Richard Whittall

Twitter

Recent Posts

Never one to shirk hyperbole, Goal.com dropped a HASHTAG NEWSBOMB that exploded all over Twitter with the force of a…bomb. Roberto Martinez, former-Villa manager(ial favourite for about ten seconds) and current Wigan manager has been approached ‘through a third party‘ (a mandrill?) to see if he’d be interested in the Liverpool FC job.

Fenway Sports Group (FSG), the Reds’ American owners, made contact with Wigan boss Martinez last week through third parties and sources have described the Spaniard as the hot favourite to take over at Anfield after Dalglish was sacked on Wednesday.

This is a moment where I can make what I hope will be an interesting point about the football. Here goes.

By coincidence, today Zonal Marking’s Michael Cox wrote an intriguing post on Martinez’s transition to a 3-4-3 at Wigan, and how it transformed the club’s fortunes in the latter half of the season. What’s clear in reading Cox’s analysis is how essential having the right players in the right positions was in supporting his vision. For example, Cox quotes Martinez explaining the shift in his own words:

“It suits our players. When you’ve got a Jean Beausejour who is a specialist in that position, you take advantage of that. The back three gives you that. Then there’s the energy we’ve got in midfield, players who can play between lines like Shaun Maloney and Jordi Gomez.”

Italics mine. The tactical shift, enabled in part by the pick up of Beausejour in the January transfer window, allowed Wigan to pick up, as Cox notes, “27 points in 14 games.” The problem is before that, Wigan earned “16 points from 24 games.”

In other words, it took time and a half season of futility before Martinez could get the personnel in order to realize his ideal formational approach and allow Wigan to play above their ability and beat teams like Manchester United and Arsenal (and, in the process, effectively help Manchester City to their first title in 44 years).

Everything about Liverpool FC at the moment screams of a club in need of someone who can help these players play at and above their current collective ability, particularly, as Swiss Ramble pointed out a week ago, the club is still rebuilding after the disastrous Hicks and Gillett ownership period. Martinez is a very good manager, at the right club with the right personnel. Is LFC a fit? Perhaps, but if this story is to be believed (asterisk asterisk asterisk) the owners haven’t exactly signaled they’re taking their time making a careful decision in finding the best possible manager based on players, staff, etc. Will Liverpool have patience while Martinez rebuilds according to his tactical ideal?

I’ve been getting word today via my mysterious source (the tentacles of LFC reach far-and-wide) that some within the club believe that Henry and FSG do not in fact know what they’re doing, and that LFC is a “shambles” at the moment. Running around like chickens sans heads in finding a replacement for Dalglish should give Liverpool fans pause. Martinez is a very good manager, but appointing him shotgun wedding styles simply because of a successful-but-painfully-slow transition at Wigan doesn’t strike me as particularly good planning.

Follow @rwhittall

"This ought to get Henry Winter off my back for a while..."

Well, as we’re in the dead zone between the end of the season and the Champions League final (here’s Jonathan Wilson’s intriguing match preview for SI, by the way), I now have to time to mull over those meta issues that surround the sport of football, including who am I, and what am I doing here?

And so on to a Tweet that stuck out among the many thousands I half read a day in trying to come up with ‘stuff’ to put on this ‘website’:

This RT: @thegrumpyowl: I don’t want to see an ump making calls in Yankee Stadium thinking he has to talk to the NY Post after the game.

— Drew F (@DrewGROF) May 16, 2012

This is of course, a ‘based-ball’ Tweet. But their sport, like our sport, has a long running love affair with the very human vulnerability of the men in black who have the final say on whether it’s a penalty or a dive, an out or a safe. In this case, this brought to mind a conversation I’ve either participated in or overheard countless times in my years being both alive and into the soccer. It usually follows an incredibly poor call from an official, and almost always features something similar to this sentence:

“While I’m not in favour of [INSERT OFFICIATING TECHNOLOGICAL THINGAMAJIG HERE], I do think referees should explain their decisions to the public after the fact.”

Beyond the simple reality that an ostensibly accountable referee is no less fallible than the normal kind, it’s a bad idea. For, if we adapt the above Tweet for a Premier League-guzzling audience, “I don’t want to see a ref making calls at Old Trafford thinking he has to talk to the Daily Mail after the game.” As if the awful pressure of dealing with the combined scorn of drooling, partisan morons and club players and staff, we want to haul Howard Webb into a press conference to explain his field of vision to Martin Samuel?

Spare us o Lord.

I think at this point, having been through the referees-are-terrible discussion more times than I’d care to remember, that we’re going to have some sort of chip-in-ball thing, and that’s about as good as it’s ever going to get. Other than that, c’est la vie.

Follow @rwhittall

In lieu of anything else interesting going on save the obvious below, here is Higuain pretending to hit his head on a glass door in a Kuwaiti airport.

Follow @rwhittall

Kenny Dalglish leaves Liverpool

— BBC Sport (@BBCSport) May 16, 2012

Kenneth Mathieson Dalglish is no longer the manager of Liverpool Football Club. Few details out now, although I have a source (an actual source!) that tells me this decision was made at least 24 hours ago, if not more. Awaiting more details as they emerge, but it seems the British sports media narrative is that Fenway Sports Group “don’t know what they’re doing.”

