The Cassel dilemna.

Teams everywhere have a huge decision to make involving Matt Cassel.

Houston we have a prob……no…erm…Everything’s shitter in texas?

So texans think solving a QB worked so well last time that it’s bound to save their franchise.

Campaign 08

The big day is just 4 days away-Monday Night Football.

Chris Berman is set to interview presidential candidates Obama and Mcain during ESPN’s Monday night Football Broadcast.

Tom Cuddlestone

Harry Redknapp has blamed Tottenham’s poor form on the drastic weight loss of hefty midfielder Tom Huddlestone.

Barry tugs on heartstrings.

Barry Ferguson sensationally survived 90 minutes of reserve team action without a scratch.

Let us all breathe a sigh of relief…

Stevie G and Lamps can kind of sort of almost nearly in a way play together.Thank god for that. Times are tough for the media. During international week they can normally go in a holding pattern.

Bloody William Regal

As John Bradshaw Layfield ascended to glory, in spite of years of toiling in the mid card, with intermittent success, it must have given hope to every mid carder with good mic skills, charisma and in ring talent that yes, the Batista’s of this world are going to get pushed to the moon, but the anti-Batista’s will have a chance to run with it..

Pauper Kenny

Rangers 

Rangers

Rangers had industry in their glorious UEFA cup run. They toiled, they battled, they put in a shift. But for all their toiling, all their battling, for the fact that each player in the Rangers team broke their fist from punching the clock so vehemently, with such enthusiasm, with such immeasurable vim and vigour for each one of their shifts during the season.

 

But it was a game too far because they were completely outclassed. They were not out toiled, they were not out battled and not one of the Russian players resembled an employee of the month in any steel mill quite as much as any one of Rangers many glorious everymen. But they had class, they had Arshavin and Arshavin tore us apart. Rangers used to have a player of Arshavin ilk, in fact they had two, Paul Gascoigne and Brian Laudrup.

 

So this summer, Walter Smith was given one goal; to find a class act, somebody who could find a goal from nowhere, who could spark excitement and genius from out of nowhere. Who does Walter Smith return with? Kenny Miller.

 

Imagine the scene at Ibrox. The management team is all sat around watching the silky skills of the Dutch team annihilate both the world cup finalists of 2006. Giovanni Van Bronkhurst is entirely dynamic, clearly a class act, oh what Rangers would give for a player like Van Bronckhurst to return. Ally McCoist muses “wouldn’t it be great if we had a player like that came back to Rangers”. Walter Smith  agreed, but he wasn’t looking at Van Bronckhurst, nor was he looking at Van Persie or Robben or any of the other skilful geniuses who have been making football a joy to watch. He was looking at Dirk Kuyt. And he did agree Rangers needed a player like that to return. Rangers needed a poor mans Dirk Kuyt:

 

 

KENNY MILLER!

 

In an argument recently regarding Kenny Miller, where one of my friends was defending his production, my brother came up with the perfect description of watching Kenny Miller play football. It is like watching somebody do a bleep test, running tirelessly between the penalty box and the halfway line. You come away blinded by his effort but unfortunately it is not a bleep test, it is a game of football and when a football gets thrown into the mix Kenny Miller would probably have an easier job rewiring a space shuttle.

 

Kenny Miller says he can’t stop smiling after the Rangers.  No wonder, he has bypassed his natural progression. Kenny Miller was bought originally pretty much just to keep Hibs down as Rangers did in the past. They constantly bought the most talented players of SPL teams, and they would then let them rot on the bench and grind down any talent or enthusiasm. These players normally end up back where they belong at a low level SPL team or in the championship. This could be dangerous for Rangers as the big summer signing in 2015 for £2 million might be Alan Gow. 

 

Ok I’m probably being unfair to Kenny Miller, I’ll just let his record speak for himself. Last 3 seasons, Millers has scored 11 goals in 63 games. Yes I know, that doesn’t show the whole picture. The whole picture would include the vision of Miller nearly giving himself an asthma attack in an effort to compensate for his shoddy production.

 

If the perfect strike partnership= half industry, half creativity then to even the equation, Rangers would have to sign Kaka and David Villa’s bastard child who plays football while writing a sonnet and designing a sculpture.

 

    If Walter Smith was to make a rock band , there would be no enigmatic singer, no wild drug  addict drummer, no troubled genius guitarist. Just 4 methodical bassists, all with bloody , broken fingers. Strumming a way without a word of complaint, taking no part in the creative process. WE NEED AN ENIGMATIC SINGER, A WILD DRUG ADDICT DRUMMER, A TROUBLED GENIUS GUITARIST.

