Filed under: Premier League, Football
So. Two daft young buggers post Facebook messages inviting people to join them on a roister doister, and get four years apiece in the jug for their troubles. Joining them in the slammer: a man who stole a bottle of water (six months), a mother of two who accepted a pair of shorts that had been looted (five months) and a bloke who helped himself to a scoop of coffee ice-cream (awaiting sentencing, but he's awaiting it in the can). And you thought that in the days of 24-hour rolling news, the summer silly season was a thing of the past.Still, as these hapless scapegoats sit in the clink cooling off, they may take a small scrap of consolation that they're not the only victims of wild knee-jerk judgements this week. Less serious, of course, but equally ludicrous are the ones being handed out after the first week of Premier League football.
In Manchester, questions are already being asked about the abilities of United's new £20m goalkeeper David de Gea. The young Spaniard has indeed been poor so far: he's failed to get down to gather simple efforts against both Manchester City and West Bromwich Albion, and yet what's perhaps more worrying is his almost total lack of authority in the box and hangdog body language. But still, he's young. And it's been two matches. Two matches! In a new country! Given he's already shown his ability in Spain, hardly a backwater, where he was an instant success at Atletico Madrid and won the Europa League, you'd think he'd be cut a little slack. But no. The new Massimo Taibi, so we're being told.
Down the M62 in Liverpool, time's already running out for £35m striker Andy Carroll to prove himself, it says here. There's no question that Liverpool wildly overpaid for the big striker back in January. One performance against Manchester City apart, he's not really made much of an impact at Anfield yet. Does his bustling style fit in with Liverpool's new (but old-school) pass-and-move approach under Kenny Dalglish? His first touch is looking a bit heavy, as indeed does the lad himself; there are, of course, the constant rumours regarding his refuelling habits and homesickness. And yet he's barely been fit: he's only played six matches. Six matches! In which he's scored twice - not a great return, but not a disastrous one, either. And that tally would have been three were he not very harshly penalised for a push on Anton Ferdinand against Sunderland last weekend. So if he can manage a goal every other game when he's supposedly playing badly, what's he going to do when he hits a patch of form? But no. He's a lummox, a waste of £35m.
Every way you turn, crises are being whipped up like meringues, pure confections whisked almost totally from hot air. Andre Villas-Boas has started badly at Chelsea, it's suggested in some quarters. His team merely failed to win at Stoke, the Britannia hardly anybody's idea of a three-point banker. Arsenal are in full-on meltdown, it's said, the Wenger Era in its last doomed days - although they're rumoured to be making a couple of big-money signings, haven't let in a goal yet this season in two tricky matches, and have just beaten Udinese, a talented outfit many thought would scupper their Champions League hopes. The Italians may yet do that, but let's at least wait until they deliver the killer blow, denying Arsenal a season in the Champions League for the first time in 14 years, before we start penning the obituaries. QPR have already been relegated, one hears.
Thing is, nearly all of the blame for these crises can be laid at the door of the media, desperately looking for angles where there are none. Talk to any Manchester United matchgoer, and they'll say they'd been expecting De Gea to make several errors this season; he's a young lad and it'll take time, but Sir Alex Ferguson is playing the long game, and he'll come good. Liverpool regulars will point to their similar patience with Carroll: wait and see, there's promise there. And while they hope Dalglish's side will mount a credible title challenge, they accept that's probably a step too far; this season's one of consolidation, of re-establishing the old Liverpool style after years of more pragmatic football under Ged Houllier and Rafa Benitez. Few at Stamford Bridge expect their team to win the league, let alone the Champions League, but they'll give Villas Boas space and time to show what he can do. Even Arsenal fans are only showing their frustration at the club's lack of a big-name signing; nobody's demanding the moon on a stick.
The majority of supporters simply aren't as petulant as they're painted to be. There are exceptions from a noisy minority on the web, but in general, football fans' sense of entitlement is a media construct. Go to most message boards, and in fact they'll circle the wagons when one of their own is criticised in the press, especially at this early stage in the season with not much in the way of empirical evidence offered. Often myopic, perhaps, but then loyalty goes a long way to averting a crisis - because it only ever gets truly tricky for players when their own fans finally get fed up and turn on them at the match. Most of the heat and noise in these supposed crises comes from supporters of other sides, rocking up on newspaper websites to have a good old belly laugh at a rival's misfortune, poking a stick at their Achilles heel, hoping to work away at a crack to make it bigger. Which is all part of the game, but the internet mob isn't one we should pay a disproportionate amount of attention to. A snap judgment on snap judgements: they're a complete waste of everyone's time.
Having said all that, we've only seen 30 minutes of Sergio Aguero, but Manchester City for the league, anyone?
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Source: http://www.fanhouse.co.uk/2011/08/18/football-premier-league-silly-season/
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