THE GOOD
Anthropological discovery of the year: the Football League’s backbone
in standing up to Leeds’s quest to overturn their points deduction
Cristiano Ronaldo: imagine how many goals he’d score if he was an
out-an-out striker. It doesn’t mean we have to actually like him . . .
An all-English Champions League final: the Premier League is the
strongest domestic competition in the world, you know Arsenal’s
free-flowing, exhilarating passing game: football for purists and idealists
. . . the goals of Emmanuel Adebayor, the defensive genius of Kolo Toure,
the flowering of Theo Walcott
Avram Grant: a superior record to Jose Mourinho’s, a Champions League
final and almost the Premier League. What can the problem possibly be?
MK Dons: League Two champions and getting better attendances in the
lowest league than Wimbledon were in the highest Least likely scenario in
November: that by December, QPR would be the wealthiest club in West London
Fabio Capello: a man of honour, a man of integrity, a man of
discipline. Just what England’s slugabeds need
Injury: Rochdale’s Lee Thorpe, who broke his arm in three places
arm-wrestling on the team coach while travelling to their playoff at
Darlington. “Arm-wrestling is something we have been doing most days,” said
manager Keith Hill. “It’s easy for outsider to say, ‘They shouldn’t have
been messing around like that’.” They shouldn’t have been messing around
like that
Sir Bobby Robson: tears were shed when the old soldier collected the
BBC’s Lifetime Achievement Award. Even Sir Alex Ferguson dropped his BBC
boycott to present it
Goal of the season: Cristiano Ronaldo’s free kick against Portsmouth at
Old Trafford. It was as if it came from another planet, one more adept at
football
Kevin Keegan: for starters, making Michael Owen look interested; for
the main course, shipping David Rozenhal off to Rome and, for a dessert
nobody thought they had room for, plugging Newcastle’s traditional colander
of a defence
Fernando Torres: the only man capable of making £26.5m look a bargain
Unsung manager of the year: Rochdale’s Keith Hill. Without a penny to
spend and with only four wins in 20 games until December, his canny use of
the loan system saw English football’s least successful club reach the
playoffs. Arm-wrestling aside Bradford City fans: 10th in League Two;
average attendance, 13,756
Overachievers: Hereford United, Carlisle United, Stoke City Birmingham
City’s Stephen Kelly: the only outfield player to appear in every minute of
every Premier League game
Peterborough United’s Aaron McLean: the most prolific striker in
the Football League, five years after being cast into the nonleague tundra
by Leyton Orient
Clubman of the year: Scarborough Athletic’s Gary Hepples, jailed for
four months after breaching his supervision order to play against Staveley
Miners Welfare
Most romantic footballer: Sheffield Wednesday’s Rob Burch, who, on
Valentine’s Day, asked his girlfriend if she would be his lawfully wedded
Wag. On daytime television
Craig Bellamy: the combative striker invested more than £500,000 of his
own money to set up a football academy in war-ravaged Sierra Leone
Fulham: how on earth did that happen?
THE BAD
The Football League: a spineless refusal to increase Leeds United’s
punishment for their frivolous, pointless appeal An all-English Champions
League final: with so few English players, something is wrong in paradise
Steve McClaren: never looked like being good enough, never actually
good enough. The umbrella, the Scott Carson selection, the David Beckham
sentimentality, the tactical ineptitude, the failure to qualify for Euro
2008. Just the man the BBC need to explain, er, Euro 2008 to a grateful
nation . . .
Arsène Wenger’s increasingly wearying myopia: he should
visit a well-known High Street opticians, poor lamb Worst substitution:
Rafael Benitez withdrawing Fernando Torres with Liverpool trailing to
Chelsea in the Champions League semi-final The 39th Game: unless it meant an
opportunity to offload Middlesbrough v Blackburn Rovers onto the
unsuspecting Laos public
Quietest £9m arrival: Branislav Ivanovic signed for Chelsea -
Avram Grant’s first recruit - was given the prestigious No 2 shirt and
promptly disappeared quicker than you could say “tax loss”
Fabio Capello: a man under investigation for tax fraud. Bring back
honest Terry Venables. And what was that performance in Paris all about? And
the craven reinstatement of David Beckham?
