Author Archives: Mike

Deja Vu All Over Again…

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I got the Modern Toss book ‘Work C’est La Merde’ for my birthday in July and about a quarter of the way through Drive By Abuser is ‘considering’ the newspaper reader:

‘…I get it all online mate, not that I can be bothered most of the time, unless some footballer’s f*cked a prostitute or something, turns out they have, then I’m off to check the latest, see you around yeah?’

So he’ll be in his element today then.

Is it me or this just the same scenario being repeated over and over again? We convincingly beat an Eastern European team in a qualifier with one of our strikers who wasn’t Wayne Rooney scoring a hat-trick and one of our centre backs picking up an injury that will keep him out of action for several weeks, forcing him to miss games in the Premiership and Champions League. The following Sunday we get to eat our bacon and eggs/croissants/chocolate Weetabix/roast dinner while reading about whoever’s been caught playing away.

To be honest, it’s all getting a bit old now. All you’ve got to do is change the names and there’s enough material to use every Sunday for the next couple of years before the England team turns up to Euro 2012 under the weight of unfulfillable expectations, scrape through the group stages and then gets knocked out by the first decent team they play.

Still, I’d be putting together a preview of the Switzerland game but to be honest with you I can’t be bothered writing any more about England today when I can just cut and paste it from posts I’ve written before.

This is the best Drive By Abuser from the Modern Toss TV series…probably NSFW though!

The Sun Shines Over Thrace…

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Before moving on to our opponents in Friday night’s game, there are a couple of England stories to mention: Peter Crouch is out of the squad with a back injury and League 2 side Shrewsbury Town will receive a £500,000 windfall ‘if’ Joe Hart plays in goal tomorrow night: not bad at all for a team that had an average attendance last season of about 5500 – that’s about £90 per punter at the Greenhous Meadow Stadium.

So onto Bulgaria. They’ve not qualified for a major tournament since Euro 2004 but having said that, they’ve actually done as well as we have in the World Cup over the last quarter of a century, finishing fourth in the ’94 World Cup in the USA.

Before that, their most successful international era was when they qualified for four straight World Cups (1962-1974) and they’ve had their fair share of decent international players; striker Georgi Asparuhov was the nearest thing they had to George Best in the 60s and at one point Benfica wanted to buy him but the Communist government wouldn’t let him leave Bulgaria. Like George Best, he died far too early: in June 1971 he was killed in a car crash aged 28.

Other Bulgarian players to have achieved international recognition are Hristo Bonev, the shy and retiring Hristo Stoichkov and most recently Dimitar Berbatov, who has now retired from international football so he can spend his weekends disinterestedly wandering around opposition penalty areas for Manchester United. Oh and the bloke who looks like a werewolf and that goalie who was bald when he was in the World Cup but had ‘hair’ when he joined Reading. And if Spartacus was alive now and was any good at football, he’d probably be playing for Bulgaria.

Like a lot of the teams from Eastern Europe that we’ve played recently, the most capped player and leading goalscorer for the Lions is a name that will be familiar – Martin Petrov of Bolton Wanderers and captain Stiliyan Petrov will be well known to Celtic and Aston Villa fans. It also shouldn’t come as much of a surprise that only one of the current squad plays his club football at home (Veselin Minev of Lokomotiv Sofia); most of the rest are spread around the world – Berbatov’s natural replacement and former Manchester City striker Valeri Bojinov now plays in Serie A for Parma.

Whilst researching this piece I was a bit surprised to find out that we’ve only actually played them four times at home since 1968: they’ve never beaten us (either home or away) and have only scored once in their games at Wembley – not surprisingly, the scorer was Asparuhov and it wasn’t a bad goal either:

Not sure who the defender he beat was; Geoff Hurst equalised four minutes later and the game finished 1-1.

I know I’m tempting fate, but I think we stand a pretty good chance of getting our qualifying campaign off to a winning start – thirteen games unbeaten at Wembley with only one draw isn’t to be dismissed lightly – but Bulgaria won’t be pushovers despite having only won once in their last ten away games (a win in Malta last November) and will be looking to nick a point if possible.
As it’s a home game ITV will be showing it (the inane waffle featuring Andy Townsend referring to ‘the goals’ when he means ‘the goal’ starts at 7:30pm, kick off at 8.00pm), which means that if you can find a noisy pub that has a telly with the sound turned off you won’t be able to hear whoever is talking about the new kit.

Back To Business

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OK, two proper games coming up – unusually, our opening game with Bulgaria is being played on a Friday night, presumably because the England squad don’t want to miss MK Dons v Hartlepool in League 1 on Saturday lunchtime. Let’s start with the squad:

Goalkeepers: Scott Carson (West Brom), Ben Foster (Birmingham), Joe Hart (Manchester City).

