A solution from the past

 The Steve Archibald episode of Icons of Football (a BBC Scotland production) put me in mind of yet another long-lost football feature probably lost to the game for good. 

I’m not talking, as you might expect, about Tottenham Hotspur winning trophies, although my thought was inspired by footage of their 1984 UEFA Cup Final over Anderlecht - in which Archibald scored a penalty in the shoot out - a thought that if turned to reality could be used to inspire change for the good of both the game and the fan (so no chance then - Ed).

Archibald’s success from 12 yards, and captain Graham Roberts’(?) lifting of the trophy was seen in the stadium by 40,000 Tottenham fans, which younger readers (pah! - Ed) may consider an unusually generous allocation by UEFA for the conclusion of its second most prestigious club competition (the main prize was also won on penalties by an English team, Liverpool, at the home of AS Roma, who were also their opponents). Rather, this was the second leg of the Final, yes second leg, just like there were second legs in all the previous rounds, and indeed still are today in the modern Europa League concept until the Final, which is a one-off game often played in a stadium small enough or unreachable enough (like Baku in 2019) to cause mass resentment among supporters who have been on every part of the journey until it’s climax.

The ticket allocation protest is an annual one - for both domestic and European Finals. The corporate football family muscles it’s way in conscience-free, and even if you get a ticket it’s going to cost well over £100 on top of the travel. As much as I derided the European Conference League, I can’t deny that West Ham fans had a great time watching them win it in Seville, though it’s a shame my West Ham friends who go to every home game didn’t get the chance to be there. No doubt they enjoyed it at home or in the pub, but it’s never the same as being there, and even if the conclusive leg of a Final may not fall at your home ground, you’ve rightfully watched your team in the Final

Away games both domestically and in Europe are a closed shop at the top level, with the same people and their number of credits representing the team, but here surely is an opportunity for the supporters to be every much as part of the grand occasion as the pyrotechnics and the pointless, expensive pop acts.

So, in the words of Deniece Williams, from the song of the same year that Spurs triumphed in Europe at home, let’s hear it for the fans (Jeez -Ed).

You Gotta Have FIFA FIFA FIFA!

 So what gets FIFA president, Gianni Infantino out of bed in the mornings? Well, firstly it’s the person he shares it with, Gianni propelled daily from the XXXL mattress by his gay or disabled soulmate so that they can summon up their bit on the side via speed dial or swipe right, or whatever route it takes these days to get your non-financial needs met. 

With Gianni’s partner seemingly satisfied just by being associated with him, and the household chores looked after by one of the spare migrants picked up in Qatar, he is free to abandon all defensive duties and concentrate on his rolling mission to heal football for all. Gianni has no reason to challenge the bronzed hunk asking to enter the house as he leaves it, it’s just the undercover psychologist his partner thinks they’ve secretly employed to help acclimatise to living with a genius. Gianni gives the man a knowing wink as they cross paths. 

Gianni has heard that some people think Gianni Infantino is short-sighted in his views, but they (or He or She, hah!) don’t know that as he is walking to his Ferrari 250 GTO, he is mapping out the finer details of introducing cheerleaders during breaks in play. And not just the cheerleaders you might think He/him is thinking of, but male variants too. After all, if it turns out a woman can kick a ball, it must follow that a man can shake a pom pom. And let’s not dis-count the They contingent. Please don’t do that. Inclusion for All in the marketplace. 

Gianni’s head-lab (or to us mere mortals, brain), is both a blessing and a curse. He is burdened at times by the relentlessness of the schemes and ideas that fly up and down the wings of that lab, pressing and counter-pressing him until he is forced to mind-shute them away, the tips of his fingers planted against each side of that Lex Luther-like head in a ritual of unavoidable execution. Little wonder he has forged such strong links with Saudi Arabia. 

The ‘controversy’ over Saudi Arabia upsets Gianni deeply. The backlash over their chivalrous offer to sponsor the Women’s World Cup this summer is incomprehensible to him. Surely their interest proves they have respect for the fairer sex?! Plus, every World Cup needs the big names - and there’s none bigger, or longer, than Saudi ones! 

