Toilet. Total toilet. A great big festering pile of smelly pooh. That’s the only way I can describe our performance against Ipswich Town last night. The team we put out should have been more than strong enough on paper to beat a team belted 7-0 by Chelsea in the FA Cup on Sunday. Unfortunately for us the game is played on grass, not paper. We lacked cohesion and purpose all over the park.
As I say later on I don’t fully subscribe to Fàbregas the King’s rant on the pathetic performance by our reserves in getting belted 10-1 by Aston Villa but there’s kernel of truth to it. The whole club, players, management, coaching staff, directors and, yes, us, the fans needs a good collective hair-drying. We’ve become conceited and complacent. We need to seriously liven ourselves up, all of us.
Off the park that horrible little injury gremlin is still working his malign black magic. We now have news that Sébastien Squillaci will be out for two-three weeks with the hamstring he pulled against Leeds United at the Grove last Saturday. We also have the bad word again on Thomas Vermaelen – surgery and a likely further six weeks minimum out of action. I’m sure Thomas is as (literally, in his case) pained as we are with the continuing inability of the specialists to diagnose and treat the root cause of the problem.
We can but hope that the surgery detects and cures the problem. Vermaelen was my Premier League buy of the season last term. His goals were an unanticipated bonus on top of his excellent defensive skills and attitude.
It leaves us however, with only two fit senior central defenders in Johan Djourou and Laurent Koscielny. Catalan youngster Ignaci Miguel was again a substitute last night at Portman Road as he was last Saturday. Alex Song – who can also play in central defence – was on the bench as well. The news on Squillaci and Vermaelen is unwelcome, as is the inability to recall Kyle Bartley from his season-long loan at Sheffield United.
I think we need to buy a central defender as soon as possible in the winter window consistent with not panicking or bringing in the wrong player. Unfortunately the clubs with whom we will be negotiating will know that we’re very short in central defence, as will the agents of players we might be looking at. They’ll be in a position to drive a hard bargain. Sometimes that just the way it is. You have to play the cards you’re dealt. Let’s hope we’re skilful in the negotiations. Despite our need for at least one addition in this position we don’t want to have our trousers pulled down. It’s very easy to spend too much money, either in transfer fees or salary, but very difficult to find a real bargain.
I’ve banged on before about a young Uruguayan central defender called Sebastián Coates, just turned 20 last October, who currently plays for Nacional of Montevideo. He’s played well over sixty games in both the Uruguayan Primera División, and the Copa Libertadores, South America’s equivalent of the Champions League, since coming into the Nacional first team aged 18. He’s played ten times for the Uruguay Under 20s but has yet to be capped for the full national team. He’s 6’5”, good in the air, solidly built, reads the game well and is quick.
As his name suggests he is of British descent (Scottish, to be precise). Unfortunately he’s not eligible for a British passport under the British Nationality Act 1981. He might be eligible for dual nationality of another European Union member state on his mother’s side. I don’t know. If he were then no work permit would be needed for him under the Treaty of Rome.
If not, it’s unlikely we’d get a work permit for him at the moment. We’ve pushed our luck and come up empty with a “special talent” Work Permit application to the Home Office UK Border Agency for Wellington Silva, the young Brazilian winger we’ve signed from Fluminense of Rio de Janeiro. I don’t know how we’ve got on with the application for Ryo Miyaichi, the young Japanese lad we’ve just signed. We’ll see. As an aside, the blame for Wellington’s work permit refusal has been laid at the door of FIFA in some parts of the media and blogosphere. FIFA is guilty of many sins, but this isn’t one of them. UK work permit decisions are taken by the Home Office.
In any event, even if a work permit could be quickly obtained (or dual EU nationality) Coates wouldn’t be an instant answer, excellent as I think he is having seen him “in the flesh” a couple of times and quite a bit on the box. I love elegant, ball-playing central defenders like Bobby Moore, Franz Beckenbaur and Peter Simpson, he of blessed memory from the Fairs Cup/Double team of the early 1970s.
I also too have an admiration though for the best of the horrible, cave-dweller, “they shall not pass” type of central defender like Martin Keown or Paolo Montero. The sort of player you loath if they’re playing for the opposition but love if they’re holding the line for your club. If you thought Montero was a “take no prisoners” sort of defender, you should have seen his old man, Julio Montero Castillo.
Father of Paolo, he played for Nacional and Uruguay in the 1970 and 1974 World Cups. He was absolutely fearsome. A complete bastard. He once said, “Adentro de la cancha, mi vieja se pone una camiseta y le pego también.” (“On the park, if my mum put on an opposition shirt I’d kick her too.”).
He played in an era when foreign players were banned in three of Europe’s “big four” leagues. Only West Germany permitted two foreign players per team. They were banned in England & Wales, Spain and Italy. He only had a couple of seasons in Spain with Granada at the end of his career after Spain opened its borders to foreign players again in 1973. He was one of the most fearsome, loathsome players I’ve ever seen, but hard as bloody nails.
We need to be looking to sign experience and quality in central defence at the moment, although I’d definitely be looking at Coates for the longer term, although the work permit issue might be a headache.
The beautiful game occasionally needs a bit of the beast too for balance. The former England and British & Irish Lions rugby union tight-head prop Jeff Probyn said that the ideal combination for a rugby union forward pack was three quick tackling, ball-playing glamour boys in the breakaway positions of flanker and lock, with five complete bastards in the front and second rows. Probyn was a complete bastard himself on the park so he should know! I remember seeing a fabulous photo of the French rugby union pack in the early 1970s in formation to engage in a set scrummage in the French sports newspaper L’equipe.
The faces of the three front rowers, props Robert Paparemborde and Gerard Cholley on either side of hooker Philippe Dintrans was enough to make anybody want to surrender without a fight, never mind their fearsome, ruthless play! Their expressions just screamed, “mess with us and we’ll f**king kill you!”
We need a little touch of that, along with much better team defending and discipline, if we’re to get to the next level. I don’t go along with all that Fàbregas the King said in his Tuesday blog on the reserves’ 10-1 tonking by Aston Villa, but there’s something to it. Hate Alex Ferguson all you like, you can’t take away the fearsome will to win that he has and the way he imparts that to this teams. I’m afraid we’ve currently lost any backbone we had as a club.
Aside from our traditional enemies such as The Unspeakables down the road, about the only people who’ll be pleased with the result last night will be the BBC. The tie now being on a knife edge should do wanders for the ratings of the second leg to be shown live on BBC Two.
As difficult as it is at times, keep the faith!
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