Sunset

The Sun has pushed the nonsense boat all the way out to the sea of stupidity today with one of those stories that use the word "may" followed by a load of nonsense, to make it appear that there's a chance of something happening - "hell may freeze over" - "The Sun may publish something true one day..."
The headline to grab you - "United stars in pay freeze," the story:

The Glazer family may make all future contracts for new and current players more incentive based.

The plan would have far-reaching consequences in United's bid to attract players and keep their star names.

Under the scheme, players would no longer get a pay rise when renegotiating contracts but be offered greater financial incentives for number of appearances and honours won.

There is even a plan to make payments in line with how many minutes they play in games.

News of the idea has leaked down to the players, who are unhappy.

The Glazers in turn are not happy at paying people like Owen Hargreaves £80,000 a week when he does not play.

The problem will come when manager Alex Ferguson decides he needs to rest players as they will lose money.

This will happen. Obviously. The problem will come when pigs start flying...
Just because the Glazers have such a bad name with Man United fans is anyone really going to buy this bullshit? Perhaps it's one of those things where every option is considered before you stick with what you've got. If this happens - players paid by minutes on pitch - I'll eat every hat I own. And I own a few...
The final paragraph -

It is another example of the Glazer's cost-cutting methods which have even extended to restricting which staff can have breakfast at United's Carrington training camp.

It's not "another example", because it hasn't and won't happen. And can the "journalist" really think of nothing worse than changing who can have breakfast at the training ground... a more heinous cut I can not think of... Has David Cameron thought of this money saving measure... Or is it too much even for him...

Getting Away with it

Henry Winter is at it again. This time he comes to the bizarre conclusion that Sir Alex's punishment is nothing of the sort, frankly, Henry concludes, it's a bonus for us to have him banned, the FA are doing us a favour!
Now, Henry has some problems with the FA. Which is fair enough. However these problems blind him to everything else, so when Rooney doesn't face punishment it's down to the FA's silly disciplinary procedures; when Sir Alex complains about an appalling referee it's the FA's fault for letting him get away with it, cos they're scared of him; when Jamie Carragher assaults Nani it's not a problem... the problem is Sir Alex not talking to the press, which is the FA's fault for not enforcing their own rules, and sod the media doing their job and enforcing some sort of consistent standard- from player to player, from team to team- in their moralising.
So when the FA give Sir Alex an insanely long touchline ban for one sentence, one bloody word even, one bloody word that was perfectly fair comment as far as anyone in their right mind could see, this isn't enough for Henry. If it was UEFA it would be a lot worse, he whines:

Uefa’s touchline ban is far more stringent, exiling the manager from his players.

Sir Alex is barely punished at all by the ban and £30,000, nothing, loose change.
Consider the article Henry could have written. He could have written one simply comparing the two and urging the FA to harden its punishments. Or he could have just written a factual one on Sir Alex's punishment, what it entails and the games he'll miss. Instead of either of these he gives us a snide little piece in which he suggests Sir Alex has got off lightly. Well. No. He hasn't. By the FA's standards the punishment is extraordinary. And there is no other standard by which to judge it by. So what if it's not as harsh as UEFA's punishments. It's still a huge punishment, by the standards of the possible punishments he could have faced, rather than the impossible punishments he can't face- Why, if he'd said that type of thing about a ref in biblical times be might well have been stoned to death - in medieval times, hung, drawn and quartered - in revolutionary France guillotined. But he didn't, so to say he's got off lightly cos he's being judged by a completely different system is a touch unnecessary.
But not as unnecessary as Henry's final paragraph, where he concludes that, because Sir Alex will be able to use the punishment to instil a siege mentality into the players, the FA have done him a favour:

So are United harmed? Not really. The FA has unwittingly given Ferguson and United a cause.

The Scot is the master at circling the wagons, and he will be using this FA sanction to stoke United’s fire even more.

Always beware a team driven by a sense of injustice. Ferguson will drive them hard.

Yes Henry. Quite. If the FA had done nothing it would have been "Man Utd, getting away with it again." The FA hit Sir Alex with this awful ban and it's "Man Utd, getting away with it again." And the media wonder why Sir Alex is a touch frosty at times...

You ain't saying nothing.

Nani wants to move to Italy apparently:

The 24-year-old is intrigued by the prospect of moving to Italy and has spoken at length with his family and his agent, Jorge Mendes, about whether a move to Serie A would be possible and if it is the right point of his career to try to make it happen.

Why you may ask:

a Premier League or European Cup winners' medal at the end of this season would leave him with little more to achieve at United.

