The great defensive battleship (with the turning radius to boot) Philippe Senderos tells us in detail what Joey Barton’s tackling style really is about:
TOTT: Philippe Senderos' slip of the tongue
Talking about verbal gaffes (and long memories), here are some choice selections from some ex-Arsenal alumni…
The work we do is not getting the credit it deserves because we are not winning silverware. It is unfair because I think we have more merit as a club than those who have built their teams with millions of pounds whereas Arsenal have brought in young footballers who have come here to play a certain kind of football and who have developed.
-Samir Nasri (2010)
I really believe that if you are a player who thinks only about money, then you could end up at Manchester City.
-Gael Clichy (2009)
City may spend a lot, but they will never overtake the Top 4 of the Premiership.
A lot of ridicule has been heaped on Arsene Wenger’s interview on Friday before the weekend matches began. Words used include “naive”, “ostrich in sand”, “deluded”, “senile” and so forth. I merely skimmed through some of the reports online, but I seemed to have missed something yesterday. And man, it’s AWESOME (at least in my book):
“We have specialised people to work everywhere. Everybody looks for centre-backs in the whole world. People with unlimited resources look for a centre-back.
“We are not in a supermarket where you go to a shelf and you ask ‘Where are the centre-backs or the strikers?’â€
That is so something Jose Mourinho would say if he wants to send the press dogs barking. Remember this?
“It’s all about omelettes and eggs…No eggs, no omelette. And it depends on the quality of the eggs….In the supermarket, you have eggs class one, class two, class three. Some are more expensive than others and some give you better omelettes. So when the class one eggs are in Waitrose and you cannot go there you have a problem.”
At least, Arsenal fans better hope that’s what’s happening. Because the alternative could be much, much worse.
One thing you learn keeping an eye on both news and The Onion, parody is finding it increasingly hard to keep up with reality these days. This…THIS….is a good example. After all the chicken jokes, you try this for real, Venky’s? Seriously? David Dunn also looks like he could shed a few pounds, so a half-time poultry orgy doesn’t help in the slightest.
“Many times in the last few years, the boss has talked up his youth project by saying that, by bringing in players from a young age and educating them at Arsenal, they develop an identity with the club and are less likely to want to leave.
Like so many of Wenger’s bright ideas in the last few years, this has FAILED..”
Pretty much the ONLY way these days to have some kind of institutional loyalty for footballers is for a cadre of youth academy players to rise up to the first team together (or at least within a constrained period of time like say…3-5 years), and even that is a long shot at best now. I don’t need to really emphasize how difficult for just ONE academy product in the PL to break into the first team, having to compete with tons of foreign intakes that their cash-rich clubs keep bringing in. Even in an anomalous environment like Arsenal, buying young players wholesale from a foreign one doesn’t cut it in the slightest. They’re not old footballers comfortable in their last mile surroundings nor out-of-fashion mid-career players grateful for a second chance. Young footballers uproot themselves only either for trophies or to use the club as a stepping stone. It’s amazing Wenger is still so blinkered in 2011.
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I also see FIFA, now that it’s put that pesky charade of an election to rest, is back to business as usual, leeching money out of the game. Predictably all the big clubs are not amused. It’ll be interesting how far a drunk-on-hubris Blatter is going to keep pushing FIFA down this headbutting road with regards to the other footballing powers.
I’m sorry, this just reinforces my (already) low, low opinion of football fans in general. It’s just so ridiculously infantile that you think it’s from the Onion, but it isn’t. This all just reminds me of some Newcastle fans claiming that the bare-bellied, fat Toon fans screaming for such figures such as King Kev and Shearer to come and reclaim their club in the past aren’t representative of the fanbase and it’s only the distorted coverage of media outlets such as Skysports that makes it appears to be, but it doesn’t really matter when the supposedly “sane” fans don’t really find call out those in their ranks who are utter nitwits.
As a general rule football fans tend to close ranks when threatened, and the most extreme example in football sports has to be the Pool fanbase, which is incredibly homogeneous in thought. All you need to wander into places such as RAWK to see the circle-jerking and echo chamber effect in its full glory. The league title issue is a massive stick in the craw for them, and the incredible bitterness and toys-out-of-pram behaviour is really a sight to behold. You might think the shirt is a parody or a troll item, but Poe’s Law applies as always.
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Martin Palermo retires for Boca Juniors and it’s an emotional sendoff for h……WAIT A MINUTE
WTH, Mr Palermo? Are you sure that’s an occasion where fans and club pay tribute to you and not a frat hazing ritual?
The perfect picture of a career of nonchalant dickery
No, just no, “Scholesy”. If you had pulled that defence ten years ago, it MIGHT have carried some water. But at the close of a career, as a post-mortem, one thing is clear. You’re either what everyone accuses you of, or you just didn’t give a shit enough to improve your game enough so that the tag doesn’t apply to you. Attempting tackles (often!) that have no academic difference from that launched by a cynical tackler means you ARE a cynical tackler to everyone else in the world. I would suggest if you didn’t play for Manyoo, IF you weren’t coddled by Fergie, IF English referees and fans didn’t laugh off the most astonishing challenges with the ever-present “Oh, it’s only Scholesy…”, you would find playing for a league bottom-half club with that mentality and behaviour a rude shock. Enough to, say, get you carded straight into Division 2.
Trying the “but I didn’t shear off anyone’s leg” tactic doesn’t work either, the only reason it didn’t happen is just the law of averages. A player in a small club doing the same stuff will do it more often, since the side will generally be under siege by bigger and better teams. Hence, there’s no reason why Scholes won’t do a Shawcross or Taylor if he was forced to ply his trade elsewhere than Manyoo. Working on that side of the game isn’t a waste of time, ESPECIALLY if you keep doing risky tackles as a force of habit. Manyoo would actually benefit from a player that didn’t have zero competence in defence and had to be paired with a water carrier in Keane, Hargreaves, Carrick, Anderson, Fletcher et al, reducing the tactical flexibility of the team. I hate to say it, but now that all their careers are winding down, it’s sad to see the Neviller being the most sensible of Fergie’s bumper crop (besides that pesky problem of trolling Pool).
Oh, since we’re on the subject of repelling footballing objects….this made for unintentional comedy too.
Sums up prefectly Keane’s recent form for his club(s).
