• Mixed doubles partnership with teenager lifts Scot’s spirits
• Murray in relaxed mood before playing 6ft 9in American

Laura Robson clearly is good for Andy Murray. As the smiling teenager gambols through the doubles at the Australian Open, Murray, six years her senior, not only keeps a kindly eye on her progress but seems to draw comfort from her presence between grinding out a much tougher path in the men’s singles.

They joked their way through the Hopman Cup in Perth before arriving here, and he was there briefly to celebrate her 16th birthday on Thursday night. He could not stay long, and retired early in preparation for his third-round match yesterday against the Frenchman Florent Serra, whom he duly dispatched in 112 minutes.

The friendship with Robson has done his tennis no harm as he enters the fourth round, where he will play the 6ft 9in American John Isner for the first time.

Robson, who, with the Australian Sally Peers, is rattling along in the women’s doubles, seems to bring out the best in someone whose diffidence has suggested suspicion of the outside world in the past, perhaps misleadingly. The real Murray – or a new version of the old one – may be emerging from his chrysalis.

“I didn’t go to her birthday dinner,” he said, “but I went and had some cake [with her] at the end of it.”

He picked up on her good spirits here, and observed: “Yeah, obviously at that age it’s so nice. There’s not really any pressure on you, so you can enjoy yourself. You know, doubles at the Australian Open, win a couple of rounds, and end up ­playing girls that she would have been watching on the TV the last few years. I’m sure she’s loving life just now.”

Did he miss those times, when he had few cares and only his own expectations? “Yeah, I guess I wish I’d made the most of them, a little bit more. But you don’t really realise at the time. I’m sure a lot of players would say the same thing.”

As gilded as his rise to be No4 in the world has been, Murray has not been immune to the emotional growing pains of youth. Just before Christmas he broke up with his girlfriend of four years, Kim Seals. The subject is off limits but he has said in the past about the break-up of his parents’ marriage when he was a teenager: “I found the divorce difficult.”

Yesterday, in the crushing humidity of the Hisense Arena (a converted velodrome), there was nothing but sunshine in Murray’s life. His tennis is in good shape, he has no injury to hamper him and, in beating Serra 7-5, 6-1, 6-4 with only minimal malfunction during the first set, he maintained the momentum he has generated since seeing off the 6ft 8in South African Kevin Anderson on the first day, followed by a similarly clinical job on the Frenchman Marc Gicquel in round two.

He had a third Frenchman in his sights, Gaël Monfils, until the imposing shadow of Isner moved across Melbourne. Murray senses a struggle of his own against the big man, but is hardly despondent.

“The run he’s been on,” he says, “he’s a difficult guy to play against. He’s the guy that everyone talks about all the time. You don’t want [6ft 10in Ivo] Karlovic or Isner next to your name in the draw, because the match is on the other guy’s racket. If he serves great and hits some big shots and returns, [Isner] is a tough guy to beat. I’m going to have to be on my game.”

As Monfils will testify, Murray will know he has been in a tennis match by the time it is over. He is unfazed. “I’ve got a good record against Karlovic,” he points out, “and when I played Kevin Anderson, who’s also a big guy, and Sam Querrey, I’ve played well against them. But it does always come down to a few points. So it’s really important to be on the ball when you get the chances, because they don’t come so often.”

Against Serra, Murray pulled off the most exquisite shot, twisting in the ­execution of it to flick a two-fisted backhand winner across Serra’s static bow. It was, he says, the result of hard work in training. “I’ve always moved well and had really good anticipation. It’s about being able to stop myself, turn and bomb back in the other direction. It’s to do with the weight training and balance work we do, more so than actual movement.”

Murray identifies such athleticism as the key to the modern game. “The ­physical side of the game is ridiculous now. You look at some of the balls some of the guys can pick up. Once they get to the ball, it’s all about the balance and control they have and how hard they can hit the ball on the stretch. That’s what makes tennis different to what it was maybe even when I started playing on the tour, or five, 10 years ago – just the things the guys can do with the ball.

“You never feel the point is over. You can get yourself into a great position and guys can just smack winners from four metres behind the baseline, or way out of court. It’s pretty impressive, the athletes that are on the tour just now.”

Few are more impressive than Murray, a young man who seems at ease with himself and his game.

Continue reading

Perhaps the perpetrators of the tug will now think twice about trying to swap shirts before the final whistle

Shirt-tuggers are having a rough time. Last weekend they had two penalties given against them in the Premier League and in one instance the perpetrator was sent off. Then in Tuesday’s Carling Cup semi-final first leg at Eastlands Manchester United lost the lead and eventually the match after Manchester City had been awarded a penalty for a similar offence.

If this is a trend long may it continue. The widespread practice of stopping an opponent breaking away by holding on to his clothing belongs to the school playground, and that may be doing the kids an injustice. The old pros chunter on about shirt-pulling as if it was as trivial an offence as parking on a double yellow line when in fact it deeply offends the spirit of the game.

Stop the match every time a player tugs a sleeve and the game will never get started, so the argument goes. But if referees get the backing to come down hard on this most tedious of fouls footballers will surely get the message and lose the habit of grabbing opponents’ habits. It has worked, by and large, with tackles from behind and those so-called professional fouls which once saw attackers regularly and amateurishly brought down a yard or so outside the penalty area.

