TwoHundredPercent

Football Shorts

Fri, 1 Feb 2008 19:41:18 -0600

Over the course of the normal working day, many things flash through my head which I either don't have the time to write up in full or aren't quite fleshy enough to warrant a full article on here. Here are some of the things that have been playing on my mind over the last week or so.

Wasn't January Great? I can't remember another month which has provided so much entertainment. We've seen the crisis at Anfield (which has opened up the Premier League in a way that no-one would have anticipated at the start of the season), the ongoing circus at Newcastle United, two marvellous rounds of the FA Cup, Leeds United losing Dennis Wise and slumping in the league, Franchise letting the chasing pack catch them up in League Two and the outstanding group stages of the African Cup Of Nations. If 2008 carries on at this rate, it's going to be a great year. It won't, though, will it?

Steamy Windows The press are the only people that get massively excited about the January transfer window, aren't they? There's always a frantic rush of excitement on the back pages towards the end of December with feverish speculation over who is going to be going where, and it always turns out to be a bit of a let down. Jermaine Defoe to Portsmouth, Nicolas Anelka to Chelsea and Jonathan Woodgate to Spurs have been the big moves over the last month or so, and Defoe's move was only really exciting because it happened at the very, very last minute. I've got a mental image of it taking place on a bridge in the middle of nowhere, rather like spies being exchanged in a cold war thriller, for some reason. Except, um, there's only one "spy".

Fabio Luvs David It is a clear sign that the world has gone mad, when acres and acres of press coverage are given over to the England squad selection for a friendly match against Switzerland, but I'll allow some slack to be cut on it because it does at least allow us a window into the world of the curious relationship between Fabio Cappello and David Beckham. Cappello was, of course, Beckham's bete noire at Real Madrid, dropping him from the first team and then offloading him to LA Galaxy. Now, with Beckham on 99 England caps and desperate to win his 100th, Cappello has left him out of the squad for the Switzerland match. It is easy to come to the conclusion that Fabio just doesn't like David that much, but I don't think that this is necessarily true. Cappello is a ruthless pragmatist, and I am inclined towards thinking that this was partly a pure football decision (Beckham has barely kicked a competitive ball in the last three months) and partly Cappello imposing his will on the no squad ("bollocks to this so-called 'golden generation' and their entourage, if you play for Fabio, you play on merit and nothing else"). Also, Cappello has sought to assure Beckham that the door isn't entirely closed, which strikes me as being merely good management. Personally, I think he should put Beckham on the bench, bring him on with two minutes to play, and then substitute him again thirty seconds later. Beckham would get his cap, Fabio would send out a clear message, and it would kind of sum up Beckham's international career into the bargain.

Oh Bugger I was momentarily feverishly excited at the news that AFC Wimbledon had drawn Torquay United in the Third Round of the FA Trophy, until I remembered that I'd already agreed to go to Preston to see friends this weekend and that even if I rescheduled this, I'd be helping some friends move house in Brighton this Saturday afternoon. Sometimes the football gods conspire against you, and there's nothing you can do about it. Should anybody be interested in watching it, I'll be doing a topless raindance on the balcony of my flat at 9.00 tomorrow morning in the interests of getting it postponed and rescheduled to Tuesday night, when I would be able to go. Just kidding. Good luck on Saturday, Wombles.

Share & Share Alike?

Fri, 1 Feb 2008 19:38:13 -0600

Like many people, I had spent much of the last year or so wondering about the supine reaction of Liverpool supporters to the Gillett & Hicks take-over. Here were two people coming in with no apparent prior interest in Liverpool Football Club, making numerous promises and claims, but with the prevailing common knowledge becoming apparent that they didn't have the cash up front to pay for it. Very few people that closely connected wondered aloud where the money was going to come from. The club was being purchased for £300m and the new stadium will cost something like £400m. These are substantial amounts of money. They were also making promises of spending obscene amounts of money on players. In spite of this, Stars & Stripes flags were flown on match days. The arrivistes were feted as saviours. It was almost as if no-one had been paying any attention to what had gone on forty miles up the road at Old Trafford for the last few years or so. Considering that Liverpool is the city that was the birthplace of Militant, the home of the Dockers' strike and a city which remains one of the most politically left-wing in Britain, it was all most perplexing.

Over the last few weeks or so, the wheels have come spectacularly off the wagon for the new owners. They may have secured the refinancing package that they desperately needed, but it hasn't come cheap and it is now common knowledge that, just as at Manchester United, a football club is effectively paying for itself to be taken over by outside investors, and at a cost of £30m per year in interest payments alone - money which, ultimately, will come from the supporters themselves. The seeds of the problems for Gillett & Hicks were sown in their treatment of Rafael Benitez. Whatever the shortcomings of Benitez are, he has taken them to two European Cup finals in three years and is still enormously popular on Merseyside. The club's apparent misjudgement of this incurred the wrath of the supporters and a demonstration march to the ground towards the end of last year. The lack of harmony within the club may or may not be directly responsible for the club's slump in form, a slump so severe that it hasn't merely ended their Premier League championship bid but will quite possibly result in them taking part in the UEFA Cup next season rather than the Champions League. There was a further demonstration against Gillett & Hicks at the recent match against Aston Villa. Something, one suspected, was in the air. At last.

