Footblog

How self-important is Shearer?

For a man who claims to "bleed black and white", it seems Alan Shearer is none too fussed about helping his home-team out. He made it abundantly clear he preferred the Match of the Day sofa when they widened the St James's door frames to boot Fat Sam out of the exit, and now he's apparently turned down an approach to help coach the strikers under Joe Effing Kinnear.

"It was very honourable of Alan," says Kinnear of Shearer's 'ta, but no ta'. "Speculation linking him with the job is never going to go away and we're both aware of that."

Perhaps Shearer's waiting until Newcastle are really in the Newky Brown stuff in the Championship, before taking on the Roy Keane Messiah-like role his ego so clearly demands. But let's hear no more of the black and white blood until he does. 

Referees: they know the game alright

Of all the lazy cliches that slip out of the mouths of ex-pros on the Football Focus sofa, the assertion that "referees know the rules but they don't know the game" is the one that always has me reaching for the mute button.

Andy Cole might think rebranding himself Andrew makes him sound more intelligent, but he was a proper Andy on this week's show, when he muttered this sloppy untruism.

Today's Premiership player will fall straight out of school into a pampered academy, where everything from their socks to their isotonic sports drinks will be laid out before them. They'll be earning thousands of pounds a week before they've even kicked a first-team football; they'll be playing youth and reserve fixtures of pitches so pristine that they could double as The Oval cricket crease - perhaps roughing it for a couple of months on loan at a lower-league team, where they only mow the grass three times a week. Then they'll embark on their Premiership career, with their monstrous egos and unassailable belief that the bloke in black, 20 years their senior, doesn't know the game and so deserves an expletive-strewn mouthful for awarding a throw-in the wrong way.

For referees, there's no shortcut to the Premiership when a scout spots their natural talent before their balls have dropped. They'll have started as they all do: on a park littered with dog shit, officiating half-drunk cloggers on a Sunday morning. They'll have worked their way up, slowly, through Saturday league, county, non-league, Conference and lower-leagues. They'll have spent 15 years spotting tugged shirts, slight deflections, marginal offsides and every conceivable scenario involving 22 men and a piece of synthetic leather. And they'll have learnt every single swear word in the English language - and thesedays probably a mother-fucking-tongue load of foreign ones, too.

And only then, if they've made few enough mistakes to escape the attention of Keith Hackett and crew in the stands, will they be allowed into the Premiership. Don't know the game? These guys have seen every single facet of the game there is to see. They might get it wrong occasionally, they might get it wrong a lot, but no-one will know it more than the bloke in the black.   

Tony Adams buffs his CV

"Harry was a master of man management but I'm a bit different," says Tony Adams, possibly confusing the word "different" for "worse".

"Maybe I'll use the fact that I'm a bit younger than him but I'm very protective of what I call my babies. If and when I get the sack it will be my results and my team which does it."

Yes, Tony, it certainly will.

Drogba facing lifetime ban

"The FA wants anyone found guilty of throwing missiles to face the strongest possible action. That includes life bans from attending football matches," an FA spokesman tells the BBC.

Presumably that rule applies to Didier Drogba, then? Or is it one rule for us, and another for the players?

Gazza's liquid assets

"He needed time to sort out his professional affairs and liquidate assets in order to pay some unpaid tax," Gazza's solicitor explains about his forthcoming court date with the Revenue.

Isn't that what got him into this mess in the first place?

Savage blow

606's Danny Baker on Robbie Savage's potential move to Lebanese club Al-Ansar:

"Hasn't Beirut suffered enough?"

Wenger stokes the fires

Arsene Wenger complaining about the opposition's tactics after an Arsenal defeat is as predictable as a news report containing the words "Joey Barton" followed by "disciplinary hearing". But Wenger may have a point when he whinges about Stoke's tactics at the weekend.

Responding to criticism that his team lacked the stomach for a cold Saturday in Stoke, Wenger replied:

"I am not ready to listen to things that are untrue and make people who are cowards, for me, look brave. I read that my team were not brave.

"All I can say is they are brave and, for me, you need to have more courage to play football when you know that someone is tackling you from behind without any intention to play the ball.

"The only intention is to hurt you and I can show some tackles where I can prove what I say. The one who is tackling is not the brave one. For me the brave one is the player who is trying to play football." 

He's undeniably bang on the money. If there's one team I'd paid to see other than Fonzie's Claret and Blue Army, it's the Wenger boys. On their day, they play football that no other team in the league can hold a candle to. Yet, when a bunch of Championship chancers kick them off the park and can only score past them by practically throwing the ball into the net, we all rub our hands with glee and remark they don't like it up 'em.

Who are we going to remember fondly in ten years' time? The team that practically passed the ball into the net after 20 successive passes? Or the bloke who threw the ball into the box like an exocet missile? Let's hope and pray it's not the latter.

Harry Redknapp: Tactical genius

How has Harry Redknapp masterminded Tottenham's sudden reversal of fortunes? With magnificent tactical masterstrokes such as his half-time instructions to Roman Pavlyuchenko.

"What did I say to him? Not a lot because he speaks through an interpreter. He asked if there was anything special I wanted him to translate and I said, ‘Not really, just tell him to f****** run about’.”

Football. Genius.