Officials do have a problem in that a brief sly pull, especially in a goalmouth crowded at a set-piece, is often hard to spot. Linesmen have a special responsibility here and praise is due to the flagger at Goodison who indicated that Manchester City’s Micah Richards had held back Everton’s Louis Saha by his shirt. Saha, in fact, thought he had been flagged offside and was as amazed to be awarded a penalty as City were furious.

When Wolverhampton’s Richard Stearman was pulled up at Molineux for a similar foul on Wigan’s James McCarthy there was less dispute about the subsequent penalty, which in this instance was saved, than the fact that Howard Webb sent the defender off after showing him a second yellow card. Some thought the referee had been harsh although the Wolves manager, Mick McCarthy, observed that “as a young player you do things and wonder why. I’m sure he will”. Maybe Stearman will indeed think twice about again trying to swap shirts before the final whistle.

Webb had previously shown himself prepared to punish severely this type of offence. During the 2008 European Championship he penalised a Pole, Marcin Wasilewski, in stoppage time for grabbing the shirt of Austria’s Sebastian Prödl. Ivica Vastic’s penalty brought Austria a 1-1 draw which kept them in the tournament for one more game while Poland protested loud and long all the way up to their prime minister. Yet all that Webb had done was apply the law to the letter. Even so Uefa did not keep him on for the knockout stage.

Manchester United, still possessed of more rabbit than Sainsbury’s, went off at an equally deep end this week when Mike Dean gave City a penalty after Rafael da Silva had clung on to Craig Bellamy’s sky blue as the pair raced towards the United penalty area. Alex Ferguson’s players were not disputing the foul so much as the fact that it had occurred outside the box, although Bellamy ultimately went down inside. Television replays supported them but it was hard to avoid the feeling that justice had been done in a roundabout way.

“It was a professional foul,” protested Liverpool’s Phil Thompson by way of a defence after Pat Partridge had awarded Nottingham Forest a penalty when Thompson had clearly brought down a goal-bound John O’Hare outside the area during the 1978 League Cup final replay at Old Trafford. John Robertson duly won the trophy for Forest from the spot and only Liverpool thought they had been hard done by. Thompson would be sent off now or, more likely, would be sensible enough not to foul his man in the first place. So it might work out if shirt-pullers were penalised properly and more often.

Lest it be thought that the practice is another by-product of foreign imports it should be mentioned that several decades ago a member of the Arsenal coaching staff confided that at Highbury, if an opponent was getting away, “we tell our players not to bring him down because they’ll be booked. Pull him back by his shirt instead”.

Unthinkable now, of course.

No, really …

Continue reading

Brighton’s manager believes he can lead the club with an ugly stadium and turbulent history out of its troubles

And Smith must score!” It is approaching 27 years now since Gordon Smith burst through the Manchester United defence and Peter Jones uttered the most famous line of his commentating career. Yet Smith missed the chance to win the 1983 FA Cup final as the game went into the final minute of extra time. Manchester United won the replay 4-0 and Brighton dropped down a division to a world of mess. They have not found the way back since.

Gus Poyet was 15 at the time, played as a striker for his local team in ­Montevideo – “big, not moving, letting the whole team run for me”, embarking on the first steps of an accomplished career that now sees him in charge at the Withdean, the peculiar little stadium that Brighton reluctantly call home, preparing for an FA Cup tie at Aston Villa, 56 places above them in the ladder of English football.

Romantics of a certain generation will instinctively remember Brighton’s famous contribution to this competition even if Poyet is candid enough to confess he has never heard those four words from Jones that inspired the name of the old Brighton fanzine. Poyet apologetically admits that whenever he is asked about the 1983 final he does not know what he is talking about, adding that he is “trying to get some books to study it”. He does, however, have vivid memories of beating Villa at Wembley in 2000, as part of the Chelsea team of Zola, Desailly and Leboeuf, and he still regards it as the high point of his career.

That was the final that ended with Dennis Wise lifting the trophy with his baby boy, Henry, in his arms. Some people found it endearing, others felt it was one novelty too far. But the man who would later become Wise’s assistant at Swindon Town and Leeds United falls into the former category. A four-year-old Diego Poyet was also on the pitch at Wembley that day and his father’s eyes sparkle as he talks of that little boy with the dark hair and brown eyes now being “a football man” on the books of Charlton Athletic.

“That was the real Wembley for me,” Poyet remembers. “They call the new one Wembley because it’s in the same place. Sorry, but it’s not the same. The old place had something magic: the red carpet, that walk from the dressing room to the tunnel with the managers at the front, wearing a flower in their buttonhole.

“I used to watch it when I was playing in Spain and I’d wonder what they were doing, and why. But then you start thinking, ‘I wonder if I will ever be lucky enough to play in an FA Cup final at Wembley.’ And ours was the last one at the old Wembley, too. There was an extra motivation for us: let’s win the last cup final at the old ­Wembley. Then the celebration on the pitch with the kids. It was the perfect day. Terrible game, though.”

He took over at Brighton in November, 13 months after he left his last job as assistant manager at Tottenham Hotspur, the club he had served with such distinction, once Juande Ramos was sacked.

