Month: April 2014

Moyes.

~ bowlingatvincent ~ Leave a comment

Moyes. Was already a fascinatingly gruelling ‘affair’ for all of us, crying out for a resolution…

At the centre the frankly dour scot being worn down by the arrogance of players and agents and the blistering levels of flak; at the heavily shepherded perimeter us lot, either exasperated or cruelly elated, depending on our degree of manc or mickeyness.

Wherever you go, people have been either stirring or cursing or holding forth: maybe, on reflection, that’s wonderful? Except that (excruciatingly) The Undeserving – the non-footie peeps, those who really might munch those prawn sarnies should they ever actually attend a match – have also been fog-horning their opinion. Because United are that MASSIVE that everyone feels entitled. Meaning the ether (and us lot, right?) are subsumed under a shit-storm of dumb ‘reactions’. To which I will now… add.

Whatever the ownership rights may be to discussions over his fate, Moyes will surely be distraught. The word damaged may be an unwise one to use but that’s surely where we are?

At the key football level some have recently noted signs that the dressing-room may be lost but we can’t be certain of the whens and wheres of that – not at least until the book(s) come out. But the central point – Exhibit A against Moyes – has been the obvious lack of a sense of team. We can unpick or fiddle with the detail – the personnel, if you will – but it is the absence of purpose from his side that has done for Moyes.

Sure he’s been unlucky; following Fergie, let down badly by certain players, up against a resurgent Chelsea and (god forbid) Liverpool. These have been and might have been significant difficulties for almost any incomer. Moyes though has utterly failed to find the necessary blend.

Just one example; playing Nani/Mata/Rooney/Kagawa at Everton was simply ludicrous unless his team – and those individuals – were utterly on fire with that rare, joyous confidence you only see or feel in the most irresistible of charges. You’ve got no business picking all four of those guys in a struggling team when the chances that it will ‘come off’ are simply nil. Admittedly not Moyes’ fault that Kagawa and Nani in particular are relatively spineless characters but absolutely the gaffer’s job to judge how many spirited or durable or loyal or passionate or genuine blokes he needs out there on the park, representing Manchester United. That kind of misjudgement smacks worryingly of someone who doesn’t understand or who can’t judge players as personalities as well as footballers.

Moyes, for weeks, has not looked like he knew what he’d got or who he could count on. This implies criticism of the players and I am happy to indulge that evil too. It’s genuinely hard to think of anyone who has raised their game or even their level of defiance during this humiliating period. Was this because from early on there was either unrest or detachment from the new ethos? And did that detachment or rebellion come because players lacked faith in the manager – on the grounds that he lacked the feel for it, the instinct, never mind the strategic awareness for this awesomely big Manchester United thing? Contrast that with his predecessor.

The delicious and perverse truth is that players play more or less in the manager’s image. They are puppets as well as prima donnas/divers/heroes.

The relationship is of course as complex as any other on an individual level but a particular magic can occur when the boss really does capture his team. Like say… Ferguson. Sir Alex may well have made as big and as real a contribution to United’s Premier League title in any given year as the fellah who knocked in twenty goals, or stopped twenty. He was as directly responsible for stuff despite the fact that he was sat on his squeaky bum eighty yards away. He had the power and the will and the ability to manage.

Moyes has some of that, to be fair. But the rather sad truth has been that he could not carry this team.

I’m reminded of the mild shock and bewilderment accompanying week after week of Rooney playing teams on his own, earlier in the season. The gulf in everything between him and the rest of the United side was both remarkable and kinda weird. He looked like the only proud professional on the staff. The rest were giving journeymen a bad name. Defensive frailties that had somehow been survivable under the Fergie bluster became open capitulations. It felt like only one bloke was trying.

