When I was in the latter stages of my student life, I had set myself a few goals of Things I Want To Own as soon as I was in a position to do so. Top of that list was the essential bit - a car - but after that, it was wholly dominated by geekdom.
To that end, an Xbox 360 and a nice flat screen telly to display it on were one of the last pieces of the jigsaw that fell into place in the spring. I’ve built up a decent collection of games, but so far there hadn’t been one that had hooked me in to a great extent. Beijing 2008 is great fun but hardly deep, the online mode in PES 2008 is a disaster that should never have been allowed to happen, I rarely have the time/inclination to sit down and have a long session on GTAIV, etc. I had high hopes for PES 2009 and FIFA 2009, in the hope that one of them would lure me in.
Football games, after all, have been one of my favoured types game for over a decade. From Sensible World of Soccer to PES, far too much of my teenage life was lost to games like these. The pinnacle of the gameplay experience was probably PES 5 back in 2005 - the game that made me buy a PS2 - an amazing football engine, finely tuned controls, and most importantly it was the first real online game I’d played. Playing against other people with their own techniques and practices was light years ahead of playing the CPU.
To this end, the first game I got for the 360 was PES 2008. More of the same, but with snazzier graphics and the beauty of Xbox Live? Not really. Fast, arcade-style play; a truly terrible online mode with several seconds’ lag. The online mode had the annoying habit of you running off with the ball, being one on one with the keeper, only for the ball to teleport 60 yards to your opponent who is in your penalty area with the ball. And then scores.
This was definitely frustrating.
FIFA 2009 doesn’t struggle with this at all. In fact, the online mode is seamless, to the point where you wouldn’t notice the difference (apart from the idiot hurling abuse at you through the earpiece). It’s good. I recommend it.
I have scored two good goals so far in my career mode as Chris Dagnall. Originally at Rochdale, I’ve earnt him a move to Serie B side Livorno, and is now England first choice striker alongside Rooney. Despite wearing the number 79 shirt. Ahem.
The now traditional table guessage is here. Leaving it a little later this year because I meant to do it on Thursday but forgot. Sorry.
Without further ado:
Chelsea
Manchester United
Arsenal
Aston Villa
Liverpool
Tottenham Hotspur
Portsmouth
Everton
Manchester City
West Ham United
Sunderland
Newcastle United
Blackburn Rovers
Fulham
Wigan Athletic
Middlesbrough
Stoke City
West Bromwich Albion
Bolton Wanderers
Hull City
Rationale for choices of controversy
The selection of Aston Villa comes not as a definite belief that this is a position that I truly think they will achieve. Nor is it one of partisan zeal on my part. It is more a feeling that this season really is make-or-break for Liverpool. Without even taking the farcical Gareth Barry pursuit into account, I am entirely unimpressed with the way their squad has evolved over the summer. Keane was horribly overpriced, while the loss of Crouch has shorn them of their one ‘different’ striking option. It might not be pretty, but there’s times when having a 6′11″ striker can help a team when things are getting desperate. Keane, for all his qualities, can’t offer that.
With this, something of a quandary was the result. If Liverpool are going to struggle, who is going to profit? Of the challengers from last season, Everton’s non-existent player purchases make it difficult to believe that their wafer-thin squad can really attain the consistency. Spurs will be there or thereabouts, but with the loss of Berbatov becoming almost inevitable (and with Keane and Defoe having already made way) a strikeforce of Darren Bent on his own is nowhere near as menacing as they have had in recent years. Portsmouth have added to their squad impressively, but will miss Sulley Muntari massively - they won’t have quite enough to challenge for fourth, but will again be an impressive team ready to give anyone a tough game.
This leaves Aston Villa, who suffered in two key positions last year - right back, and in goal. These have been filled handsomely - while Luke Young is a solid signing who will make few mistakes, Brad Friedel is indisputably one of the most impressive goalkeepers in the top flight, despite his age. His presence will surely be worth at least ten fewer goals conceded over the error-prone Scott Carson from last season.
Villa will need to get over their allergy of winning against the big clubs - hell, even a draw against Manchester United for the first time since 1995 would be a start - to stand a real chance of attaining that elusive top four spot. Bearing in mind the points that they lost in the final minutes of games last season - two points away at Arsenal, Liverpool, and Tottenham - I honestly think that Villa are best placed to challenge for the top four this season.
