So we’ve been hearing all week about football’s crisis club. An ongoing story of failure and disaster, which now appears to have reached breaking point, caused by continued mismanagement and a desire for quick success being allowed to override the need for long-term foundations to be laid.
Well actually, no, we haven’t. Instead the column inches have been clogged up with the latest renewal of the pantomime called Newcastle United. So lets quickly recap what everyone, interested in football or otherwise, now knows: A staggeringly rich football club, and its latest in a long line of staggeringly rich owners, keeps failing to use their staggeringly vast resources sensibly enough even to bring just enough decent football to keep the fans quiet. Oh how my heart bleeds for their plight.
Or to put it another way, who gives a toss? More importantly, who gives a toss when there is a case out there more deserving of our sympathy? A case for whom the kind of press coverage Newcastle have received this week could mean the difference between footballing life and death.
For Luton Town, the game is nearly up. Already in administration, a situation which has cost them ten points that currently make the difference between a place in the relegation zone, and being within shouting distance of the play-offs, Luton yesterday lost their manager. Yes, they lost their manager. You don’t hear it put like that very often do you?
For Kevin Blackwell, his job had become impossible. In making his final preparations for Luton’s home game against league one leaders Swansea on friday, Blackwell discovered that five of his players had been sold by the administrators. Having already endured the administration and points deduction, along with FA enquiries into the dodgy dealings of the club’s previous owners, and not having been paid for two weeks, you can begin to understand how Blackwell reached the end of his tether.
Yet, despite all this misery, the team has continued to show the most incredible spirit in it’s performances on the pitch. Luton’s home record has been one of the most consistent in the country this season. Promotion, not relegation, would be uppermost in their mind without the ten point penalty, and even since it was imposed, Luton have shown enough good form to suggest that survival would not have been a problem. In fact, before yesterday, Luton had lost only once in 13 games, an extraordinary performance by players who, of course, are also not being paid right now.
In addition to this, they knocked Nottingham Forest out of the FA Cup in the second round, before trumping that by earning a magnificent and improbable draw against Liverpool (should that be crisis club Liverpool?) in the third. The latter result has earned Luton a potentially life-saving replay at Anfield, but unless a new owner can be found for the club with some speed, this could prove to be a short reprieve.
Salvation for Luton is currently forming in the shape of a consortium led by (former) TV celebrity Nick Owen, a lifelong fan. Everyone in football should be hoping that Owen succeeds. Firstly, he is exactly the type of owner that a football club like Luton should have; a genuine fan, someone who would perform every action with the best interests of the club in mind, someone who would genuinely be in touch, and have sympathy, with the thoughts of the supporters, and someone who would leave the running of team affairs to the manager and his staff.
More importantly though, clubs like Luton simply must not be allowed to just disappear out of the league. They are part of football’s history, were a trophy winning club in the recent past, and are a hugely important institution in their local community. For clubs of Luton’s stature to suddenly cease to exist has massive implications for football, threatening even to the Premiership royalty that so sadly, and with blinkers firmly fitted, ignores their situation.
Lest we forget, Luton currently find themselves in such dire straits largely thanks to the allegedly illegal transfer activity of the clubs former owners – activity which was brought to the attention of the FA, The Football League and the national media by their then manager Mike Newell. Newell was admonished by virtually everyone in football, he lost his job, and has not worked since. The courage he showed in speaking out, with no support whatsoever from within the game, has been rejected and forgotten. This tale tells us everything we need to know about the way football is being run.
If the takeover goes through at Luton, and stability can be restored, Blackwell might be persuaded to change his mind about leaving (he’s decided to keep working with the players until February). Considering the job he has done with the team in such trying circumstances, this must be regarded as a necessity for Luton.
Although even if they hang on to Blackwell, the depleted squad is going to find it tough going for the remainder of the season, and bringing in new players is a fast-disappearing possibility with the days of January ticking by. Another example of how the smaller clubs are punished by the ridiculous transfer window rules, which were of course imposed in an attempt to curb the spending power of the super-rich.
The owner, directors, caretaker manager, players, and fans of Newcastle United should open up a newspaper today, wade through the ten pages of headlines about their own club, and seek out the small print. Hidden in there, they might find a football story that will make them sit up, take stock, and put their ‘problems’ into perspective.
Lets look at the facts: They will have no problem finding a manager, that manager will have millions of pounds to spend, they will continue to get 50,000+ gates for every league game regardless of how the team play, and they have no chance, repeat no chance, of getting relegated.
Could be worse couldn’t it? Newcastle, if you’re listening, you can’t continue to enjoy the luxury you do without the help of clubs like Luton Town. I suggest that the very least you could do is stop whining for five minutes, and wish them luck in their bid for survival.
Jamie.
Football’s oldest rivalry must be resumed
When the newest managers of the two oldest international football teams both made their first squad selections this week, the thing that occurred to me was how exciting it would be if they were due to play each other in their first match.
Think about it, as if there isn’t already enough on an England v Scotland match, this would be the tastiest friendly in years; a new England era looking to lay fresh foundations after the unceremonious crumbling of the old empire, and Burley’s Scotland, with the new man under the unusual pressure of having to be as good as his two predecessors.
As it turns out, there was such a match in the pipeline this summer, with both sides apparently at a loose end. This has been cancelled however, because many Scotland players would have been unavailable due to the much more vital business of going on pre-season tours with their clubs.
What kind of killjoys are running football these days? Cancelling an England v Scotland match because of pre-season tours? Who’s wearing the trousers here? More to the point though, why on earth hasn’t the annual meeting of the auld enemy been restored?
Had this planned fixture gone ahead, it would have been the first time the two sides had met in a ‘friendly’ international since 1989 – the last instance of the Rous Cup fixture which was played for on five occasions after the annual British Championships were curtailed in 1984. Since then only two meetings have taken place, both the result of tournament draws; Euro ’96, and the two-legged Euro 2000 qualification play-off.
The reason the England-Scotland fixture was brought to an end was recurring crowd trouble. However, the 1989 fixture was played only six weeks after the Hillsborough disaster; since then football stadia have changed beyond recognition, and these changes have virtually eradicated hooliganism from inside grounds, so why hasn’t it been brought back?
One could argue that that the Home Internationals should return too, but the England-Scotland fixture is one that deserves special recognition, and in fact should be played each year independently of any other tournament. We are talking, after all, about the two teams who contested football’s very first international back in 1872 – the year of the Football Association’s formation, and the first FA Cup tournament. The annual renewal of this fixture ought to mark the anniversary of what was effectively the birth of competitive football, and quite frankly, a revolutionary world event.
Yet we have been robbed of this annual celebration by those at the FA and SFA who seemingly just can’t be bothered to pick up the phone and book the fixture, and when they can, the smallest excuse is found to call the whole thing off. This shouldn’t be allowed. There ought to be a preservation order slapped on it; in the way that no bulldozer is allowed within 100 miles of a UNESCO world heritage site, no possessor of a grey suit should be allowed to faff about with the England-Scotland game.
So next week, when you’re watching the new England or the new Scotland doing their best to get a game out of barely interested opponents far more concerned with self-preservation before the Euro 2008 finals, have a think about the game you could be watching, and drop the FA and SFA a line.
Jamie.
Since yesterday, the SFA and Burley have come out and said that Scotland want to preserve the gravitas of the fixture by making sure the game is played where both sides can field strong starting XIs. Whether this is definitely the case remains to be seen.
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Tagged as England v Scotland, FA, Fabio Capello, Football, George Burley, Internationals, SFA