The upshot of it all is "Share Liverpool FC", launched today in the city by Rogan Taylor, a long time Liverpool supporter and the chair of the Football Supporters Association, Kevin Jaquiss, a lawyer specialising in employment law who was part of the group responsible for writing the legal model upon which all supporters trusts are based, and Phil French, a former director of communications of the Premier League who is now employed as the chief executive of Supporters Direct. In terms of knowledge and support, you couldn't really ask for much more experience. The plan is a simple (if ambitious) one: persuade 100,000 Liverpool supporters to pay £5,000 each and raise £500m to buy the club, and then run it as a not-for-profit mutual society, with no shareholder dividends and no profit. The group has had a somewhat shaky start (such was the level of interest that the web site collapsed fifteen minutes after it went live and, at the time of writing, hasn't recovered yet), but this would appear to bode well for them - a considerable amount interest in a concept that very few people had even heard about as recently as a couple of days ago.

So, can it work? Well, it can. These are monstrous amounts of money, though - are there 100,000 Liverpool supporters in the world who will part with £5,000 in order to take control of the club? Are there that many supporters groups that will band together and buy shares between them? The next few weeks will provide a few answers to this, but it is worth remembering that if nothing else, we should applaud the principle of this idea. Some, such as the apparently "humorous" website Who Ate All The Pies, have already chosen to scoff at the announcement, with a magnificently ill-informed article on the announcement that appears to have been written on the back of a cigarette packet in the pub. I don't know which part of their piece on the subject (which I'm not linking to from here - if you want to see it, you can go and look for yourselves) is the worst: "They should leave the running of the club to the money men in suits who know about such things", or "this is communism at its most hare-brained" are vying with each other (and a whole host more) for the most the most ill-informed comment on the subject. Having embarked upon second and third readings of it, I can confidently state that more or less every single sentence of it is as bad as the one that preceded it.

My personal inclination is to think that this plan is unlikely to work, but that this shouldn't preclude people from supporting it. What, exactly, are the alternatives? Well, there's The Middle-Aged Man Possibly On The Cusp Of A Nervous Breakdown Model (Newcastle United), The Asset Stripping Leveraged Buyout Model (Liverpool, Manchester United), The Billionaire That Could Get Bored At Any Moment And Leave Your Club Staring Into The Abyss Model (Chelsea), The God Knows What He's Up To Or, For That Matter, What His Predecessor Was Up To Either Model (Cardiff City), The Buy The Club, Kick Them Out Of The Ground, Sell The Ground And Vamoose Model (Brighton & Hove Albion) or The Former Foreign Dictator Who Could Find All Of His Assets Frozen At Any Moment Model (Manchester City) to choose from. I'd be more inclined to be critical of this project if the people that have run our clubs for the last one hundred and thirty years or so were paragons of financial and moral rectitude, but the bare fact is that they're not. If Share Liverpool should fail, they'll have at least given it a go, and it might plant the seed of an idea in the supporters of other, smaller clubs. If does turn out to work, it might just revolutionise the way that English football is run forever. Seems worth a try, doesn't it?

To The Manor Born

Fri, 1 Feb 2008 19:36:50 -0600

Grosvenor Vale is about as far from the Premier League as most people could imagine. The pitch there is surrounded with a wooden picket fence that harks back to a long-forgotten era and the club that uses it, Ruislip Manor has a long (if inglorious) history. Their neighbours Wealdstone are former non-league giants who found themselves homeless through a mixture of underhand dealing and exceptionally bad luck. Now, however, one of them faces closure and the other faces the possibility of (largely unfairly) being labelled a "club killer". How the fate of these two clubs became intertwined is a story of greed and neglect, and one of them is now in such a desperate state that it is touch and go whether they will even be able to see their way through to the end of the season.

Wealdstone are the bigger of the two clubs. In 1985, they became the first side to win the non-league "double" of the Conference and the FA Trophy and gave the world the dubious mixed football talents of Stuart Pearce and Vinny Jones. In those days, however, there was no automatic promotion to the Football League, and the the Stones soon faded into relative ignominy, being relegated back into the Southern League in 1988. In 1991, they lost their Lower Mead stadium. Chairman John Morritt, a property developer, sold the site to Tesco, claiming grandly that the club would have a new home within a couple of years. Lower Mead was a prime piece of real estate, in the heart of one of North London's most affluent areas, but the club itself received very little of this money (Morritt resigned and the company handling the sale went into liquidation, though whether these two events were related is largely unanswered by the history books), and the club entered into a financially ruinous groundshare at Vicarage Road, Watford. The club failed to attract the support that they had hoped for, and left there two years later. They've spent the years since then as nomads, ground-sharing at the altogether less salubrious homes of Yeading, Edgware Town and Northwood.

Ruislip Manor's history is less illustrious than Wealdstone's. Founded in 1938, they joined the Athenian League in 1965. The Athenian League had been a strong amateur league, but by the 1960s it was in decline, with many its biggest clubs (such as Barnet, Enfield and Dagenham) frequently decamping to the Isthmian and Southern Leagues. They stayed there until 1984, when further expansion of the Isthmian League to four divisions forced its closure. At this point, they joined the Isthmian League, where they stayed as solid, if unspectacular members until 1996, when they took a voluntary demotion to the Spartan League for financial reasons. They remain there today. Their decline has been a slow one. The club's ground was run by the Ruislip Manor Sports & Social Club, who allowed the football club to use the pitch but kept the receipts from bar takings. It was a precarious arrangement, and the S&SC was rumoured to be in debt to the tune of £60,000 after years of neglect.