 

Well if Smith is intent on retreads, why not try some actual nostalgia rather than a dirty memory, Gascoigne says he’ll play again…at least it might be entertaining.

Rangers

 

 

 

The Final piece of the puzzle.

In the 2006 season for the New England Patriots lost their main attacking option, Deion Branch. This unsettled Tom Brady, he could have rightly felt that a player of his ability should be helped to maximise his talents in any way that the team could, rather than to expect his talent to carry the burden of the team single headedly. Players such as  Lawrence Maroney provided a lot of promise to the team. However, something was missing, they could not keep up to pace with their greatest rivals, the Indianapolis Colts, who beat them in both the regular season and the Post Season.

The Patriots were therefore a puzzle with some integral pieces missing; their receiving corps lacked both grit and dynamism. Belichick saw this and masterminded the completing of the puzzle by signing Wes Welker and Randy Moss. No longer would Tom Brady have to carry the team.

Belichick is not the type of coach who looks at the players available and then decides who he wants. He is the type of coach who decides what he wants and then finds the player to fit the bill. Every decision is precise and he acts more like a professor than a coach. This has broken the mould of many NFL head coaches, as Belichick does not provide the sound bites and the emotion that other coaches do, but that is because emotion and pandering to the media would interfere with the intricate problem solving which he embarks on each day as an NFL coach. The players he sign have to fit the Bellichick mould and cannot just be football players, they must learn to be Patriots, and for that reason Belichick was often picky about which players he would sign. Attempting to be certain that each decision was measured and one step ahead of the game.

In the 2007 season for Arsenal football club, they had lost their main attacking option in Thierry Henry. This put a lot of weight on the shoulders of the young but extremely talented Cesc Fabregas. Although he was helped in the midfield by the emergence of Flamini, and in attack by Adebayor, the Arsenal team did not have the experience to last the season. The season was bitter sweet. Nobody expected them to do so well without Thierry Henry, at one point in the season it looked like they had the Premiership in their pocket and they were excelling in the Champions League. But they ended up falling short of their main rivals, Chelsea and Manchester United in the league and Liverpool in the Champions League.

Wenger had a chance to add some experience to his team in January, but chose not to. That is because he is not a coach who makes decision by emotion and desperation. Wenger would rather sign a player from a young age and mould him into an Arsenal play that subscribes to the Wenger system.  This has allowed him to be stubborn in his decision-making, when a big player such as Henry leaves, he does not throw money at the problem. He has a system in place and that system works to a science, Adebayor was waiting in the wings and for the most part he did a good job.

That system has served Wenger well. However, Arsenal has now gone from a team on the brink of something great, to the brink of complete melt down. After the Eduardo injury, Arsenal lacked the mentality to keep on competing at the same level. This was because they were a young team and the main thing they missed was leadership, as it certainly wasn’t coming from William Gallas. Players from the team saw this and their looks to be a mini-exodus, most notably Hleb and Flamini.

Wenger must see the threat of this exodus and nip it in the bud before Fabregas feels even less cheated, like his talent is being wasted on a team not capable of making the leap beyond the competition. Therefore Wenger must sacrifice his measured approach to signing players and fill in the final piece in the puzzle.

The final piece in the puzzle may be Rino Gattuso. They lack experience and tenacity. Gattuso is tenacious and is a world cup winner. He will not freeze on big occasions and he will be able to lift his team-mates beyond what they are capable. He would also act as a replacement for Flamini. He may cost more money than Wenger would allow for, but he would lift every player on the team and most importantly he would make Fabregas feel like the club is making strides. Fabregas will then be able to worry about his own game as Gattuso acts like a hoover in midfield, a pastor in the dressing room and a manager on the pitch.

Watching Football with a girlfriend, a wise decision?

After quite a bit of badgering, I finally convinced the lady friend to watch a game of football with me. When she hears me talk about football, I can hear the disdain, my upset and anguish regarding recent sporting events almost always met with the response of,  “it’s only football”. But it’s not only football, it’s a crucial component to the lives of people who often don’t have a lot to hold onto (myself being top of the pile of those people). Football never goes, it gives you highs, it gives you lows, most important of all, it has saved me literally thousands of times from akward, blokey conversations. I wouldn’t say big knockers and cars are integral to my  life so football has always been a crutch which I have lent on.

I can’t tell you a thing about my project which I spent two months on , on the industrial revolution in Primary 4, but in the same year I can tell you almost every detail about the 1994 Scottish Cup Final, I can still remember the referee was Douglas Hope from Erskine.  I can still remember Craig Brewsters goal and I can still remember the look on Andy Maxwell’s face when it went in. The reason I remember so much about that match is because it was one of the most crucial moments in my life, it was my first taste of real pain. I hadn’t felt the death of a relative or anything and my 9 year old life was relatively care free,. There were always Jaffa Cakes on the table and a football in the garden. That’s all I needed.

