In fairness, we played abysmally pretty much every Tuesday night game and the scrappy 'Yorkshire derby' thing never helps, I don't think even beautiful Donny play pretty football in those games. Most other games, we played some great stuff though, as did Norwich in fairness to them. With "dirty" target men! People need to stop pointing to Barcelona as the single reason the quality of English football is doomed. I'm no apologist for the Premier League and its antics, but other than the one team Barcelona, the short-passing Spanish style is hardly head-and-shoulders above the English/German/Italian styles, if not inferior to it. Not every foreign/Spanish team has the same stamina and quality of Barca.
Anyway, back to the point of the article. It's true what MattTheTiger and Percival have said. It's just not fashionable to play good football in England. Players who run around a lot like Marney or Harper are a coaches dream whereas someone like Huddlestone (as MTT mentioned) or Carrick aren't rated as highly. These players are particularly good passers of the ball but nobody sits and raves about them on MOTD as they do about Scott Parker for example, who runs a lot...
Anyone watch the Bundesliga? The football in Germany is very similar to the Premier League. Yet the German national side play attractive counter attacking football. At least credit Mourinho when you nick his quote.
If you did play good football in those other games (which I'm in no position to deny as I only saw those two games live) then I'm sure Becchio was still being a ****, throwing his elbows around all over the place and then crying to the papers as soon as he tries it on a proper bloke and gets sorted out. Agree with you about the general quality of La Liga though.
I read something about this a few weeks ago. It mentioned the fact that, as low as academy level, English clubs will look for the strongest, quickest kid who can hit a ball really hard with no real technical ability at all, and then try to build passing skills and defending techniques on top of that. The Spanish however, look for kids who have more of a footballing brain, they spot technical ability and then attempt to address the size and speed problem. Messi was discovered using this technique and they solved his strength, speed and size problems using hormones.
Yeah Becchio plays competitively, he's a centre forward for Christ's sake. When a foul is given against him, he accepts it and gets on with playing, doesn't moan at all. In fact, he rarely ever appeals and generally just gets up and deals with it (e.g. after the horrific tackle from Bothroyd at Elland Road which could have broken his leg). And it wasn't him that went "crying to the papers", it was the club who submitted an appeal video to the FA calling for consistency in standards (below). That the papers picked that up is their decision, hardly Becchio's. And he doesn't ever do this sort of thing:
I wasn't actually talking about the Bothroyd incident, I've still never seen it. It was this Ashbee thing that I meant. Becchio is one of those horrible little players (like Kevin Davies or Marouane Fellaini) who wins loads of headers, primarily by throwing his elbows at anyone who comes along, and he does it when he knows that the ref can't see it, but it's obvious to anyone in the crowd. As I said, he tried this on City's entire defence, and got away with it, he tried it on Ashbee and got away with it once, once only. He won't try it again.
Why? *wonders who the Swansea, QPR and Cardiff captains are...* Pratley, Taarabt and... not sure. Is it the Cardiff one that I'm missing or what?
Garry Monk of Swansea has been mentioned but his Wiki says he became captain after they missed out on the League One play-off's.
I think someone might have cocked up with that story that came out just after the play-off's, Monk played for Swansea in all four divisions, but as you say, it looks like he was only captain in three of them.
****'s sake what am I on about. I've convinced myself that Cardiff would be getting promoted since about November. Norwich, their captain is Holt and tey haven't been in League 2 in bloody ages. QPR, they've only had Taarabt for about 2 seasons. Swansea, Pratley was captain wasn't he? And he is leaving/left. So... Viking Erik, who's the person who's going to join Ash in August?!