“It was a long time to be out of the game,” he reflects. “It was not easy. I wanted to come back as a No1 but, realistically, I thought it would be difficult, probably impossible, to get a Premier League manager’s role. So for the first few months I said: ‘OK, let’s start looking at the Championship because I think I’ve got enough ability, credentials and the name to be managing at that level.’ But time went past, month after month after month, and then you start thinking: ‘Do I need to drop down another division or two?'”

Life at Brighton did not get off to the best start when he looked at a seafront apartment only to be gazumped by one of his own players (he will not say who). But Poyet’s appointment has led to a gradual upturn in results, taking them out of League One’s relegation zone and they are unbeaten in four games going into their visit to Villa Park. Brighton’s has been a story of excruciating lows and off-field drama for longer than they would care to remember but there is also a sense here of a club that has “been through the worst”.

He gets that feeling every morning when he drives into training and passes the shell of the club’s new 22,500-­capacity stadium going up in Falmer. The £60m construction is due to open for the start of the 2011-12 season and then Brighton can finally sever their ties with the Withdean, the old athletics ground where Sally Gunnell used to train and where temporary stands now circle the track like a row of broken teeth.

“It’s been very hard for this club; very difficult,” Poyet says. “They’ve changed grounds, they’ve even been away from the city for a while (Brighton played at Gillingham from 1997 to 1999) and they’re playing at the Withdean, which has to be the ugliest stadium in the league. So it’s fantastic for the players to drive past this new stadium every day and see it getting better and bigger.”

Later, the conversation turns back to the unloved Withdean. “It’s not even a football stadium,” he continues. “It’s a kind of athletics stadium, with some stands everywhere, like they’ve been doing in different stages, with different builders every time. I don’t want to say it’s the worst stadium in League One – even though it probably is – but it’s the ugliest without any doubt.”

Brighton are run these days by Tony Bloom, a multi-millionaire who goes by the nickname The Lizard on the professional poker circuit because of his cold-blooded card-playing. The club, Poyet explains, are “easily in the top half” of their division in terms of finances, a far cry from when they were so hard up they launched the Alive and Kicking survival fund in 2004.

There are monetary constraints befitting for a club in the third tier of English football, but Poyet helped to win over Bloom by citing how he and Wise had achieved results at Swindon and a financially shipwrecked Leeds.

“Dennis Wise taught me a lot about the lower divisions,” he says. “People give him stick but that’s because they don’t know him. As a player, he was someone you would love in your team and hate to play against. That’s true, we can’t hide that. But he’s a totally different person when you are talking to him. As a manager, he knew everything, he looked at every detail.”

Does he envisage Wise returning to management? “I think some part of him would like to come back but the other side is saying: ‘No, stay away,’ because, I’m telling you, you don’t know what it takes to be a manager. I was getting home at night in my first couple of weeks here and I was so tired mentally that I was gone. I put my head on the pillow and, bang, I was gone for six or seven hours. Completely gone.”

Poyet was always the good cop to Wise’s bad cop. He also went by the nickname Radio during his playing days because of the way he was always chattering. Yet he wants to move away from the image of being everyone’s friend and has already shown he is not afraid of making tough decisions, dropping the player who had started the season as Brighton’s captain, Adam Virgo, in one of his first acts as manager.

“People know what I am like, always talking, always smiling. I get on well with everyone but it’s about respect now. I don’t accept people who don’t have respect. And I’m not bothered at all about making hard decisions and leaving people out, even out of the club. I will give everything to the players to help them do what they do best and be good professionals. But if they fail me, I’m hard. And when I say that, I mean I’m bad. One of the worst. Even if I do smile all the time.”

Continue reading

• Glanford Park supporters rewriting an old chorus for City tie
• Scunthorpe manager Nigel Adkins relies on an old calling

Nigel Adkins walks into the room, glances at the rain pelting against the window and says: “Welcome to sunny Scunny.”

Scunthorpe United’s manager is hoping for similarly inclement weather tomorrow when Manchester City visit Glanford Park on FA Cup fourth-round business but he will be even happier if the ground resounds to choruses of “Who needs Mancini, we’ve got our physio.”

The Championship team’s fans are fond of acknowledging Adkins’s four-year rise from club physiotherapist to manager with chants of “Who needs Mourinho” and plans for its adaptation are well advanced.

Adkins, though, is anything but a bloke from the backroom who got lucky, somehow stumbling into a plum job when Brian Laws left for Sheffield Wednesday. Now 45, he began managing a Sunday League side at 16 and, when the lingering after effects of a double spinal fracture suffered at just 23 curtailed a goalkeeping career which had seen him play for Tranmere and Wigan, he took charge of Bangor City.

Then, suddenly, the birth of a second son left his wife seriously ill and Adkins in need of a part-time, stable, career which would allow him time to run the family home and care for his children.

Always über organised, he had filled his free hours as a player accumulating a business studies degree in addition to qualifying as a chartered physio and it was the latter profession which led him to join Scunthorpe’s backroom on initially limited hours.

