Well, as the footballing 2010 draws to a close and a new year of hope, optimism and lots of Ian Holloway looms into view, I thought I'd bring the curtain down on this blog for the year with a taxing little football quiz for you anoraks out there. I've had a very pleasant afternoon with my Rothmans annual and have come up with this for you. I've put the answers at the end, but frankly, if you skip straight to the answers without trying to guess them first, you may wish to consider a career working for FIFA, you sneaky so-and-so. No peeking! Right, here goes, I'll start with a toughie...
1) Who was Fulham manager in between Kevin Keegan (1998-99) and Jean Tigana (2000-03)?
2) Who were the top goalscorers (in all competitions) in all four divisions in the 2009/10 season?
3) Who did Cardiff City beat over two legs in the Championship play-off semi final, before losing to Blackpool at Wembley?
4) As we begin a new decade, Arsenal have had just five managers in the previous three decades. Two of them are, of course, Arsene Wenger (1996-present) and George Graham (1986-95). Who are the other three?
5) Carlisle United's player-coach is one of the most dynamic and industrious midfielders to grace the Football League in recent seasons. Name him.
6) What was unique about Torquay United's goal difference in the 2009/10 season?
7) According to Rothmans, who is Ipswich Town's all-time record signing, from which team and what was the fee involved?
8) In 2009/10 season, five teams in the top four divisions won fewer than two league games away from home. How many can you name?
9) Sheffield United have just appointed Micky Adams as manager. Who is the only other manager in their history with a five-letter firstname and five-letter surname?
10) In the opening match of the 2010 African Cup of Nations, Angola lead Mali 4-0 with 11 minutes left on the clock. What happened next? Why was this apparently bad news for one English university student?
11) True or false? Jimmy Bullard has scored more than five goals in a season just once in his career.
12) Who is this Wolves assistant manager, pictured here with Mick McCarthy?
13) Bolton Wanderers signed Bulgarian winger Martin Petrov in the summer. How many of his five previous clubs can you name?
14) Two members of the current Stoke City squad have the colour blue in their national flag. Who are they, and what are their nationalities? Note: I have discounted Diego Arismendi (Uruguay) as he is on a season-long loan to Barnsley. There are two others.
15) Name the six different sponsors that the League Cup has had in its history.
Scroll down below this completely random Panini sticker of John Aldridge in his Oxford United days for the answers...
ANSWERS
1) Paul Bracewell.
2) Didier Drogba, Peter Whittingham, Rickie Lambert, Lee Hughes.
3) Leicester City.
4) Terry Neill (1976-83), Don Howe (1984-86) and Bruce Rioch (1995-96).
5) Graham Kavanagh.
6) They were the only side in all four divisions to finish in the bottom half with a positive goal difference. They ended up with a goal difference of +9 in 17th place in League Two.
7) Matteo Sereni, £5 million from Sampdoria (August 2001).
8) Fulham, West Ham, Burnley, Hull, Gillingham. (Doesn't say much for the quality of last season's Premier League, does it?)
9) Steve Bruce (1998-99).
10) Mali scored on 79, 88, 90+3 and 90+4 minutes to draw 4-4. The English university student allegedly bet £4,400 (with the score at 4-0) that Angola would win the game. The odds were 1.01, so he stood to win just £44 profit from his £4,400 stake.
11) True.
12) Former Leeds, Brighton and Portsmouth striker Terry Connor.
13) CSKA Sofia, Servette, Wolfsburg, Atletico Madrid, Manchester City.
14) Asmir Begovic (Bosnia) and Eidur Gudjohnsen (Iceland).
15) Carling, Worthington, Coca-Cola, Rumbelows, Littlewoods, Milk.
Hope that got the old grey matter working. If people like it, I'll do another one sometime. Happy new year everyone. Hope your team rips it up in 2011.
Back in August, I wrote on this blog about how lucky AFC Wimbledon were to have a supremely talented 20-year-old left back on their books in Andre Blackman. I said this with some caveats though. Blackman's already been shown the door at few league clubs (a level at which he is easily talented enough to play), and the worry was that his attitude and lack of discipline would get the better of him. Sadly, these caveats are looking quite accurate at the moment.
