The Numbers Game

 

I was listening to BBC Radio Five Live’s excellent Monday Night Club a few weeks ago. Hosted by one of the Beeb’s best broadcasters, Mark Chapman, the show is usually a discussion on the previous weekend’s football – predominantly, it must be said, English football. Licence fee payers in Scotland tend to be ignored by Aunty Beeb south of the border but that’s only my personal opinion.

One of the regular contributors to the Monday Night Club is someone with good experience of Scottish football – former Celtic striker Chris Sutton. He was in discussion with other contributors about whether certain players are comfortable playing as a ‘nine’ or a ‘false nine’ or if they prefer playing as a ‘ten’ or even a ‘false ten’.  Someone else mentioned Chelsea effectively operating with two ‘sixes.’

I sat rather bemused by it all. Back in the late 1960s when I attended my first football match there was no such talk about playing as a ‘false nine’. Just as well because, as a six-year-old, I would have been totally bamboozled and put off football for life. As a 62-year-old, I’m still bamboozled but such gibberish doesn’t prevent me from watching the game I shall always love.

Watching Scottish football over the last six decades, I can certainly vouch for witnessing some players as a ‘false nine.’ But in the cases I’ve seen, it’s not so much a tactical ploy, rather it means the player in question would struggle to hit a barn door with a banjo. And, believe me, I’ve seen plenty of players like that…

Modern day match commentators do tend to come out with utterances which have me scratching my head. I heard one the other week declare that a team would be looking for one of their players to ‘exploit his pace.’ I assumed the commentator meant said player would try and run past the opposition defence but that possibly depended on whether they were playing a false number six…

It’s all a far cry from when football seemed a much simpler game. When games invariably kicked off at three o’clock on a Saturday. When you could pay cash at the gate (yes, I know paying with cash is fast disappearing in today’s society. In fact, it disappeared from me many years ago…) When players wore the numbers one to eleven without their names on the back of their shirts. And there wasn’t the name of a sponsor to be seen anywhere on said shirt.

But the language of football seemed much simpler back then. Standing on the crumbing terracing of Tynecastle Park back in the 1970s, I never heard anyone talk about players ‘going down the channels.’ Or ‘diamond’ formations. Or ‘running at pace’ although anyone who has ever seen me attempt to run for a bus will vouch for the fact that pace is nowhere to be seen. Or the frankly ridiculous sight of a player lying down on the ground behind a defensive wall at a free kick. This has been a recent trait as well as the sight of a goalkeeper having two of his defenders either side of him when taking a goal kick. I’ve never quite seen the reason behind this particularly if the team’s false number nine or pretend number ten or either of the number sixes are screaming for the ball…

But it seems modern jargon is here to stay. I recently asked my ten-year-old grandson which position he played for his school football team. He told me he was an ‘attacking mid.’ Not for the first time he saw the bemusement in my eyes and didn’t attempt to explain. When I was his age an ‘attacking mid’ was Hearts Drew Busby scaring the living daylights out of Alan Hansen, then of Partick Thistle in a game at Tynecastle. The look of fear on the future Scotland defender’s face was priceless.

My 14-year-old granddaughter told me she can play ‘centre mid or offensive’. My reply that, when I was playing for my primary school team back in the black and white days, I was a utility player – useless in any position – merely brought a black expression on her face, as The Specials used to sing…

Football is a simple game. Today it seems to be over-analysed, over-interpreted, and overrun with technical jargon which has old timers like me staring into space. Possibly the space where the false number nine should run into…

 

Mike Smith

X/Twitter @Mike1874

www.fitbason.blogspot.com

 

 

 

Have You Ever Been Blue (Carded?)

 

                                                                     Image: EPLIndex

In the ever-changing world of football, the latest proposal to improve ‘the beautiful game’ is a suggestion to trial sending players to a ‘sin bin’ for a period of ten minutes during a game for certain misdemeanours.

The IFAB – the International Football Association Board (people of a certain age may think this has Thunderbirds connotations) - are scheduled to discuss the proposal at its annual meeting in March in the unlikely but nevertheless stunning location of Loch Lomond. The idea is that, in addition to the red and yellow cards all-too frequently issued by referees, there will be a blue card, likely to be issued for less serious offences such as dissent, not retreating ten yards at a free-kick or time wasting.

Rugby union operates a similar system and while clearly the dynamics of the oval ball game are different to that of association football this seems to work well enough as illustrated during the current six nations competition.

