Corporate Anti Hero

I liked Roeder, I'm sorry he's gone, and next season when whoever has replaced him has led us to glory you can point at this post and say things like 'but you'd have kept Roeder'. I'd have taken any position above 18th this season in return for the stability we've had. No players involved in scandals, no insane trophy signings and indeed those players we have signed are worth more now than what we paid for them. When was the last time that happened on a season?

I was looking forward to next season. I thought it was going to be good.

This season was wrecked, by injuries that started at the world cup and just got worse from there, but even so there were bright spots. He got Nicky Butt playing well again and a season of good performances out of James Milner. He managed to send out what often looked like the academy defence and pick up points. Around November conventional wisdom was that if we didn't spend big we were going down; we spent nothing and stayed up comfortably unencumbered by another round of panic signings on big contracts.

I suspect when Roeder walks out of the door Owen, Ameobi and Dyer will know that he's put years on their career.  There are folks here who don't rate Shola, but Roeder was the first manager in years to decide that the players long term health was more important than having him available for the next six months. If anything he just made the decision too late. He was the first manager in years not to rush Dyer back and break him again, once he's got a pre-season under his belt we may find ourselves with another real talent in the squad.

In the end though we're told that Roeder lost the dressing room, but I wonder if it was the other way round. After the Alkmaaar defeat we heard plenty about the players deciding the season was over. I don't think Roeder ever believed that, but I suspect a lot of players switched off on the plane back from Amsterdam, and had Roeder stayed I think they knew they'd have been gone.

If it's true that Carr feigned injury to avoid facing the pissed off fans of St James' park then I think that sums up Roeders time here. Trying to do the right thing, trying to make himself and others face up to reality and being let down by those around him. I'm not one who believes that professionals on $40k a week should need much motivating, and I certainly don't think they should refuse to face the people who pay their wages. If I was a manager I'd send them out to face the fans every week after a game, have them stand on the touchline at the Gallowgate end for five minutes after every match and just take it, good or bad, they wouldn't want to lose twice.

The one who really let Roeder down though was the chairman. When Roeder talked about long term he must have agreed. When the season was a mess he must have accepted that Europe was unlikely this year, but the moment the fans turned on the manager he lost his nerve. It was the gutless, cowardly decision of a man who no longer had faith in his own judgement.

So thanks Glenn for putting everything you had into a tough job. I seem to remember David Moyes had a bad season once, I thought you might have turned things around the same way if the chairman backed you, but it seems I'll never get to know.

I wonder how much grief I'll get for posting this over here.

Checking the Guardian's minute by minute match report before I turn in, in the pre-match comments I find this gem

"Prediction time I fancy extra-time, Rachel Stevens, and a late, late Chelsea winner.

First email of the night "So, you fancy Rachel Stevens, do you?" harrumphs Olivia, my hugely-unimpressed girlfriend. And there was me thinking she didn't read these things."

This is the online equivalent of talking about football in the pub with your mates. It's a fantastic example of the difference between an organisation sounding like an organisation, and sounding like an individual. I have no idea if the Guardian's sports desk is better or more knowledgable than that of the Telegraph or the Times, but they're the only one I'd like to go for a beer with.

Is any other nation's major sport so owned by outside interests as UK football? Are Australian Rugby sides owned by Japanese investors? Are US baseball teams in the hands of European bankers? I don't think so, but for some reason an English football club seems to be the object of desire for Eastern block plutocrats, US billionairres and, for that matter Icelandic business magnates. I don't have a particular problem with it, I just think it's weird that sporting clubs, traditionally bought by local businessmen as objects of affection have become the purchase du jour for the world's mega wealthy.

Et tu Southampton?

Rumours are swirling around my own beloved Newcastle United as well, already the subject of not one, but two botched takeover bids this year. Of course anyone would be preferable to the current incumbents, so maybe I protest too much.

The odd thing is that there is almost no profit in football, not since the early 90's when you could buy a club, inflate the revenues and float for several hundred million has there been a chance of real money. Now you have to pay several hundred million before seeing exhorbitant wage demands and inflated transfer fees suck out all your cash. Only Manchester Utd. make commercially serious profits and it's not clear that there is room for two clubs to do what they do...

Sometime in the next 10 years I imagine there'll be some kind of meltdown in UK football, as tired of losing money the investors pull out, and Sky finally manage to get the upper hand in TV rights negotiations...

I was going to post something before this evenings Man U - Milan match noting that thanks to injuries Ferguson's only available tactic was to go for it,  a 'we're gonna score one more than you' approach, and so it turned out.

World Cup aside this is turning into a desperate year for the big Italian clubs, Milan may yet turn this one round, but by and large Europe has been a disaster for them this season, their only consolation is that the Spanish didn't do much better. I wonder how long it is before they risk losing their fourth champions league place to another country?

I've been looking forward to hearing the Italian press' reaction to Roma's 7-1 thrashing at the hands of Man Utd since I heard the score. The Guardian has a tasty selection of melodramatic quotes

Contending with Ronaldo's dribbling, the Roma players "looked like car-sick kids who vomit their elevenses at the first sharp curve", the paper wrote

Interestingly now it's Man Utd vs Milan in the next round Milan are effectively playing for Italian pride. Serie A hasn't been able to credibly claim to be the best league in the world for a while, but this kind of thing will make that clear even to the Italians.