Lizard! Fat Sam eyes up another multi-million pound fat fly payoff

Inception – The Dream Is Real

As Nick Cave said, “I had a dream,” only unlike Cadaverous Nicholas my nightmare wasn’t so much about bad people rolling my friend Michel in a floorsworth of linoleum and shooting him in the neck as it was about the same pile of bad (actually very bad) men coming along and installing Fat Sam Allerdiché as manager of the Prem’s bottom trawlers West Ham and it somehow being the right thing to do.

Now, you must be thinking that this is obviously totally, totally wrong. That I have gone mad with the coffee, stayed up all night playing videogames and my mind has gone loopy like them Sonic The Hedgehog games of yesteryear. That Leonardo and his merry men must have spent days, weeks, months larumphing around in my brain to have incepted a thought as powerfully, incontrovertably wrong as this inside my head. And obviously they have, because the more I think about it the more compelling it becomes. And there and then I resolve to split up my father’s business empire, become my own man and, fuck it, just go with the flow on this one.

Because in the twisted michavellean world that Football is, a world where up is down and financial fair play still means you can spend over 100% of your income on wages, this has all the hallmarks of a good idea. Certainly it’s every bit as good an idea as paying Wayne Bridge some £70,000+ a week to save West Ham. So why does the idea fill me with horror? Why the nightsweat?

First up, I hate Fat Sam. I hate his useless, percentage play defensive hoofery, his accumulation of low grade, often incompetent journeymen, his ‘blocking’ tactics, and his acceptance of the professional foul as a legitimate weapon. I hate the way he reduces his players and teams to agricultural hoof-merchants and blames the ref for everything that goes wrong when his team is on the pitch. Above all I hate the knuckle chewing, brain curdling tedium his sides induce whenever I’m forced to watch them. And the fact that the same players, freed of Fat Sam’s shackles, can actually play half-decent football – just look at Blackburn’s outstanding performance the other week against the Loserpool RedSox a mere month after the Fat one was given the heave-ho. Oh and I hate that he’s Ferguson’s most lickspittle chou-chou too.

I don’t hate his ambition, because every manager should aspire to manage a big club, it’s just that with little experience of Europe he’s unlikely to get offers for the posts he coverts (Man U, Arsenal, Inter, Real Madrid apparently) and he opens himself up to full-on mockery and humiliation. Additionally his statement that “I am not suited to Bolton or Blackburn,” when he patently is, displays a level of self-delusion that you just have to treat with contempt.

And he’s being supplanted by other, better mid-table managers. Steve Bruce and Owen Coyle have shown that you don’t need to play tedious, percentage play football to challenge for Europe, while Ian Holloway at Blackpool, Martinez at Wigan, De Matteo at West Brom and, whisper it really quietly, very occasionally, Mick McCarthy at Wolves have shown that attack really is the better form of defence. Their teams win (in Wolves case only very occasionally it must be said) and are generally good to watch. Certainly they’re better to watch than the teams put out by Fat Sam.

Second, you have to consider West Ham’s tradition. They’re a football playing side, a side who pride themselves in their development of great, cultured players – you think of the classic West Ham side that practically won the World Cup, Moore, Hurst and Peters, or the likes of Brooking, or the great side that won the Prem (admittedly for Chelski), Joe Cole, Lumpy and Glenda Johnson. There’s a legacy there of some sort of quality far removed from the ambitions of Fat Sam.

So you have the nightmare scenario, a footballing barbarian, albeit one who can justify his grotesque behavior with copious OptaStats and ProZone information, at the gates of one of the Prem’s ‘olde quality’ sides. But an old quality side that frankly isn’t showing the kind of quality West Ham aspire to and risks falling into relegation. And in this season of seasons, where the table is so tight and the margins so narrow and the price of failure (and relegation) so catastrophic it might make perfect sense for everyone to, you know, align the two of them.

