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The game we call ball we call foot - general discussion

ONLY NICE THINGS

22:37 / 12.05.04

Hello, darlings. After a thread one the worst of football and a thread on the best of football, I thought it might be worth having a crack at general ballfoot convo, even as the season grinds to a halt beneath us.

So, discussion point the first - Beckham's best position? Not like that, mucksters. Has his time in Spain demonstrated that to put a superb crosser of the ball into central midfield doesn't guarantee that he will become a superb playmaker - that passing and crossing are different skills, and also that the skills you need to play on the right are very different to those in the centre.

Beckham's always struck me as a bit of an oddity in that he was a right-sided midfielder in a team that did a lot of wing play who didn't really like to dribble and didn't have that much pace - considering he was replacing Kanchelsksis that's a very odd thought. I can see why this might have made people, himself included, think he was best pulling the strings in midfield, when in fact it just meant that he was a right-sided midfielder who didn't like dribbling and didn't have much pace.

So anyway - what next for England's rose? Do you think he'll replace Veron as the floptastic midfield general of Chelsea, or brazen it out in Madrid for another season? In either case, will he end up back on the wing, and will it be good or bad for England if he does?

lonely as a cloud...

12:38 / 13.05.04

Meh. As a Chelski supporter myself, I'd rather Beckham stay where he is. Or move to another continental side; Madrid seems like a bad place for him, far too much media activity goes on there. They seem to push their "galacticos" into doing ads and stuff so that, when they're not training or playing, they're running around in Pepsi jersies, or whatever.
If he did come to Chelski, though...I'd prefer to see him on the wing. 'Cos, frankly, Gronkjaer can't cross to save his life.

ONLY NICE THINGS

14:01 / 13.05.04

Gronks also apparently off to Birmingham for £2 million, to supply the wayward bullets for Mikael Forssel, Chelsea's top scorer, who is apparently barred from coming within 200 yards of Stamford Bridge. It would be more, but, you know, Fulham.

ONLY NICE THINGS

22:43 / 14.05.04

Shit! Jesus Gil is dead! Who will the Guardian do wacky continental football pieces about now? Ian "el" Holloway?

19:48 / 15.05.04

Why, Perugia, of course.

Can't remember the chairman's name. Mentaller.

The manager has the excellent appellation Serse Cosmi.

Gil - well, I can understand why he employed Atko, that's all.

nedrichards is confused

22:29 / 17.05.04

Perugia are going to stay up! Well they're in a playoff with 6th in Serie B or somesuch. And this is after they were so dead and buried that the Chairman adamantly refused to play the alst 4 games. After a personal viist from the head of the italian FA he decided to play them, they won them all, including mad results like beating Juventus and I think Roma away the other sides around went into freefall and they've scraped up to the playoffs with practicly the last kick of the season.

Oh and the mighty palace scoring tonight in added time with Neil Shipperly (who's looknig more and more like an aging maradonna) taking out the keeper, Vinny Jones style. Selhurst Park'll be back in the premiership next year, I can feel it. Either that or Fulham'll move there. It's something about the ground, can't stand amore than a season away from the top flight. Maybe it's got a crush on Michael Owen.

Oh and Haus, while up in Tranmere on business earlier in the week I paid my respects at the shirne of the cultured midfielder, anyone else exciting rolling off the Vauxhall production line? My Championship Manager side needs a new Koumas.

14:06 / 18.05.04

Beckham played on the right but never as a winger. He was always underrated at Old Trafford and overrated elsewhere. His real skills were crossing and fighting for the win.

I don't think he'll leave Real in the summer even though he has had a poor end of season.

ONLY NICE THINGS

16:54 / 18.05.04

Beckham played on the right but never as a winger.

I think I said that...

Iain Hume is a pacy goalscorer, Ned, but with fewer sides to his game than Koumas. Having said which, the average 2nd Division player has fewer sides to his game than the average game of "turn the piece of paper into a Moebius strip". David Beresford has his moments, as does Ryan Taylor, and Tyrone Loran is a classy player who can be injured at right-back, central defence or midfield...

Oh, who am I kidding?

Ex

18:19 / 18.05.04

...has his moments, as does Ryan Taylor, and Tyrone Loran is a classy player...

The team's performance is clearly not going to be helped by the fact that Tyrone Loran isn't a 'classy player'; he's an anagram of Ryan Taylor. Running low on funding, Tranmere have simply been rearranging the players they already own.

18:37 / 18.05.04

Iain Hume impressed in the two ties against Millwall, left poor old Robbie Ryan for dead a few times.

Of course, his haircut for the replay kind of dragged the attention away from his fancy footwork. Daftest style since Darren 'The Peckham Beckham' Ward decided he was going to become Millwall's leading fashion victim with his mishmash mullet o' doom

ONLY NICE THINGS

18:49 / 18.05.04

He's young, bless him.

Speaking of Tranmere's midfield, such as it is, could any of our Hull or Scotland connections give me the skinny on Theodore Whitmore? The fact that we have actually agreed to pay him means he is going to go straight into the first team, whether he is any cop or not, possibly displacing injury king Tyrone Loran (coo, Ex! You're right! I reckon "John Achterberg" may be a popular phrase or saying also....). So, is he actually any good at all?

nedrichards is confused

07:48 / 21.05.04

Tyrone, Theodore, Eugene. Is Tranmere's recruitment policy run out of an Enid Blyton book?

Goodness Gracious Meme

13:06 / 22.05.04

It certainly sounds like it. When will that courageous midefielder, Georgie Fotheringay-Phipps, be debuting?

