Redknapp Sacked by Spurs

I didn’t expect to be having to write this blog today. The news is filtering through that Harry Redknapp has been sacked by Spurs after failing to guide the side to Champions League football last season. There have been rumours of trouble for a couple of weeks now after Tottenham suffered a horrendous slump in form towards the end of the season, going from a clear third place to finishing a close fourth in the space of three months.

Harry Redknapp is left to ponder his next career move after being shown the exit at Spurs.

Of course much of that lack of form was brought about because of off-the-field issues. Firstly, ‘Arry had his day in court fighting charges of tax evasion before his well publicised courtship of the England manager’s post. He gambled his entire career on getting that job but sadly the gamble appears to have backfired. His behaviour over the past couple of months has been getting stranger and stranger as he veered from denying and then confirming his interest in the England job, stating that he would most likely sell most of Tottenham’s best players and then just this week saying that he wasn’t going to resign his post at White Hart Lane, basically offering Spurs the chance to sack him.

Those who know me will know that I’m not Redknapp’s biggest fan. I think that he’s over-rated having spent vast amounts of money for a moderate amount of success. That being said, I will defend his record at Spurs vehemently. He has galvanised a team that a few seasons ago looked like they were going to languish in mid-table and has turned them into genuine top four contenders. I think Spurs will find it difficult to replace him and tonight’s events could end up being a disaster for both parties. I can’t wait to hear what he’s got to say on the matter and where his next move lays – maybe a spell abroad?

David Moyes could be Redknapp’s replacement.

So where do Tottenham turn now? Well the early runaway favourite is Everton’s David Moyes. Moyes is one of my favourite managers in the Premier League and the complete opposite to Redknapp. He’s shy, thinks before he speaks and has achieved minor miracles at Everton on a shoestring budget. He guided them to their staple 7th place in the league (above arch-rivals Liverpool) and has got them playing some lovely stuff. I just think that Spurs will be simply too different to Everton. Moyes is in a good place at Goodison Park and we’ve seen how managers who are nicely bedded at their club leave and end up being failures at their new club (Hodgson at Liverpool, Hughes at City etc…) I can see Moyes ruining his chances of the Man United job (the one he really wants) with a terrible spell at Spurs but on the other hand it could be the thrust into the big time that he deserves.

I think he’d relish the chance to work with the young, talented team that Tottenham have and he might even be able to persuade a few of his Everton boys to follow him down to London. I’m just not convinced that Moyes would want to leave Everton yet. I’m sure he sees them as deserving of a place in the top four and won’t leave until they get there. Whatever happens, this story has massive implications for the start of the season and Spurs fans will be hoping an appointment is made swiftly.

The Premier League Can No Longer Lay Claim to Being the Best League in the World

For a long time now there has been an arrogance in English football that the English Premier League is the best league in the world. The clubs, the players, the media and the fans all are entirely convinced that the football they are seeing is better than anything else out there. Yet, with only one English club left in any European competition, can that still be the case?

The logo depicts itself as a beacon to the rest of the footballing world, but just how true is that?

There was a time when that was certainly true. The days of Ronaldo, Tevez and Rooney at United and Drogba, Terry and Lampard all in form at Chelsea proved that no-one could touch the Premier League. In addition, there were Liverpool, Arsenal and Spurs sides who were improving all the while and a tightness around the mid-table. All this culminated in the 2008 Champions League final in Moscow between, you guessed it, Man United and Chelsea. The tight 1-1 draw followed by United edging the penalty shootout was supposed to reflect the fact that at the pinnacle of English football the defences are rock solid, the midfield is a fountain of creativity and the strikers are capable of the most spectacular goals. Of course what we know now is that Premier League football has a habit of being defensive and at times desperate.

This isn’t a problem confined to the Premier League though. Serie A, once that brilliant and unpredictable league that everyone tucked into their Sunday lunch with, now is a shadow of its former self. Where the best players in the world once roamed, only a few really top class players remain and the game is still trying to forget the unfortunate match-fixing scandal of a few year’s ago. I’m not saying that English clubs are going to get embroiled in anything like that but a look north of the border at what has happened to Rangers might just provide a wake up call to many of the teams. If just one big club goes under and there is an outflow of the foreign owners, what will happen then?

