USA 1994: Disillusioned in Dublin

Ireland’s victory against Estonia in the football last week has taken me back to one of the formative experiences in my adult life, and with all the talk this week of strikes and days of action, it’s a story I’d like to share.

Pubs were different then...

Years ago, before I became a teacher, I worked in a pub in Dublin, doing four or five nights a week and often working in the daytime too, at least on holidays and over weekends. I worked there for about five years all told, and then in subsequent years would often help out on the odd night or during the holidays. A typical suburban local, the pub was built on a generous scale: it had three lounges, each of which could hold well over three hundred customers, and a public bar, capable of squeezing in more than another hundred, and a function room, which could itself take the best part of a hundred too. Despite its size it wasn’t a pub many of my university friends knew; the nondescript suburbs of west Dublin were a world apart for the one they’d grown up in.

In the summer of 1994, I wasn’t yet a barman. I was, technically, a loungeboy. Loungeboys and loungegirls were the footsoldiers of our system. Paid the magnificent sum of £2.10 an hour, we mainly worked on the floor of the lounges and the bar, serving customers by taking their orders, paying the barmen, and bringing drinks and cigarettes and whatever back to the customers. The core of the job was saving customers the hassle of breaking their conversations with their mates by going to the bar and queuing for them. Loungestaff cleared tables too, of course, and kept the floor tidy, and checked the toilets were okay, and did loads of other jobs, the lads especially helping out in the storerooms and cellar. There were usually around thirty-five of us. Our roster filled a lined A4 page, each of us having a line to ourselves, save for newer ones who might have to share a line, their names written in cramped letters, separated by biro-ruled lines.

I rarely worked on the floor. I did what was later referred to on a reference as ‘counter support work’, working behind the bar with the barmen, making it possible for them to do their jobs. The likes of me were the unheralded hinges of the system, making sure the shelves were always full, that kegs and gas cylinders were speedily replaced, that the till always had change, and that there was always a constant supply of clean, cold glasses. And, on top of that, we tended to serve the customers directly.

It started innocuously enough, with a request to pass a customer a Coke or to make a Dressed Orange – don’t ask – and then progressed to making Irish coffees at last orders, because they took time and time was one thing barmen didn’t have when the customers were four deep at the bar and they were juggling half a dozen orders. Eventually we’d be asked to hold a pint at the tap when the barman grabbed something else, and then we’d be allowed pull our own. And then a time would come when we would be allowed to use the till.

By that point we’d basically made the leap from being loungestaff to being supplementary barstaff. Promotion wasn’t always on the cards, though. This was Ireland in the early 1990s, after all. The Celtic Tiger hadn’t happened, unemployment was still really high, and job mobility was unheard of. So you did your time, and you waited.

Italia 1990 Redux?

The summer of 1994 saw Ireland in the World Cup Finals for the second time. We’d been in the 1990 finals in Italy, and it had been an absolute bonanza for the pub, such that everyone was geared up with excitement. The older loungestaff all looked back on Italia 1990 as the best time ever working there, and we were all sure this was to be great craic, even if we were underwhelmed by the rubbish official World Cup T-shirts we were all given.

(To get a handle on what Italia 1990 was like, you should read The Van, Roddy Doyle’s brilliant conclusion to his so-called 'Barrytown Trilogy'. You could watch the film too, of course, but just as The Van’s the best of the original three Barrytown books, so The Van’s the weakest of the three films by some way.)

When most Irish people think of the 1994 World Cup, they think mainly of the first glorious win against Italy and a campaign that ran out of steam. They think of Steve Staunton struggling in the heat, Jack Charlton rowing with a linesman and throwing bottles of water on to the pitch for the lads, Jason McAteer nutmegging the greatest footballer in the world, and they probably don’t remember a lot else. Sporting nerds may cherish memories of Ireland having been in the only World Cup group ever where all teams ended up on the same points. Anyone who was away might read Joe O’Connor’s The Irish Male at Home and Abroad to revive memories of the experience of being in America with the team, but for those at home it sticks in the mind mainly as the beginning of the end of the Charlton Era.

But for me the 1994 World Cup is memorable for just one thing. The Strike.

Time is Relative...

In the early nineties it was common practice for pubs not to pay their staff for all the hours they worked. In our pub, for instance, we were paid up to thirty minutes after last orders, and that was it. The thinking, I suppose, is that the customers were meant to have gone home by then. In practice, of course, we were still serving fifteen or twenty – sometimes even twenty-five or more – minutes after the bar supposedly shut, such that ‘last orders’ was a ritual that could last for half an hour, and the customers wouldn’t go home once they’d stocked up. No, if last orders was notionally at half eleven, you’d be very lucky to get the place clear by one o'clock. You certainly wouldn’t be finished cleaning and locking up by twelve, which is when you’d stop being paid.

This must have irked the barstaff no end; it certainly bothered those of us on the floor, and in early 1994 a big group of us decided that we’d have to look into joining the union. I’m not sure why I was the man who did the legwork, but into town I went, up to Parnell Square to meet Jim Moloney, who was then the main man for whatever the barmen’s union was called at the time. I don’t think it was ‘Mandate’ at that point. We talked, and he gave me lots of paperwork, and I came back, and people got nervous, and a handful backed out when they realised we weren’t just talking, and so it all came to nothing.

On the eve of the World Cup, barmen across Dublin realised they had a huge opportunity to press home their demands, and so they began to agitate for a better deal on pay and conditions. We on the floor didn’t think they’d go ahead with a strike, so we didn’t pay a lot of attention, though we all knew on the day the World Cup was due to start – with the champions Germany playing Bolivia in Chicago – there was to be a ballot. The more level-headed of our barmen assured us there’d not be a strike. Nobody would be that stupid. There was too much at stake. A deal would be struck.


Friday 17 June
I’d stayed up late drawing into the early hours on the Thursday night, so I woke late on Friday and quickly showered, dressed, and ran, slowing down as I reached the pub and saw the lads all standing outside.
‘You didn’t...?’ I said to a couple of the younger barmen, friends who I’d go out for drinks with once or twice a week.
They looked down at their feet.
‘We did.’

Some of the other loungestaff had already arrived, and so we clustered together, worrying and wondering. What had happened? Why had they voted to go out? What should we do? The lads told us that we should go across the road, to the pizza place in the shopping centre: some of the others were already there, having gathered in advance at the house of one of the girls, and we could figure things out with them. Before we went, though, they stopped us.
‘Youse have to go in. You’re not in the Union. You’re not protected. Don’t go losing your jobs for our sake.’

Over the road the others talked of what’d happened. ‘Pumped up young lads’ were behind it, they said they’d been told. One story was that the deal had been recommended and then a young barman from a neighbouring pub – a cousin of one of our loungegirls – had leapt up on the stage and shouted that the deal was crap, and that they should strike. We didn’t know. It all seemed crazy. We talked and argued for maybe half an hour. In the end we decided that the lads were right, and that we had no real choice. None of us wanted to break their line, but the fact was that they were telling us to do so. As it happened, it was those who’d spoken up most loudly in favour of our joining the Union – including me – who were most pragmatic about our having to go in.

With bleak faces we headed back over the road, and before we went in we stopped and talked to our friends on the line. I pulled back the other staff – both girls – who did counter support work like me.
‘There’s one thing, though,’ I said.
‘What’s that?’
‘We can’t serve.’
‘What?’
‘We can’t serve. Us three. We know how to serve behind the bar. We’ve done it for ages. But we can’t do it now. It’s one thing us going in to do our job, but that’s not really our job – we’re not paid to pull pints – and it’d not be fair on the lads out here.’
One nodded immediately, and the other frowned, and then said, ‘Yeah. Okay.’

And we went in.

It was horrible.

There were hardly any customers, for starters, as it was daytime, and in a solidly working-class area, crossing a picket line was anathema. We ghostwalked through our jobs, filling the ice buckets, checking the cream machines, gathering fresh cloths, setting tables, all too embarrassed even to look at each other. The manager and his brothers – the owner’s family, basically – didn’t say a word of criticism about us all being nearly an hour late. This was horrible for everyone, and they knew it. Besides, they’d phone calls to make. They needed to find barmen, somehow. Our regular part-time barmen, though not part of the Union, obviously weren’t going to cross the line.

Going out the back to get a clean mop bucket, I came across one of my friends wiping tears from her face, and another trying to comfort her. Her boyfriend – a good friend of mine – was one of our apprentice barmen, and she’d had to walk past a picket he was on. She shook her head and looked at me with red eyes. ‘This is shit,’ she said.

