Voicing Opinions

I have played football in my local park on many occasions. Mostly badly, but enjoyably nevertheless. Many of the players in these informal games are athletically built, but lack the finesse or skills to be called good footballers, or at least to even come close to professional standard. But every so often, one of them will score with an overhead kick or spin around a player with breathtaking skill. And in my eyes, sometimes to World class standards.

But many would summarily dismiss such a judgement. They would deride my opinion not because of what I saw, but simply because of the context – an informal game between amateurs. They are enormously biased by this context. I feel very strongly that I am not so readily influenced – I pride myself in being able to see brilliance in the wrong context.

In principle, the act of brilliance is of course possible – the players easily have the athletic ability and agility to perform World class manoeuvres – just once in a while, they happen to get the timing perfect. Much as an amateur can score a whole in one at golf.

If you are not convinced, picture a US subway with a very musical violinist in full flow. Here, the occasional event is the depositing of money in his cap on the floor. For most, he is ignored. This violinist was performing out of context. He regularly sold out theatres across the world. He was a world class musician. But was summarily ignored because the context was wrong. The opposite type of situation to the park game, but you get the picture.

Humans really do make judgements with a distorted bias that is an embarrassment when revealed.

Having watched football (soccer) for the best part of 40 years now, I have been exposed to the rise and fall of dozens of football teams and thousands of players. And there appears to be a number of hard and fast rules that simply do not make sense to me. They fail to explain reality so much that I call them dogmas.

The first is that a good team or player does not become bad overnight, or vice versa. In the absolute sense, this is probably true. But the reality is that fortunes and performance can switch much faster than many realise. Chelsea remained invincible at home for over 4 years until Liverpool scraped a win a few years back. That defeat was followed by 2 more in not so many weeks. My team, Liverpool, slid into a precarious relegation position they this season – this was actually a gradually decline, not an overnight matter. But the arrival of Kenny Dalglish as the new manager had as good as an overnight effect. They played immediately with a greater sense of cohesion and urgency, and notched up four straight wins 5 weeks after his arrival.

Which leads me to the other dogma. This one annoy me intensely. The dogma that ‘if we bring in a few more players then we will be going places’ is so abused as to miss the point. Liverpool found themselves struggling at the foot of the table not because they needed new players, but simply because the players they had were not performing well enough. Blackpool amassed 5 away wins before the league leaders Manchester United had won 2. Yet the whole Blackpool squad, I believe, cost about £3.5M – about a third of the annual salary of Wayne Rooney – one of the Manchester United players. Blackpool were a team performing to their fullest under an inspirational Manager.

Rafael Benetiz brought in about 70 players in his 5 year spell as Liverpool Manager. Not only does such a constant excessive change damage stability, but he never learned that he was chasing something that was entirely elusive – the ability of himself as a Manager to get the best out of his players. The only players he stuck with were the type of robust and entirely professional player such as Dirt Kuyt who would perform well under any manager.

Dalglish focused on unity and hard work, selling the under performing Torres to rivals Chelsea. Which brings me to the final point. Not so much a dogma, more a delusion. That brilliant players necessarily remain brilliant. The media broadcast the brilliance of players like Wayne Rooney, and blind themselves and their audience to the reality that he is fundamentally nor performing as a striker. He is simply not scoring goals. he has not become a bad player overnight but has become a bad striker. And the £50M paid by Chelsea for Fernando Torres was a British record mostly because the player benefited from the media’s continued to clinging to his past glories. As a striker, he is now average in terms of scoring rate. In terms of footballing skills, he is weak – his first touch is regularly so poor that he concedes possession. And his physical strength and combativeness remain underdeveloped so much that he is regularly legally pushed off the ball.

My final word is for Miereles – a midfielder who has scored 4 goals in 5 games under Dalglish after 16 goalless games under the previous Manager Hodgson. If ever there was an example of a player becoming great overnight, then he fits the bill. Along with Martin Kelly as well…

The Premier league is the most commercially successful in the World, and touted as the most exciting. If that is measured in terms of goals, then this weekend was exceptional :

Saturday 5th February 2011

Aston Villa 2 Fulham 2
Everton 5 Blackpool 3 (Blackpool were 3-2 at one stage)
Man City 3 West Brom 0
Newcastle 4 Arsenal 4 (Arsenal were 4-0 up after 26 minutes. No team has come back from 4 behind in the history of the premiership)
Stoke 3 Sunderland 2
Tottenham 3 Bolton 2
Wigan 4 Blackburn 3
Wolves 2 Man United 1 (Wolves stay bottom, Man United stay top, 4 points clear. Ended a 29 premiership run without defeat, matching their previous club record. Curiously enough, 29 is Liverpool’s record as well – Everton ended their run some years ago)

Sunday 6th Feb 2011

West Ham 0 Birmingham 1
Chelsea 0 Liverpool 1 (£50M Torres makes his debut for Chelsea but fails to score)

Even the Saturday tally of 40 goals was the best every for a weekend full set of fixtures since the Premiership dropped to 20 teams in 1995.

