Cardiff City: Bigger than Barcelona?

An exasperating 1-1 home draw with Sheffield United may not represent the makings of a European superpower, but Cardiff City’s capacity to underwhelm has earned them comparisons with Barcelona and Real Madrid.

Sam Hammam’s infamous reign as Cardiff’s owner was littered with claims of being ‘bigger than Barcelona’, only for these boasts to be tempered by defeats to the mighty likes of Darlington and Bournemouth.

Hammam has since departed with a debt-ridden vapour trail in his wake, but Cardiff’s current manager, Dave Jones, has now added his voice to the unlikely correlation between the Bluebirds and the Catalan giants, claiming that expectations at Cardiff are as high as those surrounding Barcelona and Real Madrid.

And while Cardiff’s debts of £1.75m seem modest in light of Real Madrid’s summer splurge of over £200m, Jones’s association is not as incongruous as first impressions may suggest.

The historian Gwyn Alf Williams was right when he referred to Welsh people as ‘Italians in the rain’, alluding to their Mediterranean passion and emotional extremity, albeit in a rather less glamorous climate.

Although it is uncertain whether Jones is familiar with Williams’ work, the manager did seem to echo the historian’s sentiments when he said: "You lose a couple of games around this part of the world and it's as if it's all fallen apart."

As well as recognising the volatile nature of Cardiff City fans’ reactions, Jones also appears to have grasped how heavily the national mood of Wales is influenced by the fortunes of its sports teams.

The national rugby side, for example, spark a glowing sense of nationwide glee whenever they win a Six Nations Grand Slam. Parties are thrown, newspaper headlines boast of imminent world domination, and calls for a commemorative national holiday are vociferously backed at an impromptu Shakin Stevens concert staged at Cardiff Castle.

Losses to England or Italy, however, prompt deep and gloomy self-reflections, as the country slumps into a state of misery usually only applicable to a child who has excitedly opened a Christmas present, only to find a copy of Danny Dyer’s Football Foul-Ups DVD, staring blankly from the debris of wrapping paper.

The same is true of football fans, and Jones’s tongue was not quite so firmly in his cheek as one would have first thought when he said: "You have the expectation levels of Barcelona or Real Madrid-types here.”

Grumbles of discontent filled the rain-sodden Cardiff City Stadium as the home side were held by the artisan Sheffield United this week, but as the Bluebirds still occupy a play-off spot in their quest for promotion, it seems fair for Jones to think that expectations may be a little lofty.

Jones’s Spanish connection might also add another dimension to Cardiff’s upcoming derby match against Swansea – what we may now consider to be South Wales’s answer to ‘El Clasico’.

Swansea, playing in white, will at least be wearing a kit similar to Real’s, while Cardiff have a squad oozing with as much flair and panache as any Barca side. The Catalans may have Thierry Henry, but Cardiff’s attack is led by Jay Bothroyd, and Barcelona’s so-called best player in the world, Lionel Messi, is little more than a poor man’s Peter Whittingham.

When Swansea visit, the Cardiff City Stadium (a name no catchier nine months after its unveiling) will be rumbling with animosity, and perhaps in this hateful cauldron befitting of the Nou Camp, Jones’s comparison may seem a little less fanciful as South Wales’s superpowers collide.

'Not that type of player': How football's limp excuses wear thin

Ryan Shawcross was an unassuming, quiet presence on the England bench at Wembley in midweek, a far cry from his tumultuous last appearance.

Two images defined last weekend’s football action: a tearful Shawcross leaving the Britannia Stadium pitch after being sent off for his tackle on Aaron Ramsey, whose crumpled leg was the match’s other enduring sight.

Shawcross’s manager at Stoke City, Tony Pulis, was quick to defend his player: “Ryan is not that type of lad.” This feeling was then recycled as post-match interviews mulled over the incident, and it became evident that we would hear the same old excuses.

It almost goes without saying that Shawcross didn’t mean to break Ramsey’s leg. What grates, however, is the repetitive, inane nature of the defence offered, and how, instead of taking responsibility for their reckless actions, the perpetrators are portrayed as victims.

Ramsey’s Arsenal team-mate Eduardo fell victim to a similar injury in February 2008, when a tackle from Birmingham City defender Martin Taylor left his ankle hanging by a thread.

Like Ramsey, Eduardo’s career was in jeopardy, and also like the Ramsey case, the offending player’s manager used the same limp excuse, as Alex McLeish said: "Martin's not a dirty player."

This hollow sentiment is uttered too often, and after Eduardo’s injury, Wenger said: "The worst thing you hear after is that 'he's not the kind of guy who usually does that', but you need to only kill one person one time - it's enough."

