What Exactly Are We Brits As Football Fans?

For years we have been told that the Premier League is the greatest league in the world by the marketing force of Sky, with the best fans to go along with it.

Nothing is quite the same as the group of fans who have had football thrust upon them since the day they were born, with generations of ‘bleeding’ the colours of their kit imprinted on their DNA in the same manner as an heart disease or hairline deficiency will one day catch up with them.

“There is no atmosphere in football like in England,” we are told. “Can (insert foreign player here) adapt to having a stadium of grown men tunelessly warble simple ditties, or insult referees? It’s not quite like home,” they tell us, as though tuneless ditties do not exist anywhere else in the world.

I, among many others have had experience of football in foreign pastures. The Nou Camp is a fairly quiet place, watched in an almost theatrical sense, with food being passed out around the ground during the action and any noise being a murmur that grows into a crescendo the closer the ball gets to the opposition’s goal.

Both Spain and Italy have this reputation for having a small contingent of ‘ultras’ who do the singing and chanting, while the rest of the crowd simply sit back and enjoy what unfolds before them.

Germany has recently garnered a reputation for having a lively in-match atmosphere to finally rival England, with their low ticket prices making the game easily accessible for people of all working classes to go and enjoy the experience.

The Camp Nou is a different experience to watching football in England

For despite all the talk about how great English football is for atmosphere, the persistent inflation of ticket prices has in fact damaged it heavily, and there appears to be a real lack of identity to the fan-base within the grounds.

The working classes will now find it harder and harder to afford to make top flight games in particular and quite frankly we as a nation have become somewhat more placid of late, our interest mainly on being entertained by what we have paid through the nose to see, rather than be part of the show ourselves.

The worst part about the English football for what I have noticed however, is that we actually seem to revel more in the misery of others, rather enjoy our own victories and accomplishments. That tribal aspect of completing a hunt is diminishing by the day, as we instead taunt the carcass of our prey, instead of feasting on the flesh that was the goal in the first place.

Take Monday night’s fixture between Tottenham Hotspur and Aston Villa for example. Now as a Spurs fan, I can testify that White Hart Lane has definitely lost some of the atmosphere it became renowned for over the past few years.

This is most likely a consequence of Spurs becoming a better side and therefore being expected to win most of their matches on home soil, with it surely no coincidence that the best sounding atmospheres of last season were the home victories over Chelsea and Arsenal; two games which were far more intense and had no real guarantee of a win (if there ever is such a thing with Spurs?).

With an early goal helping settle a contest against the weakest side in the division currently, there was little for the travelling Villa fans to get their teeth into, or extract any hope, while any Spurs nerves were put to bed and they relaxed into what was now expected to be a comfortable victory.

Kane & Lamela celebrate the final goal in Spurs’ victory over Villa on Monday

This in turn saw the noise levels among the home fans drop significantly early on. With now ample opportunity to inflict their own decibels into the night sky as the numbers game decreased, we should have expected a number of pro-Villa songs from the away end, urging their side to overcome the odds stacked against them and mount a comeback.

Instead, they took solace in the fact that they were the only ones singing, with the majority of their chants referencing the quiet around them. “Is this a library?” “We forgot that you were here.” That sort of tired rubbish. Instead of attempting to play a part (no matter how small) in a Villa comeback, they simply bragged that they were willing to make more noise than their counterparts, despite being greatly outnumbered.

Now this is no sleight at either Villa or Spurs, but an example of the norm these days. Home fans will largely only have a small pocket of fans who believe chanting is part of their matchday experience. Away fans will be expected to attempt to make a greater noise to mask their numerical disadvantage and will revel in doing so. Especially if their team is losing and they need to attain some form of one-upmanship.

This is by no means restricted to the money-orientated Premier League either, with little Bournemouth hardly adding much noise following their promotion. Last season I spent plenty of time down at Griffin Park watching Brentford and found little to differentiate between the strange atmospheres generated at the top.

Both sides would often claim to “sing on our own,” leading me to feel there must be some acoustical problems within the ground, as people from either end would often do this in tandem, again failing to bother singing about their own side and/or players.

Goals are rarely so much celebrated among the group, but met with rude hand gestures towards the opposition fans, goading them in their disappointment. The initial songs following a goal are not to triumph that success and will their side on further, but to revel in the misery of their counterparts, questioning, “who are ya?” reminding them that they are no longer signing, or informing them that they could potentially be relegated on the back of this potential result.

