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.)
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....
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....
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.
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....)
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 callright. 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!]
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 toobig 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.]
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:
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....
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.
