Just like Tony Pulis’
reign at the Britannia, they say all good things must come to an end and so we
come to our fourth and final part of our look back at the season that was
season 2012/13. So just like Michael Owen, Paul Scholes, Jamie Carragher and of
course Sir Alex Ferguson this is the end...although unlike them, we’ll be back
to do it all over again in 2013/14!
Another season and
yet again, to many fans and those in the press, what happened on the pitch
seemed to be the least important thing of all. From Suarez and his
cannibalistic tendencies to Rio’s Middle Eastern TV commitments (and specialist
training regime of course) which controversy really got you steaming to the
Daily Mail’s message board of moral indignation?
Well Rio Ferdinand grates at the
best of times – so it was quite amusing to see him getting some stick. Although
he’s so high up on his horse he probably didn’t notice.
As written about previously on these pages, the “fans must always get behind the team” rubbish that was put forward by several pundits over the year was particularly frustrating. I just don’t agree with the belief that fans have to be upbeat and cheerful and unswervingly positive no matter what the situation. People have a right to stick up for their views and protest. The fact John Motson claimed the booing of Rafa Benitez was the most despicable thing to happen all season says more about the man himself I think.
One other gripe for me – and of course there are certainly worse things going in the world – is the constant need, on the BBC in particular, to give anyone who ever registered on Twitter a platform to share their inane views. Of course we are, erm, twitterati now ourselves at CollinsBeans, and this is certainly not directed at Twitter itself. And in theory it’s good to listen to what fans think.
But why do we need to read out, on national television, that Tractorboy87 thinks Grant Holt should be in the England squad!!! And why does the BBC website live feed, an otherwise useful resource on a Saturday afternoon, believe it’s necessary to dedicate 75% of its time copying and pasting mindless tweets than add absolutely nothing. There you go, rant over… (James Platt)
It’s the classic children’s excuse when accused of doing something wrong: “yeah, but they did it first”. Or, “well I know what I did was wrong, but on the wrongness scale, what they did was much more wronger”. Maybe you should expect it from children, but then, some football fans have a way of acting like toddlers.
Football is tribal - we all know that. We embrace it in fact. Those rivalries with opposition supporters and that feeling of being part of a group with a shared identity is what take the sport from game to lifestyle choice. And yet, even though I’m perhaps hopelessly out of touch with the man on the Clapham Omnibus here, you would like to think that for certain issues, proper important things, people would be able to see through the partisan tinted spectacles and understand that an issue might be bigger than who you follow.
Every incident and controversy is seen as a personal attack if it’s aimed at your club or one of your players and all perspective lost. Maybe you find some of the coverage of Luis Suarez hysterical, and yet, you had some Liverpool fans railing against the media conspiracy seemingly forgetting that the media coverage came because he bit someone. He bit someone - how would you like it if someone did it to you? Or would it depend on who they played for?
Every issue is ranked on a scale, an ‘offenceometer’ designed to measure the most ridiculous of justification exercises: what’s worse, abusing someone because they are black or gay? Singing a song about fans dying in a stadium disaster or players dying in an air crash? Who did it first?! Whose song was more offensive?! It’s all crap: a way for some to exonerate their behaviour with the most childish of justifications.
Everything is personal, nothing rational. When Man City fans pointed out that Arsenal had exorbitant ticket prices where was the solidarity? Arsenal fans should have been on their side - they get ripped off every week! But rather than join with fellow fans - ordinary working people that like them don’t earn a king’s ransom - to voice their displeasure and actually further a cause which would benefit them, they got incredibly thin skinned and made jibes back at Man City. Just because a lot of football tickets might be over priced doesn’t make it right.
Indeed the nadir was reached with some Sheffield United fans abusing the victim of a terrible crime because it might have derailed a play-off push. If your player is convicted of being a rapist, don’t stand by them just because they happen to be your top scorer: judge them as the criminal they are. (Matt Snelling)
2012/13 was the year
of the long goodbye. Beckham, Scholes, Owen, Carragher, Rio Ferdinand from
international duty, it was the end of the line for much of the ‘Golden
Generation’. With no international silverware (but plenty of domestic pots and
pans to be fair) how do you sum up the contribution of that most hyped group of
England players?
