This Does Not Slip

Andi Thomas

Description

Remember the 2013/14 Premier League season? Steven Gerrard's quick tumble, Manchester United's long collapse and Manchester City's remorseless pursuit of the title? No? Us neither, which is where this helpful Premier League Diary steps up.Use it to relive every missed handshake and defensive meltdown, to remind yourself of the classic moments of schadenfreude, hatred and contempt you felt for the assortment of chumps, charlatans and chancers playing out the 2013/14 season. Each copy includes some jokes of an adequate nature, more than one hundred exclusive footnotes, plus a list of all your favourite journalists' preferred vegetables. Yes, he went with okra.

Informations

• Publié par: Ockley Books
• Date de parution: 21 novembre 2014
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781783015573
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 2 Mo

Extrait

Published by Ockley Books Ltd
First published 2014
All text copyright of the authors.
The moral right of all the authors to be identified as the authors of this work has been asserted. All chapters written and edited by Andi Thomas and Alexander Netherton.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without prior permission in writing from the author and publisher Ockley Books.
ISBN 978-0-9571410-70 eBook ISBN 978-1-7830155-73
Front Cover, layout design by Michael Kinlan
Premier League shirt illustrations by www.mehibi.com
Printed bound by:
Riley Dunn Wilson Ltd.
Red Doles Lane
Huddersfield
West Yorkshire
HD2 1YE
I FIND IT HARD TO BELIEVE THAT S THE WAY THE BALLS CAME OUT OF THE BAG, THAT S FOR SURE.
David Moyes, August 2013
CONTENTS
Foreword
Introduction
Week Zero
Week One
Week Two
Week Three
International Week One
Week Four
Week Five
Week Six
Week Seven
International Break Two
Week Eight
Week Nine
Week Ten
Week Eleven
International Break Three
Week Twelve
Week Thirteen
Week Fourteen
Week Fifteen
Week Sixteen
Week Sixteen-And-A-Half
Week Seventeen
Week Seventeen-And-A-Half
FA Cup Third Round 116 Week Eighteen
Week Nineteen
FA Cup Fourth Round
Week Twenty
Week Twenty-One
Week Twenty-Two
FA Cup Fifth Round
Week Twenty-Three
Week Twenty-Four
Week Twenty-Five / FA Cup Quarter-Finals
Week Twenty-Six
Week Twenty-Seven
Week Twenty-Eight
Week Twenty-Nine
Week Thirty / FA Cup Semi-Finals
Week Thirty-One
Week Thirty-Two
Week Thirty-Three
Week Thirty-Four
Epilogue
Hardcore Analysis
FOREWORD
When did football become hard work?
It used to be a release. Now it s worse than a maths lesson. You re bombarded with stats and theories. The parallelogram midfield. The Higgs boson back four.
It s the internet s fault. Once, you could ignore proper journalists until they broke a story. You only had to put up with your drunk mates and their opinions. Now everyone s your drunken mate - and they re armed with touch graphics and pass-completion numbers.
At least your mates got out, went the match and had a beer. The modern blogger barely leaves home. He hasn t got any time. He s writing 2,000 words on a Ukrainian 15-year-old who s setting Krasnyi Luch ablaze.
It s all so serious. An entire generation, part man, part moron, has arisen who only consume football through a screen - TV, computer or video - and then write about it with the sort of pomposity and arrogance that s breathtaking. They can t see the absurdity of getting excited about 22 men kicking a ball about. Most have no ties to the clubs they support so that removes even the civic pride justification for being interested in the sport. Yet they re obsessed.
What s the point of football if it s serious? Once you went, you watched and washed down the experience with beer. Yes, it was daft, a little wild and unpleasant and menacing at times but it was a release, a day off. Optics not Opta was the order of the day.
Now people watch on telly and go to the ipad immediately to do tactical and statistical homework. They know everything and understand nothing.
Why I like this book and its authors is they are an antidote to those who believe football is really serious. They know the game is bollocks and the circus surrounding it is bizarre. They see the inherent comedy in it. They are having fun.
OK, they re not funny, but they re having a good time. Well, they re a little bit funny. It s not a slog to read them.
If heatmaps and hot-water bottles are your thing, you won t like this book. Buy it anyway and burn it. Better still, download and delete. Just don t write 2,000 words reviewing it. Have a laugh. There s a good few in here.
by Tony Evans
Tony is Football Editor of The Times and author of I Don t Know What It Is But I Love It: Liverpool s Unforgettable 1983-84 season
INTRODUCTION
This is a diary. 1
As it was written weekly, there are some seismic - literally seismic - events that we missed and so are only alluded to. There are those who would argue that a professional would have gone back through those events and added their own take on things, but that s wrong. Why? Er
It s either because we feel that the inherent quality of this diary comes from the contemporaneous reactions that simply cannot be created retrospectively, however clever and talented we are. To do so, the argument would go, would be to cheat the reader, and worse than that, cheat ourselves. The other argument is that we are writing this the day before the World Cup and have run out of time. Either way, it is too late. We ve stuck the footnotes in, and we have your money.
This diary first appeared in some version, weekly, on Football365, and so we would like to thank Sarah, Matt, Daniel, lovely cuddly Nick and Rupert Murdoch for giving us the discipline to write it cold, hard cash necessary to make us do anything. Thanks, too, to Richard Whittall for allowing us to do the first Diary for The Score website. Finally, thanks to Dave Hartrick of Ockley Books for agreeing to respond personally to all feedback, however negative or scatological.
CHARITY SHIELD
Manchester United 2-0 Wigan Athletic

