The Malaysian Insider :: Opinion

Posted: 09 Dec 2011 03:55 PM PST

DEC 10 — It's fair to say that this not been a very good week for Manchester United.

Sorry, excuse me. Did I say "not very good"? Let's give that an instant upgrade; it's actually been a totally disastrous week for Manchester United.

Sports writers are often accused of lapsing into easy over-simplification and wild exaggeration. And rightly so — providing a sense of perspective is not always top of our to-do list. But on this occasion, it's nearly impossible to overstate the horror of United's Champions League exit at the hands of Basel (yes Basel — not Real Madrid, AC Milan or even Olympique Lyonnais... Basel. Basel, from nice, pretty, harmless Switzerland).

And that's not just for the fact that the reigning Premier League champions have failed to progress to the knockout stages of Europe's elite club competition, which would be bad enough in itself considering the kind draw they had been handed.

To understand the full magnitude of Wednesday's loss in Switzerland, we must also take into account the financial consequences — United's absence from the later stages of the competition is expected to cost the club something in the region of £20 million (RM98.6 million), which will hardly help Sir Alex Ferguson's cause in the January transfer market. If he didn't have enough money in August to buy Wesley Sneijder, where's it going to come from now?

Then we should consider the manner in which Wednesday's defeat — and, indeed, the entire Champions League campaign — vividly exposed United's shortcomings: a lack of firepower (if Wayne Rooney or Javier Hernandez don't score, few other options are forthcoming); a lack of creativity in midfield; a lack of pace in defence. The psychological impact could be significant — if Basel can beat United, the rest of the Premier League will fancy their chances, too.

Last, but certainly not least, United's captain and most reliable defender Nemanja Vidic will miss the rest of the season after suffering a serious knee injury during the defeat in Switzerland. In fact, over the course of the season, the loss of Vidic could well prove to be the most damaging aspect of Wednesday's proceedings.

On paper, United still seem to be well stocked in the centre-half position with Rio Ferdinand, Jonny Evans, Chris Smalling and Phil Jones all available to fill the gap left by their captain's absence. But I'm not convinced by that quartet.

Ferdinand is injury prone and this season has been showing signs of really slowing down — he's now 33 and starting to look it. Whether he can be relied upon to play another 20-odd Premier League games and throughout his team's FA Cup and Europa League campaigns is very doubtful.

So that leaves Jones — who Ferguson seems to prefer to play in midfield — Smalling and Evans, an inexperienced trio who will certainly not fill the hearts of opposing strikers with fear and dismay.

Of course, this isn't the first time that United have suffered a severe setback and, over the last two decades, one of their greatest strengths has been their ability to respond to adversity.

Ferguson will be itching to prove that United are still a force to be reckoned with, and will undoubtedly once again demonstrate his mastery in motivation skills to strengthen his players' collective resolve in the weeks ahead. It helps that their recovery could start today with a seemingly straightforward home game against Wolves — but then again, we thought that about their Champions League group.

Time has proven that you can never write them off but, for the first time I can remember, it's possible to say in the month of December that Manchester United do not look like winning any trophies this season.

In the interests of balance and fairness, we should acknowledge that United were not the only Manchester club to make an early exit from the Champions' League this week, with City suffering the same fate despite their victory over Bayern Munich — a result that was rendered meaningless by Napoli's win against Villareal.

But a number of factors make City's departure from the competition a lot more palatable: they were in a far tougher group than United; they won their last game to leave the competition on a fruitless high rather than a crushing low; they're sitting pretty at the top of the Premier League; they haven't just lost their captain to injury; and their fans would actually regard winning the Europe League as a success to celebrate rather than an unwanted embarrassment.

City might be out, but they're not down. United? Their season might be well down, and over, and out.

* The views expressed here are the personal opinion of the columnist.

