A post on the Leazes Terrace NUFC website on Who’s to Blame for the poor 2012/13 season
The Blame Game
Posted by markbrophy on May 23, 2013
http://markbrophy.wordpress.com/2013/05/23/the-blame-game/
Intent and Innocence
A post for the Leazes Terrace NUFC website on the reaction to Callum McManaman’s tackle on Massadio Haidara
Posted by markbrophy on May 23, 2013
http://markbrophy.wordpress.com/2013/05/23/intent-and-innocence/
Captain Colo – A Stay of Execution?
A post for the Leazes Terrace NUFC website on the chances of Fabriccio Coloccini leaving in the summer
Posted by markbrophy on May 23, 2013
http://markbrophy.wordpress.com/2013/05/23/captain-colo-a-stay-of-execution/
Thin Pickings – The NUFC Striker Shortage
A post for the NUFC website Leazes Terrace about the possibility of ending up with Nile Ranger and Xisco as their only available strikers
Posted by markbrophy on May 23, 2013
http://markbrophy.wordpress.com/2013/05/23/thin-pickings-the-nufc-striker-shortage/
Killing Honour – Lessons from the Managerial Merry Go Round
A post on the Leazes Terrace NUFC website
Posted by markbrophy on May 23, 2013
http://markbrophy.wordpress.com/2013/05/23/killing-honour-lessons-from-the-managerial-merry-go-round/
Young Hearts Run Free – True Faith Magazine
How many people thought 15 years ago that our only hope of ever challenging at the top again would be via a group of exceptionally talented youth team graduates coming through into the first team together? The only thing Newcastle have ever done consistently with their youth programme is to pay it lip service. But the truth remains that in this age of petrodollar funded clubs, it is no longer possible to challenge the top clubs by outbidding them. Indeed, recent events tell us Newcastle can’t compete financially with QPR never mind Man City.
Talk has always been cheap when it comes to investing in youth. Despite calling for a first team consisting of 11 locals, John Hall oversaw cutting off the route of those locals from youth to first team when the club stopped bothering with the reserves. For Hall and the Geordie nation in the 90s, read Mike Ashley’s development squad today. The expressed aim of acquiring the best young talent possible and developing them into top-class players is hard to argue with. So how have they been doing recently?
Of the current crop none look certainties to become fixtures in the side. Inman & Campbell have looked impressive at reserve level without breaking through. Ferguson and Sammy Ameobi make regular first team cameos without managing to grab their opportunity and become fixtures in the team. However ‘highly rated’ the rest are, if they’re behind that lot then they are nowhere near any first string pitch time. There is of course still time for every one of them to develop, but as it stands the all-conquering generation is nowhere to be seen. As an aside, when was the last time anyone improved after coming to Newcastle? Our coaching staff and setup must be questioned.
No youth team graduate has broken through to be a first choice in the first team for some time. If Tim Krul doesn’t count, who signed at age 17, we have to go back to Andy Carroll and then Stephen Taylor. Fraser Forster, who ended up bringing money into the club, could be deemed to be an Academy success even if he never made a first-team spot his own. If you widen the criteria for Academy success to include those bought as late teenagers, Charles N’Zogbia can undoubtedly be counted as a success. Such a choice of criteria matches what we know of current club strategy, where slightly scattergun effort is made to sign 17 & 18 year olds who may or may not develop into players who grace the first team.
Since Mike Ashley bought the club,there’s been a very clear policy of concentrating on scouting and buying players in their mid to late teens rather than trying to corner the market in local lads. Tozer, Baheng, Kadar, Zamblera, Soderberg, Edmundsson, Moyo, Adjei, Vuckic, Abeid, Good, Satko and Bigimirana have all been brought in to improve the standard of up-and-coming players. Whether or not they’ve done that, the intention to get players developing until they are ready for the first-team even as a squad player has largely proven fruitless. Many aren’t even at the club any more. Indeed, after the recent Brighton defeat, Alan Pardew as good as admitted that the current development squad may need a clearout. So the Ashley template for youth has been no more successful than anything else tried at the club in the last 20 years, including not trying at all.