To go down, the only real thing that I think many would dispute would be the choice of West Bromwich Albion to go down, but Stoke to stay up. Albion are a significantly better footballing team than Stoke, will score more goals than Stoke, will make more friends than Stoke, but have one key problem. They cannot defend. Because of this, they will be relegated. Also, Stoke are going to be one of the most appallingly negative, regressive, ugly, violent, and downright unpleasant teams the Premiership has ever seen. I like this. It’s as if John Beck’s Cambridge United made it up, only 18 years later.
Predictions of course are a funny game. It probably goes without saying that despite all I’ve just said, Liverpool still have the brilliant Gerrard and Torres, have a top drawer goalkeeper in Reina, a much deeper squad than most of their rivals below them. They might still even grab Villa’s captain and key man Gareth Barry before the end of the month (I tend to think it won’t happen now for both football and financial reasons). These are not very good reasons, but are probably enough.
But, as we will soon see, nobody’s ever 100% perfect. Here is my chance to prove that. Please partake of yours in the comments section.
Every day, in almost every way, I am becoming more convinced that Icon by Rhythim is Rhythim (sic) is one of the most complete pieces of electronic music ever made.
I am not a fan of Radovan Karadzic. There is enough evidence to suggest that he was responsible for some pretty nasty things. I confess to being no expert on the issues surrounding the ex-Yugoslav war and consequent break-up into constituent republics - I was too young to really understand the issues at hand, and frankly other things were of more interest when I was in my early teens.
I must confess, however, to being utterly transfixed by the capture of Karadzic last week in Belgrade after over a decade on the run. As the old English stereotype says, I think it’s a case of always admiring the plucky underdog, no matter how unpleasant they may be.
Karadzic’s absolutely genuis disguise as a New Age healer with a ludicrously large white beard was crude, but effective. It couldn’t be more different to his image in the 1990s, of a sharply dressed man with a trademark hairstyle matched only in recent years by Boris Johnson. The transformation couldn’t be more stark - aside from his hair and dress sense, Karadzic was known for his intellect, his strong nationalism, and (according to those who speak Serbo-Croat) his truly terrible poetry.
There is a comparison to be drawn with John and Anne Darwin, whose trial ended last week with them both being jailed for six years. After an elaborate life insurance scam in which John’s death was faked in a canoe accident, the couple moved to Panama, allowing their two sons to believe that their father was dead. All this was rumbled when - as part of the plan for John to regain his identity - he returned to England, presented himself at a police station declaring that he thinks he’s been missing for a few years. Unfortunately, a quick internet search showed the Darwins in Panama together in 2006, ruining this quite drastically.
Between them though, Karadzic and the Darwins had the cunning to escape the inevitable for several years. Both committed crimes, and I don’t dispute that justice should always be done. But in managing to escape it for a little while, I can’t help but applaud the endeavour required to do this.
This probably sounds crass when speaking about a man who is accused of the unpleasant charge of ‘Crimes Against Humanity’ - and I don’t mean to offend anyone by suggesting that I admire Karadzic evading justice for so long. I don’t.
I cannot help but be impressed, though, when plans that seem utterly mad come to fruition. There is a very, very fine line between madness and genius. The Darwins crossed it when John returned to the UK and presented himself to the police. Karadzic, it could be argued, had his moments of madness when he was at the height of his powers, and has only as Dragan Dabic shown the genius necessary to keep such an outlandish disguise up for so long.
The ICTY at the Hague will soon deal with Karadzic - hopefully in a significantly better way than it did with his countryman Slobodan Milosevic, who after long bouts of ill-health and an insistence that he be allowed to defend himself, died before the cases against him were ever concluded. A quick scan of the transcripts of that case don’t make pretty reading - legal technicalities seemed to block the true intentions of such a court.
It wouldn’t surprise me if Karadzic’s case faced similar problems, coupled with the unedifying possibility of the ICTY’s mandate expliting before Karadzic is brought to justice.
That would be the type of justice nobody in their right mind could admire.
While I try and make this site look and do what I want it to do. Things were messed up before to the stage whereby things I tried to post didn’t include spaces in between words. I don’t recommend this if you have any real desire to be either read or understood.
Things may or may not change here - certainly things work from a technical standpoint now, so there’s no reason why blogging shouldn’t recommence here soon. Except laziness.
Few people will remember Steve McClaren’s reign as England manager with fondness. After an unconvincing qualifying campaign, England will not be taking part in the finals of the European Championships for the first time since 1984.
