Post by QPR Report on Dec 13, 2008 8:50:49 GMT
David Lacy/The Guardian - The pressure is on, but football must be kept in perspective
Young managers such as Paul Ince and Roy Keane must learn the hard way if they are to prosper in the Premier League
At a time like this, football should guard its tongue. Not so much Joe Kinnear, who is merely an expletive to be deleted, as the game in general and the Premier League in particular. The exaggerated rhetoric which accompanies much of the action in the top division is inappropriate when the country at large faces recession. A Woolworths assistant is not going to spare much thought for the supposed problems of the Baby Bentley brigade.
There is much talk about pressure; pressure on players, managers, coaches and directors. It is an overworked word. Ask those in danger of losing their jobs or their homes. Certainly footballers in the lower divisions are suffering real pressure given the growing number of clubs that face going into administration. But much of the pressure in the Premier League is a product not only of media speculation but the hyperbolic steroids on which the competition has existed since day one of its break with the Football League.
Any pressure in the Premier League stems more from its own high-octane salesmanship than querulous headlines concerning a manager's security after his team has lost a few matches. The newspapers are not responsible for the ever-widening gap in income between the Premier League and the rest, which induces panic in the boardroom around this time of the season if a team are starting to flirt with relegation.
Certainly there is a degree of pressure in football, but it needs to be kept in perspective. Chelsea began the season by setting a brisk pace at the top of the Premier League under their new coach, Luiz Felipe Scolari, but have since lost a bit of momentum and have started to play leapfrog with Liverpool. And having appeared an odds-on bet to reach the knockout stage of the Champions League, they went into Tuesday's encounter with Cluj amid genuine doubts about their ability to make it. So was Scolari under pressure? Not according to Scolari.
"You think there is pressure here?" he scoffed. "This is zero pressure. Pressure was when I was coach of the Brazil national team, because all the people there are coaches." A personal memory can vouch for the truth of these words. Descending into the bowels of the colossal Maracana stadium for the post-match interviews after Brazil had shared an unremarkable goalless draw with Don Revie's England in Rio in 1977, the attention was diverted by what appeared to be an assault by a dozen or so men armed with mini-recorders who were pinning their victim against a wall of the marble hall that passed for the home dressing room. This was the local press getting quotes from the Brazil coach at the time, Cláudio Coutinho. This was pressure.
Scolari may be under pressure to the extent that his employer at Chelsea, Roman Abramovich, wants not merely a winning team but one that entertains. Yet he is unlikely to find himself on the shifting sands near the bottom of the table which have now seen Roy Keane walk out at Sunderland and Paul Ince put on probation at Blackburn. Both have recently complained about media pundits exaggerating the prospect of managers being fired, yet, given the growing habit among struggling clubs of seeking a change in time for the January transfer window, such speculation now goes with the territory.
To some Keane may be a mystery wrapped in an enigma. To others he may still be the figure making a beeline for the dressing room immediately after the final whistle blew on Brian Clough's last home game as manager of Nottingham Forest on a sunny May afternoon in 1993. Forest had just been relegated from the top flight but most people in the City Ground wanted to stay on to say goodbye to Cloughie. Keane, on the other hand, seemed to want to leave the scene of failure as swiftly as he could.
Players, not the press, put pressure on managers. The Sunderland who, post-Keane, came within seconds of holding Manchester United at Old Trafford were not the Sunderland who surrendered 4–1 at home to Bolton, a defeat that had the Irishman going on about always looking at the man in the mirror, a bit like Robert De Niro in Taxi Driver. Maybe Keane should have sought advice from his dog, who presumably would have recommended putting the team on Winalot.
Ince may feel people are having a go at him. Wrong, the Premier League table is having a go at him. With experience, and probably a few more clubs, he will learn to live with it.
www.guardian.co.uk/sport/blog/2008/dec/12/luiz-felipe-scolari-paul-ince-roy-keane
TELEGRAPH - Premier League player power rife in modern game
Dimitar Berbatov's Achilles tendon injury may or may not relent in time to allow him to make a playing return to White Hart Lane with Manchester United, but the scars left by his contentious departure from Tottenham Hotspur will take longer to heal.
By John Ley and Paul Kelso
While Spurs’ supporters may be divided between those fearful of the damage a fit Berbatov could do to their resurgent team and others desperate for a chance to heap derision on his head, chairman Daniel Levy is unlikely to relish his visit either way.
The Bulgarian’s transfer was the most protracted and controversial of the summer. Relations between Old Trafford and White Hart Lane soured, and the atmosphere in the directors’ box might be as frosty as that on the pitch.
United’s pursuit of Berbatov began in the summer of 2007, when Tottenham rejected a £25 million offer. The response was initially grumpy, but gave way to Berbatov’s best season in England, as he scored 27 goals with an elan that made his departure to a Champions League club a near certainty.