Ramsey’s injury was the third such incident in less than four years, after Abou Diaby suffered serious damage to his ankle after a terrible challenge from Sunderland’s Dan Smith. Again, the excuse offered by the offending side was feeble, as then Sunderland caretaker manager Kevin Ball said: "Dan Smith is by no means a dirty player.”

If Shawcross had caused an injury by crashing his car, Pulis is unlikely to have offered the defence: “He’s not that type of driver.” Nobody involved in a car crash purposefully drives into another vehicle, but it is to be expected when the driver responsible has their licence suspended.

In this case, then, why are footballers so reluctant to accept responsibility when they are involved in such serious incidents?

Shawcross may not have been trying to shatter Ramsey’s leg, but the horrific collision was the result of a team’s bloody-minded determination to physically unsettle technically superior opponents.

And the stomach-churning image of Ramsey’s decimated shin is not only the result of one team’s efforts to ‘get in the faces’ of the Arsenal players, but a product of a wider culture of thuggery.

As Wenger notes, these are not merely unfortunate coincidences: "It goes with the idea that to stop Arsenal you have to kick Arsenal and that kind of thing [Eduardo’s injury] was waiting to happen.”

When pundits discuss ways of beating Arsenal, they invariably mention how the Gunners “don’t like it up ‘em”, and that teams will succeed if they “get in their faces” and “stop them playing”.

This message then seeps into Premier League changing rooms, where the likes of Pulis and McLeish urge their sides to rise to the challenge in an unswervingly robust manner.

And, deliberately or not, this physical approach eventually culminates in ugly scenes such as those at the Britannia Stadium.

Published in Leeds Student on Friday, March 5, 2010
Maybe Dara O'Briain is a regular reader:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/blog/2010/mar/06/aaron-ramsey-broken-leg-ryan-shawcross

The graveyard shift

Whether it is a confused Spanish playmaker being shown around Birmingham or a promising Belgian midfielder taking in the sights of Wolverhampton, the January transfer window represents new beginnings for footballers.

For managers, however, the biting cold of British winter is a harbinger of change for the worse.

Sackings have been typically commonplace this winter, but what has been particularly eye-catching is the funereal manner of these dismissals.

News of Manchester City’s December sacking of Mark Hughes was broken to viewers like a state funeral. Pundits were asked to pay tribute to a “good man”, and other managers were quick to praise a fellow professional who “deserved better”.

Gary Lineker dispensed with his default mode of radiant smugness to glumly announce Sparky’s departure, and Match of the Day ended their usually chirpy closing montage with commentator Steve Wilson’s despairing mention of Hughes’ “lingering wave”.

Even Arsene Wenger, the supposed ray of intellectual hope in the landfill site of Premier League clichés, succumbed to the solemnity by adding that “it is always very sad when a manager loses his job”.

The most sombre of tributes was paid to Alan Irvine, who was fired by Preston. His successor Rob Kelly vowed that the club would “carry on as we did before – it’s what Alan would have wanted.”

He also mourned Irvine as “not just a great manager but a great person”.

Despite his morbid departure, Irvine has since found employment at Sheffield Wednesday. And judging by his immediate success at Hillsborough, Irvine’s move is proving to be a resurrection.

Paul Hart’s exit from Queen’s Park Rangers did not cause such a stir. This managerial casualty was instead brushed aside like one of many incidental fatalities in a gangster film.

The indifference should come as no surprise. Hart (pictured) was the ninth manager to be dispatched by QPR owner, Formula 1 mogul and pseudo-mafia boss, Flavio Briatore.

Wary of Briatore’s fearsome reputation, media coverage of Hart’s demise was muted. Rolling news channels were conspicuously unwilling to expand on the issue, while newspapers were similarly careful not to upset Briatore.

Similarly bereft of sentiment was the end of Gary Megson’s tenure at Bolton. Like Hart, the response to Megson’s demise was underwhelming in terms of sympathy, somewhat like the national feeling of indifference induced by the death of Bernard Manning.

Bolton fans had long been clamouring for his dismissal, and when the fateful moment arrived, it was met with the fervour usually reserved for the gallows.

Linguistically, managerial fatalism comes as no surprise. Each rumoured sacking is met with tabloid headlines and studio chatter of ‘nails in the coffin’ and ‘dead men walking’.

Some managers, such as the gloomy, vortex-eyed Avram Grant, are a step ahead of their peers, appearing to already be half dead as they morbidly prowl their technical areas.

Grant’s club, Portsmouth, have recently had a transfer embargo lifted, and they will be hoping that an influx of new faces breathes new life into the relegation-threatened side.

Amid the chaos of the transfer window’s frantic closure, the end of January at least offers a slither of hope. Spring is a not too distant prospect, and with the almost bearable climes of February, comes the realisation for managers that they may have survived the culling season.

What's the measure of a guilty pleasure?