“I had to pay the mortgage somehow,” said Adkins, who has presided over two promotions with a relegation sandwiched in between. “But life’s not all about money, you only need so much of it. Billions of pounds can’t buy your family’s health. I know you need a certain amount – but I’m just not motivated by money. My wife’s fit now, that’s what matters.”

In a world where numerous managers and players worship money the highly articulate, cliche-free, Adkins – who seems more like a friendly local GP or solicitor than a football manager – certainly stands apart from the crowd. Typically he is unafraid to offer an opinion on City’s great enigma. “Robinho’s got to ask himself does he want to be the best footballer in the world or not?” he says. “He’s a multi-millionaire so he’s financially secure for life but your career goes quickly.”

Scunthorpe’s players are not quite so comfortable. With Glanford Park holding just 9,000, Adkins’s squad generally earn less than most League One equivalents with the highest paid individual on around £3,000 a week. “But we’re one of only three clubs in the top two divisions who’ve got no debt,” he says. “And these are the good times, I was here when we were struggling in League Two.”

Some of “Sunny Scunny’s” facilities still seem suited to the bottom tier. “It might be challenging for City’s entourage to all fit themselves and their equipment into the dressing room,” says Adkins, smiling. “They’ll need to adapt.”

If his own adaptation to management’s goldfish bowl has been relatively seamless – “heads turn when I’m in Tesco with my wife now, I know how David Beckham feels” – those years as a physio taught Adkins invaluable lessons.

“I can understand people,” he says. “I learnt the importance of managers communicating with players. A lot I saw in my room weren’t really injured, it was just they were having a hard time and wanted to be out of the firing line. Or they were drinking. Or frustrated.”

Mancini could do worse than ask Adkins to dust down his old treatment table and get inside Robinho’s head.

Continue reading

The Manchester United striker has not given up hope of being called up for the summer’s World Cup in South Africa

Michael Owen knows the question is ­coming. It always does. “England, ­England, England,” he says, with sadness and affection, as if talking of a far-off place. The intelligence that has always burned behind his diplomatic exterior confronts its biggest test when the conversation turns to Fabio Capello’s policy of ­excluding the country’s fourth-highest scorer from the England squad.

With the World Cup less than six months away time is not so much running out as dashing by like a train as Owen, with his 40 international goals and 89 caps, formulates a method for dealing with the disappointment of being overlooked since March 2008, when he made his only appearance for Capello. The battle in him is between acceptance and hope.

“England’s bigger than Michael Owen anyway. But I make sure I’m in a mind-set that if I did have to pack my bags to go to South Africa I’d be right with it,” he says. “I’ve watched all the games. I know what the manager is looking for, even though I’m not there listening. For example, I ask Wayne [Rooney, his Manchester United team-mate], ‘What does he expect when you’ve not got the ball?’ So I have to stay in with it without thinking I’m part of it, because I’m not.

“I’d love to go and I’d love to play for my country and go to a World Cup again. I’ve got to accept I’m not in the ­current squad and just think, ‘If I get it, it’s a bonus and I’ll give it everything.’ But it’s hard to do when you’ve been thinking a different way all your life.”

Owen’s defining characteristic is ­resilience. The hardness that helped make him the teenage star of England’s 1998 World Cup side was apparent in his move last summer from Newcastle to ­Manchester United, which prompted cries of betrayal in Liverpool and caused some United fans to ask why Sir Alex Ferguson was ­importing an Anfield legend. This toxic blend of tribal indignation would have driven many ­players into a trench. Described as “a killer” and “cold” by Sven-Goran ­Eriksson, Owen was protected by a talent for equanimity. These are hard times for him, if you measure his life in game time, but he became so sure, so long ago, of his ability to put balls in nets that nothing can persuade him his time at the top is closing.

The England conundrum is hard for him to articulate, as it would be for any discarded household name. To make a strong case for his own inclusion would sound like ­agitation. To keep quiet might suggest ­resignation. “If you have any setback in your life, like not being in the England squad was for me – any setback, like losing a family member – everyone handles it in different ways,” he starts out. “When I first wasn’t included I was numb. I’d been the main England striker for years and years. It was really disappointing, upsetting. For the next few days you’re trying to get your head round it. Then it’s, ‘OK – I’m not playing well, I need to find some form, I’m ­playing in a struggling team at ­Newcastle,’ or whatever it is.

“And then you’re not in the next squad. And you’re numb, and you do the inquiring in your head again, then you’re not in the third squad, and you gradually come to the point where you say, ‘OK, I’m not in the squad for whatever reason.’ I’ve ­handled that in my own way. If you thought about it too long you might think, ‘Right, I’m a crap player because I can’t get in the England squad’ – but I’m confident in my own ability. If that wasn’t the case you might as well pack it in now. If you think too much, you start doubting yourself, doubting your quality, so you have to train yourself in a certain way. It’s hard for me to say [I should be in the squad] without jeopardising that, or being ­disrespectful to any other player, and the list goes on.”

Plainly a painful adjustment is under way. As with England, so, to a lesser degree, with United, where Owen, now 30, inherited Cristiano Ronaldo’s No7 shirt but has served mainly as back-up for Rooney and Dimitar Berbatov and has even seen the 22-year-old rookie Mame Biram Diouf sent on as a replacement ahead of him, at Birmingham City. Owen has scored seven times in 26 appearances (with nine starts) and has overcome the Stretford End’s ­suspicions with a late winning goal in a Manchester derby and a Champions League hat-trick at Wolfsburg.

