Monday 26 September 2016

Corruption in football, Allardyce & a broken English reputation

Corruption in British football involving the English #fa & the England manager, we've discussed corruption for years on Pitch Talk Live #ptlive shows (links available upon request), so for us (especially yours truly) the Telegraph’s revelations of a sting operation involving England manager Sam Allardyce are not a surprise at all.

We've said on #ptlive shows for years and discussed in detail about how corrupt FIFA, UEFA and our own English FA are (check out http://youtube.com/pitchtalk for numerous corruption in football special feature segments) and we’ve always said that sh*t would hit the fan at some point (I was waiting for the day personally). Hopefully this latest scandal is the beginning of the dissolution of the good old boy networks i’ve always been critical of at FA level…

FIFA were the first to get exposed but we knew it wouldn't be the last. Circumventing rules isn't new, when FFP was first suggested we said straight away that the bigger clubs would find loopholes to get around them, so Allardyce speaking on the Telegraph newspaper sting about circumventing third party ownership rules isn’t a new thing, it’s more of a who thing, as in, who are they talking about in terms of players. Remember, as we discussed on a #ptlive show in May 2015, agents have been deregulated by FIFA, so Allardyce's comments about getting agents on board plays into what we discussed about deregulation potentially leading to a 'wild west' of agents with any Tom, Dick & Harry getting into that sector and young players development not only being hampered, but neglected totally, but even that is only part of the problem.

Panorama bung scandal documentaries done on behalf of the BBC & Channel 4 Dispatches documentaries on buying football clubs (just to name 2 examples), these stings have been done before on multiple occasions. Harry Redknapp, Sven Goran Ericsson, Bryan Robson have all been stung at some point before and those are just in relation to British clubs/people, don't get me started on FIFA & UEFA or we'll be here all night.

Some say this Telegraph sting with Sam Allardyce hurts the integrity of our FA/English football’s reputation, i’d disagree on that because to me this is another in a long list of things that have damaged the integrity of English football. Our FA, those in & those around it have compromised the integrity of english football for many years, for many reasons including the callous destruction of the grass roots game, the loopholes in the homegrown rule, half baked rules for the development of the game including the suggestion of Premier League B-teams in English Football league, the very public brownnosing of Adnan Januzaj that was utterly embarrassing & sent complete mixed messages to young domestic talent, the lack of BAME representation at the top levels of the game, the list is endless.

As I said on one of our recent #PTLIVE special feature segments on our show, When you have corruption at the very top, don't be surprised if it's evident elsewhere and at every level of the game... From Claus Lundekvam talking about spot fixing during his days at Southampton in the 90s, to match fixing in Champions league matches from 2009 (see Debrecen’s GK v Liverpool fc), to El Salvador being approached to fix a game v Canada a few short weeks ago.

This is disappointing but nowhere near surprising because as we've said for years, to get rid of corruption in football, you'd have to literally stop the game, or to borrow the title of a tune from Nas’ 2001 album; Stillmatic... Destroy and Rebuild.

More stuff will hit the fan and more people will be thrown under the bus, but unless swift and decisive changes happen, it’ll keep happening. On Pitch Talk LIVE back in 2011 (and on other occasions) we called for Interpol to investigate FIFA and that eventually happened in 2015, hopefully that will happen in regards to this level of corruption in British football.

I wouldn’t hold my breath on that happening though, because just like i’ve said about FIFA & UEFA, too many people are making kickbacks on this corruption to want to ruffle feathers and they’ll do everything to stop proper investigations & nothing will change as it’ll blow over and the #parisiticmedia will move onto the next story and leave this in the rear view, which is why i’d like to see an independent entity clean this utter mess up, because how can you take the FA seriously, when they won’t take the scourge of corruption seriously…

One of the other sad things about this for me is the fact that us fans are the ones getting constantly shafted, whether directly or indirectly, immediately or eventually, whilst those at the top generally get off scot free in these situations with a slap on the wrist and a giant payoff and us fans are again left questioning our love for a game riddled by corruption and greed.

Unless people are brought to justice and held accountable for their actions, they’ll keep on happening and if all our FA do is come out and make a ‘statement’ about this and don’t take swift, draconian action, then i’ll have to quote HBK Shawn Michaels again and say ‘If I wanted crap out of you, i’d pick it out of your teeth’ to FA Chairman Greg Clarke and co.

Some serious sh*t is about to hit the fan and on a personal note, don't say we didn't warn you :-)


I'm Straight Shootin' LJA...and that's my opinion!!!




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Saturday 24 September 2016

Pedestrian buildups & sloppy defending = Defeats

Straight Shootin’ LJA would like to take a few of minutes of your time to focus a bit on 2 of the big games this past Saturday (24th September 2016), Manchester United 4-1 Leicester city & Arsenal 3-0 v Chelsea.