‘I know,’ I grimaced.

Back inside, and seeing the manager away from the phone for the first time, I asked could I have a word.
‘Of course,’ he said, walking into the little kitchen that doubled as an informal office from time to time, ‘what’s up?’
‘Conor,’ I said, and paused. ‘I’ve spoken to Lucy and Niamh, and although we’ve come in, we’re not happy about serving behind the bar. It’s not really our job, after all, and we only do it –’
‘That’s alright,’ he said, ‘I understand. We wouldn’t ask you to. And we’re grateful you’ve come in.’
This surprised me.
‘Thank you,’ I paused again. ‘Will this get fixed, do you think?’
He looked away.
'I hope so,' he said. 'We’re trying.'

As the day wore on more loungestaff arrived, appearing in dribs and drabs, the girls all dressed in shorts and our special World Cup T-shirts. The longest-serving of us wasn’t among them. Like a mother to us, she was older than most of the barmen, and there was no way she’d pass their line.
‘She hasn’t come in,’ said one of the other lounge girls. ‘Maybe we should have stayed out too?’
‘Nah,’ said another, ‘she’s here too long. They’d never sack her. We’re different. They could replace us tomorrow.’

Barstaff started to appear too. We had no idea who they were, but they came in, and pulled on bright yellow polo shirts given them by management. They were hardly in the door before we called them Yellow-packers, after the Quinnsworth cheap range, muttering about them when they were out of earshot. Upstairs we had a podgy one named Jim serving us, squeezed into his bright yellow shirt. ‘Slim Jim’, we called him. It seemed inevitable.

In truth, it was obvious that we hardly needed the yellow-packers, just as we’d hardly needed the manager’s assurance that the likes of myself wouldn’t be asked to pull pints. Hardly any customers came in.

I went home for my break, and when I came back up the road it was obvious from what was going on outside that something had happened. There’d been a meeting, I learned, during which the pub’s owners had broken away from their own organization, the Licensed Vintner’s Association, in order to offer the barstaff a better deal and get the show back on the road. The barstaff had gotten together and decided that they’d take a vote, but that it had to be unanimous. If even one person wanted to stay with the Union, then they’d all with it and would remain on strike.

Only one person had done so. They were still on strike.

I’m not clear now on the sequence of events – memory fades, after all – but as far as I can remember it was that night, while Germany played Bolivia and Spain played South Korea, that our head barman finally quit, walking away after decades of working for the same people. He wouldn’t let the others down by breaking the line, but he felt he was letting his employers down by striking in such a situation. I think it was that night too that four of the barstaff decided that they too weren’t going to remain on strike, and that they were going to come in.

Saturday 18 June

In the morning I cleaned shelves and restocked them with Mark, the senior barman from upstairs, and someone who I’d worked with for years. We worked in silence for a while, and then I stopped.
‘Mark, can I ask you a question?’
‘Go on.’
‘Why did you come in?’
He frowned.
‘I know it’s not really my business,’ I said, ‘but I don’t understand. I understand why Rob came in, because he was worried about the cellars getting out of hand without him to look after them, and Susan was probably worried about not getting kept on after her apprenticeship, but I don’t understand why Bernie and you came in.’
‘No, it’s a fair question,’ he said. ‘There were a few reasons, really. Rob and I got talking last night, because we weren’t happy about how the meeting with Conor had gone. That was stupid. He’d gone out on a limb, and made a decent offer, and we should have taken it. The thing is, the strike makes no sense. It’s mainly over two things, and we shouldn’t be taking advantage of our employers like this.’
‘One of them’s not being paid for cleaning up?’
‘Yeah, and that’s obviously bollix, but that’ll get sorted at the Labour Court one way or another. You can’t have people working for nothing in this day and age. We don’t need to strike to fix that.’
‘And the other thing?’
‘More money, really. But we can’t strike for that. There’s a national wage agreement that we’ve signed up to. And everybody needs to stick to that. It’s the only way to get the country on its feet. This strike? It’s stupid. It’s cutting off our nose to spite our face.’

Ireland was due to play Italy on the Saturday night, a fitting rematch really, given how Italy had knocked us out of the last World Cup at the quarter final stage. It should have been the biggest day of the year, Christmas and New Year’s Eves, St Stephen’s Day, St Patrick’s Day, and the Blessing of the Graves all rolled into one. Instead the place was like a cemetery. Only a handful of regulars had come in, and what few customers we had were almost all people we’d never seen before, or people who’d have been turned away in the past.

It didn’t look to be getting any busier when I went home for my dinner, chatting on the way home with some of our regulars who I bumped into the street – people who’d stayed away, and decided to watch the match at their own houses.
‘This is important,’ they’d said. ‘You know about Larkin and Connolly. Ordinary people like us – we have to stick together. If we don’t, who’ll look out for us?’

'I know, but –'

'There's no "but". You'd have nothing if your father and his father hadn't stood up with their mates for their rights. It's the same thing.'

Things didn’t look that much busier that night, when I returned to be on hand for the Ireland match. A few of the other loungegirls had turned up with a flask of soup and some sandwiches for the lads outside, and I stopped to talk. There was a bitterness there this time – not towards us, as we’d just done as they’d said, but towards their co-workers who’d gone in. It was obvious they felt betrayed, and though I could understand why the four who’d come in had done so, I didn’t blame the ones who stayed out for feeling the way they did.

It was a quiet night for the few of us working upstairs – Mark, Slim Jim, me, and Louise and a couple of other loungegirls – but the reality is that there wasn’t a whole lot of work being done. We’d a few regulars in one end of the lounge, while the rest was empty. We could have taken three hundred with ease, and we’d fewer than thirty customers. Fewer than twenty, probably, now I think of it.

Downstairs was a different matter, though, as people had come from miles away, unwilling to cross the lines at their own pub, but happy to do so elsewhere. Our cabaret lounge, with its big screen, had a respectable crowd. It wasn’t what the owners would have hoped for, but there was a bit of a buzz there.

Those of us upstairs chatted most of the night away together, sitting at the far end, down by the toilets, watching the match on a small screen, and occasionally strolling down to see if anyone wanted a drink, or getting up whenever we heard a distant cough.

Ireland won. 1-0. Houghton’s goal was a bit of a out of nowhere, but the result wasn’t, as we’d been the dominant team throughout. It was one of our best ever performances – certainly one of the best two or three of the Charlton era, even if the one moment that really sticks in the mind about the match, though, was that comedy instant when Jason McAteer nutmegged Roberto Baggio.

Endgame and Aftermath

Things kind of petered out after that, as the strike’s momentum was broken. The LVA carried on haggling with the Union, and eventually a deal was struck on Monday or Tuesday, and the lads came back in to work.

It wasn’t nice. The ones who’d stayed out couldn’t forgive the ones who’d gone in, and things got worse in the following weeks, as it seemed the ones who’d came in were treated better than others. The apprentice who came in was kept on when her time was up, as we’d expected she would, but one who stayed outside – a fine barman by any standard – was let go. The Union, most importantly, was broken: with a third of the permanent barstaff no longer being members, it was only a matter of time before the whole thing faded out. It’s still there, as far as I know, but it’s a shadow of what it was. And sometimes, to this day, I hear of those who stepped off the lines and came in being referred to as scabs.

You’ll be glad to know that the loungestaff were rewarded for their loyalty. We were told we’d be paid for a further quarter of an hour’s cleaning up. 55p a night, that worked out at. Enough for a bag of crisps and a dash of lemonade.

A year later I became a part-time barman myself; Lucy and Niamh followed me within a week or so.

I think this sort of thing happened in pubs across Dublin, such that the old structured system of apprenticeships – the system that made Irish barmen so remarkably good – is a thing of the past. In the long run, I don’t think anyone gained from this.

So...?

What’s my point? I’m not sure I have one, really, save that I’ve often thought about the rights and wrongs of this over the years. If it taught me anything it’s that strikes are horrible, and that unions are vitally important, but they need to believe sensibly. They are important, after all: they’re often the only way ordinary people can protect themselves and their families from being exploited, and they can play a crucial role in building a successful society, as the German economic model shows us.

