Premier League Nonsense

The Premier League is back and the warm fuzzy glow engendered by such a positive Olympics has been replaced by the harsh reality of people doing a job for the cold hard cash that will see them through their retirement.

Hopes that the humility and dignity showed by Team GB’s Olympic heroes would rub off on football’s seasoned old pros were dashed on the opening day as football returned giving notice that as far as it was concerned it was business as usual and nothing had changed.

Arsenal had all the possession against a defensive minded Sunderland but still failed to break down the visitors leaving many to bemoan the loss of a certain Robin van Persie who had signed for Manchester United a few days earlier. Surely, the masses opined, the Dutchman would have scored. Ergo, this train of thought goes, without the striker who netted 30 times in the Premier League last season, Arsenal will struggle this season despite the promise shown by Santi Corzola and the experienced duo Olivier Giroud and Lukas Podolski who were brought in earlier in the summer.

Obviously we cannot expect a better debate in football.

Everton then went and beat Manchester United in their opening game leaving Sir Alex Ferguson moaning after the game that the home crowd intimidate the match officials; something he, as a knight of the realm, would ever contemplate doing.

Successful managers are deemed to be ‘winners’ and we give them all sorts of leeway we would not offer to lesser mortals. Rather than holding his hands up and saying United were beaten by the better team, Fergie preferred to gripe about the officials and Everton’s style of play.

The perceived wisdom of this approach is that the defeated manager is being seen as not slating his players in public. Implicit in this scenario is the idea that these players, most earning more in a week than the rest of us earn in a couple of years, do not take nicely to being criticized, that they need to be protected from the blame game that usually surrounds most defeats.

Maybe that is how it is with the modern player. Millionaires before their 21^st birthday, they are used to getting their way and if they feel slighted in any way then all they have to do is tip off their agent or pet journalist and a whole heap of negativity will come crashing down on the club and, by extension, the manager. So the clubs and the media pander to them.

Which takes us nicely to a certain Emmanuel Adebayor. The Togolese striker was bought to England by Arsenal and his career has followed a similar pattern ever since. Work hard, get a few goals, get the fans on your side then play up.

It says it all that only one club, Tottenham Hotspur, showed any interest in him and even then Manchester City are having to subsidise his salary for the next couple of years after Tottenham refused to break their wage structure and the player, short of suitors, refused to moderate his own demands.

Another player reluctant to take note of the new reality brought about by the economic crunch is Michael Owen. Formerly a teenage prodigy with Liverpool and England, Owen has been hampered by injuries for a few seasons now and was released by Manchester United at the end of last season having struggled in anything beyond the Carling Cup.

Shorn of his pace, Owen has become just another player looking for a club. He no longer brings much to the table yet, like Adebayor, considers himself a top of the range player with a salary to match. Rumours that Stoke City are interested were followed by rumours that Owen wanted a similar salary to the one he was earning at United.

It is a shame that on a weekend when Swansea City and Fulham both hit five playing stylish football and sat, albeit temporarily, on top of the heap, the headlines are being hogged by the usual negativity.

But we still  love it!