Badges done. Time to change the football

"Fucking yeeeeeessssss!"

Last week we said we were off to get our badges from UEFA. We’ve got them now. And what an experience it was. For one, we now can’t move for cones and bibs at Spongers Towers. You can't even get in the bogs without doing those daft jumps over those daft bars, and that's not solely down to the fact that 'the bogs' double up as 'the cupboard'.

The Runs #1: York City 2003-4

Chris Brass presumably enjoying the first four games of the season

We have a confession to make, Rob and I. We've got lazier in our old age so series are easier to do than write proper articles. So, true to form, here is Spongers' own Adam Bushby kicking off our new series with a quite remarkable winless streak. 

The 2003/4 season in England is best remembered for Arsenal’s ‘Invincibles’. Thirty-eight games unbeaten and a Premier League title. Twenty six wins and 12 draws. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It’s impressive, if in an obvious way. But I tell you what is more impressive. Gaining just 16 points between November 22 and the end of the season. Sixteen points. (Clamouring from soapbox) SIXTEEN. From 27 games, between end-November and May. I tell you what is more impressive even than that. Not winning a game from January 10 to the end of the season. NOT ONE. And these things happened that very season at the other end of the pyramid.

To Hull And Back

Not even the sagest of scribes could have predicted Blackpool’s sensational 2010. Unless you’ve been on the moon, you know that the Seasiders went from relegation fodder in the Championship to the best thing to happen to Premier League football since a beach ball scored a goal against Liverpool. Their direct impact on people actually enjoying watching the league this season is rivalled perhaps only by Sian Massey.

Can Hodgson Ride The Merseyslide?

Roy Hodgson leans towards his deputy Sammy Lee, his face creased with tension, brow sticky, stomach uneasy: “Sammy, what the fuck do we do? How do we change it? Who can we bring on?” Lee, a man who has spent his life in the game, is nonplussed. “I don’t know boss. We have nothing. We can’t change it.” Hodgson, growing increasingly worried, darts a look left and then right. He eyes up those sat on the benches next to him. He is trying to get the measure of the situation, while trying frantically to calm his nerves. It wasn’t like this at the Cottage, he thinks. “David, get stripped lad,” he says. Hodgson exchanges glances with Lee. His side are 2-0 down to their local rivals and his only chance at changing the game is by throwing on David Ngog. Hodgson, resigned to his fate, shrinks back into his chair, eyes wide, face creased with tension, brow sticky, stomach uneasy.

Being Crap Bankrupts Hull; Burnley Knew All Along

"I earn more than you, and you, and you, and you..."

The identity of the Premier League’s relegated teams is all but decided. Barring a miracle, Hull will join Burnley and Portsmouth in the Championship when the new season kicks off in August. Assuming, that is, they still have a club. While Brian Laws is still looking for Burnley’s wheels, last seen falling off back around Christmas time, they are all he has been charged with finding. Hull, meanwhile, are searching for a solution to liabilities believed to be as much as £35m, while continuing to operate. Of the two sides for whom relegation is confirmed, Hull resemble the stricken south coast club far more than their prudent Northern counterparts.

If you measure success, as most of us should, by still having a club to support every Saturday, Burnley are a magnificent example. They have a salary cap, for a start. It is £15,000 a week. And while those wages don’t necessarily get you a squad of internationals, it certainly secures the future of the club should you relinquish a lucrative place in the Premier League. It removes the likelihood of the dreaded fire-sale decimating your squad. It certainly doesn’t mean that you end up spending 80% of your turnover merely on paying players, like Hull City.

The differences in the running of the two clubs are staggering and Hull’s re-appointment of Adam Pearson may have come too late to save them this time. Unfortunately, he wasn’t present when the euphoria of another season in the Premier League led to a slew of signings on lucrative contracts as Hull aimed to become ‘established’ in the top tier. This yielded, as has been widely reported, the accumulation of seven strikers at the club, collecting a total of £200,000 a week in wages while returning only nine goals. Burnley’s record signing, Steven Fletcher, scored eight in the league and has 12 in all competitions. He cost £3m and, remember, collects no more than £15,000 a week. Meanwhile, Hull signed the mercenary, Amr Zaki, and continue to pay injury-prone and therefore un-saleable asset Jimmy Bullard £45,000 a week, with no relegation clause to reduce his wage. Phil Brown still has a year on his equally lucrative contract and all he’s doing is sitting in his garden topping up that implausible tan. Iain Dowie, now that I come to think of it, was rumoured to be on a £1mn bonus if he kept Hull up. Ludicrous figures, especially from a club that came so close to extinction in 2001.

