So the end of the January football transfer window is coming up, and Rafa Benitez has gone insane. I don't mean to jump on the man's back after all he's done because a part of me will always love Liverpool, but listening to the things he's been coming out with lately is like being shot in the face by a machine gun loaded with stupid.
First off, you don't win mind games with Alex Ferguson. You just don't. Kevin Keegan learned that lesson when his Newcastle team were in a much stronger position than Liverpool are now, the otherwise unflappable Arsene Wenger has learned to keep his trap shut and talk about the football, and the only bloke to ever go toe to toe with Fergie was Jose Mourinho, a man so confident in his own abilities that whenever he jets off to Dubai with his bucket and spade is probably quite surprised when he gets his Armani trunks wet because he can't walk on water.
This is, of course, saying nothing of Rafa's latest outburst in the direction of a far less wily character, the flappy-faced Harry Redknapp down at the Spuds. If your reaction to another manager suggesting he wished he hadn't sold a player to you is to throw a massive wobbler and throw your toys out of the pram, you're probably not cut out for the unique pressures of being a Premier League manager. In fact, I'd say Rafa is fairly unsuited to the job in general, as the minute he's gotten his team back to playing the way they've always played, they're sliding back down the table again. For six months they were excellent, and some of their football in pre-season was absolutely sublime, but the gaffer obviously gave them all the Rafa Benitez Guide to Overcaution for Christmas and now it's all gone to pot. Robbie Keane, the catalyst behind his latest dummy-spitting escapade, has had his confidence shattered by being chained to the sub's bench for the majority of the season and already looks like being a £20m seat warmer for when Torres gets tired.
Mark my words, he'll be back at Spurs for around half that fee in the summer,which is a ridiculous choice seeing as that probably means that pornographer-looking donkey of a player Andriy Voronin will be back in the side once he finishes his loan spell at whatever German hellhole he's been sent back to. Can you imagine, if Torres gets himself knackered for any length of time, a forward line of Andriy Voronin and Dirk Kuyt? The pair will cover forty-six miles of turf per game and score sod-all. Rafa has an obvious love for the attacking grafter and so his distaste with Keane is strange, especially seeing as the preferred bench choice recently, David N'Gog, is about as good as I am, and I might as well not have any legs.
Personally, and I know this isn't much of a stretch, I think Liverpool's title ambitions are over. If results go against them this week, they will be five points behind Manchester United with Fergie's side with a game in hand. The way they're playing, you're not going to come back from that, and with the red half of Manchester fully aware that Liverpool, Chelsea and Arsenal are all struggling, it's difficult not to see them steaming off into the distance once again. A certain sense of inevitability is creeping across the Premiership title before we're even out of January.
Speaking of the other members of the 'big four' - although Aston Villa are trying very hard to mix it up a little with prolific goal machine Emile '30-a-season' Heskey - their activity in the transfer window shows that they've probably given up on this year, too - Chelsea's sole activity so far is signing up a 17-year-old Turkish midfielder who's going to go straight into their academy, and the only thing they have lined up before the deadline is flogging unfortunate flop Branislav Ivanovic to Fiorentina for a few quid. Arsenal look like they've finally gotten themselves into gear as regards signing Andriy Arshavin - already being referred to as AA before he's even in the door - but are holding fire on signing the defensive midfielder and center-half they would need to push on this season, and with chairman Peter Hill-Wood already talking about having the money to survive not qualifying for the Champions League, it looks like this year is going to be another of Wenger's dreaded 'season of transition's, of which there's now been about five, each one transitioning into another transition.
Honestly, in the last few years, Arsenal football club have had more transitions than a bad 80s pop video, and eventually any team has to ask itself what it's trying to transition into; rumours that in-form Robin van Persie wants assurances about Champions League football before he signs a new contract fuelled talk of a late bid for Micah Richards - young, versatile, very much a Wenger player - or Charles N'Zogbia - young, versatile, French and moody; you wonder why he hasn't snapped him up already - but Wenger's style has never been to splash the cash, much to the growing chagrin of everyone in the red and white.
Still, stranger things have happened. We could yet see Arshavin, Richards and N'Zogbia lining up for Arsenal next weekend, while Robbie Keane joins Jermaine Defoe on the slow bus back to White Hart Lane and Chelsea, just to show Man City who really wears the daddy pants, snap up Kaka, Pirlo and an organically-sourced clone of Pele in a £500m deal. Anything's possible in a January where the in-form strikers are Carlton Cole and Nicklas bloody Bendtner.