This Vardy strike appeared to provoke an angry reaction from one West Brom fan

Beyond simply singing mocking and/or offensive songs there is also the truth that outside of South America, Great Britain is the only place on earth you appear to see grown men careering down the turnstiles to ‘get at’ an opposition player who has just netted.

On Saturday, one such example arose as pictures just caught the image of a West Brom fan seeming to be being restrained by a steward, as Jamie Vardy celebrated near the crowd after scoring Leicester’s third goal in their victory over the Baggies.

It is something we see fairly consistently, and a fairly mild-mannered friend of mine has admitted to doing so at a Cambridge United match previously. Lord knows what would actually happen if they were allowed to get there; most likely they would baulk at the confrontation if it were allowed to happen. Fortunately this isn’t South America.

It just seems weird that we in England cling to this ‘best fans in the world’ idea of ourselves. It may well come from the fact that we are no longer a major force on the international scene and once again need to establish some form of dominance somewhere.

But the truth is we are not. We are bound somewhere in the purgatory that exists between pacifism and outright violence, seemingly unable to find any form of solace being between the two extremes.

For we as a people and as a fan-base are drawn purely to misery, more so than any accomplishments. And the only way we can find true happiness anymore is by finding people more miserable than us, in one way or another.

Time For Tim To Actually Back Up His Touch Talk

Some people are just born leaders. They exude that aura around them that really makes others take notice and feel compelled to follow them.

Other people simply believe they should be leaders, talking the talk in the hope that somebody, anybody, will buy into the message and follow them down a road that has yet to be decided as yet.

People like Sir Alex Ferguson fit into the former, a man who just commanded respect from his peers and peons alike. Some may have questioned some of his decision making in the latter part of his career, but there was never any question as to whether people would follow him to the end of the earth, such was his character.

For the latter, read Tim Sherwood. A man who has managed to carve out a career in management based on little else than bluster, constantly talking up his own ability without ever doing anything to back up his credentials.

Sherwood is not a man who dropped down the divisions to hone his skills as a leader like so many before him, instead believing that his ‘experience’ working with the youth teams at Tottenham Hotspur made him ready to take the top job.

His self-confidence got him a crack at the top job at Spurs, taking over from Andre Villas-Boas and spending six months as a caretaker before being informed he had not done an adequate enough job to be given any longer.

Sherwood’s record at White Hart Lane was not bad, as he will constantly inform you, with talk about win percentages. But this was a Spurs side that, while shorn of the talents of Gareth Bale, was still packed with talent and should have been a match for any side in the division.

Sherwood will point to victories that continued to be narrow over the lesser lights of the Premier League, but when it came to pitting himself against the best sides in the division, the sides Spurs were trying to catch, his record was pitiful; losing games against top three Manchester City, Liverpool and Chelsea by an accumulated scoreline of 13-1.

Getting performances out of Adebayor has been Sherwood’s biggest success as a manager

He will claim to have resurrected Emmanuel Adebayor from the recycling bin at Spurs, but in truth, Sherwood is potentially as much to blame for the failings of many of Spurs’ ‘Magnificent Seven’ signed in the wake of Bale’s world record transfer to Real Madrid.

Eril Lamela was cast off with an injury that was never described as anything more than a ‘back injury’ for six months, whilst Nacer Chadli was another player made an outcast, with his performances the following season making a mockery of Sherwood’s treatment of him.

Paulinho, Etienne Capoue, Vlad Chiriches and Roberto Soldado have all now left the club and they fared little better under Sherwood, whose love of honest, hard-working English players can only have belittled their confidence further, with Soldado’s failure to emerge as a success the biggest craw in the throat of any Spurs fan.

With talk claiming Spurs players had given their verdict on Sherwood to Levy, the Spurs chairman offered no continuation to Sherwood in his current role and offered him another back in the backroom staff in North London, which was never to be of interest to man who had developed such a high opinion of himself like the former Blackburn captain.

Not only that, but the offer of taking the West Bromwich Albion job also proved of little interest to Sherwood, with Sherwood feeling that was too much of a step down for a man already eyeing the England job in the back of his own mind.

So nine months went by before Sherwood was convinced to end a sabbatical that lasted longer than his time in the game, with Aston Villa finally losing patience with the turgid ‘entertainment’ Paul Lambert was offering and giving Mr Personality an opportunity to cache those cheques his mouth was writing.

