The Outsiders' Edge

(I’m extremely excited to post the first entry from our London correspondent, the mysterious Ballz. He will be our EPL man in the stands and our (White Man) in Hammersmith Palais)

So, the 2009/2010 Premiership season is all of four games old, but already the drama has started. I don’t think that terms such as ‘ease into it’ or ‘start slow’ are really a part of the league’s lexicon, and now I have the glamorous task of trying to round it all up. As I have (for now…) the blessing to do this in any means possible, I choose the medium of a top 10 list. It was that or a swim suit contest, which is universally popular.

I will now list, rank, discuss and generally dissect the stories from 10^th to first, with ten of course being the least important. First though, if I dare, a vaguely serious point. I know, I know…. but its only one paragraph. Suck it up.

Looking over the list, it appears that this season the Premier League is being driven more than ever by one factor – Money. It used to be that a team would throw their effort at a strong youth system and spend money to strengthen the squad, or bring in that one key player. Manchester United’s sheer dominance of the Premiership era is built off the back bone of their terrific youth team that produced The Brothers Neville, Beckham, Giggs, Butt and Scholes. However, that was some ago now. These days teams will part ways with their best young players for big fees and buy in foreign, established players for half the price. It’s a global game these days, and clubs cannot afford to use solely a local catchment area, but the current trend of money directly correlating with success is getting out of hand. This nicely brings us into our first point…

10 – The English National Team

It is a proud English sporting tradition to come close and then fail miserably. Football is no different. The penalty shoot out loss and crunch game collapse are folk lore. The typical England fan usually blames this on the manager (who will inevitably be let go), bemoans the lack of a certain player and then promptly gets drunk. Did you know that, should you ever be stuck without a clock, you can tell the time by blood alcohol content of an English soccer fan?

However, I think that the problem is a little bit more deep rooted than just bad luck. Typically, key positions are mainly taken up by foreigners – a large amount of top goalkeepers, wingers and strikers in the Premiership aren’t English. What is more, English players don’t like to travel and play abroad (except English Ambassador Sir David of Beckham). The end result is we have some enormous holes in our national team as we simply don’t have anyone playing the positions in the top clubs. To quote the prophet Hetfield, ‘It’s sad but true’.

9 – Sven Goran Eriksson to Notts County

Back at the 2002 World Cup I was still at school. Since then I’ve been lucky enough to be granted parole, but at the time a song always seemed to come on the radio that went ‘Sven Sven Sven Goran Eriksson, He’s a lovely geezer, but don’t forget that he’s from Sweden’. Oh, how we loved to sing along and praise that silly Scandinavian man as the saviour of English football. Time, however, showed that we were in fact wrong. Since those glorious days, he has proven that in fact he is as useful as a chocolate tea pot. He now works as a Director of Football for League 2 (lowest professional tier of English football, 3 leagues below the Premiership) outfit Notts County. Sure, the reason he is there is they have a lot of money now but it is absolutely hilarious for England fans to see the former England National Team manager, who probably set English football back 5 years, working for such a lowly club. Now, if only we could arrange the lynching of Steve McClaren….

Sven Goran Erikkson has to be talked down from jumping over a rail after being informed that Notts County isn't even in Coca Cola League 1

8 – Chelsea Transfer Ban

Now, this is very much a breaking news story (hence the low ranking) but Chelsea have literally just been banned from signing any new players for two transfer windows, meaning they will not be able to add to their squad until January 1^st 2011. Although the ban directly results from their transfer of Gael Kakuta, they have had a long history over the last few years of extremely questionable transfer ethics, such as Jose ‘tapping up’ Ashley Cole and the whole issue over John Obi Mikel signing two contracts, one for Manchester United then one for Chelsea. More on this I’m sure, but Chelsea don’t have the youngest squad, nor the largest, and this could hurt them.

7 – Life After Ronaldo

This summer United finally agreed to let want away midfielder Cristiano Ronaldo go play with his new friends in Spain. It wasn’t cheap though, as Real Madrid had to pay €80m ($114m) for the pleasure. However, United are coming into the season without one of their leading stars. More worryingly, they haven’t re-invested the money into a big new signing. It would be a very Sir Alex thing to wait a season, sum everything up then spend big however it has left United fans feeling a little nervous. Ronnie was the leading goal scorer for United, and with Rooney often left toiling midfield and Berbatov being quite possibly the worst striker in the history of football it wasn’t clear just how his contributions would be replaced. United have started solidly enough, including stealing a win from Arsenal at Old Trafford, and look to be playing more traditional football, not the overly stylised type they have played recently to fully exploit Ronaldo’s talent. The goals, though, are expected to be contributed by our next point.

