Premier League Nonsense

It was an interesting Merseyside Derby last night, not least because of the two managers involved. Both gritty Glaswegians, nothing like a stereotype to get the ball rolling.

Everton’s David Moyes was celebrating his 10 years with Everton. A decade that has seen the club win absolutely nothing.

The mere fact that his anniversary should rate a mention is a symptom of the modern game; the ink has barely dried on Andre Villas Boas’ dismissal from Chelsea where he lasted a mere nine months, a fraction of Moyes’ 120.

That decade though has seen unprecedented change in the English football landscape and one of the victims has been patience. Clubs have hired and fired managers with monotonous regularity, often caving in to fan pressure as we recently saw with Mick McCarthy at Wolves.

In the new Premier League where everything is driven by money the mere fact that Moyes has kept Everton in the top flight is a worthy achievement in itself. The odd flirt with relegation has been tempered with European runs and the odd cup final and it is credit to the Everton faithful that they have not been beating down the chairman’s door demanding Moyes’ ouster as we witnessed at Wolves and the rumblings of at Arsenal.

Instead Moyes has been allowed to get on with the job, working assiduously away from the headlines which may of course have helped. The relatively straitened circumstances at Goodison mean that the days of smashing the transfer fee record to sign strikers, like they did with Bob Latchford back in the 1970s, are a distant dream and Moyes has cuit his cloth accordingly, looking round the smaller teams and the lower leagues for his players. Tim Cahill, Leighton Baines and Phil Jagielka are cases in point.

Success then for Everton is merely staying in the top half of the top flight.

Expectations are somewhat loftier across Stanley Park where Liverpool recently won the Carling Cup. Kenny Dalglish recently came out and said points are not the only signs of success at a football club. Now lest we forget, Dalglish is the manager of the football club, not the Marketing Manager or the Chief Executive Officer. He is fully responsible for what happens on the playing field.

You can imagine the fuss managers would kick up if they perceived directors getting involved on the playing side of things! There would be uproar and we’d see a stern faced manager in training kit telling TV cameras the suits should stay in theboardroom.

And they’d be right of course. God knows where Kenny thought he should start commenting on Liverpool’s business model or indeed, in these days of spin, who he was addressing his comments at, By suggesting that a multi million dollar kit deal was a sign of success, Kenny just managed to belittle the whole playing squad in one nonsense sentence.

As I type this the red half of Merseyside will be out on the town celebrating Stevie G’s hat trick. A new kit supplier? Not a chance. When Gerrard does hag up his boots do you think he’ll tell his grand children about the time Liverpool signed a deal to be supplied shirts by a company no one has heard of? Course he bloody won’t. do you think Liverpool fans went home after losing 2-1 to Arsenal in the last minute and writing blogs saying ‘yes we lost but look which logo we will have on our new shirt next season, everything’s good.’

Mentioning Arsenal segues nicely into the third definition of success. Arsene Wenger has been somewhat dismissive of domestic cup competitions saying that finishing in the top four is as good as winning a cup; it brings Champions League football. Maybe, but seriously, who cares about that when you can do a victory jig at Wembley?

The reality is that clubs need the cash that comes from the Champions League or kit sponsorship. But there is a whole team working behind the scenes to make that happen. And that won’t happen unless the manager brings success on the field. Managers becoming mouthpieces of plcs or the owners shouldn’t just parrot their masters.

As football fans we know the realities of life. We don’t need to be lectured by people who earn sums we can only dream of. One of football’s joys is that we can all dream, whether we support Arsenal, Liverpool or Rochdale. It is our dreams that bring us back week in, week out. Don’t let reality spoil it.

# posted by Me @ 4:24 PM