Blackman was - and I'm going on overheard fan conversations here - apparently seen stropping off in the car park while his teammates were preparing to kick off against Eastbourne yesterday, leaving flu-hit Wimbledon to name only three subs on their bench. Who knows, maybe Blackman had flu too and was just frustrated that he couldn't play, but whatever the cause was, it's another worry to add to Blackman's growing list. There are plenty of rumours as to why he got kicked out of other clubs - most of them relating to off-field matters - but it's on the field where the concerns are at the moment.
Wimbledon started the season short of cover at left back. But this wasn't too big a problem because Blackman looked a nailed-on starter for that position. Quick, skilful, audacious, attack-minded - Blackman essentially looked like an exciting winger that could defend a bit. On the ball, there are comparisons with several Premier League left backs - with aspects of Ashley Cole, Micah Richards, Gareth Bale and Patrice Evra in the way he plays. Defensively, he's a bit naive and prone to being dragged out of position. And by "dragged out of position", what I really mean is "caught upfield after neglecting his defensive duties".
The frustrating thing is, it's not always naivety that makes him a liability. Sometimes it's just flagrant disregard for tactics. We've even seen him dispute shouted instructions from the bench. Like the time when, positioned as cover on the half-way line for a corner, like full-backs often are - he started creeping forward leaving only one man back. And when told to get back to his position, he started gesticulating at the bench as if he knew best and that going forward was the correct thing to do. Even if it was, that's a debate for the dressing room afterwards. When you're on the pitch, you do what the coaches tell you to do.
If you'd seen Blackman play during pre-season you'd understand why I thought he could be one of the stand-out players in the division. AFC Wimbledon manager Terry Brown agreed, labelling Blackman as "Premier League or Championship quality". But it's just not worked out for him yet. He's not been able to find a way past solid Brentford loanee Chris Bush into the first team of late, and Brown is now making noises about finding another left-back in January.
One surprising thing is that Brown hasn't really given Blackman a go on the left wing. I'm a huge admirer of the manager and I'm sure he knows better than me, but a player of Blackman's touch, pace and skill would presumably do quite well running at an opposition full-back. I'd like to see it tried once.
If Wimbledon do sign another left-back in January, I worry that could be the last we'll see of Blackman. And for such a talented player to just simply not be able to knuckle down and work hard at his game, listen to instructions and make progress, would be a huge pity. If he applied himself, he'd be playing league football in no time.
I'm sure most supporters can think of a player they've watched as a youngster who looked supremely talented, but just never quite had the mindset of a professional athlete - and thus didn't make the grade. Andre Blackman may be just the next in a long line of gifted players that don't fulfil their potential. But with the ability he has, it really wouldn't take a hell of a lot of knuckling down for him to regularly be one of the best players on the pitch.
I hope I'm wrong to be worried. I hope we see what he's really capable of in the second half of the season and that this talented but troubled soul can somehow channel his angst into terrorising the opposition. But I'm increasingly concerned that Andre Blackman may have kicked over his bar stool at the Last Chance saloon, and is now squaring up to nobody in particular, possibly just his own reflection in a mirror, as a potentially brilliant career starts to slip from his grasp.
I used to love watching Andrei Kanchelskis play. At his best he was a genuinely exhilarating player. It is he more than almost anybody that epitomises my memories of the early years of Premier League football and Sky’s coverage. Here's why...
Any winger with the winning combination of searing pace and plenty of trickery will always be a favourite with the neutral. They’re the one you want to get on the ball during a drab game; you know that if anyone can make something happen, it’s the baggy-sleeved whippet on the wing.
But Andrei Kanchelskis’s sleeves weren’t as baggy as the archetypal touchline hugger. Surprisingly broad of shoulder for a winger, he’d often go past his man with a combination of pace, skill and the sort of strength that is best shown when going shoulder-to-shoulder with a fullback and gradually sending them off balance over the course of several paces. The marauding Ukrainian played the game how most of us like to see it – quick, on the deck, with precision and verve. I think the greatest compliment I could pay him would be that he made every pitch look like it was wet. The ball would glide along smoothly as he dribbled it. His crosses and shots would normally be fizzed in low like a well-skimmed pebble being thrown into water. He did everything with zip.