Which all makes the apparent failure to achieve Category 1 status in the new Premier League approved Elite Player Performance Plan the more puzzling. As clubs have been awarded this top level status for their academies they have announced the fact and Newcastle have yet to do so. This status gives a club the right to sign youngsters from anywhere in the country, and coupled with the low fixed transfer fees which are also part of the system, gives that club the ability to cherry-pick the best youngsters including those attached to other clubs’ academies. Newcastle’s failure to achieve this status would seem to be down to one or both of two important criteria for an academy to achieve Category 1: a minimum full-time staff of 18 and a yearly budget of £2.5m.
Could it be that Mike Ashley has done the sums and decided that buying a few foreign kids and muddling on as before is cheaper than the infrastructure investment required to achieve Category 1? In effect he would be gambling the odd one of these teenage signings come good anyway rather than provide them with the best environment in which to develop and the best one for them to succeed in. If the investment in the academy was being made alongside the purchase of well-scouted youth team players we could all be confident that everything that could be done was being done. That isn’t the case, and the suspicion is that the gambler has struck again and derailed our main real potential source of improvement. We have good reason to be wary of Ashley’s gambles which usually result in improved finances and decreased capability on the pitch.
All the spending and infrastructure possible can never guarantee success. Youth coaching is such a famously difficult trick to pull off that we can all think of rare instances when a club gains an advantage by it. Failing to do it guarantees failure however, losing the war for the want of a horseshoe-nail.
Posted by markbrophy on May 21, 2013
http://markbrophy.wordpress.com/2013/05/21/young-hearts-run-free-true-faith-magazine/
Blunted Diamond – True Faith 100
What a difference a summer makes. After signing for Newcastle in the January 2012 transfer window, Cisse embarked on an unprecedented scoring run of 13 goals in 14 games before the season’s end. The signing had been a classic example of when Mike Ashley’s technique in the transfer market succeeds. There had been rumours of interest the previous summer but the price then had been too much. Then, without any rumours having surfaced in the media, a situation the local press pack will privately inform you is down to there being no relationship whatsoever between journalists and those at the club, Cisse was signed for roughly half the price that had been circulated in the summer. His sensational form thereafter, including scoring the BBC’s Goal of the Season at Chelsea, was convincing proof that here was a player who could take the club to the next level. His form was a major factor in the club qualifying for the Europa League. Since the new season began however, he’s been a shadow of the player who’d taken the league by storm, and the goals haven’t even looked like coming, only managing 2 in his first 12 league games.
What’s gone wrong? Maybe his first months at the club were a fluke. He could have been found out by Premier League defences unfamiliar with him last year. Have Newcastle started using him a different way to last season? Perhaps he’s just out of form. Or it might just be that he’s been unable to ride out a general malaise.
When he arrived he was no unknown quantity, or any kind of gamble. He’d consistently performed in the Bundesliga for Freiburg, a middle-table side, over a couple of seasons. The vein of form he struck on arrival was merely a continuation of that he’d been enjoying in Germany. If anything’s a fluke it’s his form at the start of this season, not that at the end of last.
Has he been found out then, or just lost form? I find it difficult to believe that defenders have seen a way of blotting out his threat. Not just one set of defenders but every set Newcastle have come up against so far have seen the same flaw, worked out a way to combat it and managed to implement it perfectly? I don’t think so. Cisse was no tap-in merchant last season. Goals from through balls, crosses, outrageous long-range efforts, composed use of time and instinctive first-time finishes all featured. Each different string to his bow makes him that bit more difficult to shut out. Were his game all about pace behind the defence, the opposition could play a deep line. If it was aerial prowess alone that brought his success, teams could attempt to cut off the supply from the flanks or stop him getting a run at crosses. Cisse is a natural finisher and to combat that other teams would have to prevent him getting the ball anywhere near the goal, near impossible to do.
As for his form, the best thing that could be said for his performances so far this season would be that he’s been anonymous. Barely noticeable in some games, in mitigation is that his game is all about goals. When he’s not scoring he’s not creating chances for others, or running defences ragged. How many games last season would you have said he did very little apart from score his then customary goal?
