Three and in – not just another football blog

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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You can comment below or you can contact Lawrence by email.

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.

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 striking footballers fall under the microscope

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There are many things which irritate me about modern day footballers. Their haircuts, their insistence on wearing what they call ‘bling’, giant headphones, unpronounceable names (both surnames and Christian names – in fact many of them aren’t even Christian at all, but that’s another day’s debate), their shiny cars and the celebrations they conjure up. It used to be a case that a firm handshake and a slap on the back was sufficient, now they’re kissing each other, rocking imaginary babies or shining each other’s boots. It’s awful.

However, nothing gets up my wick like a player who goes on strike. And sadly it seems going on strike is the latest trend to hit football across Europe. On Monday night Liverpool had play Manchester City without Javier Mascherano, their combative midfielder. We know he’s combative because he’s Argentinian and we all remember the Falklands but perhaps Mascherano ought to remember another of the 80s most moving events – the miner’s strike.

These proud men fought for what they believed in – the right to mine for coal despite the government at the time announcing the closure of pits up and down the land. Even now it’s impossible not to see parallels with the world of football. Proud Englishmen put out of work because foreign electricity was cheaper and more attractive, the traditional English way of digging deep underground to power the nation seemingly redundant. As many top English footballers struggle in the lower divisions these days, their places taken by inferior yet cheaper imports, it seems as if we’ve learned nothing.

Javier Mascherano went ‘on strike’ when he learned that Barcelona had turned their attention to him having failed to sign Cesc Fabregas from Arsenal. Imagine, a Liverpool footballer disrespecting the traditions of that great club by refusing to play. When I think of all the fantastic players who have had the privilege of donning that famous red shirt it makes my stomach churn that this man, paid hundreds of thousands of pounds a month in case we’d forgotten that, would do such a thing. Emlyn Hughes and Steve Heighway must be turning in their graves.

I read this morning that Mascherano faced the ire of his teammates when he returned to training. Quite right too. If this were the era I played in he’d be lucky not to escape without being duffed up. I remember Jimmy Greenhoff telling me a story about how once, before an away game, Arthur Albiston tried to get out of traveling by saying he’d got a stomach bug. The other United players knew he was trying to pull a fast one so he could go couple with a Page 3 girl he’d met the week before. The ‘stomach bug’ was cured when Jimmy Nicholl and Gordon McQueen punched him repeatedly in the belly.

That’s how things were sorted out back then. Now these precious footballers would go crying to their agents about being bullied and demand a move. And it’s not just Mascherano. Stoke manager Tony Pulis was critical of his goalkeeper, Asmir Begovic, when he refused to play in the Carling Cup. He’s afraid picking up an injury might scupper his dream move to Chelsea’s bench.

Arsenal are set to sign a defender who refused to play for Sevilla while Fulham’s Mark Schwarzer hasn’t played for his club since handing in a transfer request. They say he’s injured but I say that’s a load of poopycock. I bet he, like all the other non-English players I’ve just mentioned, has decided that striking is an acceptable way for a footballer to behave. Well, let me tell you, it is not. Drunk driving, roasting girls, impregnating your teammates girls, these aren’t exactly things to make you proud of the game, but they’re acceptable because the players who do these things are committed to their clubs.

None of them would refuse to play. They know they’re in a position that so many fans would love to be in – pulling on a cheap nylon shirt, kicking a ball around for 90 minutes and getting paid a fortune to do it. Javier Mascherano has let himself and Liverpool FC down. He needs a crash course in British history. Strikes are noble things when you’re fighting the good fight, like the miners, like underground drivers, cabbies or air-traffic controllers.

Striking to go somewhere else to play a game of football … there’s nothing worse. Not even putting a cat in a bin.

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 opines on the divisive topic of facial hair in football

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Back when I started my professional career there was a grizzled old pro coming towards the end of his. He was an intimidating character in the dressing room. One of his favourite things was to sit on your head and unleash a monstrous fart which generally smelled like the fish and chips washed down with bottles of stout that he’d had last thing the night before.

His other favourite thing was his moustache. It was an enormous bushy thing, like a frightened caterpillar that had just been blow-dried by Vidal Bassoon himself. He said it set him apart from the other players. He was right. We might not all have been great players, in fact some of us were decidedly average, but because of our lack of facial hair we weren’t noticed. Fans noticed him and he got unmerciful stick when he had a bad game. He didn’t care though and when I attended his funeral a few years back (he was another who fell victim to the demon drink – he was beaten to death with a vodka bottle by a customer in the pub he bought) we all chipped in and bought a giant moustache shaped wreath to pay our respects.

Yet that was then. This is now. And now is not an age when footballers should be sporting facial hair. I’ve mentioned my friend Tony Grealish in previous columns and he told me he wouldn’t dare sport a beard if he were playing these days. Back then he was a member of the hirsute massive. Look at the amazing players who were bearded – George Best, Frank Lampard Sr, Ricky Villa, Socrates and Mickey Droy. You could make an all-star XI out of those players alone.