As a child, I hadn’t begun to take domestic success for granted. I still remember a  complete over reaction involving tears as I sat and listened to radio clyde as Rangers fell to Motherwell. Rangers had already won the league at that point, the match mattered not a jot. But I wasn’t prepared for all this losing business.  The Scottish Cup was a different story, it was silverware, how could that not be important? The impact of a football match can be measured by how soon you wish to go outside and play football afterwards. For example, after the whistle blew at the end of Bayern Munich v. Manchester United European Cup Final I don’t think a word was said between me and my friends, just a solemn understanding that we must go out into the street and kick the football, it had to be done. After the Scottish Cup Final in 1994 the only kick of a football I wanted to do would be an immediate huff inspired hoof into the neighbours back garden, almost begging them to burst my ball.

Most men are a bit emotionally retarded, me more than most, but football gives you a reference point for pain, a dry run of suffering before we all inevitably have to face it in the real world. As we grow older this pain becomes almost comforting as although there is still the pain of loss, we revel in it because we are living vicariously through these footballers. The human mind is a complicated thing, so emotions scare me because I have no solution. For example, politics are complicated. We can all criticise Gordon Brown but can anybody truly say that they think they would do a better job? If I were Prime Minister I’d give it about 6 months before the UK became so disastrous that Will Smith would buy the rights for it to be the basis of his new summer blockbuster.  But with football I do have an answer, we all genuinely think we have an answer. The fact that 93% of men (approximately) have sat in front of their computer at one point in their lives for about 32 hours straights playing ‘Championship Manager’, eating something like dry cornflakes, so not to necessitate a trip to the kitchen which would be an unwelcome interruption to when you are so feverishly trying to sign Ariel Ortega, proves that. We all think that we would be flawless managers, and all we want to do is tell people about it.  LISTEN TO ME, I’M A GENIUS, I’M THE BASTARD SPAWN OF SCOLARI AND FERGUSON, IF ONLY SOMEBODY WOULD GIVE ME A CHANCE, DOESN’T EVEN HAVE TO BE PREMIERSHIP, IT COULD BE CHAMPIONSHIP OR SPL, JUST GIVE ME A CHANCE.

The lowest moment I have ever experienced through this reality blindspot was when I once sent a letter to Rangers football club as a young chap, imploring them to play German chain smoker Jorg Albertz in the holding midfield role as he didn’t have the legs for playing on the left. It worked when I battle tested it in Champ Man and I felt it was the solution to all Rangers problems. They didn’t.

So as anybody can reading this can probably tell, I feel quite deeply for Rangers Football Club. So when I finally convinced my girlfriend to watch a football match with me, I knew I couldn’t push my luck and make her watch a Rangers game. Firstly, because if you have no emotional connection to Scottish Football, then the standard of football is so low, the style of play so uninspiring that it must be impossible to win over new fans. Secondly, because I knew if we watched a Rangers game I’d only confirm her worst fears, that I am nothing more than a whining, petulant, moody, overgrown child.

What better way to begin a beautiful relationship with football than to watch Manchester United v. Chelsea I thought. The skill of Joe Cole and Ronaldo, the romanticism of Giggs and Scholes returning to a European Cup Final , the heartbreaking story of Frank Lampard playing for the memory of his mother, the tenacity of Tevez as he plays every game like it’s his last and the heightened change of a gory injury given than Petr Cech and John Terry were playing. The game had it all.

I wanted to sit an explain all these storylines, all the nuances of the play, the tactics, some dubiously interesting tidbits, peppered with my own musings and of course some nuggets of my tactical expertise and managerial innovation. What a lucky lady she’d be getting all that for free. But that idea was quickly nipped in the bud, I could only add commentary when called upon to do so to clear up areas of confusion, after doing so I’d again be quickly muted.. I was gutted. Imagine, my three favourite things  the lady, football and the sound of my own voice. Pigs in shit would be referring to that situation when trying to come up with an analogy for how much fun they are having.

A storyline was developing, instead of being interested in the romantacism of the game, she was becoming romantically interested in the footballers. Most notably, to my horror, Carlos Tevez. Don’t get me wrong, I love Carlos Tevez, but his appearance is not one of the things that attracts me to him. If it was then I’d definitely adopt a chimpanzee. There were 5 stages to my grief with this statement:

Denial: Haha very funny…you’re joking right…I mean you are joking…that was just a joke wasn’t it? You’re only joking right.
Anger: HOW DARE YOU LOOK AT OTHER MEN/CREATURES
Bargaining: Oh common, Carlos Tevez is quite good looking.  I guess he has nice hair, chimpanzees are actually really cute etc.
Depression : I hate my life, a girl who is seemingly attracted to me has set her bar so low that she’s attracted to Carlos Tevez.
Acceptance: Ah well, at least it wasn’t Paul Scholes.

