Hey Gaffa! Whose Side Are You On?

Much has been written, both by RTG and other parts of the media, about how modern footballers no longer seem able to relate to the supporters who come to watch them each week and, effectively, pay their wages. RTG could offer up a great deal of evidence of events in recent times that would back this up and you’d probably have heard most of it all before. But what of managers? As the corporate animal slowly but surely devours the game of football are we now beginning to see the inevitable loss of respect for supporters from the team bosses themselves?

Supporters traditionally have always treated the manager as custodian of the team’s interests. He has always been a figurehead who fights the chairman for more money to boost the squad and, when their club was successful, you could hear no wrong said from the fans on the terraces.

The relationship between club chairmen and managers was always an uneasy one. Brian Clough was famous for criticising chairmen and it was indeed the breakdown of his relationship with Sam Longson at Derby County that led to his resignation in 1973. It is now well documented that Clough himself was no saint but he was adamant that he had deserved better treatment for what he had done for the club and its supporters.

Clough’s battles, of course, were in the days when the club chairman was usually a local successful businessman. The huge sums of money involved in football today have changed club governance immeasurably and, in RTG’s opinion, the relationship between manager and supporter is therefore beginning to look very different.

Ask any Manchester United fan and Sir Alex Ferguson is, quite rightly, a legend. He has built a dynasty at United turning them from a there-or-thereabouts team into perennial winners. And he has done it through building new team after new team.

"We don't want the club in anyone else's hands. I have always tried to the bridge between the club and the fans. I have tried to support the fans in a lot of their pleas and causes. It's important for the club to recognise the fans. When the plc started, there were grave doubts about it - I had them myself - but I think the supporters have come round to that. There's a stronger rapport between the club and the fans than there's ever been."

Sir Alex Ferguson, November 2004

When the Glazers arrived, United fans protested at the huge debts that they heaped on the club where once there were reasonable profits—profits that were spent on the team and facilities for supporters. Supporters looked to their talisman to come out and state his own disapproval regarding what was happening to the club. Surely, Sir Alex himself would be concerned at the impending money squeeze that would inevitably occur. But he remained diplomatically silent other than to state his disregard for the fans who formed FC United of Manchester, claiming they were self-publicists and had no real interest in saving Manchester United. It was, he said, more an act in their own self-interests.

"I've got close friends who've been working with me here for 15 years. They come first in all of this….If you don't like it, go and watch Chelsea."

Sir Alex Ferguson, August 2005,

And then, disappointingly, two seasons ago, to the chagrin of the United faithful, he came out in support of the Glazers management of the club. “They've been great owners”, he said. 'They have supported me every way I've asked them.”

Last season, following the departure of Christiano Ronaldo for a record £80M, saw the rise of the green and old campaign, a campaign that RTG wholeheartedly supports for its stance against the use of a football club as a cash cow to prop up their ailing business interests in a foreign country after having used the club’s own money to buy it in the first place. Surely now, Sir Alex would at least express some degree of concern about lack of spending money and perhaps some sympathy for supporters who had seen their star player sold for a record transfer fee with very little coming back in the way of class players to strengthen the squad.

But no. Sir Alex continued to maintain that his squad was good enough and he came out and, earlier this year, criticised the green and gold campaign. He effectively dismissed those behind, what is a worthy and heartfelt campaign, as idiots. United did, in fact, secure second in the Premier League last season but the signs were there that some cracks were beginning to appear.

Before you start to think, where is RTG going with this? That you’d be more than happy if your club were to finish second in the Premier League! That is not the issue. The point is that, what should be a fantastic football legacy left not only to the club by Sir Alex, but also to English football itself, is in danger of being slowly but surely squandered away. And why? So a few American businessmen can pay off their debts back home and continue to draw funds from what is their only cash generating concern. The objective of the business has clearly changed to a distinctly non-footballing agenda.

Sir Alex was reputedly paid upwards of £3.6M in 2008. RTG can only assume it is more than that now. If he comes out and criticises the Glazers, where does that leave him? He seems to be one of these people that supports socialism right up to the point that it leaves him worse off. He’ll be OK. He’ll retire, when he chooses to do so, in a more than comfortable state. United supporters, and yes, English football as a whole, will be left with the Glazers and the mess.

If this sounds like a direct attack on Sir Alex Ferguson, it is not meant to be. RTG just wishes to illustrate that he is the most successful manager and United are the biggest supported club in the world. You could equally take the case of Arsenal who, since moving to a bigger stadium in order to supposedly ‘compete’, have won nothing since. Yet, Arsene Wenger continues to claim transfer fees are there if he wants them. Nobody really knows the truth. No, the corporate interests and wealthy billionaire owners have seen to it that our managers are now well and truly at the mercy of the money god.