I’ve been banging on to anyone who’ll listen that the Spanish became the home of the best football on the planet as soon as Real Madrid and Barcelona opened their pockets and brought players such as Cristiano Ronaldo, Kaka, Alexis Sanchez, Fabregas and Xabi Alonso over to La Liga. Having the three best players in the world for the last few seasons playing in La Liga has raised the entire standard of Spanish football. Por ejemplo (full of surprises aren’t I?) just look at Atheltic Bilbao’s brutal dismantling of Manchester United a few weeks ago. United, leading the Premier League and supposedly England’s best club, were outplayed and out-thought both at home and away. Bilbao played some scintillating stuff while United very often resorted to long ball tactics – not exactly dynamic is it? Meanwhile, Bilbao have tonight secured their place in the semi-finals of the Europa League with another impressive win over Schalke. This from a team who three years ago played a friendly against my local team, Colchester United and were very much cannon fodder for the bigger clubs in Spain until recently. The real issue though is that we’ve lost quality from the Premier League. People can point to Van Persie,Aguero and Silva but none of them have the impact that Ronaldo did at United or that Henry did at Arsenal. In Ronaldo and Henry, the Premier League had its first two players who could potentially be labelled in the ‘greatest ever’ category but inevitably they had to move on at some point and the Premier League just hasn’t been able to lure a player of that calibre since.

Fernando Torres' lack of form symbolises the plight of the Premier League

That has led to the league becoming tighter and in some people’s eyes better. I think it’s great to see teams like Newcastle and Spurs becoming genuine fourth place contenders but that sort of system has been in place for years in Spain. Valencia, Villareal, Atletico Madrid and Sevilla regularly fought it out for the European places over the past few seasons. I think another issue with the Premier League is that we have a lot of big names over here, on big pay packets but they’re not in their peak like they are over in Spain. Torres, Terry, Ferdinand, Berbatov, Drogba and Gerrard would have been the most desirable collectibles in the Panini sticker album a few seasons ago but now they’re out of form and looking old. I know that most people say that the only reason La Liga is so popular now is down to Messi and Ronaldo. But if you look beyond them, beyond Real Madrid and Barcelona even and you can still see real talent. There’s Iker Muniain at Bilbao, Falcao at Atletico Madrid, Roberto Soldado at Valencia, Jeremy Toulalan, Ruud Van Nistelrooy and Julio Baptista at Malaga and Jesus Navas at Sevilla. Almost every team has a talisman who could make the jump over to anywhere in European football and I can’t really see someone like Tim Cahill doing that – sorry Everton fans. The depth of the league isn’t quite up to the level of late 80s/early 90s Serie A but it’s getting there.

Lionel Messi, just one of the many reasons why La Liga is so entertaining

The style of football is also much prettier on the eye over there. I’m very much someone who’d appreciate a 0-0 draw full of attacking, quick passing football instead of a 2-0 win that was claimed through dull passages of play and physical football. People fawn over Barcelona’s style but watch Revista de La Liga and the majority of teams play football like that, it’s just that Barcelona do it better. The closest we have to that here are Arsenal, Swansea and Man City but only when they’re on form. I’ve just lost faith in the English game and am genuinely fearful that if we get far enough to play Spain at Euro 2012 that we’ll be completely slaughtered in front of millions of viewers. I’d dare say Germany would do the same – the Bundesliga is becoming a cracking little league too. Dortmund have a young, brilliant team while Bayern are a match for Barcelona and Madrid for the title of best all-round unit.

I’m not saying that the Premier League is the worst league in European football, far from it actually, but we just need to stop this attitude that just because our league is the richest in the world, it doesn’t make it the best. Chelsea, Man City and United can have all the millions in the world but without a player to match Messi then they might as well have nothing. Coming onto Barcelona I’d like to say that they were an absolute joy to watch the other night against Milan. Messi, Xavi and Iniesta will be remembered as three Gods of the game. It’s also important to remember that they beat a strong Milan side without 20 goal a season man David Villa and without a recognised left-back. Chelsea will give it their best, as they always do, but I fully expect them to be taught a footballing lesson by the Catalan giants. Those four years since Moscow must feel like an awful long time ago….

Round-Up/Australian Grand Prix Preview/Get Well Soon Fabrice Muamba

Well, what a busy few days it has been in the world of sport. We’ve seen: Synchronized win the Gold Cup in sensational style and Kauto Star bow out of Cheltenham with dignity (a blog post on him coming up in the next few days), Wales clinch a brilliant Grand Slam in the Six Nations, Sachin Tendulkar finally reach his 100th international century as well as the beginning of the 2012 Formula 1 season and tragic events in North London – more of which later. It’s been a crazy week and one that I’ve thoroughly enjoyed (not least of which because I finished £80 up on my bets at Cheltenham.)