That flourish in Germany fortifies the view he has of himself. For the third goal he outran a defender almost from the halfway line and finished like the pup he was at Liverpool. “Sprinting half the length of the pitch: to me that proved what I knew anyway. I’m still quick enough, though not blistering like I used to be. I’m still fit enough, because that was in the 90th minute. People were saying, ‘He shouldn’t be playing for England because he’s not playing for United.’ Well, that pitch was like a bog. I played 90 minutes on a bog and in the 90th minute I’ve still got the stamina and speed to do that. The one doubt – though not in my mind – was injuries. Thankfully, no one talks about that now.”

After that grand night in Europe he returned to the United bench. “I was under no illusions that I was going to be in the first-choice pairing,” he says. ­”Nothing’s changed in that way. But I’ve been involved in more squads than anyone in the building. I’ve come on in a lot of games. I’ve started a few. Yeah, I want to play a bit more but I’ve never once considered asking the manager, ‘Can I play in this game?’ or telling him I think I should play more, because I knew what I was buying into. I’m totally comfortable with it.”

So now we get round to the changes in him as a player and the loss of the firefly pace that brought 118 league goals in 216 appearances for Liverpool. In his most detailed self-analysis yet he explains that all top players “evolve” and says: “Nobody’s going to tell me Ryan Giggs isn’t a different player to the one he was when he was lightning quick and beating everyone on the outside, crossing balls. Paul Scholes used to score dozens of goals every year. What does he do now? He sits in the centre and sprays the ball in all directions and doesn’t give it away for the whole game. He’s not the same player. Alan Shearer wasn’t the same player. The list goes on. I’ve added bits but I’ve had things taken away as well.

“I was talking to Rio Ferdinand the other day and he said that when I first got into the England squad I ran past a ­couple of defenders and all the lads stopped ­training and said, ‘Did you see that?’

“I was proper, proper fast at one point, and obviously I’m not now, so I’ve lost certain things, but when I was that fast I didn’t need to do certain other things in a game. It was such a potent weapon. I was in the team to threaten in behind, to get the ball and run at players. But when I started losing that I had to find other ways to scare defenders. And that’s how your game evolves. I’m much better now at timing the run and picking the moment and being able to spot something develop. When I was young it was make a diagonal run there, there and there, and out of the six runs only one or two would be good ones – or good enough for me to be found – but I’d be quick enough to run past the player anyway. I’d say my runs are more thought-out now.”

Less haste, more cunning is his ­message, and he says this is true across United’s Carrington training ground: “Ryan Giggs now, the way his body sways in and out, he can almost twist ­defenders inside out. His pace wouldn’t be what it was 10 years ago, exactly like me. But who would have thought when he burst on the scene as a 17–year–old that 20 years later he would probably be one of the top three players you want on the ball, playing a decisive pass?”

Rooney remains the biggest block to Owen claiming a starting place with club and country (that, plus Capello’s apparent prejudice). Ferguson has said he regards a Rooney-Owen partnership as duplication. The older of the pair takes up that theme: “The manager’s mentioned it to me and talked about the combinations that are available to him and he’s also been in the press and said he wants Wayne playing further forward and getting goals, and that’s what he’s been doing this season.

“A few years ago when I was playing for England with Wayne he used to drop in [to a more withdrawn position] and enjoyed that role. But people evolve and Wayne is a better all-round player. If you can get his services nearer to goal he’s going to get a lot. He can still drop in and create chances for others but now he’s nicked my place with England and Man Utd, so that’s not so great.” He stops laughing: “I automatically thought we could play together because we’re different types, but the manager wants him to play in that position more and Wayne’s been fantastic at it. One of us would have to adapt our game if we played together. The manager has played us together, but he thinks maybe other combinations are better, or that it might take a bit out of my game or Wayne’s game if one of us had to take an unfamiliar role.”

The master-apprentice bond between the fellow boyhood Everton fans is authentic: “If you ask for favourite memories, I say Gary Lineker in the 1990 World Cup and Wayne says Michael Owen in 98. From Lineker to Shearer to me to Wayne: we’ve been the main strikers. He likes listening to my opinion at half-time in games, for example. After the manager says his piece, Wayne for some reason will walk over and we’ll talk. If he has a problem I’ll give my opinion. It’s a team game, but compared to a goalkeeper or a right-back a striker is doing totally different things. Not everyone understands how it feels.”

With his racing yard in Cheshire employing 40 staff (“it’s my main passion outside of football, but I’ll never want to train”), his life after playing is already charted. But he still wants his old prominence. He goads his team-mates with the boast that ­winning the Premier League and Champions League would render his trophy collection superior to theirs. “I say to the lads, ‘I’ve won a lot of the smaller ones as well, like the Uefa Cup’, which they’ll never win because they’re always in the Champions League. I say, ‘If we win another league it’ll just be another one for you, but I’ll have the clean sweep.'”

You look for a crack in the faith he has in his ability to shine at a fourth World Cup with England. And still none is visible.