The Red Devil has to console Sir Alex after he realizes how bad is midfield is without Ronaldo

6 – Michael Owen

To use some manager-speak phrase, this was one hell of a curve ball. At the end of the 2008/2009 season Michael Owen had his still young career in flux. The last few years had been dogged by injuries and playing for a club in free fall. When he left Newcastle he was so desperate for a decent club his management took the unprecedented step of producing a brochure showing what Owen could give to a club both on and off the field. Desperate? You bet. Successful? You bet. After looking like he would have to choose between lowly Stoke and Hull, out popped Manchester United to snap him up. At first it seemed like he would just be another highly paid inhabitant of the Louis Saha Memorial Treatment Room and Owen Hargreaves Physiotherapy Department. Gags were abound that he would break his wrist just signing the contract, but he has stayed fit and gotten on the score sheets. If someone had said back when he was a fully anointed demi-god playing for Liverpool that he would move from a relegated Newcastle United to Manchester, they would be lead away by men in white coats. Next step for Owen – getting back in the England team. Not the easiest thing, seeing as how whenever he is watched by the England manager he comes over all weak and feeble. He has never scored while Capello has been watching him.

5 – Are Tottenham Hotspur for real?

Back when bankers the world round were busy loosing money and it appeared that the world was a step away from reverting to living in mud huts, Spurs were in a relegation battle. But then Harry Redknapp got on his merry horse, rode up the A3, turned off onto the M3, then the M25, then down the A4 and eventually wound up as new manager of the London club. He promptly bought back a lot of the players that Juande Ramos had sold, along with a few of his old Portsmouth players, and produced a stunning turn around. Calls were made that if he could perform such miracles with Spurs, then surely he should be made Prime Minister to turn the whole country around. Based on form at the end of last season, Spurs could have been realistic top 4 contenders. This year, they are realistic top 4 contenders. It has long been prophesied that one day a club would emerge from the dregs and infiltrate the Big Four – Manchester United, Arsenal, Chelsea and Liverpool. Everton had their shot and couldn’t make it, as did Aston Villa. However, Spurs look to have the ingredients to make a sustained assault at the big clubs and it would really be no surprise if they stole a Champions League place off of one of the big four.

4 – Liverpool Suck… Err, I mean on course to have a bad year

First off, in the interest of fairness, I hate Liverpool. I hate their stupid sense of entitlement, I hate Rafa Benitez and his stupid goatee, I hate Steven Gerrard and his blinkered ideals that his team are better than everyone else, I hate their fans’ stupid accents and most of all I hate the fact that on Football Manager 2009 I just cannot beat them. All of that impartial journalism aside, this year they are in trouble. Liverpool are a team based around 4 players – Gerrard, Torres, Reina and Alonso. They have sold Alonso to Real, not really replaced him and are now left with a few good players in a sea of mediocrity. However, they are still a good club… just a bad good club, if you know what I mean. But this season will be critical for them – their squad is weakened, they have had a slow start to the domestic season and have a very tough Champions League group. They need to have a near impeccable first half to the season on all fronts, as if they don’t then they are in huge trouble. Rafa has had a difficult relationship with cash strapped owners. A poor league finish and missing out on next years Champions League cashpot would most likely see Rafa leave and the club head downhill.

Former Outsiders Edge writer and Liverpool resident SJX will likely blew a gasket when he read the last section. This picture will calm him down.

3 – Referee Influence\Video Technology

This isn’t so much a Premiership issue, more one affecting English clubs in general. It comes down to referee influence. The big ones which have come out so far are diving and sportsmanship. Sadly, diving is so much a part of football that the Pro Evolution Soccer franchise of video game actually have the option to just dive. It is disgusting, it is vile, and as a supporter of a club which has only just sold one of the biggest divers about I can finally speak out against it. However, there is a real Punishment vs Crime debate going on here. Lets take Arsenal as an example – Eduardo dived against Celtic in the Champions League and didn’t get caught at the time. He was seen on video, however, and promptly got handed a 2 match ban. In their match against Manchester United, another of Arsenal’s players (I forget which one… sorry about that) dived and was caught by the ref. He was given a yellow card. In the pre-season Community Shield between Chelsea and Manchester United, a referee played advantage after Michael Ballack elbowed Patrice Evra in the face. The advantage never really played out, Evra was still down injured but the referee ignored all of it and when Chelsea hoofed the ball up field while most of the United team were checking on Evra’s condition, Lampard powered home a goal. Fat Frank said after the match, perhaps rightly, that they just played to the whistle and had no obligation to play the ball out so Evra could get treatment. What all Chelsea players ignored was the fact that a few minutes earlier the ref blew a Manchester United counter attack dead for treatment after Ballack went down and popped back up uninjured.