Manchester United 4-1 Leicester City - 
Just for the sake of full disclosure, I was hoping Man United would get beaten soundly as you know that Jose Mourinho would have had a bitch fit, but I digress. The reigning champions were humbled at Old Trafford and it wasn’t by accident. Like I said on a recent Pitch Talk live show, for the money paid for Paul Pogba, I’d want him influencing every game he's in, helping his team get back into the champions league in the process and i'm expecting a ballon d'or winner inside 2 years, because if world record fees are being paid, i’m having world class expectations.

Credit to Pogba though as he was impressive in this match…at last, he pinged a quality ball that Ibrahimovic blasted high, wide & butt ugly, was defending in the 2nd half and scored a quality header to reopen his Man United account, this is the start of the sort of impact most are expecting for £89m.

The Smalling header for the 1st goal, free header and a very poor goal to concede because if you're man marking you have to stay tight to your man, looking at Robert Huth as directly culpable there.
Generally, Leicester looked sluggish as hell as they were sitting deep and letting runs happen rather than closing down and stopping United from playing, already in direct contrast to last season and a repeat of what happened recently v Liverpool who put 4 goals past them. 2nd and 3rd goals, again, sloppy defending, Morgan and Simpson switched off, 1 on marking and the other from a quick corner and Pogba’s header for the 4th, as good as it was, was icing on the cake in a comfortable victory for United and looking at all 3 goals, 3 of the back 4 have to hang their heads in shame at how poorly they were defended.

This season Leicester (so far) haven't got that surprise factor any more, the onus is now on them to break teams down and because of this, teams now expect what they’re bringing. Also, they now lack the infinite energy of N’golo Kante running their midfield from deep, which allows other, more attacking players to unleash themselves creatively. Mahrez & Slimani looked lively in flashes early on, but Vardy was starved of service, which will cause any striker problems.

Demari Gray got an absolute belter as a consolation goal but to quote edge and christian from the WWF Wrestlemania 16 post show interviews - 'it's a lot easier to get to the top than it is to stay there' and ironically, that was said after their first title win (WWF tag team titles), so I thought that would be an apropos #OWR to drop here. Leicester have already lost 3 games, which is all they lost last season, so it’s crucial for them that they get it together, or they could end up like Chelsea last season…an awful title defence.


Arsenal 3-0 Chelsea - 
The omens looked ominous considering Chelsea's recent record against Arsenal but in hindsight, it looked like Wenger's 20th anniversary in charge of the side was the perfect ammunition for the Gunners to blow Chelsea away.

Even though Arsenal were dominant in the early exchanges in terms of possession & attacking intent, poor defending comes under the microscope immediately as Gary Cahill dithering on the ball for the 1st goal (similar to the game v Swansea) & Eden Hazard not tracking his runner properly on the 2nd goal shows how sloppy Chelsea are at the back against stern opposition.

About 36/37 mins into this match, Steve McManaman had a proper go about how slow Chelsea were building up and to me I thought… fair do’s. Playing across and back is easy to defend against as it allows your opposition to get set again, 3/4 backwards and/or square passes before you get into the opponents half is really easy to read and defend against. Also, looking further up the field, your striker/s could be in acres of space, but if the ball takes 5 minutes to get forward the space gets closed down before that ball ever gets played, so you basically end up nullifying your own attack, making it easy for your opposition and just like against my boyz Liverpool, Costa got isolated.

For Arsenal’s 3rd goal, look how quick that break was, forward passing all the time and more importantly, quick forward passing. Arsenal got onto the front foot and had the Chelsea defenders turning back towards their own goal, which (speaking as a centre back for SAL side Ibis Eagles AFC) defenders hate doing.

2nd half, Arsenal looked like they could have got another couple but players were getting in each others way, players were in acres of space but delivered poor crosses, but because chelsea were sitting so deep, there was no real chance of Arsenal getting caught on the counter attack, again, pedestrian buildup, allowing Arsenal to get their shape back ended up meant Chelsea not only had to be intricate, but absolutely postage stamp accurate in terms of passing to end up getting in a position to test Petr Cech. One example that finally happened was a great pass from David Luiz that set Michy Batshuayi in around 84 minutes in but unlike Alexis Sanchez, the young striker couldn’t finish the job, 1 shot on target all game has to be concerning, even at this early stage of the season for Chelsea & especially Antonio Conte.


Food for thought for the last 2 Premier League title winners, on a day where both were shocked and humbled in equal measure and were both beaten by 3 goal margins.

Don’t get me wrong, both winning sides deserved their victories and the margins of those victories were fair reflections of the games. Arsenal were ruthless and slick to say the least and i’m taking nothing away from them or Manchester United (as a Kopite you know that burns me lol) but I always look at the defending first on goals.



I'm Straight Shootin' LJA...and that's my opinion!!!




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