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Cook's PR disaster, understanding how football works and Mancini doesn't lie

Gabriele Marcotti

Funny how, when the weather gets cold, Garry gets cooking. Last winter it was the Kaka extravaganza when the Manchester City chief executive turned a transfer coup (even just getting to the point where Milan agreed a sale was a huge achievement and one for which he and his advisors should have received more credit than they did) into a public relations fiasco with his absurd accusations of "bottling it" and the low blow directed at Kaka's father, Bosco, whom Cook deemed not "sophisticated" enough to represent his son. (Never mind the fact that Bosco is a civil engineer, whereas Cook spent most of his adult life flogging shoes and sports apparel).

Manchester City's handling of the sacking of Mark Hughes was, simply put, terrible. The idea, peddled by Cook on Monday, that Hughes wasn't told he was being sacked until after the Sunderland game because the chairman, Khaldoon Al-Mubarak wanted to tell him in person and was so busy that he couldn't physically be in Manchester until 10am on Saturday, is not an acceptable explanation for such uncivil behaviour. For a start, there is little question that Hughes had heard the rumours by that point. I can only imagine what was going through his head as he showed up at the stadium to take charge of the game, too dignified and too professional to hunt down Cook or his sidekick, Brian Marwood and shake a straight answer out of them.

We'll never know, unless Al-Mubarak tells us, which is unlikely, since the man doesn't do too much public speaking. But to me it smacks of passing the buck. I'd love to ask him the following question: "Hey, if you heard rumours that your boss, Sheikh Mansour, had decided to sack you and put you out of work, would you rather get confirmation from one of the Sheikh's minions who are all around you or would you rather be left in limbo for twelve hours, with no choice but to go about your job in front of tens of thousands of people (and millions watching around the world), because hearing it straight from the Sheikh's mouth will mitigate the pain and the humiliation?"

My guess - but heck, I could be wrong - is that Al-Mubarak would choose the former. But, yes, if we want to follow the Cook line and blame Hughes's public humiliation entirely on Al-Mubarak let's go ahead and do so. The only thing I wonder is whether, at any point, it crossed Cook's mind to say: "Gee, Khaldoon, are you sure it's such a good idea? I appreciate the gesture of telling him face-to-face, but we're heading for a PR disaster here and maybe we really should think about sparing him some embarassment ..." Maybe Cook did suggest that and was overruled. Maybe he did not. We may never know.

Stability accomplished, now Quinn's mission is to fill the Stadium of Light

George Caulkin

As Steve Bruce reflected on the carnage at Eastlands last weekend, with Mark Hughes sacked for taking Manchester City to sixth in the table, he made a faintly startling observation. “I could be next,” he said. Except that, no, he couldn’t. Bonds are solid at the Stadium of Light and, as Niall Quinn explains (exclusively) here, Sunderland’s manager enjoys the full faith of his employers.

Sunderland are tenth in the Barclays Premier League. This time last year, the club were embroiled in a relegation battle, Roy Keane’s departure was fresh in the memory and their identity had become blurred. There may be frustration on Wearside that fine victories over Liverpool and Arsenal have been followed by defeats against Wigan Athletic and Fulham, but transforming mentalities is not an overnight endeavour.

We already know what Bruce’s Sunderland means, or will come to mean. It means the hunger and alacrity of Darren Bent, the committed drive of men like Lee Cattermole and Lorik Cana, the rugged defending of Michael Turner. A lack of consistency is understandable in the context of their difficulties over the previous two years, but Bruce and Quinn are building something tangible, not producing it from nowhere.

Debate: Should Liverpool sell Steven Gerrard?

 

Patrick Barclay, Chief Football Commentator

It is all very well, in discussing Liverpool’s woes, to invoke the spirit of Shankly. But how do you define it? You can make a start by listening to 73 minutes and 30 seconds of the great man giving his thoughts to John Roberts, the journalist with whom he collaborated on his autobiography two years after retiring as manager in 1974.