It isn’t clear yet, even if the blue card proposal is given the green light (I’m getting a headache with all these colour references) when and where the trials will start. England’s Premier League has already stated they won’t be implementing it and even FIFA have suggested it’s unlikely to happen at elite levels of football although who defines what levels of football are elite is anyone’s guess.

In fairness, I can see why the footballing lawmakers have suggested this as a proposal. There seems to be an increasing number of instances of players seeking to gain an unfair advantage by falling over as if having been shot by a sniper at the nearest brush of contact from an opponent. It really irritates me when I hear pundits and summarisers on television and radio saying, ‘there was contact, so the player was entitled to go down.’ This, in my view, is utter tosh. Some players fall over when there has been no foul committed, particularly when they’re anticipating a tackle that doesn’t arrive. Despatching such players to the ‘sin bin’ for ten minutes may not eradicate such behaviour but I suspect IFAB believe it will make players think twice before falling down like a pack of cards when an opponent tickles their arm.

I grew up watching football in the 1970s and there were hard men back then in what was a much more physical game than it is now. But there was a different attitude back then. Players such as John Greig at Rangers, Bobby Murdoch at Celtic, Drew Busby at Hearts, and John Blackley at Hibernian were tough competitors who, to use a phrase in popular use at the time, ‘took no prisoners.’  But their opponents wouldn’t collapse to the ground when they could feel their breath on the back of their neck. Rather, they wanted to show these no-nonsense players that they weren’t afraid of them.

I suspect those aforementioned players and others such as Willie Miller at Aberdeen and, down south, the legendary Dave Mackay at Tottenham Hotspur and Derby County would have viewed the sin bin as nothing more than a gimmick. Indeed, such players would probably find themselves spending ten minutes on the field of play and 80 minutes in the sin bin…

When you add in VAR – have I mentioned how much I dislike it? – I can see a game kicking off at 3.00pm and not finishing until 5.30pm. Which would be a serious issue for me as the present Mrs Smith already suspects the reason I’m late home from the football is that I partake of a pint of foaming ale from any number of hostelries on the way home. Then it’s not so much a blue card but turning the air blue and issuing me a straight red…

I agree that something needs to be done to end the blatant cheating of some players, particularly in the top-flight divisions in both Scotland and England. But refereeing officials have a tough enough job as it is without having to check when the ten minute sin bin time is up to allow a player back on the field. And one can envisage a team temporarily going down to ten men packing their defence for ten minutes – and surely the game is about scoring goals?

With the vast amounts of money in the game in England perhaps financial penalties would have minimal impact but a retrospective points deduction may drive home the message to players and managers that cheating is not acceptable. Never has been and never will be.

And from a Scottish football perspective, the flashing of a blue card to a Celtic player during an Old Firm game at Ibrox may prove a tad inflammatory.

 What is needed is a common sense approach. Add your own punchline here, dear reader, before a sin bin is installed at a stadium near you... 

 

Mike Smith

Twitter @Mike1874

www.thefitbason.com

 

 

 

Want to Bet?

 

Photo: Getty Images

There is something of a paradox in Scottish football these days. In fact, not just Scottish football but football in general.

There are numerous clubs in the UK whose shirts are emblazoned by the name of a betting company of some kind of another. In the cinch Premiership, Celtic and Rangers currently promote betting companies on their shirts and, in Scotland, there are seemingly no plans to stop this despite the Premier League in England banning the names of gambling companies on the front of team shirts from season 2026/27.

There are some wellbeing organisations and charities who have been concerned for some time by the affects of gambling addiction on the young (and not so young) and the fact that it is now easier than ever before to place a bet on just about anything you can think on.

The internet has seen a huge increase in online betting through various apps. Most of the betting companies who run these apps not only make it far easier than it should be to gamble on your smart phone but actively encourage you to do so by bombarding you with email messages on a daily basis. It makes for a reasonable argument to suggest that promoting these companies on football shirts encourages impressionable young adults to gamble.

Some football clubs have started to move away from taking the ‘gold’ on offer from said betting companies. This is to their credit, and it seems any form of gambling is now persona non grata at an increasing number of football clubs around the country. It doesn’t seem that long ago that you could use betting facilities at Tynecastle and Easter Road, for example. The hut in the Wheatfield Stand at Tynecastle which was a mini betting shop has been closed for some time now, but it used to be a hive of activity on match days.