Gianni remembers 2018, and what a hit the Russian World Cup was. You don’t get a bigger character than Vladdy; larger than life itself. His influence drove that tournament up another level. Gave the gig a special aura. The players felt it, the fans felt it, and they have important roles to play in FIFA’s success; commodities that have to be managed and monitored. Gianni gets some stick for his choices of World Cup hosts, but he can’t think of one negative outcome from the tournament being held in Russia. All those do-gooders and their obsession with rights. Well, Gianni knows he has the right to produce a special World Cup. He is aware that Putin is getting some bad press at the moment, but when it all dies down, an invitation to join FIFA will be in the post. The Ukrainians might kick off a bit, but Gianni will play peacemaker (again!) and offer them an extra place in the 2030 Club World Cup, which, if all goes to plan, should be up to 64 teams by then.

Virtue-signalling is Gianni’s biggest problem in his mission to grow the game. It can only ever be about growth, otherwise you shrink, wither away. Gianni knows the value of enlargement, and the boost you need to get there. Yet the naysayers want to cut off the blood supply. ‘Oh, you can’t play this there, you can’t ban that.’ Jesus, the fuss they made when dear old Sepp made that little remark about women players needing to wear tighter shorts to spark interest in the game! Well, who exactly was complaining when that Englishwoman took her top off, swinging it around her head, when she scored that goal in the European thing? I didn’t see anyone rushing on to cover her up. And yet we’re not allowed to have a laugh about them swapping shirts at full time. Hypocrites the world over! 

But it’s a world Gianni knows he has to tread carefully in, because after all, he owns it. He takes it more seriously than anyone can ever imagine. Just look at all the thoughts and reflections inflicted upon him this morning, and then consider that he hasn’t even reached the driveway yet. The FIFA headquarters are still twenty minutes away. Gianni’s driveway is a 4G pitch, so actually about twenty one. He checks himself in the window of the Ferrari 250 GTO, assures himself that the navy blue suit and white trainers compliment each other perfectly. EarPods in, another day of reckoning awaits. 

The double-edged sword of self-improvement

Back in 2004, a friend of mine responded incredulously to the news that I’d been in a relationship for five years but wasn’t married yet. He asked a rather personal question after, and I felt judged and exposed. 

Was the problem mine or his? Had he touched a nerve, highlighted an area in my life that I needed to change? Knowing him as I did, his questioning would have come from  a kind place, but my feelings told me to be offended by the inference regarding the state of my relationship rather than spring into action to forge a better life. 

Circumstances, rather than my friend’s directness, ensured that we would drift apart, and when we met again last December, it was the first time in over a decade. Even then, after the smiles and the hug, he had a good-faith withering statement for me:

“So you didn’t become a journalist then?”

I don’t recall airing this as an ambition, although I had shown him some of my writing, which I was hopeful of turning into a book. Nevertheless, I could live with the career-based judgement, seeing as I agreed with it. 

I wrote match reports and player articles as part of a club fanzine for all the Sunday League teams I played for. Before a match in 97- 98, a team mate said I should be writing for Maxim or FHM, a remark that distracted me for a large part of the first half, my mind elsewhere from the thing I loved to do the most, suggesting that maybe writing was actually the thing I loved to do the most. 

My tools for self-improvement set me up with a move to a better football team for next season, bringing trophies and new friends, while my work life continued to drift, delivering no purpose beyond a salary. In fairness, I did cut my full-time drudgery in the hotel industry to go part-time in a sorting office so that I could create time to write my book, but I just ended up sleeping too much until I had to move out of home and find another full-time job.

Nearly twenty years on from my friend’s dismissive assessment of my relationship, I am still with the same person and still unmarried, but happily so, while the job is better but still not what I always dreamed of doing. I guess that’s the case for most of us. Some of us fight for fulfilment and satisfaction, while some of us aren’t quite so sure of ourselves. Some are happy with drifting along.

