Interesting little column from Marcus Hahnemann here.
This has not exactly been the ideal week for me. Somehow, Reading managed to jump start Fulham’s fight to stay up last weekend with a 2-0 defeat at the Madejski while stalling our own recovery (I’ve been working on these car metaphors while fixing my truck).
He he. But not really. If our recovery was jump-started, well, it’s still in the middle of the Australian outback with half a tank of petrol and no water.
The Guardian’s Richard Williams on football in this country. It contains that valuable Jorge Valdano quote too:
It is a year since Jorge Valdano, the Argentinian World Cup winner turned football philosopher, watched a European Cup semi-final between Liverpool and Chelsea and made his famous remark about Anfield and, by implication, the current state of English football. “Put a shit hanging from a stick in the middle of this passionate, crazy stadium and there are people who will tell you it’s a work of art,” he said. “It’s not. It’s a shit hanging from a stick.” There is no reason to think that, 12 months later, he would have had a different reaction to a match between the same clubs in which all the salient characteristics of the Premier League were writ large.
He he. Williams again:
With its bottomless funding and its emphasis on producing players who can run non-stop for 90 minutes, the Premier League is promoting the football of Croesus and Creatine. Often exhilarating, it engages television audiences all around the world because it can guarantee that, if you need to break off to get a drink from the bar or the fridge, the thrills and spills will still be going on when you get back.
No one should underestimate the amount of effort that it takes to assemble and prepare a team capable of mastering this demanding footballing idiom.
…
But those who prefer a different diet should not be dismissed out of hand. Although a Ferenc Puskas or a Wim van Hanegem will never again be allowed to put his foot on the ball and slow a game down to his own preferred pace, that does not mean there is only one pace at which the modern game can be played.
Indeed. The first comment on the Guardian blog (as is so often the case) is sniping, “bitter and living in the past” it says. Well maybe. Richard Williams is big on football’s history, and (like me) has watched and been very excited by film of the great Hungarian side of the 50s. Yes the game has moved on from that, a long way on, and yes that’s probably a good thing on balance, but his point that the football we see is getting increasingly dull is hard to disagree with.
It’s not a new thought by any stretch – those of us who have watched Fulham’s increasingly desperate attempts to keep up with all this need no reminder of what modern football in England can descend to – but it’s still very valid. Does it have to be this way? Is Arsene Wenger the only person capable of insisting on sparkling, interesting, aethetically pleasing football? Of course not.
Funnily enough dear old Lawrie Sanchez touched on this in one of his many misunderstood interviews. He said that if we wanted teams to play like Arsenal we’d have to do away with relegation. Predictably people latched onto this as evidence that “That prick wants to get rid of relegation!” when all he was saying was that the barriers to playing football are quite high, that, in his mind, to do so would mean greater risk.
And I think he’s right. What Sanchez tried to do and what Sam Allardyce did, was eliminate as many risks as possible. Allardyce was famous for looking for and then exploiting all available edges, which generally came down to strangling the life out of a game and trying to ensure superiority at set pieces at both ends of the pitch. Which is an overly simplistic summation, but about right really and a valid approach for a small club to take if it wants to punch above its weight. Sanchez may have tried the same but got his recruitment and his coaching wrong. Whatever, the point stands: in England attractive football is seen as a luxury that average clubs can’t afford to buy into.
Then what to make of Roy Hodgson? Certainly the man hasn’t won enough points, but under him the team is passing, passing, passing. Over-passing sometimes (Brede Hangeland excepted, he says mischievously). This was first obvious when Chris Baird was still about. Rather than seeing his typical backspin angled lob every time he got the ball, we saw Jimmy Bullard haring over and giving Baird an easy pass. It meant we kept the ball, with Bullard typically finding Murphy, who would find the next man and attempt to string something worthwhile together. It’s definitely passing football. It might not be what we need, and it might not be being done very well, but it is aspiring towards something worthwhile.
Which to me is a good thing. Fulham is in some ways a club out of time anyway. Most of the grounds we go to now are fairly similar, and of course the Cottage is very unique. This and other minor oddities are what appeal to many of us. Even now people are complaining that the team’s too soft, and it is! Which again marks it out as a team that’s not made for the modern era.
Roy Hodgson seems to be moving the club in a pleasing direction. Of course none of this matters at all if he can’t eventually find some wins, but in the context of modern football it has to be said that things are shaping up reasonably well at Fulham, if you like this sort of thing. There will always be some who would prefer to win ugly than to lose in style, and if we lose six in a row to start next season it’ll be hard for anyone to resist such a stance, but if Roy can build on what he’s started, combining passing football with an acceptable number of points, well we’re alright again, aren’t we? That’s the crux: we need to be better, however we go about things, but if we can get better with Roy’s passing approach, well that’d be fantastic, whatever division we’re in.
