Monthly Archives: December 2012

Mock the Year 2012: Honour for Tevez and Chelsea re-enact Star Wars

By George Ankers

Man of the Year


Carlos Tevez (Manchester City)

Carlos Tevez owes this award to Mario Balotelli. That is not to say that the Italian is a more deserving Man of the Year – it is the fact that if he had not kept his cool to assist Sergio Aguero for the Premier League-winning goal on May 13, everything would have been different for Tevez.

Starve a club of glory for 44 years and they will become desperate. Irrational.

Manchester City were slipping back in the title race when Tevez returned to action. Roberto Mancini, who is to tactical planning what a toaster is to lockpicking, relied upon individual brilliance to win games but most of his brilliant individuals were burned out.

GOOD YEAR
Robin van Persie
The year in which the Dutch Destroyer transformed from injury-prone talent to best-in-the-world-bothering goal volcano. So good that nobody noticed his useless Euro 2012 and so strong that he survived that vicious attack by Ashley s.

Statisticians
As Lionel Messi blitzed his fearsome goal-rampage all year long, number-crunchers have rarely been more in demand as they were hired to dig up the next unlikely feat. “No player has scored more goals on Tuesdays than Messi!” “He’s the first man to net two with only one shot!” They’ve earned their crust.

Leon Osman
In a tough year for football, seeing Osman finally win an England cap was a cathartic victory for all the little guys out there. MTY salutes you, Leon.

So the Argentine’s comeback was a vital push. He did not score any of those vital goals in the final games but, by then, his work was done. He had reignited City. His orchestration of their 6-1 win at Norwich City in April was one of the most devastating performances of the season.

Rejuvenated, Mancini’s men stole the title from Manchester United in a fashion more dramatic than a 14-year-old girl’s Facebook messages. Everything was fine.

Fine? Why was everything fine? Why did City and all their fans just shrug and mutter “hey, crazy Carlos. What ya gonna do?”

Tevez refused to do his job and went on a golfing tour of South America for four busy months. That’s not adorably crazy, that’s grossly unprofessional. Setting your bin on fire and buying trampolines from John Lewis is adorably crazy.

So again, Tevez owes this award to Balotelli. If Super Mario hadn’t laid the groundwork for City fans accepting extraordinary behaviour, the Argentine would have been hounded out before he could slink back into training.

Instead, he is welcomed by all because, when he finally did bother to show up, he won them a trophy. Glory finally burying the body of football’s principles, stuffing its corpse roughly into a well-dug grave beneath the 18th green. Carlos Tevez is football’s Mr 2012.


WELCOME TO BUENOS AIRES

Quote of the year

“We’ve left ourselves a two-goal cushion to climb”

Petr Cech after Chelsea lose 3-1 to Napoli in the first leg of their Champions League clash. Turns out that cushions are, in fact, easy to climb

Star Wars: A Blue Hope

A long, long time ago in a tax bracket far, far away… the CHELSEA EMPIRE is in chaos. On the planet Mustamfar Bridge, their once-mighty fortress is crumbling, spewing dodgy defending everywhere like lava.

ROBERTOBI-WAN KENODI MATTEO and ROMANAKIN SKYWALKER are waging a fierce duel across the fiery landscape, their lightsabers flashing and hissing like the VIP guests at a footballers’ Christmas party after midnight.

TEAM OF THE YEAR
Goalkeeper: Ali Al Habsi. The only reason why Wigan didn’t go down last year, he’s now seeking a new challenge as the main reason why they probably will.

Defence: The Society of Black Lawyers. Ever-present. (Plus Stewart Downing at left-back.)

Midfield: Marouane Fellaini and his hair. That’ll probably do.

Forwards: Grant Holt – the working man’s champion in 2011-12, deserved an England call-up in the summer, said as much, didn’t get it, got in a huff, hustled his club for more money and then just picked up where he left off. Fair play. Partnered by Gervinho.

ROMANAKIN: Look at what you’ve done! You’ve destroyed the empire!

ROBERTOBI-WAN: You have done that yourself! Your anger and lust for power have already done that. By putting so much faith in that pathetic cartoon of a man, Fer Fer Torrinks, you caused all this!

ROMANAKIN: You were the chosen one!

ROBERTOBI-WAN: No, Romanakin, I was the only one left! I conquered the galaxy for you; we could have ruled it as father and son! But you wanted Han Guardiolo instead – he’ll never join you!

ROMANAKIN: I see through your lies! With you gone, I can bring peace, freedom, justice and security back to the Empire! If I build it, Guardiolo will come!

RAFAEODA: (emerging from the darkness) FACHT, that is.

ROBERTOBI-WAN: Aligning with the enemy, Romanakin? I’ve got a bad feeling about that. If you strike me down, I will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine!

ROMANAKIN: Hardly. You’ll get the Swansea job when Michael Laudrup moves up the ladder, maybe.

A jump. A lightsaber flashes. Silence.