That particular malaise – so painful to watch and subversive of your own support – cannot happen where the manager is a) topside of players and b) fundamentally confident. It happened. United starting getting beat – even soundly thrashed – at home! Worse, in a way, was the fact that rather than occasional blips we were seeing consistently poor performances and an obvious failure to rally. Nobody (except Rooney, in that one period) could get past the general, listless mediocrity. With fans understandably screaming for some pride in the shirt, players shirked the responsibility that comes with any challenge. They got nervier whilst playing safer. It was bloody awful.

And Moyes never got to grips with it. It can’t have helped that ‘his feller’ – Fellaini – was firstly injured then plain ordinary. Or that the one United really needed –Baines – stayed at Goodison. (My strong hunch btw was that Baines would have been a revelation at Old Trafford. Raiding or defending. Ever present, spirited, great with a dead ball. At the critical time they should have paid whatever it would have taken.) What is extraordinary is the thought that looking at how United’s defence has been for most of the season (mostly at home?!?) should they have bought Baines… they would have only have needed three more.

Perhaps somebody else can rebuild Jones/Evans/Smalling and the rest. I hope so. Moyes didn’t so much tell them to get lost as lose them. In the void, the flux that was his flimsy empire.
Poor man. Did he ever get to feel that he had entered something special? That he was leading it on and up? Or was he always too busy, too stressed, too overawed – too under-supported even?

The spectre of Ferguson and Charlton and maybe Giggs/Butt/Neville(s) has hung around all this. Inevitably. Despite the unspoken but shared knowledge that there can and probably should never be another Ferguson – there are other, better, more civilised ways of gathering folks to your cause – the Moyes era feels like a bungled attempt to stick with methods only viable under that uniquely motivational senior man. ‘ Tough’, football has said. ‘The game and the world have changed’.

Could it be that United have, in choosing Fergie 2, been simply too dumb, too obvious, too reactionary for the crazy carousel that is elite sport 2014? Perhaps.

My A Level English – Grade A, thank you ver ver much – reminds me, you, us lot that
you can’t repeat the past.
Suggesting maybe the American owners should have read more attentively the fable that is Gatsby?

Moyes, ultimately, or maybe from the first moment, had neither the raw power of the original nor the true top-level genius to compensate or even to compete. He floundered. What if we say that he was unlucky and poorly served? There’s some truth in that. So… he was unlucky, poorly served… and unable to manage Manchester United.

Triumph and tears.

~ bowlingatvincent ~ Leave a comment

Liverpool City. Had everything. Goals, sunshine, vitriol, clangers, minimal Yaya. Premier-quality cheating. It was splattered with incidents and raw with that uncomfortable mix of poignancy and venom. My response is loaded and maybe lumpen in the way of the match. It’s bullet-pointed again – immediate.