This is one of the reasons I get annoyed when people talk of how disgraceful it is that Labour – in the UK – is so heavily influenced by the Unions. Yeah, they are. They receive funding from unions, each union representing hundreds of thousands of members. The unions ballot their members every few years to see if they still want to contribute to support the Labour party, and even if the majority decide to arrange to support Labour financially, individual members are always free to withhold that part of their subscription. Collectively, this means that millions of ordinary people contribute towards the Labour party – and I’m always intrigued by the agenda of anybody who holds that those millions of ordinary people should be blocked from financially supporting their political party of choice.

Anyway, as you’ll know, Britain’s unions have called a national day of strike action on 30 November. In a nutshell, it’s over changes to pension arrangements that have already been agreed, and that the Government wants to renege on. Yes, I know there’s more to it than that, and that the Government’s in a nasty place financially, but that’s at the core of things: the Government’s trying to change things so that teachers and nurses and binmen and all manner of other people who dedicate their lives to serving the public will have less money to retire on in their old age than had previously been agreed on.

A friend of mine has, with other members of the TUC, just put out a single under the banner of ‘The Workers’. It’s in solidarity with all those involved in 30 November’s Day of Action for Pension Justice. The video’s fun to watch – and not just because of the pretty blonde gazing wistfully at the 2:45 mark – and the single’s certainly worth the downloading. It’s for a good cause, after all.

A Defeat in More Ways than One

This morning didn't go quite according to plan. Having spent the last week ill and very busy, such that the blog's been very low on my list of priorities, I'm now away at a retreat centre. I got up at half five this morning, well ahead of everyone else so I could watch the rugby -- well, the Celtic clash between Ireland and Wales at any rate -- before everyone else appeared for Mass, which is how our day together was to begin. So anyway, up I got, unlocking the common room door, turning on the telly, grabbing the remote, and pulling up a chair, only to discover that try as I might I couldn't get the telly to play. Channels would notionally appear, but without a signal, and eventually I conceded defeat.

I know, I could have watched it on my netbook, but I couldn't remember the wifi codes, not having had a pen to scrawl them down when we'd been told them, so in the end I gave up, and resigned myself to a couple of hours' reading and writing before Mass.

Unable to resist the temptation to find out how things were going, though, I eventually texted a friend at home in Dublin, one having keen eyes, an analytical mind, and a deep knowledge and love of the game. How had it gone thus far?

'Ireland the better team but not converting,' she said. 'Early try for Wales 0-7. Lots of pressure from us but no tries and we opt not to kick goals x 3. Eventually score pen in front of posts. Wales score pen straight back 3-10. ROG having poor game. HT. 2nd half. Ireland out of traps fast. Messy but try scored on sideline by Earls. ROG converts. 10-10 now 48 mins.'

That sounded awkward but ultimately encouraging, and I was about to text to say so when she sent the grim update, 'Wales hit back with try 10-15'

'Thank you,' I replied. 'Bit surprised it's ROG rather than Sexton today. Also, blast on the update. This clearly could go either way. Wonder why we didn't go for those goals. Hmmm. Thank you.'

'Exactly. Makes no sense to play ROG and eschew kicks,' she said, reading my mind, 'He's trying to go into contact as well and keeps losing the ball. Sexton on at 55 mins with Reddan.'

Moments later there was another  text, dashing my hopes that Sexton would change things, bluntly saying 'Wales over again. Horrific defence from Ireland. 10-22. We don't deserve it, I'm afraid.'

'Blast,' I said, 'That's hugely disappointing. It's no longer that we're playing better but not achieving, then?'

'Welsh execution clinical. They have fewer chances but are taking them. Few of our players not performing. Earls good in attack, poor in defence. Trimble replaces at 72 mins. Still 10-22.'

And then a few minutes later she wrapped it up, 'Will finish 10-22. Wales deserve it. Kidney has questions to answer re selections and tactics.'

'Thanks,' I said, baffled by choices but grateful for the updates, 'It does sound deeply perverse to have gone for O'Gara and not kicked. Still, I'll wish Wales well in the semi. Neither England nor France deserves to go through.'

I turned on my phone later on the day, during a coffee break, to see my housemate had texted to say that we probably both wished we'd stayed in bed this morning. France versus Wales it was to be, so. Come on Wales!

Who Referees the Referees?

Well, today's not been a good day on the sport front. I was at my cousins' for most of the day, stranded there with an unexpectedly immobilised bike -- a new inner tube is needed, it seems, and some fresh repair patches -- and took advantage of their telly to watch the Merseyside Derby, them all having gone off to the match themselves.

It was an ugly, nasty, messy match, wholly ruined by Jack Rodwell having been sent off less than halfway through the first half for having done something which was scarcely a foul at all, and hardly something that warranted a red card. After that Everton ceased the swarming advances that had already promised so much and committed themselves to a frantic defence, occasionally venturing a sketchy counter-attack. If we fouled after that, we did so in a panic. The game had been ruined.

And that, frankly, was the icing on a rather foul cake, as I'd already been disgusted that morning by England having cheated Scotland out of a place in the quarter finals of the Rugby World Cup. You remember the episode in the last minute of England's match against Argentina when an England player held back an Argentinian for just long enough for his attempt at a foot rush to be wasted, following a sustained Argentinian attack on the English line? 

As the commentator said: 

'Oh, he pulled him down it seemed... the officials are unmoved...every South American in this main stand wasn't... Argentina feel they should have had a penalty...'

Well, the referee and his henchmen didn't care, and England, having played in a deeply cynical way for the whole match, scraped a 13-9 win.

What rule was broken there? 10.4 (f) looks like the key one:

'Playing an opponent without the ball: Except in a scrum, ruck, or maul, a player who is not in possession of the ball must not hold, push, or obstruct an opponent not carrying the ball.'

The sanction for that's a penalty kick, of course, although 10.2 (a) comes into play if the offence is deemed to have prevented a try, and of course the referee can always caution and even send off players for such offences too.

That was a few weeks back, but today we saw exactly the same thing happen again, in more or less the same part of the pitch, with Chris Ashton likewise obstructing a foot-rush, and at a time when Scotland had numbers ready to come to support: Just listen to the commentator:

'Blair... to Parks.... Ford... finds Paterson. Scotland running through the hands easily with Danielli who chases his own kick. Was he obstructed? Beautifully taken, but picked up by De Luca, who couldn't take it cleanly... the ball was knocked on... so much to talk about. Awww.... was that the opportunity for Scotland to nail their try?'

Was he obstructed? Yes, he certainly was. Look at Ashton there, grabbing Danielli with both hands, his left hand on his shoulder, his right hand reaching around across his chest and with both neither leg supporting his weight on the ground as Danielli breaks free of him.

And was it Scotland's opportunity? It certainly looks that way. After all, look at how the Guardian described the event at the time:

'Was this Scotland's chance gone? Danielli chips and chases down the left, and so nearly latches onto the ball deep in the corner. He can't get to it, but de Luca is just behind him. All he has to do is pick the ball up, take two steps, and plonk the ball down for a try, but he lets the ball slip through his hands like a bar of soap, and the chance is gone. Oh my. You can't be passing up opportunities like that, especially when you play in a team who struggle to score tries.'

That's how close Scotland came to scoring there. And no, nobody bothered after the match bothered to talk about Ashton's obstruction, despite it having been a clear instance of such, and something that may well have thwarted a Scottish try. I guess there was too much else to discuss, and maybe it seemed mean-spirited to take the shine off Johnson's lumberers. And so England won 16-12, having for the second time in the tournament scraped a victory by four points, each time having managed their win after shamelessly and illegally obstructing an opposing player trying to foot-rush towards the goal line.

There was a time when English people would rather lose honourably than win through cheating. Sic transit gloria mundi...


(And in the meantime, I look forward very cautiously to tomorrow.  Should Ireland beat Italy? Yes. Will they? Who knows... given how this World Cup is going, it's entirely possibility that Italy will play out of their skins, hammer us in the scrum, panic us, and win a very ugly match. These things happen. Fingers crossed that they don't, so.)

Refuting a Mancunian Myth

I'm afraid I got a little annoyed by a comment on yesterday's post. One Steve from Manchester responded to my sceptical dismissal of Alex Ferguson's claim that Manchester United had produced more players for the English national side than any other club had ever done by taking me to task:

'"I really don't have the time to trawl through the history books on this one..."

LOL- you mean don't let the facts get in the way of a good headline?
If you think it's a 'Mancunian myth' then prove it, instead of just picking an arbitrary time period that suits your argument.'

