Feeling overwhelmed...?

 

For no particularly good reason (only the TV companies' remorseless appetite for airtime-filler...), the opening match of the Gameweek 21 schedule, West Ham v Nottingham Forest, is kicking off tonight - Tuesday evening, 8pm, UK time.

These midweek gameweeks are a huge hassle for everyone in FPL, because almost everybody has less time to attend to these things during the working week: certainly less time during the day to check up on the latest team news, but also probably less opportunity to watch games live - or perhaps even to catch up on highlights (promptly, or at all...).

But it's even worse for folks like me living in Asia - well, anywhere east of the Arabian Gulf or the Caspian Sea, really. For us, evening games are starting at midnight or later, much too late for most of us to even think of watching them live; much too late, in fact, or most of us to even be staying up until the FPL deadline to try to catch late-breaking team news before finalizing our squads.

And when the games are staggered across multiple days, that hassle is greatly increased; especially when having an 'early' game or two, a day ahead of the majority of the gameweek fixtures, compresses the gap with the preceding gameweek such that we'll have no real opportunity to learn about new injury problems,... or, really, to ponder our FPL squads at all! It is a right pain-in-the-arse, frankly. 

At least, if the Gameweek started on Wednesday, we'd have a full two-day breather after GW20, and some chance for press conference updates to filter through to us on the far side of the world. Thanks to this bloody West Ham game, we're essentially flying blind into this one...

All of which is to say.... no, I don't really have time to do my usual detailed preview for Gameweek 21; sorry.

The main NEW INJURY PROBLEMS I'm aware of are:

Wesley Fofana (illness) and Robert Sanchez (muscle strain) missed the last game for Chelsea.

Jefferson Lerma (concussion) Nathaniel Clyne (groin strain) both had to come off with knocks in the weekend game against Newcastle at the weekend. That leaves Palace stretched very thin in defence.

Leeds right-back Jayden Bogle missed the weekend's game against Manchester United with a calf problem.

Hugo Ekitike was missing at the weekend with a slight hamstring strain.

The big news of the gameweek though, is that Josko Gvardiol had to come off early in the second-half against Chelsea with a leg injury, and has since needed surgery on a cracked tibia - so, he's likely to be out for several weeks at least (a major blow to the 10% or so of Fantasy managers who own him). Even worse for Pep, Ruben Dias also had to come off shortly before the end of the game with a leg-muscle problem. I wonder if they might have to recall Manuel Akanji from his loan to Inter.

Jacob Murphy had to come off before the end against Palace, complaining of a tight hamstring.

Callum Hudson-Odoi missed the Villa game with a sore Achilles tendon, and goalkeeper John Victor had to come off in the second-half with a pulled muscle behind his knee.

Sunderland striker Wilson Isidor was also missing at the weekend, apparently because of a training-ground knock.

Mo Kudus had to come off against Sunderland with a thigh strain.

Lucas Paqueta missed the Wolves game with a back problem.

Joao Gomes and Hwang Hee-Chan both had to come off in the West Ham game with muscle soreness, Gomes suffering in the groin and Hwang in the calf.

At least there ae no new suspensions to worry about for this game. And Xavi Simons, Moises Caicedo and Ethan Ampadu are available again after serving their bans.

Oh, and Ruben Amorim's been sacked at last (about 8 months too late, but better late than never...). Youth team coach Darren Fletcher is expected to take over as an interim manager, but I wonder if the ownership made the move now because they think they can land the suddenly available Maresca. A change like this is always disruptive, but Amorim has been such an embarrassment of flailing disaster (and a source of constant uncertainty for his players as he messes with the line-up every single week!) that I would expect the 'new manager bounce' at United could be huge - even if only short-lived.

The video clip at the top is of course from the seminal campus comedy National Lampoon's 'Animal House': the classic little scene where the boys go shopping at a local supermarket to get food for an upcoming toga party at their fraternity house, and geeky freshman Kent Dorfman (Fraternity name: 'Flounder'), played by the late Stephen Furst, for a while manifests unexpected dexterity in catching the avalanche of food items tossed his way by his mischievous frat brothers. It is, I think, one of the great bits of improvised physical comedy in cinema. (I saw this film during my first week at university; and I like to say that I have never looked forward since...)