The orthodox view of Newcastle’s problems is that Alan Pardew has ditched the 4-3-3 system he hit upon soon after the purchase of Cisse which accommodated his best players, in favour of a 4-4-2 to allow Demba Ba to play in his favoured role through the middle along with Cisse. I’ve heard it said that Newcastle only played a 4-3-3 on four occasions last season, but I don’t think that stat, if it is accurate, takes account of the number of times Pardew switched formations during a game. Maybe Newcastle didn’t start that way as often as people think, but they did finish games as popularly imagined. That way brought Hatem Ben Arfa, Newcastle’s most creative player, into games higher up the pitch on the right than a 4-4-2 commonly allowed. Ba was able to contribute effectively from the left without managing to keep up his own goalscoring record, and a central midfield 3 of Tiote, Cabaye and Jonas prospered against sides who didn’t match them numerically. It’s not that Cisse & Ba can’t play together as a pair necessarily though they’re not always selected together up front for Senegal. It’s more that playing with a front 3 suited Newcastle’s personnel generally last season. That being said, Newcastle have been just as poor in either formation this season, so the solution’s not as simple as a tactical one.
The truth of the matter is that the team as a whole hasn’t pulled up any trees so far this term. Injuries, extra games, less rest between matches, all seem to have contributed to the loss of form of pretty much every one of Newcastle’s top players. To single out Cisse seems churlish when Cabaye’s through balls to him have been largely absent, when Tiote’s given the ball away by habit and Coloccini’s regressed on occasion to his 08/09 form. We rely on them too much, especially when we miss each’s best form so badly. Squad strengthening seems the only solution.
Posted by markbrophy on May 21, 2013
http://markbrophy.wordpress.com/2013/05/21/blunted-diamond-true-faith-100/
Green Unpleasant Land 5: Top Class
This weekend Bradford City, complete with on-loan Newcastle youngster Curtis Good, took on Swansea in the League Cup final at Wembley Stadium. A neutral spectator gorged on no-longer-special showdowns between elite Premier League clubs, surely felt a frisson of excitement at seeing a final contested by teams that are not tainted by the kind of expectation which sees Arsenal view 8 years without a trophy during 15 consecutive years of Champions League qualification as unacceptable failure for instance. Neither set of fans would have been so blasé as to fail to celebrate a victory they see as routine, and Bradford were even able to celebrate the pride in their achievement in reaching the final despite a heavy defeat.
Fans of habitually successful clubs, bored by and yet insistent upon a constant stream of triumphs, perhaps may feel envy towards those experiencing winning a major trophy for the first time in their lives. They will never feel that thrill again. From the point of view of supporters of the clubs who travelled to the final this weekend, it would be difficult to be happier or more excited. Is there a case to be made for the experience of being a lower-league football fan, or at least of being a fan of a less-fashionable club, rather than being a success-hoovering constantly-demanding big 4 follower?
Imagine the benefits, if you need to imagine them that is. Lower ticket prices, standing areas. The lower value of the club increases the chance of fans’ groups owning a significant chunk of it. The chances of sharing a terrace with a johnny-come-lately glory hunter is dramatically reduced by the sheer unlikelihood of ever tasting the kind of glory they crave. That’s not to say there’s no glory in it. Victory tastes just as sweet at whatever level you play, and a minor achievement such as reaching your divisional playoffs or a good run in the Football League Trophy ( currently sponsored by Johnstone’s Paint and about to be contested by Crewe and Southend) is relatively speaking as impressive as a Champions League spot for a top-level outfit. The quality of the football itself can be just as impressive too. Players of similar ability gravitate to the level they are most suited to and so at all levels the usual situation is of opposing teams and players cancelling each other out. That means good play is just as difficult, and so also just as possible at all levels.
In terms of fans’ enjoyment then, there’s no difference between the top level and the rest. The reason there’s so much clamour about the importance of gaining Premier League status and then retaining it, is as we all know, money. That’s money in the pockets of owners, the people with power, who make the decisions about the game. Fans’ enjoyment, or even the general interests of fans, is neither here nor there in the thinking of these people. Look at the recent response to the Parliamentary Culture, Media and Sport select committee’s report into the game. The report highlighted the need for the FA to act as the game’s regulator, but the Premier League expressed the view that it regarded the FA merely as an ‘association of interests’. The difference is important. The model favoured by the Premier League involves the FA representing the views of ‘shareholders’ as they put it, primarily the Premier League itself, rather than leading them.
