Here at GhostGoal I had a thought. It had been building for some time and then it simply had to be blurted out.
But I was too much of a coward to write the piece on here. There may be Premiership fans reading who would dismiss it as the ramblings of a madman. So I sought shelter in the arms of others. A place where the the virtues of Championship forwards are appreciated.
Check out this piece that appeared on TheSeventyTwo earlier in the week:
Did you enjoy the last one or did it infuriate? Here’s my mate Gollo to speak the unspeakable once again …
Whenever there’s a brilliant new teenager on the scene, it doesn’t take long before someone utters the phrase: ‘Imagine what he’ll be like when he reaches his peak’.
We’ve heard it time and again about the likes of Rooney, Walcott et al. And here’s the problem – in terms of the modern footballer it makes absolutely no sense.
If you believe the various ex pros who loiter around the punditry circuit like teenage chavs around Bargain Booze, then footballers peak somewhere between 26-28. So when a player bursts onto the scene at 16 we are told to expect them to be achieving non-stop greatness for at least a decade. This may have indeed been the case in the 60s, or even as late as the 80s, but football in this country was played at a slightly different pace. A centre forward with a wise old head could use his experience and nous to great effect on younger more naïve defenders. Football was also more physical. Despite Mr Wenger’s ceaseless protestations, the truth is that small skilful players in this country have never had it so good. They can’t be tackled from behind and nudges that ‘Chopper’ Harris probably considered foreplay are punishable by yellow cards these days. And rightly so. I’m not pining for those days by any stretch of the imagination – the game has changed.
Modern football, especially in the Premier League, is so quick that pace, athleticism and physical conditioning are more important than ever. At the top level, players are scientifically conditioned, their weights are carefully monitored (I can’t get the image of Jon Parkin out of my head here but I’m going to push on regardless) and generally , when they head out onto the pitch they are as ready as they can physically be without breaking the rules of the game. Which leads me nicely onto my next question, how many 28 yr old men are in better condition now than when they were 18? Our metabolism is faster, our recovery rates are faster … according to Cosmopolitan Magazine (don’t ask) we even screw better when we’re 18. Sure, we may ‘fill out’ a little until we hit twenty one but after that it’s just a slow and painful trudge towards death. Add onto this the style of football in the Premier League, it’s the fastest league in the world, where skill and first touch are frequently choked by teams closing down. We expect people to run endlessly, centre forwards are universally applauded for chasing down goal kicks and running the channels and booed for trying skilful flicks anywhere outside the penalty area.
In addition to the physical demands, there are also the psychological demands placed upon the modern player. Before I hear the John Gregorys amongst you ask: ”How can a guy earning that much be depressed”, bear in mind that the media scrutiny these players are under is greater than ever. The top English players have massive expectation on their shoulders; it has been assumed by those in the know that Wayne Rooney would’ve won England the World Cup single-handedly by now. Don’t get me wrong, footballers have an amazing life, but when you consider the endless media scrutiny on their private lives and paparazzi tracking their every move then the ceaseless expectation must take their toll.
Let’s continue to use Wayne Rooney as the subject. At 16 he burst onto the scene with a love of the game and talent to burn. Aged 18, he moves to the biggest club in the world (Fergie says so) for a huge transfer fee and is given more money than he will ever know what to do with. He then spends the next six years getting kicked from pillar to post on the pitch and putting his body through the mill week in week out. I don’t have the stats to hand (I’m from the MOTD school of punditry) but we know Rooney is the sort of player who will run himself into the ground. He does this for ten months of the year for six years straight. I have checked that in this period he has never played less than 40 games a season. Regardless of the aforementioned psychological strains this amount of effort must have a cumulative effect on his body - and it’s starting to show. As a guy who hopes desperately that England will win the World Cup in his lifetime it pains me to say this … but when you consider the above - Wayne Rooney’s best days are almost certainly behind him.
Edgar Davids at Crystal Palace – What is going on with the world?
In our latest piece for In Bed With Maradona – The Home of World Football Online – GhostGoal looks at foreign stars and their incongruous relationship with the English lower leagues.
Check it out, click the link below:
Our latest piece for WolvesBlog.
When Nenad Milijas signed for Wolves in the early summer of 2009, he was arguably the club’s most exciting Premiership signing. Yes it’s true; Kevin Doyle was the club’s record purchase. But it was Milijas that had that hint of the exotic. After all, it was the captain of Red Star Belgrade no less – conjuring images of Dejan Savicevic, Robert Prosinecki and the club that had been champions of Europe as recently as 1991.
However, concerns about the player were there from the outset. The esteemed European scout turned pundit Tor-Kristian Karlsen listed the purchase as one of the worst buys of the summer, describing Milijas as follows:
“Great set pieces but if you want to have a prototype of a player who does not fit English football, you can take out a patent on Nenad Milijas. Classic Balkan playmaker, gifted but about as mobile as a refrigerator.”
There were moments of magic in that first season but, in truth, Karlsen’s assessment proved spot on. The set pieces were there for all to see, never more dramatically than in his appearance off the bench to provide two assists and a valuable point at Stoke City. The gifts were displayed fleetingly but memorably: a thunderbolt against Bolton, a delicious back heel to help win the late penalty versus Aston Villa. And the lack of mobility was evident in abundance – written through every performance he nearly delivered.
And yet the nagging suspicion remained – if the platform for success is in place, Nenad Milijas could still prove an asset. For all the false dawns, the axing and recalls, the bald statistics of Milijas’ Wolves career to date read:
1,532 minutes, 4 goals, 7 assists.
1,532 minutes. The equivalent of 17 games. Extrapolated over a league season it equates to something like 9 goals and 16 assists – a contribution that compares favourably with almost any midfielder in the game.