FIFA can never be accused of drift. Please don’t say that about them. Their thirst for more is unquenching. Bigger World Cup. Bigger Champions League. Bigger World Club Cup. World Cup every two years. Always pushing the envelope, which is A5 only for now.

I wonder if the FIFA president, Gianni Infantino, ever had a friend who questioned him. He recently turned up to the FIFA Best Awards in a navy blue suit and white trainers, although his fashion sense is the least of the things that he should be receiving a supportive word about. The Best Awards are symbolic of FIFA’s self-serving manifesto, grotesque, short-sighted and decadent in a world where people are struggling to heat their homes and put petrol in their cars. 

Infantino probably thinks his show of glitz and gluttony is a public service to the needy. He is, if you recall, someone who feels gay and disabled, statements of fact, vis-a-vis the justification of a Qatar World Cup. He didn’t go as far as identifying as a woman or a black man, so maybe he does have a friend who can help him reach a compromise, even if that person is actually his speech writer. 

Infantino has certainly made his mark on the world, never deny him that. But one day he might finally get round to doing something good.

Going for broke with caution

 They were all there on the Sporting pitch on Thursday night, Saliba, Saka, Martinelli, Zinchenko, Xhaka, Partey, with a tough game at an overachieving 7th placed Fulham coming up on Sunday afternoon. 2-2 it ended in Portugal, which suggests the first part of the gamble paid off…

In keeping with modern football, it’s all about gambling, and the different variations of gambling: you can rest the whole team, keeping them fresh for the London derby, but what if the likely midweek defeat re-introduces a losing habit? Please gamble responsibly.

Sam Matterface made an acute point (yes) during the Manchester City FA Cup 4th Round tie on ITV in January, referencing the six changes Mikel Arteta had made for that game and recalling Arsenal’s 4-0 defeat at Manchester United in the 5th Round in 2007-08 when Arsenal were also top of the Prem and juggling three competitions. Arsene Wenger’s heavily diluted team allowed Darren Fletcher to score twice and give the impression that Nani was a future superstar in a lifeless 4-0 defeat to their stand-out title rivals. Although this averted another game in the schedule, it did so at the cost of momentum. What followed was a ruinous run of form where Arsenal failed to win any of the next five league games, beginning with Birmingham City away, where a 2-1 lead was snatched away by a controversial last minute penalty. On a day when top scorer Eduardo had his shin broken after four minutes and wasn't to play again for 15 months, captain William Gallas sat on the St Andrews turf after the final whistle in a sulk, having already lashed out at an advertising hoarding. 

It’s impossible to tell how much of the collapse in form was down to luck or a negative mindset lingering from the Manchester United thrashing; had the penalty not been given to Birmingham City, confidence may have been restored, but then Gael Clichy perhaps could have exercised greater awareness to avoid the collision that led to it.

As it was, home draws with Aston Villa and relegation-bound Middlesbrough, sandwiched between a goalless draw at Wigan where Wenger railed at the state of the pitch, saw United take over at the top. After 2-1 away defeats to Chelsea and United, the title challenge was effectively over. Perhaps most gallingly, Arsenal still finished only four points behind eventual champions, United.

On the Monday before the ill-fated Cup trip to Old Trafford, Arsenal had beaten Blackburn Rovers 2-0 at home, and next day at work a Manchester United fan congratulated me on winning the league. It was only February, but Arsenal were five points clear of United with 12 games to go.

Fast forward 15 years and Arsenal are five points clear at the top of the table with 12 games to go. The same Manchester United fan congratulated me on winning the league some weeks ago. Arsenal don’t have an FA Cup encounter with their closest challengers to worry about, because that has already happened at the Etihad, and despite the again diluted team, it was a good enough one to put up a good fight against Haaland, De Bruyne et al, particularly in the first half, and the narrow 1-0 defeat thanks to City’s only effort on target even hinted that it was Arsenal who could take the psychological advantage.