What’s worse is that this obviously got her going. No, not in my direction, in the direction of the internet where she spent the next 30 minutes of one of the most entertaining matches I have seen in years, typing in google “footballers topless”. I then had to feel inadequate as she looked at Christano Ronaldo and Didier Drogba topless. It was a testament to my own insecurity that I tried to turn her right off by hijacking the computer and typing in “Davie Weir topless”, try it now, I dare you.

The chat then turned to American Footballers. There I was, in the middle of the European cup final, less concerned by the game and more concerned by the fact that my girlfriend was comparing the muscles in my back to the back muscles in a picture of Terrel Owens. Guess who is more muscley? The clue may be in the fact that writing ranting blogs about the state of Rangers Football Club is not actually a great upper body work out, in fact, if I continue to allocate my time towards that I may end up looking like “Davie Weir Topless”. The worst part about her now liking Terrell Owens is that I’m well aware of her penchant for whining , petulant, moody, overgrown children.

I realised I was fighting a losing battle, if she was going to be attracted to footballers it would have to be to ones that I wouldn’t actually be all that upset if she slept with them. People like Brett Favre, (don’t have to worry about her sleeping with Brett Favre, I don’t think Favre would be able to see her standing in the cue behind John Madden) and Hines Ward. She then requested to see a picture of Brady Quinn again, after first seeing him when we watched NFL Total Access together. (Quick tip, nothing is smoother with the ladies than making them watch Rich Eisen wise cracking while Jamie Dukes stumbles over his script with the background noise of me vomiting at Rod Woodsons latest disgusting vile and garish suit. )With Brady Quinn I realised I made my mistake. I had accidentally raised her standards away from the perfectly manageable standard of a Carlos Tevez to now being in the arena with the most handsome man since the beginning of time, Brady Quinn, he’s handsome, he’s buff, he’s a millionaire, he plays quarterback. I actually think there is not one thing in the world I’d beat him at. I’ll pick something randomly to illustrate this point . Cluedo, I have no doubt in my mind that Brady Quinn would batter me at Cluedo. Trying to think of a negative, I pointed out he doesn’t start for the Browns. This unfortunately made me wonder where I’d place on the Cleveland Browns quarterback depth chart.

30 minutes of this later and I realised she wasn’t interested in the game. I was hurt. How could something so important to me be so unceremoniously ignored by her. That hurt. Then I had a flash back, a flash back to me being around my two good friends from Boston as they waxed lyrical about baseball as we watched the game on television. I think I got so bored that at one point I yearned for cricket. But if they are so passionate about baseball, why did I not make an effort to get into it and share their enthusiasm? Because it would have been forced, it would have been unnatural and nobody would be better off. I don’t understand it and it’s got to the stage where I don’t want to understand it. They love baseball because they remember going to minor league games with their dad, because they played it out on their back garden, because they talked about it every day at school, because they live in a culture obsessed with that, because they spent the better part of their youth coming up with batting orders and trade ideas. Because of that I will never appreciate baseball like they do, so why should I expect or even want people to appreciate football like I do?

It wouldn’t have been very becoming if I pretended to like it. I saw them do the same thing to me as I do to the lady. They tried to talk me into liking it, as much as I admired their passion for baseball, I just didn’t like it, doesn’t appeal to me. I then had another flashback. A flashback to the millions of times I’ve heard girls try and talk about football. The majority of girls know nothing about football, but a lot of them don’t let that stop them from trying to be part of conversations, throwing in their lightweight soundbite laden ill informed opinions, just to be part of the banter. There is actually nothing worse. It’s cheap, because love for football is based on a genuine affection and connection. If there isn’t that genuine affection and connection then there is no point in forcing it and nothing more unattractive than seeing it being forced. Passion can’t be invented and who would want it to be?  I went into the game willing to do anything to make her like football, I left the game appreciating her for the fact she doesn’t.

One of the most beautiful headers ever by Ronaldo, the iconic image of Scholes bleeding, Giggs breaking the appearance record, a penalty shoot out, a complete tipping of the balance of play, a fitting goal by Frank Lampard, a red card on Drogba. Boring, no wonder she didn’t fall in love with football. I should have just saved it till Thursday whern she could have watched Rangers lose 2-0 at Pittodrie. Now that’s football.