Indeed, the FA’s response was to propose giving up any say on issues such as the distribution of funds throughout the game and ticket prices. Far from reasserting some control over the game the FA were offering to relinquish it once and for all. The regulations approved soon afterwards based loosely on UEFA’s Financial Fair Play rules differ from them too in important ways. Clubs are allowed to make a much bigger loss per year than UEFA’s rules for their competitions allow, though not to spend on the scale that Manchester City have been doing, so long as their owner guarantees the funds. Most tellingly though, clubs aren’t allowed to increase players’ wages significantly unless the funds for that come from increased ticket or commercial income. In short, fans are to fund wage escalation while the owners corral the £5bn or so on the way from the latest TV deal. Owners are allowed to use their wealth to maintain their position should they need to, but no one else is allowed to come in and spend the way they did to leapfrog to the top. This plan is the very definition of a closed shop in the process of being established. Let’s hope that fans of less-fashionable clubs appreciate their position within the game’s hierarchy because their ability to change it is reduced with each passing month.
Posted by markbrophy on May 21, 2013
http://markbrophy.wordpress.com/2013/05/21/green-unpleasant-land-5-top-class/
Green Unpleasant Land 4: Show Pointless Posturing the Red Card
Rio Ferdinand’s refusal to wear a Kick It Out t-shirt while warming up for Manchester United’s game against Stoke this weekend has garnered predictable responses, some of them curious. Alex Ferguson had announced before the game that all his players would be wearing the t-shirts in response to Jason Roberts refusing to do so for Reading’s game against Liverpool, commenting that he didn’t think Kick It Out had been strong enough in the fight against racism with reference to the events of the past year. Both John Terry and Luis Suarez have been publicly supported by their clubs both before and after being found guilty by the FA of racially abusing opponents. A number of players including Ferdinand’s brother Anton,the victim of the Terry incident, also refused to don the t-shirts before the QPR-Everton match.
Both the PFA’s Gordon Taylor and ex-player Viv Anderson were critical of Ferdinand’s stance. Taylor made the point that Ferdinand was misguided in aiming his displeasure at the campaign, which as a pressure group rather than a governing body has no authority to impose solutions. Anderson felt that players have a duty to show a united front, and that Ferdinand should have expressed his reservations through the PFA, who back the campaign. He also stated that Ferdinand’s manager should be able to expect his players to do as they are told on such matters.
Ferguson clearly agrees with Anderson. Before the game he’d said in reference to Roberts that unless all players showed their support, it sent out the wrong message. Then in a post-match interview he claimed to have been embarrassed by Ferdinand, and that the matter would be dealt with. Indeed, several newspapers have claimed that Ferdinand is set to be fined £220,000, though that figure seems plucked out of the air deliberately to match the FA’s fine of Terry so as to help frame the story in terms of equivalent fines for unequal misdeeds.
There are a number of issues here. The first is the rights of the individual. I may be doing a disservice to him, but I’d never considered Tony Pulis to be a natural defender of liberal values. Yet he was one of the few pointing out that the players are perfectly free to make their own decisions on whether to take part. If they don’t feel able to support something which on face value is so clearly worthwhile then something has to be wrong with it. It’s also worth remembering that a campaign which attempts to display a common moral response among players is worth precisely nothing if their participation is compulsory, enforced by club sanction.
Arsene Wenger made the excellent point that if black players desert Kick It Out the campaign will cease to be credible. The players involved appear to feel that the campaign’s credibility has already been damaged, laudable though its aims are. When clubs back their employees in such cases in the face of convincing evidence against them, when their colleagues back them with their own public t-shirt display of solidarity, and the FA impose punishment on them which fails to give the message that their actions will not be tolerated, perhaps disquiet towards the campaign can better be understood. This isn’t of course the fault of the campaign itself, it’s that the reality doesn’t match the principle of it.
The effect of the solidarity of everyone wearing anti-racism t-shirts becomes one of insincerity and posturing, when some of those involved are the unapologetic protagonists of the past year. By wearing the t-shirts they are projecting a wish to remove racism from football, while being unwilling to remove racist abuse from their own speech. That’s not solidarity, it’s brushing the issue under the carpet.