Another little bit of Christmas fun

For anyone growing up in the UK in the '70s or early '80s, veteran comedy double-act Morecambe & Wise's 'Christmas Special' TV show on the BBC became more of a central institution of the family Christmas than the Queen's annual 'Message to the Commonwealth', a highlight of the year anticipated for weeks beforehand.

The secret of the duo's showbiz longevity was the remarkable chemistry they shared, along with Eric Morecambe's peerless deadpan delivery; but the Christmas shows were also often memorable for some fantastic bits of visual inventiveness - like this.....

Merry Christmas, again!

The distant laughter of the Fantasy Gods....

 

On Saturday - when half the world had bet their precious Triple Captain chip on him - the great Erling Haaland played like a man who'd been heavily on the lash on Friday night....

But just three days later, he comes up with a goal and 2 assists, for what would have been a very decent return on the TC chip!!!

The pagan gods who preside over the realm of FPL are not just cruel and capricious, but fond of mockery; it is not enough for them to smash our hopes, they must then taunt us in the midst of our despair.

But really, backing Haaland against Leeds was the 'right' choice, Fulham are a way better team than Leeds, and this match was on their home ground: it was not nearly so favourable a prospect for a big haul from the lanky Viking. (But then, neither were the Bournemouth or Everton games; or even Burnley or Wolves.....! It's impossible to predict with any confidence when the big hauls are going to happen.)

TOO SOON!!!

Christmas has become strangely popular in East Asia over the last few decades - especially in China; but really, everywhere across the region.

The seasonal decorations started going up in my sleepy little hometown last weekend (and they'll probably stay up till around March!). And I got Whammed! for the first time on Sunday afternoon last week in a local supermarket. Come on, people, we're not even out of November yet!  Cruel and unusual punishment indeed!

I see the official challenge doesn't actually start until tomorrow, so I suppose I'm still in with a chance of survival. But the omens are not good....

Early wake-up

It is, somehow, an Iron Law of the Universe that, if you live in Asia, you are never more than about 150 metres away from some sort of construction project.

There is an unfortunate corollary to this Law - that if it's 7 o'clock on a Sunday morning, you are probably within 50 metres of someone using an angle-grinder....

Feeling THANKFUL?

I've long had a peculiar fondness for the American holiday of Thanksgiving - largely because I've so often been able to celebrate the occasion with American and/or Americophile friends, and a few times even in America.

This year, alas, I shall probably be making do with a turkey sandwich on my own. And maybe I'll make myself a pumpkin cheesecake for a sweet treat tonight...

Anyhow, a Happy Thanksgiving to any American readers who may stumble upon this obscure corner of the Internet (probably looking for content about the Fantasy version of their own gridiron game - the one that rather conspicuously involves very little playing of the ball with the foot....).

[And apologies to any Canadian readers who feel overlooked. But you're probably used to it! I am well aware that your version of this holiday falls much earlier, on the 2nd Monday in October, as I lived in Toronto for a year-and-a-half in my youth. However, that holiday never embedded itself in my psyche, even when I was a resident in the country. You Canucks are not so, um, culturally assertive as your American cousins, I suppose.]

For some reason, Linus's pitiful obsession with The Great Pumpkin - an autumn-themed deity of his own invention - was always one of the things that most resonated with me in the classic 'Peanuts' cartoons. This superstition of his was actually associated with Halloween, but it is Thanksgiving, with its own emphasis on pumpkins, that always recalls it to my mind. 

Linus, of course, was convinced that The Great Pumpkin would appear only to him, if he created a pumpkin-patch that was worthy of the demi-god's attendance; and he'd wait patiently every year, full of expectation - but it never happened.  In much the same way, we FPL managers convince ourselves that, if we only take enough care over our selections, one day The Great Gameweek or The Great Chip Play will manifest itself only for us.  Like I said, pitiful.

