Pardew not punished by FA for swearing

My headline of the week so far, courtesy of the BBC website.

The terrible thing about watching Man U just now : without Rooney they don’t have a clue.

Sad days for us who are Man U fans. The team that won the league by a distance last year has been transformed into one that couldn’t score in a barrel of doughnuts. Where Fergie went out of the FA Cup at the first hurdle just once in 27 years, Moyes has managed it at the first time of asking. Yes, I know that he’s had no luck with injuries, but he inherited a quality squad. Yes I know that playing the last ten minutes yesterday with ten men didn’t help, but it doesn’t take eleven to deny a striker a free header in front of goal, just one back line doing its job properly. Some managers send sides out not to lose, first and foremost; others send them out to play with pace and creative aggression and to dominate at all times. Some managers make substitutions that are guaranteed to make their side more incisive, others make them for the sake of change. Some managers are winners, and some are losers.

Alex Ferguson made a few mistakes during his career; for example, selling Jaap Stam, signing Veron, and that Portuguese lad Bebe  who couldn’t play for tofu. However, choosing Moyes as his anointed successor looks like his biggest blunder by a mile.

Rant over.

Must watch some of this.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/cricket/international/australia/10530477/Its-shamelessly-loud-and-over-the-top-but-the-Big-Bash-proves-Australian-cricket-is-secure-in-every-format.html

As the third Ashes test makes its predictable way towards another no-win situation for Engerland, I note that once again Alastair Cook lost the toss of the coin. He must be the worst tosser in world cricket.

This releases a bee from my bonnet, or would do if I wore one. The toss, and with it the choice of whether to bat or bowl first, gives  a great advantage to whoever wins it. Matches and series can be won and lost on it, and if one skipper loses five times in a row, well tough on him. Wouldn’t it be fairer all round if there was only one coin toss, at the start of a series, with the choice, to bat or bowl first, alternating thereafter?

I haven’t been saying too much about the performance of the England cricket team in Australia. I’ve been too busy laughing.

However, my friends will tell you that I have been predicting a severe humping since before the first ball was bowled.

Reading the Ashes coverage this morning, I find myself wondering again which is worse, a bad loser or a bad winner. But  one thing I know for sure; if I was an Australian batsman I wouldn’t be winding up Jimmy Anderson.

Let’s see how the next four tests play out.

While chuckling over my melon and banana this morning as I read the report of England’s predictably woeful batting collapse in Australia, a piece of profundity came to me. ‘Now wait for the press reaction,’ I muttered to myself.

There is nothing so furious as the English media when its collective nose is rubbed in the truth, that its expectation of superiority over the rest of the world  is generally misplaced.

I read yesterday that the Australian rugby management has suspended five players for the game against Scotland for the unpatriotic sin of drinking ‘inappropriate levels of alcohol’ after a team dinner. And here was I thinking that was the National Pastime.

This offence occurred, apparently in the middle of last week, and that begs a question. Why are the guys involved being disciplined only now? Why were they allowed to play against Ireland last Saturday, a few days after they went out on the piss? People have paid already to watch next weekend’s Murrayfield encounter, and now they know they’re going to be short-changed. 

This has been my week for football books. 

Mark Halsey has been one of my favourite English referees for several years, and I am not a natural fan of that profession. He has always struck me as positive in his attitude to the game, and as a man who realises that a set-up that preaches RESPECT, in great big capital letters, should be prepared to show that to players as well as demanding it from them. He retired from the game at the end of last season, after a career interrupted by a successful battle against cancer, and has now published his autobiography, ‘Added Time’. His book makes it pretty clear that his sympathetic attitude to the game did not endear him to the regime which is currently in charge of English match officials. There are two sides to every argument, but the fact that the publisher (no names, no pack drill) who commissioned the book declined subsequently to publish it, indicates that a certain amount of leaning may have gone on. (Nothing new about that  in publishing, by the way, as a friend of mine could tell you.)

In the end, Mark and his co-writer took the considerable gamble of publishing it independently. They won, for it has become a sports best-seller, and quite right too. He comes across as a bitter man, and hits all his targets. At the same time he is generous in his praise, and the book does shed light on the world of the people who control football matches and the extent to which they are themselves controlled. There are always two sides to every yarn, but the very idea that his former employers did their best to silence him makes me lean towards his version. 

One small criticism which readers should note. In his list of favourite pre-match music, Mark lists a track by Bobby McFerrin, ‘Don’t worry, be happy’ and refers sadly to the singer’s suicide. Fact is, Bobby McF is still among us; the suicide thing was an internet rumour that was debunked years ago.

Whether you like or loathe boxing, this is a sobering piece.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-24919484

Just finished Keith Gillespie’s book ‘How NOT to become a football millionaire’. A cautionary tale and a good read; also, a lads’ bible.

Awoke this morning to the inevitable buzz over Spurs’ ridiculous decision to allow their goalie to stay on the field vs Everton after being knocked spark out for quite some time. Thankfully, the guy seems okay, but he should have been protected from his own bravery.

In the furore everyone seems to be overlooking another scandal, namely the ref’s decision to book the Everton player involved in what was beyond any shadow of a doubt an accidental collision. When the crowd sang ‘You’re not fit to referee’, they were absolutely right.

I follow golf on the telly; it’s one of the reasons why I have Sky Sports. Currently the European Tour is in what it calls ‘The Final Series’, a device introduced this year to ape the American PGA tour’s successful and very lucrative Fedex Cup series; four big money events, not open to all Tour card-holders, but only to those who have qualified by earning enough through the regular season. Since it is the European Tour, it would be reasonable to suppose that these tournaments would take place in Europe. How wrong could you be? Have I been watching it live? No, because I don’t fancy getting up in the middle of the night!

Of this quids-in quartet, the first took place in China, and the field included local talent and invitees, in addition to the European qualifiers. This week’s event  is also in  China; it’s a World Golf Championship event, which means that only a minority of European Tour card-holders have any hope of playing in it. The third event takes place next week in Antalya, Turkey, which is, I believe, in Asia Minor, and whose guest star is Tiger Woods. Thanks to co-sanctioning, the Tigger has actually won more European Tour events  than anyone other than Seve and Bernhard Langer, but he has never held a tour card in his life, so he’s taking a spot from someone with legitimate aspirations of a place in a restricted field. The last event, the grandly titled DP World Tour Championship, will be held, as always, in Dubai, over a course designed by that well-known European, Greg Norman. So there you have it; not one of these bonanza events, the crown of the European Tour season, will actually take place in Europe.  You might think that’s daft, but it’s not when you realise that in the 2013 series only twenty of the forty-six listed events took place in the what is supposed to be the home continent.

Agreed, you cannot play tournament golf in Europe 52 weeks a year. To give its members earning opportunities, the Tour managers have to go far and wide, to Australia, to South Africa and to the Far East. But they do not need to sell out completely. For years now, the schedule has overlapped calendar years, so what is to prevent them copying the Americans once again and staging The  Final Series in the European summer, with one event each in Britain, France, Germany and Spain? Only, I suspect, a little imagination.

1  —  1 at home vs Southampton. Moyes would have been better playing 11 men rather than 10 plus Fellaini.