UEFA, FIFA and the English Football Association all need to do something to stop such massive discrepancies. There have always been calls and rebuttals for the use of video technology to sort this stuff in game, and I can’t help but think that over the season this will snowball (as things do, such as video replay in Major League Baseball) and be the beginning of introducing technology within football. As I can hear you all asking me what my opinions are, I do think the Premiership and Championship (second tier of English football, FYI) should have a ‘war room’ like the NHL have. Its cheap and its effective.

2 – Hooliganism

The Firm. Football Factory. Green Machine. All great movies. All stylised tellings of the big ‘firms’ in English football, where extremist groups of a clubs supporters (aka Hooligans, no relation to the head nurse from MASH) will go on a violent rampage on game day. Green Machine especially is awesome when you consider that the main character is Frodo Baggins. ‘I’ll show you how we roll in the shire, you twit!’

Anyway, it was thought it was something that had been eradicated from the game, especially after the behaviour of England fans at World Cups and European Championships made it not just an internal problem but an International issue. However, when Millwall met West Ham in the Carling Cup a few weeks ago it came rushing back that it is still all too rampant as the pitch was invaded, fans tried to kill each other outside and everyone had a nice old punch up. Although still a strong minority, it is out there and it is vile. It also shows that, despite best efforts and grand assumptions, it is still in the game. Millwall, thankfully, don’t play it the EPL where most of their main rival firms play. Whenever they draw one of their rival teams in a cup, its the acid test as to where the war on hooliganism is. We came up positive on this one. Or negative. Or alkaline. Or whatever result you actually get when you fail an acid test.

1 – Manchester City

Manchester City have struck oil. Last year, just before the transfer deadline day that saw them swoop in and steal Robinho from under the nose of Chelsea, they were bought out by the investment arm of the Dubai ruling family, or U.A.E. Government, or something. Nobody really cares who owns them, as Manchester City fans are too busy counting money are the rest of the league are cowering in fear. The owners, after offering up some truly insane money for unattainable players, finally realised this transfer window that some players just cannot be bought. It was a shock to them no doubt, however this summer they seem to have gotten things right. They have signed some of the biggest names in the Premiership – Santa Cruz, Adebayor, Touré, Tevez, Lescott and Gareth Barry. They already had a pretty decent squad, and a good start to the season has meant they are relevant in the title picture.

Ever since Real Madrid had their “Galactico” era a decade or so ago, and Chelsea much more recently, proved that success can be bought… it just seems upsporting, you know? In Formula One, people harp on about drivers having unfair advantages because they have faster cars but at the end of the day the designers that built said cars are still a part of the team. It is a team sport. In football, a club who has £400m pumped in to their transfer kitty has the same advantage of having a faster car. Except the business men who bankroll it all clearly aren’t members of the team, hence an unsporting advantage. At this rate, same was as the NFL was pressured to put an mark by the Patriots Superbowl wins when they recorded defensive calls, or the steroid era baseball players needing a mark on their home run tally, Premiership teams will need a mark saying how much they spent that season to buy the league.

Still, all of that aside, its amazing to watch Man City play. It appears that nobody has explained to Mark Hughes the concept of “midfield players” as he has a team full of strikers. Same way that the Dolphins and their Wildcat direct snap formation revolutionised NFL, perhaps Man City and their 1-1-8 formation will revolutionise football?

Carlos Tevez on the way to the set to prepare for his role as the alien in Close Encounters with the Argentinian Kind

End of the day, I would like to think that they won’t succeed purely off of cash. If you sign mercenary players, they only care if they are winning. A lot of their signings fit that bill.

So that story of English football so far. Of course, in the true spirit of the Premiership, it will all be irrelevant in about fourteen minutes but for now soak it up.