Which is about as silly a sentence as one would hope to read - it's the "or" that's the problem: "a Premier League AND European Cup winners' medal" would be understandable, the "or" self-evidently leaves the other one to be achieved. Even without being a pedant, continued success would be something to achieve, as the story pretty much tells us anyway -

Nani has won the European Cup, the Club World Club, two Premier League titles and two Carling Cups at United

- he already seems to have little to achieve at United in terms of medals...
The story then turns into a Daily Mail story - trumpeting an insane "exclusive" -

The Guardian broke the story of United signing the then 20-year-old Nani in 2007

Which is nice for them... before telling us he probably won't leave anyway:

he is deliberating over several scenarios depending on what happens before the end of the season. Importantly, he is willing to wait to see what pans out, in contrast to the way Ronaldo made it a personal mission to leave for Real Madrid.In that regard similarities can be made with the cases of Patrice Evra and Nemanja Vidic, who were both tempted by moves to Spain before concluding that they would be better off staying in Manchester and signing new contracts.

The whole story might as well have been on the back-page of the Daily Mail with the headline being one of those questions to which the answer is "no" that The Mail is so fond of: "Nani to move to Italy?"
Move along, nothing to see here.

Time Machine

Seeing as it's been such an exciting week of football I thought the only way to really get on top of it was via the medium of a timeline, done using my *cough* awesome *cough* photoshop skills - which is above.
On it you can see that on Saturday, Arsenal failed to take full advantage of our defeat to Chelsea by only managing a draw at home to Sunderland.
Then on Sunday and Monday there was a media blackout, so God only knows what happened on them days...
On Tuesday Arsenal were knocked out of the Champions League by Barcelona. I say knocked out, I mean crucified. And they had a humourous sending off incident so we even got to laugh at them whining on. And they couldn't manage an attempt on target - the only team in Champions League history to manage this.
On Wednesday, to rub Arsenal's noses in it a bit more, Spurs got through to the next round of the Champions League.
Then, apparently, some teams do play football on a Thursday - look around your electronic guide, they're on one of those Channels you hardly ever watch (unless your girlfriend is obsessed by Home and Away that is...) - and those teams (Man City and Liverpool) both lost.
So all in all, a pretty good week for football, I'm sure you'll agree...

Credit in the straight world

Given that I'm often complaining about our biased treatment in the media it's sometimes good to just say, "here's something good," so I don't appear like a paranoid nutter seeing conspiracy everywhere. Every now and again there is something good in the papers - the exception that proves the rule if you will...
I'm quick enough to complain, so credit where credit's due - here's a link I was just going to tweet but think I should flag it up a little more - It's by Martin Samuel in the Mail and it's that rare thing recently - an article on refereeing that doesn't mention Rooney! I didn't even think it possible. Here's the opening:

By popular consent, Phil Dowd had a fine game at Anfield on Sunday. In other words, he missed two potentially leg-breaking tackles, one of which forced a highly creative player from the game, and stood idly by while a melee involving 10 or more players took place. ... By not dealing with Jamie Carragher’s appalling tackle on Nani, and then with that of Maxi Rodriguez on Rafael, he contributed to Rafael’s assault on Lucas Leiva, and to the minor mayhem that followed. He became not so much an arbiter as an accessory.

He then dares to criticise Saint Kenny:

In trying to ensure the controversy did not detract from an outstanding Liverpool performance, he came across as self-servingly cynical. Nani may be out until April; how would Dalglish feel if similar harm befell Luis Suarez, just as he was gathering impressive momentum in his first season at Anfield?

There's more - on how good players shouldn't be allowed to be kicked out of games, how the FA could take retrospective action if they wished but won't. All in all it's well worth a read - and no Rooney in sight... Here's the link again.

Nihilist Asault Group

Now a bit of time has passed I think I can try and look back, with clearer vision, on Sunday's game. No two ways about it we weren't very good. In a sense it was similar to the Chelsea game, we found it hard to find another gear, like the Chelsea game we'd grown throughout the half but when they came back at us we had no answers, it could have been an end of season performance so tired did we look against Liverpool- tired tackling for their first, a tired headed clearance by Nani for their second, tired goalkeeping for their third. We looked resigned. Resigned to losing, and we never look resigned... to anything.

