Is Football in the Wrong Dimension?

Unless you have spent the last few years like the proverbial ostrich, with your head in the sand, you will no doubt have heard the great song and dance surrounding 3D TV.

As a concept, 3D has merits. The experience of seeing a blockbuster film at an Imax screen is a gripping thrill-ride and the third dimension certainly enhances the atmosphere. But what about live sport in the third dimension?

Naturally, Sky have made a huge fuss about their televised football being 3D, including what looks like their own version of the Blues Brothers (until they went all rock 'n' roll and unleashed abuse on a female official). They pushed the 3D coverage fervently in a big advertising campaign, encouraging viewers to find their nearest 3D pub.

Just imagine the spectacle: 200 blokes down the local, all wearing silly blue and red glasses, whilst watching the big game (spare a thought for those poor souls who have to wear glasses anyway). This scenario, which would resemble an Edgar Davids fan convention, already sounds ridiculous enough, but imagine seeing images like this and this in three dimensions. They are scary enough in 2D to give a child nightmares without making them pop out of the screen and towards your face, snarling.

As a sceptic, I can't help but see this 3D lark as anything more than a fad that will eventually pass. Besides, 3D football is nothing new; it has been around since the game was first invented. Of course, I am referring to going to watch a game live. It doesn't get any more 3D than cheering your team on from the stands. Even better, you don't have to watch the game in red and blue shades (impossible for Norwich vs Plymouth games) and the atmosphere is better than the greatest surround sound system could convey.

2D football has served us perfectly well since it was first broadcast, so let's keep it that way. If you insist on watching your football in 3D, go and support your team in person -  and put those silly glasses in the bin.

Spare a thought for Nani

Few hearts will have bled with sympathy for Nani when the PFA Player of the Year nominees were announced.

The Portuguese Manchester United winger is disliked by many for some of his on field antics; diving, feigning injury and crying to name just a few.


All of that aside, however, and it has to be said that he has finally shown this season the form that we knew he was capable of on a consistent basis. Since he signed for United in 2007, he has been erratic to say the least. His performances fluctuating between scoring some sublime goals to barely knowing he's on the pitch.

In a Manchester United team that is widely accepted to be their worst for possibly 15-20 years, Nani has been at the forefront of United's quest to remain at the peak of English football. Last season, it could have been argued that Wayne Rooney carried the team but when his form dipped at the end of the season, throughout the World Cup and the majority of this season, it could have been difficult to see where the goal threat could come from.

Berbatov had struggled since joining from Tottenham, Hernandez was largely unproven. Somebody needed to step up to the plate. Nani and the two aforementioned players have all performed admirably this season, but it is Nani who has stood out with nine goals and the most assists of anybody in the league.

Despite such output, the PFA have overlooked him and named a sextet of Gareth Bale, Scott Parker, Samir Nasri, Nemanja Vidic, Charlie Adam and Carlos Tevez.


The six have all played remarkably this season, and all are undoubtedly important figureheads of their respective teams but it is Bale, the bookies' favourite at a staggering 1/2, whom is surely least deserving of the award.

We've all seen his two demolitions of Inter Milan but he has spent much of this season injured, so his team have got by without him. When he has played he has been good, but the best player in the league? Not even close. If he could maintain his Internazionale performances on a regular basis then you are looking at a world class player but it is the consistency of performances and appearances that is lacking.

Does Swearing Crackdown Mean Sweet F.A.?

Wayne Rooney swears. He swears a lot.

In fact, believe it or not, most footballers swear. Some of them every single game. Now, some of these players swear at referees; this isn't really allowed. Not that you'd guess.

It is very rare, particularly in the Premier League, to see a player either booked or sent off for 'effing and jeffing' at the man in black. Rooney, it has to be said, is one of the most prominent players who are prone to one or two expletive-laden tirades at the officials. Yet, on most occasions, he is let off scot-free.

Why, then, are the F.A. choosing to ban him for his 'message' into the camera of Sky Sports?

This isn't to say it is the wrong move, mind. What Rooney did was stupid and to do it into a camera, a camera he knows is providing images to millions of viewers (viewers who include impressionable children), is both unprofessional and irresponsible.

What it does mean, however, is that the F.A. have, potentially, set a dangerous precedent.

Does this mean that all swearing by players will result in a ban? Or just swearing at referees? Or maybe it only counts if you're caught on camera? Possibly it's only if there's huge mock-outrage from the media... who knows?

If, next weekend, you spot a player giving a linesman a bit of 'friendly advice' of where he can store his flag and said player doesn't get booked; you'll know it's likely the latter.

What is more confusing is that this ban follows the F.A's refusal to punish Rooney for his near-assault of Wigan's James McCarthy.

Effectively, in punishing this yet refusing to punish the elbow; the F.A. have given the message: 'It's fine to smack someone in the head, as long as you don't tell him to 'f**k off' as you're doing it'.