I am watching an FA cup match between Arsenal and Leeds, old adversaries in the 20th century.

Now it was deemed by the powers that be that Leeds would have to don their away kit. But exactly why is this? It would seem that the Arsenal players would get confused by White shorts matching their own.

So the whole kit had to be changed because of one colour clash. Leeds played in all blue. But why on earth not just get them to put on blue shorts, and retain their traditional white shirts?

On these grounds, it is then a joke that the Arsenal goalkeeper could get away wearing a deep pink shirt (although precisely why he would want to is another matter). I always though that the last line of defence had to be clearly identifiable. This is patently a much bigger problem than white shorts …

Beware subterfuge when someone who has overstepped the mark, but who does not care eventually apologises. They do care, but about their own-selves and their own reputation, and not about the misdemeanour that got them into trouble in the first place.

A hallmark of such an attitude is in the nature of the wording of the apology. The sentence that struck a chord with me was this :

I certainly regret if I have offended them in any ways,” he said.

I have highlighted the pivotal word. He still persists in absolute failure to see that he is at fault. He acts surprised when all around are incensed by a string of dire performances by Liverpool FC. Their worse first 18 games to a season in 57 years.

The man fails to properly apologise, totally out of touch with the supporters, and keen only to stay in a job that has evidently elevated him to a position of incompetence. He is out of his depth but only he is failing to respond.

I signed a petition to oust him. I hope that this happens sooner rather than later.

But going back to November, he finally ‘apologised to Rafa Benitez for some ill-chosen words about the former Liverpool manager. See if you can spot the pivotal word. It is very, very early in the sentence …

If I have upset him by saying something which I certainly didn’t mean to be in any way critical or negative about his work at the club, then I would happily apologise because there was never any intention to do that.

Once again, not an apology. An apology is where you say ‘I am sorry’. Here he says that if, perchance, he might have said something wrong, then he might be forced to say sorry.

He is shirking responsibility, just as he has in motivating the team, and getting the best out of the players.

This was the most abject performance I have seen from Liverpool in 39 years supporting them. The team was disinterested, disorganised and discordant.

Compare with Wolves, a team who had lost their previous 7 away fixtures. They have few established stars, but most certainly gel as a team, with crisp, accurate passing, and consistently high quality first touches. There was one occasion when the ball was passed to Torres. It was a little underhit, but he still stood and waited, unconcerned that a lively Wolves player was easily going to intercept.

I put this malaise down to three things. First the enormous and unrelenting weight of expectation engendered by past glories. Second, the expectation that the talent they have should deliver them more. Third, that the Manager seems even more lacking in his ability to get the best out of his players than the manager he replaced. Just as with Benitez, he clamours for fresh blood. But this is a smokescreen. Alex Ferguson could have cried wolf when he lost Ronaldo and Tevez, two game changing players. But he simply worked harder at getting the best out of what he has. And they sit prettily at the top of the table.

Mick McCarthy has done the same at Wolves, his players working fluidly as a team, unhampered by expectations. But close scrutiny of teams like Wolves and the very entertaining Blackpool really show what is possible if you get the best out of players. But the king of player motivation and liberation from fear is Harry Rednap. His transformation of Spurs is awesome. I would love him to be Liverpool Manager, but he would not ‘look the part’. Looking the part is part of the problem. The Liverpool players are more concerned looking the part by moving the ball around sweetly than scoring. They need a man at the helm who can understand players and who motivates them. Second to Harry, I would go for the special one.

The sensation that is Gareth Bale, galloping down the wings like a gazelle, is a wondrous sight to behold. He was recruited by Damien Comolli, a shrewd judge of up and coming footballing talent.

Comolli eventually left Spurs and is now director of football at Liverpool.

This is great news, and is likely to expose a fundamental flaw in past purchase principles used, to generally poor effect by the once successful club. They had fallen into ‘safe’ purchases of established players, many ‘legitimized’ by their International status. But many were mediocre, and over-priced both for what they offered at the start, and for what they might offer in the future. Liverpool has a squad of fairly aged, expensively salaried players as a legacy of this approach.

The balance and direction has all been wrong for far too long.

Hopefully, Comelli will signal a sea change.

Anyone who has ever played the Sim City computer game knows very well that the citizens you reign over will tend to become anarchic if policing levels are not adequate. Criminal tendencies have to be kept in check.

In the real World, where policing is weak, the level of anti-social behaviour eventually rises. And it becomes self-reinforcing, as it starts to become a visible ‘norm’. Fairly well behaved citizens start to lose their sense of responsibility, feeling that their efforts are pointless in an unruly environment. Poor behaviour, unpoliced, breeds further poor behaviour.

It is possible to crudely calculate the effectiveness of the policing in an area by this level of anarchy.

There is a similar ‘signature’ of anarchy in other domains, such as in sport. The behaviour of snooker players is visibly impeccable, the referee suitably empowered to monitor play and issue penalties. There is also a historic culture of pristine and respectful behaviour in that sport that is generally observed by newcomers. There is a momentum that has evolved over the decades.