Michael Owen is wearing the new white, black and gold Umbro Speciali boots this season. The boots he will wear for Manchester United this weekend were designed by competition winner Tom Fournier whose design was chosen by Owen from 6,000 entries. For more information, and to purchase a pair, visit www.prodirectsoccer.com

Continue reading

Even typing this I can sense the Premier League lawyers advancing up my garden waiting to plunder my hard drive

The FA is turning us all into paedophiles. Yes, paedophiles. I stand over that last phrase. In fact, I hope they also used that as a headline. It’s clearly ludicrous and overwrought, but who doesn’t like a sensational banner across their work now and again?

In all honesty, the FA is making us behave like paedophiles in a manner that completely excludes the actual paedophilia bit, but bear with me, it is still a worthy comparison.

Last Wednesday, my club played in a game that was broadly declared as having overturned an 11-point deficit to go top of the table. Even though the game was dramatic, the achievement was a little less so, given that we went from one game in hand to one extra game played, so you could say we actually overturned a five‑point gap. Either way, people got to sing the “We are top of the league” song, Chelsea’s game in hand or not, so there were a lot of happy punters in the stadium.

I was not one of them. As a blessed relief to those who feel this column has taken on a strong red and white hue recently, I wasn’t even at the game and can offer little comment on the events that occurred. No cheerleading for Wenger’s boys this week. For the best of reasons, I spent the evening at home, and there I got to enjoy the game as it was meant to be enjoyed; on an illegal stream from Scandinavian telly. And when that signal went down, Singaporese telly. Truly it is the greatest league in the world. If they didn’t keep blocking our access to it.

On Wednesday, I was in front of a computer with a bank of windows open, most of them on different, dubiously sourced streams of the game. They offered brief chances to watch the action before crashing, and having to be reloaded. During these reload periods I was reduced to taking all my information from the other window I had open, which was a live text update from other fans watching other illegal feeds.

I can’t decide if this is a phenomenally cool thing to be doing, like Dennis Hopper in Speed, watching the bomb on the bus and the news coverage of the bomb on the bus at the same time; or a really tragic thing to do, like a man in his pants sitting in the kitchen watching football in Russian in two–minute bursts.

Things I have learned from watching football like this: Cyrillic looks complex at first but when you’re looking for Arsenal v Bolton, you can pretty much guess what ” ” means. This means I am much less impressed by Jason Bourne, for example. All those sequences where he effortlessly moved to Russian while negotiating a high-speed chase through the Moscow underground system? All he was doing was squinting his eyes.

I could have resorted to more official means. The club’s website, for example, was carrying radio commentary along with intermittent still images of the game, which was like having a court illustrator pass scribbled impressions of the action underneath the door to you. You know the way getting a postcard from your mates never quite makes their holiday come alive for you? Try watching a still of Matt Taylor lining up a penalty, followed 60 seconds later by a shot of the teams kicking off again.

And this is how we honest football fans get to ape the behaviour of the lowest of the low. All we want to do is watch the match. It’s already sold out. Given the chance we’d happily use a subscription sports channel. With none of these routes open to us, we turn to the more furtive corners of the net, knowing full well that the Premier League’s voracious hunter‑killer RightsBots are tracking down and closing the sites even as we watch. With our most useful sites only one step ahead of the authorities at all times, we find ourselves privately swapping addresses. This one is great, we whisper, I don’t think the authorities are on to it yet. Where is it based? Who knows?

I may even be breaking some code of silence by writing about this here. Even typing this I can sense the Premier League lawyers advancing up my garden waiting to plunder my hard drive. I was just researching a book, I’ll cry, as they take my laptop away.

All I know is that on Wednesday, we play Villa. It’s not on the telly. Not here. Yet again, I’ll be siting in kitchen, flying through cyberspace, in my pants. And looking for answers to the eternal question: what does my team’s name look like in Arabic, or Greek, or binary?

Continue reading

• Arsenal manager says William Gallas’s challenge was mistimed
• Bemused and frustrated over outcry following Bolton game

Arsène Wenger says there is one rule for teams when they kick Arsenal and quite another when the boot is on the other foot and he believes the double standard was evident in the matches against Bolton Wanderers over the past week.

The Arsenal manager is frustrated and bemused at the outcry that has followed William ­Gallas for his challenge on the Bolton midfielder Mark Davies at Emirates Stadium on Wednesday, which finished in a 4-2 home win. Wenger maintains that ­Gallas’s tackle was simply mistimed and his persecution complex has been fired not only by the repeated re-runs of the incident on Sky TV but by other, in his view, “malicious” challenges being overlooked.

He said his captain, Cesc Fábregas, ought to have had four penalties over the two games and he wondered why more was not made of Matthew Taylor’s coming together with the Spaniard after one of those appeals, at the Reebok Stadium last Sunday, which Arsenal won 2-0. Taylor, furious at what he felt was simulation by Fábregas, appeared to aim a stamp at him and he grabbed him by the top of the head. Wenger has also noted that he has lost Abou Diaby to a Bolton kick. The midfielder will miss tomorrow’s FA Cup fourth-round tie at Stoke City, where Arsenal have been promised another physical examination.