The two clubs' paths crossed when Wealdstone completed the purchase of the Ruislip Manor Sports & Social Club earlier this season. Ruislip, struggling near the bottom of the table had been struggling by on gates on that had fallen as low as 25, but Wealdstone had been paying the football club ground rent for their reserves and youth teams use of Grosvenor Vale, and without this source of income, the club suddenly found itself with no income other than gate receipts. The committee running Ruislip Manor resigned and, at an emergency meeting held on the 29th of January, no-one came forward to fill the vital administrative posts (chairman, secretary and treasurer) that are required for the club to carry on playing. The Spartan League have allowed them to call previous matches off in order to allow them to find people to fill these positions, but at the time of writing it looks unlikely that they will be able to continue. Wealdstone, it is worth pointing out, are not as bad as they could be painted here. They have waived any rent charges for the remainder of this season, but they run on a very limited budget themselves. There is no particularly good reason why they should "bail out" Ruislip.

There comes, I guess, a point when you have to wonder whether it is worth carrying on. If the support and the will to keep the club going isn't there, is it worth the few people left that care about Ruislip Manor FC busting a gut when the end reward might well be beyond their reach? These are tough questions, but there are tentative signs that they might not quite be done for yet. The messages coming from the Ruislip forum are encouraging, with several people having volunteered to help out on match days, with the hope being that they at least be able to carry on playing until the end of this season, giving them a critical couple of months in which to regroup. They can resign to the very base of the pyramid, which would free them up to use the considerably cheaper option of hiring a public pitch, but they would also have to consider that there may be no way back into the senior game should they do this. In the present day, though, time is running out, and it seems likely that, after 70 years, last orders are being called on Ruislip Manor FC. On the off-chance that there is anybody reading this that might be able to help, there is more information here.

Tuesday Night Review

Fri, 1 Feb 2008 19:34:06 -0600

This week's midweek matches, the vast majority of which were played last night, seemed to catch many people unaware. This certainly seemed to be what happened at The Reebok Stadium, where just 17,700 people took the time to drop by for their 0-0 draw with Fulham. The missing thousands must have known something. Meanwhile, Arsenal went back to the top of the table with a 3-0 win against Newcastle United, whose new managerial "team" could only watch in silence as their players turned in a second successive dreadful performance in North London. This morning's BBC web site leads with Keegan's bullish response to Dennis Wise's appointment as Supreme Galactic Overlord - most notably of all, the article points out that Newcastle are now just seven points off the relegation places. One shudders to think what the effect on Mike Ashley's apparently fragile mental state might be if they get sucked into a battle against relegation. You can probably expect to see him topless and daubed in war paint next Saturday. As it stands, anyone from Tottenham Hotspur (in twelfth place) down could find themselves fighting for their survival. The prognosis at least looks a little healthier for Sunderland this morning after their 2-0 win over Birmingham City lifted them up to fourteenth place. Taking their place beneath the trapdoor are Wigan Athletic, who lost 1-0 at Middlesbrough.

Anyone that believes that FA Cup is detrimental to league form should probably take a look at last night's results in the Championship. Preston North End seem to have been given a healthy dose of self-confidence, and followed up their thrashing of Derby County at the weekend by beating West Bromwich Albion 2-1 at Deepdale last night. This result meant that Albion failed to move clear of this season's surprise package, Bristol City, who stay in second place on goal difference only in spite of not having played last night. A few weeks ago it looked as if the race for the promotion places might come down to a two horse race, but there are now just four points between the top five. Charlton won a critical game against Stoke by a single goal last night, whilst Watford could only draw at Sheffield United, muddying the waters still further. Barnsley followed up the news that they will be the next team to try and knock Liverpool out of the FA Cup by beating bottom of the table Colchester United 1-0 at Oakwell, while Wolves, who seemed to be in free-fall over the last couple of months, beat Sheffield Wednesday at Molineux. This result left the bottom of the Championship table as open as the top, with six points now between third from bottom Preston and Sheffield United, in fifteenth place.

All eyes in League One last night were on Roots Hall - how well would Leeds United's players react to the surprise departure of Dennis Wise? The answer was "not very". Southend United beat them 1-0 to drop them down to sixth place. If the match between Nottingham Forest and Swansea City was meant to be "an advertisement for the division", it was an advertisement that lacked an end product. It finished goalless, although the crowd of over 21,000 was notable for a Tuesday night match in January. All of this suited Doncaster Rovers very nicely. They leapfrogged over Forest and into second place with a 2-0 win against Hartlepool United. At the the bottom, there's all still to play for. Luton Town lost 1-0 at home to Swindon Town in The Battle Of The Clubs That Have Flirted With Bankruptcy. The result leaves them one place off the bottom of the table, but results elsewhere went their way - fellow relegation candidates Bournemouth lost at Huddersfield, while Crewe could only draw at home against Bristol Rovers. The last time that I looked at the League One table, Cheltenham Town appeared doomed to the drop. Since then, they've gone unbeaten in 2008 until last night, when they were beaten 1-0 at home by Millwall, who hauled themselves out of the relegation places. It still looks like being tight, though, with anyone from Brighton & Hove Albion (in fourteenth place) likely to end up fighting against the drop.