I'd not in fact picked a random period to suit my argument, and had merely pointed out that if Ferguson was talking about the present day, rather than historical achievements, then he didn't have a leg to stand on, given that United hasn't produced one player for England's national team since Wes Brown made his debut in 1999. Far from producing England players, it seems that the modern Manchester United waits until other clubs produce them, and then it buys them with the money it's used to imbalance the League, thereby maintaining its record of bought success -- while dissing Chelsea and City for trying to do exactly the same thing.

However, in irritation at this comment, and motivated by genuine curiosity, I've worked my way through Wikipedia's perhaps slightly patchy list of English international footballers to try to fugure out which English teams have 'produced' the most players for the national side. Granted, how you define 'produced' is pretty much impossible to define, given how players usually move from club to club, even in their youth, but I think the one solid bit of data we can use is this: 'who were they playing for when their performances were such as to earn them a place in the English team?'

On this criterion, then, it seems the ten clubs which have produced most players for the English national team are, in descending order:

• 59: Aston Villa
• 46: Everton
• 45: Arsenal
• 44: Liverpool
• 44: Spurs
• 41: Blackburn
• 40: Manchester United
• 37: West Brom
• 36: Sheffield Wednesday
• 34: Sheffield United

Yep. Manchester United has indeed made an serious contribution to the national side, but even then, six other teams have provided more players, with Aston Villa having provided almost one-and-a-half times as many as Manchester United! By claiming to have produced more players for the English national side than any other club, Ferguson insulted Villa. I wonder if there are any Villa fans who realise what he said...

And as for United producing more players for England than any other club in the world? Well, that's just hyperbole. Of the 112 clubs that I counted as having produced players for the English team, only five weren't actually English: Hibernian, Falkirk, Celtic, Rangers, and Bayern Munich.

I don't how United people keep getting away with pumping out this rubbish. It's as though people are just happy to swallow any kind of diabolic nonsense as long as it's red.

Mancunian Myths Again

Honestly, Alex Ferguson is a buffoon. Look at him today, expressing his delight at how as many as eight United players could wind up being named in Fabio Capello's squad for England's Euro 2012 qualifiers against Bulgaria and Wales:

'It is fantastic. The FA may realise who has produced more players for their country than any club in the world. Maybe they will get some joy from it and realise how important we are to England instead of treating us like shit. I am pleased for the players. They are outstanding.'

Let's not even get into his persecution complex and instead concentrate on looking at his claim about the contribution Manchester United makes to the national team.

I really don't have the time to trawl through the history books on this one, and one might make a serious case that English players are often formed in their teenage years, when they may well have represented their country at youth level, but let's for now just take Ferguson at face value, by focusing on current English senior internationals, and ask ourselves -- honestly -- how many of them were 'produced' by Manchester United. 

If you look at the squad Capello picked for the match against the Netherlands that had been due to be played on 10 August 2011 -- the match that was cancelled because of the riots -- you'll see that of the twenty-five players, twenty-two had already played for their country. Fancy guessing how many of those twenty-two had been United players at the time they made their debuts?

None.

Sure, Danny Welbeck was contracted to Manchester United when he made his senior debut, but he'd been on loan to Sunderland for several months before that. For what it's worth, here's a breakdown of the teams players had been playing for when they earned their English shirts :

• 4: Everton -- Rooney, Lescott, Jagielka, and Baines
• 3: Aston Villa -- Barry, Milner, and Young
• 3: Manchester City -- Hart, Richards, Johnson
• 2: Bolton --  Cahill, Wilshere (had been on loan from Arsenal)
• 2: West Ham -- Ferdinand, Carrick
• 1: Arsenal --  Cole
• 1: Charlton Athletic --  Parker
• 1: Chelsea -- Terry
• 1: Middlesbrough -- Downing
• 1: Newcastle -- Carroll
• 1: Norwich -- Green
• 1: Southampton -- Crouch
• 1: Sunderland -- Welbeck (on loan from Manchester United)

Phil Jones, Chris Smalling, and Tom Cleverley haven't yet made their senior debuts for England, but all three have been named in Capello's provisional squad. Of these it'd be preposterous to say that Jones has been 'produced' for England by United, given that he was with Blackburn until United paid £17 million for him about ten minutes ago, and even captained England's under-21 side as a Blackburn player. That leaves Cleverley and Smalling, both of whom could fairly be said to have been 'produced' by Manchester United, and neither of whom may yet take the field.

There's not much of a case here to say that United produces any players for the English national side nowadays. But then, given that they hardly produce any for themselves, this probably shouldn't surprise us. The Premier League is a rigged game, where a handful of teams, rolling in money, are able to use their ridiculously fat wallets to buy players that other teams have developed -- often to a point where they can represent their countries at senior level -- and then use them to maintain their dominance. But then, I've said all this before.


Update: Having scrolled over breakfast through Wikipedia's list of England internationals and looked elsewhere, it seems that the last time somebody earned an England shirt while playing for Manchester United was April 1999, when Wes Brown managed it. Since then three players contracted to United have played for England, all earning their first cap while on loan to other teams: Kieran Richardson was playing for West Bromwich Albion when he earned the first of his eight caps in May 2005, Ben Foster was on loan to Watford when he earned the first of his four caps in February 2007, and Danny Welbeck was on loan to Sunderland on the only occasion thus far that he has played for his country, that being in March of this year. Hmph.

Painful Truths

I was just amused there on Twitter to see Barry Glendenning, once of Dublin's Hot Press and now of the Guardian, getting into a minor spat with the sort of Evertonian that lets the side down a bit. Glendenning began the affair by drily remarking that:

'Phil Neville tweeting that Everton's youngsters are the 'future of the club'. Aren't they the future of richer clubs?'

Sadly, this is probably all too true, unless we manage to get a whole brigade of brilliant ones, sell them for a fortune to Continental sides, and use that money to climb the Premier League, which, as I've said in the past, is basically a rigged game. Anyway, in leapt the sort of Evertonian who gives the rest of us a bad name, declaring in indignation: 'your just a knob ed'

And thus began a bit of a squabble into which I like a fool rushed in where an angel would have feared to tread. Somewhere along the way, it was pointed to Barry that somebody had had obviously had fun with his Wikipedia entry, and to have done so some time ago -- more than a month -- which is impressive, given how scathing it is:

'Barry Glendenning is an Irish sports journalist who currently holds the position of deputy sports editor on the Guardian Unlimited website run by the UK newspaper The Guardian. He is perhaps best-known for his work on Guardian Unlimited's football podcast Football Weekly hosted by James Richardson. He is well known for his smug, superficial style, and usually contributes little to the discussion beyond listless anecdotes from his personal life; for instance, spending 5 minutes discussing the curry house he went to the previous Saturday. He also regularly contributes to the site's satirical daily email service, The Fiver. He is also often found at the helm of the Guardian Unlimited "minute by minute reports", which feature live text coverage of Premier League and Champions League games and internationals. He also writes about horseracing and table tennis. In recent years, Glendenning has become a vocal critic of The Irish County Woman's Association.

Barry has also mastered one chord on the guitar, which is the chord of A. He hopes one day to master another chord, at which point he will turn his attention to his other great love, the castanets.'

I say it's impressive that it's not been corrected because, well, I once modified an entry and was swiftly told off for doing so. It was the page for Dominic Monaghan, he of Lost and 'Merry in The Lord of the Rings' fame, which had said that his family had lived in Manchester but had moved to Heaton Moor in Stockport. Given that I'd lived very close to them, I corrected this entry, and then whimsically went on to say that:

'[...] the local pub, the Moor Top, has a large sign saying "Eat, Drink, and Be Merry", in presumed reference to the local celebrity.'

This, as it happens, was at least partially true. The Moor Top did have such a sign, though it doesn't now. And it probably isn't connected with Monaghan, though I always liked to think it was. Anyway, hardly had I made the change that someone corrected it, switching things back to say that his family had moved to Manchester; I discovered this when I next logged into Wikipedia a few hours later to see a large banner plastered over the site, telling me off for mucking about. I contritely made another adjustment, so that it at least no longer falsely claimed the Monaghans had shaken the dust of Stockport from their feet, but I decided to keep my theories about the local pub to myself.

I hope Glendenning leaves entry as it is. That'd be an entry worth quoting in an obituary.

Mancunian Myths and the Futility of Fidelity

Lots of the sporting talk in Britain lately has been of the retirement of the football legend that is Paul Scholes, the revelation that Scholes' fellow legend Giggs has feet of clay, and Manchester United's having decisively dethroned Liverpool as the most consistently successful football club in English history.