And it’s not just the betting shop which has disappeared from Tynie. For years, I was accustomed to parting with my hard-earned cash to the auld fella at the turnstile (sound familiar, Citizens?) before having my ears subjected to ‘get yer half-time draw tickets!’ being bellowed from a person or persons armed with a fifty-fifty draw ticket. For a mere pound you had the chance of winning an untold fortune (well, enough to get a few rounds in at The Diggers pub after the game)

I recall visiting Firs Park, home of East Stirlingshire a few years ago, at a time when the Shire were still in the Scottish Football League albeit perennial strugglers in the bottom division. I was so impressed by a fella doing his fifty-fifty half-time draw ticket sales pitch – ‘this could change your life forever’ – that I parted with a pound and stuffed my part of the ticket in my pocket. It was only upon leaving the ground at the end of the game that I saw the winning number nailed to a hut by the exit gate. It was my number. I duly collected £125 and felt a tad guilty that I was taking money from a club for which every penny was precious. Although not guilty enough to give them it back…

Along the road from Firs Park, was Brockville Park, former home of Falkirk FC. I remember my father taking me there in the late 1960s/early 1970s and buying a ‘goalden goal’ ticket (do you see what they did there?) For the price of a shilling (for those under the age of 50 look it up on Google) you got a perforated piece of paper which, upon opening, contained any time between 0 minutes and 90 minutes. The idea was if your ticket had the time of the first goal of the game you won a cash prize. I still recall my father throwing away one of his tickets in disgust after it revealed ‘0 mins, 14 seconds’…In fact, the terracing at Brockville Park always seemed to be festooned with discarded ‘goalden’ goal tickets.

Nowadays, with the internet meaning instant access to the world on one’s smartphone – and the world of online gambling – there isn’t quite the same anticipation with buying a half-time draw ticket or the much missed ‘goalden’ goal ticket.

I like a bet as much as the next person but I do appreciate the dangers of addiction which can lead to serious consequences. But I do ponder if the fact that Celtic and Rangers have a gambling company as their shirt sponsors will really influence wee Johnny sitting at either Celtic Park or Ibrox to bet his life away at an online bookmaker.

In life, people really have to take responsibility for their own actions. But do they? Don’t bet on it…

 

 Mike Smith

Twitter @Mike1874

Get Yer Official Programme

 

Regular readers of this column – and I thank you both – may have a notion that I tend to look at the past through rose coloured spectacles. Those far-off days of decades ago long before football became the corporate beast it is now; when teams took to the field in plain shirts with not a sponsor’s name to be seen; when you didn’t need to buy a ticket in advance – just handed over your cash to the friendly old man at the turnstile - and when you had to buy a match programme in order to get the half-time scores from around the country. I still miss those half-time scoreboards…

I’m currently reading Cliff Hague’s excellent book ‘Programmes, Programmes!’ which not so much wallows in nostalgia but nearly drowns in it. A Manchester United fan who actually hails from Manchester, Hague writes affectionately about how he still treasures his ticket stub from the 1968 European Cup final (although he felt the need to add ‘Champions League’ in brackets) between United and Benfica played at Wembley Stadium. It cost the princely sum of £2 and the match programme set the author back one shilling – that’s five pence, young ‘uns. Of course, everything is relevant. The pay packets (in the days when we had such a thing) didn’t exactly bulge for the working class in this country more than half a century ago. But it’s a sobering thought that the price of a ticket for a European Cup final in 1968 wouldn’t even get you a pie at a domestic league game today.

Hague also writes about the programme for Manchester United’s first home game following the Munich air disaster in 1958. Twenty-three people died when the plane carrying Manchester United players and officials and members of the press back from the club’s European Cup quarter final in Belgrade crashed on take off from Munich airport where it had stopped to refuel. Atrocious weather conditions with snow and ice on the runway meant the pilots had tried three times to take off but the plane failed to clear the runway on the third attempt and more than half the forty-four passengers onboard perished, some immediately, some days and weeks later. The programme for United’s game against Sheffield Wednesday merely left the names blank on the team sheet, a poignant indication of the tragedy. The importance of the programme is forever a reminder of a tragedy that destroyed one of football’s greatest ever teams, the legendary Busby Babes – although manager Matt Busby survived the crash.