Of course, Kanchelskis played at the same time (and in the same team) as Eric Cantona, and so history perhaps does not remember him as a true United great. And even apart from the volatile-but-gifted Frenchman, he was playing alongside other world-class players in their pomp (Giggs, Schmeichel, Keane). But he still stood out as a real danger on many occasions during his four-year spell at United. During this time, he would make 145 appearances for the club, scoring an impressive 48 goals.
United's first 'proper' right winger since the early 1980s
I was lucky enough to see him play during his last full season at Old Trafford. It was 29 October 1994, and United were at home to Kevin Keegan’s table-topping Newcastle. The home side were convincing 2-0 winners, thanks to goals from Gary Pallister and Keith Gillespie (before the latter became a make-weight in the Andy Cole transfer between the clubs a couple of months later). But the real star of the show that day was Kanchelskis. People often talk about how thrilling it is to be stood or sat behind the goal towards which a flying winger is running. But for me, it was equally beguiling to sit behind him as he ran away, because then you got to enjoy watching the full-back squirm and contort before eventually falling over. He seemed so fast. And as he approached top speed he would jink and lurch in different directions – much like Gareth Bale does today, but at more acute angles. He loved to cut inside too, and was more than comfortable shooting with either foot.
When United signed Kanchelskis from Shakhtar Donetsk in March 1991, they paid just £650,000 for his services. And they were urgently needed services too. No disrespect to Mike Phelan, Neil Webb and Clayton Blackmore, but United’s right-sided options weren’t exactly budding Usain Bolts. In fact, the new arrival was said to be United’s first 'proper' right-winger since Steve Coppell.
Like with so many of United’s best servants over the years, Kanchelskis departed after a fall-out with Sir Alex Ferguson could not be patched up. He left for Everton in a £5 million deal just weeks after Ferguson had sold Paul Ince and Mark Hughes – in retrospect, a clear-out that arguably accelerated the development of one David Beckham, not to mention the rest of “Fergie’s Fledglings”.
Many predicted that he’d flop on Merseyside. They assumed he must have an attitude problem to have fallen out with Ferguson. But whenever I saw him play for Everton he always looked a threat – and 20 goals from 52 Premier League games, including both goals in a 2-1 win away at Anfield – tell you all you need to know.
Kanchelskis nets the winner at Anfield in 1995
Having earned cult status with Toffees fans and cemented his reputation as one of the most feared wingers in British football, he was suddenly gone; sold to Fiorentina in the January of his second season at Goodison Park for £8 million. He was never quite the same player after that, and even when he joined Glasgow Rangers in the summer of 1998, he never quite hit the heights. His status in Glasgow was that of a player good at turning the screw once Rangers were ahead, but who couldn’t produce in the big games.
The flat-track bully tag was perhaps best evidenced in the fact that he began to showboat. Once, memorably, with Rangers several goals to the good against Ayr United in a Scottish Cup semi-final, Kanchelskis received a pass in space on the right flank. He stood on top of the ball with both feet and raised his hand to his brow as if surveying his options. A swift one-two with Claudio Reyna and Kanchelskis whipped the ball in for Billy Dodds to score. It was a memorable moment, replayed endlessly in the days that followed, but Ayr’s players and fans felt it was unnecessary to do it against a minnow already heading for a convincing defeat. They just wanted to enjoy their big day out at Hampden Park by that point, and Kanchelskis had rubbed their noses in it.
But if he got away with that one, signs that his powers were on the wane were more apparent in a game with Kilmarnock at Ibrox, when Kanchelskis performed an even more pointless trick, completing a 360-degree turn without touching the ball. His marker, who’d kept his eye on the ball, wasn’t even close to being fooled and the Ukrainian then failed to get his cross in. He did little of particular note in what remained of his career, as he drifted to Manchester City (loan), Southampton, Saudi Arabia and Russia before eventually retiring at 38.
It was not the end he would have wished for his career, but he will always be remembered by fans of United and Everton for the way he brought pace, goals and skill to the first half of the 1990s. He also provided a certain amount of exoticism as a foreign player. He was one of just 13 non-Brits to play in the Premier League’s opening weekend (the others were Schmeichel, Cantona, Jan Stejskal, Robert Warzycha, Roland Nilsson, Hans Segers, John Jensen, Anders Limpar, Gunnar Halle, Craig Forrest, Michel Vonk and Ronnie Rosenthal). How bizarre does such a statistic seem now? Today’s Premier League teams have, on average, 13 foreign players each.