Yet, that first domestic defeat since November (when Brighton & Hove Albion won in the League Cup) was followed by another at Everton the next Saturday, opponents who hadn't recorded a win in their previous 10 games, albeit buoyed by the new manager factor, in Sean Dyche. Then the following week, at home, Arsenal saw Brentford miss guilt-edged chances before equalising Leandro Trossard’s second half opener in injury time. In terms of the goal itself, Brentford’s fortune was greater than Birmingham City’s in 2007-08, owing to VAR official Lee Mason forgetting to draw the lines that would have flagged up two instances of offside, a farce that led to Howard Webb - himself a glaring error-maker of Emirates past, having somehow not given Liverpool a penalty in the FA Cup 5th Round in 2013-14 when Alex Oxlade Chamberlain had kicked Luis Suarez over in the box - apologising to Arsenal in his role of Referees chief. 

The malaise continued the following Wednesday when City came to the Emirates and won 3-1, and when the following Saturday Arsenal went 1-0 and then 2-1 down at Unai Emery’s Aston Villa, the blow-up that everyone had been waiting for seemed all but certified. But Zinchenko’s equaliser was followed by Arsenal’s turn to benefit from a last-minute strike, engineered by Jorginho and steered expertly in by Emiliano Martinez, who then compounded his afternoon by going up for a last-ditch corner that resulted in Gabriel Martinelli tapping in to an empty net for 4-2.

Arsenal showed in the next game at Leicester that a recovery was in progress with an absurdly comfortable 1-0 win, before Dyche’s Everton were beaten in style 4-0 at home. Three days later, home to Bournemouth would surely be as easy. Going a goal down in the first move of the game didn’t necessarily blunt that point of view, although going a second down after an hour due to poor defending at a corner wasn’t ideal. 33 minutes later though, sub Reiss Nelson hammered in a 97th minute winner, and with City having only drawn at Forest on the same afternoon as Arsenal had won at Villa, the five-point gap was back. 

So, onto the Sporting game as the Europa League returned. Contrary to what I may have said at the start of this, they weren’t all there; Ramsdale didn’t play at all, nor Odegaard, nor Gabriel, and Partey came on in the second half. It’s a delicate balancing act between rotation and morale; physical and mental. 

Arteta faces a duel-challenge that Emery, his predecessor, couldn’t manage in his first season succeeding Arsene Wenger in 19-20. Emery didn’t prioritise either route to Champions League qualification, going full throttle both domestically and in Europe. He was brave but without fortune. A fifth placed finish in the league, six points behind Spurs, was followed by Europa League Final defeat to Chelsea, a solid first half giving way to an inability to handle Eden Hazard, who inspired the 4-1 win for the Blues in Baku. Some Arsenal fans dubbed Emery ‘Bruce Rioja’, perhaps unfairly, if hilariously. Rioch’s first season after replacing a hugely successful manager in George Graham also ended in 5th, but conversely was heralded, enabling as it did Arsenal’s entry into the UEFA Cup, the forerunner to the Europa League (look it up if you don’t believe me, kids). Nevertheless, Rioch was sacked in the summer, frustrated with the board’s reluctance to back him in the transfer market,  and going public with it. The board stated, bizarrely, that his lack of European experience was the reason for his subsequent dismissal, an accusation that couldn’t be levelled at Emery, a triple Europa League winner with Sevilla, but for the Spaniard, the defeat to Chelsea was the proverbial writing on the wall. By November of the following season, he was too, sacked. 

The pattern of Emery’s downfall in the top four-Europa assault seems obvious, with a damaging home defeat to Crystal Palace and a draw with Brighton, also at home, both coming on the Sundays after Europa away wins at Napoli in the quarter final second leg and at Valencia in the semi-final second leg. 

Emery, as with Rioch, had issues convincing the board of his transfer targets during a complicated recruitment strategy that first saw elite scout Sven Mislintat heading this area, before Emery appeared to usurp him, leaving the highly regarded former Borussia Dortmund man without a role to play and leaving the club. Emery was believed to have pushed through the ill-fated loan signing of Denis Suares from Barcelona, which may have been on the board’s mind when denying him the prospect of Wilfred Zaha in favour of Pepe. The disastrous £72 million signing doesn’t necessarily mean Zaha would have worked out (would his pressing/defensive application be tolerated under Arteta, or rather would he have been willing to conform?) but it was clear that Emery had lost the board.

