A Knight Mare on Edmiston Drive

The real story behind Rangers’ demise.

By Iain Swan

A world famous Scottish institution is led to brink of extinction by the ego fuelled megalomania of it's titled supremo.

Sadly for the millions of supporters around the world, this is not R.B.S. but R.F.C. 

Unlike Sir, now plain, Fred Goodwin, who lead The Royal Bank of Scotland during an ill-fated decade of debt fuelled expansion, there are no calls as yet for Sir David Murray to be stripped of his knighthood for the wanton vandalism of The Rangers Football Club during the twenty three years of  er, ill-fated debt fuelled folly.

But then Murray has always had willing cronies in the media ready to be summoned, wide eyed to Sir’s office in Charlotte Square, Edinburgh, to swallow the latest gospel according to David.

Who can forget the excruciating interviews with hapless Chick Young on Friday Sportscene when Murray was in his pomp? Another sermon delivered on a sport in which Murray had shown little interest, before attempting to buy Ayr United in the 1980s and one about which he lacks proper knowledge. That would not prevent him from helpfully mapping out the future of Scottish and European football for the naive and accepting masses.

When he bought Rangers in 1988, amid claims never substantiated, that the  notorious tycoon Robert Maxwell was preparing  a takeover bid, the club was re-establishing itself after decline in the early eighties. It was his good fortune that there was a modern stadium in place which would only need minor re-modification when the post-Hillsborough ruling on all seater stadia became law.

While his rivals in the Scottish Premier League, most notably Celtic, spent the next decade diverting money into upgrading their stadia to meet these new requirements, Murray was able to use the increased revenue of a resurgent Rangers to exert an unhealthy dominance on Scottish football.

Unhealthy, but lucrative, for it guaranteed Champions League football  every year and with it the fortunes that this new tournament offered. In the first season of the new incarnation, Rangers were within a whisker of reaching the final. Murray’s head was turned by the riches and glamour, the hobknobbing with the wealthy industrialists and businessmen who owned Europe’s top clubs, the Berlusconi’s (Milan) Agnellis (Juventus) and Tapies (Marseille).

The more mundane domestic scene paled in comparison and with the advent of the English Premiership, awash with satellite television money that Murray could only dream of, it diminished in his  eyes still further. Stung by the departure of his club’s manager and friend Graeme Souness for Liverpool and the Premiership in the Spring of 1991,  Murray  spent a Scottish record fee of £2million on Ukrainian midfielder Alexei Michailichenko to reassert himself and Rangers as major players in British football. It was to be the first in a string of eyebrow raising purchases of established foreign stars as the seed of Rangers’ downfall began to be sown.

The following year, in the highpoint of the early years of his reign, Rangers eliminated the English champions Leeds United from the European Cup and embarked on that inaugural Champions League campaign that almost brought them an appearance in the Final. Twelve months later, Rangers again beat Leeds, this time to the signature of  young Scottish star Duncan Ferguson. The £4million pound fee was a British record, the fact that Rangers spent their entire transfer budget that summer on a player they did not require, when other parts of the team needed strengthening was lost in the publicity that outbidding the Premiership giants generated.

This goes to crux of the problem of David Murray’s ownership of the club. He used Rangers as a publicity vehicle for David Murray, to boost his profile  and that of the rest of his business empire and to satisfy his vast ego spending money the club did not have  and recklessly borrowing money that the club's revenue could not support.

Within three months of Ferguson signing for Rangers and Murray proclaiming his club to be the biggest in Britain, uncelebrated Bulgarians Lokomotiv Sofia went to Ibrox and bundled Rangers out of the European Cup before the lucrative group stages.

Rangers were never again close to reaching the finals of the Champions League, despite the huge transfer fees and wages spent luring players of the quality of Brian Laudrup, Paul Gascoigne and Basile Boli to play in the veritable backwater of the European game that was Scotland.

Murray’s great dream of equalling the feat of rivals Celtic and leading Rangers to European glory was never fulfilled. But  another achievement of Jock Stein’s legendary Celtic side began to exercise the Murray ego.

 Laudrup, Gascoigne and co. were not good enough to bring the European Cup to Ibrox, but they were a class above anything Rangers’ domestic rivals could muster and so the dangerous obsession with  beating Celtic’s haul of nine consecutive league titles began to dominate thinking in Govan.

Rangers eventually reached the nine titles in a row mark but were unable to go one better. Manager Walter Smith’s team had grown old  and thanks to the short term planning at Rangers, the youth team had been thoroughly neglected and was unable to produce adequate replacements needed to sustain Rangers’ challenge over the coming years. Proper, sensible management had been sacrificed to assuage the insatiable ego of the owner. The support at this time, revelling at a decade of dominance seemed not to notice the flaws in the running of the club or they were not bothered by them.

Cue another Murray spending spree  as he flew around Europe in his private jet signing a new team. With the exception of Swedish national team captain Jonas Thern these were of inferior quality to the Laudrups and Gasgoignes. 