For West Ham the benefits are obvious. Fatto will save them from relegation, which is not something you can guarantee with Avuncular Avram, indeed the latter’s proven recent track record of nothing but relegation indicates otherwise. He will firm up West Ham’s slowcoach defence and improve their set-piece play. He’ll love and cherish Scott Parker, who is exactly the kind of ‘flair’ player that Fat Sam appreciates and he’ll probably entice Chris Samba to join him from Blackburn to further solidify their defence, assuming West Ham spunk up the cash. He might even go crawling to Ferguson for a couple of likely loanees, which he’d get more likely than not. And, with around 20 points to get from 16 matches, that should do it. And with Prem status confirmed and the Hammers looking to step up to the Olympic Stadium, you can bet there’ll be money on the table for Fat Sam to build a better side. The worry is what will it cost, not in cold, hard cash, but in quality of play on the field.

For West Ham, like Tottingham, are, if nothing else, an attacking side. Last night against Boremingham in the Useless Cup they were outstanding going forward in the first half, where they battered Boremingham into the floor and should have been ahead by 2 or 3 by halftime. They broke fast(ish) and pressed Boremingham all over the pitch. So  much so, they were obviously exhausted by the time the second half rolled around and were at the mercy of the Bores for much of the second half, when they played atrociously. I don’t see Fat Sam encouraging that sort of risky first half behavior. And with the once celebrated West Ham academy not exactly shovelling out new talent I can’t see him waiting for quality to be developed. Instead I see another plethora of overpriced, mid-market journeymen heading for the Boleyn Ground. And then you’ve lost your soul and all that’s  left is that sick, vertiginous feeling you get when the ground is pulled out from under you, or you’re running away like hell and the stairs have turned to porridge and you realise, in a moment of clarity, that you are in the grips of a nightmare.

And yet, and yet, the dream seems real. It has potential.

• Ding dong! Hodgson's gone. Loserpool regress to the 1970's. Cue Hovis style nostalgia amid continued failure. Next stop thrashing by Man U. #
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• I just finished a 1.66 km run with a time of 15:15 with Nike+ GPS. #nikeplus #

Are You <Insert Name Here> In Disguise?

Now apparently the traditional First Weekend FA Cup 3rd Round is the time for fans to dress up and put on airs, but it’s highly unusual for yer actual teams to be donning the fancy dress on the pitch. In some ways the worst offenders were Real Blackburn, who were all but unrecognisable as the shite Fat Sam bumblers they really are as they demolished the equally unrecognisable Loserpool, but there were impostors all over the place. Who were those boys in the Wolves shirts for instance? Who were those crazy guys in Fulham shirts slapping three past Soaking Wet Brom? Certainly they can’t have been the previously rubbishly defending Wolverines or the painfully goalshy Fulhamites.

Are You A Football Team In Disguise?

Man City, meanwhile, brought the most expensive team ever assembled by the magic of petrodollars to the Emirates only to force them to play like a bunch of laziboy defenders. Strangely, given they seem to have bought pretty much all the rubbish second grade strikers they could get their hands on (Adebayor, Santa Cruz, Jo-Ho-Ho, Balotelli etc), they didn’t seem to actually have the nous or a plan to actually attack. According to the stats, which often don’t mean much, they had zero shots on target. That’s zero. Zip. Nil. Nada. But no one should really be surprised given Mancini bottled out of a Big Cup place this season when he conspired to lose to Tottingham by playing just as crappily defensive a formation, thus sacrificing a pretty much nailed on top four finish. And they say he hasn’t got the big game temprament.

And The Games

Easily the best ‘week’ of the Winter Round of matches, with upsets, managerial shenanighans and some not utterly shite matches to boot. Arsenal, once again, managed to extract a draw from as patently a one sided match as we’ve seen since Bolton were given a right lesson by, er, one Man City. Man City, for it was them again, went hell for leather to play a strange ‘all 11 in our own penalty box’ formation, only allowing Leetle Carlito out above the halfway line on very special occasions – usually when Koscielny was to be found a yard or so behind him. Had Arsenal not displayed their usual profligacy in front of goal they should realistically have won by about 3 by half time. Still, that’s four points Arsenal have taken from City and if that had been a draw away and a win at the Emirates, no one would be complaining.