It seems a long time ago that it all started so positively for Sherwood at Villa

There can be no doubt Sherwood had an initial revitalising tonic effect on a Villa side that were struggling to so much as score goals or launch meaningful attacks under the previous manager, but the wheels had already appeared to be coming off at the back end of last season.

Having secured survival, Villa went on a run of defeats to ensure they finished in 17^th come the conclusion of proceedings, before being soundly thrashed by Arsenal in the FA Cup final, with the Midlands side barely posing even the faintest threat to the Gunners.

A summer in which we watched to see how Sherwood would handle his first proper transfer window (he was technically in charge throughout one at Spurs) was of great intrigue, and one that left us on the outside a little puzzled.

Sherwood called for Premier League ‘experience’, something he confused with has-been footballers, and doubled that up with a host of untested players mainly plying their trade in France, with few really exciting the imaginations of the fans.

With Swansea snatching up Andre Ayew on a free transfer, Villa opted to sign his less-talented younger brother Jordan for a figure reportedly close to the £10million mark, while people much more learned than me in regards to Ligue Un affairs were somewhat puzzled that either Idrissa Gueye or Jordan Veretout had attracted the attentions of the Villains.

Rudy Gestede was signed by Sherwood as ‘the best header of the ball’ in the league, but then either sat on the bench or played in a system that included no wingers, showing him up for the limited striker he is, able to dovetail well with Jordan Rhodes at Blackburn, but ineffective as a lone striker, especially when lacking any service.

Only £10m left-back Jordan Amavi could potentially be described as a success from the summer acquisitions, but Sherwood even found room to drop him to the bench, with Kieran Richardson once again shoe-horned into a defensive role, with the emphasis taken away from being defensively resolute, but needing an extra attacker.

Amavi has probably been the only success of Sherwood’s first proper transfer window

One can sympathise that Sherwood was shorn of the spine of the Villa side over the summer, with Christian Benteke, Fabian Delph and Ron Vlaar all leaving the club, but just one success from the raft of players he did coax into joining is a pitiful response to losing your three top talents.

In addition to that, the final part of that spine Brad Guzan appears to have lost an awful lot of confidence since the arrival of Sherwood, having once been one of the finest goalkeepers outside of the elite six in the division.

But having won their opener in perhaps fortunate circumstances against newly promoted Bournemouth, Villa have picked up just one point since, a home draw against an equally hapless Sunderland side, losing eight fixtures, including a home derby defeat to West Brom.

Sherwood always spoke voraciously about his belief in himself to turn things around, but this was so frequently contradicted by other statements, such as being bored by his side, seemingly ignoring that it was his duty as manager to make his side entertaining to watch, if not to actually win games of football.

And so the axe has fallen on Sherwood, with the club languishing at the bottom of the table, with just one victory and four points on the board, with little sign of life within a luck-lustre squad.

His initial effect to keep Villa up last season has quickly dwindled, and it was perhaps telling that the statement from the club on releasing the news to the media only thanked him for his efforts last season, not quite as willing to offer any gratitude for his start to yet another torrid start to the season at Villa Park.

For a man so enamoured with win percentages after his dismissal from Tottenham, it would be remiss not to bring up a 26% win rate during his time with Villa, emerging victorious in just six of the 23 Premier League games he took charge of.

Sherwood’s stats with Villa don’t make for pretty reading

So what next for Sherwood? Rumours have linked him with the vacant managerial post at Swindon Town, and that might actually be a wise move for him, giving him a chance to actually hone his abilities as a manager away from the spotlight of the Premier League and build his way back up.

His reputation among the elite his damaged and now is the time for Sherwood to develop some humility and earn his credentials, instead of relying on the worry over a lack of British managers among the press to force him into the reckoning of any top flight job, knowing his gift of the gab may well talk himself into another high-profile failure.

Sherwood’s management career so far has focused on being all heart and very little head. It’s now time for him to take some time away from the high-pressured world of the Premier League and actually learn the skill of management before he makes any sort of return.

Premier League Preview – Part One

Chelsea emerged champions last season. Will they do it again?

The football season is back! Rejoice! The tedium that is the close season and the rubbish that fills our newspapers and websites desperate to fill column inches is finally at an end, and we can focus on the football itself. Well, nearly. I’m looking at you Daily Mail.

The Premier League has opted to kick-off at the same time as the other divisions in England this season due to a major tournament appearing next summer and it looks set to be potentially the most interesting season in a while, with a number of teams well equipped to mount a title challenge and nobody looking quite weak enough to be dead certs for the drop.