It was with a considerable pinch of self-consciousness that I recently scolded myself for singing along to every word of a Good Charlotte song that blared from my kitchen radio.

This was not because I was wary of disturbing my neighbours, or because my singing would embarrass the cat sitting in my garden, but because the song was a truly guilty pleasure. Good Charlotte are rubbish, and I really should know better.

Good Charlotte would not, however, feature on a typical 'guilty pleasures' playlist, as they'd undoubtedly be muscled out of the selection by hordes of 70s soft-rock ballads and theme songs from programmes such as Baywatch and Nightrider.

Do not be fooled.

Those who confess to the 'guilty' enjoyment of acts such as Richard Astley or Whitney Houston do so fraudulently, behind a heavy veil of try-hard irony.

Not good. Not even in an ironic way.

Astley and Houston are flag-bearers for all that is bad about music, yet their most offensive efforts, ‘Never Gonna Give You Up’ and ‘I Will Always Love You’ (dis)respectively, are spared the warranted scorn by a scandalous view shared by many that they are guilty pleasures.

These distorted recollections are what James Murphy, a.k.a. LCD Soundsystem, would call the cool kids' “nostalgia of the unremembered eighties”.

Christmas is notoriously synonymous with musical pseudo-guilty pleasures.

Dross like Paul McCartney’s ‘Wonderful Christmas Time’ is hauled from the murkiest depths of music’s sewage systems to be played at office Christmas parties across the country.

Brain-splittingly tortuous efforts like these would be treated with suitable disdain had they been released in May, yet their festive timing affords them a collective shrug of pardon from the public.

Tolerating such drivel is bad, but it is the act of enjoying these as so-called guilty pleasures that is unforgivable. Indeed, there is not enough guilt attached to guilty pleasures. If guilt was adequately appropriated to those found to be enjoying these songs, record collections would be torched and ears severed.

As things stand, however, we are left with halfwits who choose to dedicate club nights to ‘the best of the worst of the 80s’ and opportunities to ‘dance like your dad’ (or, more accurately, like the ‘totally random’ prick dancing next to you).

Irony is bludgeoned all over these events like a bloody axe, to such an extent that the term itself is left gaunt and empty; a bastardised phoneme shunned to the cringeworthy corners of our darkest mass culture.

So I’m going to listen to Mariah Carey’s ‘All I Want for Christmas is You’. In an entirely un-ironic fashion.

The Football League Show Blog. Show.

The Football League has undergone numerous facelifts and rebranding projects to rid itself of old pre-cursors such as the ‘basement’ or ‘the graveyard of ambition’.

The Championship (formerly the second division) is no longer solely associated with the top division’s title chase, and League One and League Two are deceptively elevating pseudonyms for what are actually the third and fourth tiers of British football.

Whereas the Football League has been innovative with its reinventions, though, the BBC’s coverage of it has been a little less than imaginative. The catchy name for its weekly, post-Match of the Day slot? The Football League Show.

And while the BBC’s coverage, despite its less than eye-catching branding, has still increased viewing figures for the divisions in question, its peculiar underground studio does create a basement feel.



Every Saturday night, we’re taken into the depths of a cold, bare warehouse, with only presenter Manish Bhasin and an analyst, usually Steve Claridge, for company. Claridge, having played for most, if not every one, of the football clubs in the United Kingdom, is the ideal man to guide you through the efforts of Gillingham’s John Nutter or Morecambe midfielder Emmanuel Panther.

Meanwhile, another of the BBC’s (un)memorable creations is the title of its League Cup programme… The League Cup Show.

This competition has also had its image tarnished by indifferent managers and belittling media coverage but, like the Football League, it has consistently reinvented itself as, among other things, the Milk Cup, Worthington Cup and now the Carling Cup.

It may only have rebranded itself for financial reasons but attendances are up, big clubs are all taking it seriously and, judging by the BBC’s decision to call in the big guns (well, Mark Lawrenson) for its coverage, the Carling Cup appears to be in rude health.

There is viewer interactivity in both programmes, with Jacqui Oatley and Lizzie Greenwood-Hughes fielding emails from fans. Although a little tedious, it does spare us the aural ordeal of a radio phone-in ‘debate’ between Alan Green and ‘Dave from the Wirrall’.

One facet of the footballing media circus the BBC has disappointingly overlooked is Andy Townsend’s Tactics Truck, last seen on ITV’s ill-fated Premiership highlights package. The nearest thing we’re treated to is the expert Leroy Rosenior chatting excitedly about the ‘total football’ on display at, erm, Huddersfield Town.

The BBC also has coverage rights for football’s truly unfashionable competition, the Johnstone’s Paint Trophy. It remains unconfirmed, however, whether there are plans to broadcast The Johnstone’s Paint Trophy Show.