A lot of blame placed on the midfield, more specifically on Carrick. Which I find harsh, yes Carrick isn't having the best of seasons, yes Carrick was rubbish yesterday. I think the problem is that Carrick is a confidence player, when the team around plays well he looks great, when there's trouble around he looks less so. Our midfield this season is the area we've suffered from injuries the most in and I think Carrick is missing the stability that an injury free midfield would bring. And with less injuries Scholes and Giggs could be playing less and their energies preserved for concentrated doses as and when required, both seemed to be well below par yesterday. Of course we didn't get the chance to see what our top midfielder this season - Nani - could have done to change the game as he was the victim of a Carragher assault and stretchered off before half-time.
The oddest thing about that passage of play was why precisely Liverpool, 2-0 up at this point remember, suddenly decided it was time to boot us off the pitch. Stereotypically that's the job of the side who are losing, from "frustration" as the commentators always claim. Here it was Liverpool, winning, who decided we had to be taught a lesson. Carragher's was a straight out assault. Which makes the parallels a lot of reports make with Rafael's challenge laughable. Here's one in the Independent:

In mitigation, Liverpool would offer Rafael da Silva's wild lunge at Lucas Leiva shortly after Carragher's cruncher on Nani. Having been caught by Maxi Rodriguez, he leapt studs-up into a tackle with Lucas. There was provocation but Rafael's temperament remains a liability and he could easily have gone, too. The full-back was substituted before the end and it looked like it was done for his own protection.

Carragher's challenge was a "cruncher" apparently, which has the sound of something hard but fair, not the knee high lunge that it actually was. If I'd quoted the whole piece you'd find that more words are devoted to Rafael's challenge than to Carragher's - most of what is written about Carragher's challenge concentrates on what Sir Alex might have had to say about the refereeing of it. Good ol' Carra... And there's no "mitigation" about it. Nothing would mitigate Carragher's challenge (do we remember how nothing could possibly have mitigated Rooney's challenge the week before in the eyes of the baying pack of journalists?). Rafael's challenge has to be seen in the context of the previous events, including the challenge by Rodriguez which deserved more censure than the "caught by" this piece gives it and the Carragher challenge and ensuing melee. And perhaps Rafael's challenge might have warranted a red card, but Dowd could hardly have red-carded Rafael after letting Carragher off could he? So no way does one mitigate the other. Either in the sense that the ref was lenient on them both or that Rafael's challenge was comparable in the least with Caraagher's.
Which is why the general silence on Carragher's challenge is disappointing, if not unexpected. James Lawton is the exception, concentrating on it in his match report. But otherwise the papers are a disgrace. It's Tuesday. Tuesday. Carragher's challenge was on Sunday. Rooney's elbow was a week ago last Saturday. Today, a headline in The Guardian - "FA's Justice system suits Rooney"- I'm not even going to bother quoting it, the fact that they're still bleating on about it though speaks volumes. Henry Winter, who in a Twitter reply (I had asked if I'd missed his call for the FA to take action against Carragher - he was so vocal against Rooney), a reply he copied to many other people, said he agreed, it was one of the worst tackles he'd seen this season, and his opinion was in evidence in his tweets and match report. His tweets mentioned Carragher once (from memory) but no call for action from the FA. His match report says:

Little respect could be detected as he tore into Nani, high and late. The Portuguese leapt up, remonstrated with Dowd, then collapsed and had to be carried away on a stretcher. Carragher did apologise afterwards.

And still the lunges went in. Caught by Maxi Rodriguez, Rafael stormed into Lucas, who almost needed clearance from John Lennon International to take avoidance action.

Which really doesn't reflect the awful nature of the tackle, it just makes it sound like one of a series. As does his piece in today's paper. Not, I should add, that his piece in today's paper is the criticism of the FA for not punishing Carragher we might have expected (like the one he wrote after the Rooney incident), no, his piece is on Clattenburg - the ref involved in the Rooney incident. This is his mention of Carragher in that article:

Football must always be about passion but too many footballers too often cross the line: Jamie Carragher on Nani, Rafael on Lucas, Rooney on James McCarthy. None of those miscreants was properly punished.

Just one in a series...
And as to the reports of our "media blackout." The implication in many is that it was sour grapes at losing. This theory falls down on the grounds we weren't talking before the game. Let's not let that get in the way of the narrative though... And we can also take with a pinch of salt the story about Nani's anger at us not speaking out in the press against Carragher. Let's concentrate instead on his, perfectly reasonable, refusal of Carragher's apology:

Carragher tried to apologise to Nani after the game but it is understood the Portuguese was unwilling to engage with the defender, who was denied access by United's players to their dressing room. He then waited outside with the intention of saying sorry but Nani is understood to have walked by.

