Football Orphan: United delighted to claim hollow victory.
Photo courtesy of independent.co.uk
After last nights victory over Aldershot Alex Ferguson spoke of his delight of the goal scoring ratio of Michael Owen and his pleasure of seeing Dimitar Berbatov score. Am I possibly missing something here? Berbatov, who cost the club close to £30 million scores against Aldershot, and this is what pleases Ferguson? He doesn’t trust either Michael Owen or Dimitar Berbatov to put them anywhere near the first team squad but when they play against lower league and destroy them, he has high praise for them. His comments about Owen were laughable, “Every time he plays, he scores”. He has only played against lower league opposition this season. This is a player who is still only 31 and has 89 caps for England scoring 40 goals. Last night’s exploits were hardly worth a pat on the back in my opinion. As for Berbatov, this type of thing should be a little more embarrassing given the transfer fee that he commanded from Spurs just a few seasons ago. Ferguson’s comments are little more than propaganda to massage these players egos.
Alex Ferguson could be forgiven for being shell-shocked at the result suffered at Old Trafford on Sunday, but the post match interview could have had a little more humility about it. It closely resembled the school yard game with kids who pick fair teams when some older lads come along (Vidic, Valencia, Park, Owen and Berbatov) and one team claims all of them. Once the inevitable result has been established, the winning team has the audacity to puff their chest out and boast about the victory. There has been more than enough written about the wrong turn in both Owen and Berbatov’s career, but I personally just can’t understand the mentality of players sitting out top games and collecting medals by defacto victory. When they look back on their career, I’m sure they’ll both have stout bank balances to justify the gaps in suffered in vital game time.
Football Orphan: Any 3 from 8. The battle to beat the drop.
This season’s relegation battle will go down as the most exciting since the Premier League’s inception. For any fans not involved, it’s difficult not to pick who you’d like to see stay up or slide through the trap door.
At this moment we’re spoiled for choice with eight teams realistically fighting for survival. The romantics amongst us would love to see rookies Blackpool defy all the odds and remain in the top flight. Then again there’s a good argument put forward that the likes of Birmingham, Aston Villa and Blackburn going down would diminish the quality of the league.
My pick of the bunch is Wigan Athletic. Personally I see them as one of, if not the most progressive club in the Premier League. Since their arrival to the pinnacle of English football they have brought some fantastic players to the division. We’ve seen players such as Jimmy Bullard and Leighton Baines come through. More importantly once they had consolidated and established themselves, it was the calibre of player which they chose to bring in which in my opinion divides them from other clubs.
Players such as Wilson Palacios, Antonio Valencia and Hugo Rodellega were transported from South American football and integrated with relative ease to a league notoriously difficult to adapt to. They had no hesitation snapping up hot prospects Victor Moses and James McCarthy when others failed to match their faith in the youngsters.
In Roberto Martinez they have one of the best young managers around. He’s a forward thinker and believes in playing expansive football. He will no doubt go on to bigger and better things later in his career and has already been tipped for some of the top jobs in his homeland.
Chairman Dave Whelan has been extremely supportive of all of his managers in not only getting the cheque book out but in putting forward proposals for giving supporters one free game per season in future years. If little old Wigan can propose something like this, why can’t the bigger clubs can’t do something similar?
Wigan picked up a vital point yesterday against a distracted Tottenham who play Real Madrid in the Champions League midweek. In my opinion the Premier League needs clubs like Wigan Athletic as much as they need the Premier League. While others around them scamper for a formula for survival, the Lancashire club never waiver from their football principles. While other clubs around them dropped points this weekend, there is no reason to think that they can’t avoid the drop again this season.
Football Orphan 