It could be argued that this ban comes in lieu of the elbow incident. If so, then that is a further blow to their integrity; smacking of a Gene Hunt-esque modus operandi of 'we might not be able to get you on one score but we'll get you on something, no matter how shoddy'.

In any case, if the F.A are intent on cracking down on players swearing in camera-shot, then Mark Wright can expect a retrospective fine for his rather uncouth display of delight at lifting the F.A. Cup in 1992.

Argelico Fucks and Stefan Kuntz (and John Motson) can also count themselves lucky they avoided the Premier League.

Meanwhile, the F.A. continue to bemuse and blunder their way through their stewardship of the game; usually leaving us all thinking: "F***ing what?! What?! F***ing hell!"

Sky's the limit but their punditry is limited

This weekend saw the return of domestic football and, with it, the loud, brash, 'look at me' banner waving of Sky Sports.

Not that this comes as a surprise or, indeed, to the detriment of the viewer. Sky have been exactly the same since day one when they rolled out the cheerleaders and Richard Keys' hands were still impossibly hairy.

If you put your mind to it, you can almost successfully zone-out whenever Sky's follically over-compensated ringmaster bellows at you to 'WATCH IT IN 3D! GO ON! IT'S DEAD GOOD! I PROMISE!'

One area, however, in which Sky have become more irritating is in their deteriorating quality of punditry and their obvious sycophancy towards certain members of the footballing world - and apparent agenda against some others.

Watching the Community Shield, yesterday, you could almost be forgiven for thinking your television was autonomously flicking between MUTV and some sort of anti-Capello propaganda channel.

It started off all harmless enough, with Keys peddling out cliché after cliché about how 'it's good to be back' with 'the best league in the world' and him trying to flog you 3D TV, much in the same way as you would expect a street merchant in Marrakesh to try and palm a dodgy Rolex off on you for an unnecessarily exorbitant price.

Then Redknapp opened his mouth.

While he must be congratulated in managing to curb his misuse of the word 'literally', he threw away any chance of having his first decent game when he launched into an off-topic 'Capello has lost the plot' rant.

This rant can be summarised as: 'Capello is not good enough because he's not English enough'.

You almost get the feeling that he won't be happy until his old fella, whiter-than-white, diamond geezer, Harry Redknapp gets the job.

When, finally, Redknapp had tired himself out, picked up his dummy, and settled down for a nap during the game (not that it'd make much difference to his inane, paint-by-numbers, makes-Mark-Bright-look-insightful effort of an 'analysis' if he actually did falls asleep during the game) it was time to roll out an interview with His Holiness Lord Almighty The Overseer Most High Sir Alex Ferguson, to give him his full Sky Sports infobar name.

Well, calling it an 'interview' is probably over-egging it somewhat. That would imply probing and helpful questions were asked. They weren't.

Instead, Geoff Shreeves, boot polish and tongue at the ready, proceeded to make Jonathan Ross and Terry Wogan look like the Spanish Inquisition.

No queries on Michael Carrick's miraculous recovery, from being ruled out for two weeks on Friday to starting one-and-a-half days later. No probing on the possible transfer of Mesut Ozil. No anything.

The interview basically condensed into:

GS: "Good to be back, isn't it Sir Alex?"
AF: "Yes it is."
GS: "You're great."
AF: "Yes I am."
GS: "I love you."
AF: "I know."

Of course, the coverage of the game itself was, as usual, high quality stuff. No one can argue about that.

It's even possible to put up with the odd bit of salesmanship from Martin Tyler and the general torrent of verbal diarrhoea from Andy Gray. Although, even they are partial to a bit of a love-in.

After Javi Hernandez scored his farcical face-plant, complete with equally farcical badge-kissing celebration, Tyler and Gray waxed lyrical about 'yet another young gem unearthed by Sir Alex' and marvelled at his ability to find young talent, conveniently forgetting the likes of Tosic, Manucho, Djemba-Djemba, Liam Miller and Dong.

Although, to be fair to Tyler and Gray, they may have genuinely forgotten about them, such was their pointlessness.

After the game it was back to Richard and Jamie in the studio for, yet another edition of, the mind numbing state-the-obvious championship.

Sometimes you have to laugh at the sheer shallowness of it all, if only because the alternative is to put your foot through your TV.
Sent from my BlackBerry® wireless device

Coyle Asks Megson for Advice

Owen Coyle asks ex-Bolton boss Gary Megson for tips on taking over at the Reebok:



A Half Time Oranges production.

Ignorant Warewolves Bay For Benitez Blood

Hallowe'en saw Liverpool have a nightmare and crash to a frightening 3-1 defeat at Fulham.

