The first rule of football club is don’t say anything original about football club. Sam Allardyce’s ‘thump it forward and see’ description of Manchester United’s approach towards the end of Sunday’s game only serves to prove a theory I’ve been working on for some time; football has run out of ideas.
As pundits continue to trot out recycled thoughtless descriptions
of what has gone before and what might follow and @footballcliches thrives on
Twitter, I’m left believing that managers are destined to repeat accusations
once thrown at them, as a cycle of nothingness continues to go nowhere.
Allardyce v Van Gaal:
Long ball team…
Putting aside the negative connotations of long-ball
football, the suggestion that this was United’s best chance of scoring a goal
at the weekend was, from Allardyce, undeniably the pot calling the kettle
black.
Recently United have gone noticeably direct in an attempt to
utilise Marouane Fellaini’s attributes and avoid previous criticisms linked to
ponderous build-up play, but let’s be honest, Allardyce was just frustrated
about conceding a late goal.
Anything else would be hypocrisy, as during his tenure at
West Ham he has repeatedly come under fire from his own fans for a style of
play far removed from the passing game believed to be the ‘West Ham way’.
Less than a year ago ‘Fat Sam out, killing WHU’ was displayed on a large banner as Allardyce watched his side lose to West Brom, and this followed a long period where results were poor, and the style of play was regularly criticised. Despite this harrowing experience, something he also dealt with in his ill-fated period as Newcastle boss too, Big Sam was happy to make the same accusation this weekend.
Allardyce v Mourinho:
Parking the bus..?
Just over a year ago, as Allardyce was fighting against poor
form and the abuse from sections of his own fans, West Ham won a hard fought
point at Stamford Bridge against Jose Mourinho’s Chelsea.
‘It's very difficult to play
a football match where only one team wants to play,’ declared Mourinho, as he
described the West Ham playing style as being from the nineteenth century.
This particular assertion,
that West Ham had wronged Chelsea by not attempting to take them on blow for
blow is not a new one to Mourinho, as he has put teams out to (often
successfully) stifle and suffocate all creativity from a game. Not more
hypocrisy, surely?
His comments received a
variety of responses, including a description of Victorian-era football, and reasonable suggestions that he has been equally guilty of this type of tactic.
The best response though, comes from Mourinho’s own archive of witticisms. Following a 1-0 defeat at the Nou Camp that saw his Inter Milan side reach the Champions League final on aggregate, Mourinho triumphantly rejected allegations that his side had parked the bus.
‘People say we park[ed] the
bus,’ he said. ‘That is not true, we park[ed] the plane!’
Van Gaal v Koeman: You came for one point…
The most blatant example of
repetition involves colleagues turned nemeses, Louis Van Gaal and Ronald
Koeman. When Koeman took his Southampton team to Old Trafford, and beat United
1-0, Van Gaal was exasperated by the result.
‘They came for a draw and
they got away with a victory,’ he said, barely making sense.
Three weeks later, Koeman’s
team were the hosts, and Swansea City were the visitors. After more than an
hour of near-domination by the home side, Jonjo Shelvey scored the winner for
the Welsh side, and it was Koeman left lamenting a smash and grab defeat at
home.
As if reading off a script
prepared for all managers faced with explaining a 1-0 home defeat, the Dutchman
said: ‘I think the luckiest team won today. They came for one point and theygot three points.’
Maybe the bizarre touchline incident involving Nigel Pearson
and James McArthur on Saturday was the Leicester manager's attempt to break the monotony and
repetition of modern football, and we should be grateful if that is the case. Strangely,
his comment after the incident that he is ‘more than capable of looking after
himself’ was rhetoric more akin to Fight
Club than a football club. Fortunately, the Leicester manager didn’t breach
the first rule of this club any further by explaining or justifying his
behaviour, a shrewd move indeed…
