Me and my mates stayed away from the Manchester derby game at the weekend, as usual, preferring to watch it in the comfort of my TV room with some cold beers and no angry City fans shouting at us and throwing things around. Purely from a football point of view, it was a cracking game – 2-0 at half time, then 2-2 with just minutes to go and ending with an injury-time goal to make it 3-2 is going to be a good game of football whoever’s playing. The fact it was United v City, and United won, made it all the better – especially for us United fans.
That win (and City’s lack of points) takes us six points clear at the top of the Premier League, which is a great place to be mid-December. If we can take the winning run through for the next couple of games we’ll have really stamped our authority on the title and you’d have to say it would be ours to lose from there. Although, as we know from last year, anything can happen.
Sadly the talking point after Sunday’s derby game wasn’t the football but the injury Rio Ferdinand sustained from a coin thrown at him by a City fan. It hit him just above the eye, making him bleed quite a lot, but the most worrying thing for me was the fan who got on the pitch immediately after and had to be stopped by Joe Hart from confronting Ferdinand. How did security not stop him? Perhaps more to the point, what makes people act like this in the first place? I’ve said it before and will no doubt say it again, but it’s only football. It amazes me that people take it so seriously.
Anyway, on a more positive note our 3-2 win over City marks a landmark occasion – I actually got a prediction right! If I get the other two from my previous blog correct as well… well, I don’t know what. I guess I’ll just be kicking myself that I didn’t put any money on all three.
I saw on the news this week that David Beckham is leaving LA Galaxy and wants to play one last season with another club, as a final ‘challenge’ to end his career on. Having been a Man United fan for many years, I obviously remember when he was with us. I’ll be honest and say that I never actually rated him particularly highly – he’s pretty good with a dead ball and scores the odd decent strike, but he never stood out as the hard-working, talismanic player that many desperately wanted him to be.
In the end I think he succeeded in creating a persona and brand the preceded any talent (or lack of) that he had (or didn’t have). He played in many of the biggest clubs in the world throughout his career, moving to Real Madrid after us and also playing a stint at AC Milan, on loan from LA Galaxy. I think it’s fair to say that he was never the best player in any of the teams he played in. You could be cruel and say that Real Madrid and AC Milan got more out of signing him through replica shirt sales than football performance, but I wouldn’t go quite that far. What he lacked in all-round skill and football ability he must have made up for in experience and, through his presence alone, motivation and inspiration, particularly for the younger players around him.
We’ve not been told who Beckham’s going to for his final season as a professional footballer. There has been talk of some French clubs but there’s also a chance he’ll come back to the Premier League for one last taste of English football. It would be interesting if he did do that, but who for? I’m not sure putting him in a Man United shirt would be a good idea to be honest but you never know, it might just happen again. And he wasn’t all that bad when he was with us…
In the unlikely event that any of the Manchester United team read my blog, I could claim a little hand in our change in fortunes over the last week or so. Since my last post, when I was bemoaning our lack of form, we’ve had three convincing wins on the trot – all in the Premier League, against QPR, West Ham and Reading – which have taken us three points clear at the top of the table. Perhaps my words, coming from a true fan of the club and the team, might have inspired them to up their game? Okay, so that is highly unlikely (impossible) but I can dream, right?
December tends to be seen as quite a crucial month in the Premier League, as many teams see the end of the year as a good marker for who is likely to go on to take the title. Gambling on who will be top at Christmas is very popular, with bookmakers producing special odds for those who like that kind of thing – here’s a good comparison table of odds on who will be top of the Premier League at Xmas.
I’m not particularly a gambling man, as I’ve said before, but I think I might stick a few quid on Man United staying at the top of the table for Christmas. We’ve got a few tough matches in December – notably Man City on the 9 December – but I’m confident we can do it. City haven’t got too hard a time of it in comparison – they’re playing Reading and Newcastle this month, after us – but you never know what will happen. If we can come through this month and be top at Christmas I think we’d have to be favourites to go on and win the Premier League this season. So I’ll be watching Man United intently this month, as ever, and here are my predictions for the next few games:
I shouldn’t be surprised that my claim last week that Man United ‘seem to be on a pretty good run at the moment’ is followed by us losing away to Norwich, being knocked down to second place in the Premier League and losing 1-0 to Galatasaray in the Champions League. That last result doesn’t really matter to us because we’re through the group stage anyway but it’s never nice to see us lose, especially in Europe. And, of course, the other results didn’t go in our favour, as I’d hoped they would. Man City beat Aston Villa 5-0, which put them at the top of the league, and Chelsea lost to West Brom, which was about the only positive thing for us all weekend because it meant they didn’t gain any points on us.