“I don’t think Arsenal can deal with the aggressive play,” said the Stoke striker Ricardo Fuller. “It’s been proved that Chelsea and Bolton have roughed them up and tried to bully them. We can also be rough and aggressive when we need to. It couldn’t be a better draw for us.”

Wenger said: “Gallas’s was a mistimed challenge but it was without any intention to harm the player. I cannot say that all the tackles that we have got in the last two games were completely accidental. What is more funny is when we get kicked. Some people say before the games, ‘We know how to play Arsenal, we have to kick them’, and nobody in the whole country is absolutely upset by that. When people say they will kick you, that shows the intent. I am always absolutely amazed that people get away with that.

“When we get kicked and lose the game, the question I get is, ‘Oh, you did not fancy it?’ Nobody is upset or shocked by it. When we are kicked, it is absolutely all right. But when we have one incident, it makes a massive story. Fábregas had two clear penalties at Bolton and one or two here [at the Emirates]. And at Bolton there was what happened after one of them when they pulled his hair and stood on his neck. Why is no one sensitive to that? Does that not make a story? You wonder why.”

Wenger aimed at a dig at Sky and its rolling news, which he feels can champion the wrong issues. “The problem in England is that the sensitivity of one media dictates what the whole country has to think and I raise big question marks over the competence and the objectivity of the guys who make these kind of decisions,” he said. “There was an overreaction with the way the Gallas incident was treated. If it is a bad, malicious tackle, I can understand that it is shown every half an hour but the way it happened, it can happen in every game.”

Wenger believes that his team are still paying the price for the Eduardo da Silva controversy in the Champions League play-off against Celtic in August, when the striker won and scored a dubious penalty. “It’s harder for us to get penalties after that,” Wenger said. “I can show you how many penalties we have been denied. We have had one penalty since [then].”

Wenger has indicated that he has an interest in the Fulham and England Under-21 central defender Chris Smalling. “He is a player that we know, yes,” said the manager, who was asked whether he may bid for the 20-year-old this month. “There is no truth in it at the moment,” he said. “Maybe in the future. At the moment is at the moment. I never rule anything out.”

Continue reading

• 23,000 tickets sold, out of an allocation of 29,000
• Only one match oversubscribed and that by only 150

Every member of England’s official fan club who has applied for a ticket to see Fabio Capello’s team at this summer’s World Cup should be catered for, the Football Association has said.

The FA has been able to accommodate every fan who applied for a ticket for the group matches against the United States, Algeria and Slovenia, as well as any potential quarter-final, semi-final or final involving England.

Only the round-of-16 match – against Germany, Australia, Serbia or Ghana – presents a potential problem, with the FA 150 tickets short of satisfying all applicants.

“Conversations are ongoing to try and secure these outstanding tickets,” said a spokesman. “England fans who have applied for tickets for all other knockout games beyond this stage will be allocated those tickets.”

Of the total allocation of 29,000 tickets reserved by Fifa for England fans, the FA has allocated 23,000 tickets. Supporters’ groups have said high prices and gloom over the economy, combined with uncertainty over safety and logistics, had contributed to a “relatively low take-up” of tickets among England fans.

At previous World Cups the FA has had to impose conditions requiring fans to have attended a certain number of qualifying matches; or it has held a ballot for tickets.

Unusually a large proportion of fans have gambled on applying for tickets for the knockout phases in the hope that England progress, calculating that their trip will offer better value than the group stages where there are long gaps between games.

Amid concern about the fees being charged by Fifa and the sales procedure, the FA said it had negotiated a better deal for members of its official supporters’ club, Englandfans. “The FA has taken additional steps to try and provide an opportunity for supporters to receive as many tickets as possible in the lower price categories,” said a spokesman.

“We are also delighted to advise England fans that we have reached agreement with Fifa and Match that we are the only participating nation in which our members are paying a lower 5% commission on each ticket, as opposed to 10% in the case of all other participating nations.”

Despite not taking up the full allocation of tickets, Capello’s team will still be one of the best supported in South Africa. The German football federation has sold just 6,700 of its allocation of 21,000 and the Dutch FA 7,000 of its 22,000 for Holland’s three group matches.

The FA receives an allocation of 12% of the capacity for group matches and 8% for the knockout phase. The latest open-sales phase for tickets closed yesterday, with approximately one million of the three million tickets offered for sale. Fifa will deliver its latest update on ticket sales on Wednesday, amid concern that South Africans are not buying them in sufficient numbers due to high prices and low internet and credit card penetration.

Continue reading

• ‘Everyone is trying to win the cups,’ says Goodison manager
• Club are in talks to sign Slovakia goalkeeper Jan Mucha

David Moyes believes it will be harder for Everton to repeat last season’s run to the FA Cup final as the competition has become a magnet for wealthier clubs seeking a return on their investment.

Despite Liverpool and Manchester United falling by the wayside already this season, the Everton manager rejects the idea the FA Cup has been thrown wide open by their shock exits. Indeed Moyes has claimed the opposite is true, with Manchester City and Aston Villa increasing the competition as they pursue the FA and Carling cups in the absence of a title challenge.

The Everton manager, whose side face Birmingham City at Goodison Park this afternoon, said: “Look at the teams now who are spending hundreds of millions just to win a cup. It puts winning the FA Cup into perspective. It’s not an easy thing to do.