Defenders: Gary Cahill (Bolton), Ashley Cole (Chelsea), Michael Dawson (Tottenham), Kieran Gibbs (Arsenal), Phil Jagielka (Everton), Glen Johnson (Liverpool), Joleon Lescott (Manchester City), Matthew Upson (West Ham)

Midfielders: Gareth Barry (Manchester City), Michael Carrick (Manchester United), Steven Gerrard (Liverpool), Adam Johnson (Manchester City), James Milner (Manchester City), Theo Walcott (Arsenal), Shaun Wright-Phillips (Manchester City), Ashley Young (Aston Villa)

Forwards: Darren Bent (Sunderland), Carlton Cole (West Ham), Peter Crouch (Tottenham), Jermain Defoe (Tottenham), Wayne Rooney (Manchester United).

* The goalkeeper situation for the next decade is basically Joe Hart and anyone who’s ever played goalkeeper before. Fab’s sudden realisation that Hart is the best keeper we’ve got is arguably six months too late and is a tacit admission that he made a mistake with his choices at the the World Cup. I’ll be amazed if either David James or Robert Green ever play for England again: Joe Hart could end up rivalling Peter Shilton in terms of talent and longevity.

* 16 players made the provisional 30 strong squad that was named before the World Cup; Darren Bent, Adam Johnson and Theo Walcott are back in contention after having missed the cut for the final 23 for South Africa. Personally I thought that either Johnson or Walcott should have gone to the World Cup and that Darren Bent didn’t really get a realistic chance to impress in the friendly against Japan – in retrospect, a game where the alarm bells really should have started ringing very loudly indeed.

* Of the players that didn’t decide to either retire or declare their permanent ineligibility after the World Cup, Joe Cole, Robert Green, Ledley King and Steven Warnock were all in the final World Cup squad but are missing this time. John Terry, Frank Lampard, Rio Ferdinand (again) and Bobby Zamora are all missing for injury reasons, although rumours that Lampard is having psychological treatment aimed at persuading him never to take a penalty again are unfounded. Cole (J) is going to find it hard going to get back into the squad – his decision to move to a Liverpool team that already looks even more lacklustre than last season may have an adverse affect on his England chances.

* Why is anyone from West Ham still involved in the England team? Bottom of the Premiership already having scored one goal in three games and with a goal difference of -9. If Matt Upson and Carlton Cole were truly international standard players then they would have at least been linked to moves to Manchester City. The Hammers are worse than Wigan right now; perhaps Fab should give Chris Kirkland and Victor Moses a look before he announces the next squad.

Our record at home against Bulgaria is OK: they’ve never beaten us (home or away) but in our four games with them at Wembley we’ve won two. Our last win came in March 1996 – when Les Ferdinand scored the only goal – but the last time we played them competitively was in a 0-0 draw in October 1998 in a Euro 2000 qualifer.

I’ll take a look at Bulgaria later in the week but for those of you that can’t wait to find out some interesting facts about them, neither that bloke who looks like a werewolf or Dimitar Berbatov play for them any longer.

That bloke who looks like a werewolf.

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Are You Hungary For More?

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Excuse the inevitable pun…the good news is that we’re still pretty formidable at home: nine straight wins, unbeaten since that game against Croatia in November 2007 and playing a country that hasn’t beaten us since the 1962 World Cup and hasn’t beaten us in England since that game in November 1953.

The bad news? This is a game we should win. Just like the game against Algeria during the World Cup, although to be fair to the Algerians the current FIFA rankings have the Desert Foxes thirty places above the current crop of slightly less than magical Magyars, but after this summer’s dismal failure anything might happen.

Having said that, the contrite atmosphere that has permeated the press conferences given by Fabio Capello and Steven Gerrard this week have been encouraging yet slightly depressing. Admitting that there were various problems with both the preparation and execution of the World Cup campaign is refreshing, but the comments that were coming from the England camp before the World Cup contradicted those statements. Attempting to put those things right in one game won’t work and – like most fans – I’ll be extremely wary if the expected romp through the Euro 2012 qualification group materialises. It shouldn’t be forgotten that half of the World Cup semi finalists had to qualify via the playoffs.

Then there are the withdrawals. I’ve already commented on Robinson and Brown and to some extent I sympathise with their points of view, but although it’s encouraging to see that Capello has called up Scott Loach and Frankie Fielding from the Under 21 squad as replacements, he didn’t really have much choice in the matter and I seriously doubt that they’ll get any playing time tomorrow.

