How Will They Manage?

Aside from the little things that keep you going — an 80/1 each-way coup on Jason Day at the US Open, for instance, serving to render a rare Sunday off even more exceedingly pleasant — life for Foul Play this last couple of weeks has been less sport-saturated than normal.

The All-Ireland series has yet to catch fire (seriously, scrap the provincials!) and I refuse to dignify the Confederations Cup by watching it. I didn’t even see Trappy’s Army’s quasi-heroic defeat at the hands of the Spanish, having sat through the entirety of the Faroe Islands encounter and come close to sustaining rigor mortis in the process. The Faroes affair offered no indication whatsoever that Ireland are about to break out of their tactical straitjacket, with the teams disturbingly evenly-matched for vast stretches, aside from the pleasing spectacle of Robbie Keane grabbing a hat-trick. We can probably assume that Wes Hoolahan, in setting up the first goal quite brilliantly, shattered whatever hopes he had of forcing his way ahead of Paul Green, Andrews and Whelan in the pecking order. Conversely, Conor Sammon appears to be Trap’s favourite son right now, his distinctly clumsy first touch presumably offset by an endless willingness to ‘make his presence felt’. 
I hate singling out individual players for finger-pointing, but it becomes unavoidable when the manager insists on grotesquely over-promoting them. We are positively spoilt for attacking options at the minute. Jon Walters is a fine player, though we do him no favours by endlessly lumping the ball in the general direction of his head. Under any sort of sane regime, Shane Long’s wonderfully-taken header at Wembley ought to have definitively settled any debate about his place in the line-up. But with Trap, you’re never quite sure. Robbie may no longer strike fear into the hearts of proper opposition, but it would be rash in the extreme to discard his goal scoring potential at this stage. Kevin Doyle has had a horrible 12 months or so, but you still sense he has a part to play; his stunning 90th-minute winner in Kazakhstan turned one point into three and could still prove to be absolutely massive when the dust settles on Group C. Sammon, at best, should be sixth choice among Trap’s striking options. Indeed Celtic’s Anthony Stokes would be a better bet for goals. 
At any rate, with Sweden repeatedly revealing themselves to be less of a force than was generally suspected and Austria apparently at their healthiest in quite some time, we are in a knife-edge three-way battle for the play-off spot. There is no compelling reason why the task shouldn’t be achievable, unless the squad collectively decide that narrow failure is preferable to actually reaching a World Cup on the other side of the world and being made to look like prize half-wits when we get there. All will be revealed.
Across the water, the pace of regime change at the Premiership’s heavyweight clubs has been tumultuous. Indeed, if we accept that the power-balance atop the table is now a case of a Big Three pursued by a slightly less big three – an opinion shared by the bookies, who have Chelsea and the two Mancunian clubs separated by the width of a cigarette paper at the head of the market, with Arsenal, Liverpool and Spurs a considerable distance behind – it’s Year Zero, as Messrs. Mourinho, Pellegrini and Moyes settle into their respective roles. 
United’s fans have the greatest cause for trepidation. There has long been a suspicion that the incomparable Fergie would be nigh-impossible to adequately replace, and he may not be making life any easier for his successor by continuing to hang around the place (though equally his counsel could transpire to prove invaluable). However, I must beg to differ with those souls who have suggested that Moyes is somehow under-qualified for the job, having spent a decade at Everton, won no trophies and never participated in the Champions League. The reality is surely that Moyes has been the glaringly obvious successor to Fergie for at least five years now, having consistently built ferociously competitive teams on a limited budget, conducted himself well in terms of media relations, and unquestionably commanded the respect of his players. 
The biggest question marks concern his record in the transfer market, which is mixed, and his lack of experience at the highest level (this should not be of huge relevance, unless anyone is seriously suggesting that Champions League first-round ties against the likes of Olympiakos and PSV Eindhoven are a tougher test than the opposition week-in and week-out in England). There will never be another Fergie, but at this point, I think United have chosen well. 
Chelsea fans will have been jumping up and down at the return of The Special One. Indeed, journalists in general have every cause to be delighted at the return of the preening Portuguese egomaniac recently described in the Observer as “slightly less camp than Liberace.” His vanity is off the scale; among sportsmen within my living memory, perhaps only Muhammad Ali and the late great wrestler ‘Ravishing’ Rick Rude (go ahead, youtube him) come close. He is endlessly quotable, and there is also the minor matter of his undeniably impressive CV which includes conquering Europe twice (with Porto and Inter Milan) either side of a hugely distinguished three-year stint at Chelsea. 
It shouldn’t have gone unnoticed, however, that neither Manchester club appeared particularly interested in Mourinho. He departed Madrid under a black cloud, with a majority of senior players delighted to see the back of him; his Real teams fell three times in three years at the semi-final hurdle of the Champions League; he repeatedly failed to trouble Pep Guardiola’s Barcelona when the teams went head-to-head; and, without denying his comic value, charm or pantomime-villain appeal, there are aspects of his behaviour which are indefensibly horrible. The charge-sheet is a long one: poking Barca’s then-No 2 Tito Villanova in the eye, slandering the professional integrity of countless referees, and cultivating a cynicism in his teams which suggests that there are few depths to which he wouldn’t stoop in pursuit of victory.
He is back by popular demand, to the evident delight of the dressing room, but the Cech-Terry-Lampard-Drogba axis on which he built his empire first time round has either grown old or departed, and there are no guarantees that the in-fighting and personality clashes which marred his reign in Madrid won’t resurface at the Bridge. He does inherit a team almost overflowing with creative talent – Eden Hazard, Oscar and Juan Mata looks like a midfield trio to die for – but the Abramovich cash isn’t flowing quite as freely as it did a few years ago, and I suspect that, as with the Stone Roses, the Second Coming may not be the roaring success many seem to expect.
And Pellegrini? A largely unknown quality to anyone unacquainted with Spanish football, the Chilean’s appointment is intended to signal a clean break from the Roberto Mancini era. The City hierarchy had reached the conclusion that the suave Italian (aside from being egotistical, argumentative, constantly trying to score cheap points in conversation and alienating most of his players) was no longer delivering acceptable results commensurate with the Sheikhs’ colossal financial outlay, showed zero interest in keeping tabs on the progress of his youth-team and Academy players, and generally had become an impediment to progress. The grand vision, apparently, is of a Barcelona-style school of footballing excellence from youth level upwards, a club which produces its own great players rather than endlessly throwing money at other clubs’ prize assets, perhaps in readiness for an imminent global financial Armageddon that will render £40million transfer deals a thing of the past. 
In principle, it sounds like a great idea. The Chilean’s CV is impressive up to a point, having established Villareal and Malaga as middling-sized forces in Spanish football and steered both to moderate Champions League success. He is, if you like, roughly equivalent to Moyes in terms of accomplishments to date. However, his one major stab at top-level management was not a success. Appointed Real Madrid manager in 2009, he promptly spent £200million on four players (Kaka, Benzema, Ronaldo, Xabi Alonso) yet failed to make the quarter-final for either the Champions League or Copa del Rey, trailed in behind Barca in the League, and was waved on his way after one season. It is a patchy track record for someone presumably expected to win both domestic and Champions League in short order. And as Ireland fans have discovered painfully over the past five years, even a glittering CV is no guarantee of success. 
Still, as a City man since 1981, who can recall the golden age of being managed by the likes of John Benson, Jimmy Frizzell, Alan Ball and Frank Clark, Foul Play welcomes Pellegrini warmly and wishes him the best of luck. He may need it.