Expensively acquired “Carlos Kickaballs” to use former Spurs chairman Alan Sugar’s phrase  describing foreign journeymen commanding inflated wages and transfer fees, because they appeared to offer  an exotic alternative to their more prosaic British teammates.

Thern spent most of his Ranger career injured , starting a worrying trend in the signing of injured or injury prone players and the rest of that disparate bunch surrendered the title to Celtic.

Manager Walter Smith left Ibrox at the end of that season 1997-98 along with most of the heroes of the nine in a row years. It was thought that he left due to poor performances in Europe and because his team had grown old together. But I cannot help think that David Murray’s increased involvement in the signing of players may also have been a contributing factor. I did not get the impression that Smith had had much say in the players so expensively recruited the previous summer and may have decided to call it a day because the team was not his anymore. But that is merely conjecture.

As we will see tomorrow, THE Murray ego remained intact despite this setback as Rangers embarked on the insane journey to ruin.

The writer is a Ranger season ticket holder and share holder

Tomorrow : Going Dutch has never been so costly

The Zombie Nation: Notes on Scottish football’s demise.

There has been an inordinate amount of wailing , moaning and vacant stares around Glasgow this past week, sadly not all has been confined to the set of “World War Z”, Brad Pitt’s film in which he tries to prevent a zombie Apocalypse, which is currently filming in the city. The film’s premise could be used as a  metaphor for Scottish football.

For the Scottish football community has  not yet woken up to it’s own end of days, or it cannot understand what has happened. The nation has no clubs left in European competition before the autumn leaves fall from the trees. The media have gone into overdrive, whole rain forests have been felled to provide newsprint for the punditocracy to condemn as shameful (an adjective used more and more frequently by the hysterical tabloids to describe every aspect of Scotland's favourite pastime these days!) the attempts by the Old Firm and Heart of Midlothian to qualify for the group stages of Europe’s secondary competition, the Europa League, Rangers having already been eliminated from the premier competition, the Champions League, at the first hurdle by average Swedish champions Malmo on yet another “night of shame”.

Quite how the famous old Edinburgh club can be tarred with the same brush as the wealthier Glasgow “giants” is as bewildering as the reaction of some women of a certain age to the presence of a Hollwood actor in their city. All rational thought seems to evaporate. Anyone surprised by Hearts’  five nil demolition by Tottenham Hotspur in the first leg at Tynecastle must have had the same full frontal lobotomy that Mr. Pitt’s adversaries in his blockbuster have endured. Spurs could have put him in goal and fielded his good lady, Angelina Jolie, at centre half and still destroyed the “Jam Tarts”, such is the difference in  wealth and class between the two sides.

Those who doubt that wealth matters in such competitions can point to Shamrock Rovers’ progression at the expense of Partizan Belgrade, but the reality is somewhat different. European football has changed in important ways, to the detriment of Scottish teams, as I shall explain below.

Until Scottish football accepts these realities and deals with them, qualification for Champions League group stages and the odd U.E.F.A Cup final appearance will become rarer and rarer and all of the  radio phone- in waffle and ten point plans to save Scottish football that I have been hearing for the best part of thirty years will continue to be superfluous flim -flam.

Our so called experts in the game and in the press need to recognise the following truths :

Firstly, European football does not want us. They are not interested in us. The problem with Scotland is that we are a small country of around five million souls and when that is translated into television revenue that is pretty small beer, despite the potential worldwide television audience of the Scottish and Irish diaspora, we don’t count when compared to the larger, more lucrative markets of the larger European countries  who now have up to four teams in the “Champions League”, so obstacles are erected at every turn to deny us entry.

In the late eighties Ramon Mendoza, then president of Real Madrid, was aghast at drawing the champions of Italy in the first round of the European Cup two years out of three. The threat to his revenues of an early exit from the continent’s premier competition was too much to contemplate and so he and the industrialists and businessmen at the head of Europe’s top clubs formed plans for breakaway European super leagues financed by satellite television millions. U.E.F.A., desperate to retain their power and influence, butchered their own competition, the European Cup, turning it into the Champions League, a Frankenstein’s monster of a tournament where the teams from the largest European countries, or those who could provide the largest television revenues were provided with safe havens of seeded places in group sections, guaranteeing them at least six games in the competition and usually straightfoward passage to the lucrative final knockout stages.

UEFA  then abandoned the principle that entrants had to be national champions, in the wake of more pressure from the larger nations and now we have the absurdity of teams like Napoli, who last won Serie A in 1990, and Villareal, who have never won La Liga, in the group stages by virtue of the fact they play in Italy and Spain, two of the favoured nations. The inclusion of these imposters at the expense of legitimate national champions  makes a mockery of the competition’s title. So, the champions of proud footballing nations such as Scotland are forced to play qualifying ties earlier and earlier in summer, while the big boys relax on beaches, to scrap for the few remaining places in the groups not gifted to the also rans of the Premiership, the Bundesliga et al.