Again with the metaphors, Mr Wade?

So nice to have it back...

Sometimes - even with a summer tournament to fill part of the gap - the break between football seasons can seem to drag on an awfully long time.

There is something reassuringly familiar and nostalgically warming about having football to look forward to on our Saturdays.

That feeling is beautifully encapsulated in this wistful monologue by 'Ron Manager', an elegiac reverie on Saturday afternoon football that is almost poetic in its evocation of nostalgia for England, the BBC, my long-lost 1970s childhood. (It was indeed my weekly ritual to huddle in front of the TV at 4.40 on a Saturday, ready to record the day's results in a newspaper so that my dad could check his Football Pools - when he got back from watching our local team.)

Ron, one of many wonderful characters created by legendary comic actor Paul Whitehouse for the '90s BBC skit comedy The Fast Show, was a kind of quintessential 'old school' English football manager, scratching a living in his dotage from TV punditry; although borderline senile and rarely at all coherent in his meandering pronouncements, his patent love of the game was nevertheless powerfully endearing. Here's another great little snippet of his, expressing his appreciation of Ryan Giggs.

Saturday afternoon is football. Isn't it? Mmmm?

Back home, we'd be just getting ready to watch a game about now. But where I live, we still have three-and-a-half hours until the lunchtime kick-off.  (Must try to resist temptation and not start drinking beers just yet....)

A cracking game indeed!!

We don't often get the greatest football in a tournament final, as fatigue and nerves (or cumulative injuries and suspensions) get the better of the teams, or fear of failure comes to dominate, and the game ends up being mostly an edgy, cagey stalemate. Approaching Sunday's climax of the first Club World Cup in New Jersey, we were all hoping for the best - bur rather fearing the possibility of the worst.

Or indeed, many people - probably a significant majority - were expecting a rather drably one-sided contest. Paris St Germain had simply been so good over the last several months, and in most of this competition, while Chelsea, coming off a turbulent and inconsistent season, appeared to be still mired in the midst of a difficult rebuild - well, very few people gave the London team much of a chance, and it was widely anticipated that PSG might prevail over them as easily as they had in their semi-final against Real Madrid. Some of the bookies were offering more than 2-1 against Chelsea lifting the trophy, and although those odds shortened slightly in the last 24 hours or so before kick-off, really not many were seriously fancying the Chelsea win. 

Now, I try never to talk myself up on here, but.... I will allow myself to occasionally acknowledge when I've got a big call right. And I did indeed predict a Chelsea win - in my last post on here before the Final, and even before the start of the tournament. [That foresight enabled me to enjoy a strong MatchDay 7 in the Fantasy game, as well as a nice little return from the bookmaker!]

PSG didn't do themselves any favours: perhaps being guilty of a little over-confidence, they persisted with their usual open attacking style, pushing both full-backs up the field as often as possible. I had really thought that they would appreciate the potential danger posed by players like Neto and Gusto (and Palmer and Cucurella and Pedro) in the wide areas, and try to hold Nuno Mendes and/or Hakimi much deeper most of the time. Perhaps they just dismissed this threat because they hadn't expected that Robert Sanchez, so long derided for his sloppy distribution, would suddenly have figured out how to ping accurate long balls into those inviting spaces on the flanks behind the over-advanced full-backs. Chelsea were perfectly set up to exploit this weakness, and Sanchez created a dangerous counter-attack with almost every long clearance from his box. But they were impeccable in their defensive set-up too, with their effcient pressing and fluid positional rotations completely stifling PSG in the middle of the pitch. 'Tactical masterclass' is becoming a bit of an overused cliché, but it might be justified here: Maresca's gameplan was exemplary. And every single one of his men absolutely played their socks off! It was pretty much the perfect team performance. Well done, lads!

And then of course, we ended the day with that wonderful comedy moment when a bumbling Donald Trump refused to leave the stage after the trophy presentation. (Who could have foreseen that?? Oh, wait.......)