In League Two, Franchise's implosion continues apace. They've now lost five home matches this season, and the "loyal" people of Milton Keynes demonstrated their impatience with it all with just 6,500 turning up to see them drop another two points, this time with a 1-1 draw against struggling Macclesfield Town. The chasing pack are catching up ominously. Franchise are still five points clear at the top, but everyone below them has got games in hand, though Rotherham United wasted the chance to close the gap to just two points with a 3-1 defeat at Peterborough United. Peterborough are up to fourth place now, with a game in hand, whilst Darlington stay in third place after a 1-0 win against Accrington Stanley. A highly undignified battle to stay in the Football League looks likely, with half a dozen teams in touching distance of the relegation places. Wrexham's mini revival continued with a creditable 2-2 at Morecambe, whilst Mansfield Town (who must have taken encouragement from their excellent performance in losing at home to Middlesbrough in the FA Cup on Saturday lunchtime) won at Lincoln City to keep Wrexham bottom of the table.

Finally, there were three matches in the Conference last night. Aldershot Town moved six points clear of Torquay United at the top of the table with a 1-0 win against Oxford United, although Torquay still have two games in hand and would go top if they won both of them. Oxford's slump has been as surprising for the rest of us as it has been alarming for their own supporters. They have now won just two matches in fifteen since the start of December, and have plummeted from having a reasonable chance of making the play-offs to fifteenth place. With thirty-seven points in the bag, they've probably got enough about them to steer clear of a relegation battle (there are still sixteen points between them and fourth from bottom Farsley Celtic), but this wasn't, I rather suspect, what anyone at The Kassam Stadium thought would happen after they lost out in last year's Conference play-offs. Elsewhere, Exeter City closed the gap on Cambridge United (who occupy the last play-off place at the moment) with a 1-0 win at The Abbey Stadium, and Burton Albion cemented their fourth position with a 2-1 win against struggling Rushden & Diamonds.

You can see some of last night's Premier League goals here, along with highlights from the African Cup Of Nations, the group stages of which are coming to an end. More on that tonight.

When Soap Operas Collide

Fri, 1 Feb 2008 19:32:01 -0600

The Simpsons has a habit of occasionally dropping in cameo performances from the stars of other animated series, and it always leave me feeling strangely uncomfortable. Seeing Fred Flintstone sitting on the couch at 742 Evergreen Terrace has the effect of making me look around, just to check that the world is still turning and that I haven't slipped, without noticing, into a parallel universe. Soap operas, thank heavens, don't do the same thing nearly as often, but I had to check that there was just the one sun in the sky this morning with the news that Dennis Wise has been appointed as the General Manager at Newcastle United, an appointment which has further reinforced my opinion that Mike Ashley is suffering some sort of nervous breakdown.

Interviewed on the radio last night, Kevin Keegan sounded somewhat bemused and unhappy at the appointment. After all the fanfare of his resurrection-like return to St James Park (though it is always worth pointing out that this particular "Geordie Messiah" isn't actually a Geordie himself, and that his first significant involvement with Newcastle United was practically beating them single-handed for Liverpool in the 1974 FA Cup final - he didn't sign for Newcastle until 1982, by which time he was way past his best and had already retired from international football), Newcastle have played some atrocious football in his two matches in charge so far, barely registering a shot on target against either Bolton Wanderers or Arsenal, but I doubt if he could reasonably have been expecting such a, well, peculiar appointment to be made, especially without his own authorisation.

Leeds United supporters seem happy enough with it all and, indeed, why shouldn't they be? I fully understand that they would be top of the table if it hadn't been for the fifteen point deduction that they suffered during the summer because of the attempted sleight of hand over their financial crisis at the time, but their supporters seem to have long enough memories to be be fully aware of the fact that it was Wise that took them down in the first place and that his appointment and retention at Elland Road seemed to be largely on the basis that he is one of the few men in football that actually likes Ken Bates. They have spent heavily since the transfer embargo placed upon them was lifted, and being near the top of League One, for a club that was competing in the Champions League earlier in this decade, should be their minimum requirement, points deduction or no. The only cloud on their horizon is the spectre of Dave Bassett, seemingly appointed as caretaker-manager - another ghost from the past, who seems unlikely to be the man to provide them with very much success or, indeed watchable football.

Considering how dull the January transfer window has been, we should be grateful to Leeds and Newcastle (as well as Liverpool) for providing us with as much mirth as they have done. Football needs this level of incompetent administration to give the rest of us something to giggle over, and you get the feeling that it just wouldn't be the same if everyone was ably administrated. All we need now is for Jose Mourinho to be offered the Leeds job, only for him to turn it down, leaving them with Steve McClaren in charge, and the circle will be complete.

Some Final Thoughts On Havant & Waterlooville

Fri, 1 Feb 2008 19:29:23 -0600

There has been plenty of comment in many different places on the subject of Havant & Waterlooville's FA Cup run, and their performance on Saturday. There are many people more closely involved in what has been going on than I am, but I thought that I would take opportunity to add some final, personal thoughts on the subject before laying it to rest for the time being. As I mentioned on here earlier, we heard a lot of cliche over the weekend, but it continues to delight me that, in such a cynical age as this, we haven't forgotten our capacity to be delighted by football, and by minor acts of heroism. The last few days have been a time to forget about the harsh realities of the modern game, with its nepotism, closed shops and spirit-sapping commercialism. It has been a time to revel in the sort of shared experience that I had been starting to think was dead in modern football.