As written for Leeds Student 30/10/09

Window of opportunity nears chaotic closure

Ankara’s rammed Esenborga Airport was an unlikely scene of mass hysteria earlier this summer, and it wasn’t a visit from the Pope or an Elvis comeback concert that the Turkish capital was staging, but a feverish welcome for quite a different hero.

Darius Vassell may be a striker with a less than handy knack for not scoring – best known for missing a penalty in England’s Euro 2004 quarter-final exit – but, at his new home, he has been embraced like a messiah.

Described as ‘more than a player’ by Ankaragucu fans’ placards, the former Manchester City misfit looked understandably surprised as around 3,000 supporters let off flares and chanted his name.



And it is this maniacal response to new arrivals that embodies the world’s undying thirst for the circus of the transfer window, which comes to a frenzied close today.

Whether it is a Bosnian wonder-kid heralded as Man United’s new favourite son, or an unattached journeyman going through the motions at a trial match in Grimsby, football transfers capture the essence of a British summer like the sight of a binge-drinking 16-year-old girl lying face down in a puddle of gravy and vomit outside Oceana, just hours after collecting 27 A* GCSEs.

The closure of the window, however, is as much a harbinger of the summer’s end as a chilly autumnal shower, and it is accompanied by chaotic ‘wheeling and dealing’ all over the world.

As 5pm nears, tanned and bejewelled agents across Europe will be frantically trying to explain why their Lithuanian utility defender is worth a last-minute multi-million bid, while managers will jostle for the signature of an aging forward whose ‘dream’ it has always been to join an underachieving Championship club.

And our friends at Sky Sports News will be there, anticipating every routine medical or rumoured trans-continental swap deal with the sort of excitement Carlo Ancelotti feels when he enters Greggs’ bakery.

The window won’t re-open until January the first, so make the most of Sam Allardyce’s latest pursuit of a fading former ‘Galactico’, ’Arry Redknapp’s bid of £3m and a bag of chips for David James, or Phil Brown’s failure to attract a confused Argentine playmaker to Hull.

Cullinan and cakes: Cricket's culinary treats

Despite the efforts of various radio DJs to ram La Roux’s faux-80s synthesized squealing into my brain, Test Match Special absolutely remains the soundtrack of my summer.

While Australia humiliated England at Headingley, the TMS team cheered its audience with an altogether jollier alternative subject to a batting collapse: food.

It took Geoffrey Boycott less than five minutes to add his input to the mix. Asked what he thought of Matt Prior’s injury sustained during a football match, Boycott boomed in overtones of Yorkshire dissatisfaction: “Daft. You’ll get more brains in a chocolate mouse.”

Boycott’s comment paved the way for a deluge of confectionery-related chatter in the commentary box. Jonathan Agnew waxed lyrical about cakes and sweets, sent in by the truckload by adoring listeners, while Matthew Hayden, the gargantuan Australian, licked his lips at the prospect of tucking into a selection of toffees, just as his former team-mates were devouring their feeble English prey.

What's for tea, Bumble?


A little further along in the media area, David ‘Bumble’ Lloyd kept Twitter followers updated not only with the cricket but, most importantly, the snacks available in the Sky studios.

One message read excitedly: “Pies and Branston have arrived and a HUGE cake. Beefy in business.” Beefy, of course, being Ian Botham – a talisman not only for his all-round cricketing ability but for his insatiable hunger.

Shane Warne may be a new addition to the Sky commentary team but the Australian is well acquainted with cricket’s healthy relationship with food. Renowned for his cutting remarks at the crease, there were often dietary references when he sledged opponents.

When bowling to the full-of-figure Arjuna Ranatunga, Warne was encouraged by his wicket-keeper, Ian Healey, to “put a Mars bar on a length”, to tempt the batsman out of his crease.

Warne’s own sizeable build, however, did not go unnoticed during his playing career. When welcoming Daryll Cullinan to the wicket, Warne remarked that he’d been waiting two years to bowl at and torment the batsman once again (Cullinan had supposedly seen a psychiatrist since their last meeting). The South African’s retort was short but sweet: “Looks like you spent that time eating.”

One wouldn't necessarily have to rummage through Bumble’s picnics or Warne’s mind games to find further foodie association.

Batsmen playing against Durham can actually be dismissed caught (Phil) Mustard, bowled (Graham) Onions. Proving to be a hit for reasons other than wickets and a comedy surname, England seamer Onions can now list Lily Allen as an admirer. It has not yet been confirmed whether Amy Winehouse has professed to her Twitter followers about an Ian Bell crush.

In fact, with Alistair Cook opening the batting, the England team has never been so pun-friendly, especially where culinary wordplay is concerned.

And should Rob Key win a recall to the England side for the decisive Oval Test, you can bet that food will once again be a feature of conversation at the crease.