Photo of the Year

Best ex-thing
Euro 2012

Euro 2012 was a solid tournament, perhaps a six-and-a-half or maybe seven out of 10. A good time was had by all, though more in the exciting group stage than the only-really-worth-it-for-Balotelli knockouts.

In future years, however, we will remember it as a marvel, a show-stopping explosion of footballing joy. For future editions of the competition will push upon our faces a pair of glasses so rose-tinted that bees will be trying to pollenate our eyes.

BAD YEAR
English football
On the pitch, standards are slipping like John Terry playing a high line. There’s fun to be had but the Premier League has well and truly had its pants pulled down in the Champions League. Even Ligue 1 is catching up! Off the pitch… just grow up, everyone, please.

Emmanuel Adebayor
Last year, he was the glue holding Spurs together as the league’s most entertaining side. Now he’s a red-card-in-waiting playing second fiddle to Jermain Defoe’s revolutionary ‘false false nine’ poacher role.

Arsenal
Disastrous! Losing club captain Van Persie has, as expected, destroyed the Gunners – to the extent that they are further up the table than they were at this stage of last season. What is it that you want back exactly?

Having already done away with the plausibility of shocking group-stage twists by increasing Euro 2016 to 24 teams, Michel Platini promptly dismembered the soul of the tournament and scattered its twitching limbs across the continent for EuroTrip 2020.

So it was fun but now it’s gone. We’ll just have to pretend that Poland and Ukraine was the perfect send-off for a delightful but now essentially defunct institution – and there were some incredible highlights, like the Antonin Panenka comeback tour and Nicklas Bendtner’s pants.

Anyway, we’ll always have Paris. And London. And Munich. And Bucharest. And…

Hashtag of the Year
#cerealquest

Football is still learning how to deal with Twitter. The relationship has improved, undoubtedly, but there are plenty of flare-ups as the sport reluctantly gets to grips with modernity.

Who could forget the foul-mouthed rant from Ashley Cole as he labelled the FA a “#BUNCHOF[REDACTED]”? Or Rio Ferdinand accusing [REDACTED]? Or [REDACTED] Heskey [REDACTED] spoon [REDACTED]?

Twitter is a great force for good, uniting players, journalists and fans like never before. It can also be a horrible place, where anonymity makes morons feel brave enough to write racial abuse or post Photoshopped pictures of John Terry celebrating other people’s victories.

MISSED OPPORTUNITIES
Things that should have happened in 2012 but didn’t:

Swansea City releasing a parody ‘Danny Graham Style’ video

Brendan Rodgers playing all the characters in ‘Being: Liverpool’

Chelsea winning the Club World Cup (too soon?)

So thank you to Reading defender Sean Morrison for #cerealquest. The young centre-back has done as well as any Royals player following their promotion to the Premier League but he understood that he has a higher calling than just playing the game.

The people needed hope. The people needed joy. The people needed cereal. And so Morrison began a solemn mission to try lots of different kinds of cereal and judge each one to find the best. And he did it with a quite brilliant way with words.

“First things first! The box itself is ridiculous!” he wrote when evaluating Golden Nuggets. “Draws you in from what feels like a mile away! Your eyes lock on and you can’t take them off! Till you grasp the box in your hands! Beautiful and captivating!

“Once the milk washes its self over this graceful cereal! Something amazing happens! It remains unexplained! The crunch of the little nuggets as you bite into them and the flavour of the luscious milk! BAFFLING! Best yet! … 4/5”

Thrilling and different, Morrison has proved himself the Froot Loops of footballers on Twitter. There can be no higher praise.

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Suarez the ‘street fighter’ can be Premier League’s best in 2013

COMMENT
By Oliver Platt

The Ajax managing director, Rik van den Boog, promised Liverpool fans a “street fighter” when the Reds paid nearly £23 million to sign Luis Suarez 23 months ago. That characterisation has proved more accurate than even he might have imagined. Suarez has fought more than his fair share of battles in England and sometimes he has not come out of them in a flattering light.

One year after his lowest low, though, his star now shines brighter than ever. On the evening that ushered in 2012, the Football Association published the 115-page verdict produced by the independent disciplinary commission that investigated allegations of racial abuse by Suarez against Patrice Evra. The Uruguay striker’s evidence was described as “unreliable” and “inconsistent” and he was banned for eight matches.

Those two stinging criticisms could hardly be less applicable to Suarez the footballer. Few teams in the Premier League have relied on one man as much as Liverpool have Suarez this season. Having provided two assists and struck 13 times himself, he has been on the scene for nearly half of their 31 league goals in 2012-13.

On Sunday, the QPR defence was diced and demoralised within 16 minutes at Loftus Road. Suarez scored twice in that time and both goals were of nearly entirely his own creation. There was a video game quality to the way he scampered breathlessly around the attacking third of the pitch. “I can’t bear the idea of not trying to make the most of every single second,” he said in an interview with the Guardian in August.

