The week's weak

They say ‘a week in politics is a long time’. Ha! That’s just what the politicians want you to think when an unpleasant story rumbles on in the press for more than a couple of days. You might like to note that successful political campaigns are referred to again and again, ad nauseum, when it suits them.

If you want a week to be a long time, all you need to do is turn to football – especially at the beginning of the season. A week ago, I was enshrouded in a slough of gloom after West Brom’s embarrassing 6-0 defeat to Chelsea. I kept saying (to various gloating wags) ‘early days yet’, but I was really thinking ‘we’re done for’.

Now, a mere week later, with two comfortable wins under the Baggie belt (against Sunderland in the league and the powerhouse that is Leyton Orient in the League Cup), I’m thinking, ‘hey, maybe we can scrape through’. Unfortunately, the scoffers are remaining annoyingly quiet at the moment.

Of course, it’s not just me leaping to ridiculous conclusions with 36-plus games to go in the season. The pundits are at it with considerable savagery… For a start, Robbie Savage (is he actually still playing for Derby County? He certainly seems to spend most of his time in BBC studios at the moment).

Savage, of course, started the season by assessing Newcastle after the team’s first humbling defeat away to Man United (although not as humbling as West Brom’s). He concluded that the Toon was not strong enough to survive the Premiership and its striker, Andy Carroll was nowehere near the standard necessary to have an impact on the league.

Roll on a week and Newcastle annihilated Aston Villa 6-0 with Carroll slotting away a very cool hat trick.

Blackpool were being praised for their resilience and spirit after their 4-0 hammering of Wigan, only to be another team to eat the bitter taste of a 6-0 defeat a week later.

Man U looked impressive against Newcastle, but mediocre against Fulham (a 2-2 draw). Arsenal looked destined to chug along for third or fourth place (again) against a spritely looking Liverpool, destined to reclaim their ‘top four’ status and Man City were ‘a team of individuals that would never gel in time’ against Tottenham Hotspur, the ‘new contenders’.

Well, a quick look over the past week and we see Arsenal’s 6-0 demolition of Blackpool, while Man City veritably crushed Liverpool and Spurs, a few days later, were 3-0 down to the oddly monikered Young Boys of Switzerland.

Okay, so Spurs fought back to 3-2 and will probably beat the Young Boys (sorry about that, but not really any other way of saying it) tonight (Weds 25th August).

And it is that date that really puts the whole thing into perspective. August! Two games in to the season. It is all as meaningless at the moment as the dryness of the tea leaves before you pour the water on them.

Okay, so fans will always leap to ridiculous conclusions after the first game of the season (we are doomed) only to change direction 90 minutes later (we will be the champions), but the pundits really do need to keep their feet a little bit more on the ground and their mouths a little bit more connected to a brain that is in gear if they are going to blather in front of millions each week.

Predictions are fun and part of the job, of course, but to write a team off or declare its invincibility after a single game? Unwise.

So, West Brom for the League Cup, anyone?

Six of the best

Oh dear…

Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear…

Actually, I knew before the moment that the Premier League fixtures were announced that my team, West Bromwich Albion, the Mighty Baggies, were in for a rough ride this season. Yes, the opening six games of our fifth season in the top flight in nine years read like a who’s who of top four and top ten teams (Chelsea, Sunderland, Liverpool, Tottenham, Birmingham, Arsenal – with Bolton and Man U following swiftly afterwards), but West brom can hardly have been said to have cruised to promotion last season.

I was worried – even while the World Cup was going on – that we would be fighting so hard to hold on to any decent players we had, that we found ourselves with little time to actually strengthen the squad…

Strengthen? With a 25-player limit?

As it turns out, we held on to everyone except Valero and Koren. The former didn’t want to stay and the latter, for some, as yet unexplained reason, was not wanted. No matter. West Brom did something a little unusual during this close season in that it actually strengthened its team. A few potentially good signings, holding on to Graham Dorrans (non-home-grown, it turns out) and…

That’s when I saw the fixture list for the season.

Now, I must admit, I did find myself wondering something like this during the World Cup and watching England’s abject displays: why can’t we have some luck? Other teams have luck. Other teams win games on bad refereeing decisions. Other teams get Wigan for their opening game of the season. Other teams just ‘click’ and play a game of blinding perfection against vastly superior opposition and win three unexpected points that end up making the difference between relegation and survival. Why doesn’t West Brom?