Fast forward some years and what have you got? Olaf Mellberg, Djibril Cisse and Abel Xavier who looks more like he’s auditioning for the role of Neptune in a straight to DVD movie than a football player. I know David Beckham had a beard at one point but David Beckham also wore a skirt. The former England man is a legend but he’s made mistakes.

Since David Seaman retired there hasn’t been a top class goalkeeper with a moustache anywhere in the world. I watched every minute of the World Cup this summer and not once did I see a keeper with a ‘tache. Those days have long gone. They need to be clean shaven to maximise their aerodynamics when they dive. If you don’t believe me I’m told that a top Premier League currently trying to sign a goalkeeper is having so much trouble because they’re insisting the player shave his head before each game so he can fly through the air with the least wind resistance possible.

Is it any coincidence that when Cesc Fabregas shaved off his beard Vincente del Bosque chose to use him in the World Cup final to great effect? And I know, from previous columns and people picking up on what they think are errors, that someone will mention Gerard Pique, but Pique’s beard is a Katie Holmes, designed to conceal the truth. He has had a weeping skin complaint for some months and this hides his embarrassment in public.

Newcastle have just come back to the Premier League after a great season in the Championship but bad-boy Barton’s refusal to shave will do nothing but end in tears. I’ve got no problem with Barton in general, I feel he’s misunderstood and who amongst us hasn’t got so drunk that they think somebody’s eye is an ashtray? Let he who is without sin and all that, but Chris Hughton ought to slam down hard on him for his outrageous top lip fuzz.

If I were a manager I would insist all my players had short back and sides and had a good shave before each game. A club has to have to standards. None of this sissy long hair or African-Americanfros that some of them sport. And standards aside the fact is the more clean shaven a team is the more chance they have of success. Only rarely can a team grow hair on their faces and win things. A stylish dazzler like Robert Pires can just about get away with it, an unremarkable clogger like Alan Smith cannot.

Unless Newcastle want to go straight back down the Championship Barton must make an appointment with his barber who will take out his trusty razor and do what’s right for Newcastle.

It’s a cut-throat business in both regards.

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 Threeandin.

This week he looks at the trend of foreign ownership.

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When I was a young professional, making my way in the game, I had ambitions. To play a cup final at Wembley, perhaps score the winning goal or make a goal line save with my hand that the referee didn’t spot. In those days you didn’t have all the replays so you would have been a real hero instead of a villain like Thierry Henry who did what any good professional should have done against Ireland. Not least because they’re Irish. Only joking, some of my best friends are bogtrotters!

I never got to play at Wembley, nor score the goal, nor make the save, but I did get to turn out at Anfield. What a day that was. The famous ‘Here is Anfield’ sign, the Kop, the stench of stale wee and the rousing Scouse singing and banter. I remember taking a throw deep in the Liverpool half when some wag piped up from just behind me ‘Hey, Gray-Hodson, why’s your wife so fat?’. I simply turned around and said ‘She is addicted to cakes which contain massive amounts of calories’. Good times.

Abramovich's enthusiasm for English football is undisputed

So it was with great sadness that I read about consortiums from all over the world lining up to buy Liverpool, one of England’s greatest clubs. It was bad enough that the Moores family sold out to the Americans, and I never took to Gillett anyway being a Wilkinson Sword man. Yet now we have Huang Kong Phooey and Yahya Kirdi (didn’t he just sign for Man City?) trying to come over here to milk the money from the Premier League like it was a cow, literally filled with cash. What has happened to our game?

Look at the biggest clubs in England. Man United, owned by Americans. Chelsea’s owner is Russian oil magnate. Aston Villa, an American. Birmingham City, an Asian country of some kind. Man City by Abu Dhabi (no wonder their fans are uploading videos to the YouTube with them running around doing Yogi Bear impressions – “Abu Dhabi Doooooo!”, because they do do and it’s greater than your average picnic basket). Arsenal retain a bit of Englishness but face a pitched battle between an American and a Uzbeki and even good old fashioned Fulham is owned by a man refused British citizenship because his son’s driver killed Princess Diana. How times have changed.

It wasn’t long ago that we wanted to bomb Russia out of existence and nobody had even heard of Uzbekistan. More clubs are sure to follow and soon all the Premier League clubs will be owned by foreigners. Now, in general, I have no real problem with foreigners. They have their place, it’s abroad. When we go there we respect their customs. For example, an Englishman would never go to Saudi Arabia and drink but they come here and buy up our football clubs. We don’t go all over the world purchasing Turban Rovers or Vladivostock United, do we?

It begs the question as to why there are no rich Englishmen with sufficient pride in their country and their country’s national sport to do something about this. It’s all well and good for Richard Branson to spend his money on trains which are always late and trying to fly a balloon across space but why doesn’t he put his money where his beard is and buy Liverpool. A great British club owned by a great British man.