There's no denying the fact that United's achievement is impressive, and that Giggs and Scholes have been among the most successful players the English game has ever seen, but the praise heaped upon Ferguson's United is sheer hyperbole; they may be legends, but we should be careful how we build our mythologies.


The Myth of the Perch
To take one example, a few weeks back I kept hearing talk on how United had knocked Liverpool off their perch, and how Ferguson had announced back in 1986 on his taking the job of managing United that his ambition was to knock Liverpool off their perch.

Nonsense. Ferguson said nothing of the sort back in '86. Indeed, he has admitted as much, saying just a few weeks ago in the Telegraph that:

'That thing about knocking Liverpool off their perch, I don’t think I actually said that but it’s more important that United are the best team in the country in terms of winning titles.'

What actually happened is that when interviewed by the Guardian back in September 2002, on the day of his 400th game, years after United had supplanted Liverpool as England's preeminent team, Ferguson said that his toughest task as United manager up to that point had been taking Liverpool's place at the pinnacle of the domestic game:

'Ferguson does not seem like a man in a corner. "I don't get paid to panic," Ferguson said. "We have had plenty of stuttering starts." Neither the topics of Juan Sebastian Veron nor Diego Forlan could stir Ferguson into a crimson caricature of his legendary wrath. But Hansen's analysis did. "My greatest challenge is not what's happening at the moment," Ferguson countered, "my greatest challenge was knocking Liverpool right off their fucking perch. And you can print that."'

This, of course, should make perfect sense to anyone who thinks for a minute instead of unthinkingly repeating lazy journalistic claptrap. After all, when Ferguson became manager in 1986, United had just seven League titles to their name, and hadn't won the League since 1967. They were widely regarded as a cup team, unlike Liverpool, which by that point had won the League sixteen times, seven of those victories being in the previous ten seasons. If Ferguson had said that he planned on overtaking Liverpool's record he'd have been locked away.


The Myth of Honest Home-Grown Success
Nobody in 1986 could have predicted what would happen over the next few years, with the development of the Premier League and the Champions' League -- oiled and fed by Sky money -- transforming English football from being a broad competition where a host of teams could plausibly compete for the title, into, in practice, an oligarchic system where a handful of rich teams were guaranteed to hold the top four slots year after year, so that each season began with most clubs knowing that the best they could hope for would be the glorious position of also-rans.

One of the great ironies of modern British sporting analysis is that people too often and too lazily repeat cliches about Blackburn having bought short-lived success, about Chelsea having bought more sustainable success, and about Manchester city trying to buy success; United, it is generally held, did it properly, training up youngsters and earning success the hard way. The conceit, basically, is that United are an honest team, and that the others have merely tried to lie and buy their way to the title.

Obviously, it's blatantly clear that the current United team isn't a home-grown one. We can all see that. Indeed, if we look at the teams that faced off in the Champions' League final on Saturday, we can see that of the thirteen players in the defeated United side, only two came through their youth system, both of them progressing to the senior team almost twenty years ago; even with the club's most expensive ever signing not making the bench, the eleven imported players that took the field cost the club about £130 million. Against that, it's interesting that the Barcelona team that beat United fielded fourteen players, half of whom had come through their own system...

Still, I don't think it's ever been true that United's success in the Ferguson era has been home-grown. There's a figment of truth in this, but when you get down to it it's as nonsensical as the Myth of the Perch. Back in the early nineties United did indeed have a clutch of gifted young players they'd reared from scratch -- the Nevilles, Giggs, Scholes, Butt, and Beckham, but this shouldn't blind us to the fact that United's success was largely bought, and it was bought at exactly the right time.

Ferguson's first years with United were bleak ones, but in the summer of 1989, armed with a uniquely wealthy war-chest, and desperate to turn things around after having come eleventh in the League, without a trophy of any sort in four years and without having won the League since 1967, Alex Ferguson embarked on what was then an unprecedentedly spectacular spending spree. He spent £8 million on five players, the £2.3 million spent on Gary Pallister in August 1989 breaking the national transfer fee, and a further £2.4 million being spent on Paul Ince. The money proved well-spent: United won the FA Cup in 1990, their first trophy since 1985, and Ince and Pallister formed the backbone of the team for the next few years.

With the addition of Denis Irwin to the squad, bought for £625,000 in June 1990, United won the European Cup Winners' Cup in 1991, thereby becoming the first English team to win a European trophy since Everton's victory in the same competition in 1985, just before the Heysel Stadium disaster had led to Mrs Thatcher pressuring the FA to withdraw English clubs  from European competition.

June 1991 saw Manchester United being the first football club floated on the Stock Exchange, raising £6.7 million. The following year, with the squad bolstered by Andrei Kancheskis who had been bought for £650,000 in March 1991 and by Peter Schmeichel who had been bought for £500,000 in August 1991, Manchester United won its first ever League Cup. In August 1992 the club bought Dion Dublin for £1 million and in November 1992, when they were lagging behind Aston Villa and Blackburn, the club also bought Eric Cantona for £1.2 million from League champions Leeds; United went on to win the inaugural Premier League.

Hardly had the Premier League been won that United broke the national transfer record again, buying Roy Keane for £3.75 million from Nottingham Forest, and with him in the team they again won the Premier League and also won the FA Cup, thus earning their first ever Double. Indeed, in the first seven years of the newly lucrative Premier League, Manchester United won the title five times along with three FA Cups and the European Cup, in the popular mindset having done so with the kids Alan Hansen so famously disparaged.

It's true that the likes of  Giggs, Scholes, Beckham, Butt, and the Nevilles all became stars during the 1990s, but the thing is, it's not as if United weren't continuing to buy at the same time. With the money they had from being a PLC, and with the Sky money flowing into them from the Premier League, they bought David May for £1.2 million in 1994, and broke the national transfer record for the second time in less than two years when they bought Andy Cole for £7 million in January 1995. Solskjaer was bought for £1.5 million in July 1996 and in summer 1997, United added Teddy Sheringham to the squad for £3.5 million and broke the national transfer record for a defender by spending £5 million on Henning Berg. The following summer saw even more being spent, with £4.4 million being spent on Jesper Blomqvist, the national transfer record for a defender again being broken when £10.6 million was spent on Jaap Stam, and a further £12.6 million being spent on Dwight Yorke.

And thus the Treble was won. Nine of the thirteen players who played in the UEFA Champions' League final -- including both injury-time goalscorers -- had been bought by United. They hadn't been bought cheaply either: the team that won the FA Cup that year included two players whose transfer fees had broken the national record, and other players who were even more costly but who'd been bought in more expensive seasons.

Since then, of course, the Champions' League has become an absolute goldmine and with the money United made from that they were able to break the national transfer record three times running, spending £19 million on Van Nistelrooy, £28.1 million on Veron, and £29 million on Ferdinand, since going on to spend £25.6 million on Rooney, £14 million on Carrick, £17 million on Hargreaves, £14.7 million on Nani, £17.3 million on Anderson, and £30.75m spent on Berbatov.

Those figures are difficult to substantiate, unfortunately -- this very interesting site gives different figures though reveals the same trend -- but it seems clear that even under the Glazers, despite their fans' refusal to believe otherwise, they've bought six of their ten most expensive ever players. Granted, City and Chelsea have bought, respectively, 14 and 19 players in the price range of United's top ten, but that's largely because they've bought them in the last ten minutes or so, with prices being higher nowadays than even three or four years back. To put this into context, Liverpool have bought seven players in this price range, Spurs have bought five, Arsenal have bought only two, and Everton and Villa have bought just one apiece.

Anyway, it's with such a pricey brigade of players that United have won the the League a further seven times since winning the Treble, along with an FA Cup, three League Cups, and another European trophy.

And none of this gets into the issue of wages, with almost a third of the total Premier League wage bill being accounted for by just three clubs, one of which is United, the others -- predictably -- being Chelsea and City, who are really just spending to try to catch up, just as with their ultra-expensive squads. It's like watching people turning up late at a party when everybody else is already tipsy, and then hammering back the drink to try to match them.

I'm not criticising, as United have been very fortunate in coming good just as football became big business; any other team would envy their luck, their brand name, and how well Ferguson et al have built well on the success they've had. All I'm saying is that the notion that United haven't bought their success is claptrap. They have. They've bought in spades, and they keep buying, and they're going to keep buying, and though some of their purchases haven't paid off, many have.

What does all of this mean?