But if Burnley are such a fantastic example, is it true to say that promoted or smaller clubs will never be able to compete if they run a tight ship? Yes, mostly. The Premier League’s behemoths make the summit an impossible dream, though with great power also comes great debt. In theory though, lower down the league, a year of top-flight football with the insurance of two years’ parachute payments should enable clubs like Burnley to fund more lucrative contracts and build a better squad. In practice, there is too much money elsewhere in the Premier League for the parachute payments to be enough to tempt clubs into gambling and players into signing. The only club – in recent times – that has made the journey from lower-league football to the Premier League and survived is Fulham, who have done so because Mohamed al-Fayed has spent a fortune on them. Even then, they’ve been perilously close to going down a few times. Birmingham appear to have a trough of money from an investor to spend in the summer, but they, West Brom and Wolves have traditionally been serial relegation fodder following promotion.

Therefore, in a hammer blow to the ‘romance’ of football, Burnley have been destined to go down from the start, all because the club is run responsibly. Such operating, however, has enabled them to invest in a £15m redevelopment of Turf Moor, whose new features – upon completion in 2011 – will net the club an extra £1m a year. A solid foundation but again, one suspects, not enough to make waves in the Premier League. In football nowadays, you can’t succeed if you’re just using your own money. The more catastrophic effects, as we should expect to see in the next few years, will come as clubs continue to gamble on success using someone else’s. Rob MacDonald

Zola, Farewell, Auf Wiedersehen, Goodbye

Those at the bottom of the Premier League table decided to take over the ‘you first, no you first, no you…’ exchanges from the top dogs and prove that they really are all as bad as each other this weekend. For the second year running (and possibly more), those that survive a season in the top flight will know that it’s not necessarily because they were good, but rather because others were just that little bit more rubbish.

In the thick of this race to remain stranded on less than 30 points for the season are West Ham. If the other clubs in the relegation mire are in freefall, West Ham are approaching terminal velocity.

One argument is the oft-repeated mantra that Zola is ‘too nice’, but that’s not quite it. You don’t really tend to cut it as a professional footballer for 20 years at the very top if you’re ‘too nice’. Zola’s problem, in fact, is that he is simply too inexperienced and this has brought with it the majority of his managerial difficulties.

West Ham tried to rectify this by bringing in Steve Clarke from Chelsea and were widely applauded for it. However, I can fully imagine a wealth of scenarios in which Zola bows and has bowed to Clarke’s knowledge and experience ahead of his own – though Clarke’s CV itself is quite brief, being in charge of Chelsea youth teams before building a reputation with the teams of Mourinho and Grant.

Spot the difference – Mourinho isn’t short of belief and courage in his own convictions and Grant, previously a Champions League finalist, is now being widely lauded for the job he is doing at stricken Portsmouth. They are men who require an assistant to assist, not to mentor.

Contrast that with the belief that can be seen draining from Zola with every goal conceded. Consolidating a first relatively successful season at the Boleyn Ground has proved difficult. Contrast it further with his playing career. We all knew how good he was, but crucially so did he. That’s why he isn’t ‘too nice’. You have to be a bit arrogant to be one of the best footballers in the Premier League. Being a manager though, inexperienced and up there to be shot at each Saturday brings with it a whole different set of demands. Clarke’s advice may be being asked for with increasing desperation, an influence that may also inform its content.

I don’t think you can watch Jeff and the boys on Soccer Saturday or Match of the Day without someone (normally Mark Lawrenson) saying what a ‘lovely fella’ Zola is. I revered him so much as a player that I don’t really want to believe he won’t succeed as West Ham manager. But his apparent loss of belief and this infectious uncertainty that has come across in the press has transmitted itself into his players. By publicly questioning his own future in the midst of a scenario where the successful generally stay silent and stoic, I can’t help but think that while he will always be a darling of English football for his playing achievements, his managerial career might be short-lived.