“I think the FA Cup has become harder to win now. Everybody is trying to win the cup competitions. If you’re in the Champions League you might try and get through the early rounds of the League Cup with a lesser side but in the FA Cup I don’t think there’s one team in the Premier League who doesn’t want to win it and would say it isn’t important to them. You can’t take winning the league or the Champions League for granted, so everybody wants to win the FA Cup.”

Moyes admits he will make few changes from the side that convincingly beat City in the Premier League last weekend and that the influential Spanish midfielder Mikel Arteta is close to a comeback 11 months after suffering a cruciate ligament injury in a game at Newcastle United. “Mikel is much closer now,” he said. “He is not in full training but he is getting very close, while Victor Anichebe, Dan Gosling and Jack Rodwell are also close to a return.”

The Everton manager refused to comment on claims he has struck an agreement to sign the Leeds United striker, Jermaine Beckford, on a free transfer this summer but confirmed the club are in talks with Legia Warsaw over the possibility of signing the Slovakia goalkeeper Jan Mucha. The 27-year-old is out of contract at the end of this season and expected to play for Slovakia at the World Cup. Everton have offered him a deal to join after his return from South Africa, although there are suggestions an agreement is in place. “I couldn’t confirm that at the moment but we are in talks,” said Moyes.

Everton hope to make at least one more loan signing in this transfer window and gave a two-day trial this week to the Molde defender, Knut Olav Rindaroy.

Continue reading

Munster 12-9 Northampton

Northampton just about kept their European hopes alive, losing in Limerick but leaving with a bonus point which may see them through to the quarter-finals as one of the two best pool runners-up.

Saints scored three penalties through three kickers and Munster four by one on a night which was all passion and little open rugby. “They are the real deal, a nice side well coached. They can still be a real force in this competition,” said the coach Tony McGahan, whose Munster side guaranteed themselves a remarkable 12th successive appearance in the knockout stages.

Not for the first time the double champions had Ronan O’Gara to thank but even he had a scrappy night as Jim Mallinder’s men refused to be overcome by an atmosphere that has undermined every English side that has come here, bar Leicester in 2007. At least Northampton arrived never having lost to the champions of 2006 and 2008. In fact, they beat them in a Twickenham final 10 years ago but it was their 31-27 win at Franklin’s Gardens in October – and the celebrations that went with it – that had stuck in Munster throats. They reckon they were “under-cooked” in that match and had not got going until a trip to Perpignan just before Christmas, when they thumped the French champions.

Until then the Munster pack had been way short of its best and was being written off in some quarters – another reason why there was a distinct edge up front here. In addition the home side were saying ­goodbye to Wian du Preez, their South African loosehead prop. Du Preez was up against Euan Murray, 18st of Scottish tighthead who missed the October match, and the South African seemed anxious to leave on a high note. He shoved the first Northampton scrum backwards and caused the first turnover of the night.

From one of many lofted kicks O’Gara put ­Munster into the lead. Ben Foden caught the ball but some of his support came in at the side and the home fly-half kicked the penalty from 40 yards.

With Paul Warwick and Tomas O’Leary, supplying precise punts and box kicks, Northampton were under the cosh. Shane Geraghty was having to scramble and some pretty wayward kicking did his side no favours. Northampton began to come into the game, levelling the scores with a Bruce Reihana penalty, but the half ended as it had begun. Munster’s forwards rolled towards the line and O’Gara kicked a ­second penalty.

Such is the love of the high ball in these parts that the half-time entertainment involved five minutes of fans kicking ­garryowens at each other. When the second half replicated the first, it was no surprise. Reihana missed from wide on the left, Geraghty kicked directly into touch, then so did O’Gara. The Ireland fly-half even failed to find touch with a penalty but Geraghty went one worse, scuffing a penalty which barely reached the posts.

Northampton then put together the best move of the night. Forwards and backs went left and right before Geraghty found a hole in the middle. For a split ­second it looked as though rugby had broken out but all Northampton got was a penalty. Geraghty kicked it.

Two minutes later Romain Poite spotted hands in the ruck and O’Gara kicked his third penalty, although the French referee lost favour with the Munster fans by sending Paul O’Connell to the sin-bin, apparently for going off his feet. Munster’s seven forwards then pushed Northampton off their own ball and O’Gara landed his fourth kick. Saints’ Stephen Myler kicked a final penalty late on.

Munster Warwick; Howlett, Earls, De Villiers, Dowling; O’Gara, O’Leary; Du Preez (Horan, 67), Fogarty (Varley, 56), Hayes (Buckley, 72), O’Callaghan (Ryan, 56), O’Connell (capt), Quinlan, Ronan, Wallace.

Pens O’Gara 4.

Sin-bin O’Connell, 60.

Northampton Foden; Ashton, Clarke, Downey, Reihana; Geraghty (Myler, 72), Dickson; Tonga’uiha, Hartley (capt), Murray, Fernandez Lobbe (Day, 58), Kruger, Lawes (Best, 72), Dowson, Wilson.

Pens Reihana, Geraghty, Myler.

Referee R Poite (France) Attendance 26,000.

Continue reading