Let’s have a more in-depth look at the Australian Grand Prix and let me announce a fairly ambitious project that The Eternal Sunshine will be undertaking for the entire F1 season. We’ll be aiming to cover every race, bringing in analysis and opinion in the form of a race preview after qualifying and a race review after the main event on the Sunday. Hopefully it’ll be a season to remember and not just a constant stream of S. Vettel at the top of the timesheets and leaderboards. Now, unless you’ve been living under a rock for the last year then you’ll know that the BBC have lost the exclusive rights to broadcast F1 until 2018 and they will now be forced to share the coverage with Sky. The BBC will broadcast 10 races live with the rest being covered by highlights later in the day while Sky will be showing every session of every race weekend live and in “High Definition with Dolby 5.1 surround sound” as the rather scary voiceover man keeps telling me everytime I switch on the new channel. Oh yeah, they’ve dedicated an entire channel to F1, GP2 and GP3 (no Le Mans?) which is a clear sign of their dedication to a sport that they have pretty much neglected to mention for the last 10 years. So for this part of the preview I’d like to discuss the Sky broadcasting effort.

Who will win the ratings war?

I’ve watched every single session on Sky so far and the coverage has actually been very good – typical Sky though, lots of shiny graphics and random features that are under the illusion that they bring the viewer closer to the sport but we all know that they are just fillers. I liked their feature on Caterham but there is very much of an ITV feel when it comes to the stats they like to feature before the ad breaks. The presenting team are by far the biggest issue so far. Simon Lazenby is still very green when it comes to F1 and has very much the look of the new boy trying to fit in – he missed a golden opportunity to make a name for himself when he didn’t try and doorstop Alonso when the Spaniard was heading back to the pits after crashing out of Q2. Martin Brundle is still Martin Brundle, very knowledgeable, quite a big ego about his credentials and wanting to be lead presenter while Damon Hill is Sky’s Eddie Jordan without any of the brashness. I loved Damon as a driver but at Sky he never seems to talk without being spoken to which is a shame because he has some good opinions and insight. Ted Kravitz is charming as ever but may face competition from the BBC which we’ll discuss in a second. The main bugbear of my time watching the channel though was the presence of the “Skypad” – basically a studio that houses a giant touchscreen and where Georgie Thompson apparently is caged during the race weekend. She offers nothing to the coverage other than going “Go on then Anthony Davidson, tell everyone what they need to know while I stand here and look pretty” – typical Sky then. As for the rest of the programming, David Croft is a decent commentator but needs to stop trying to out-Murray the great Murray Walker and the ad breaks need to be introduced better. Oh and get some decent programming on the channel, don’t just repeat the same old shows over and over!

I came away from Sky to watch the BBC’s efforts and that’s when it hit me – Sky just didn’t match up. Jake Humphrey is a much better presenter than Lazenby and has a much more natural rapport with the drivers and his co-presenter. Coulthard is much more relaxed in his role as a number 2 and Ben Edwards is perhaps the most talented commentator working at the moment. Where the BBC has really upped the game though is in the technical analysis. Ted Kravitz was very good at his job but could only go so far in his analysis but his replacement, ex-Jordan designer Gary Anderson, can be much more detailed. His reports so far have been simply superb and enlightening, check out his analysis of Ferrari’s woes for example. The BBC’s coverage was just slicker and the change in personnel has really freshened the feel of the programme up and the reduced running time has also improved the show. It wasn’t like Sky was bad but as my girlfriend put it, it was like having to adjust to Matt Smith as The Doctor after being used to David Tennant, who she loves. Round one to BBC then.

Away from the broadcasting, qualifying itself was a thrilling affair. I can’t remember a session as exciting as that for many years. The field is so tightly packed this season that anyone from McLaren, Red Bull, Lotus, Mercedes or even the Williams’ could have taken pole position. Let’s go through session by session.

Qualifying 1

With 24 cars on track the biggest problem in the opening minutes was traffic with the HRT of Nahrain Karthikeyan attracting particular criticism as he held up first Alonso then Vettel. Neither HRT would set a time within 107% of the quickest time in Q1 so will not make the grid – a relief to the rest of the cars I’m sure. The usual suspects of Marussia (formerly Virgin) and Caterham were eliminated after Q1 but by far the biggest shock of the session and of the day was Kimi Raikonnen’s sloppy performance that left him down in 18th, later revised to 17th after Perez got a penalty for replacing his gearbox. Raikonnen had struggled all weekend with a steering issue and never looked like matching the pace of his less experienced teammate. A mistake coming out of the Waite chicane that put him on the grass cost him a faster time and it’ll be fascinating to see how he makes up the places tomorrow.