Thus I have compiled a quick preview of every side in the division, rated and/or slated their summer transfer activity and attempted the fools’ game of predicting where they will end up. Enjoy and feel free to add your own comments at the bottom!

Here’s part one, taking us from Arsenal to Crystal Palace:

Can Wenger finally deliver another league title?

Arsenal

Last Season: 3^rd

Transfers In: Petr Cech (Chelsea)

Transfers Out: Lukas Podolski (Galatasaray), Ryo Miyaichi (St Pauli), Abou Diaby (Marseille), Yaya Sanogo (Ajax, Loan), Wojciech Szczesny (Roma, Loan), Carl Jenkinson (West Ham, Loan), Chuba Akpom (Hull, Loan)

Every pre-season we are forced to talk about Arsenal as title contenders due to the quality of players they possess, before eventually placing our bets elsewhere because….well it’s Arsenal isn’t it? Sure there’s plenty of quality there, but mental factors will eventually play against them and/or injuries will hit, proving a very shallow depth of quality. That would be the norm.

This year feels very different. The strength in depth that the Gunners have is incredible and one would be comfortable claiming that they potentially possess the best bench in the Premier League now. This might be the first year for a while in which it has seemed Arsenal have all their ducks in a row, with no real glaring weaknesses in the squad.

Olivier Giroud is made out to be a far worse player than he actually is, and when you have such a multitude of goal-scoring talent around you, he is hardly required to net 20-odd goals to ensure success. The likes of Alexis Sanchez, Mesut Ozil and Santi Cazorla provide some of the best attacking back-up in England currently, so there is no shortage of goals, especially when you throw the likes of Aaron Ramsey into the equation too.

With the purchase of Petr Cech they have addressed the biggest flaw in their squad from last season, and with the emerging Francis Coquelin now marshalling that previously-flimsy midfield role in front of a more than capable back four, it’s hard to not see them as genuine favourites, especially when they have real quality to call upon when the annual injury event strikes once again.

Prediction: Champions

A first full season as a manger for Sherwood. Presuming he lasts that long

Aston Villa

Last Season: 17^th

Transfers In: Jordan Ayew (Lorient), Jordan Amavi (Nice), Idrissa Gueye (Lille), Scott Sinclair, Micah Richards (Manchester City), Jose Angel Crespo (Cordoba), Mark Bunn (Norwich), Jordan Veretout (Nantes), Rudy Gestede (Blackburn)

Transfers Out: Christian Benteke (Liverpool), Fabian Delph (Manchester City), Andres Weimann, Darren Bent (Derby), Yacouba Sylla (Rennes), Matthew Lowton (Burnley), Antonio Luna (Eibar), Shay Given (Stoke), Ron Vlaar, Chris Herd (Released)

When you finish just one place outside of the drop zone, quite frankly you don’t want things to get much worse. Yet that is exactly what has happened at Aston Villa, who have had the entire spine of the side ripped out, with Vlaar, Delph and Benteke all departing the club this summer.

Couple that with a rookie manager experiencing his first transfer window in charge of a club and you have a seriously unpredictable scenario in which one of two things could happen: A) Villa could be the surprise package of the season and achieve a top half finish, or B) they implode in farcical fashion and earn their first relegation since the advent of the Premier League.

If we take the examples of Tottenham Hotspur and Liverpool though, when you lose your best player(s) and then spend wildly on a number of players with little to no Premier League experience, it doesn’t often go too well and that’s unfortunately what I see happening with Villa now.

I haven’t watched enough of Ligue Un football to really cast judgement on the players that have so far been drafted in from France, but more learned people than me have already casted doubt on the ability of these players to be much of a success in the Premier League. Protracted moves for Emmanuel Adebayor and Dimitar Berbatov are yet to yield any fruit and Villa are running out of time to put together a side that will not have a serious battle on their hands to remain in the division.

Prediction: Relegation

Eddie Howe can finally test himself among the best

Bournemouth

Last Season: 1^st (Championship)

Transfers In: Artur Boruc (Southampton), Adam Federici (Reading), Joshua King (Blackburn), Christian Atsu (Chelsea, Loan), Tyrone Mings (Ipswich), Sylvain Distin (Everton), Filippo Costa (Chievo), Max Gradel (St Etienne), Lee Tomlin (Middlesbrough)

Transfers Out: Ian Harte, Miles Addison (Released), Ryan Fraser (Ipswich, Loan) Brett Pitman (Ipswich)

It’s always a difficult thing to judge just how well a club coming up from the Championship will fare in their first season and with this being Bournemouth’s first return to the top flight since the advent of the Premier League, it is even harder to judge.