As seems often to be the case, one man’s disgruntlement and eventual firing wasn't the cut-and-dried solution to the club’s problems. With Chief Executive Ivan Gazidis leaving almost as soon as Emery arrived (not hanging around to see how his managerial overhaul panned out, in a very Farage type way) , Mislintat’s departure, followed by Emery’s, was also followed by that of Raul Sanllehi, the Director of Football. Sanllehi’s exit was as much as a relief as Emery’s, particularly as it spelt the end of a deeply troubling transfer policy that appeared to be based on notorious agent Kia Joorabchien’s client list of over 30’s footballers. The Edu-Arteta combo, with Arteta becoming club ‘Manager’ rather than ‘Head Coach’ has eradicated this toxic approach. 

Rioch’s problem was clearer cut (much to the relief of writer and reader of this blog.) His very arrival at Highbury was due to George Graham’s sacking for receiving kickbacks/bungs from an agent, a situation that led to the Arsenal board, led by David Dein, taking charge of transfers. Rioch, as with Emery under the initial Mislintat-led policy, would have had a say, but with no power beyond that. The summer signings of Dennis Bergkamp and David Platt would have been met with no objection by the new manager or board, deals that would have likely begun prior to Rioch’s arrival and ultimately secured the UEFA Cup spot with both players scoring in a late 2-1 win over Rioch’s former club Bolton Wanderers on the final day at Highbury. It was just that everyone else Rioch wanted (Ince and Kanchelskis believed to have been two of them) brought out the cliched tradesperson’s wincing noise of concern from the board. 

Wenger’s 07-08 team didn’t quite have it in them to pursue the loftier fronts of Premier League title and Champions League Final aspirations. The outstanding bright spot in the run-in for Wenger’s team was the 2-0 win at AC Milan that brought them a quarter final tie with Liverpool, but bad luck and carelessness cost them again when facing Rafa Benitez’s side. In the 0-0 first leg at home, Alexander Hleb was denied the most obvious penalty never given, while at Anfield, seconds after Emmanuel Adebayor had finished off Theo Walcott’s mesmeric run to make it 2-2 and put Arsenal ahead on away goals, Kolo Toure collided with Ryan Babel to concede a penalty, nothing like as blatant as the one Hleb didn’t get at The Emirates. Steven Gerrard scored the pen, and on the breakaway Babel officially closed Arsenal’s season. Finishing fourth and qualifying for the CL again didn’t count as success then, especially if achieved by Arsenal, in which case there was a weird type of ridicule somehow. 

Next season, perhaps the best thing about being back in the CL will be the extended rest in the schedule, the best possibility of a Tuesday-Sunday rather than the cemented Thursday-Sunday. But for now, its Fulham tomorrow, Sporting on Thursday and Palace on Sunday…

A FOMO shared is a FOMO halved

 The ill-fated upcoming half-term trip to Norfolk has now ignited spectacularly embittered emotion. Last week the car’s dashboard was repeatedly kicked, and there were cries of injustice and resentment. “Why are we going away that day? I don’t even want to go on holiday! It’s not fair!”

Thankfully, this heartfelt outpouring of anger isn’t coming from me, but from my 10 year old daughter, whose two closest school friends are going to a trampoline park on Wednesday (the same day that Arsenal play Manchester City live on my telly, which I won’t be watching as I’m on the same holiday.)

Unlike daughter, I’d kept my bug-bear zipped up, or at least until I used it to try and temper my daughter’s temper as we drove home from collecting her brother from school. A pain shared is a pain halved, or something. 

“But you can still watch it afterwards”, came the dismissal of my own application of woe.

“But it won’t be live”, I counter-pressed.

“But it’s (the trampoline park play date) all they’re talking about.”