• I’m fascinated and appalled by Suarez to the point where I don’t really want to go there… and yet must. But not first. But been thinking about the man a fair bit. He’s plainly dysfunctional – yeh, I think that’s the word. Dysfunctional.
• Happier thoughts… Sterling’s opening goal. Was this so brilliant that it confirmed him as an England World Cup starter? Was that composure evidence of such fabulous growth in his game that he must leap to the front of the wide player’s queue? Many would think so. I’ve been and remain just a tad concerned that he may in that real moment – the bona fide competitive international game – shrink back into Walcott/Lennon(?)/Ox(?) mode. He has something of the junior flyer about him that concerns me but he was certainly influential in this the biggest game of the Premiership season so far. We know he would run at people in the World Cup but would he do it with real belief or would he be as inconsistent and ultimately wasteful as the eight zillion other Boy Wonders who have disappointed in recent times?
• Whatever, Sterling will go to Brazil (now) and he will probably (now) be ahead of the fella who’s got closest in the last season or two to delivering – Townsend. Once there I hope Sterling/Townsend will be encouraged to both hug the touchlines and dart central. In other words get involved/get plenty of precious touches/be influential.
• Sturridge will of course also travel. But which Sturridge? The sullen, frankly greedy geezer who makes too many bad football choices (because he’s greedy) or the unplayably good finisher who finishes so devastatingly often because… he’s greedy (for it?) Today he was ordinary – as he has been for the last month. Saving it up for Italy, hopefully.
• Incidentally I squirmed a little when I saw that bloke Clattenberg centre-stage today. He’s a little greedy for it too, is he not?
• Inevitably, there were ‘decisions.’ Clattenberg appeared to be avoiding making positive calls until the relative safety of the final few minutes, where he felt able to dismiss Henderson for his tired (o je-sus I can’t get… there) lunge. Marginal in the sense that there was no spite in the challenge but Henderson did jump in there with studs high. So red.
• Prior to this – count ‘em? – there were any number of appeals for pens, all turned away. Suarez, Silva and Zabaleta all ‘made the most’ of things. Suarez fell most obviously into the Shameful Outrage category and therefore he gets no sympathy from me for later incidents that may in isolation have been judged in his favour. I know that ain’t logical but a) that’s how us humans work –Clattenburg too? And b) the Uruguayan should have been red-carded for his most nauseatingly OTT effort.
• I do wonder if Suarez – who presumably believes himself innocent(?) – might think ‘bugger this feragameasoldiers lichke’ and actually go to Real, where he may think there is less outrage to contend with. (Plusses/minuses; La Liga refs and defences are even worse but things feel less judgemental.)
• I would miss ar Luis – about as much as Sturridge would, I reckon – though less than Liverpool FC. The number 7 is one of the best forwards in world footie… but one of the worst humans. He made the game ungovernable.
• Okay. I exaggerate.
• Final word. He’s magic but his ‘antics’ are a total, total disgrace. I think there is again a case for retrospective punishment or would be if the machinery was in place. (See ‘The Campaign for Gentlemanly Conduct’ vols 1-265).
• The game though; Liverpool were magnificent and irresistible again for most of the first half, playing both with authority and composure and also swiftly counterattacking. They mix it up; chase and run as well as pass all around. Generally though, they play with pace… and this feels threatening, especially with that crowd on board.
• That crowd by the way bore and bears them on, towards what Stevie G will no doubt privately be calling the title they deserve – they being the players, the club and supporters live and sadly departed. The skipper rightly gathered his men to collectivise spirits for the final push. They were told in no uncertain terms that there must be no ‘fucking slips’. The implications – powerful and maybe contradictory ones – being that the title belongs to them but they must battle invincibly to the fateful end.
• How wonderful that sport can be so huge.
• There are almost unbearably rich and tender emotions around the Hillsborough thing. The tragedy itself, the awful nature of events, plus the additional, cruel travesties which may yet transform how the majority of the (tabloid-reading?) public view our allegedly world-class police. There is much bitterness in this beautiful charge towards destiny.
• City came back. Silva suddenly flowered as Liverpool sat off. I lost a few friends on twitter by suggesting that the Reds wilted under the first meaningful pressure for 20 years – somewhat uncalled for perhaps but the point remains. The bitter enemy Manchester United have had to carry the burden of being title favourites and the team everyone wants to beat for an age. Liverpool dealt rather poorly with the rising threat to their first Premier League crown. City deserved to draw level and looked more likely to win it.
• Then, 80-odd minutes in, just about the finest defender in the league – Kompany – ballsed things up completely and Coutinho scored against the run of play.
• The rest was run-of-the-mill agony. For everyone.
• The roar at the final peep from Mr Clattenburg carried with it both triumph… and tears.

The Case for Sport – 2.

~ bowlingatvincent ~ Leave a comment

I have personal experience of the brilliance of sport. By that I mean I’ve both felt and witnessed (and I’ll have you know occasionally been the origin of) daft-but-magic moments arising from running round the place/chucking or hoofing things, very often in the midst of some grinning or, okay, gurning pack of mates.