Speaking of Chelsea, the surprise news yesterday was that they sacked Roberto Di Matteo immediately after their loss to Juventus in the Champions League on Tuesday night. I have to say I was really shocked – he revived them after a really bad spell last season and took them on to win the FA Cup and the Champions League, which is a brilliant achievement by anyone’s standards. So to just sack him after a few losses in the middle of this season seems really harsh to me.
Looking at their previous form, though, it shouldn’t be that surprising – they’ve been through nine managers in the last nine seasons, with their owner, Roman Abramovich, apparently not taking any kind of failure very well. That’s what football’s like these days, unfortunately – big money, big stakes. It’s a funny old game but it’s a tough old game too, especially if you’re a manager and your team loses. Still, I expect he’ll be getting a couple of million quid in compensation, so it’s not too hard a life being a football manager.
Two good wins for Man United over the past week but we certainly don’t make things easy for ourselves. I thought we were going to completely collapse in the Champions League game last week against Braga, having gone 2-0 down, but we brought it back to win 3-2. I suppose I should have a bit more faith and believe in the team more.
We did the opposite against Chelsea in the Premier League on Sunday, going 2-0 ahead in the first 12 minutes only to see them bring it back to 2-2. We won 3-2 in the end, with Chelsea moaning about the referee losing it for them. I generally believe that the luck of the decisions evens itself out – we might get awarded an offside goal one week (as it seems we did on Sunday) but in a week or a month we’ll get one scored against us, so it comes back around. I have to say though, if I were a Chelsea fan I think I would be disappointed in the decisions that went against them on Sunday. They did seem to unfairly stack against them and ultimately helped decide the game.
The other thing that came out of that game is something that’s looming a little too largely over football at the moment – the issue of racism. It seems we’re set for another ‘who said what to whom’ episode, with Chelsea accusing the referee this time of using ‘inappropriate language’ towards two of their players – the implication being that it was racist language.
I don’t know what was said, obviously, but if the John Terry episode taught us anything it’s that the language used on professional football fields is, in my opinion, completely unacceptable. In what other working environment would it be okay to bait, swear at and generally abuse a fellow professional? I’m not excusing Terry at all – I actually think he should have been punished more severely – but you do get the sense that what he said was a ‘step too far’ on a field that is awash with insults, foul language and abuse.
Cut it all out, I say – swearing, disrespect, abuse… and, of course, racism, in all its forms. Get tough – reduce offending players to a salary of £20k a year. That’d soon shut them up.
I didn’t intend to write such a long blog about cycling before but, as I say, I do find it really fascinating. It’s funny too that many in the cycling world feel their sport is singled out and tarnished with the ‘doping brush’ when drug use and cheating is an issue in all sports. There’s a big difference though, I think. If Wayne Rooney, for example, was using EPO, it wouldn’t necessarily help him score goals. He may be able to run faster for longer but ultimately he still needs that innate football ability – no drugs can give him that. What it takes to win in cycling – the pure endurance – is so raw and so immediate that EPO use greatly improves your chances of winning. That’s the difference.
Anyway, I’m not going to write a whole other blog about cycling and drugs – I’ll leave that for when (if) Lance Armstrong decides to speak about it. For now I’m going to concentrate on football and Man United have an important Champions League game against Braga tonight. We got a good win at home to Stoke on Saturday, despite a bit of a dodgy start, and I’m hoping we’ll continue the winning streak tonight. As you know, I’m not entirely confident in our Champions League performances at the moment.
It’s a pretty big evening for a lot of British clubs tonight, with Chelsea playing away in Ukraine and Celtic playing Barcelona in the Camp Nou. That would be a great game to watch I think and I might just stick a few quid on Celtic causing a bit of an upset – I’ll definitely be watching the highlights to see how they get on. As I seem to be making a bit of a habit of it, here are my predictions for tonight’s three games:
Man United 3, Braga 0
Barcelona 2, Celtic 3
Shakhtar Donetsk 2, Chelsea 2
Now I’ve written it that Celtic result does look a bit optimistic – you’d probably get good odds on it though.
A cracking win at Newcastle on Sunday means Man United are now second in the Premier League, behind Chelsea. It is of course early days still but I think we’re going to hold a much stronger position this year, judging by the quality we’ve shown, and I predict we’ll go into Christmas top of the league and go on to win it with games to spare. There you go – I’ve said before I don’t like making football predictions because I’m not normally very good at them but I’ve got a feeling this season and I think we’re going to storm it. You heard it here first and I’m even going to put a bet on while I’m thinking about it, that’s how certain I am.