His first goal is mesmerising to watch. Clint Hill’s shortcomings as a Premier League central defender are brutally exposed but that is to take nothing away from Suarez’s brilliance. Even after Hill is sent into a spin, after all, neither Stephane Mbia nor Ryan Nelsen can close in on him quickly enough.

The second is somewhat emblematic of the jackhammer style that is Suarez’s nature. Little more than five minutes have elapsed since the opening goal hit the net, but Suarez does not stop. He elects to try a pass across goal to Raheem Sterling, after a run in behind which perfectly evidenced his tireless nature. There is little more Nedum Onuoha can do than desperately slide in to prevent Sterling from converting and, in the process, return the ball to Suarez to slam into the roof of the net.

Only Robin van Persie, among the top flight’s leading hitmen, can justifiably argue that he has been better than Suarez this season and, perhaps, in 2012 as a whole. Van Persie leads the goalscoring charts having found the target 14 times, but his supporting cast, both at Manchester United and Arsenal, has been considerably stronger. He is also playing in his ninth Premier League season; Suarez has the experience of only one and a half.

“He’s been brilliant for us since he came to the club,” Gerrard told Sky Sports following the 3-0 victory in west London. “Week in, week out he shows what a top player he is. These players have only got to play against him twice a year; we’ve got to train against him every day. He’s a magician.”

But as Redknapp noted, this was nothing new. He was even better in a quite staggering display against Norwich in September, to give just one example. “I think I’ve seen him do that to everyone he’s played against this year,” Redknapp said. “It’s not something he’s just suddenly done today, is it? It’s what he is. He’s the most fantastic striker. He’s one of the best, in the half a dozen in the world, without a doubt.”

Suarez will never be universally loved, but that will not bother him one iota while he is so adored at Anfield. The allegations of racism were on another level of seriousness entirely but this is a player who has been frequently singled out as a diver and, according to Asamoah Gyan, became “the most hated person in Ghana” after his handball denied the African country a goal that would have secured their place in the semi-finals of the last World Cup.

Still he is met with regular boos, cries of ‘cheat’ and chants referencing the Evra case at Premier League stadiums. Twelve months ago he responded by raising his middle finger to Fulham supporters following a 1-0 defeat. Now, he lets his football do the talking, and Liverpool are enjoying the benefits.

Suarez will only get better, and the doubts at Liverpool now do not concern his worth but the club’s ability to grow as quickly as he is. Like it or not, 2013 could be the year of the street fighter.

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Manchester United top, Everton fourth & Liverpool in the bottom half – the final 2012 Premier League table

ANALYSIS
By Chris Myson

If the Premier League was decided purely on results from the calendar year of 2012, Manchester United would be champions, Everton would be in the Champions League and Liverpool would have to settle for a 14th-place finish.

The 2012 table gives us a fascinating look at performances based on the last 12 months, with some surprising results recorded based on how well teams fared at the end of the 2011-12 season and the start of the current 2012-13 campaign.

Amongst what is most notable from the statistics – which were provided by Infostrada Sports – is the gulf between Manchester United and Manchester City to the rest of the division over the last year.

United racked up an impressive 93 points during the year, while City picked up 86 from a game more, reflecting both the current gap between the two teams in the table and how close they were last season.

That puts United and City a massive margin – 25 and 18 points respectively – ahead of nearest challengers Chelsea, who finish the year in third in the table following their win over Everton, who scoop fourth.

The fact David Moyes’ men have been in Champions League form for the last year will give them hope that they can sustain a top-four challenge in the latter part of this season as they battle the likes of Arsenal and Tottenham, who round off our top six.

Impressive years for West Bromwich Albion and Swansea City are recognised with top-eight places, while the scale of Newcastle United‘s slump since the start of the campaign is emphasised by their own finishing position.

After recording an excellent finish in fifth in 2011-12, their poor form in the first half of the current season sees them slip to ninth on the overall 2012 table.

The size of the task facing Brendan Rodgers at Liverpool is highlighted by the Reds’ record being just the 14th best in the top flight, with 17 defeats to just 12 wins in the calendar year despite their victory against QPR on Sunday.

Horrendous years for Aston Villa and QPR are summed up by their position at the bottom of the standings when we don’t consider the newly-promoted clubs.

West Ham, who have only been back in the top flight since August, have recorded just seven points less than Harry Redknapp’s new team over the last year.

Combined, Villa and QPR won just 13 of the 78 games they played during 2012 in what can hardly be considered a vintage year for either club.

Wigan Athletic lost more games than anyone else in the division – 19 over the course of the 12 months – while Stoke City had the most draws with 18.

In terms of goals scored, Manchester United (90), Manchester City (78) and Arsenal (78) led the way.

When it comes to leaking goals at the other end, QPR (69), Villa (68) and Norwich City (64) were the worst offenders. After such poor defending over 2012, they will all be looking to improve those records in the New Year.

* Asterisks designated to teams who were promoted in the summer and subsequently only played half the calendar year in the top flight.

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