Andrei Kanchelskis was unusual. He came from a place we knew little about, seemed to run differently, shoot differently, even celebrate differently – his arms outstretched, slightly bent at the elbows, hands turned in, as if ready to embrace the first person that could catch him.
The Cantonas, Bergkamps, Henrys and Beckhams are all rightly revered for the contributions they have made to football in this shiny Premier League era. But we should not forget that Andrei Kanchelskis more than did his bit too.
Gloria! Hosannah in Kanchelskis!
(Or, to use a less pretentious subhead, ‘Five Memorable Andrei Kanchelskis Moments’)
1) An absolute monster of a goal against Oldham in the 1994 FA Cup Semi Final. United are making rather heavy work of this fixture, and so Andrei decides to take matters into his own hands...
2) A stunning volley for Rangers away at Dunfermline – one of the few special moments of his time in Glasgow.
3) A terrific hat-trick for Everton against Sheffield Wednesday (you’ll notice a rare Daniel Amokachi goal in there too).
4) A decidedly scrappier hat-trick in the Manchester derby. But still, a hat-trick in the derby is something to savour, especially when you win 5-0. Kanchelskis is the only player in history to have scored in all three of the Manchester, Liverpool and Glasgow derbies. Some feat.
5) A sublime goal against Forest in the 1994/95 season. It’s the first goal in this enjoyable compilation video. Watch for the view from inside the net to see just how well he picks his spot here. If Bergkamp had done that, it would have been Goal Of The Season in any season.
Harry Redknapp divides opinion like few other football managers. Some see him as a straight-talking, canny, shrewd operator and a wonderful motivator of players, while others see him as over-rated, ungracious and untrustworthy. In fact, many in the latter camp have more-or-less already made up their minds that he must have been involved in some illegal activity; the odd dodgy deal or twelve over the years.
I’ve always put myself – albeit increasingly tentatively – on Redknapp’s side. This is not a fashionable point of view, particularly in recent years. As a Bournemouth fan, who started watching the Cherries in the 1988/89 season and became instantly hooked for life, Harry was something of an idol to me as a child. Redknapp, captain Mark Newson, goalkeeper Gerry Peyton, classy midfielder Ian Bishop, and talismanic striker Luther Blissett were my heroes that first season at Dean Court. They were the key men, and none of them could do any wrong in my eyes. They all seemed immaculately good at their respective jobs. Redknapp seemed so much cleverer and more earnest than most of the kick-n-rush football managers of the late 1980s. I was, in short, a big fan. But that’s started to change in recent times, and never more so than this season. But I’ll get to that later.
Let me first explain where my fondness for the man comes from. The late 1980s were a cynical time for football. Much romanticised now of course, now we’re all pining for crumbling terraces and £5 tickets, but at the time it wasn’t much fun for many football fans. Functional football was increasingly the order of the day. Huge centre backs and centre forwards would crash into each other, nippy wingers would be chopped down by hard-as-nails full backs wearing metal studs, anybody with an ounce of guile – Peter Beardsley, Kevin Sheedy, Ossie Ardiles and the like – were adored like messiahs by the fans; givers of the few moments of flair that would, once in a while, light up a muddy Saturday afternoon and make it worthwhile.
The beauty of Harry Redknapp was his ability to combine skill and toughness into one side – a quality his teams still often exhibit today. The squad contained the flair of Bishop, Sean O’Driscoll and the vastly underrated Shaun Brooks, the searing pace of Richard Cooke, but also the rugged bite-yer-legs-and-any-stray-testicles graft and occasional downright nastiness of Tony Pulis. Most of the squad could really play, including the back four, but there was that bit of steel when it was needed. You can apply this template to most Redknapp sides ever since.
He was a champion wheeler-dealer even back then. Yes, I used the phrase ‘wheeler-dealer’. What better expression is there? That’s what he is. It’s not an insult. Astute signings from the Football League such as Gavin Peacock, John Williams, Blissett and Bishop were combined with brilliant, inspired non-league discoveries like Sean Teale, Efan Ekoku and Newson (pinched from Maidstone United, under the nose of apoplectic manager Barry Fry, after Redknapp found out Newson hadn’t actually signed his contract at Maidstone – Fry telling Redknapp in response that “there'll be two blokes coming down the motorway to shoot your ****ing kneecaps off”).
