A league of its own

I presume most of you didn’t catch the recent Man Utd-Leeds match. Despite being an evening midweek kick-off, it was nowhere to be found on Sky Sports, which instead broadcast a less than rivetting tableau of several middle-aged men (and Charlie Nicholas) sitting around wearing headsets and reading scores off television monitors.

Foul Play saw the game, however, thanks to the proprietors of his local boozer, who were enterprising enough to slip the installation bloke an extra few squids when getting their satellite dish, thus gaining access to a Greek station that broadcasts Premiership matches all day and all of the night.

Disgracefully illegal carry-on, of course, but it gets one out of the house on a Wednesday night.

A shame, then, that the game itself should turn out to be such a smorgasbord of pure shite, with umpteen cocked-up set-pieces, surreally woeful shooting, and more wayward passes being made than on a night out with John Leslie. That the winner should be headed in by Mikaël Silvestre, in the dying minutes of his fourth or fifth consecutive lame performance, was somehow very apt.

There was one moment of genuine skill to savour, when John O’Shea made a fool of Seth Johnson by executing a flawless Cruyff turn. Otherwise, it was deeply depressing. I cannot ever remember taking so little pleasure from United beating Leeds.

You wouldn’t expect much more from the Yorkshire outfit, of course. They’ve gone to the dogs this season, “led” by a spoofer of a manager happy to pocket a salary of £2m while absolving himself of all responsibility for the results. Moreover, they were deeply understrength on the night: as Lucas Radebe lumbered around the pitch, we could hear the creaking of his old bones from our seats in the pub.

But what is United’s excuse? They’re meant to be the great entertainers of the Premiership, and their annual dust-up with Leeds is supposed to be a bit of a showpiece match. Watching it, you couldn’t help thinking: what the hell has happened to them?

With the decline of Ryan Giggs, and the inability of Roy Keane to charge from box to box as he once did, United have lost what they used to kill their opponents with – blinding pace.

There is a seriously pedestrian look to a lot of their moves these days. Quinton Fortune, who took Giggs’ place on Wednesday, is not, has never been, and will never be a United player. On the right, Beckham is playing better than for some time, but still can’t go past a full-back and still has only one foot. Keane, having operated only on full throttle for so long, seems now like a lost soul.

And if United are in second place while in obvious decline, what does it say about the rest? The last time Foul Play looked at the Premiership table, Everton and Charlton were both in the top six. Great for them, I’m sure, but not for the general standards and technical well-being of English football.

It’s a pertinent question. How good can we really consider the Premiership to be, when its strongest team can’t manage to beat a youthful and depleted Ajax in two attempts, and have only one decent defender?

How can we take it seriously as a top European league when the club with the best overall squad (United) possesses only two, maybe three, players that would get into the Milan or Real Madrid starting eleven? Or when its last representative in the Uefa Cup is a team which hasn’t regularly fielded a recognised wide player for at least four years? Or when third place is occupied by an outfit that plays without a proper defence?

Football is about putting the ball in the net (which is why Foul Play has lately become convinced that Gerd Müller, the deadliest striker in history, was the best player of all time), so let’s look at how easy it is to score a goal in the Premiership. James Beattie, a deeply ordinary player who’ll never be picked by England for a serious match, is top of the scoring charts. Two more of the Premiership’s most feared attackers are Alan Shearer and Dennis Bergkamp.

At the very highest level, the latter duo have been busted flushes for some time. Bergkamp’s final two years playing for Holland failed to yield a single goal. Though majestic in the league all season, he’s been a marginal figure for Arsenal in Europe this year.

Shearer, meanwhile, has done nothing in that competition except for a facile hat-trick against a terrible Bayer Leverkusen side. The repeated calls for him to reconsider his international retirement are laughable to those who remember how flaccid he was for England in recent years. By France 98 ˆ never mind Euro 2000 ˆ all he was good for was elbowing keepers and taking the penalties.

Say it again: these guys are two of the most dangerous attackers in the Premiership.

There’s still much to enjoy in this most incoherent of leagues: Gianfranco Zola, Arsenal’s Frenchmen, Paul Scholes, Laurent Robert, Damien Duff, the rise of Southampton. But not enough to justify shelling out €50 every month for a steady diet of crap matches and the odd great one.

The cable men, I’m afraid, will have lost my custom by the end of the season. Which is why the boys in my local will be seeing a little more of me on Saturdays and Sundays from now on.