Now, what you will have to forgive me for calling my life’s work is absolutely centred on all this fizz. I really am privileged to be right in it, this lurv/sport/runrunrun-like-crazy vortex, where (for example!) the most perfect and comradely sharing often spins. So I know the invincibly good and penetrating and healthy and edgy stuff that grows here. (I’m aware too, in passing that bringing the L-word into this is ill-advised at best but do not withdraw it; I’m happy to postulate some dumb theory whereby love of people and of adrenalin becomes intrinsic to a trillion transformations.)

I also know that some are suspicious of (what they think is) sport’s adversarial nature. Some children being exposed or even damaged through failure before their peers – this does happen, this is important – but the failure is of coaching. Good coaches encourage a way through and skilfully re-calibrate what’s offered – how big the challenge might be. They make it appropriate and they lift the child through any difficulty. They splash in extra praise and make the thing (which may have changed) achievable; the ‘non-athlete’ joins the game and things bundle forward, before anybody clocks or judges the ‘fact’ that Johnny or Jess was momentarily lost.

This isn’t idealist nonsense. This is good coaching in Primary Education. Coaches facilitating the expression of talent – young, low or high, clunky or beautifully co-ordinated – coherent. Developing people as well as skills.

Every day I see this and I see children warming to allegedly less able mates as they clatter a ball off a tee; the former clapping and bouncing or high-fiving with proper joy and the latter arms raised in seminal triumph. No matter that the grooved majority can beast a bouncing ball around the park, the elation around Johnny clumping that helpfully immobile sphere with electrifying conviction is, in my experience, generally heart-warmingly shared. Indeed I am positive by nature partly because I see children sharing in somebody else’s triumph every working day. If that pleasure leaches through all manner of things in my life… how great must it feel for the suddenly emerging starlet?

I recently underwent further training on what are known as multiskills and wider skills to enrich and improve the link between my cricket coaching and the broader Junior Curriculum. Interestingly, one of the reasons for this training was because (allegedly) there is a perception amongst Secondary School sports teachers that new intakes of children have relatively poor sports/co-ordination skills. This may or may not be an accurate reflection of how things are – hard to know how meaningful such a general view might be? Hard to know if this is what Secondary School sportsfolks are always likely to say? – but if there is any truth in this notion, it ain’t good… and it ain’t surprising.

I have my own view on both a practical and philosophical level re- the state of sports provision in Primary Schools and maybe sometime I’ll share that. What I want to do here is reiterate my case for how MASSIVE it could be – how elevating, how life-changing.

Children learn to support/learn/calculate/share/plan as well as move, smile and co-ordinate in my sessions – and in thousands of other games lessons every week. We coaches are not solely in the business of cultivating champions or tweaking technical skills, though we hope, of course, for those things too. I am personally motivated at least as much by the aspiration to draw some tiny but also wonderful moment from a child who likely never ‘achieves’ at all in ‘class’ as to get some gifted child to smash the ball mega-miles.

I have a very clear picture in my mind right now of a wee fellah aged eight – sporting the worst home-shorn Mohican I have ever seen – so deep into listening and following a chasing and catching game and so bursting with the effort of breaking through into success that the phrase I occasionally fall back on – outliving himself – springs to mind. He’d simply gone somewhere new and ecstatic, like he’d shed a skin or thrown off some burden. He was living somebody else’s better life, blazing around a playground utterly into the game. Joined, essential to it, loving it, feeling every bit as brilliant as those good guys – the ones who always have their hands up in class.

I see these revelations almost daily and I cherish them. They make me ever more certain that the essence of what I do contains a valuable strategic purpose – to enthuse children towards new cricket teams – on the back of a truly healthy, civilised, populist impulse. What could be more generous or supportive or right than sharing some fun, building some confidence(s) and enabling better, fuller learning? Good sport coaching does all that… which is why I write to defend it… and extoll its virtues.

Okay here comes the deep breath/get real bit, where again, incidentally, despite monumental temptation I hold back from lambasting the suffocating reactionaries that may or may not be responsible for policy on this stuff… because the time will come, right?