The Myth of a Competitive League
Well, I said the other day, prior to the Barcelona match, that I hoped United would lose. Not because I take pleasure in my friends' disappointment, as I don't and I would have liked them to be happy, but because I didn't believe it'd do the English game any good for any member of English football's dominant cartel to receive a cash injection of £109 million in order further to enhance its dominance in the English game.

The Premier League, quite simply, isn't as good, as interesting, or as meaningful a competition as the old First Division was. I don't dispute for a moment that the football is better -- I think it probably is, especially given the sheer quality of foreign players that now play in England, albeit at a clear cost to the quality of the English national side. However, if you look back at the last fifty years or so of English football, it's quite clear that over the past fifteen years the English top flight has become a stitch-up.

Don't believe me?

Well, think of what I'm saying, that back in the day pretty much any team could rise to win or at least challenge for the title, but that in recent years the competition has been predictable and stale, with the same teams forming the same hierachy year-in year-out. This is easy to test. All we have to do is look at the top four teams in any given year, and see how many of them had been in the top four the previous year, tracking this back over the decades. I'd pick the top four as I think the Champions' League formalises a top four elite nowadays, and since the difference between fourth and fifth place nowadays can effectively be twenty million pounds or so, which buys you a top-notch player.

Look at the chart.

Interesting, eh? Before 1997 it was typical for two teams from the previous year's top four to make it into the top four; the odd year three teams would make it, and sometimes only one made it, but on balance two would typically retain top-tier positions. Since 1997, though, there hasn't been a year when fewer than three top-four teams from one year made it into the top four spots the following year, and there've been four years when the same four teams had retained their collective position at the pinnacle of English football.

It's worse, though. Only nine teams have won places in the 60 top-four spots that have been available over the past fifteen years, with just four teams having held 52 of those places. To put that into context, eighteen teams -- twice as many -- won places in the previous fifteen years' 60 top-four spots, with the top four teams overall having held just 35 of those places.

What's my point?

English football's top flight has become a rigged game, where victory is pretty much guaranteed to one of a handful of foreign-owned superwealthy clubs, those clubs that feed at the Golden Trough of the Champions' League. Victory in the Football League had long been dependent on cash, but even so that cash was more evenly spread about than it's been since the rise of the Premier League. The prize money -- especially from the Champions' League -- is such as to enable teams that do well to guarantee that they'll do well henceforth, so that success is rewarded with cash and cash buys further success.

United have won their nineteenth title. They'll win their twentieth in a year or two. It won't mean much, though. It'll be a victory in an unofficial mini-league, informally nestling at the top of a bigger and messier one. I hate to say it, but Liverpool's eighteen titles all mattered more. The League was a real competition then. Winning was more romantic, and being beaten didn't mean being vanquished: teams could lose, and regroup, and come back in the real hope of triumph. That doesn't happen anymore.


On Love and Loyalty
I still support Everton, of course, even though I do not believe she will ever win the League again, unless she's bought as a rich man's toy, as Chelsea and Manchester City have been.

That's the nature of love and of loyalty: we may admire things and people for what they can do, but we love them for who and what they are, for that royal blue strip, that church in the corner of the ground and pillars we've to crane around, that statue of Bill Dean, that fleeting moment when I was a little boy and Everton might have been the best team in Europe, my brother being at the other semi-final and a city mourning together, a battered schoolbag bearing the badge and the teasing it brought, a sense of secret fellowship with those few Dubliners I'd meet who supported a team that didn't wear red, years of squandered promise and too frequent a survival by the skin of our teeth, the occasional magnificent performance, too much mediocre dross to mention, going to my first match on the day I was persuaded to move to England, bitterness boiling over when playing our offshoot and oldest rival, quiet calm appraisal from the stands in match after match, wry head-shaking with family and friends and people who could be either in the pub afterwards, a friend trying to hide her pleasure at her first top-flight game as her team demolished mine, a cousin grabbing and shaking my shoulders in a frenzy of delight as Everton turned the tables with rare style, the smug pleasure in establishing that Everton are my local team with their ground being the closest Premier League ground to my home in Dublin, and decade after decade of family fidelity.

I don't support Everton because she's good. I support her because she's Everton. My blood's blue.

Chesterton nailed this idea of attachment, talking once of Kipling's lack of true patriotism:

'The great gap in his mind is what may be roughly called the lack of patriotism -- that is to say, he lacks altogether the faculty of attaching himself to any cause or community finally and tragically; for all finality must be tragic. He admires England, but he does not love her; for we admire things with reasons, but love them without reasons. He admires England because she is strong, not because she is English.'

I like Arsenal because they play more creative football than any other team in England and because even when their rivals at the top splash money around like there's no bubble waiting to burst tomorrow they spend sensibly; but while I admire their elegance and their prudence, I don't love them. I freely recognise that United are the best team in England, though I'm suspicious of their fans, as there are too many of them who have never known anything but success; I often wonder how deep their loyalty runs, and whether they'd fly to another team if United's sun were to set. Certainly, I suspect the future may belong to Manchester City, who are only too frank in admitting that they'll soon be acquiring their own legions of gloryhunters, all too keen to contribute to City's coffers, and I'll doubt their new fans too. I'm highly dubious about Chelsea ones too, not least because so many of them are recent converts, lured by cash-fuelled success.

While I wouldn't go so far as to embrace claims that the followers of the most successful English football teams are more likely to be unfaithful to their partners and spouses than those who follow less successful teams, I do wonder whether if a person's loyal in one aspect of his or her life, he or she's likely to be loyal in other areas. Terry Leahy, Tesco's erstwhile CEO, had a mantra that said he believed in 'one religion, one football team, one wife, one firm'. Taken at face value, that's obviously facile and trite, but I suspect he had a point. Certainly, people who support teams that look destined never to succeed must be the sort of people who stick by those they love through thick and thin.

If there's a moral to this story, it's that United's success is real but not as glorious as it might look, and that you should never marry a Chelsea fan.  Against that, a friend of mine married a Blackburn fan a couple of years back. I tend to think that'll prove a wise move in the long run, as a man who's supported Blackburn over the last decade is  clearly a man of unshakeable faith. I think theirs shall prove a long and happy marriage.

Spot the Ball

And so France goes to the World Cup Finals, having beaten Ireland with a rather dubious goal, with two players offside and the ball having been judiciously handled.

As the Brother said on Twitter: spot the ball . . . it's a tricky one, but there's a trip to South Africa in it.


'I will be honest, it was a handball,' as M. Henry says, 'But I’m not the ref. I played it, the ref allowed it. That’s a question you should ask him.'

Begging the age-old question of whether if a tree cheats in a forest, and the ref doesn't see the offence, has it still cheated?

Premier League 2010-11: Survival of the Fittest?

It's been a pretty grim week to be an Everton supporter, what with losing 5-0 to Benfica last Thursday in a match we didn't need to win, succumbing 3-2 to Bolton in one we surely did, and then being knocked out of the Carling Cup by Spurs this evening, going down 2-0.

The reaction over on Toffeeweb is understandably grim, but strangely, most of anti-Moyes crowd are being unusually quiet at the minute. Relatively so, anyway. I'm not sure if it's because they think this is just because the results speak for themselves, or because they reckon this is all down to injuries.

Is that a cop out? I don't think so. If you go over to this remarkable site, you'll see that at the moment Everton is clearly the most battered side in the Premier League, with ten people out injured, eight of the ten being regular starters, and two being regular subs. To put that into context, all bar three sides currently have five or fewer men injured; indeed, Everton has more men out than Villa, Hull, Stoke, Sunderland, and Wigan combined. Add this to the fact that we have one of the Premier League's smallest squads, and fielding a team is proving increasingly tricky; Moyes seems to have little option but to play regulars out of position along with youngsters and lads that aren't fully match-fit. The subs benches have tended to be almost for show, given the inexperience of the players sitting on them; tactical substitution seems scarcely to be an option. It's not really surprising that we've been getting tonked.

The thing is, though, I can't help but wonder how next season's going to pan out. After all, the plan is that next season no Premier League side should have more than 25 players in its squad. Obviously, this is intended to stop absurdities like last year when Liverpool had 62 players on the books, while the average club had 41.

I think it's safe to say that if you reduced Everton's squad to 25 players, that 25 would include the injured 10. That'd leave us with 15 functioning players, those presumably being the eleven starters from tonight and four of the six subs.