Bournemouth had their highest ever league finish under Redknapp in 1989, hanging around the Second Division play-offs until late March before petering out and ending up 12th. Sadly, they were relegated the following season (minus Ian Bishop, I should add), and Redknapp would soon depart the club. In a (not widely known) moment of controversy, it emerged after his departure that Redknapp had accepted a payment of £100,000 from then chairman Norman Hayward on leaving the club. Hayward insisted the money was his own and hadn’t cost the club, but still nobody knew what the payment was for. The story caused some unrest among the fans and led to the council withdrawing a grant for car park improvements. It was to be the first of a fistful of allegations and rumours that would dog Redknapp at various times during the long managerial career he has enjoyed.
After he left Bournemouth, I continued to follow Redknapp’s fortunes with some interest. West Ham effectively became my second team for several years. Players like Bishop and Matt Holmes continued a long-standing tradition of links between the two clubs, which carried on throughout the 1990s with the likes of Rio Ferdinand and Jermain Defoe joining the Cherries on loan, and Matt Holland and Scott Mean arriving on free transfers – much of this on Redknapp’s recommendation, no doubt.
And so there are the foundations for my liking of the man. Over the years since he left Bournemouth, I’ve defended him so many times when other football fans have been critical or taken the mick. I’ve sometimes felt that the main things he gets attacked for are slightly unfair.
The wheeler-dealer issue first. Surely the very definition of a wheeler-dealer is someone who buys and sells a lot of things, chiselling out a profit overall. Yes, he buys and sells at a rate of knots, but it’s misleading to say that he’s wasteful with money – as a lot of pub bores do. During his 27-year career as a manager the ‘spent’ and ‘recouped’ columns from his transfers are almost exactly balanced at approx £220-230 million each; if anything the ‘recouped’ total is slightly the bigger figure. That’s textbook wheeler-dealage! The bargains (Rafael Van der Vaart £8m, Sean Teale £50,000, and an honourable mention to Robert Prosinecki on a free while director of football at Portsmouth) and the stinkers (Robbie Keane £12m, John Utaka £7m, Nigel Quashie £2.1m) balance out and leave Redknapp marginally in the black.
Then there’s the twitch. People always laugh at silly old Harry with his craggy, jowly face and his ‘hilarious’ twitch. The affliction seemed to coincide with Redknapp’s recovery from a major car crash at the 1990 World Cup in Italy, in which Bournemouth’s inspirational managing director Brian Tiler was killed. Redknapp was lucky to escape from the wreckage with his life – and I’ve no recollection of him twitching before that. So as well as permanently losing his sense of smell in the crash, that twitch is a perhaps permanent reminder of the day Redknapp lost a colleague and a very close friend. It’s probably not something to make a cheap joke about.
The biggest Redknapp haters of all are probably Southampton fans – and they are perhaps the ones I do have some degree of sympathy for. He did take them down, and he couldn’t get out of St Mary’s quick enough when the chance came to return to arch rivals Portsmouth. To offer some sort of caveat, he did inherit a poor squad, where the likes of Darren Kenton and Neil McCann were getting games, and he did have Clive Woodward brought in over his head the next season – a rugby coach with no football experience. So it’s not quite as simple as dismissing him as a Judas, though it’s certainly true that he could have handled things a lot better.
But among the average football fan there has been a move towards having a go at Redknapp about every little thing he says in recent years. I’ve lost count of the number of conversations I’ve had with people in pubs where I’ve stuck up for the guy, and it’s been getting harder to win those arguments I can tell you. It’s been a challenge not to get sucked into following the herd, and sticking steadfastly to my own feelings about the man. Until this season, that is. I’ve gone. I’ve finally cracked.