Despite United’s long-term interest, come the summer Levy was incensed at what he saw as blatant “tapping-up” of his prized asset. Having lost today’s other returning old boy, Michael Carrick, to Old Trafford two years earlier he was desperate to hang on to his best players and stave off the impression that Tottenham had become a selling club.
Levy filed an official complaint to the Premier League, indignantly accusing Sir Alex Ferguson of deliberately destabilising his player. Liverpool were also the subject of a complaint for their pursuit of Robbie Keane.
While neither complaint was ultimately pursued – combined transfer fees of £51 million assured Tottenham’s silence on both – Berbatov was certainly distracted. Levy claimed earlier this year that he refused to play in two matches, one of them against Chelsea, and ultimately the club had no choice but to sell him.
The departure of their first-choice strikers was a major factor in the club’s dire start to the season, but Harry Redknapp, who inherited the denuded squad in October, believes that Levy had little choice but to let the players go.
With the January transfer window in which the Spurs manager is likely to be active fast approaching, he conceded yesterday that tapping-up was an inevitable part of the game.
“It does happen all the time. Everybody has got the ear of a chairman, a chief executive or a director of football,” Redknapp said. “Agents are talking to players direct, so it’s become more and more difficult. When they want to go, the players have got so much power. I don’t think there’s a lot you can do about it.
“What do you do if somebody walks in here every morning with the hump? If he’s not happy and he doesn’t want to be here, what do you do? You know it’s no good for the team, it’s about team spirit and if you have people like that within your team, then you’re better off without them. You have to make sure you get the right price and Tottenham did that with Berbatov. In the end, it was probably a good deal for everybody. It was good money for Tottenham and United got a top player. He didn’t seem the type you’d keep if he wasn’t happy.”
The January window is likely to throw up further examples of the dark art of tapping, but despite being forbidden by Premier League rules there is no likelihood of it stopping. Rules state that agents, managers, coaches and clubs cannot approach a player or coach without gaining permission from their club, but they are universally ignored. Bluntly, everyone is at it.
Levy may have been indignant, but no more than Sevilla when they discovered Juande Ramos was directly approached by Levy without their permission. Unless clubs desist from destabilising the players they want they will find little sympathy when the same happens to them.
Despite regular accusations of illegal approaches only one major case has been fully prosecuted, that of Ashley Cole and his hugely controversial transfer from Arsenal to Chelsea.
www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/football/leagues/premierleague/tottenham/3727123/Premier-League-player-power-rife-in-modern-game.html
Young managers such as Paul Ince and Roy Keane must learn the hard way if they are to prosper in the Premier League
At a time like this, football should guard its tongue. Not so much Joe Kinnear, who is merely an expletive to be deleted, as the game in general and the Premier League in particular. The exaggerated rhetoric which accompanies much of the action in the top division is inappropriate when the country at large faces recession. A Woolworths assistant is not going to spare much thought for the supposed problems of the Baby Bentley brigade.
There is much talk about pressure; pressure on players, managers, coaches and directors. It is an overworked word. Ask those in danger of losing their jobs or their homes. Certainly footballers in the lower divisions are suffering real pressure given the growing number of clubs that face going into administration. But much of the pressure in the Premier League is a product not only of media speculation but the hyperbolic steroids on which the competition has existed since day one of its break with the Football League.
Any pressure in the Premier League stems more from its own high-octane salesmanship than querulous headlines concerning a manager's security after his team has lost a few matches. The newspapers are not responsible for the ever-widening gap in income between the Premier League and the rest, which induces panic in the boardroom around this time of the season if a team are starting to flirt with relegation.
Certainly there is a degree of pressure in football, but it needs to be kept in perspective. Chelsea began the season by setting a brisk pace at the top of the Premier League under their new coach, Luiz Felipe Scolari, but have since lost a bit of momentum and have started to play leapfrog with Liverpool. And having appeared an odds-on bet to reach the knockout stage of the Champions League, they went into Tuesday's encounter with Cluj amid genuine doubts about their ability to make it. So was Scolari under pressure? Not according to Scolari.
"You think there is pressure here?" he scoffed. "This is zero pressure. Pressure was when I was coach of the Brazil national team, because all the people there are coaches." A personal memory can vouch for the truth of these words. Descending into the bowels of the colossal Maracana stadium for the post-match interviews after Brazil had shared an unremarkable goalless draw with Don Revie's England in Rio in 1977, the attention was diverted by what appeared to be an assault by a dozen or so men armed with mini-recorders who were pinning their victim against a wall of the marble hall that passed for the home dressing room. This was the local press getting quotes from the Brazil coach at the time, Cláudio Coutinho. This was pressure.