Order the CD — The Amazing Bill Shankly — for £9.99 and I doubt that you will find a better distillation of the spirit that was to make Anfield a fortress than this, delivered in Shankly’s machine-gun Ayrshire tones:

"Now I want one thing. I want loyalty. I don’t want anybody to be carrying stories about anybody else. If somebody comes to me with a story — I warn you about this — whoever you’re telling it about won’t be the one who goes. It’ll be you.

"You’ll go — out! I don’t care if you’ve been here 15 year [sic]. I want everybody to be loyal to each other. And to do everything you do for Liverpool Football Club. And we’ll all get together. And that will make strength . . . And maybe one day we’ll get players as well!"

Pragmatic Gary Megson deserves more credit for Bolton revival

James Ducker

Gary Megson does not have Jose Mourinho’s good looks or a French accent like Arsene Wenger and the more fickle element of Bolton Wanderers’s support, who decided long ago that he was not their cup of tea, will probably continue to hold that against him until they succeed in their efforts to have him replaced.

They will try to tell you that it has nothing to do with image and everything to do with results, pointing in their defence to the fact that they took great delight in seeing Arsene Wenger routinely paint their team as some sort of monster during Sam Allardyce’s reign as Bolton manager after Arsenal had been given another bullying at the Reebok Stadium. It is nonsense, of course.

Megson’s face doesn’t fit as far as some Bolton fans – but by no means all – are concerned and it never will, which is a shame because the former West Bromwich Albion manager has done a far better job than a lot of people give him credit for.

He did not succeed Allardyce. He followed Sammy Lee, who did so much damage in just over six months in charge at the Reebok that the task facing Megson upon his arrival in October 2007 was colossal. Lee is a lovely bloke but his managerial reign should go down as one of the worst in recent history, the woefully flawed vision of a man who tried to do far too much far too quickly in a well intentioned but terribly misguided attempt to distance himself from Allardyce, his predecessor whose shadow loomed so large.

Bolton had taken five points from their first 10 league games that season and were staring into the abyss. If they had kept that form, they would have finished nineteenth with 19 points and been relegated. Instead they ended the season with 37 points, one above the drop zone, and that despite selling Nicolas Anelka to Chelsea in the January. Anelka, incidentally, is one of only two players – El-Hadji Diouf being the other – who Megson inherited from Lee who are still playing in the Barclays Premier League.

That just goes to show the scale of the rebuilding job Megson undertook when he joined Bolton, even if his first season (or rather, three-quarters of a season) was about survival by any means necessary. Have the dissenters really given much thought to where Bolton might be now had they gone down that season?

Some appear to still live in an Allardyce bubble, but it is seriously doubtful that Allardyce would be able to replicate even one of those top six or top eight finishes with the Premier League as strong at the top end as it is now. Manchester United, Chelsea, Arsenal and Liverpool aside, Manchester City, Aston Villa and Tottenham Hotspur are stronger than they have ever been, so are Fulham, Sunderland have money to spend and Everton will surely be back up towards the top end of the table once their injury problems relent. That is ten teams already. When you look at it that way, finishing thirteenth – as Bolton did last season – would probably constitute an achievement this term.

Bolton are also a more attractive team to watch under Megson than Allardyce. Sure, they are not always pretty on the eye, but the 3-3 draw at home to Manchester City was an absorbing encounter and demonstrated their ability to play football as well as ask teams some tough questions from set pieces. Megson is pragmatic and demands a little rough and tough, but the signing of players such as Tamir Cohen and Lee Chung-Yong, ball players both, also points to a manager who is not content solely with route one tactics. Kevin Davies’s goal in the 2-2 draw against Spurs at the Reebok Stadium was the product of one of the moves of the season. If Arsenal had scored it, we would still be gushing about it now.

The £11 million signing of Johan Elmander, the Sweden forward, from Toulouse remains a stick with which some like to beat Megson, but all managers are entitled to a mistake. Yes, the money could have been better spent and Bolton do not exactly have that sort of cash to waste, but this is also the same manager who signed Ivan Klasnic on a season long loan from Nantes. The Croatia striker’s goal in the 3-1 win at home to West Ham United last night, which moved Megson’s team out of the relegation zone, was his fifth in as many league starts for the club. And how about the capture of Gary Cahill from Aston Villa, surely the best £4.5 million spent in the top flight in years. Martin O’Neill, the widely feted Northern Irishman, may well lead Villa into the Champions League this season but Megson saw something in Cahill that O’Neill obviously didn’t.