Qualifying 2

Q2 was always going to be a tight battle with one big team going out and that big team turned out to be Ferrari. They’ve struggled with their car all through the winter and in Melbourne it looked twitchier than ever with Massa ending up in the gravel in practice and Alonso wrestling the car almost every lap. The pull-rod front suspension seems to have not worked the way the team expected although we’re truly seeing how good a driver Alonso is and that can only be good for the neutral. Massa just couldn’t handle the imbalance of the car and ended up 16th. Alonso was just getting his eye in and looking like he could scrape into Q3 but he dropped a wheel onto the grass on the entry to turn 1 and ended up beached in the gravel, leaving him 12th. Another disappointment were the two Saubers who again failed to live up to their winter testing pace and they ended up 13th and 22nd (after Perez’s gearbox change.) Toro Rosso were very solid and their new car continued to impress with Ricciardo getting into Q3 ahead of Jean-Eric Vergne in 11th. Paul di Resta was left rueing a lack of consistency on his tyres and traffic as he languished down in 15th but the big trend in Q2 was that the midfield was so tight this season.

What a way to bounce back - he has got to be happy with that

Qualifying 3

This session was all about one man – Lewis Hamilton. His lap in the early minutes of Q3 was not beaten with only Jenson Button coming close. The McLarens had looked strong all weekend but I’m not sure if that’s down to pure pace or the fact that their car is suited to this circuit. Romain Grosjean put in the performance of the day to snatch 3rd for Lotus ahead of 7 time World Champion Michael Schumacher. Mercedes are the talk of the paddock after it was revealed that their DRS system has a built in F-duct within the rear wing. When the DRS is activated, the airflow is re-distributed around the rear of the car via a slot within the endplate – all very simple – but Lotus have complained the F-duct is driver operated and protested the qualifying results. Personally, I think it’s perfectly legal and the F-duct is acting as a secondary device but then so was the infamous ride-height system that Lotus and Ferrari were working on so by that basis, that should be deemed legal too. Rosberg, in the other Silver Arrow,  had two minor mistakes that cost him time and left him in 7th. As for Red Bull, they massively disappointed me today. All the talk had been of them still having to show their hand and Christian Horner even said that they hadn’t run a low fuel programme all winter before qualifying but when push came to shove, they just didn’t have the pace. Webber qualified 5th with KERS issues and Vettel could only manage 6th. The reigning World Champion looked uneasy without the backing of the blown diffuser and ended up in the gravel in FP3. Maybe they’re hiding something for the race but they’re facing a real uphill battle. Maldonado, Hulkenberg and Ricciardo rounded out the top 10.

So, what awaits us in the race tomorrow? I can see McLaren being very strong if their winter testing race pace was anything to go by but don’t rule out Red Bull just yet – it’s unlike them to give up without a fight. With new tyres and less technical innovations this season it will be more about the strategists and the drivers. Schumacher could well be on for a podium while further back the Ferraris and Raikonnen won’t find carving up the field easy this season. Kimi will be given a baptism of fire on his return to the sport. My prediction is this:

1.Button (Vodafone McLaren Mercedes)

2. Hamilton (Vodafone McLaren Mercedes)

3. Schumacher (Mercedes AMG Petronas)

But as those of you who follow this blog will know, my predictions are woeful!

Finally, onto a very upsetting story indeed as the FA Cup clash between Bolton Wanderers and Tottenham Hotspur was abandoned tonight because England U21 international and Bolton player Fabrice Muamba collapsed in the middle of the game. I was instantly reminded of Marc Vivien-Foe’s tragic death after he collapsed on the football pitch playing for Cameroon. It’s something that puts the game and sport in general into perspective and has united the entire footballing community behind one cause. I have felt for a long time that clubs should have more stringent medicals and hopefully this incident will force those responsible to recognise that fact. Close analysis of the heart and brain should be taken every few months to ensure that a player is capable of playing top level football every week. Fabrice is a wonderful talent and I would like to echo one Bolton fan’s statement: “I don’t care if he never pulls on a Bolton shirt again as long as he pulls through”. Our thoughts are with Fabrice and his family at this time.

On that sombre note, I bid you goodnight. I shall see you tomorrow after the first Grand Prix of the year with full coverage, pictures and analysis of the show at Albert Park. It will be the written equivalent of “High Definition with Dolby 5.1 surround sound”.