Good grief – he’s been a dislikeable sod this season, hasn’t he? It’s been a non-stop torrent of spite and selfishness. He’s declared interest in the England job (more than once) when England have a manager and he himself has a contract at Tottenham. He’s threatened to stop talking to the press after speculation he could get into hot water for some conspiratorial and disparaging comments about referee Mark Clattenburg following Nani’s controversial goal at Old Trafford against his team. He’s humiliated an interviewer live on air for using the ‘wheeler-dealer’ tag ("I'm not a wheeler and dealer – f*** off. I've not made my name as a wheeler and dealer, don't say that. I'm a f***ing football manager"). He’s blamed Spurs’ performance away at Young Boys on the artificial surface, when clearly his team defended like they’d never seen each other before. He’s winged to anyone that would listen that Man City wouldn’t loan him Craig Bellamy – why the heck should they? Would he have loaned them anyone that could help them finish above Spurs? Of course not. And when asked before the World Cup if he was interested in signing Joe Cole, he hinted in no uncertain terms that Cole already had a deal in place with another club, giving no thought to whether the player himself might want to tell the Chelsea fans that had supported him for years that he was moving on. He’s become a real fan of poking his nose into other clubs’ business, and openly discussing rumours with journalists instead of politely avoiding the questions.
So the question is: were all of you Redknapp haters right about the man all along? Or has he just become much more objectionable in recent years?
He is, of course, due back in court in the next few months – to answer charges of tax evasion along with Milan Mandaric and Peter Storrie. Which makes his status as bookies’ favourite to be the next England manager quite interesting. Obviously he’s innocent until proven guilty, but if Fabio Capello has another couple of bad results and walks, Redknapp could conceivably be convicted of the crime while in the job. Then what?
Harry Redknapp, despite spending most of his career managing middling teams, has a career win percentage of roughly 40% – no mean feat. He has the knack of getting the best out of players, particularly those that lack the intelligence to comprehend complicated tactical instructions – as recent quotes from Van der Vaart made clear. He is a wily, savvy, dogged survivor. But though it saddens me to say it – deary me, he hasn’t half turned into a bit of a tosser.
It's with much sadness that I read today's news confirming that Danny Baker is battling cancer. I'm sure we all really hope the big man pulls through. I have special reasons for adoring the guy and it feels only right to document them here.
First question: name a journalist you admire and talk about the reasons why. My mind went blank - I was not an avid reader of newspapers and spent most of my time reading about football rather than *proper*, hard subjects like news, politics and other terrifyingly grown-up things. The only name coming to mind was Danny Baker. Man alive!
I decided to run with it, and gave an impassioned five-minute speech about why Baker is a genius, an essential part of the footballing press and an inspirational user of the English language. There were initially raised eyebrows from the panel at my choice (I think most people said AA Gill, Will Self and the like) but clearly I won them over because they offered me a rare place on the course despite the rest of the interview being downright ordinary. I haven't looked back since. So thanks Dan, I really owe you one.
The love affair with Baker and his wonderful vocabulary began in childhood with his series of Own Goals & Gaffs videos and other similar releases. I was bought the first installment as a Christmas present. "Why have you bought me a video by the man from the Daz adverts?" was my baffled response to my parents. But as soon as I stuck it on, I was hooked.
I used to play Own Goals & Gaffs over and over again. I knew every sentence, in the same way that some people can quote you the entire script of Withnail & I or scenes from Spaced verbatim. The rich and florid language used by Baker, combined with his London twang, fascinated me. It was like a door had been opened in my mind: this was how to get the most out of our Mother Tongue. It was the moment in my childhood when I realised that using long or intelligent words was not simply a preserve of the pompous; it was not necessarily done to exclude the uninformed but to embrace the possibilities available in a language riddled with near-infinite possibilities.
If you haven't seen the Own Goals & Gaffs series, I would urge you to try and pick them up at the earliest opportunity, even if you have to buy them on VHS and track down something to play them on. The footage is very funny in itself, but what makes it is Baker's introduction and commentary over the clips. It would always be the small detail that caught his attention - an old man in the crowd sarcastically applauding a hairbrained own goal by his team, a bald fella falling over, a fleeting glance between goalkeeper and defender as they attempted to blame each other without moving their lips. Baker would highlight all of this minutiae to the viewer; it was delicious.
Into my teens and the Radio 5 show Baker & Kelly Upfront was essential listening. The idea of a football phone-in that spent hardly any time talking about action on the pitch, instead concentrating on every other aspect of being a supporter, perfectly summed up what it is to be a football fan in this country.
