.

I can vividly remember his screams. I can only liken it to the noise made by a cat in heat when the male cat withdraws his heavily barbed penis from her cat flap. However, the physios came on, had at both of us with the magic spray, some deep heat and, in Blockley’s case, a couple of Anadin and we got up, picked ourselves off and played the rest of the game. We played the rest of the season in fact. Nowadays that kind of injury would keep a player out for months because apparently it’s important to have a non-torn cruciate ligament. We just didn’t know any better. Pain was part and parcel of the game.

There’s little doubt though that footballers when I played were tougher. They’d run off sprains and twists whereas in this era they get carried off on a stretcher to generous applause. You would have had to have been paralysed from the neck down not to be barracked for coming off on a stretcher when I played. Football needs a change, and fast.

We can’t make the players change their attitude, so what can we do? Well, my dear old dad was a big cycling buff. He lived for the Tour de France, the Giro d’Italia and all that. He’d tell me stories of cyclists like Tom Simpson, a great English man, whose desire to win was so great he died during the race. A post-mortem showed Simpson had a belly full of amphetamines and whiskey on Mont Ventoux. Yet cycling didn’t crawl into a ball and weep. No, recent years have shown us that cycling has made huge leaps forward. Now the drugs are almost undetectable to the point where a bloke with only ball (and no, the other’s not in the Albert Hall!) can win in time and time again.

Cycling has the right idea. Let the performers get hopped up on goofballs and just go for it. Times are faster, races are more exciting, they climb the mountains quicker than ever and, even if you don’t like it, you have to admit they’re pushing the boundaries of science forward, creating ever more crafty ways to stop the drugs being detected.

So, let the same thing apply to football. Theo Walcott could play for Arsenal this weekend if he was injected with some kind of synthetic painkiller which also helped cure strained ligaments faster. Spurs will be without Jermaine Defoe for 8 weeks. Don’t you think they’d like to get him some good, good stuff and back out on the pitch quicker? Would Michael Owen be the pathetic wreck of a player he is these days if he had fresh stem cells mixed with quaaludes injected into his hamstrings for the last few years? Of course not and it’s to the detriment of football that we maintain this medieval attitude towards drugs.

Even the very best need a helping hand

Look, I’m not talking about players who do lines of charlie. They all do it. It was common in my day and from what I hear it’s common now. You can hardly call it performance enhancing though, can you? Standing around talking shite as if you’re the most important person in the world will hardly win you cup finals. And if a player wants to have a joint or a bit of heroin during his summer holidays then by all means punish him because that’s no example to set to youngster. They’re not sophisticated drugs like coke. You must have some standards.

I just can’t believe though that clubs aren’t following the lead of cycling. Where are the secret dope labs? Why aren’t players taking steroids which are designed so they don’t show up in the random dope tests? They would be bigger, stronger, faster, more athletic and more resistant to injury. When you’re paying a guy £100,000 to see him go off with a girly sprained ankle must be immensely frustrating. Why shouldn’t clubs insist their players are better able to cope with the rigors of professional football?

Sure, you might increase the risk of the occasional heart attack on the pitch and very few of us enjoy seeing that, but isn’t the odd death a reasonable price to pay to see the best players week in, week out? Fans deserve to see the best possible quality when you consider how much their tickets cost. The clubs have a duty to them to find their way around these antiquated rules and ensure the rise of the super-athlete. A sprained ankle will no longer mean six weeks out, it means you might miss the rest of the game, at most. Who’s to say these treatments can’t be applied on the sly on the pitch?

I would prefer to see a fit Theo Walcott than the spindly, breakable one we have now. What do any of us care what he takes to make himself better? In the end it wouldn’t replace training and working hard, it’d just give him a little help along the way.

And heaven knows we all need that from time to time.

Every week 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 it’s memories of Aston Villa and a look at their future

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I find it hard to look at Aston Villa and not think about what might have been. In late 1981, as I was ploughing a furrow in Division 2, I got a phone call. ‘Hello’ said the voice on the other end of the line, ‘this is Ron Saunders’.