It is worth reminding everyone reading this that, for a club of the size of Havant & Waterlooville, this truly is a "once in a lifetime" experience. For Havant (and they are by no means the smallest club to enter into the FA Cup), it took them eight matches to get this far, against stronger and stronger opposition. They started, in the Second Qualifying round, with an away match against Bognor Regis Town, who are in the same division as them. They had to beat three teams that play at a higher level than them. In the First Round, they beat York City (one division above them) away from home. In the Second Round, they beat Notts County (two divisions above them). In the Third Round, they beat Swansea City (top of League One - three divisions above them). Merely to get to Anfield in the first place was an achievement of Herculean proportions - to make a game of it and give the club that called themselves the champions of Europe not so long ago the fright of their lives is icing on the cake. We don't know how long we'll have to wait for a team to repeat it. It might be next year, it could be a decade.

They have been handsomely rewarded for their endeavour. The FA Cup divides gate receipts equally between the two competing clubs, so 50% of the money that people paid at Anfield on Saturday will have gone to Havant & Waterlooville, as well as 50% of the gate receipts for their earlier matches. The prize money (they have bagged nearly £100,000 for winning all of the matches that they have won this season) is a significant amount for a club of their size. There's every chance that they have made £1m from their adventure. An astronomical amount for a club of their size. One will have to hope that they choose to spend this money wisely, as a safeguard for the club's future. Time will tell on whether they do this, or whether they get carried away with their wealth and throw it all away into the unquenchable bonfire that is the world of footballers' wages. It may prove to be a difficult temptation to resist.

For now, though, the FA Cup has been given a massive breath of fresh air, and that is enough. The clubs that have treated it with disdain have been laughed out of court. It feels as if we've all remembered how much fun cup football can be, and with only six Premier League clubs left in the competition (one of whom, Manchester United or Arsenal, no less, is guaranteed to be knocked out in the Fifth Round, and two of whom, Middlesbrough and Portsmouth, have tricky away ties at Sheffield United and Preston North End respectively), it could well get even more interesting yet.

FA Cup Fourth Round Review

Fri, 1 Feb 2008 19:26:56 -0600

The FA Cup Fourth Round, played out last weekend, was most peculiar. There were sixteen matches played, involving thirty-two clubs, and not a single one was drawn. It was the first time that this had happened in a shade of fifty years. I bet no-one at the BBC saw that one coming. Equally strange is the layout of the last sixteen of the competition. Arsenal, Manchester United, Chelsea and Liverpool are all ominously present and correct (fingers crossed that they draw each other in the fifth round, then), but the rest of the Premier League has been absolutely decimated. I pointed out here before that the best possible Premier League representation in the Fifth Round would be eight clubs, and the weekend's results mean that just six have survived - the Big Four, plus Middlesbrough and Portsmouth. I can't offer a definitive solution to this riddle. I remain less than convinced that this idea that "the Premier League doesn't care about the FA Cup any more". I simply cannot accept that professional sportsmen could sell their supporters down the river like that, and I also don't think that it is in the genetic make-up of the professional sportsman to not want to win. I remain convinced that it is simply that the majority of the Premier League is nowhere near as good as it thinks it is. If the Premier League was anything like as good as it thinks it is, Everton's reserves would have rolled Oldham Athletic, Birmingham City would have beaten Huddersfield Town and so on and so forth. Until lunchtime, when the Fifth Round draw is made, it's difficult to gauge how healthy this all is for the competition (the rest of the Premier League's capitulation could be seen as simply giving the Big Four a free run to the semi-finals if they manage to avoid each other in the draw), but it does at least make a pleasant change to see some different faces at this stage of the competition.

The vast majority of the weekend's plaudits were taken by Havant & Waterlooville, who inflicted up Liverpool arguably the most excruciating forty-five minutes of football in their entire history. It was inevitable that Liverpool would eventually overpower them, but the final score of 5-2 was highly flattering, and whilst some cynics snorted over the cliches about "the magic of the FA Cup" and it being "what dreams are made of", it's worth pointing out that lazy journalism will always be lazy journalism. Some people have also wondered aloud how many of the 6,000 people that travelled up from Hampshire to Anfield will be back at West Leigh Park next week. My mind turns to Woking's FA Cup adventure in 1991, when they took a similar number of supporters to The Hawthorns for their match against West Bromwich Albion. Prior to that FA Cup run, Woking had been a fairly typical lower division non-league team, getting by on crowds of three to four hundred. Their average home crowds immediately shot up after this cup run, giving them the springboard for two promotions which took them into the Conference, where they remain to this day. We shall wait to see with interest whether Havant & Waterlooville enjoy similar success.

Yesterday's back pages certainly made interesting reading, with particular regard to Newcastle's trip to The Emirates Stadium to play Arsenal. One "senior source" (presumably a disgruntled player) noted darkly that Kevin Keegan's team talk prior to the match consisted of telling his players that "Arsenal are a great passing team. We must make sure that we pass the ball better than them", and nothing else. Such tactical acumen was thoroughly rewarded with Arsenal swatting them aside by an eventual 3-0 scoreline. Two games, no goals and out of the FA Cup. The Keegan Revolution marches on. Two further Premier League teams bit the dust against lower division opposition. There was no great surprise at Pride Park, where Derby County's new American owners saw their team thrashed at home by Preston North End, who currently occupy one of the relegation places in the Championship. They must be wondering what they've let themselves in for, there. Slightly more surprising was Manchester City's capitulation at Sheffield United, not least because Sven Goran Eriksson seemed to have turned a corner in terms of turning City into a capable, organised outfit, whilst the involvement of Bryan Robson at Bramall Lane would appear to preclude Sheffield United from doing anything with much efficiency.