Alas, in football (soccer), the momentum has seen the preservation of an attitude where the norm is to take advantage of situations. You claim for a corner when there is the slightest doubt. You elbow a striker in the ribs, or maybe tug his shirt just as he soars to head the ball. You ‘take out’ their star player with callous tackling – either to injure him or make him fearful of future treatment. Players dive in the penalty area without any bodily contact.

And the problem here is that the policing – the refereeing – is simply inadequate in dealing with this long term (and now growing) problem of deceit and misbehaviour. The problem requires heavy and decisive action, but the failure to take such action comes from Sepp Blatter at the head of World football. He wants to see ‘the beautiful game’ flow, with minimal disruption from video technology and the like. But the beauty in the game is being corroded by the cheating and underhand habits of many players. The word of the referee is final, yet it is virtually impossible for one many to cover 7,000 square yards of a football field, and keep an eye on 22 players at the same time.

Help the referee to do his job better, so that the game is fairer, and the excessive fouling and cheating can be quashed. If the 4th official can see on a video monitor that the referee has missed something, then he can inform him. Does Sepp Blatter really think that it is OK to allow a clear goal, as shown on the big video display (by mistake) to be disallowed because the referee did not happen to be on the goal line to see if it had crossed the line? The same referee had to look up at the screen and see his mistake, but was even then not allowed to change his mind – video is a no-no in decision making.

I have discussed this before, but it is becoming a chronic problem now, and urgently needs action. A fabulous and extremely easy to administer first step would be to remove from the field for 15 minutes each player who receives a yellow card. In the sin-bin. The punishment then has an immediate impact on the game – a yellow card has only a small psychological effect (the avoidance of another). And one more change, for good measure – to explain to referees that allowing fouls in the early stages of a game to go unpunished so as to keep the game flowing is not right! A foul perpetrated in the 1st minute of the game should be punished with a yellow or red card. If it is not, as now? Then it gives licence to players to intimidate their opponents at the start of a game. It sends a message that misbehaviour will be ignored for a while.

As an ardent Liverpool fan since 1971, I feel that Liverpool were somewhat tough at the start if this season. Not just the ill fortune of mounting uncertainty about their ownership and possible slip into administration. But how the fixtures have made it a hard opening dozen games or so …

Not content with an opening day fixture against Arsenal, Liverpool will have faced the top 5 most dangerous opponents (Arsenal, Chelsea, Man Utd, Man City and Everton) in their first 11 games of the season by the time they host Chelsea on Sunday the 7th Nov 2010.

The reverse fixtures against those 5 teams is spread out across the remaining 27 fixtures!

However, after the Chelsea game, they then have an unprecedented 3 consecutive away Premier league fixtures (unless my mini Sun guide to fixtures has got it wrong). Maybe they did get it wrong – I thought that the fixture computer was meant to avoid such a sequence.

Virtually every day, I play the Oriental game of Go on the Internet. Truly wonderful that I can find an opponent at any time of the day or night. And I also get to play different styles from around the World. All for free.

On the Go Server I use, you can opt to play a ‘rated’ game, or a ‘free’ one. The result of only the former has an effect on your player rating.

Having protected an artificially high rating for a number of months, I decided to play all games as rated, and to focus on my game play, not on my ranking. This allowed me to develop aspects of my game without worrying unduly about losing. My ranking settled to a more realsitic level, where it has stayed since. But try as I might, I cannot shake free from a concern about my ranking. My ego hangs onto this status symbol with concerted dilligance, opposing my long term desires.

The more I watched this status obsession, the more I realised how stubborn it is. A deep rooted need to find a good or elavated level compared to others. Or at least not to slip so as to lose credibility regardless of the quality of my actual games. (It is easy in Go to play a solid game that you lead for most of the game only to slip up at the very end and see a position collapse and the gameslip away from your grasp).

So far, I cannot play without at least some concern for my ranking. My status. Maybe this indicates that I need to liberate the grip of my ego, and can use this simple status scenario as a gauge. I’ll update here if the situation changes.

On the matter of mental and emotional training, the excellent ‘The Plastic mind’ book covers this matter. They investigated the effect of decades of meditation on then non-meditative state of the meditator brains. They found that the influence of the right frontal cortex was small. During compassionate meditation, the left frontal cortex was the highest they had ever seen. Left means compassio, loce, harmony and the right ishome to jealousy, hatred, anger etc.

When questioned on hatred, it appears that the Dalai Lama not so much deeply suppresses this very negative emotion, but simple never feels it. His day to day life is free from the grip of a status obsessed ego, with all that entails.

Of course, these meditators are also liberated from the daily grind that afflicts the rest of us. They would barely have any time to themselves if parenting a bunch of children, let alone daily time to meditate for hours. But a small amount of mental and emotional training for the rest of us would probably be of parallel good as physical exercise is for us. It is just that we have not been edcuated in any way to see the value of such training. Or even how to go about it.