Liverpool

Insideworldfootball.biz

English football fans are be capable of much humour, no little inventiveness and a warmth and goodness that can be truly uplifting, but the capacity for some fans to be vile should not be underestimated. Events at some recent matches have once again demonstrated that.

So during their Carling Cup encounter, Manchester United fans were taunted by chants from Leeds fans about the Munich air crash and United fans, in turn, retaliated with chants of Istanbul, a city where Leeds fans were killed. Fans of other clubs have also indulged in such behaviour and in the past, clashes between Manchester United and Liverpool have seen extremely disgraceful references to Munich and the death of Bill Shankly.

Read more >

Insideworldfootball

The cult of the manager may have been developing since the 1960s, but football now faces a situation that not many could have imagined. This is the age of the manager as a celebrity, with his every action judged to be as important and worthy of highlight, at times even more so, than the players he manages.

This marks a fundamental change in the how the game is perceived. When Pelé described football as the beautiful game, he meant the show put on by the likes of him and his fellow players.

We now have the extraordinary spectacle of not one football event, but two simultaneous ones, where the off-field action surrounding managers, be it Jose Mourinho or Arsène Wenger, attracts as much attention, if not more, than Lionel Messi’s performance on the field.

Read more >

Evening Standard

Hodgson: 'English football's health is judged on just five results a year. It has to be more important than that'. Image courtesy of Evening Standard

Nothing much surprises Roy Hodgson. “I am fatalistic,” he says. “So many things happen in football that, if you have a long career like I have, they are going to happen to you sometime.”

The West Brom manager takes another sip of beer when we meet in the Park Lane hotel, where his team stayed for last weekend’s game at Chelsea. But, for all his acceptance of football fate, he is surprised by how things have turned out since he was sacked by Liverpool. “I’m back at a club similar to the one I left for Liverpool: Fulham.”

As with Fulham, he was called in to save the Baggies from relegation. Last season’s rescue lacked the drama of keeping Fulham up in 2008 when the winner against Portsmouth came in the 76th minute of their last match but, says Hodgson: “It still was a close escape. We weren’t fooled that we finished mid-table [11th]. I was no more confident than we were at Fulham.”

Read more >

Insideworldfootball

The beginning of the football season always turns to talk of money and how much clubs have spent on the transfer market.

Yet what this misses is the age-old truth that money does not buy sporting success. Spending money can keep the fans happy and raise their expectations for the season, but is no guarantee of silverware at the end of the season.

This is something that Manchester City fans might well discover this season as they finally strive to wrest back some glory from their more famous city rivals. Managers under pressure always talk of how much the opposition has spent, but it is management more than money that matters in the end.

Read more >

Insideworldfootball.biz

The £225 million ($363 million) spend in the January transfer window has been greeted with awe, alarm and the sort of reaction that suggests something entirely new has happened.

That is not so.

Yes, the figure is a record. But that fact, by itself, does not change the basic realities of the Premier League.

Ignore the numbers for the moment and the Premier League is where it has been since the summer of 2003. Then, an unknown Russian called Roman Abramovich, flew to London, bought a West London club that had a great need for money, and changed the football landscape of this country.

Read more >