Spare a thought for Hungary though. Despite their 1954 squad being widely acknowledged as one of the best teams never to have won the World Cup, they haven’t qualified for a major tournament since 1986, although the under 20s finished third in the 2009 World Cup for that age group. That team was coached by Sandor Egervari, who replaced Erwin Koeman as senior team manager at the end of July. Although there are several well known names amongst the Hungarians – four of the squad play in England and keeper Gabor Kiraly played for Crystal Palace, Aston Villa and Burnley – the Hungarian league isn’t particularly good and it’s significant that only five of the twenty man squad play for domestic clubs. Kiraly is the most capped player in the current squad and any goals will come from either Zoltan Gera of Fulham or Tamas Priskin, who scored at the weekend for Ipswich Town.

Prediction: England to win and keep a clean sheet. Immediate post-match reaction tomorrow but it won’t be either an instant classic or have the same long term implications this game did, although after this summer’s shambles it could be argued we still haven’t learned the lessons from that foggy Wednesday afternoon in November 1953…

Squad for Hungary Friendly – 2nd Update

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Goalkeepers: Ben Foster (Birmingham), Joe Hart (Manchester City), Paul Robinson (Blackburn)  – although Sporting Life is reporting on Sunday morning that Robinson has withdrawn from the squad and announced his retirement from international football.

On Sunday, Wes Brown did the same thing as Robinson – presumably fed up with being a reserve, he’s also retired from international football. I’m actually beginning to wonder if this is a sign of widespread disatisfaction by the players about the way the team is heading in – it’s almost insulting to be left out of the World Cup squad but to be included in the squad for a pre-season friendly which no-one really cares about.

Defenders: Gary Cahill (Bolton), Ashley Cole (Chelsea), Michael Dawson (Tottenham Hotspur), Kieran Gibbs (Arsenal), Phil Jagielka (Everton), Glen Johnson (Liverpool), John Terry (Chelsea)

Midfielders: Gareth Barry (Manchester City), Steven Gerrard (Liverpool), Adam Johnson (Manchester City), Frank Lampard (Chelsea), James Milner (Aston Villa), Ashley Young (Aston Villa), Theo Walcott (Arsenal), Jack Wilshere (Arsenal)

Forwards: Darren Bent (Sunderland), Carlton Cole (West Ham United), Wayne Rooney (Manchester United), Bobby Zamora (Fulham)

Hungary (from – I’ve always wanted to write that!)

Goalkeepers: Gabor Kiraly (1860 Munich), Marton Fulop (Sunderland)

Defenders: Zoltan Szelesi (Olympiakos Volosz), Krisztian Vermes (Ujpest FC), Zoltan Liptak (Videoton FC), Roland Juhasz (Anderlecht), Adam Komlosi (Debreceni VSC), Vilmos Vanczak (FC Sion)

Midfielders: Krisztian Vadocz (Osasuna), Akos Elek (Videoton FC), Balazs Toth (Genk), Akos Buzsaky (QPR), Peter Czvitkovics (Debreceni), Balazs Dzsudzsak (PSV), Szabolcs Huszti (FC Zenit), Vladimir Koman (Sampdoria)

Forwards: Zoltan Gera (Fulham), Tamas Hajnal (Borussia Dortmund), Gergely Rudolf (Genoa), Tamas Priskin (Ipswich Town).

Full preview coming before the game.

David James Joins Bristol City

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I hereby declare a conflict of interest: I’ve tried to be keep my posts about the England team, the Premiership and interesting bits and pieces about international foobtall around the world but I hereby declare that I am a Bristol City season ticket holder and have been for some years. So I can pretty much guarantee that at the moment I am probably more stunned that David James has decided to join City than anyone else reading this.

I’m going to have a lie down now.

Man Underperforms But Keeps Job (Part 2)

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Vaya con Dios, Diego Maradona: despite getting further than England but scoring fewer goals against Germany than England did, El Diego is now looking for another job. Presumably Ronald Reagan, Tony Blair, Margaret Thatcher, George Bush and FIFA mafiosi were to blame, not shoddy defending or inability/unwillingness by his strikers to track back.

The current coaches of Cuba and Venezuela are Raul Gonzalez Triana and Cesar Farias respectively. Just sayin’ 😉

Not nearly as harsh as what happened to the North Korean team though…and Fab goes marching on.

The Ultimate Underdogs?

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We’ll definitely be keeping our eyes on this. Best of luck to Hekari United.

In other news…all 23 players that comprised the French squad that went to the World Cup have been suspended for their game against Norway on August 11th. It’ll be interesting to see how many of our squad play against Hungary on the same day; at least the FFF seem to be taking their abject failure seriously.

It’s The Capello Index!

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It’s here! ESPN Soccernet has the England team ratings here if you really feel you must see them.

It’s a bit bonkers though – Diego Forlan was born in Uruguay, but apparently his nationality is Spanish – and apparently we took Barry Gareth to South Africa rather than Gareth Barry and there’s no ‘ball given away in midfield’ stats for him. Wayne Rooney also somehow got a higher rating than Cristiano Ronaldo – who actually scored a goal in the finals.