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Weird time to be a Spurs fan

Posted: 09 Dec 2011 03:46 PM PST

DEC 10 — It's quite scary being a Tottenham Hotspur (Spurs) fan right now. I know, we're supposed to be having the time of our lives since we're sitting very pretty in third place in the English Premier League (EPL), three points clear of Chelsea who's in fourth place, and with a game in hand to boot. If we do win that game in hand then we'd be second in the EPL, overtaking the defending champions Manchester United and trailing league leaders Manchester City by only four points.

The reason why I say this is all so scary is that such great heights are totally unfamiliar to all us younger Spurs fans. The last time we were league winners or title challengers was in the 1960s, which does seem like a few lifetimes ago. The only glory days that I remember since I started becoming a fan were some Cup wins during the Glenn Hoddle and Gary Lineker era, the short-lived reign of Paul Gascoigne, and of course the second coming of Jurgen Klinsmann in which we were the league's free-scoring team (which was negated by the fact that we were also the league's "free-conceding" team).

Other than that, it's always been a world of pain and near-misses for us long-suffering Spurs fans. Even trying to secure the much sought after fourth place in the EPL, which guarantees the team occupying a place in the qualifying rounds of the Champions League, took a really long time for us. All this while our more illustrious London neighbours Chelsea and deadly rivals Arsenal comfortably established themselves as one of the EPL's Big Four.

Even last season's grand adventure in the Champions League, in which the world took notice as we swashbuckled through some of Europe's top footballing grounds, ended with the anti-climax of failing to qualify for the Champions League again this year as we finished fifth in the EPL. Fellow EPL fans even have a term to shoot us down with — mid-table mediocrity.

So as happy I am to see my beloved Spurs so high up the table, unbeaten in 11 games and winning 10 of those, playing some truly wonderful and sometimes dazzling attacking football, all these years of suffering and underachievement have resulted in me almost automatically expecting things to go wrong by the end of the season. It really does seem too good to be true, the way things have been happening for us this year, how the players have magically clicked together and how joyful they look when they play their football together on the field.

It's getting to be so good that if you're an ardent reader of the top football websites and forums, you'll see that even the neutrals (i.e. fans of clubs other than the Big Four) are starting to root for us, not just to finish fourth anymore, but to challenge for the title! Now this is all really new to us, honestly. And this is all so much pressure in such a short time for a team of mid-table mediocrity like us!

I still remember clearly how we got a pasting from the two Manchester teams in our first two games of the season, when the transfer window was still open and it clearly looked like our squad still needed some sorting out, and how scary it felt back then, and how I greatly hoped that club manager Harry Redknapp and chairman Daniel Levy knew what they were doing in the transfer market. They didn't do much but bring in 31-year-old Scott Parker, who's turned out to be absolutely essential to our gameplay, and loan signing Emmanuel Adebayor from Manchester City, who's proving to be the final piece in the puzzle.

As great as the first team squad are looking now, I totally fear the day when Adebayor finally does get injured or picks up a knock that requires him to miss a few games, or the day when both Luka Modric and Parker get injured, because if that happens then we're left with basically the same team that got battered by the Manchester clubs earlier in the season.

But as they say, confidence is everything in football. And even as I worried when we played away from home without both Modric and Rafael Van Der Vaart, it never looked like we were in much trouble without them, which only shows how well their replacements did. Maybe the long unbeaten run and the unbelievable amount of wins we've notched up already this season (even away from home at places where we've always dropped points in recent seasons) contributed to the players' confidence. But our dreadful results in the Europa League, in which we largely fielded our second-string side, should provide caution as to how far we have to go till we have a strong enough squad.

As a realistic Spurs fan who's more than used to heartbreak, I do not expect this unbeaten run to continue too much longer. Still, this is an unbelievable time to be a Spurs fan. I just hope the players can maintain their confidence throughout the season and continue playing their brand of joyous attacking football. But if this Spurs team does manage to surprise me (and everyone else) at the end of the season with a great showing in the league table, well you won't see me saying no to that. Come on, you Spurs!

* The views expressed here are the personal opinion of the columnist.

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Sabtu, 10 Disember 2011

The Malaysian Insider :: Opinion

The Malaysian Insider :: Opinion

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