Lastly, just a word on Liverpool's glory days returning. What? They're not? Sorry, I've been reading the papers, I thought they were... Here's Alan Hansen:

He has now generated that impetus again by getting the team winning, lifting morale and the victory against Manchester United,following on from the win at Chelsea last month, has given the club real impetus.

We'll forget the home draw to Wigan and the defeat to West Ham that came in between Alan shall we? Ignore the facts - Liverpool are invincible...

Karma Police

A piece on the whole Rooney/Chelsea combined refereeing disasters on The Guardian blog by David Lacey, which argues that Sir Alex can't have his cake and eat it, ends with this:

Ferguson, now facing a charge of improper conduct, did have a point on Tuesday when he called the penalty from which Frank Lampard scored Chelsea's winner "soft". Atkinson decided that Chris Smalling had tripped Yuri Zhirkov; playbacks were not needed to support the view that it was more about the Russian showing personal initiative in the face of the enemy.

A bit like the penalty Manchester United were given against Arsenal in October 2004, when Sol Campbell was ruled to have upended Rooney. It was the eighth penalty the referee had awarded United in eight visits to Old Trafford. Name of Riley. Nothing sinister, just a stat, and as Tuesday night demonstrated, these things usually even themselves out.

Which made me cough my coffee all over the place. Apparently the penalty decision from Tuesday against Chelsea is evened out by a penalty from 6 and a half years ago against Arsenal. What?! Forget the fact that three visits to Stamford Bridge in a row we've been robbed by poor refereeing. No, that doesn't need evening out does it...

Constantly Changing

This morning Henry Winter wrote this on Twitter, "Wayne Rooney's elbow, FA red tape and the unjust vilification of Mark Clattenburg..." pointing to this article. In the article, written by Henry Winter, we have a sympathetic portrait of Clattenburg - everyone leaps to his defence - he's the victim of a system which won't allow him to correct the error (not sending off Rooney for his elbow). And it's all FIFA and the FA's fault.
He writes:

Clattenburg was subsequently criticised for appearing overly chummy with Rooney, almost trying to ingratiate himself with a famous England international.

Criticised by none other than Henry Winter - less than a week ago he wrote -

Officials appear in awe of stars like Rooney, as seen in Clattenburg’s naively matey huddle with the England attacker. Referees and the authorities now look afraid of upsetting Sir Alex Ferguson.

(I'd point out the stupidity of the Sir Alex bit but that's for a different piece...). In it he also wrote:

The FA simpered on Monday that it could do nothing, that it had to rely on Mark Clattenburg acknowledging his mistake, that “re-refereeing” games is frowned on by Fifa.

Weak. It should have urged an arrogant referee to understand fully the dark ramifications of not owning up to his error. The FA could even have intervened on grounds of “extraordinary circumstances”.

Then in the ridiculously sentimental way Henry Winter loves so much he goes on:

The FA should be ensuring justice is done, that mistakes can be rectified. Nobody is advocating that results be changed, simply that catching culprits is important whether the match is on-going or concluded. Inconsistency riddles FA thoughts.

It pours money into a glossy Respect campaign and then sits idly by as one high-profile footballer elbows a lesser one.

Those right-minded souls seeking to instil healthy sporting habits into impressionable youngsters have had their tasks further complicated by Clattenburg and the compliant officers of the FA.

“How will I explain this most recent action from their ‘role model’?” one teacher lamented on Monday. “Another accident?”

The violins are out...

He finished that piece -

Rooney and Cole do their peers a disservice. So does Clattenburg with his whistle-blowing brethren.

Clattenburg does other top referees a disservice according to Henry.

Let's throw in another couple of tweets:

Forget Clattenburg. There's a good ref here at the Britannia...Michael Oliver, very young, very promising.

Good thing about ref Oliver is when he makes mistake, Holt/Ibanez, he helps get cards rescinded. Owns up to cock-ups. Unlike Clattenburg

So Henry, who's been unjustly vilifying Clattenburg? Some hypocrite no doubt...

Throw An Elbow

As I watched the game unfold on Saturday, on Twitter on my phone as I was ill in bed, and as I heard the rumours of a Rooney elbow and saw tweets slagging him off outweigh tweets supporting him, even among Man Utd fans, I saw the way forward, the way for Rooney to return to the fold, return after the whole new contract shenanigans. It should be noted that, obviously some people have already welcomed him back with open arms, but hey, this is a broad church so they can carry on reading too...