Alas, a lot of people are refusing to share in the joy of having been able to watch a fine game of football, to witness a superb achievement from a new coach and a renascent club (and yes, English fans should be allowed - should be expected - to indulge in a little bit of a patriotic buzz about one of our country's teams having come out on top, even if it's a team we revile and root against in domestic competition...). Instead, they're still bitching about the tournament and its winners, yet again rehashing the ridiculous argument that the tournament really has no value, isn't respected by anybody, and doesn't mean anything, that it isn't a true 'world championship'.

I have some hard news for those people: your opinion doesn't matter. FIFA is the world governing body of our game, and - for better or worse - only they get decide on the status of a tournament. This IS the definitive 'world championship' for clubs - because they say it is.

Moreover, now that it's all over - only Chelsea fans any longer have the right to make legitimate criticisms about the tournament and its perceived status in the game. If you voiced those criticisms before it started, and if you managed to frame them within a genuinely broad view of the world game, untainted by personal resentments about whether your favourite team was going to be involved (most gripers were not thus reasonable), then fair enough. But most of the criticisms - the standard of football is going to be poor, none of the big teams are going to take it seriously, nobody's going to go to the games, nobody's going to watch, nobody's going to care about the outcome - have now been emphatically disproved by events. It has been a very successful, very entertaining tournament, with every participating team looking fully committed to trying to win it.

And now, if you continue to whinge like this, it just sounds like sour grapes - not reasoned criticism, but surly resentment that a team you like better than Chelsea didn't win it. 

If Chelsea fans, despite the euphoria of such an impressive victory, and the pride of having such an impressive-looking trophy to add to their cabinet, still want to voice doubts about the tournament's worth - they would deserve to be listened to. But everybody else should just shut the f*** up!

However, Chelsea fans shouldn't get too big for their boots. Being the official 'Club World Champions' doesn't necessarily make them the best team in the world. They'll have to sustain this sort of performance level for a full year, beat a bunch more top sides, and, ideally, claim another big trophy - the Premier League or Champions League title - at the end of the coming season before they can be in that conversation. They're off to a flying start with this magnificent win; but they'll need to build on that....

PS: I'm glad to see that my two favourite Youtube tactical analysts, Adam Clery (who has his 'own' channel now, bless him) and Cormac of Football Meta, were both quick to put out videos breaking down Chelsea's success this weekend: worth a look.

[And finally..... I generally rather like the Irish commentator, Conor McNamara; but recently it has started to grate on me a little that he always seems to pronounce the French champions as Barry St Germain. I suddenly find myself growing obsessed with the idea of trying to write a novel around this fascinating character.]

A little bit of Zen (35)

"All effort is vain, in that a thing strived for can never be perfectly attained. 

All effort is not vain, in that the expense of effort, and the will to do so, is in itself noble."

GW

If I ruled the world

 

So, finally, the new man in the England job gets to pick a team and run a match....

But, of course, every other football fan in the country is imagining how they'd do it differently, including me.

In a way, I think injuries have made Tuchel's job a lot easier in this instance. One of the biggest problems England face is an over-abundance of talent in certain positions, and a challenge in trying to fit certain players together into the starting eleven (I fear a multiple repeat of the classic Gerrard-OR-Lampard dilemma which hamstrung our progress in the Noughties). With Alexander-Arnold, Palmer, Saka, and Mainoo all missing, that conundrum can be kicked down the road for a while.

Here's what I'd go with:

Pickford, obviously has made the No. 1 jersey his own. And I think Guehi and Konsa are looking like our strongest central defensive pairing for now (although Stones is still in contention, when fit again; and I imagine Branthwaite and Tomori will be providing some competition going forward; Branthwaite, for me, should have been in this squad, ahead of Colwill). Lewis-Skelly has made an outstanding debut for Arsenal this season, and looks our strongest option at left-back now (again, injuries really make it a forced choice); Livramento has been rather less convincing for Newcastle, but deserves a chance - ahead of Walker, who now appears to be past it. (I hope to god Tuchel hasn't included Colwill and Walker because they'd fit a possible back-three better; I really do not want to see us playing that system ever again!)