On Tranmere, watching the hilights of the Millwall cup tie, Achtenberg looks pretty useful, is this the case Haus? And therefore, how long are you going to keep him?

Another topic for discussion, which I'll refrain from commenting on just now, what do people think, if anything, of Alan Smith being most likely on his way to Man U? Good value, neccessary strengthening on Ferguson's part? How much would be a good price? Will this revive his England chances?

(personally, I'm stuck on wishing it was anyone but them. fuuuuck.)

(BiP, relishing the odd experience of genuinely cheering on Millwall.)

ONLY NICE THINGS

08:09 / 25.05.04

Achterberg is solid, but has now been at Tranmere for so long that I think he's set down roots - there was talk of him going back to Holland a couple of years ago, but nothing came of it. Funnily enough, he is a big match player for a team without many big matches. His role has mainly been to understudy - when we signed Russell Howarth at the start of this season, I kind of assumed he would take over as number 1, because Achterberg, despite beinga talented shot-stopper, is always fighting for his place with a younger player. In fact, that's something about Tranmere that I like - the tradition of excellent young goalkeepers with very bad instincts for transfers. In the last decade we've had Danny Coyne, Steve Simonsen and Joe Murphy passing through...

nedrichards is confused

21:09 / 25.05.04

Ah Steve Simonsen, briefly the most expensive British goalie ever. Really. A snip at 3 million quid. The current record is held by Chris Kirkland I beleive at £6m who is actually a rather good keeper when he's not hideously injured. Plus seeing him on Soccer AM the other week he seems a nice lad with his feet right on the ground, not difficult when you're 7 foot 14 (or so it seems) but he seemed endearingly gawky. I'll give him the nedrichards kiss of goalkeeping death and mark him as a future England regular.

[previous holders of this estimable curse have included Chris Woods, Ian Walker (what was I thinking, wasn't the hair a clue?) and Richard Wright. Had I been around I'd almost certainly have picked Peter 'the cat' Bonetti too]

22:25 / 25.05.04

Did Jim 'bandylegs' Leighton not briefly hold this record, before Woods?

Anyway, all change yesterday as Real Madrid, Liverpool and Aberdeen dumped their respective managers.

01:01 / 26.05.04

I'm an American, and a basketball fan mostly. The only real knowledge I have of football is just kinda second hand through songs and books. So can someone tell me what this means and if it in fact has something to do with football?

"Fighting for your team on a chicken run."

The Business have a bunch of football songs. One of them is Southgate and the chorus is something like
"Dance now, wherever you may be
Cuz he missed the fucking penalty
Now we smash up the town, wherever we may be
cuz he missed the fucking penalty"
another of the lyrics to this song is
"should he kick it to the left, should he kick it to the right, doesn't really matter cuz he was shite"

Anyone know this Southgate character?

01:05 / 26.05.04

Gareth? Oh, yes.

No idea about the chicken run.

01:08 / 26.05.04

voila.

Gareth Southgate. Without a doubt, Britain’s ugliest footballer. Almost as bad as that, he missed an important penalty in 1996.

06:08 / 26.05.04

Southgate could well be the ugliest English player to play for England, but what about Nick Chadwick? He looks like Sloth in Se7en.

Neil Shipperly used to look like Chunk in The Goonies.

As a Forest fan I could never get to grips with Shipperly, I was sure that his dad had saved Harry Bassett's life and insisted that young Neil always play for him or something - Doogie Freedman I got, and never understood why we sold him, yes he looked like a man that didn't care, but he can score goals in the first division all day long. Anyway I'm really looking forward to the 1st Div playoff final, I think young Dowie is a fantastic looking manager and makes for some good newspaper articles about his methods, and the Hammer's have Marlon Harewood - who was my favourite at Forest for some time...now all I have is Andy Reid, but for how long....

ONLY NICE THINGS

07:39 / 26.05.04

Southgate could well be the ugliest English player to play for England, but what about Nick Chadwick? He looks like Sloth in Se7en.

Luke Chadwick, I assume - memorably described aas resembling a rat with acne.

However, I have to take a breath when in the same post Iain Dowie is described as a "fantastic-looking manager". We're not talking fantastic-looking like Christina Ricci, are we?

(On Shipperley - I think it's one of those weird Dave Basset fascinations. Like Glyn Hodges, a left-footed passing midfielder who spent his career watching the ball arc over his head on its journey from defence to 8 foot striker at a variety of Basset-managed clubs. I think he may have been the son he never had, or a concession to how he actualy *wanted* to play the game - you know "damn it, this cruel world means we have to lump it up to Jostein Flo/Brian Deane/the Dai-X from Star Fleet, but in my heart I play a game of accurate, short passing. You can't take that away from me, dammit! Not while Hodges still plays!")

ONLY NICE THINGS

08:17 / 26.05.04

Incidentally, as Charlton have been entered into the draw for a Fair Play place in the UEFA cup, what do you guys think about this process? If I was a fan of, say, Newcastle United or Aston Villa, I'd be pretty hacked off about this, and for that matter about the award of a UEFA cup polace to the winner of the Worthington Cup. At least that is for football reasons...

Of course, one could argue that fair play *is* a football reason, and anytihng that encourages it should be encouraged, and also that it allows minnows like Ipswich to have fantastic European nights. But are fantastic European nights actually *meant* to be had by times who finished in the bottom places of their domestic league? Shouldn't European football be a place for the domestic leagues to show of the excellence of their teams? And should fair play not be rewarded by stuff like keeping 11 men on the pitch, not having your midfield suspended, not conceding free kick near your goal - that sort of thing? I'm conflicted. Basically, I'd really like to see Charlton in Europe next season, but I suspect I probably shouldn't...