Season of transition: Arsenal. See also 2004-05, 2005-06, 2006-07
Leicester City: sacking Martin Allen after losing just one of his four
games in charge never looked like a bright move, did it, Milan Mandaric? And
replacing him with the ever-loyal Gary Megson?
Three of four FA Cup semi-finalists hailing from outside the Premier League:
a sign of the FA Cup’s wretched marginalisation, not its soul-stirring
unpredictability
Walsall: sitty pretty in December, sold best players in January.
Mid-table, without a manager in April. There’s a moral there
Underachievers: Leicester City, Huddersfield Town, Brentford
Derby County: “bad” somehow seems an insufficiently, er, bad word for a
team relegated before April
John Hartson’s retirement: on the grounds that “I can’t have a
burger without putting on half a stone”. Not to be confused with not having
scored since January 2007
Kenny Lunt’s car: “It was like someone had tipped a load of
rubbish into the back. Every time he turned a corner, there’d be bottles
flying and discarded papers everywhere,” according to Steve Watson, who
accepted a lift, once
Darren Purse’s suspension: after a Turf Moor tackle that left
Andy Cole needing 10 stitches, overturned by the Welsh FA, enabling him to
play for Cardiff City in the FA Cup final yesterday
Avram Grant: appointed by his chum Roman Abramovich to play
swashbuckling football. Oh dear
Manchester United’s finances: just the £58m loss
West Bromwich Albion: spoilsport refusal to have an open-top bus tour
of their locality after winning the Championship to give the players “a
well-earned rest”
Claudio Pizarro: just two goals all season (both against Birmingham
City) on wages that meant each strike cost Roman Abramovich more than £1m.
Pizarro did manage to receive an 18-month international ban for inviting
wine and women back to his hotel room the night before his Peru lost 5-1 in
Ecuador
THE UGLY
The tackle by Martin Taylor on Eduardo
Carlos Queiroz: his whining about Manchester United not getting their fair
share of penalties. Two words: “Cristiano” and “Ronaldo”
Ian Wright: stomping off from the BBC, complaining that he was cast as
“a court jester”. He then joined Gladiators, a programme few refer to as the
new World In Action
The Manchester United Christmas party: couldn’t they have gone for a
pizza and then perhaps on to the cinema to see a Hugh Grant film?
Tottenham’s sacking of Martin Jol: that it may have been the
correct decision doesn’t make its whiff any more pleasant
Ankle socks, according to Fabio Capello: “When the trouser legs ride up
to show hairy shins, it offends my eyes”
John Terry parking his Bentley in a disabled bay outside Pizza Express
while he enjoyed lunch: not the sort of thing Bobby Moore did when he
was in the running to be England captain
Portsmouth’s David Nugent: could not be bothered to tell Ipswich
he had turned down a loan move the clubs had agreed. “These Premier League
lads seem happy to pick up their money and sit and not play,” said Ipswich
manager Jim Magilton
Thaksin Shinawatra: “A human rights abuser of the worst kind,” say
Human Rights Watch. Currently, fears are growing over the job safety of
Swedish citizen Svennis Eriksson after piloting Manchester City to a top10
finish
The police raid on Harry Redknapp’s mansion: Mock Tudor. Ugh
Arsenal captain William Gallas’s lack of leadership: after Gael
Clichy conceded a late penalty at St Andrews, sitting in the centre circle
muttering to himself wasn’t the answer, whatever the question was
Ian Holloway: not so much the leaving of Plymouth as the “it’s
poppycock” denials, the cynical declarations of love for all things Argyle
and the shattering of a nice-guy reputation
Worst value for money Fulham signed Jari Litmanen in January on a free
transfer. So far, he’s cost £225,000 in wages without playing
Tom Hicks and George Gillett’s spat in the Liverpool boardroom: children,
children, please! And while their backs are turned, Rafael Benitez has
wasted another £6m of their bucks on this year’s Jan Kromkamp, Martin
Skrtel.
Watford’s Al Bangura: his successful campaign to avoid
deportation to Sierra Leone – where he said his life was in danger after
losing contact with his family – warmed hearts nationwide until a spurned
lover said: “He was in so much danger in Sierra Leone that he was planning
to take me there on holiday and his mum wasn’t missing: he was in touch with
her and wired her £50,000 so she could build a house”