Which is at least partly true, based on John Henry’s remarks about not knowing the enormous cost of transfer fees, for one. But the Americans clearly have a long term plan in place for the club. Sacking Kenny, along with Damien Comolli before him based on a very poor season by the club’s standards doesn’t exactly seem like the wrong decision, necessarily.

Now, who to replace him? I love silly season, don’t you?

UPDATE: Liverpool FC have issued the official press release:

Fenway Sports Group (FSG) and Liverpool Football Club announced that Kenny Dalglish is to leave his post today as Manager after having his contract terminated.

After a careful and deliberative review of the season, the Club came to the decision that a change was appropriate. It is not a decision that was reached lightly or hastily.

The search for a new Manager will begin immediately.

No hogwash about “mutual consent” departures, and FSG ties their name directly to the decision in the first sentence. I like this, and so should Liverpool FC fans who appreciate honesty.

*Or has left by mutual consent, we don’t know yet, but this headline is clearly way cooler than “The King has left by mutual consent”

Follow @rwhittall

One would like to think managerial decisions, particularly with regard to team sleections, would have advanced significantly beyond the “he’s got a good head on his shoulders,” and “he’s a natural leader.” Which is why England manager Roy Hodgson’s remarks explaining his decision to go with Arsenal midfielder Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain leave a bad, Graham Taylor-esque taste in the mouth:

“He’s a very very exciting player, who has made an impression on me on quite a few occasions this season. I was very impressed with how he coped with [Massimo] Ambrosini and [Andrea] Pirlo in the middle against Milan.”

It’s been universally pointed out in the minutes following the remark that neither Ambrosini nor Pirlo featured for AC Milan during Arsenal’s second leg round of 16 match. The former wasn’t even on the bench that day, while Andrea Pirlo plays for Juventus.
Read the rest of this entry »

Follow @rwhittall

The Lead

The Roy Hodgson Honeymoon among the Englerland faithful is sadly over, and the dark reality of a long marriage with the former West Brom manager has only started to set in. Indeed, as one Tweeter noticed, the #hodgsonout hashtag made its debut a mere ten minutes after he made his one and only meaningful decision as England manager—the provisional 23 man squad going to Ukraine and Poland for Euro 2012. Via the Guardian, here’s the selection:

England’s 23-man squad for Euro 2012

Goalkeepers Hart, Green, Ruddy

Defenders Baines, Cahill, Cole, Johnson, Lescott, Terry, Jones

Midfielders Barry, Downing, Gerrard, Lampard, Oxlade-Chamberlain, Parker, Walcott, Young, Milner

Strikers Carroll, Defoe, Rooney, Welbeck

There are a few points of outrage, first over the selection of ‘alleged racist’ John Terry over Rio Ferdinand, although footballistically-speaking the Chelsea centrehalf has as much right to be there as anyone else. And there are some understandable quibbles about Carroll over Crouch or Welbeck over Sturridge (although both yield similar statistics).

But the real populist ire is for the appearance of Stewart Downing on the list and the absence of Michael Carrick, although as the marketing coordinator at Opta pointed out, there is the simple fact that despite the well-known fact that Downing has notched 0 goals and 0 assists, the Liverpool player has played 55 key passes to Carrick’s 31. Moreover, as pointed out by Opta and the first team performance analyst at Manchester City:

@OptaJoe Interestingly the only one #eng player to better Downing’s 11 ‘big chances created’ in the PL was Lennon (12); RVP top (21)

— Stephen Rands (@SRands_Analyst) May 16, 2012

And if stats aren’t your bag, there’s always the lonely voice of reason to help you along the way:

Roy Hodgson’s squad is not a “disgrace” it’s the players he thinks will do a job for him at the Euros. Can we all just wait & see?

— Mark Segal (@segalmark) May 16, 2012

Read the rest of this entry »

Follow @rwhittall

If YOU were going to the Champions League Final this year…what would YOU do? @TomArnold will be at his first UCL Final this Saturday.

— FOX Soccer (@FOXSoccer) May 15, 2012

Booking agent: Tom, it’s Sandra, can we talk?

Tom Arnold: Sandra, I’m doing the Beethoven: Death of a Titan shoot right now, can it wait a little? I’m up to my nips in dog shit here.

Booking agent: Listen, I’ve got Fox Soccer on the other line, they’re pretty desperate. They need some middle America comic relief guy to bump ratings in the Midwest. Something called the League of Champions of Europe, or something.

TA: League of Champions? Sounds like a fucking comic book.

Booking agent: They’re going to fly you out to Munich and film you doing your friendly idiot shtick. Jeff Dunham cancelled because his David Beckham doll broke in half on a long haul flight.

TA: That the city in Switzerland?

Booking agent: Germany.

TA: Right, I was thinking of Vienna. How much?

Booking agent: You get to be on TV for ten minutes. And you’ll have to answer some pointless softballs on Twitter for half an hour.

TA: TEN MINUTES? I’m there.

Follow @rwhittall