Couldn’t the Royal Family dip into their reserves and stop Blackburn falling into the hands of a consortium which is probably made up from Triads and

Arsenal's Stan Kroenke

scimitar wielding hoodlums? Bernie Ecclestone has money to burn, he needs to look beyond silly car racing and buy a football club better than Queens Park Rangers. The Duke of Westminster? Simon Cowell? TV stars get paid so much money now that even Ant and Dick could buy their beloved Sunderland.

Something must be done to ensure that English clubs stay English. I know I’m not the only one who shares this point of view. I was recently out for a few pints with Terry Venables and Jack Charlton, two men who have done so much for English football and who would never take the foreign shilling, and they both expressed their deep dismay at the situation.

“I’m all for immigration”, said Big Jack, “as long as they don’t come buying up our football clubs and marrying my daughters”.

Terry nodded wisely, took a gulp from his glass and said “Like my beer, English football clubs are probably the best football clubs in the world. Let’s keep ‘em like that”.

And when El Tel talks you’ve got to listen.

Lawrence Gray-Hodson

Threeandin is proud to welcome a man who made his name in the upper reaches of Division 2 in the 1970s and 80s as well as being a Scotland and England international, Lawrence Gray-Hodson.

He’ll write exclusively for us as the season progresses, dealing with all the issues the domestic game throws up. In his first column though he looks back to the World Cup.

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When you’ve been around the game of football for as long as I have there’s very little that surprises you. Let me tell you, I’ve seen things in dressing rooms and around the back of nightclubs that wouldn’t make the back pages in a million years. It makes the idea of Gazza turning up with chicken and lager for a mentally disturbed murderer seem downright normal.

That’s why, after the World Cup final, I had to laugh at the people who jumped on their ivory towers and looked for the immoral high ground when it came to pundits reactions to the game. There was a lot of focus on how rough the Dutch were. I watched the game with Rodney Marsh and Stan Bowles and, over a few jars of sangria in Marbella, we chuckled away to ourselves about how times have changed. You think Holland played dirty? You were never on the end of a Johnny Giles reducer or a Peter Storey fisting.

Compared to the games we played in the men in orange were like precious ballerinas handing out flowers and lemon cakes to the Spanish. This new breed of fan who thinks he’s so clever because he has a blog audience of a few dozen and some backslapping followers on Twitter just doesn’t understand the game of football at all. Sure, they can talk about diamonds this and pyramids that, deep lying midfielders and false 9s but you talk to any ex-pro and they’ll tell you none of those things matter at all.

The reality of the game is out there on the pitch, the 22 men doing battle with each other. You don’t see any of them out there with text books, do you? Of course not. Books are for libraries and the decent class of waiting room that doesn’t lumber you with months old issues of Time or Reader’s Digest.

That’s why when they accuse British pundits, who everybody knows are the best pundits in the world because we invented the game and have been talking about it longer than anyone, of double-standards it makes me want to choke them on my own vomit. I lost count of how many times I heard them say great men like Alan Hansen and Andy Townsend were hypocrites for criticising the Dutch’s foul play while saying nothing about teams who play like that in the English league.

Are they stupid or what? They simply don’t get it. If they can’t see there’s a difference between foreign brutality and British brutality then they need to open their eyes. Sure, some foreigners think they can kick opponents as hard as we can, maybe that’s true, but they do it differently. They’re sly, underhand, devious and full of trickery. I remember playing an away game in Italy back in the 70s and the minute the ref’s back was turned they would literally gouge your eyes out. Poor Wilf Mortenson ended up playing the second half with an eye-patch on just so no bits of mud would get into the socket.

Not us though. We wouldn’t stoop to their level and if we had to go in two footed on somebody we made sure it was in full view of the officials. That’s the difference. That’s what sets the English game apart and that’s why it curdles my loins when people accuse the likes of Ryan Shawcross and Martin Taylor of being monsters. There was nothing devious about what they did, there was nothing nasty and foreign, it was good, old fashioned, honest British brutality, in the best traditions of the game.

Did they get red cards? Of course. They took their punishment like men, unlike the sneaky, whinging immigrant de Jong or van Bommel who wouldn’t have lasted two minutes on the field with Chopper Harris or Trevor Cherry. As for their so-called victims, well they show their mettle by running off scared to places like Ukraine, which in my day didn’t even exist!

So when Hansen and Co criticise the Dutch for what they did, it’s not hypocrisy. It’s bravery. They’re trying to maintain the standards of the game in these fair isles. Everything else has been homogenised by the EEC, or the EU as they like to be called now, don’t let our football go the same way.

I pray that the bosses at the BBC and ITV, who know more about the game than the plebs who watch it week in, week out, don’t succumb to the populist notion that these men are bad for the game. Nobody wants to see a player get his leg broken – except for Billy Bremner, he loved that – but serious injury is part of the game, always has been, always will be. Perhaps it will take going through a season without the spectacle of a man trying to hold his leg together to make these idiots realise what they’re missing.

Let’s hope that never happens.

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Lawrence will be happy to answer any questions regarding the article, or anything else, in the comments section!