And by football fan, I mean a fan of football. Some people just support their team, and as long as they win that's all that matters. I, and I suspect most of you, have never been that way. I am a fan of the game, played in the right way and in the right spirit. And that spirit has to include humour. Without humour the game would die. Would we really pay anything from £5 to £50 to watch our team if there was no possibility of the referee falling over, a hilarious own goal, some girlish fisticuffs between foppish midfielders or - best of all - a brief floodlight failure? It is all this other stuff that Baker (and Kelly) would celebrate. And today more so than ever Baker's Saturday morning show on 5Live retains this heavy dose of the absurd. Any caller wanting to discuss the actual match action in a game is usually given short shrift in favour of a lady with an anecdote about how she knits baby booties during Reading's home matches.
But for all Baker's lovably verbose delivery, nothing makes me smile more than when a caller rings in with a beautifully silly football anecdote and Baker responds with a roaring, uncontrollable belly laugh of delight. In that moment, as you can almost hear the tears of joy rolling down his cheeks, he embodies us all, us proper football fans.
It's not about whether you win, lose or draw. It's about the last man, desperately dashing towards a ball trickling towards the goalline as a result of a squiffy back-pass, straining every sinue to get there in time, failing, and ending up in a heap with one boot stuck in the net. Wonderful. That is the game we love and the game Danny Baker brings us every single time we tune in.
Football is not about Alan Shearer telling us on Match Of The Day that a centre forward has "done great" in beating his man to a header. It's about Danny Baker asking former England captains whether they prefer red or brown sauce on a sausage sandwich.
Everything else is just noise.
Get well soon, Dan. I would say that I love you more than words but that wouldn't quite be true. I look forward to hearing more of your immaculate words soon.
What is the point of any away team's manager getting involved with heated banter and bickering with the home fans? The very idea that a manager would even bother seems ludicrous. What possible good is ever going to come of it in terms of the team's performance on the pitch?
Some context. Yesterday I was at AFC Wimbledon v Darlington. The first thing to say is that Darlington got their tactics right, worked their socks off and were probably deserved winners. But Darlington manager Mark Cooper's conduct in the dugout was really bizarre.
Stood in my usual spot on the terraces behind the dugouts, I get to hear a lot of what the managers say during the game. I pick this spot because I find Dons manager Terry Brown's continual encouragement of his troops to keep calm and play attractive football rather heart-warming.
Opposition managers - Crawley's Steve Evans aside, obviously - have generally conducted themselves in a good manner this season at Kingsmeadow. I had always been under the impression that Mark Cooper was an intelligent, forward-thinking young manager - but that was not the impression I left with yesterday.
Some fans behind me were giving Cooper a little bit - and I emphasise the words 'little bit' - of stick, largely about how things hadn't worked out for him as manager of Peterborough. Cooper was giving a bit back for some reason, but it was largely harmless at this point. Then one fan quipped "How much dodgy money are they paying you at Darlo?", or words to that effect. Cooper's response was quite surprising.
He paused for a moment, then turned around and snarled: "About one-hundred-and-fifty grand, tax-free, ah-reet?!"
It's one thing to banter with the away fans - as the likes of Dagenham keeper Tony Roberts regularly demonstrate, you'll quickly gain widespread respect if your banter is good - but to spitefully start boasting about your salary just because a couple of fans have harmlessly taken the mick... as you can imagine, the fans took a real shine to Cooper from this point on.
During the second half, the manager continued to argue with the home fans. There was a lengthy debate between Cooper and the fans over a free-kick in Darlington's favour. And at one point, responding to a throwaway comment from a Dons fan, Cooper crowned his afternoon with a really bad 'Your Mum' joke aimed at one particular fan. And not a funny one either. How much is a manager's mind on his team's performance if he's coming up with crap jokes about supporters' mothers?
One final point. While Cooper remained a distracted presence for large periods of the game, his assistant Richard Dryden acquitted himself well. For much of the game it appeared that Dryden was calling most of the shots. On a couple of occasions it even appeared that Dryden had overruled Cooper on a couple of decisions. I'm sure it wasn't quite as it seemed, but there's no question that Dryden was the only one of the two that was fully focused on the game. Indeed he was the only person in the stadium who realised what had happened when the referee gave Darlington a penalty for more-or-less nothing in the second half.