We already have alienation of the players and the supporters. Signs are that we may soon have managers and supporters alienated too. What next? Complete alienation of the clubs and its supporters? We don’t like you lot anymore. We can survive with our TV money and the supporters abroad. Season ticket to Dubai United anyone?

The Keeper

...he's punching above his weight

News of an almighty row from the American National Football League (NFL) has reached the Keeper. Apparently a former Miss Universe was subjected to ‘abuse’ by male players when doing the post match (sorry “game”) round of interviews in the changing (sorry “locker”) room on behalf of an obscure sports channel. The NFL has long prided itself on having equal access for all reporters of either gender or sexual orientation to players – extending to ignoring any issues arising from naked men running around flicking wet towels at each other, or for that matter, the “qualification” of said reporters. The Keeper is thankful that no such access exists here. No, not because the Keeper is loathe to flash women (after all, it’s legal!). But the spectre of Madams Balding, Barker, Irvine et al chasing naked men around with a large microphone would leave both parties, well…not worthy of fantasy. Anyway, if rumours are to be believed, they’d be a lot happier hanging around in female professional tennis changing rooms. However, it did make the Keeper wonder if the NFL’s politically correct approach extended the same privileges to males in female locker rooms?

Talking of being thankful, or not in this case, the Keeper was disappointed to see Alan Shearer back on the MOTD couch last Saturday. However, the Keeper was thankful to be distracted from his tiresome repetition of clichés, masquerading as analysis, by being mesmerised by his patchy bald pate, resembling something like a football pitch from the 1960’s. So mesmerised in fact, that he even missed Alan’s uninformed remark: “Ben Arfa – whoever ‘eard of ‘im”; referring to Newcastle United’s France International, Hatem Ben Arfa – five times French League Champion, with two different clubs, and regular on the Champions League scene over the last five years. Certainly contradicts the old saying that goes “grass doesn’t grow on a busy thoroughfare”! Not busy, just lazy.

Now that the England team establishment have stated that the next England manager will be English, jockeying for position in the role has been initiated, with several managers putting themselves forward. Sam Allardyce made his intentions clear by telling the media that he would win all the domestic honours, at least, if he was in charge at either Inter or Real Madrid. Knowing his predilection for the technical side of the game – through lap top analysis and blue tooth earpiece communications, the Keeper wonders if he has been drawing the wrong conclusions from playing too much with his EA Sports Champions League play station game. Besides which Sam, modern European managers usually have a command of several languages, not just a poor command of one!

On a serious note, the Keeper’s least favourite rogue administrator, the less than honourable Jack Warner, FIFA vice President and President of CONCACAF, is still managing to cock a snook to both the Trinidad & Tobago Players and the country’s legal system. Despite the fact that the T & T courts have ordered him to release the funds to pay players who participated in the 2006 world cup, he’s still refusing to do so. This from a man who was fined hundreds of thousands of dollars by FIFA for touting tickets and for enriching his own relative’s travel company at that tournament. The fact that Sepp Blatter keeps insisting that “Jack” is a paragon of virtue and all round top bloke, says more about Blatter than it does about Warner.

A Phoney Phase to a Phoney Competition – Part Three

In the previous two parts of the ‘Phoney Competition’ series, RTG highlighted how the unrestricted spending of billionaire owners was ruining the Premier League competition. Also highlighted, were the hyper-inflationary pressures resulting directly from the mega-millions thrown in by these wealthy owners which has led to a huge financial chasm to cross for ambitious Championship clubs to get into the Premier League. A chasm that has meant financial ruin and further losses of league status for those clubs who fail to stay in the League beyond a single season.

RTG has called for the unilateral imposition (i.e. outside of UEFA’s useless new rules) of controls by the Premier League to improve the quality of the competition. This week, RTG is calling for a reduction in the size of the League to further improve not only the competitive element, but also aid the England team by imposing less games on players.

Many would think that RTG would be against an even smaller elite Premier League – and in some senses that is true. However, if RTG’s ideas on club finances were adopted, coupled with fewer games for English players, football would benefit twofold. Firstly, less meaningless games against ‘canon fodder’ teams – thus allowing the much vaunted mid season break, and, secondly the competitiveness would be further improved.