Scolari may be under pressure to the extent that his employer at Chelsea, Roman Abramovich, wants not merely a winning team but one that entertains. Yet he is unlikely to find himself on the shifting sands near the bottom of the table which have now seen Roy Keane walk out at Sunderland and Paul Ince put on probation at Blackburn. Both have recently complained about media pundits exaggerating the prospect of managers being fired, yet, given the growing habit among struggling clubs of seeking a change in time for the January transfer window, such speculation now goes with the territory.
To some Keane may be a mystery wrapped in an enigma. To others he may still be the figure making a beeline for the dressing room immediately after the final whistle blew on Brian Clough's last home game as manager of Nottingham Forest on a sunny May afternoon in 1993. Forest had just been relegated from the top flight but most people in the City Ground wanted to stay on to say goodbye to Cloughie. Keane, on the other hand, seemed to want to leave the scene of failure as swiftly as he could.
Players, not the press, put pressure on managers. The Sunderland who, post-Keane, came within seconds of holding Manchester United at Old Trafford were not the Sunderland who surrendered 4–1 at home to Bolton, a defeat that had the Irishman going on about always looking at the man in the mirror, a bit like Robert De Niro in Taxi Driver. Maybe Keane should have sought advice from his dog, who presumably would have recommended putting the team on Winalot.
Ince may feel people are having a go at him. Wrong, the Premier League table is having a go at him. With experience, and probably a few more clubs, he will learn to live with it.
www.guardian.co.uk/sport/blog/2008/dec/12/luiz-felipe-scolari-paul-ince-roy-keane
TELEGRAPH - Premier League player power rife in modern game
Dimitar Berbatov's Achilles tendon injury may or may not relent in time to allow him to make a playing return to White Hart Lane with Manchester United, but the scars left by his contentious departure from Tottenham Hotspur will take longer to heal.
By John Ley and Paul Kelso
While Spurs’ supporters may be divided between those fearful of the damage a fit Berbatov could do to their resurgent team and others desperate for a chance to heap derision on his head, chairman Daniel Levy is unlikely to relish his visit either way.
The Bulgarian’s transfer was the most protracted and controversial of the summer. Relations between Old Trafford and White Hart Lane soured, and the atmosphere in the directors’ box might be as frosty as that on the pitch.
United’s pursuit of Berbatov began in the summer of 2007, when Tottenham rejected a £25 million offer. The response was initially grumpy, but gave way to Berbatov’s best season in England, as he scored 27 goals with an elan that made his departure to a Champions League club a near certainty.
Despite United’s long-term interest, come the summer Levy was incensed at what he saw as blatant “tapping-up” of his prized asset. Having lost today’s other returning old boy, Michael Carrick, to Old Trafford two years earlier he was desperate to hang on to his best players and stave off the impression that Tottenham had become a selling club.
Levy filed an official complaint to the Premier League, indignantly accusing Sir Alex Ferguson of deliberately destabilising his player. Liverpool were also the subject of a complaint for their pursuit of Robbie Keane.
While neither complaint was ultimately pursued – combined transfer fees of £51 million assured Tottenham’s silence on both – Berbatov was certainly distracted. Levy claimed earlier this year that he refused to play in two matches, one of them against Chelsea, and ultimately the club had no choice but to sell him.
The departure of their first-choice strikers was a major factor in the club’s dire start to the season, but Harry Redknapp, who inherited the denuded squad in October, believes that Levy had little choice but to let the players go.
With the January transfer window in which the Spurs manager is likely to be active fast approaching, he conceded yesterday that tapping-up was an inevitable part of the game.
“It does happen all the time. Everybody has got the ear of a chairman, a chief executive or a director of football,” Redknapp said. “Agents are talking to players direct, so it’s become more and more difficult. When they want to go, the players have got so much power. I don’t think there’s a lot you can do about it.
“What do you do if somebody walks in here every morning with the hump? If he’s not happy and he doesn’t want to be here, what do you do? You know it’s no good for the team, it’s about team spirit and if you have people like that within your team, then you’re better off without them. You have to make sure you get the right price and Tottenham did that with Berbatov. In the end, it was probably a good deal for everybody. It was good money for Tottenham and United got a top player. He didn’t seem the type you’d keep if he wasn’t happy.”
The January window is likely to throw up further examples of the dark art of tapping, but despite being forbidden by Premier League rules there is no likelihood of it stopping. Rules state that agents, managers, coaches and clubs cannot approach a player or coach without gaining permission from their club, but they are universally ignored. Bluntly, everyone is at it.
Levy may have been indignant, but no more than Sevilla when they discovered Juande Ramos was directly approached by Levy without their permission. Unless clubs desist from destabilising the players they want they will find little sympathy when the same happens to them.
Despite regular accusations of illegal approaches only one major case has been fully prosecuted, that of Ashley Cole and his hugely controversial transfer from Arsenal to Chelsea.
www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/football/leagues/premierleague/tottenham/3727123/Premier-League-player-power-rife-in-modern-game.html