Apologies if any of this sounds like sour grapes. Darlington did play well, with some impressive performances from the likes of Marc Bridge-Wilkinson, Chris Senior and live-wire substitute Daniel Powell. But their manager's behaviour was just plain odd.
A few weeks ago, some of you may have seen me prattling away on Twitter at the fact that Tranmere Rovers have a player – a local lad and highly-rated scholar of their youth team – who goes by the glorious name of: Max Power.
“Max Power. The man whose name you’d love to touch,” goes the Homer Simpson ditty (in Simpsons Episode 216 from 11 years ago, where Homer decides to change his name to Max Power after noticing it on a hairdryer). Here’s the lyrics and a clip I found on Youtube, in case you’ve not seen the episode.
“Max Power — he's the man whose name you'd love to touch...
But, you mustn't touch!
His name sounds good in your ear
But when you say it, you mustn't fear
Because his name can be said by anyone!”
According to Soccerbase, Power is yet to make his first team debut. But he does have a squad number (22) and was on the bench against Southampton at the weekend. So it won't be long... brace yourselves.
If you are a Tranmere supporter then I urge you: learn the Max Power song, teach it to your mates, and the first time the lad first runs onto the Prenton Park pitch, sing it at the top of your voices. Hopefully it will end up being sung at him on a regular basis.
But this isn't just a blog by a man amused about another man because he has a good name. There is more to enjoy about the Wirral's Max Power. Like the fact that three years ago - when just a scrawny Scouse scamp in his mid-teens - Power set up his own Youtube channel. Here he announced himself to the world thus: "My name is Max Power. Am 14. I play for Tranmere Rovers FC. I like meetin birds and love makin funny and mad videos."
A budding Nick Broomfield he is not, but regardless here are my three favourites:
1) Max Power slaps his mate. For a laugh, like
2) Max Power pranks his sister during the night
3) Max Power and his school chums belting out "You'll Never Walk Alone" on a train
You can imagine that last one getting dredged up if he ever signs for Everton. That's some serious Red-loving passion in Power's face on 57 seconds. If only Youtube had been around in Jamie Carragher's Everton-supporting teenage years.
Anyway, like the Homer song, this blog doesn't really make sense. I just wanted to be the first person to write anything significant on the subject of Max Power the footballer. If he makes it big, you heard of him here first.
Even without the Simpsons episode, the name conjures up memories of the laddish car magazine of the same name - the one you used to see sitting on the passenger seats of souped-up Vauxhall Novas with fancy hubcaps and Ford Fiestas with silly spoilers on the back. The merest mention of the name Max Power will always make us smile. Look, I'll prove it to you. Here are three random and otherwise fairly mundane mentions of the lad in what little press coverage he's had so far:
"In contrast to Southampton's resources, Tranmere manager Les Parry had to put 17-year-old academy player Max Power on the bench."
"It was a miss that was followed by a lull in the proceedings until Max Power drilled a shot straight at Bouzanis after a neat exchange with Ryan Fraughan on the half hour mark."
"The Rovers side also included keeper Andy Coughlin, who was on the bench during a few first team games last year, and captain Jay Gibbs, though hotly-tipped midfielder Max Power missed out."
See? :)
I'll leave you with The Simpsons family's reaction to Homer's name change - because if this ridiculous idea for a blog post has achieved one thing, it's probably been to make you crave watching the whole episode, and I cannot bring you that.
If you are reading this and you happen to know Max Power, or indeed if you are Max Power, please get in touch. I’d love to do an interview with the young man whose fledgling career we will all surely be keeping tabs on. Even if it's mostly because we'd really love to touch his name.
***
Lisa: "Max Power"?
Homer: Dynamic, isn't it?
Bart: I love it, Max.
Marge: You changed your name without consulting me?
Homer: That's the way Max Power is, Marge. Decisive. Uncompromising! And rude!
Marge: But I fell in love with Homer Simpson! I don't want to snuggle with "Max Power!"
Homer: Nobody snuggles with Max Power. You strap yourself in and feel the "G"s!
Marge: Oh, Lord.
Homer: And it doesn't stop in the bedroom. Oh, no. I'm taking charge! Kids, there's three ways to do things. The right way, the wrong way, and the Max Power way!