Programme collecting has always been popular among football fans so it’s disappointing to read of some clubs who have stopped producing them, in paper format at least. Some have gone digital in producing programmes which may reduce a club’s carbon footprint but takes away, in my view, from the matchday experience. In days of yore one would leave the pub after partaking of a half pint lager tops and push through the turnstile five minutes before kick off (after greeting the friendly auld fella at the gate – Ed) and stand on the often open terrace. The programme would make a good read at half-time along with a pie and a cup of Bovril (other beverages were available)

One could catch up with the manager’s thoughts on the previous game. Whenever I went to Tannadice, reading Dundee United manager Jim McLean’s thoughts were often enough to have one crying into one’s Bovril but usually a manager’s ‘notes’, as they were often described in the programme, contained the usual cliches about ‘treating today’s opponents with respect and how it will be a tough game but the boys are ready for the challenge’

Scrolling through the digital version on your mobile phone doesn’t quite have the same effect and, try as I might, I just can’t write the team changes or the half-time scores on my mobile phone screen…

Much to the dismay of many, some clubs – and I’m talking about you, Hibernian FC – have even stopped producing any programme, digital or paper, which is a real shame. 

Cliff Hague’s book is a wonderful recollection of times gone by and some programmes such as the aforementioned Manchester United one against Sheffield Wednesday are a moment in history.  Yes, everyone needs to keep a tab on their carbon footprint and paper is a commodity that is easy to cut back on now we’re in the digital age. But producing football programmes on recycled paper may be a way of offsetting that.

Much of what gave me huge enjoyment when I first began going to the football more than fifty years ago has disappeared. While I don’t miss some of it – open air toilets which amounted to little more than a brick wall with a drain – football programmes are an essential element of going to the game.

Please don’t let this disappear.

Twitter @Mike1874

fitbason.blogspot.com

The End is Near, but Dignity is Distant

 

                                                            Photo: Aberdeen FC

At the end of January Hibernian entertained Aberdeen in the cinch SPFL Premiership. A fixture between two of Scotland’s biggest clubs is usually keenly anticipated but there was an extra edge to this particular game that had social media in a frenzy.

The nature of the game these days is that a run of defeats instigates a ‘crisis’ with calls for the manager’s head and, occasionally, the collective heads of the board of directors. Hibs and Aberdeen both went into this fixture on a run of form for which the phrase downward spiral had been invented. Intriguingly, both sides had won just twice in their preceding ten games, losing seven of them.  

A pall of gloom had descended on Easter Road the previous week following their elimination from this season’s Scottish Cup after a chastening 3-0 defeat from city rivals Hearts. Hibs manager Lee Johnson was under fire from an increasingly angry support.

However, if the disappointment at Easter Road was palpable it was nothing compared to what was happening 130 miles north in the Granite City. Aberdeen’s form since the cinch Premiership resumed after the Qatar World Cup had fallen quicker than the temperature in my house when I upset my wife (a fairly regular occurrence) Their record away from Pittodrie was abysmal although surely they would put things right when they visited West of Scotland league side Darvel in the Scottish Cup? After all, there were five divisions separating the two teams with most of the Ayrshire lads having worked in their days jobs in the hours leading up to the game.

What happened, of course, was the biggest shock in the long history of the Scottish Cup. Darvel deservedly won 1-0 and the Dons were out on a night of humiliation, the worst result in their history. The press and the supporters, as is the way of these scenarios, waited for what surely had to be the announcement of the sacking of Dons manager Jim Goodwin the following day. But what they got, 48 hours later, was a statement from the club saying Goodwin was staying but an immediate improvement was required.

That improvement had to occur at Easter Road where the Dons met fellow ‘crisis’ club Hibernian. The media lapped it up of course and the game was dubbed ‘El Sackio’ which, in my view, reflects rather sadly on society. Social media went into overdrive, the press were circulating Easter Road like vultures round a carcass and all prying eyes were fixed on the two managers.

Hibernian’s 6-0 hammering of the Dons meant there was no way back for Jim Goodwin and the sight of him walking forlornly across the Easter Road pitch minutes after the game had ended, stepping over an advertising hoarding en route to a waiting car to whisk him away meant one could only have sympathy for the amiable Irishman. Granted, some Aberdeen fans, particularly those who held up a banner at Easter Road proclaiming ‘Goodwin Out’ may have had little sympathy but this is a man’s livelihood we’re talking about, a young man with a young family enduring, like the rest of us, very difficult economic times. He may well have been paid the rest of his contract which had around 18 months to run but the diatribe fired towards him was akin to a baying mob after a murderous villain.

Goodwin’s ignominious exit brought to mind the fate of another former Aberdeen manager, Steve Paterson, who was sacked by the Pittodrie board of directors in the summer of 2004 and smuggled out of the ground in the boot of a Mercedes car to avoid the attentions of the baying press. Paterson had well-documented problems with alcohol but it says much about our society that he had to be smuggled out like someone having been given a life sentence for a heinous crime.