The problem wasn’t so much their accomplishments but the expectation: quite honestly they were never going to be able to live up to the hype. All were fine players, some, such as Scholes genuinely brilliant players, but as a group there was just something missing. At their best when used in conjecture with skilled foreign players, the direct and full throttle style (well, maybe not Jamie Carragher) when balanced out with a more cerebral continental accompaniment was a lethal combination, but left to their own devices they just weren’t able to pull it together as a group.
We were told over and over how brilliant these
players were, and while week in week out they performed for their clubs there
was no discernible evidence on an international level why it should be regarded
that their name was on any cup. It was a group of players also growing up at
the height of excess and celebrity culture and rightly or wrongly their
achievements (whatever, or how much, they were) will always be linked with the
circus and tabloid feeding frenzy of the 2006 World Cup.
These were some fine players at club level that
collapsed under the weight of not just ridiculous expectation but ridiculous levels
of entitlement: a team worth far, far less than the sum of its parts. (MS)
Think it depends on how you look at it.
Domestically, most of them have accumulated a very impressive haul of medals.
Beckham, Scholes and Ferdinand in particular must have no room left in their
bulging trophy cabinets.
Internationally of course, it’s a different story.
I don’t think anyone can deny the “golden generation” were a bit of a flop.
They seemed to believe their own hype too much, always coming out with phrases
like “we’ve got as good a squad as anyone” before failing to keep the ball for
more than five passes in any game and drifting out of tournaments without
making an impact. Of course some of the wider decisions from the FA on
everything from manager selection to fixtures haven’t helped, but I think the
golden boys need to look at themselves and say they didn’t really deliver in an
England shirt.
Another theory, and whisper it quietly, is that
maybe they weren’t actually that good in the first place… (JP)
Going to games is soooo
20th Century, now it’s all about Tweeting at Joey Barton or watching
SkyGo on your ipad. In this modern televisual age, what were the TV programmes
and pundits that engaged your brain…
I enjoyed listening to Pat Nevin this year. He’s very good on radio, coming up with some interesting and thoughtful theories on 5 Live, and his appearances on MOTD2 have been impressive as well. I know “thinking man’s pundit” is a bit obvious, but Nevin does usually go more in depth than simply talking through a goal you’ve already seen six times.
Gary Neville is the obvious name here, and I do
think he’s still one of the better pundits out there. As a bit of reserve team
man, I also think you can do worse than Alan Smith on Sky.
A brief mention of Graeme Souness too – not the
best pundit going, but someone I always find quite watchable simply due to his
impressive anger levels. And I’m going to admit it – I’ve got a soft spot for
Andy Townsend. How can you not love a man who thinks you need “a big centre
half at the back, organising at corners and telling people who to mark” and
says a striker has done “everything right” when he hasn’t found the net from
three yards. (JP)
It is perhaps a measure of the
paucity in modern day punditry that Gary Neville is so universally lauded. It’s
not for nothing however as Sky’s top draw (alongside the equally acerbic Graeme
Souness) offers true opinion and insight in a world where Paul Jewell is paid
actual money to give his considered ‘knowledge’.
That’s enough of the bad and the ugly (more on them in a bit) so onto the good then, and It’s interesting that if you actually crave that insight and analysis, then the medium of television is arguably the last place to go looking for it. Without advert breaks or plugs for Touring Cars, analysis has more time to breathe on the radio and increasingly, online. To back up Mr Platt Pat Nevin is always interesting to listen to, and a man that has held his own on the Newsnight Review is nothing to be sniffed at.