M anchester United began with the season with the elan one would expect from a newly reinforced side. 1 Having been presented with a club in need of a new midfield, amongst other things, David Moyes impressive summer of reinforcement made a mockery of the contest between the Premier League champions and Wigan Athletic, recently relegated. Given Manchester United have finally spent the Ronaldo money it was no surprise they ran out comfortable winners. Robin Van Persie may have scored both the goals, but without the support of the new purchases the club would have struggled against Wigan s energetic midfield.
With Leighton Baines in defence, Manchester United proved themselves far more resilient. Patrice Evra has struggled for the last few years with form. A great deal of this is due to evil man Luis Su rez, but the rest of it is mainly his age and the fact all of us, even you, decay. His pace is one of the few things that remain, but positionally he lacks concentration and his focus throughout matches has been utterly lacking. Luckily, Moyes acted swiftly to bring in Baines 2 , and the benefits were obvious. No longer were the centre back pairing wondering what trouble Evra would expose them to, and Danny Welbeck was no longer required to fret over his defensive responsibilities. With Baines, Manchester United have acted quickly to solve a longstanding problem from the Ferguson era.
And that s not all they ve done. Marouane Fellaini 3 is another Everton purchase who has quickly settled under his old manager. It s a different colour shirt, but the same performance level. Not only was he as assured as you might expect from years of Premier League experience, he offered quick, reliable passing and, more importantly, a genuine physical presence in midfield 4 . He wasn t especially dominant with his passes, but no longer do United look like they re fielding a team of also-rans when Carrick isn t in the starting eleven. Given David Moyes s links with Everton, it s no surprise that the move was completed so quickly, rather than embarrassingly dragging on throughout the summer.
Of course, just Fellaini alone would have been a sensible reinforcement, but given that Manchester United had not bought a midfielder since Owen Hargreaves in 2007, that would have been a bit of a sop rather than a complete solution. United s fans will be even more grateful for the transfer of Cesc Fabregas from Barcelona, giving them a new, genuinely world class midfielder for the first time in six years. Fabregas, of course, was never able to truly convince at Barcelona, a direct presence amongst a studied tiki taka-versed set of colleagues. At United he can offer box-to-box coverage, technical excellence, and a talismanic quality that Barcelona never needed but that United have always thrived upon. Not only did he set up one of Van Persie s goals, reigniting the understanding the two have from their days at Arsenal, but he also offered a firm central presence to kick against Wigan s youthful energy. Having identified the Catalan s willingness to move several months ago, Edward Woodward and David Moyes have clearly been working together long before Moyes official start date of 1 July 5 . To have actually waited until that date to get going in the most important summer for the club in recent years would have been certifiable.
But Fabregas and Fellaini are United spending the money that they received after Wayne Rooney s inevitable departure to Chelsea, and Baines was bought with the usual net spend allowed by the Glazer family. Most surprising is the sight of Gareth Bale/Cristiano Ronaldo in a United kit. Few would have imagined the man from Spurs/Real Madrid would have made the dramatic transfer/return to United, but it goes to show that the new man, Edward Woodward, is not messing about in establishing Manchester United at the top of the pile.
This was a crucial summer: Alex Ferguson and David Gill had left, Chelsea had Jos Mourinho and Manchester City had spent loads, quickly, quite well. It would not do for United to faff along incompetently at this crucial time. That s why Bale/Ronaldo was such a vitally important signature. It proved to the rest of Europe, never mind the Premier League, that the club were still ultimately the most beguiling and important attraction in England, and one of the greatest in the world. A team with such tradition, and with owners who say they are fully committed to on-pitch success, simply could not have continued with Tom Cleverley, Ryan Giggs and Michael Carrick any longer, without looking like risible chumps operating purely on a knife edge devoted to profit.
Not only that, but Bale/Ronaldo s adoption of the glamorous number seven of Cantona, Ronald