I could be back in two days with a post entitled 'bloody hell', but I doubt it.
First off, you don't win mind games with Alex Ferguson. You just don't. Kevin Keegan learned that lesson when his Newcastle team were in a much stronger position than Liverpool are now, the otherwise unflappable Arsene Wenger has learned to keep his trap shut and talk about the football, and the only bloke to ever go toe to toe with Fergie was Jose Mourinho, a man so confident in his own abilities that whenever he jets off to Dubai with his bucket and spade is probably quite surprised when he gets his Armani trunks wet because he can't walk on water.
This is, of course, saying nothing of Rafa's latest outburst in the direction of a far less wily character, the flappy-faced Harry Redknapp down at the Spuds. If your reaction to another manager suggesting he wished he hadn't sold a player to you is to throw a massive wobbler and throw your toys out of the pram, you're probably not cut out for the unique pressures of being a Premier League manager. In fact, I'd say Rafa is fairly unsuited to the job in general, as the minute he's gotten his team back to playing the way they've always played, they're sliding back down the table again. For six months they were excellent, and some of their football in pre-season was absolutely sublime, but the gaffer obviously gave them all the Rafa Benitez Guide to Overcaution for Christmas and now it's all gone to pot. Robbie Keane, the catalyst behind his latest dummy-spitting escapade, has had his confidence shattered by being chained to the sub's bench for the majority of the season and already looks like being a £20m seat warmer for when Torres gets tired.
Mark my words, he'll be back at Spurs for around half that fee in the summer,which is a ridiculous choice seeing as that probably means that pornographer-looking donkey of a player Andriy Voronin will be back in the side once he finishes his loan spell at whatever German hellhole he's been sent back to. Can you imagine, if Torres gets himself knackered for any length of time, a forward line of Andriy Voronin and Dirk Kuyt? The pair will cover forty-six miles of turf per game and score sod-all. Rafa has an obvious love for the attacking grafter and so his distaste with Keane is strange, especially seeing as the preferred bench choice recently, David N'Gog, is about as good as I am, and I might as well not have any legs.
Personally, and I know this isn't much of a stretch, I think Liverpool's title ambitions are over. If results go against them this week, they will be five points behind Manchester United with Fergie's side with a game in hand. The way they're playing, you're not going to come back from that, and with the red half of Manchester fully aware that Liverpool, Chelsea and Arsenal are all struggling, it's difficult not to see them steaming off into the distance once again. A certain sense of inevitability is creeping across the Premiership title before we're even out of January.
Speaking of the other members of the 'big four' - although Aston Villa are trying very hard to mix it up a little with prolific goal machine Emile '30-a-season' Heskey - their activity in the transfer window shows that they've probably given up on this year, too - Chelsea's sole activity so far is signing up a 17-year-old Turkish midfielder who's going to go straight into their academy, and the only thing they have lined up before the deadline is flogging unfortunate flop Branislav Ivanovic to Fiorentina for a few quid. Arsenal look like they've finally gotten themselves into gear as regards signing Andriy Arshavin - already being referred to as AA before he's even in the door - but are holding fire on signing the defensive midfielder and center-half they would need to push on this season, and with chairman Peter Hill-Wood already talking about having the money to survive not qualifying for the Champions League, it looks like this year is going to be another of Wenger's dreaded 'season of transition's, of which there's now been about five, each one transitioning into another transition.
Honestly, in the last few years, Arsenal football club have had more transitions than a bad 80s pop video, and eventually any team has to ask itself what it's trying to transition into; rumours that in-form Robin van Persie wants assurances about Champions League football before he signs a new contract fuelled talk of a late bid for Micah Richards - young, versatile, very much a Wenger player - or Charles N'Zogbia - young, versatile, French and moody; you wonder why he hasn't snapped him up already - but Wenger's style has never been to splash the cash, much to the growing chagrin of everyone in the red and white.
Still, stranger things have happened. We could yet see Arshavin, Richards and N'Zogbia lining up for Arsenal next weekend, while Robbie Keane joins Jermaine Defoe on the slow bus back to White Hart Lane and Chelsea, just to show Man City who really wears the daddy pants, snap up Kaka, Pirlo and an organically-sourced clone of Pele in a £500m deal. Anything's possible in a January where the in-form strikers are Carlton Cole and Nicklas bloody Bendtner.
I could be back in two days with a post entitled 'bloody hell', but I doubt it.
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