I concede nothing is easy and sport is no panacea. And there are choices to be made on what money is spent where.
I do however maintain that substantial and intelligent use of games not only makes sense but is transformative in a way that may be hard to find elsewhere. If children’s ability to listen is central to much of school life – can’t or won’t listen? Fail – then dynamic games, challenging games can (and do) cultivate listening, whilst improving behaviour/attention span/problem solving.

Sport done well is a gift to many who may need to express unseen talents or (know what?) just run and smile a bit. Throw in the undoubted ‘social skills’ – sharing/toleration/patience/camaraderie and you’re getting pretty good value for your money. Maybe that’s something the Honourable Secretary of State might instinctively respond to?

Toe-to-toe?

~ bowlingatvincent ~ Leave a comment

bowlingatvincent

So United are still in the competition and they’re happy with that. After being given a lesson during the first half in particular, they charged forward just enough to do just enough. They can go ‘toe-to-toe’ again at the Allianz.

My memory being every bit as broken up, conflicted and generally feeble as yours, here’s what struck me about the game – bullet-pointed.

  • Let’s not forget, people, that the first half was a nil-nil massacre, with Bayern playing at a level United cannot yet dream of.
  • Welbeck again did that thing where he looked like a world-beater for five minutes then, when the moment came, he really let his eyes glaze over, needed the moment to be over, longed for the responsibility to be gone, rather than for him to have to grasp it. And he dinked unconvincingly – unsuccessfully – because he is a good player but not a…

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Toe-to-toe?

~ bowlingatvincent ~ 1 Comment

So United are still in the competition and they’re happy with that. After being given a lesson during the first half in particular, they charged forward just enough to do just enough. They can go ‘toe-to-toe’ again at the Allianz.

My memory being every bit as broken up, conflicted and generally feeble as yours, here’s what struck me about the game – bullet-pointed.

  • Let’s not forget, people, that the first half was a nil-nil massacre, with Bayern playing at a level United cannot yet dream of.
  • Welbeck again did that thing where he looked like a world-beater for five minutes then, when the moment came, he really let his eyes glaze over, needed the moment to be over, longed for the responsibility to be gone, rather than for him to have to grasp it. And he dinked unconvincingly – unsuccessfully – because he is a good player but not a real striker.
  • Rooney was a disappointment.
  • Fellaini was almost fascinating dire – slow (and with no likelihood of a gear-change) clumsy and so generally befuddled he appeared to have forgotten how to head it. Which is almost funny. But funny with a very big price-tag.
  • The gulf in terms of comfort on the ball – and the treasuring of that fairly significant accessory – was staggering. United looked very English (i.e. chronically wasteful), Bayern majestically ‘continental’.
  • We can talk of United playing (finally) with some spirit but for aeons that’s been – and should always be? – non-negotiable. They were honest (give or take) but frankly ordinary, secured a home draw and conceded a goal and yet this is generally viewed as a step forward.  Talk of progress very quietly please.
  • Having wondered aloud about the propensity of a certain player in particular to throw himself (ahem… I mean draw contact) perhaps we should note in passing that the three most obvious simulations/exaggerations/examples of raw cheating (delete where your allegiances allow) were committed by Messrs Vidic (twice) and Rooney. Which disappointed me, I have to say.
  • Robben, meanwhile, played rather beautifully. With a kind of economy and skill and movement and confidence that maybe we shouldn’t even think of comparing with say… Valencia(?)
  • Great goal Vidic.
  • Wonderful goal Schweinsteiger. (But where was Fellaini?)
  • Valencia had to go for that second offence – simple undeniable jumping in, even if there appeared to be little malice.
  • Scweinsteiger was robbed – and we are robbed of watching him – after Rooney threw himself rather cheaply.
  • No wonder them there Germans are furious. They will feel they gave United whatever German is for ‘a lesson’ and had no luck in the ref department.
  • What they do have, of course, is an away goal. And the likelihood of a comfortable home win to take them rightfully through.
  • But United – this United – could yet do err… a Wimbledon… couldn’t they?

 

 

 

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