And I get that. After the Manchester United win, I couldn't resist going on Twitter and hearing what a great time everyone had without me. So, do we hope Arsenal don’t win and that the friends have another fall-out at the trampoline park? What I can say for certain is that I’d much rather the girls don’t have a good time at the trampoline park, and therefore don’t go on and on about it, than Arsenal lose. As much as I have FOMO, I don’t want to live the pain of defeat, and I’m worried that the 115 charges brought against City for cooking the books will have a resurgent effect on their form. 

I would be very bitter about the probable wrongdoing of a Nation State somehow helping them in the title race thanks to  a siege mentality formed by that wrongdoing being challenged - but I have surprisingly not held on to the initial irritation at missing the big match. I’ll treat myself perhaps to the Etihad return in April, assuming it will be covered by Sky, which I can pay for via Now TV. Though there’s a chance, of course, that on the day I’ll decide that Match of the Day will actually be fine or that something else will be going on.

If I could just get to one game this season, it would be a success (and hopefully now that the touting websites have been drastically hit, the chances won’t be so remote) starting with the Palace sale on 14th - Valentine’s Day of course, obliging me to postpone romance for 30-45 minutes between 10am onwards: I’m more than up to it, having taken my missus to a fancy restaurant in Bushey the night Arsenal played at Bolton in the FA Cup in 2006-07.

I guess if I was happy to watch delayed coverage of an Arsenal match back then, then the same should apply for the City game, even if the stakes, as they say on Strictly Come Dancing, are higher. Meredith and I need to get through this together. Meredith’s dramatic articulation of her dismay may have helped her deal with her issue, unburdening herself, while the missus remains blissfully ignorant of mine. This may be working out ok now, but on the evening she may sense something is amiss while we’re having dinner, or playing cards, or intervening between the warring kids. Then you can bet I won’t be praised for keeping it all in and riding it out, stiff upper lip and so on. But if I say about the match in advance, then I’ll feel like a child. 

Just one who hasn’t vandalised the car yet. 

Adulthood

It’s March 1991, and the week leading up to the biggest game of the Barclays Division One season, Arsenal three points ahead of champions Liverpool and looking to stretch the lead at Anfield on the Sunday in a veritable ‘six-pointer’. That same Sunday afternoon, Mum has arranged to visit her best friend, Lesley, in hospital. With Dad. I can only speculate as to the response he gave her when told of the time and date, but he certainly released his disdain to me: “You know what’s happening that day, don’t you?”

But this season, this present day, the joke is on me. The game: Arsenal versus Manchester City, February 15th: Current Position of Competing Sides; 1st vs 2nd: Coverage: Amazon Prime Video. Streaming Service Access Available in My household: Amazon Prime Video (thanks to borrowed password from a family account). So What's the Problem, Then? It’s the first night of our half-term holiday away. Ah…

I knew all about the holiday of course, had agreed it was a great idea for a great price, and was looking forward to something that normal people did when school was out. I didn’t think to check the date before we booked, as I’m not in that sphere anymore, which in itself perhaps questions my disappointment; moreover, I’d only checked the date of the match on Sunday, when feeling that I’d missed out on the high of Arsenal’s 3-2 win over Manchester United with last minute winner. The chance to sell my soul to Sky Sports would have been there if I’d thought of it earlier. With two of the household horizontal with the virus going round the family, and me functioning the best, the 4:30pm kick off could have been purchased via Now TV, though by the time the opportunity presented itself, the match was imminent and I’d committed to picking up an urgent dose of peptol bismol for the missus (out of stock everywhere, it turned out.) The voice in the head played it down: you spent a tenner on Spurs away last April and look how that turned out. I agreed and headed for the chemists, switching the radio on, hearing the noise in the stadium and the thrill of the game and feeling a little irrelevant. 

So I was looking forward to the Man City game even more eagerly, only to find, 32 years after I was denied the highlights of this fixture’s 1991-92 incarnation by a mandatory family lunch (I sulked the whole way through it, determined that Mum, who’d engineered the outside occasion, saw how much she’d hurt me. For the record, I’d been to the actual game in question the previous afternoon), the family dynamic had struck again to thwart me. 