Also not complaining were Man U, who put super compliant Stoke to the sword. Admittedly while Stoke manager Pulis is obviously a great friend of Ferguson, he’s obviously not as big a pal as Fat Sam as his side didn’t roll over quite as much as Real Blackburn did during the rotund oaf’s last stand. Still the spectre of English managers grovelling before Man U really dents their whole credibility. Still we can but hope that Pulis and his rubbish tackling side are given the royal heave-ho in the not too distant future.

Helping keep the smirk on Ferguson’s face were plucky Wolves, who somehow managed to not only beat the once mighty Chelski, but managed to get the blues to score their only goal for them. But then again Wolves did have the practice of scoring one of West Ham’s goals for them the other week. Chelski, who were leading the table by 5 points at the end of October, are now out of the Big Cup positions and look increasingly like lost little children dressed only in the Emporer’s New Clothes. Wolves have now beaten both former Top Four teams, the Skibums and Loserpool, in the last month and they play Loserpool again at the end of January, so it’s points ahoy!

Speaking of the now aptly named Loserpool RedSox, they were royally turned over by a spectacularly surprising Real Blackburn. Given the latter were utterly supine against Sunderland last ‘week’, which was actually only 4 days ago, it was a bit of a shock that they were actually (wisper it quietly) really rather good. Actually, more than good. They tore Loserpool  apart and scored three great goals. In some ways it was almost as much of a shock as seeing Sunderland go to Chelski, attack them and win 3-0 earlier this season. Like suddenly Real Blackburn could actually be good, play attractive, engaging football and actually win. It’s almost as if a dark, ugly cloud has been lifted from the team and they’ve been told they can actually go out there and play football again. Oh wait. That would be the dark ugly cloud created by Fat Sam’s corpulent shadow. If I were Venky’s I’d be going, ‘That’s what I want, not that useless garbage we put out against Man U’. Admittedly they were only up against Loserpool, but still, it’s a great start. If they carry on like this I’ll be happy for them to stay in the Prem.

Whisper it quietly too, maybe Lil Tim Cahil’s absence from Everton will be a blessing in disguise. He’s lopped off pretty much half a season to go to Qatar to play for Oztralia in the Pointless Asian Cup, which itself is another insult to football dignity having been originally planned to take place in the summer, only for everyone to agree that it it simply too hot in Qatar in the summer, which leads to all kinds of football conspiracy theories regarding the 2022 World Cup. Anyway, with Lil Tim scoring three times as many goals as the next nearest Everton striker, you’d think his absence would cause catastrophy in the Everton Camp. However, it seems to have galvanised the team, in particular their strikers, who displayed unusually un-Evertonian prowess in front of goal. This was doubly impressive given they were playing Tottingham. Maybe the sides had decided to swop shirts and identities.

Also seeming to swop identities were Wet Brom and Fulham. Fulham, who apparently can’t score because they don’t have any strikers, managed to boff three past the Baggies. However, normal service was continued as none of the goals was scored by a Fulham striker. Former no-goal hero Andy Johnson wasn’t so much given a rest as benched and told not to come on the pitch.

Is Blackpool losing to Boremingham considered a shock or not? Certainly it has a number of shock elements, Boremingham hadn’t won away all season, Blackpool have been playing exhilarating, if not always effective football. Boremingham can’t score goals, Blackpool can’t stop attacking. Still shock or not, it wasn’t the result we all wanted.

Newcastle Loony Toons kept up their rather schizophrenic home record by putting West Ham to the dogs. And they did it without Andy Carroll or Shola Amiobi and while the latter isn’t anything like a goal machine, he does have as many goals as Everton’s second best striker so he was something of a miss. But the Toons  found a new hero in Prem debutante Leon Best, who got a hattrick. Still West Ham did contribute some pretty crap defending.

Back on track in the non-shocks department, Villa continued their Jules Verne voyage to the bottom of the table by letting a relatively poor Sunderland nick a goal and a win. Ho-Ho-Houllier has a big problem. Does he give in and kow-tow to the old boys at Villa who might easily save the team this season, but won’t ever win anything for them, or does he continue to trust in the young boys, who seem to have the talent, but maybe lack the belief? Shades of Arsenal lite one thinks and with the bottom of the league being even tighter than the top, pragmatism has to be the order of the day. Then get rid of the older wankers in the summer.