Sky’s La Liga pundits such as Guillem Balague and Gerry Armstrong show a nice knowledge of their product and Revitsa De La Liga as a ‘magazine show’ in the finest Gazzetta Football Italia traditions is always a treat. Anyone that employs Times writer Gab Marcotti is always on to a winner and increasingly, it is journalists, when they aren’t tapping phones and the like, that can offer that more detached viewpoint: the croissants and orange juice of the Sunday Supplement a definite guilty pleasure. (MS)
…and who were those ‘experts’ that simply made your head hurt?
I’ve said it before and I’m going to say it again I’m afraid – Alan Shearer. The man simply doesn’t add any value. He tells you what you already know and his range of adjectives is staggeringly poor.
Also, he may good for a bit of bants and an
exceptionally tight suit, but I still don’t believe Jamie Redknapp ever says
anything that really enhances your viewing experience.
Finally while he seems like a genuinely nice old
man, Jimmy Armfield on 5 Live, if we’re being honest, isn’t the best. (JP)
The problem with modern day punditry is telling you
nothing new whilst simultaneously smacking you over the head with a frying pan of
obviousness. Or as Jason Roberts might say “yes that game changing moment very
much changed the game”
But then, maybe we should go easy on pundits, after
all it’s not easy to get the words out when there’s just so many points going
round your head:
In general however, and to be fair to a lot of
pundits and programmes out there I have noticed a change in recent months as
the backlash against how useless modern coverage and punditry is starts to
force some changes in how people present football. They are trying to thing a little
outside the box.
Someone that never went outside the box however (in
every sense) and who we already touched on as part of the retirement of the ‘Golden
Generation’ is Michael Owen. The only thing more depressing than watching
Michael Owen propping up a bench in Stoke is the prospect of him taking a full
time bow as a pundit. I’m sure he’s a perfectly nice guy and that he like his
horses, but Owen has all the charisma of a dried apricot and I’m hoping that he’s
not the BBC’s secret weapon in their battle to counter the North West
Neville/Carragher axis on Sky next season. (MS)
As we finish up this
review and finish up this season it’s the end of the line for the patriarch of
the English game: 2012/13 was the season that Sir Alex Ferguson finally hung up
that hairdryer. CollinsBeans has only ever known a football world with Sir Alex
at the Old Trafford tiller – what’s the legacy he leaves behind?
A pretty specular one I think it must be said. It’s hard to see how anyone will ever replicate that success and longevity at one club, and the continuous procession of silverware at Old Trafford has been remarkable.
Taking the rose tinted glasses off briefly, it
hasn’t all been fun and games, and some of Ferguson’s rants and abuse of
officials and journalists have been deplorable. Also, being held up as a living
legend has allowed Ferguson to get away with an awful lot.
But all in all, it’s an absolutely fantastic legacy
he leaves behind and you can only admire what the man has achieved. (JP)
It’s bizarre to think of a football world that won’t have the Godfather of Govan in it. It’s even crazier to think that there are adult Manchester fans that have never known any other manager: for them, welcome to the real, scary world that the rest of us live in.
The legacy of Ferguson is one of success, relentless success, and his is a record in terms of longevity that at the highest level will surely never be replicated. He is also a man that was able to change and remodel his sides as football evolved over time. Was he a tactical innovator, a genius in the transfer market or a man manager extraordinaire? It’s hard to say he was any one thing, more someone that was able to mould all the aspects of what it takes to be a winner through a determined and dominating personality.
Have the eulogies been somewhat over the top? You could say so, and should he be given a free pass for all the times he has been able to bring an undue influence on the game and match officials through his reputation? Most definitely, but then will we ever see his like again? And on that note alone his legacy should be everlasting in the history of the game. (MS)
Finally, as shown by the significant social media footprint that CollinsBeans creates, this is a blog that knows how to embrace the modern world: sum up the season in 140 characters or less
All sizzle without the steak. Things off the pitch more important than things on it. Cant we just enjoy the game rather than the controversy? (MS)
Premier league probably not best in world. Bale definitely not best player in world. Overall standard pretty low. Yet still plenty to enjoy & talk about. And adios Rafa (JP)
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