In Sunday lunchtime's match, Spurs were predictably hungover against Manchester United. With a makeshift defence playing, they took the lead at Old Trafford before capitulating, and the 3-1 scoreline seemed to flatter United, with Michael Dawson getting himself sent off for deliberate handball and Radek Cerny rolled over a tame, deflected shot by Cristiano Ronaldo to sew the game game. In spite of all of this, Spurs had their chances. Jermaine Jenas was put through on goal with the score tied at 1-1 but rolled the ball tamely wide, and Dimitar Berbatov bundled the ball against the post with United leading 2-1, so it could have been different, but Spurs are going to have to put this one down to experience and redouble their efforts in the League Cup and UEFA Cup.

Elsewhere, Middlesbrough were given an almighty scare by Mansfield Town before running out 2-0 winners and Portsmouth had to come from a goal behind before beating Plymouth Argyle. In the matches between the lower division sides, Bristol Rovers beat Barnet 1-0 at Underhill, Wolverhampton Wanderers raised a few eyebrows in beating Watford 4-1 at Vicarage Road, and Luke Beckett continued his impressive record - he scored the winning goal in Huddersfield Town's 1-0 win at Oldham Athletic, meaning that he has scored in all four rounds of the cup so far this season. The draw for the Fifth Round will be made at lunchtime, and the sixteen teams left in are as follows: Liverpool, Arsenal, Manchester United, Chelsea, Portsmouth, Middlesbrough, Wolverhampton Wanderers, Cardiff City, West Bromwich Albion, Sheffield United, Coventry City, Huddersfield Town, Bristol Rovers, Barnsley, Southampton and Preston North End. You can catch up with the weekend's goals here, and there will be a lengthy report on the Liverpool vs Havant & Waterlooville match here.

AFC Sudbury 3-0 Tilbury

Fri, 1 Feb 2008 19:24:52 -0600

Sometimes, you just get the feeling that something bigger is going on elsewhere. Kings Marsh Stadium in Sudbury, Suffolk is a very agreeable place to watch football - it's usually football of a reasonably high quality and the beer is cheap and plentiful - but yesterday afternoon everybody's thoughts were trained elsewhere, a couple of hundred miles or so north-west. We were watching Sudbury play Tilbury, but our thoughts were primarily at Anfield, where Havant & Waterlooville were making Liverpool sweat in a way that few had foreseen.

Since our last trip to Suffolk in August, AFC Sudbury have bedded themselves into quite a comfortable position in Division Two North of the Ryman Football League. Dartford, revitalised by the completion of their new stadium last year, head the table, but with a second promotion place on offer to play-off winners, a race is on to ensure at the very least a place in these play-offs. Sudbury have tough opposition - amongst the teams doing battle with them are one of the pre-season favourites Enfield Town and Ware, who won through to the First Round Proper of the FA Cup. There are six or seven teams chasing the four play-off spots and, in spite of their superior resources, Dartford aren't out of sight in top place being just four points clear at the top of the table. Springtime is coming, and there's still all to play for.

For their visitors, Tilbury, the good times have been thin on the ground. They had a run to the Third Round of the FA Cup in 1978, losing to Stoke City, but almost collapsed financially a couple of years later and have spent much of the last three decades merely keeping their heads above water in the face of local disinterest. Nestled in amongst the docks of the Thames Estuary, they have a high level of local competition for their attention - crowds at their Chadfields stadium frequently fall into two figures - and they went into Saturday's match in four points above the relegation places and with games in hands, but doubtlessly looking nervously over their shoulders. Having dropped into the Essex Senior League once and clawed their way back once, they already know how difficult it can be to work your way back up.

Sudbury have been struggling with their pitch lately. Their last home match was postponed because it was waterlogged, and the club had taken the traditional remedy action to such a problem by covering last sections of it in sand. It didn't make for a particularly edifying spectacle for the first twenty minutes or so, but the truth was that it didn't really matter that much. News had come through that Havant had scored at Anfield, and later that they had taken a 2-1 lead. The token Liverpool supporter in the shed was, somewhat predictably, being mercilessly mocked. In addition to this, Sudbury's supporters are possibly the noisiest that you will come across anywhere, and are augmented by a World War II air raid siren, two drums, a plastic trumpet and what might have been a harmonica. It certainly didn't seem to help the Tilbury goalkeeper, who made a dog's breakfast of Stuart Boardley's weak header from six yards, spilling the ball over the line to give the home side the lead.