Nonetheless, it seemed likely that the mercurial playmaker’s days in the Premiership were numbered. Indeed, it was something of a surprise that Milijas was not offloaded in the summer – to France, to Turkey, to Russia … frankly anywhere but England.
And then a funny thing happened. Milijas became useful again. Injury to Adlene Guedioura was followed by the suspension of Karl Henry. Even then, the Serbian man would most likely have been ignored for the visit to Chelsea but for the ineligibility of Michael Mancienne to play against his parent club. As a result, Mick McCarthy was forced to make use of his £2.6m signing – and so he began to talk up the player’s ball retention skills:
“We can’t chase the ball for 90 minutes – we have to keep it. And if we do that, it certainly stops the wave after wave of attacks. Nenad’s a very talented player who can keep the ball and pass it to a shirt the same colour as his. We’ll have to do that because if you just keep giving it back to them by booting it up the pitch, it will keep coming back.”
On the face of it, Stamford Bridge seems the unlikeliest of venues for the Serb to prove his worth. However, he performed admirably and it can hardly have been lost on McCarthy that the player did exactly what was requested of him:
Guardian Chalkboards powered by Opta data
As the Opta data shows, not only did Milijas keep the ball with remarkable ease, he also managed five shots on target as Petr Cech faced what was statistically the busiest afternoon of his Chelsea career. For a team like Wolves, a player who can keep the ball and provide a goal threat is one the club ignores at its peril. It perhaps also requires a re-evaluation of the way Milijas has been used by his employer thus far.
It was always one of the curiosities of Milijas’ 2009-10 season that he was dropped from the side just one game after McCarthy elected to switch to a 4-5-1 formation. The new system proved a success, with fellow left-footed playmaker David Jones to the fore. But after its initial appearance in the home draw against Liverpool, Milijas himself saw just an hour of league action in the remaining four months of the season.
This seems an anomaly for the simple reason that Milijas would appear to be a player made for a 4-5-1 system. The extra man in midfield ensures simple passing options are regularly available and would allow others to do his running. After battling gamely in a 4-4-2, Milijas was discarded just as Wolves began to operate with a formation that may have allowed him to flourish.
Stamford Bridge may have been a false dawn. Nenad Milijas may be out the team again by next week when Henry and Mancienne return. But the weekend was a welcome reminder of the talents of Wolves’ gifted Balkan playmaker with the mobility of a refrigerator.
It’s been a strange old week. So we agreed to let our mate Gollo try and make some sense of it. He ranted. And we sort of liked it.
Having been spectacularly bored at work for the entire duration of the Rooney saga, I’ve been able to follow every twist and turn on the internet. I’ve watched the fans of the various clubs. The despair. The gloating. The feigned indifference. Needless to say it got me thinking on the various emotions football fans are exposed to in the digital age and the effect this has on our lives.
In days gone by, being a football fan was very simple. In the 50s and 60s you went along to the game on a Saturday, smoked your pipe with the lads before having two pints of bitter then heading off home. In the 70s and 80s as Match of the Day really came into its own. You now had the opportunity to watch other teams on the television and maybe formulate an opinion on them with the help of ‘expert’ analysis by Jimmy Hill. But the match day experience was much the same – with the addition of being able to have a fight with the police and/or opposition fans to really spice things up a little if you so desired.
It wasn’t until Sky invented football in 1992 that the modern day football experience really began to evolve. Suddenly you could watch every team in the league. You could covet other teams players. Decide which referees genuinely did have a penchant for ‘waxing their dolphins’. Now you could admire Andy Gray’s tactical analysis and decide exactly how far back down the evolutionary ladder Richard Keys belonged.
The tabloid press got involved by churning out transfer rumour after transfer rumour, each more unlikely than the rest, but proving the old theory that if you throw enough shit at the wall, some of it is bound to stick. In 1998 Sky launched Sky Sports News and did what they had threatened to do for six years and made it possible to watch nothing but sport for 24 hours a day. Combined with the explosion of usage in the internet this meant the football fan’s relationship with his club and his favourite players was closer than ever before. You could read about their boozing and womanising antics in the front of the tabloids. Or read about their next transfer in the back of the tabloids or online. And then, to top it all, watch the aforementioned antics affect their performance on Sky on Monday, Wednesday, Saturday and Sunday. Saturation point, it seemed, had been reached.
But there was a third and (hopefully) final age dawning. As technology continued to move at a breathtaking pace and the world of social networking and blogging became mainstream, interaction with our teams reached new levels. For example, over the past few days I have tried to antagonise various different sets of North West football fans on my Facebook page. my Twitter account, on F365, The Guardian Blog and Teamtalk. I’m a Wolves fan you understand, but I just quite enjoy starting arguments then heading for the hills (think Nigel Winterburn with the Di Canio / Paul Alcock incident and you’re almost there).
The dawn of independent media, internet phones and social networking has turned some modern football fans into teenage girls in their first relationship – ‘Does he love me?’ ‘Will he leave me for the girl with bigger boobs?’ What can I do to make him stay?’ ‘The bastard, I’ll never forgive him’ ‘He loves me again’ and so on and so forth. Most Man Utd fans have gone through a very similar set of emotions over the past few days and what’s more they’ve gone through them very publicly.
Now I dye my hair blonde, exfoliate and moisturise regularly as well as wearing skinny jeans – so far be it for me to tell anyone to ‘man up’. I can also acknowledge that the digital age and independent media has made us more informed than ever before. But I can’t help but feel that when grown men feel the need to share their emotions on a website to help them cope with what is essentially an exchange of contracts then something is slightly wrong with the modern football fan.
Roll on Saturday.
You can’t follow Gollo on Twitter. He deleted his account.