Unlike that 91-92 season of terrace-filled electricity, I cannot get in to the ground these days, no matter how early I get on the phone lines or web page when it’s ticket sales day, so have to rely on the telly to get closer to the players, to get to know them more. It’s what I’m left with. So missing the Man City home match is understandably a gripe. 

The other thing to say is that this fixture would already have been played had the Queen not died just before the weekend of the originally scheduled meeting. That decision to postpone matches still seems stupid, and is part of an ongoing conspiracy by the monarchy to ruin my football life. For instance, just 26 years ago no one cared about my hat trick in a pre-season friendly for Highground against Cotterells Club when it fell on the same day as Princess Diana being killed. It was completely overshadowed when the news came through. 

Friends, family and royalty, who needs them?

  

  

A Christmas philosophy

One of the stand-out Christmas successes this year was the redeployment of the recycling area in our kitchen. The bottom drawer, as mooted some time ago, is now host to a tub for recycling and a tub for rubbish. The visual effect is pleasing on the eye, in so much as the eye can’t see it, while the wooden shelf by the window is no longer filled with tins, cans and bottles while there is also no need for a bin-bag hanging off the fridge door anymore. It really is the gift that keeps on giving! 

Our 15 year old was moved to submit his approval of the new system, which though requires probably the same amount of visits to the outside bins, is literally contained and offloaded in one tip rather than, as previously, requiring several trips back and forth from the open window, where the missus would hand out the dispiriting collection of loose items as if we were operating through a piss-take hatch. 

The revolutionary system has hopefully exceeded the trial basis, which was basically proposed by the missus as a way of making sure I complied properly with the process and didn’t re-employ the window shelf as an overflow option. I believe that I have passed the probation period with flying colours, while still aware that any complacency could result in a written warning, or worse, a return to the previous recycling approach.

My mantra is the one espoused by Mikel Arteta, and also the one plagiarised by me on a recent Talking Additional Needs parental course: that mantra being ‘Trust The Process’. I must ignore the temptation to pop a couple of stray items on the side as much as the Arsenal player in possession should avoid hoofing the ball up the pitch when harassed by opponents near the goal. Arteta will back Granit Xhaka for knocking the ball in-off Chris Wood and past Bernd Leno as happened at Burnley last season, but you’ll be out in your ear if you take the easy option. Sniffing doesn’t stem the runny nose. Don’t be afraid of bumps in the road. The long game is the short game. 

Once upon a time  in this country, playing the ball across your own goal was one of the first no no’s you learned, the football equivalent of running with scissors, or taking sweets from a stranger. All part of the English DNA. Abroad of course, there has never been a wrong part of the pitch in which to ‘play’. I think it was during Italia 90’, when a pundit, possibly Ian St John, highlighted Roberto Donadoni showing a natural instinct to play the ball short and retain possession when presented with the ball in his own penalty area under pressure from attackers. Yet even in 2012-13, during the early stages of Brendan Rodgers’ managerial spell at Liverpool, he was hammered on telly by Alan Hansen because his defenders, unused as yet to building from the back, conceded terrible looking goals at West Brom. “Play percentages”, Hansen intoned with his usual arrogance. The following season, Rodgers’ team came within two games of winning the league ahead of Manchester City and Mourinho’s Chelsea. 

Yes, there have been some high-profile howlers, when footballers have been exposed by the instruction to play football, and its true, like Man U at Brentford this season, it does look so bad when it goes wrong. Gary Neville did his office bloke bit after that game, lamenting “just when you think they couldn’t sink any lower” but Ten Haag’s new team were never not going to win a game of football again that season. Indeed, they beat Liverpool in the next one and go into the derby with City on Sunday in something of a resurgence, Ronaldo-free and looking a good bet to get something from the game, adding to their booked League Cup semi-final appearance with Nottm Forest last week. 

In short, let’s not be afraid to try things as they may turn out to revolutionise your daily existence. The blog post you’re reading, for instance, appeared to be stuck and going nowhere, but then I found a way out, calmly and progressively, rather than just lobbing it in the bin, or leaving it on the side!