For several decades now, newly promoted clubs have struggled to find their feet in the top division. The recent history of failure by the newly promoted to maintain their status is not new. What is new is that, the vastly increased wages and transfer fees that are needed to field a team at the top level, have caused financial ruin, that no amount of ‘parachute payments can arrest – should relegation occur. And it usually does.

The sensible financial policy would be for the ‘newbies’ not to compete by spending alone. This is what Blackpool have just done: bolstering their thin Championship squad with loans, free transfers and a solitary one million pound player transfer. In effect, they have already metaphorically thrown themselves into the wind with little expectation of success. They’re going to be in the top level for the first time in 40-odd years and they’ll enjoy it come what may. Who can blame them?

What would happen though if, as so nearly happened this season, that the English Champions are decided by whoever scores the most goals against the ‘canon fodder’ teams? Or for that matter, if Manchester United had won it because of the weakened team fielded against them by Wolves, who were resting key players before a crucial so-called ‘six-pointer’ game against fellow relegation rivals the following match? Again, what does this do for the Premier League competition?

The fact that there has been a plethora of six nil victories, not to mention eights and nines since the inception of the Premier League and a rarity of these scorelines prior to its birth is a huge pointer to the less competitive nature at the top level. The fact that there has only been four winners – and some would say two of those were “bought” – is another clear indicator. This despite Sky’s increasingly irritating assertion that it is a league “where anything can happen”. Anything that is, as long as two or three of the promoted clubs get relegated again!

RTG emphasizes that we don’t claim to have the right answers. But if as football supporters we can get a better competition with numerous clubs challenging for honours and Champions League spots AND help the England set up, surely this is worth campaigning for?

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The Keeper

…still trying to keep a clean sheet

Last week saw the Keeper confined to his sick bed for a few days. Don’t worry, there’s nothing seriously wrong with him. It just happened to be that time of year when mobile phones are on permanent alert just in case a big money opportunity presents itself before the transfer window closes. The Keeper was minding his own business over a game of golf on Monday afternoon when an anonymous text comes through linking yours truly with none other than Big Sam. Sniffing a lucrative Premier League move and, in order not to cup tie himself, the Keeper feigned sickness and did a Mascherano to rule himself out of any midweek activity. While his hardworking teammates took to the field, the Keeper waited eagerly for the call which duly came that evening. It was indeed a moneymaking opportunity with Big Sam. Sadly Big Sam turned out to be none other than ex-page three stunner and now famous cockney lesbian, Sam Fox, and the opportunity was an invitation to take part in celebrity Big Brother. Sam Fox indeed. Certainly not the Big Sam he was expecting and definitely not the ‘six yard box’ he was used to.

Speaking of transfers, there was a somewhat unique feel to the last window as the likes of Manchester City try desperately tried to offload some of their expensively assembled squad in order to comply with the Premier League’s new rules on squad size. Consequently, Craig Bellamy was welcomed with open arms on loan at his native Cardiff City. The move prompted Gwyn Davies, co-founder of Valley Rams, to state categorically that Cardiff City would much prefer to have Welshman Bellamy on their books than Wayne Rooney or Didier Drogba; a statement that goes to prove what we’ve always thought about the Welsh. As Alan Partridge would say, “you…you like your own, don’t you?” Enough said!

To other parts of the UK now and last week’s Champions League draw saw Rangers drawn in the same group as Manchester United. The Sun was very quick to refer to this as the ‘Battle of Britain’. Many, including the Keeper, were led to believe this was based purely on the fact that it was a Scottish team playing an English team. However, it seems on closer inspection that it may be more down to the fact that last time Rangers fans visited Manchester for the 2008 UEFA Cup final, they left it looking like an entire Squadron of Heinkels had unloaded it’s payload on the city during said battle. In fact, in a recent poll, where the residents of Manchester were asked which they’d prefer, Rangers or Heinkels, the Heinkels narrowly shaded it.

Speaking of being in the wars, Jerome Boateng has become the first injury worry of the new season for Manchester City. Rather than picking up a knock in training or on the pitch, Boateng became the next in a long line of unusual football injuries joining such fine examples as Robbie Keane, who ruptured his knee cartilage reaching for the TV remote control, and Steve Morrow, who broke his collar bone after being dropped on the ground by teammate Tony Adams after the Carling Cup Final in 1993. Our Jerome was harmlessly sat in his airplane seat when the stewardess bashed his knee with her trolley and tore his ligaments. It just goes to show how important it is for foreign players to learn English. She asked him if he wanted chicken or beef and his German/Ghanaian accent made it sound more like ‘biff’ when he replied. Sounds like she duly obliged.