This means that, inevitably, the blood-thirsty press and brain-dead fans will be clawing at Benitez' door as they clamour to put him in his coffin and hammer in all the nails with the gusto of an over-excited undertaker.

Fans foam and fit on radio phone ins while pundits paw-over and analyse every move made by Benitez, stopping short of examining his stools for further fault.

But is the Spaniard really to blame for this latest result.

No. Not for the most part. Even people who have half their brains eaten by a zombie should be able to deduce that.

It was not so much a freak result as a freak set of circumstances.

Fulham, at Craven Cottage, are a hard team to beat, as Manchester United will testify after last season's visit. Roy Hodgson has built an extremely resilient side who are more than capable of claiming the scalps of big teams.

Make no bones about it, they are a tough side to play against with a full strength side. So imagine going into the game with a whole starting XI's worth of players out. To make it more complicated, more than half those players pulled out the night before with a virus.

Very rarely are teams picked on the day. A match will be planned for almost a week in advance with the team in the managers mind on the Friday. So most of the changes would have been made the morning of the game.

Gerrard, Johnson, Riera, Kelly and El Zhar were already missing through injury while Aquilani dropped out with a virus on Friday morning. Then it began.

Seemingly overnight Liverpool lost Cavallieri, Agger, Skrtel, Aurellio and N'Gog to the same illness.That's a half decent Carling Cup side all ruled out in a matter of hours, the majority of whom would have featured in either the starting line-up or on the bench.

The patched up side Liverpool sent out didn't play particularly well but did dominate the game for the most part, until Fulham scored the second. Where they came unstuck was lack of alternatives on the bench, almost entirely down to the sudden onset of a virus.

The bench resembled more a creche than a substitutes bench. Dossena was the oldest of the lot at 28 while the next oldest was Ryan Babel at the decrepit old age of 22.

The lack of depth from the bench could be, in part, attributed to a lack of squad depth. Something that Rafa could be at fault for. However, despite distorted reports from many media outlets, the Spaniard has not been able to spend vast amounts of money on players or, indeed, wages. Something highlighted in, prolific Red's novelist, Paul Tomkins' article about his recent meeting with the former Valencia boss.

Benitez was questioned about taking off of Torres but the striker is still carrying an injury and was always going to come off. If he had been left on and got injured for a month then Benitez would also have been chastised. The substitution of Benayoun was questionable but one that was probably made with the make-or-break game against Lyon in mind.

Going down to 9 men, with one debatable red card, did not help Benitez. He can hardly control moments of madness by players, injuries and illness.

Don't expect many 'experts' and jerky-kneed fans to take note of such common sense, though.

Why believe that when you could believe that Rafa could have possibly injured Gerrard and Johnson himself, purposely withheld Limsips from the those laid low by the virus and even paid off the referee to send off his players.

Flatline Deadline

For many football fans, yesterday was the day that those who weren’t at work sat perched on the edge of their sofa, curtains drawn, staring at a Sky Sports News lovely and the average bloke sat next to her, whilst those at work kept a crafty eye on proceedings through a constantly minimizing Internet Explorer window.

Yes, yesterday was transfer deadline day! With millions of fans - watery eyes, heart palpitations and all - were glued to whatever screens were in front of them in the hope of their club pulling off a major signing before the transfer window slammed shut on the fingers of cash-splash happy managers (or, if you’re a Portsmouth fan, in silent prayer that the other half of your squad isn’t sold).

However it was all a bit of an anti-climax. While rumours; from the sensational (Ribery to Liverpool) to the reasonable (David James to Spurs) to the downright ridiculous (Voronin to Arsenal) were in abundance, Leeds’ Jermaine Beckford was spotted at the training grounds of the remaining 91 clubs in the football league (presumably by a best friend’s mam’s uncle’s partner’s dog’s son’s brother’s owner) and Notts County were supposedly throwing cash at retired football luminaries such as; Figo, Nedved and probably Pele, Beckenbauer and Bobby Moore, nothing of any note actually happened.

As much as Sky tried to make the transfer of Danny Collins seem important, everything was, well, a bit rubbish. They darted from club to club speaking to their roving reporters only to be told: ‘There’s sod all happening’ - albeit in a more articulate way - while a smarmy looking bloke sat on a telephone in the studio telling them why sod all was happening before feeding us false hope by saying: ‘but it could… will it… probably not… but there is a chance.’ Did it? No.

What did happen was; Pompey managed to replace the half of the squad they had sold… before quickly selling the other half and Man City signed no-one, presumably because Hughes’ arms are knackered after hurling huge sacks of dosh at clubs, players and probably passers buy in the street all summer.

So, all in all, another wasted afternoon sat in the company Sky Sports or BBC’s text commentary on their website. No change there then. Will we learn in time for January’s deadline? Probably not and with good reason: I’ve heard from a reliable source that Frank Lampard will be signing for Stockport.