Phil Gartside, the Bolton chairman, was given a lot of flak for appointing Megson but it was a good decision. Last week, he came out in support of the manager, while, at the same time stressing that “none of us are stupid, if you are second bottom of the league, you are under pressure”. The response was a draw against moneybags City and a win at home to West Ham, whose fashionable manager, incidentally, is having a rather tough time of his own at the moment.

No case for the defence

With Nemanja Vidic taken off with a calf injury during Manchester United’s 3-0 win at home to Wolves last night and Wes Brown out for a fortnight with a recurrence of a hamstring strain, Sir Alex Ferguson is likely to again be left with a threadbare defence for the game against Fulham at Craven Cottage on Saturday. Ritchie De Laet, a 21-year-old with just two league starts, could be asked to partner Michael Carrick, a midfield player, in central defence with Darren Fletcher, another midfield player, at right back. Somehow I doubt Roy Hodgson, the Fulham manager, will be making ten changes to his team for that one.

Hughes right to see red over Bellamy blunder

Mark Hughes, the Manchester City manager, had a point when he called yesterday for the FA to change its rules so that retrospective action can be taken over incidents such as that involving Craig Bellamy, who was shown a highly contentious second yellow card during the 3-3 draw against Bolton Wanderers on Saturday for a dive that wasn’t.

Because yellow cards cannot be rescinded except in cases of mistaken identity, Bellamy will be forced to sit out City’s match away to Spurs this evening, even though he was the victim of a mistake by Mark Clattenburg, the referee.

The problem, though, is this: if the authorities give clubs the right to appeal yellow cards, is there not a grave danger that referees will only be undermined farther by managers eager to get more and more decisions overturned. Retrospective action, in theory, is fine if it means a player having a yellow card changed to a red if he has committed a career-ending challenge or, in Bellamy’s case, a dismissal overturned because one of the yellow cards he received was, to quote Hughes, “laughable”, but what happens when managers try to push their luck by requesting legitimate bookings be looked at simply because, in their eyes, they weren’t sure a foul or infringement had been committed?

Surely we need to empower referees, not question their decision-making further and leave them more open to ridicule or unnecessary and potential damaging retrospective action. There is a way around all this, of course, and it is called video technology. It is by no means a perfect solution but surely if it is introduced we’ll see less incidents like that involving Bellamy at the weekend that so angered City and Hughes.

Why McCarthy's pragmatism is no outrage

Oliver Kay

The instinctive reaction upon hearing about the Wolverhampton Wanderers team that Mick McCarthy would be sending out at Old Trafford last night was one of disappointment. Not outrage, not disgust, just disappointment.
 
It was not a great moment for Premier League football, but nor, in my view at least, was this the start of a national scandal.
 
Call it wishful thinking, but I don’t regard this as the thin of the wedge, with managers content to field a reserve XI at Old Trafford, Stamford Bridge and elsewhere in the belief that it is better to conserve their first-team players’ energies for the more winnable games that lie ahead.
 
It took a particular set of circumstances to prompt McCarthy to field the team he did. It is relatively rare, over the course of the season, for a club to have three Premier League fixtures in eight days – unless they are involved in the later stages of a European competition, in which case they are likely to have assembled a squad in which to deal with such scenarios.

Wolves fans deserve more, credit to Yeung and what is Mourinho up to?

Gabriele Marcotti

Did Mick McCarthy have an ethical obligation to field a more credible side than the one which stepped out at Old Trafford against Manchester United, the one which featured just one holdover from the XI that won away to Spurs on Saturday?

Premier League Rule E20 states that clubs must field full-strength teams, but it may as well not exist since, in practical terms, it's unenforceable. Ultimately, it's the manager's choice. And if McCarthy reckons he's probably going to lose away to United anyway and would rather keep players fresh for the "relegation six-pointer" against Burnley on Sunday, he has a right to do so. His job, after all, is to keep Wolves up and, if this helps, so be it.