It's not so much anything that Rooney can do, he's passive in the whole thing, give or take the odd elbow... It's more a change in his structural position (note to self - talking about "structural positions" is probably not the best way to issue a rallying cry...) that counts. I saw the possibility when someone (on 5Live I think) suggested that Sir Alex would be able to use this to get our "usual" siege mentality going. And I saw that yes, the siege mentality was the way to go, for all of us. It's a necessity. As we've seen even more in the last few days, EVERYONE is against us. It's not so much a siege mentality as an actual freaking siege!
Rooney is no longer just another player, he's now firmly locked down in the camp, he's no choice - he's one of us. Forget his contract negotiations, forget the money - this is war and Rooney has (been) chosen (on) the right side.
In honour of this I quickly drew up a flag: the flag of the Battle of Rooney's Elbow:

Severe Punishment part 2

As an addition to the previous post I've just seen this ridiculous article by Jeff Winter (laughing described as "a top official" by The Sun) in which he says:

"Very early in my Premier League career I sent Roy Keane off and incurred Fergie's wrath for doing so.

"In the course of the next two seasons I did not get a single Manchester United game, even though I refereed every other Premier League club at least five or six times. I was not afraid to stand up to him and I think he knew that.

"With his latest remarks, Fergie has probably de-selected Martin Atkinson for the potential title decider with Arsenal."

Which, as I argued in the previous post, is the rather silly FA-are-scared-of-Sir-Alex argument. Especially silly in this instance, given just how many times Sir Alex has slagged off Atkinson and how many times he's come back to referee our games.

Severe Punishment

The suggestion after the Wigan game that, somehow, everyone, the FA especially, is scared of Sir Alex, which looked stupid at the time, becomes stupider by the day. Given that he has 2 games of a four match touchline ban under suspension. A touchline ban from The FA. This is the FA who are too scared to punish Rooney because Sir Alex claimed in an interview that it was "nothing."
For some reason Sir Alex's pronouncements after games have the same weight as tablets handed down from Mount Sinai. Anyone else says anything after game and it's "in the heat of moment," Sir Alex opens his mouth and it's part of a Machiavellian plot to undermine civilised society. Here's some idiot in The Telegraph -

Regardless of whether Atkinson was right not to give Luiz a second yellow card, that Ferguson will be allowed to publicly doubt that Atkinson is a fair referee will eat further into the Football Association’s Respect campaign, for it shows no respect at all.

How many times has Harry Redknapp started a post match interview with "I'm not one to criticise referees but..." before launching into a tirade against referees and journalists believe him -" Harry, oh cheeky Harry, he ain't one to criticise referees..." The odd thing is that Sir Alex is often fair after games, he's not the bury-your-head-in-the-sand Arsene type, if he's asked for an opinion on a sending off he generally agrees, even if it's one of our players. The minute he criticises a referee (after ridiculous provocation...) everyone forgets this.
And, I know I don't read everything the papers write on football, especially on other teams, but when was the last time bloody Alan Leighton, chief referee's apologist, was wheeled out for an opinion - yes, after Sir Alex was criticised for laying into Alan Wiley. Anyone else slags off refs he stays under his rock, only emerging when the lynch mob are after Sir Alex.
There's only two voices which seem to talk sense here, and they are James Lawton and Graham Poll. And I am shocked I just wrote that. The 2 people I've called out most on this blog and they're defending Sir Alex. The world turned on its head. Graham Poll, to be fair, simply takes a consisent view - he says what everyone else says when A manager (other than Sir Alex) criticises referees namely, that leeway should be given for heat of the moment comments -

So I understand that, when Ferguson gave an interview minutes after the game, the defeat was still raw and he was angry at the effect Atkinson's decisions had on the outcome. If you prod a hornets' nest, expect to be stung.

Post-match interviews provide a great service to fans, but I think the FA should acknowledge that emotions are running high, and allow managers leeway in what they say.

This is exactly the same principle which referees apply to dissent and abusive language during a match: officials will generally make allowances for 'heat of the moment' abuse.

James Lawton's piece has this good observation on Luiz - " along with his virtuosity came what seemed like a thoroughly unpleasant belief that he could do more or less what he liked with pretty much absolute impunity," a license given him by Atkinson. Lawton's final paragraph is the clincher -

The FA may choose, again, to cast Ferguson as the villain. But then one of these days maybe it should recognise him as not the disease but its most persistent symptom. The real malady, surely, is a refereeing system too often unfit for purpose

Except, of course, it's not just the FA who cast Sir Alex as the villian, it's the media too. Apparently that's easier than questioning the refereeing system or the dirty bunch of cheats who play at Stamford Bridge.