Rice and Jones are a fairly obvious double-pivot midfield, from what we've got available (though again, I would prefer Gomes and Wharton, and I don't know why they weren't selected this time).

Kane - for now - has to continue as the main striker. We have to see if we can find a balance of players to support him, who can compensate for his chronic lack of pace. With Palmer and Saka missing, the selection becomes more straightforward: Foden and Gordon on the flanks, and Bellingham in a free role in the middle.

The main variations I'd be intrigued to explore would be to have Kane mostly drop deeper, lining up more alongside Bellingham as a pair of '10s' or 'false 9s', perhaps inviting Bellingham to move into the centre-forward space on occasion; or... to drop one of the pivots (probably the less experienced Jones) and have Bellingham play in the centre alongside Rice, allowing Kane to occupy the No. 10 space on his own (mostly; I'm sure Jude would still push up there quite often!), while using Watkins as a more advanced forward. I think we need to make more use of Kane as a playmaker rather than just a battering-ram striker, and this could possibly extend his playing life by a few years too; and it would be useful to see if we can find a way of - sometimes - fitting him and Watkins into the same line-up. However, I suspect that these tactical riffs are both a little too bold for an initial outing - even against a team like Albania. Perhaps Herr Tuchel will become a little more adventurous and experimental over the coming monhs. I do hope so. (I may have more to say in a while about my ideas for how the England squad might develop going into the next World Cup, and beyond...)

The always amusing 442oons Youtube channel marked Tuchel's entry into the fray like this:

Normal 'service' will be resumed.... LATER

I am of Irish heritage, and hence struggle to resist the temptation to a once-yearly indulgence on this day in what an old college friend of mine once termed 'the Celtic melancholy' - drinking too much, listening to emotional music, and getting all weepily maudlin and nostalgic... for hours on end. 

For several years in my youth, I was quite interested in horse-racing, and lived fairly near Cheltenham; so, that was sometimes a happy pretext for even further alcohol-related revelries. (The Cheltenham Festival, a four-day steeplechase and hurdles meeting in mid-March, more-or-less coincides with St Patrick's Day every year, and traditionally draws huge numbers of Irish racing fans to the small West Country town for the week. The event thus becomes as much about the peripheral craic to be enjoyed in the evenings as about the races in the afternoons...)

Also, my mum's birthday was the day following, so for much of my younger life I was dutifully travelling long distances by train or bus the next day to see her - generally looking very much as if I'd slept in my clothes, if at all, the night before. I believe she was duly impressed by this reliable display of filial devotion, even if she might also have fretted that I might be "going to the bad...."

All of which is simply to say.... that posting might be a bit light for the next day or two, while I indulge... and then (hopefully) recover.

Of course, the Australian-Scots folk singer Eric Bogle (a splendid chap, who I once had the great pleasure of meeting, and seeing perform - in an intimate setting in Toronto) said it best....

A little bit of Zen (21)

 

"We have to continually be jumping off cliffs and developing our wings on the way down."

Kurt Vonnegut

This is a fabulous short video - made as a Master's graduation project in computer animation in 2006 by Dony Permedi.  A little Christmas treat!

So, farewell then....

 Alas - goodbye (at last), Uncle Erik.

Though few people, I imagine, will mourn his passing from Old Trafford. The overwhelming sensation, for most of us, is probably rather a sense of profound relief that we've all now been put out of his misery.

It had indeed become embarrassing, painful to witness this ongoing slow-motion train-wreck over so many months....  It is baffling that the board did not get rid of him last summer (an untypically brilliant performance to clinch the FA Cup scarcely compensating for another dismal season in the League); or during the last international break. Van Nistelrooy has recently been much-touted as at least an interim option; but I suppose they didn't fancy handing the reins to him for any extended period, and thus weren't willing to do so until they had a substantive replacement finally secured. And Thomas Tuchel taking the England job may have thrown a spanner in the works. Even if he wasn't their prime target, he must surely have been in the conversation, and other managers they'd approached will probably have thought he might have been their preferred option - and hence that his apparent spurning of their overtures presented an opportunity for them to intensify their own negotiation over the position.... and so drag things out for another week or two.