In the second half, Sudbury extended their advantage, despite not playing particularly well against weak opposition. Liverpool had levelled things up at 2-2 just before half-time against Havant & Waterlooville, and news that they had taken a 3-2 lead seemed to turn more people's attention to what was actually going on in front of them. Four minutes into the second half, the outstanding Clements was put through and made the score 2-0, and the race was largely on to see how many Sudbury would score. With twenty minutes to play and things starting to go a little stale, they brought on top scorer James Rowe, and the final piece of the jigsaw was complete. Having looked somewhat disjointed for much of the second half, they started to look more and more fluid, and the icing on the cake was added with just a couple of minutes left to play when Luke Hammond suddenly (and somewhat unexpectedly) skipped past three or four tackles before putting the ball in the bottom corner from the edge of the penalty area.

After the match, everything seemed to be settling down and returning to normal. The familiar five o'clock music chimed up on the radio, and "Sports Report" confirmed that Liverpool had run up five against Havant in the end whilst Derby County had taken at absolute pasting at home against Preston North End. Far away from the glare of the national media, other results in the Ryman League had gone in Sudbury's favour, leaving them in second place in the table - four points behind Dartford with an all-important home match against The Darts at Kings Marsh in a fortnight's time. All to play for in this particular corner of Suffolk, then.

FA Cup Fourth Round Preview

Fri, 1 Feb 2008 19:23:19 -0600

It's the last weekend in January, and this can only mean one thing. The FA Cup Fourth Round. We're down to the last thirty-two now, and by the time that we've made the last sixteen, at least eight of the clubs involved won't even be from the Premier League, half of whose clubs bit the dust at the first hurdle. It all kicks off tonight with Southend United playing Barnsley at Roots Hall, and then spreads luxuriously over the following three days. The clubs still involved range from the Big Four down to Havant & Waterlooville from the Conference South. Havant have been lapping up their time in the media limelight and it's almost certainly too much to expect them to go to Anfield and get a result, but they have already won, relatively speaking, far more than anyone else will in this year's tournament - they stand to make over £600,000 from their match tomorrow, which is probably enough to pay their wage bill for the next year at least. I covered Havant's rise from the primordial gloop that is local league football on Pitch Invasion yesterday, but this isn't the only match to be taking place this weekend, so here are a further five stand-out ties from this weekend's matches.

Manchester United vs Tottenham Hotspur: After all the ranting and raving over their League Cup win against Arsenal on Tuesday night (which, of course, I was a party to), Spurs face another even bigger test against Manchester United on Sunday afternoon. I mean, it's all very well thrashing an under-strength Arsenal team at home, but going to Old Trafford to play a full-strength team is a different matter altogether. Still, Spurs are brimming with confidence now they have the knowledge that they will be going to Wembley once this season, and are capable of getting a result there. Manchester United still lead the Premier League on goal difference from Arsenal but, apart from Newcastle's spectacular second half collapse at Old Trafford a couple of weeks ago, they haven't actually been playing particularly brilliantly recently. Their 2-0 win at Reading last week flattered them, and they also laboured to wins against Aston Villa and Birmingham City as well. Much of what will happen will come down to Alex Ferguson's team selection - if he chooses to rest the likes of Rooney and Ronaldo, Spurs could well come away with a result. Otherwise, it will likely be business as usual.

Sheffield United vs Manchester City: Where to start with Bryan Robson and Sheffield United? My belief in the summer was that this was an insane appointment, and The Blades' mid-table position in the Championship makes a mockery of their end of season complaints last year about West Ham "cheating" to stay in the Premier League (which they probably did, but that's besides the point). They may be continuing to struggle in the league - and last weekend's beating in the Sheffield derby match wreaked fresh humiliation upon them in that respect - but they doubtless still feel as if they've got a point to prove against Premier League clubs, and they've got a chance to do this on Monday night against Manchester City at Bramall Lane. This match is exactly the sort of Manchester City would usually lose. However, Sven Goran Eriksson's appointment has turned perceived wisdom upon its head. City are, if nothing else, highly organised, and are exceeding their supporters' wildest dreams by still having half a chance of a Champions League place going into spring. This will be a big test of their mettle (and City will be taking it seriously - they haven't won a major trophy since 1976), and I suspect that they will have just too much for United.

Portsmouth vs Plymouth Argyle: Considering that both of their local rivals in Devon have, in recent years, dropped out of the Football League, this is getting on for being a local derby for Plymouth Argyle, whose continuing comfort in the Championship has surprised many neutrals. They lost manger Ian Holloway to Leicester City in the autumn, but their form hasn't been noticeably affected (their big problem was consistency before he went and it still is now), and they currently sit in eleventh place in the table. Portsmouth, somewhat ominously, have been in better form away from at home than they have at Fratton Park this season. They've won just three home league matches all season, and last week's win against Derby County (who surely don't really count as Premier League opposition) was their first since that bizarre 7-4 win against Reading at the end of September. They should really see Plymouth off with some comfort, but you'd have said the same thing about Everton before their Third Round match against Oldham Athletic.

Derby County vs Preston North End: I tipped Derby County to lose to Sheffield Wednesday in the last round and they almost did me proud, requiring a penalty shootout in the replay at Hillsborough to finally see off their lower division opposition. Still, with just seven points all season so far, only Newport Isle of White and Berkhamsted Town in the Southern League and Wivenhoe Town in the Isthmian League have a worse record than them in the whole of senior English football. For Preston North End, it's probably fair to describe this season so far as "traumatic". Last season, they were in the automatic promotion places in the Championship and it looked likely as if they would reach the top flight for the first time in over forty years. However, they lost in the play-offs and have been suffering a hangover ever since. They sacked manager Paul Simpson in November replacing him with Alan Irvine, but still sit in the relegation places, four points adrift of fourth from bottom Sheffield Wednesday. For all of that, though, I still can't see Derby County beating anyone in normal time at the moment, so I still think that Preston could pull off a minor surprise here.