Coming up as champions suggests they should be the strongest of the promoted trio, yet I fear for them in their attempts to retain their position in the top flight. They seem to have recruited well, with a good mix of experience and raw hunger, yet I still feel they will be lacking in the quality to achieve survival come the season’s end.

Eddie Howe always demands that his side play an attractive brand of football and that could just prove their undoing in the end. You feel whatever happens, Howe will still have his managerial reputation intact, but I just feel he is raising this Bournemouth side to just be too nice to handle the fight in the end.

Prediction: Relegation

Never a dull a moment with this man around

Chelsea

Last Season: 1^st

Transfers In: Nathan (Atletico Paranaense), Asmir Begovic (Stoke), Radamel Falcao (Monaco, Loan), Danilo Pantic (Partizan Belgrade)

Transfers In: Filipe Luis (Atletico Madrid), Christian Atsu (Bournemouth, Loan), Didier Drogba (Montreal Impact), Petr Cech (Arsenal), Marco van Ginkel (Stoke), Patrick Bamford (Crystal Palace)

After finally bringing the Premier League trophy back to Stamford Bridge, now comes the hard part for Chelsea and Jose Mourinho (I am contractually obliged to make him sound as important as the club itself).

Many people feel that retaining the title is harder than winning it in the first place and Chelsea will not be able to be so reliant on the failings of their rivals to wrap up consecutive first place finishes, with the likes of Arsenal and Manchester United having strengthened heavily over the summer months and addressed their glaring flaws.

There is an air of Chelsea that is akin to Manchester City of a year ago, in that they have stood practically still over the summer months. Not that they had any big weaknesses to address, but sometimes a bit of fresh competition can just be healthy, rotating around some of the squad players.

Changing the back-up ‘keeper doesn’t necessarily do much for that, whilst they have only otherwise seen Radamel Falcao come in for another crack at the Premier League following his disastrous spell at Manchester United last season, in place of the departing Drogba.

The expected arrival of Baba Rahman from Augsburg will freshen up the battle on the left-hand side of defence, but one feels that an injury or two to their defensive line could actually leave them a bit short handed at the back, which is a worry.

Last season, Diego Costa’s dodgy hamstrings aside, Chelsea got rather lucky with injuries and they will have to hope that they can achieve the same again this year, as a bit of digging beyond the impressive surface sees John Obi Mikel as back-up to Nemanja Matic and nobody to cover for a crippled Fabregas. Chelsea simply have not reacted to the strengthening of their rivals and could pay for their dalliances.

Prediction: Runners-Up

Pardew and Cabaye reunited again in one of the shock transfers of the summer

Crystal Palace

Last Season: 10^th

Transfers In: Yohan Cabaye (Paris St Germain), Patrick Bamford (Chelsea, Loan), Alex McCarthy (QPR), Connor Wickham (Sunderland), Bakary Sako (Wolves)

Transfers Out: Shola Ameobi, Owen Garvan, Jerome Thomas (Released), Stephen Dobbie (Bolton)

I think everyone is curious to see how Crystal Palace will fare this season. The signing of Cabaye has made everybody sit up and take notice of Palace and their intention not to dwell on an impressive top half finish from last season, with Pardew claiming he wants to take Palace into Europe.

And why the hell not? With Cabaye pulling the strings in midfield and an endless supply of pace in Jason Puncheon, Yannick Bolasie and Wilfried Zaha in front of him to utilise, now ably backed up with the arrival of Sako on a free transfer, Palace have the attacking credentials to really push the likes of Southampton and Swansea.

Yet the questions still remain over their defensive attributes. Re-signing Brede Hangeland for a further season is the only thing they have done for the back-four so far, with only an optimistic chase to prise Ashley Williams from Swansea the only other news to emerge on fixing an area of the pitch that needs some work if these lofty ambitions are to come true.

Palace could improve on their 10^th place finish of last season, and yet as we have seen with Pardew so many times before, it could also yo-yo from season to season and last season’s impressive run-in could have already been the upward motion they required. Either way it should be an interesting season at Selhurst Park that has definitely piqued my interest.

Prediction: 9th