Once upon a time, it would have been just about inconceivable that any top manager would take a post in charge of a national team in preference to the Manchester United job. But this, sadly, is how far they have fallen - from being 'The Greatest Club in the World' 15 years ago.... to an object of general derision now.  And the real reason for Ten Hag surviving the last 5 or 6 months may not have been that unexpected FA Cup win, but the fact that the United job has become such a 'poisoned chalice' that none of the several managers said to have been tapped up for it showed any interest in accepting the offer.

I never felt Ten Hag was a good fit for the position. United's fans expect an expansive attacking style of play - exciting to watch, even if not consistently successful; but the Dutchman's attitude seemed to be more dour and pragmatic. And the United job - even more than those at the other top Premier League clubs - really demands someone who's very media-savvy, who cuts a charismatic figure in interviews. Poor Erik always came across as stiff and pompous. And, over the last year or so, he, not unnaturally, increasingly had rather a hunted air about him - which did not inspire general confidence.

Yes, he came to a club with all kinds of structural problems, a squad that was a total mess, with a long history of under-performance. And he has had some ridiculous injury problems to cope with. But even when players were fit, he seemed to be constantly chopping and changing between them - never sure what his best starting eleven should be: particularly in defence, where Lindelof, Varane, or Maguire could never seem to get an extended run of starts, even when they played well (Lindelof, I thought, was particularly hard done-by); but he also couldn't make his mind up about how to juggle his attacking assets - Martial, Rashford, Antony, Garnacho, Elanga, Diallo. There was never any consistency in the selections, nor any clear 'identity' in the style of play; and very often, his players on the pitch looked lost, as if they just didn't know what they were supposed to be doing. This might be tolerable on occasion, early in a manager's tenure; but with Ten Hag, this never changed across two years! And he rarely seemed to be able to adapt his tactics, or use new personnel off the bench, to improve matters when games were going badly for them. That remarkable FA Cup victory gave a tantalising glimpse of what he might have been, should have been capable of - a shrewd gameplan to knock City out of their stride, and his players fully invested in it, all giving 110%. Why did he scarcely manage to produce any hint of such effectiveness in the 85 EPL matches he led United out for??

One suspects that his high-profile spat - which seemed petty on both sides - with Jadon Sancho was just the tip of an iceberg of poor player relations. It seemed he might have long since 'lost the dressing room', as most of his players rarely seemed willing to really 'put in a shift' for him.

Above all, it seemed incredibly perverse that he persisted in a tactical set-up that could never possibly work with the players he had available. If you're going to pursue an aggressive high press, you need to compress the play in the opposition half by keeping a high defensive line; but in order to do that, you need at least one or two very fast defenders who can get back quickly to deal with counter-attacks (Nope), atacking players, particularly in the wide areas, who are willing to run their arses off to get back and help out with thwarting a counter (Garnacho, Rashford?? Nope!), and, ideally, a highly mobile central defensive midfielder who can usually snuff out such attacks at source (Nope). Instead, because of the chronic lack of pace at the back and in the holding role (Casemiro reads the game superbly, but has no legs any more), and lack of reliable forward cover down the flanks,... his defensive line tended to drop very, very deep - leaving 30 yards of open space for opposing attackers to canter through at will (poor Kobbie Mainoo last season often being left with the thankless task of trying to police 25-30% of the entire pitch on his own...). And on a related point - really, what was the point of buying one of the world's best ball-playing goalkeepers if you never let him leave his area?  All of fhat was just self-destructive lunacy. So, YES, he absolutely had to go. It was long, long, long overdue.

As usual, my man Adam Clery at FourFourTwo is largely in agreement with me. He's been very swift to put out a video on Ten Hag's departure.

He's done one on Ruben Amorim as well now - thanks, Adam.