The one thing which, perhaps, he could have done differently is to consider the feelings of the fans who travelled to Old Trafford expecting to see the "real" Wolves. This is not the League Cup, fans expect to see their clubs field something approaching their best XI.

You can see why some Wolves fans may feel cheated. A gesture towards them might be a good idea at this point. Just as, with hindsight, it might have been a good idea to share his plans ahead of time.

North East fans yearn for success, they don't expect it

George Caulkin

Expectation. In the context of North East football, how annoying, cliched and utterly misplaced, is that single word? You hear it all the time, often from the lips of tired, beaten managers, getting in their excuses for another failure, another pay-off: “The expectations are so high, too high, up there.” Well, no. They’re not. Quite the opposite. Amongst most supporters, expectations slumber in a long hibernation.

Over the last half-century and more, Middlesbrough, Newcastle United and Sunderland have won a meaningful trophy apiece; respectively the League Cup, the Fairs Cup and the FA Cup. If there is any expectation, it is of ultimate disappointment. Manchester United and Chelsea fans may expect to win things, but in our region, history and precedent simply do not allow that luxury.

Rangers cannot afford to lose Kris Boyd but cannot afford to keep him either

Graham Spiers

 

Few situations at Rangers have been odder in recent years than the current case of Kris Boyd. The facts are, the prolific striker wants to remain at Rangers when his current contract expires in June, and his club also wish him to stay put. Yet Boyd, almost inevitably, will soon be bidding goodbye to Ibrox, possibly even in January.

The history of football is littered with cases of players who, at crucial junctures, have made the wrong decision in terms of a career move, and lived to regret it. Boyd, in the weeks and months ahead, has to carefully weigh up this pitfall, though the circumstances may be out of his hands.

Roman Pavlyuchenko is not a player worthy of Liverpool

 

Tony Cascarino

I read a report that Liverpool were considering a swap deal with Tottenham Hotspur for Roman Pavlyuchenko, with Ryan Babel going to White Hart Lane. Hilarious. What a comical idea: sign a striker who can't get in the Spurs team ahead of two Anfield rejects, Peter Crouch and Robbie Keane. What a damning indictment of Liverpool's transfer strategy that would be.

The way things are going on Merseyside, of course, if it happened, Babel would become a star in north London. He could be a good striker: so much pace and direct running and a great shot. He's not great in the air, not really a predator, but he could be explosive and dangerous. I don't understand why Rafael Benitez hasn't given Babel a shot at centre forward instead of persisting with David Ngog. The Dutch international would do a better job.

Three concerns for Aquilani, Owen's game-plan and the manager of the year is ...

Oliver Kay

I liked what I saw of Alberto Aquilani on his long-awaited first start for Liverpool last night. Elegant, intelligent and blessed with a sublime touch, he is undoubtedly a class act, though it will clearly take time for him and his team to adjust to his role alongside Javier Mascherano and behind Steven Gerrard, who is generally at his best when he has space in which to roam through the middle of the pitch.
 
My concerns for Aquilani are three-fold. First of all, he is not Xabi Alonso and, in a team where a loss of defensive nous has been the main effect of the Spaniard’s departure to Real Madrid, the immediate priority must be to play safe. Second, some excellent Italian players have struggled to adapt to the physical demands of the Premier League, where the prerequisite for any central midfielder is not to play or even to think, but to run. And third, can Aquilani stay fit long enough?
 
It is far from unknown for a manager to sign an injured player – and, to use two very different examples of how it can work, Sir Alex Ferguson got it right when signing Ruud van Nistelrooy, who had barely recovered from cruciate knee ligament damage, but seemingly failed to do his homework on Owen Hargreaves, who arrived with a tendinitis problem in the summer of 2006 and has struggled with it ever since. Aquilani’s terrible injury record in recent years leads you to think he may be a Hargreaves, rather than a Van Nistelrooy. The difference is that Manchester United had the players to cover for Hargreaves’s long absences. At Liverpool, as ever, the margin for error just isn’t there.