On the other side of the coin, Livingston manager David Martindale has been lauded for producing a team which is in the top half of the league and is challenging for a place in European competition next season. Given the size of the club and the budget being a fraction of other more fashionable clubs, it’s a remarkable achievement. But even Martindale is wary of the pitfalls of football management. He spoke about Jim Goodwin’s dismissal to Sky Sports News saying it is the way football is nowadays – you get a job, you lose a job.

Aberdeen’s last two managers have both been fired before a year was out on their respective contracts. Football has changed so much in the last few years and the advent of social media has given more power to the supporters who demand immediate success. As in any profession, failure or perceived failure can see the incumbent pay the ultimate price. But dignity and respect is the least anyone deserves. As we strive for an equal, inclusive and fair society that’s something the football world in particular should consider.

Twitter @Mike1874

fitbason.blogspot.com

At the End of the Day

 

It was one of the first football clichés I can recall and goes back to the 1970s. ‘As sick as a parrot’. There are many different explanations as to the origins of this particular cliché although my favourite dates back almost a century. 

Tottenham Hotspur went on an overseas tour in 1908 and the captain of the ship they sailed on presented them with a parrot as a gift. The bird sat happily in the confines of White Hart Lane in North London. However, controversy arose in 1919 when Spurs arch-rivals Arsenal were admitted to the First Division - at Spurs expense. The day the decision was announced the parrot died (I won’t make the obvious Monty Python gag…)

Clichés are so ingrained in football these days it’s little surprise that players and managers will trot them out ad finite. In my more idle moments, I have wondered when they were first spoken and who by. I’ve often heard it said after a particularly physical game that ‘no quarter was asked’. What does that mean exactly? How does that fit with another well-worn cliché ‘a game of two halves’? I’ve never quite understood what no quarter was asked meant. I can fathom its use in other scenarios. I had an argument with my local sweetshop owner the other day when I accused him of falling short with the number of liquorice all sorts he put in my bag. His response of ‘well there was no quarter asked’ was understandable if somewhat irritating. However, what it means in a football sense is less clear.

Then there’s the 'stonewall' penalty. I heard one of the seemingly endless summarisers on television say the other week after a player was hauled down and the referee waved play on that ‘for me, it was a stonewaller’. The pundit is far from alone in using this phrase, but it does make me wonder what it means in a football context.

Some pearls of wisdom remain etched in the memory. Craig Burley was summarising a Newcastle United v Aston Villa game a few years back. At 0-0, Villa’s John Carew blasted his penalty into the upper tier of the Gallowgate Stand of St. James Park inducing Burley to opine ‘he hit the ball too well….’

One that I haven’t heard for a while - educated foot - as in "he's spraying the ball around the park with his educated left foot" Now there are two inexplicable clichés in the same sentence. Can you spray a solid, spherical object? And in what context can your left foot be educated? Did it go to St. Andrew’s University while the rest of your body hopped around the streets with a sweeping brush?

BT Sports Champions League coverage includes summaries from the former Liverpool defender Jim Beglin. The Irishman talks a good game, but he does tend to use the phrase "that was meat and drink for the goalkeeper" whenever a cross ball is easily collected. I half expect Manchester City’s goalkeeper Ederson to catch the ball, produce a napkin from his shorts and start tucking into the match ball…

Prior to their exclusion to Champions League coverage, ITV used to have former United and West Bromwich Albion manager Ron Atkinson as a summariser until he courted controversy with a racist comment. Atkinson is given the credit - or should that be blame - for first coining the phrase ‘early doors’ as in ‘United will look to keep things tight early doors.’ Many people use that term now and we all know what it means but I do wonder how on earth Atkinson thought it made any sense.

There are clichés in all walks of public life. How many politicians do you hear saying ‘the fact of the matter is’? (usually when they’re trying desperately to think of an answer to a probing question) However, they seem more prevalent in football and it’s not just players and officials. Newspaper reporters will often refer to a manager ‘losing the dressing room’ or the more successful ones as ‘supremo' while the transfer window always 'slams shut' at the end of August and January.

At the end of the day, cliches are part and parcel of football. It’s a big ask for me not to write this article without resorting to cliché mode and, to be fair, I set my stall out early doors. Although, I have to say, as I wrote this whilst consuming copious amounts of brandy this there’s a fair chance ‘I’ll be feeling that one in the morning…’

Mike Smith 

@Mike1874