The man has been beaten pillar to post for his selections, his demeanour, his umbrella, but most of all his results. Statistically, he ranks as England’s worst ever full-time manager - and a far cry from the efficient but dull team put out by Sven-Göran Eriksson.
After his inevitable sacking, I am not mourning his departure. I personally was never convinced that he was the right man, and still to this day feel that Sam Allardyce was the right choice for the job.
Just as history is judging Eriksson well, I think that McClaren’s reign is going to be remembered for a few positive things.
Despite the image of McClaren being the easy choice, the unthreatening candidate who wouldn’t ruffle suits at the FA, the man had both the nerve and the nous to make tough decisions, and history must note that in several of these were triumphs.
Eriksson was a slave to loyalty. He stuck with the likes of Gerrard, Lampard, Seaman and Beckham for longer than most of us would have liked. McClaren didn’t do this. His brave opening gambit was to drop Beckham, a decision few would disagree was the right one at the time. After a third successive below-par major tournament, the writing was on the wall for Beckham, and the new man did the right thing. Even though Beckham was brought back in, the hunger and passion he showed was like the Beckham of old.
It wasn’t just Beckham either. Lampard was dropped. Robinson. In came the perennially overlooked Gareth Barry, and even the maligned Emile Heskey - both of whom turned in impressive performances.
McClaren’s downfall was somewhat Thatcher-esque in its roots. Both had been buoyed by their successes in their strongest fields, and took it a step too far, confident they could once again prove their critics wrong. For Thatcher it was the Poll Tax. For McClaren, it was playing Scott Carson against Croatia.
Robinson didn’t merit selection against Croatia. His form for England and Tottenham had been on a downward spiral for months, and the only reason for selecting him would have been continuity. Available in the England squad was David James, an honest senior pro who has put most of his calamities behind him. Carson though represented the future. In exceptional form for Villa all season long, McClaren surely reasoned that this game would be a tough, but appropriate introduction to competitive international football - England did, after all, only require a draw.
I totally understand why he made that decision, and in his place, I think I would have done the same. The hypocrisy which has emanated from fans and the press ever since on this subject has been dishonest and fatuous - I know almost nobody who wanted to see Robinson playing against Croatia.
I felt sorry for Carson when everything fell around him in that match. I felt sorry that McClaren was going to be remembered for that selection, and especially that it would be remembered as the wrong selection. It was the right selection, but one that just went badly wrong.
The man was let down by poor performances from most of his key players throughout the qualifying campaign. Rooney forgot how to score goals for most of McClaren’s reign, Lampard and Gerrard almost always showed nothing except overwhelming ineptitude, Robinson forgot how to tend goal, and so on.
I do think that with a better manager at the helm, England would still have qualified for the finals next summer. McClaren is partially to blame for this. But his players are the ones at fault for most of the failure. Even though the Carson selection went wrong, it wasn’t his fault that the likes of Bridge, Lampard, Gerrard, Campbell, Lescott and Richards played like Under 16 rugby players for most of the Croatia game.
As for the next manager? As far as I’m concerned, if the man has the nerve to make the kind of decisions McClaren made, allied with a bit more tactical nous and the bit of luck every manager needs, then I’ll be happy.
I try and avoid simple links to YouTube videos where possible. This might just justify it, however.
I normally pay no attention to the likes of The X Factor, Pop Idol, or whatever other programmes like this exist, except in the opening weeks when it comes to watching some of the appalling dross that auditions. That is entertainment.
A French take on this, M6’s Nouvelle Star, has quite possibly ruined my disdain/appreciation (delete as applicable) for this genre for good. I have no idea when this was (for all I know this dates from when I was living in France) but 21-year-old Joseph from Sête is responsible for this. How? With this.
RSS aficionados, the video is embedded above. Click the link to see it, or visit the actual entry, you horrible, horrible people.
I don’t have a clue what the final song is, but it appears to be a modern adaptation of Numbers by Kraftwerk, the song with the absolute funkiest beat in the history of the modern world.
[audio:numberssnippet.mp3]
RSS aficionados, a clip of this song is embedded above. If you didn’t visit the site before, please do so now, otherwise you have wasted part of your life reading an entry you won’t fully appreciate. That would be a shame.
This guy is amazing. As the little judge said in a far more authoritative tone than I ever could: ‘Respecte’.