Least surprising result of the week was Bolton‘s draw with Wigan. Two teams who are trying to play their way to better positions, neither was really grateful for the single point, yet neither did enough to win all three.

Rob Green Save Of The Day

For once, just for once, this should maybe go to a keeper for pulling off, well, an actual save. Wayne Henessey, Wolves’ keeper just managed to get a boot to  Kalou’s lunging strike to deny Chelski a certain goal, effectively giving Wolves, if not all three points, then certainly making the difference between the win and a draw.

Here Are Some New Year Resolutions/Predictions

• Man U resolve to step up a gear and actually start playing well (at which point someone, somewhere will actually beat the Crap Invincibles)
• Arsenal resolve to stand up to the big boy playground bullies and actually take points off them (although probably not Barcelona)
• Man City resolve to try to play attacking football every now and then (more games like the Bolton one where they dominated throughout)
• Tottingham resolve to just fucking go for it (and goddam the consequences, the spirit of Ossie Ardiles is alive and well)
• Chelski resolve to reappoint Ray Wilkins in a desperate attempt to make him return their mojo, which he took with him when they sacked him
• Sunderland resolve to continue to play attacking 3 up front football and sign some players rather than just loaning Man U/City trainees
• Bolton resolve to actually recruit some players as they’re a bit short on the bench
• Liverpool resolve to spend the entire year living in the past, while not moving forward on any level (so no new stadium, big players or significant investment)
• Everton resolve to rub their neighbours’ noses in it (surely they can’t finish any lower than Liverpool this year)
• Blackpool resolve to keep exceeding our expectations
• Boremingham resolve to GET BLOODY RELEGATED (please)
• Villa resolve to keep the faith with the kids (although it will be a hard slog)
• West Ham resolve to be too good to go down (while still being relegated)
• Real Blackburn resolve to prove Vinky’s were right to sack Fat Sam
• West Brom resolve to be the best team in the league starting with W
• Wolves resolve to GET BLOODY RELEGATED (please)
• Newcastle resolve to keep Andy Carroll (and force him to live permanently with Kevin Nolan because it’s funny)
• Fulham resolve to continue drawing matches and having no strikers
• Stoke resolve to try to play decent football rather than just crap tackling (Huth and Shawcross in the same team – that’s crap defending that is)
• Wigan resolve to just about avoid relegation by being only the third worst team in the league beginning with W

Happy New Year.

My Eyes Are Bleeding From So Many Games

Another two days, another set of games. My eyes are bleeding from watching so much football – moment for moment this is even more demanding than watching the entire World Cup, not to mention several degrees more entertaining. However, as match follows match with ferocious regularity it becomes hard to distinguish the weeks let alone the matches we should be talking about.

If there was a theme for Week 20 (or in this case the Two Days of Week 20) it was about consolidation at both the top and bottom of the table. The top teams Chelski excluded won, while the rest contrived to swop points in such a way as to compress the table even further.

Arsenal did the exceptional (for them) of following a comprehensive win against Chelski with a win at sorry Boremingham. Previously this is a match that Arsenal have dropped points at and they needed to be firm in a nasty petty match where Boremingham more than lived up to their reputation as an unattractive, ugly side who not only can’t tackle, but underpin their game with a maliciousness that does them no favours. Van Persie might have scored, but he still looks some way from being a genuinely inspirational player. Arsenal’s defence still looked shaky, but managed to keep a clean sheet and Fabianski made one fantastic save.  Yet again Arsenal struggled to make a heavily one sided match look like amazingly hard work, but once Nasri scored just before the hour it was game over.

Arsenal needed to win as Man U had continued their ‘Crap Invincibles’ season by just about beating West Brom. While Chav Wanker did actually manage to score, Man U never really looked like bossing the game and were lucky that Odemwinge contrived to miss a penalty before they actually sealed the game. Still that means they’ve beaten West Brom at home, which Arsenal couldn’t do.