The point being: next season could be very interesting, given that every side will have a squad smaller than Everton's current one. I'm not even sure it'll be possible for teams to compete meaningfully in four competitions, and I suspect utility players rather than positional specialists may become the norm. There's a serious chance that the League could well wind up being a simple campaign of attrition, with health rather than wealth being the deciding factor in who wins, in which case it may not be Manchester City's money that breaks the top four cartel -- it may all come down to who has the fewest injuries.

In terms of turning the Premier League into an actual competition, this can only be good, but I suspect it's not going to be pretty. Evolution is anything but elegant, after all.

The Premier League and the Illusion of Competition

So, with the football season drawing to a close, and with the Premier League having wrapped up on Sunday, I got to chatting last night about the overall shape of this season. As an Everton fan, I was obviously pretty happy with it, given that we've managed fifth place in the league for a second time running, and are in the cup final, but my mates were rather surprised at how pensive I was about the whole thing.

Well, I explained, I think the Premier League is basically a rigged game. Everton may have managed fifth twice running, having been sixth the previous year, but unless Arsenal have another shocker of a year next year, or Benitez's near-achievements of this year aren't repeated next year, or Chelsea's new manager can't come up with the goods, or Manchester City buys a batch of new players and shakes things up at the top, there's not really much hope of breaking into the top four. And sad though it is, it's all about getting into the top four.

It'll be great if we win the cup, and there'll be no end of celebrating if we do, but the league's the real barometer of success, and the only competition that offers real rewards, in that the top four places grant you access to the Champions' League, and the money that the Champions' League brings pretty much guarantees dominance in the domestic game, unless things go very wrong.

To explain, simply, in 2006-7 Everton came fifth in the Premier League, with Liverpool coming fourth. Everton entered the UEFA cup, making it as far as the quarter finals, beating the eventual winners on the way there, but getting knocked out on penalties. For all their efforts they were rewarded with something in the region of half a million quid. Liverpool, on the other hand, attained a place in the Champions' League qualifiers, and, on qualifying for the Champions' League, made it all the way through to the semi-final, winning something in the region of twenty million quid through doing so.

That's what the difference between fourth and fifth place can be. Twenty million pounds. So what, you might say. Well, twenty million pounds buys you Torres, putting it bluntly. And winning the Champions' League means more than thirty million into the club kitty.

Obviously, I'm caricaturing the situation, and this probably sounds like sour grapes, but there's no denying that there's a massive gap between the top four teams and the next four teams, and despite claims that this year's Premier League has been more competitive than previously, this competition is largely an illusion. There are a few mini-competitions, but the overall trend is pretty much settled even before the season starts.

If you average out the end of season stats for the top four teams, you'll see that they've ended the season on 82.75 points each, and have a positive goal difference of 42.25. The next four teams, on the other hand, work out at 57.25 points each, and a positive goal difference of 7.25.

In other words, the Sky 4 lead the chasing pack by an average of 25.5 points and 35 goals. And this season, though worse than any in the last twenty years in this regard, is no anomaly. Look at this chart:

Both the points gap and the goal difference gap have been indisputably increasing over the past twenty years. Sure, the rate of increase is erratic, but the general trend is clear, especially over the last decade. Twenty years ago the gap stood at 13.5 points and 18 goals, and now it stands at 25.5 points and 35 goals -- it's almost doubled, and I suspect it'll have done so within another year or two.

Look at the top six teams for the last two years. The league trophy, in whatever incarnation, has been the exclusive preserve of United, Arsenal, and Chelsea since 1996. Of the chasing pack, Liverpool last won it in 1990, when the gap stood at 11.5 points and 12 goals, Everton last won it in 1987, when the gap stood at 9.75 points and a then anomalous 24.75 goals., and Villa last won it way back in 1981, when the gap was likewise 9.75 points and a mere 6.75 goals.

The Sky 4's level of dominance can't be put down to good management, especially given the profligacy of Benitez at Liverpool and the instability of Chelsea. This is clearly a matter of money -- and it's surely no coincidence that 2000-1 and 2001-2 were the seasons in which the Champions' League franchise was extended so that the third- and fourth-placed teams could enter the competition and reap the lucrative rewards so that their dominance in the domestic game could be assured.

What do they spend the money on? Well, for starters, how about the Premiership's four largest and costliest squads? Back in March, as far as I can ascertain, the average Premiership squad consisted of just 41 players. The top four squads were Chelsea's 48, United's 53, Arsenal's 61, and Liverpool's 62, averaging out at 56 players each; the following sixteen had an average squad size of just 37 players. Everton had but 33, and Bolton had a paltry 27. Is it any surprise that the Sky 4 dominate to the extent they do, especially when other sides get depleted through injuries and suspension? Despite all the whinging we hear when the top teams don't get to field their ideal first eleven, they're practically immune to injuries.

Yes, I know Sunderland have 48 players on their books, but try comparing the calibre and the cost of the Sunderland 48 with the Chelsea 48. The reality of the current situation is that coming fourth in the Premier League means you can buy Torres, and that coming third one season means that if the next season starts badly, well, you can always buy Arshavin as a Christmas present, guaranteeing that you stay fourth at the end, leading the fifth place team by three whole wins.

The reality of the Premier League is that there's a four-team competition for first place, then a competition between a handful of teams for the next two or three places, and then a mad scramble at the bottom to avoid relegation. Sure, on any given day there can be an upset and a David can beat a Goliath, but these are anomalies. They don't happen often enough to change the big picture, and the reality is that most of the Premier League are little more than cannon fodder for the Sky 4, the teams that happened to be successful at the one moment in the modern game when success on the field pretty much guaranteed that the money would keep flowing in...

It rather seems that the Champions' League is the real competition, and that the purpose of the domestic competitions is simply to see who is worthy of promotion to the Champions' League. Unfortunately, the rewards for Champions' League participation are so massive that once established in the League, it's kind of difficult to get relegated, making the whole charade spectacularly uncompetitive.

All of which begs the questions of how much longer the sixteen teams that do the heavy lifting, not to mention the Morlocks below them, will continue to put up with this situation, and what will happen if one of the Sky 4 should slip out of the top bracket, especially given their astronomical levels of debt...

Given that I doubt the likelihood of an American solution, I'm sure this is a bubble waiting to burst.

Foiled by Grace Kelly

On the subject of films, by the way, any of you who've been pondering my March post on my vastly superior mental reworking of A Beautiful Mind can't fail to have noticed the most superficially implausible aspect of my Hitchcockian fantasy, which is that the age gap between Gregory Peck and Grace Kelly wasn't utterly ludicrous. Gregory P would have been 40 in 1956, whereas her Serene Highness the Princess of Monaco, as Grace Kelly became that year, was a flawless 27. Only thirteen or so years between them.

You might think that's a lot, though I'd beg to differ, but given Grace's history with leading men, what can't disputed is that this age gap is negligible!

Look at her career, rounding things off a bit. In High Noon she was 23 to Gary Cooper's 51, and in Mogambo she was 24 while Clark Gable was 52. In Dial M for Murder, she was 25 to her husband Ray Milland's 49 and her lover Robert Cummings's 44. 25 again in Rear Window, her fiancee Jimmy Stewart was 46, and still 25 in The Country Girl and Green Fire, Bing Crosby and Stewart Granger were 51 and a sprightly 41 respectively. The Bridges of Toko Ri, from 1954 again, saw her 25-year-old self in a reasonably normal relationship with the 36-year-old William Holden, who she'd also been drawn to in The Country Girl, but she returned to form the following year, a ravishing 26-year-old seducing the 51-year-old Cary Grant in To Catch a Thief.

And then there's High Society, in which 41-year old Frank Sinatra vied with 53-year-old Bing Crosby and 45-year-old John Lund to win her 27-year-old hand.

So it seems that of all her leading men, only William Holden was closer to her in age than Gregory Peck, who, as I've sadly noted, never acted with her. The league table of age gaps runs something like this: William Holden a meagre 11, Frank Sinatra 14, Stewart Granger 16, John Lund 18, Robert Cummings 19, Jimmy Stewart 21, Ray Milland 24, Cary Grant 25, Bing Crosby 26, and Gary Cooper and Clark Gable both having a positively indecent 28 years on her peerless self, Clark Gable reigning supreme with a magnificent 28 years, 10 months, and 11 days!

Yes, I know, I've left out The Swan, but I haven't seen it and it doesn't seem to be available on DVD in this neck of the woods. This one looks to have a 42-year-old Alec Guinness perplexingly indifferent to the infinite charms of the Twentieth Century's most elegant woman. I know, it makes no sense.