The team plays good football… all right, that could be down to luck, I suppose. The lovely Tony Mowbray created a team that played ‘The Beautiful Game’ (regardless of the fact that we had no players of any real quality to pull it off) and now, the not so lovely Roberto di Matteo has harnessed that and added a bit of grit and practicality, making us a great team to watch when we are on the ball. It’s attractive in the build up and we can score the occasional goal. But we have to face facts. We are neither as flowing and skilful as the top half dozen teams, nor are we as gritty as the likes of Stoke, Bolton or Blackburn.

So, what have we got? It all looks a bit thin, to be honest. Damn it all, we probably won’t even beat Liverpool this season… In fact, after seeing their first game against Arsenal, I don’t think many will.

You see? A bit of luck. The archetypal yo-yo team times it perfectly to be in the Championship just when Liverpool are at their most shitty for 50 years and miss the opportunity to beat the smug bunch of humourless scallies.

I’d give a win over Wolves to beat Liverpool… Well, a draw, perhaps – let’s not get carried away. But even then – now – with the thoroughly pleasant and decidedly not completely bonkers Roy Hodgson in charge of Mersyside’s scumbags, beating them just wouldn’t be the same.

Not that we’re going to now, of course. They looked like a team of world champion sprinters on the break (except Carragher, of course).

No, the only thing West Brom can hope for over the next few weeks is that the thrashing we took last Saturday from Chelsea (6-0 for those of you living on Mars or in Liverpool).

The phrase ‘six of the best’ has come to be used more frequently of late as a precursor to a list of six really good things. Have we forgotten that it refers to being caned at school?

Well, corporal punishment may not be in our schools any more, but it is certainly alive and well in the Premier League. Let’s hope West Brom can learn the lessons necessary – and quickly – before teacher comes along and gives another half dozen.

Blue genes

In David Bond’s excellent blog posting yesterday, he discussed Richard Scudamore’s recent (very limited amount of) acceptance of some blame for England’s appalling performance at the recent World Cup (which England has never won).

He comes up with some interesting figures.

Nearly 60 per cent of the Premier League players are not ‘home grown’. Of the 42 per cent that are ‘home grown’, not all of these are eligible to play for England.

The academy system in the country has some 300 players between the ages of 16 to 18, of which 245 are English.

The 2010/11 season will see Premier League teams having to comply with the new quota system that limits squads to 25 players, of which 17 have to be ‘home grown’. At the extreme (Arsenal, of course) that means there will be precisely two (yes, two – that’s 2 – one more than one, one less than three) English players. The other six ‘home grown’ players have come through the academy, but are not English – and never, presumably, will be. One suspects this will do wonders for Theo Walcott and Jack Wilshire’s foreign language skills. For their footballing skills, I fear the worst. Shame, two good players that probably could do well with another team.

But digging at Arsenal, while inherently warming inside for any football fan (only to be topped by digging at Liverpool, really), is misleading. The fact is that there are about as many teams in the Premier League and Championship that can claim more than 50 per cent British players (let alone English) as there are teeth in the average nine-month-old baby.

Again, this is not necessarily bad in and of itself (although I have pointed out in a previous blog that mediocrity among English players is often obscured by the brilliance of the foreign team mates), but what walked out of the computer screen and slapped me repeatedly across the face was a simple and immediately obvious discrepancy in the figures above…

Let’s have a look at them again…

58 per cent of players in the Premier League are from abroad. 42 per cent are ‘home grown’ (that is, not necessarily English). 245 out of 300 academy players between the ages of 16 and 18 are English – that’s 82 per cent…

There are 20 teams in the Premier League, each (now) with a squad of 25 players. That’s 500 players aged 21 upwards, which means that’s 210 home grown players.

Correct me if I’m wrong, but this means more than two out of three academy players are making it into the Premier League. Now that strikes me as a pretty good success rate. Using these figures, this means that we have something like 172 English players in the Premier League.

Seems to me that the problem is not so much the FA, or the manager, or the Premier League, or the clubs, or the foreign players, or even the academies. All of that seems to be in place. The problem is that England is turning out adequate squad players by the hundreds every two or three years. What they are not churning out is international standard players. It’s just that we’re a bit shit, really.

Is there anyway of nurturing raw talent? I’m thinking it will probably require genetic engineering, but with Britain up in arms today about someone having ‘slaughtered and eaten’ the offspring of a genetically modified cow, I doubt we’ll be going down that road any time soon.

The national team faces Hungary next Wednesday. Oh God! Come on Hungary…