Most teams faced by Man City tend to plonk down the defenders and try and seal a draw. Not Blackpool. They have no concept of the ‘park the bus’ defence, they simply play their normal 4 – 3 – 3 attacking game and take whatever that brings. And more often than not this ambitious strategy pays dividends. Not today, however, as City contrived to peg them back and control the game, although this was not nearly as one dimensional as their match against Bolton, where they totally dominated. And with Leetle Carlito missing a penalty and every one of his shots on goal, it was a bit stressful for the Mancs.

West Ham managed to take the points from their desperate bottom of the table 6 pointer against Wolves. Not that the Hammers player particularly well, just that they had all of the luck, getting a totally flukey in off the defender first goal and a neat second. Wolves, meanwhile, managed to play what manager Mick McCarthy called ‘football suicide’. Carlton Cole, for West Ham, managed to do everything he could to reduce his already low valuation with some sub-Heskey hoofery in front of goal.

Liverpool managed to do the impossible, namely win at home against Bolton, while actually playing vaguely alright. OK, so they went a goal down and were looking rubbish all first half, but the Stevie Me half volley chip to Torres to score was fantastic one touch football where the ball didn’t actually touch the ground before it was in the net. For a second there Torres looked like he’d woken up. Bolton look like one of those teams that flatters to deceive and having played some blinders in October and November, really haven’t done it on the pitch since then.

The new regime at Real Blackburn needed to kick off with a result at Sunderland. But while they weren’t quite as abject as they were against Man U, they were still pretty bloody rubbish. The first two Sunderland goals came from exactly the same source, an Elmohamady cross from the right about 10 yards from the area, floated into the box for first Welbeck and then Darren Bent to pop into the net. I mean, yes, they were very good crosses, but that sort of thing should be easy peasy to the Real Blackburn defence, who really look like they’ve switched off for Christmas or some such. Admittedly, the third was a great Asamoah Gyan solo, but by then Real were thoroughly stuffed and beaten. Cheeky Steve Bruce dedicated the win to Fat Sam, which will only have added insult to injury.

Everton desperately need goals and hoped against hope that Santa would bring them a 10 or at a pinch 20 goal a season striker to take over from Lil Tim Cahill while he’s away at the Pointless Asian Cup. Sadly Crap Santa failed to deliver even so much as a Roy of the Rovers action figure and they were roundly dealt with by  Stoke. Stoke weren’t any great shakes at all, but were slightly more clinical in front of goal.

Tottingham should have really had a hatful. After all they were playing Fulham, whose entire strikeforce is still on the treatment table and have a manager who seems to treat draws as though they were worth a full three points. In a shock move, Fulham weren’t wearing their normal shit green away kit and had some kind of red number, but that was the only interesting thing about them the entire game.

Poor old Chelski, you couldn’t make it up. No sooner has captain of the world and general saviour of all that is good John Titface Terry put them ahead in the 901st minute of injury time in the second half – to the usual great acclaim and uber celebration, than he and his defence let leaden footed Villa sprog Clark in behind them to nod the Villa level. Oh if only there was such a thing as hubris which we could rain down on the repellent Titface. Oh wait, there is. This. Another day, another set of points lost for the ‘Ski bums. Despite the return of Lumpy and Essien, Chelski suddenly look like a bunch of half-arsed juniors with no idea of where to go. Villa shouldn’t be too pleased. They were 2 – 1 up with 6 minutes to go.

Everyone’s favourite pendulum team (now they’re stuffing teams 5-0, now they’re being roundly thrashed) Newcastle Looney Toons went to Wigan and got a result. And without Carroll too. Hmmmm.

Rob Green Save Of The Day

More a provisional entrant for the Pascal Chimbonda Memorial Backpass than an actual winner from Blackpool‘s Charlie Adam. Normally their key playmaker, Adam nearly became the architect of their downfall by playing in Leetle Carlito in the first minute or so with the sort of catastrophic backpass under pressure that did for Phil Neville the other week.  Only the fact that Leetle Carlito didn’t put the ball in the net spared Charlie.

This week we could replace it with the Gareth Southgate Penalty Miss Of The Day where the competition was harsh. Would it be West Brom‘s Peter Odimwinge or Leetle Carlito, both of whom managed to put the ball wide from 12 yards? On balance we give it to Leetle Carlito as he doesn’t miss that often and seemed to do all his missing in this one match.