Still, absurd though the premise of the film may be, I'm rather keen to see it, not least because it features this scene:

I know. Grace Kelly and fencing in one film. Can such perfection really exist in this fallen world?

I suspect the plot is rubbish.

Because He Knows What He's Talking About

The Brother used to be an avid attender at football matches back in the day, and has written about them on more than one occasion, whether talking about watching the only two footballers ever to have taken his breath away, or personal experiences of what our continental cousins used to call the English disease. I'm always puzzled by his never having posted anywhere an email he once sent me filled with musings and memories of Crewe station, which before getting to the holy of holies, dallied with some football-related observations.

'When I stopped living in Liverpool and moved to Birmingham, I retained my season ticket at Goodison and so at least every second week - and of course for every midweek game including the never to be missed Simod Cup clashes - I headed north and often found myself in Crewe rather than on the direct train . . .

It was in Crewe station that I sat unspeaking among English national team supporters as we all headed for Dublin and a spiteful International fixture. Seated either side of me were two large giggling skinheads from Millwall who were doing their own spotting - that of notorious thugs among the English fans. As I silently drank my tea between them I noticed the backs of the hands of both of the skinheads as they drank theirs. Tattooed on the hand of one was "TRACY" and on the other was "MICHELLE". The next time I saw them was in Dublin as part of a marauding English gang that waded into the Irish crowd with boots and fists. I held screaming women for their protection, by inches missing receiving a kicking from skinheads in brown suede jackets. By the time we all ended up back in Crewe their faces were cut and bruised, and my Irish scarf was never more hidden.'

All of which is a circuitous way of saying that I expected he'd have quite a bit to say about today and his memories of what happened twenty years ago, when 96 people died and the English disease wasn't to blame, despite what some claimed at the time. And he does. You should read it, even if football means nothing to you.

Swords and Strategy

Last night was a dismal one on the fencing front, with me somehow contriving to lose all seven of my bouts. I'll freely admit I'm not the best of the club's novices, but I'm nowhere near the bottom of the pile. We've all got our distinctive weaknesses and strengths, whether those relate to strength, speed, size, skill, or strategy, and I'm generally good enough at the last one to do okay if a bout goes on long enough. Not this week, though: it started badly, with me having to stop several times when up against Jane, who trounced me, and got worse as I was toppled by fencer after fencer.

I'm tempted to just put this down to having been an off week, but I'm fairly surely the likes of Aldo Nadi would have no truck with such notions. I've recently been perusing his On Fencing. It's rather dated now, especially given the rise of electronic scoring and the parallel rise of to ubiquity the pistol grip and fall to near-obsolescence of his beloved Italian grip, but it's got lots in its favour for all that.

Um, skipping to the bit on tactics in competitive bouts:

Apart from what you have been told in the preceding chapter, it is impossible to tell you what to do in a bout. True, a great deal depends upon you; but your adversary is as free as you are, and no two fencers are alike. Strategy and tactics must therefore be applied differently to each opponent.

What I can describe, however, is the general pattern of combat the great champion employs against an unknown adversary. Even if you are a novice, and cannot be expected to apply it successfully in a week or two, I think you will readily understand what I mean. Engrave it in your mind forever.

First, I would like to quote a part of the Napoleonic record as related in the Encyclopedia Brittanica. It reads: "He said, 'The whole art of war consists of a careful and well-thought out defensive, together with a swift and bold offensive.' Simplicity, energy, rapidity was his constant admonition. . . . One must concentrate one's own forces, keep them together, lead the enemy to give battle in the most unfavourable conditions; then, when his last reserves are engaged, destroy him with a decisive attack. . . . Napoleon's power of rapidly summing up a situation and making his decision, explains his victories." . . . "One of the characteristic features of Napoleonic strategy," says Marshal Franchet d'Esperey, "is that, the goal, once chosen and boldly chosen, the method does not vary, though, being supple, it adapts itself to circumstances."

When I first read this passage I could hardly believe my eyes. For, almost word for word these were the same principles I had been repeating incessantly to pupils ever since I started teaching -- a long time ago. What a perfectly stunning similarity between the war principles of one of the greatest soldiers of all time and the fundamentals of the competitive fencing war! Well, to become a good fencer, memorize and assimilate the above quotations.

In the meantime, I may work on my lunges and parries.

So We Need a Referee as Well as Rules?

Yesterday wasn't a bad day on the sport front. Despite Ronan O'Gara's kicking being about as bad as I've ever seen, Ireland still somehow managed to grind out a 14-13 win against what seems an increasingly and perversely ill-disciplined English team, and it was nice on the football front to see a battered Everton winning and a faltering Liverpool losing too. With Arsenal dropping points again, Everton is seriously starting to look as though they may well overtake them, despite having six senior players, including our most creative player and our most effective striker, injured.

Speaking of football, and bear with me, I've mentioned the Alpha Course and Nicky Gumbel a couple of times in the past here, but haven't talked about either at length. Last May I described Christianity Explored as a mainstream rather than charismatic Evangelical corrective to Alpha, and the previous November I expressed some concerns about a presentation on The Da Vinci Code by the Reverend Gumbel, noting that he had misrepresented some things, made claims that couldn't really be supported, cherry-picked his evidence, and ignored the implications of what he had said.

No, don't ask me for examples. It was a long time ago. I can't remember what I was referring to. I'd need to watch it again, and the time just isn't to be found.

So anyway, I've recently been reading Gumbel's Questions of Life, which is basically Alpha for people who can't do the course, and I've been far from impressed. It's very simplistic, and I can't see how it would work in practice. Not a page passes without me frowning at things that just don't make sense, at statements that don't hold up, at quotations that are utterly out of context... I don't see how this brings people to Christ. I mean, obviously it does, but I just don't see how. I guess it must be linked with other things -- regular Bible reading, perhaps, or attendance at Church out curiosity -- and I suppose that when it's done as a course people have opportunities to ask questions and get answers, rather than simply scrawling in the margins things like 'hmmm', 'not quite', and 'but even Paul was unsure of this - see 1 Cor. 9.27, Gal. 5.4, and 1 Tim. 4.1, also Heb. 3.14, 6.6, 2 Pet. 2.15-21, and Matt. 7.21!'

One bit that particularly bemused me was this passage, on page 75 for what's in worth, in a chapter entitled 'Why and How Should I Read the Bible?'

A few years ago, a football match had been arranged involving twenty-two small boys, including one of my sons, aged eight at the time. A friend of mine called Andy (who had been training the boys all year) was going to referee. Unfortunately, by 2.30 pm he had not turned up. The boys could wait no longer. I was press-ganged into being the substitute referee. There were a number of difficulties with this: I had no whistle; there were no markings for the boundaries of the pitch; I didn't know any of the other boys' names; they did not have colours to distinguish which sides they were on; and I did not know the rules nearly as well as some of the boys.

The game soon descended into complete chaos. Some shouted that the ball was in. Others that it was out. I wasn't at all sure, so I let things run. Then the fouls started. Some cried, 'Foul!' Others said, 'No foul!' I didn't know who was right. So I let them play on. Then people began to get hurt. By the time Andy arrived, there were three boys lying injured on the ground and all the rest were shouting, mainly at me! But the moment Andy arrived, he blew his whistle, arranged the teams, told them where the boundaries were and had them under complete control. Then the boys had the game of their lives.

The point of this story, Reverend Gumbel tells us, is that without rules there'd be anarchy; people, he says, would be free to do whatever they wanted, causing people to get confused and hurt. Rules are needed, he says; people need to know where the boundaries are, so they can be free to enjoy the game. In some ways, he says, the Bible is like that -- it is God's rule book, in which he tells us what is 'in' and what is 'out', what we can do, and what we must not do.

Think about that, and have a read of the story again. The analogy doesn't really work, does it? After all, in the story, the problem isn't a lack of rules, it's the lack of a referee. Sure, Reverend Gumbel did his best, but he realised that he wasn't as familiar with the rules as some of the boys, and the boys themselves didn't agree on how to interpret or apply the rules. What's more, without a whistle he didn't have the authority to insist that the rules be applied consistently, and so he had difficulty preventing things from getting out of hand and people getting hurt.

What Reverend Gumbel appears to be saying here, and it would probably horrify him to realise this, is that we don't just need a rulebook, we need a referee to definitively interpret them. In effect, he's made a fine argument for the Papacy.