Last week ended on a bit of a high as the young band I was talking about in my last post were really chuffed to come back and finish their demo off properly. I’m not normally one for going over the top with good will and handing out unearned favours but as I said, they were really nice lads and it does feel good to help out an up and coming band once in a while. They’ve promised me a mention on the sleeve notes of their first album if (when) it gets released.
At the other end of the recording spectrum, I’ve got a guy in all week this week doing voice-overs for some radio and TV adverts. It’s good work because I don’t have to do much and I get a decent rate from the production companies, but it’s a bit boring after the youthful, enthusiastic rock and roll of last week. I’ve got Friday off though so I can go out with a mate and look at some cars. He’s been thinking about leasing a Peugeot 308 and asked me to go along with him. Should be fun – I like looking at new cars.
A few weeks ago I was going on about how worried I was that Man United wouldn’t perform in the Champions League this year. We completely bombed out of it last year so it was really important to start well this time and get some wins under our belt. As of tonight, we’ve played two and won two, so that’s pretty good going as far as I’m concerned. And judging by the weekend’s performance in the Premier League, it’s that competition I should be worrying about, not the Champions League.
We were awful in the first half against Tottenham on Saturday, letting them go two up, and although we fought hard in the second half I just didn’t think we had the quality to turn it around. They ended up winning 3-2, which was their first victory at Old Trafford in 23 years. Sir Alex moaned afterwards about the lack of injury time, saying it was an insult and it didn’t give us the proper chance to win the game. As big a fan of Man United as I am I can’t agree with him – even if there is discrepancy in the time keeping, it’s only about 30 seconds or a minute and you can’t say that’s why we didn’t win. We needed to play well for the whole game and we didn’t – that’s why. Plus we all know that if it was the other way round, and we’d beaten them and they were moaning about injury time, Sir Alex would be rubbishing their comments. It’s another example of the stupidity that I don’t like in professional football.
We’re away to Newcastle this Sunday then there are a couple of international fixtures, with England playing World Cup qualifiers against San Marino and Poland. I like a bit of international football to break up the domestic stuff every now and again, and it’ll no doubt be a welcome break for some of the players too. Ferdinand, for example, can put his feet up for a week, as it doesn’t look likely he’ll be called up to play for Roy Hodgson again.
Strangely for me, I actually ended up turning the England football game off last week. I looked at the result afterwards, of course, and was pleased we managed to get a goal back to draw 1-1, but the play in the first half was so uninspiring I just thought to myself, I’ve got better things to be doing than spending another 45 minutes watching this. So I went and did them. I’m sure I’ll get into international football again at some point but right now it’s doing nothing for me.
Man United, on the other hand, smashed Wigan 4-0 on Saturday, which sets us up really nicely for this week’s Champions League game against Galatasary. I will be watching all of that game, of course, although I think I will quickly lose patience with United if they pull last season’s trick of doing really badly in the Champions League. Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that.
I’ve got an average week in the studio this week, which I’m quite grateful for after last week’s workload. There’s a band in at the moment for three days, recording a single (I’m not impressed with them myself but that’s irrelevant I suppose), and I’ve got a morning of voice-over to record on Friday then that’s it for the week. It gives me Thursday off to do a bit of shopping, maybe go and look at a few cars and potentially get over the celebratory beers from Wednesday night’s Champions League victory. See, I am trying to keep in a positive frame of mind.
Oh, and for what it’s worth (which isn’t a lot) here’s my prediction for Wednesday night:
A mate asked me to go and test drive a few cars with him this weekend, so that’ll be good fun on Saturday. I always like driving different used cars, seeing how they vary in terms of performance and comfort. We might go and have a go in some brand new cars too, which will be interesting. Not sure I can persuade him to go to the Lamborghini garage though.
Man United play Wigan at home this Saturday and I’m hoping we’ll be done with the car shopping before kickoff. I was going to go to the game but I’ve decided to watch it at home with the lads and a few beers instead. I’m hoping we can keep a good run of form now and get up to the top of the table in the next few games. With Van Persie in the form he’s in it looks likely. We’ve also got our first Champions League game next week, against Galatasary on Wednesday. We need to focus for that one and make sure we don’t make mistakes and get knocked out early, like we did last year. I definitely do not want to be in the Europa League again.
And it’s typical that yesterday, in keeping with my run of form with sporting predictions, Contador stormed the stage and took over two minutes out of Rodriguez in the Vuelta, giving him the overall lead. Just goes to show how quickly things can change in sport – I only hope what we’ve seen is an honest performance. It was amazing to watch and great bike racing but I can’t be the only one with a niggling feeling in the back of mind, knowing that he has just returned from a ban for taking performance enhancing drugs. It’s a shame cycling is tarnished with doubt because of its doping history but it’s something we still can’t ignore, unfortunately.