Posted by markbrophy on May 21, 2013
http://markbrophy.wordpress.com/2013/05/21/green-unpleasant-land-4-show-pointless-posturing-the-red-card/
Green Unpleasant Land 3: Football In The Gutter
Three football stories to hit the news this week made a disturbing snapshot of the state of the British game. Each exposes different effects of untrammelled finance on a game which had rules restricting dividend payments to shareholders as recently as the late 1990s, though those rules had by then long been bypassed by the use of holding companies not restricted by FA rules.
The crash to earth of Glasgow Rangers was caused by the efforts of those in charge to avoid taxation on player wages. An illegal trust scheme was set up into which wages were paid for this purpose. These payments were concealed from the Scottish FA in the declarations of contractual payments they were obliged to make. Players were employed who could not have been afforded by the club if their tax obligations had been fulfilled. During the time this was going on, 15 domestic trophies were won by the club. Runners-up who paid their taxes were unfairly denied the chance of victory. The assets of the club were sold to a new company which carries on playing football though relegated to Division 3, while the original company is about to be placed in the hands of liquidators and cease to exist. The administrators of the ‘oldco’ this week reported the claims of HMRC to total over £94m. In times such as these, during a financial crisis in which every penny of government revenue must be made to count, when companies such as Vodafone are rightly lambasted for paying virtually no tax under completely legal agreements with HMRC, why should football escape its responsibilities? Some believe that Rangers’ debt has been paid via their relegations, though those demotions will almost certainly be overcome by 3 straight promotions. The players and agents involved were aware of the scam and participated freely. It seems only fair that prosecutions for tax evasion should follow, both of those in charge and those who benefited.
In an interview with BBC News, former owner of Portsmouth FC Balram Chainrai criticised the Pompey Supporters Trust’s bid to buy the club from administrators as lacking the experience and money of his own company’s rival bid. It appears that the administrators may agree with him, as the Trust’s contacts with them have dried up. The experience which Chainrai sees as so valuable consists of already having owned the club twice, and having allegedly also controlled taking the club into administration twice. Should these allegations be proved he will be barred from purchasing Pompey or anyone else under FA rules. However his continued hovering around the club signifies well the ability of parasites to make money by taking control of football club assets (he still owns a mortgage on Fratton Park) and relieving themselves of responsibilty for company debt by taking advantage of Company administration law.
Finally, in his own words, Steve Kean has been forced to resign as manager of Blackburn Rovers. Whether he meant that his position had been made untenable by fans who refused to back him, or owners who did the same, it is those owners whose actions have caused the situation which Rovers find themselves in. Having bought the club from a Trust set up by previous owner Jack Walker, new long-distance owners Venkys appointed agent Jerome Anderson as football advisor. Anderson’s advice was apparently to sack Sam Allardyce ( not in itself necessarily such a heinous act ), sign several players who also happened to be clients of his, including his own son, and appoint another client, Kean, as manager. Amid eventually vain struggles against relegation despite proclaiming the top four as their goal, the previously-unknown in this country Shebby Singh was appointed as an advisor. Though Blackburn made a solid start to their Championship campaign following encouraging summer signings, Singh undermined Kean by repeatedly discussing his sacking, which inevitably came to pass. The shambles can be placed squarely at the door of rich people whose influence is matched only by their arrogance and ignorance. They symbolise the kind of people attracted to invest in football these days, though often it is investment in name only, their money used to buy control rather than provide a club with operating funds. They recognise a money-making opportunity and a bandwagon to mount without also possessing the humility to acknowledge their need for advice from people who are both qualified to give it and have no conflict of interest in doing so.
Finance, in the form of profit-seeking unscrupulous owners, has truly put football into the gutter. In contrast to Oscar Wilde though, the game isn’t looking up at the stars but buried face-down in the mud, with no hope of relief and certainly no immediate prospect of it. The concept of Financial Fair Play with its wage caps and increased levels of club governance will help reduce the effects of mismanagement in some cases, but only the removal of these people from football once and for all can save it.
Posted by markbrophy on May 21, 2013
http://markbrophy.wordpress.com/2013/05/21/green-unpleasant-land-3-football-in-the-gutter/