Peterborough United vs West Bromwich Albion: Peterborough United are one of English football's great conundrums - a club that really thinks that it is bigger than it is but isn't, really. They're currently in fifth place in League Two, but their last win, an 8-2 thrashing of Accrington Stanley, demonstrated their potential. If ever there was a manager with the burden of expectation, it's Peterborough manager Darren Ferguson, who is at least starting to look like his old man, Alex. I still don't like West Bromwich Albion, and this (as some of you will recall) has been emphasised by a fawning hagiography about them on ITV last Sunday. They've lost seven of their twenty-eight league matches this season and have won just once in their last five matches. The Championship, a highly competitive league in which everyone seems capable of beating everyone else, has been a bit like that this season. Albion were very lucky to get past Charlton Athletic after a penalty shootout in the Third Round, and their defensive frailties lead me to believe that Peterborough might be good for a result here.

This weekend's live televised FA Cup matches on the BBC are Mansfield Town vs Middlesbrough and Wigan Athletic vs Chelsea on Saturday and Manchester United vs Tottenham Hotspur. Also (and I will be returning to this subject next week), I highly recommend the BBC's excellent coverage of the African Cup Of Nations on BBC3 and BBCi - proof that the BBC can still do it when they put their minds to it.

One Night In Heaven

Fri, 1 Feb 2008 19:20:10 -0600

It will probably prove to be a false dawn. It was when they did the same to Chelsea at the same stage of the League Cup in 1999 (they didn't even manage to win the final that year). However, Spurs supporters might be allowed a moment or two to wallow in their own crapulence after a 5-1 victory over Arsenal last night which booked them their first visit to the new Wembley stadium and really, seriously called into question the strength in depth that Arsene Wenger has (or, rather, doesn't have) at his disposal.

I noted on here a couple of weeks ago what a crucial match this would be for Tottenham Hotspur FC. Spurs have some sort of psychological block when it comes to playing the big clubs which has been enormously damaging when it has come to the club taking that critical Great Leap Forward towards challenging seriously for a Champions League place. You can count their league victories over Arsenal, Chelsea, Manchester United over the last ten years on the fingers of one hand. This morning, though, Spurs fans might just be waking up with the belief that Juande Ramos has got it in him to take their club to the next level.

It wasn't merely the 5-1 scoreline, but the performance itself. This wasn't Spurs vs Arsenal Youth. Arsene Wenger simply hasn't got the excuse that he put out his weakest possible team. This was an Arsenal team featuring a number of established players, but their performance as a team coupled with a confident, assertive Spurs performance made them look like youth team players. Jermaine Jenas, who scored the first goal and forced the second out of Nicholas Bendtner with a tremendous free kick, put in his best performance yet in a Spurs shirt (leading one to believe that Ramos could succeed at something critical for Spurs, considering their transfer policy over the last three or four years or so - getting players to actually fulfil their potential). In true Spurs tradition, there was a heart in mouth moment just before half-time, when Dimitar Berbatov was put through on goal and hit the outside of the post. It was typical Spurs that, two goals up and completely out-playing the opposition, one's mind should turn to the inevitable comeback at such a point.

The moment that finally settled the nerves came three minutes into the second half, when Keane added the third goal. It was at this moment that one could finally start to relax a little. This Arsenal team, playing this badly were not going to be able to get three goals back if they played all night and into this morning. There was still time for a brief chest-tightening moment when Adeabyor pulled one back at 4-0, but Malbranque's last-gasp fifth goal was nothing less than Tottenham deserved on the night, and over the two legs. We can now await with interest the result of tonight's other semi-final between Everton and Chelsea, and with the scores tied at 1-1 after the first leg, I wouldn't bet against Everton getting a win to take themselves to Wembley too.

As ever, though, it is critically important to sound a note of caution. After all, Spurs are the undisputed kings of the false dawn. As recently as last year, Spurs were 3-1 up at Stamford Bridge in an FA Cup quarter-final against Chelsea with Jermaine Defoe through on goal against Petr Cech. He missed, the match ended up 3-3 and Chelsea won the replay at White Hart Lane. Equally significantly, Spurs beat Chelsea 5-1 in a League Cup semi-final at White Hart Lane in 2001, but lost 6-1 at home to them in the league shortly afterwards, and went on to lose the final against Blackburn Rovers. My mind, however, automatically drifts to Nick Hornby's "Fever Pitch", and the League Cup semi-final between Arsenal and Spurs in 1987. Spurs were 2-0 up on aggregate when Arsenal's travelling support suddenly and unexpectedly got behind their team, being rewarded with a late, late winning goal from David Rocastle to send them to Wembley for the first time since 1979. Hornby credits it as being one of the most crucial results in the history of Arsenal Football Club - it swept the weight of expectation that had crushed all Arsenal teams since the 1971 double-winning team and instilled the self-belief that would lead them to champsionship victories in 1989 and 1991. It's probably too much, in this day and age, to hope for the same thing to happen with Spurs. However, the morning after the match, it feels like a result of equal significance. All they have to do now is go to Old Trafford at the weekend and knock Manchester United out of the FA Cup.