‘Yeah right, Grimes’, I said, thinking it was my best pal Ashley on a wind-up. I advised him where he could go and how he could get there in a manner which would make Bernard Manning blush. Footballers are a foul-mouthed lot when they suspect they’re being pranked. Amazingly Ron Saunders understood and accepted my red-faced apology when I realised it was really him.

He told me he wanted me to sign for Villa. He needed cover for Denis Mortimer as they tried to make their way back up the first division and challenged in Europe. He was realistic and told me I wouldn’t play as often as I might want, but for me it was like Paul Gascoigne, a no-brainer. A club with the pedigree and quality of Villa looking to sign me?! It was fantastic. I remember getting off the phone and telling the wife. She was ecstatic and I think had it all gone well then she wouldn’t have run off with Alan Devonshire a couple of years later.

Saunders wanted me at Villa. Then in January he fell out with Doug Ellis. Some say it was about control of the team. He confided in me that he’d tried to insist Peter Withe shave his beard but Withe was an Ellis favourite and that brought about his resignation. His assistant, Tony Barton, too over and he never rated me. I rang him to see if there was still a chance of the deal being done. I’ll never forget his reply. “You’ve got as much chance of playing for Villa as I do of getting a handjob from Joanna Lumley”. I can still hear his laughter as he hung up. It stings.

So I think about what might have been and I maintain a soft spot for Villa despite missing out on being part of that glorious team that went on to lift the European cup. I see what’s going on now at the club, the resignation of Martin O’Neill and I see a club in a state of crisis. I was never fond of O’Neill. He was a man who played for Northern Ireland yet considered himself Irish. Didn’t he realise that Britain owned his country? I find that kind of anti-nationalism quite reprehensible.

Brown has never let his deafness get in the way of his career

David O’Leary was a real Irishman at least but no kind of a football manager. His time at Leeds was a fluke, like when you let Football Manager auto-pick your team and play through the games without making changes … every so often you’re going to go on a decent run of results.

One thing you can always say about Villa is that they give good English managers a chance. Look at the cream of the crop that have graced the club. Brian Little, John Gregory (a much underrated tactician and it was only his addiction to high cost transfer shopping cost him in the end), Graham Taylor and Big Ron himself. Quality managers, quality men, one and all.

So it’s with dismay that I read about the foreign managers being linked with the job. Sven Goran Eriksson. I think not. Ronald Koeman. No self-respecting Villa fan could ever accept him after his foul on Platty and the free kick he scored to put Graham Taylor’s England out of the World Cup qualifying.

And now the favourite is Gerard Houllier? Do me a favour. How can anyone even listen to this man after he tried to tell us Robbie Fowler was ‘chewing the cud’ and not honking up a great big line of the gicker when celebrating that goal? A man who made Liverpool so bad the hapless Rafa Benitez appeared to be a brilliant manager for years afterwards. It’s disgraceful, especially when there are good young English managers around who could do the job just as well.

My personal choice would be Phil Brown. He’ll have learned from his mistakes at Hull. Can anyone realistically see him growing a beard as bad as that again? Of course not. And if there’s any singing to be done he’ll do in the comfort of his own home or at his local karaoke night, not on the pitch. Phil Brown is a modern, forward thinking English manager who we have to ensure gets every chance in the game. Remember, Alf Ramsey went from managing Ipswich to winning the World Cup for England.

When Capello’s time comes we need an Englishman to take over and steady the ship. I can see Phil Brown bringing European Cup, or Champions League if you want to be a pedantophile about it, back to Villa Park. He could even win them the league. And then he could move to the biggest job in English football and show the world that an English manager can win the top prizes. I think we’d all agree it’d be the best trip we’d ever been on if he did that.

I hope Villa take a risk. Randy Lerner made his billions selling a credit card company. There are some things money can’t buy and that’s English spirit. Phil Brown has got that in spades.

The closest Gerard Houllier comes is when he has a glass of Pimms.