Should they manage to negotiate their way to the group stages, their chances of progression are hindered still further by the way the sections are created . In each group there are usually two clubs from the favoured leagues and two minnows to ensure that the usual suspects make it through to the knockout stages. This makes for sterile group games in front of half full stadia and a lot of meaningless matches; as the places are usually decided by the third round of matches. But for UEFA’s favoured sons  the financial rewards mean they can continue to distance themselves from  competitors in their domestic leagues and form a cartel of four teams who each year contest the top four places in their division, leading to qualification for the following seasons Champions League.

Until this inequality is corrected, legitimate national champions will find it harder and harder to enter the promised land of the Champions League . Sadly this is not likely to happen anytime soon. As former England captain Bryan Robson opined on the undercover sting by Channel 4 programme “Dispatches”, football is a business now, part of the entertainment industry and all that matters is tv ratings and audience figures. Arsenal Versus Barcelona is worth more  in television revenue than Rangers versus Barcelona, the days of fair play and level playing fields are long gone. This is the reality that Scotland must wake up to. We don’t count. The men running football are not interested in us, which is why they kindly created a second division of the European Super League- the unloved and ignored second son – the Europa League. The refuge for those teams not considered “sexy” enough for prime time, that is where we must now try our luck, but for now, our clubs struggle even to make that grade.

Chelsea: A Bridge Too Far for Marco Van Basten

As respected English football writer Martin Samuel says, any manager taking the job at Stamford Bridge now is there purely for the money.
That can be the only motivation for accepting the job where you will be continually undermined by Roman Abramovich and the coterie of sycophants who advise him, find your trusted and respected assistant sacked one day and replaced by someone you hardly know the next, with transfer policy conducted without you being consulted.
Could you imagine Sir Alex Ferguson or Arsene Wenger tolerating such a situation?
Carlo Ancelotti may have been used to such a transfer policy during his time coaching in Italy, but I would imagine even Milan owner Silvio Berlusconi and general manager Adriano Galliani discussing  potential transfers with their coach.
When Chelsea spent, some would say wasted, £50million on Fernando Torres, it was apparent that Ancelotti had no burning desire to see the Spaniard in a blue shirt .
Rather, it was the kind of ego fuelled marquee signing that club owners love to make. There was no great need to add the under performing Torres to the strikers already at the club.
Had the power brokers at Chelsea listened to their manager, a man with more football knowledge than the whole board combined, the Blues may have added some much needed strength in depth to their threadbare squad. If they had also added one or two pacy wide men perhaps Ancelotti may have guided the club to the the league title or European Cup that was a prerequisite for him retaining his job.
Just contemplate that statement for a moment and consider that this is Chelsea we are talking about . A club with only three league championship wins in the last 50 years, one of which was engineered by Ancelotti last season, along with an F.A. Cup triumph and has never even won a European Cup now expects their manager to achieve either one of these tasks or he is history!
This is management of the madhouse, second place in the Premiership  and a quarterfinal place  in the European Cup is such an abject failure that the manager must pay with his job!
The managers of Chelsea's  two main rivals Manchester United and Arsenal have been in their positions for 25 and 15 years respectively, no such continuity at the Bridge where six men have occupied the managers office during Abramovich 's eight-year reign.
The wily old foxes at Old Trafford and Highbury must be licking their lips at the prospect of another lamb to the slaughter, if, as my colleague Willie Gannon revealed on Sunday, Marco van Basten arrives as manager. Even with the experienced and highly successful Guus Hiddink installed in the nebulous position of "director of football" this has all the makings of a disaster waiting to happen.
One can only assume Abramovich has been dazzled by van Basten's playing career. He was the finest striker of his generation but, unlike his mentor Johan Cruijff, his managerial career has failed to blossom.
As Dutch national team coach, his feuds with senior players including Ruud van Nistelrooy and Clarence Seedorf hindered  attempts to win the 2006 World Cup, and may bode ill for his appointment at Chelsea where there are potential clashes with the group of egotistical senior players who appear to have run the team for some time.
At the 2008 European Championships Holland set the pace in the early stages destroying France & Italy before succumbing to Russia, coached, ironically, by Hiddink.
Van Basten left his post after the tournament  to coach his former club Ajax but instead of a glorious return of the prodigal son. he resigned at the end of his first season due to the failure to qualify for the European Cup.
Quite why this qualifies him to coach Chelsea is beyond me. Like Cruijff he seems to have an unshakable belief in his vision of how his teams should play and will brook no dissent, it will be interesting to see how he deals with the more opinionated and vocal in the Chelsea dressing room.
Unlike Cruijff, he has yet to prove he can turn the vision into positive results. Hiddink would be a far more sensible choice, but his agent insists he will not be joining Chelsea this summer. Van Basten may just be a highly paid stop gap until Hiddink extricates himself from his contract as coach of the Turkish national team after next summer's European Championships, if Marco lasts that long!
I fear Abramovich may live to regret going Dutch!

This article first appeared on The Bleacher Report

San Fernando Rally as Dalglish Begins to Turn the Tide

Lo! it came to pass , that on the Feast of Epiphany the three wise men from the East(Coast of America) did beckon the chosen one back from the Holy Land and he was proclaimed the messiah.
Joy at the return of the prodigal ( if I may mix my Biblical metaphors!) was short lived. Two defeats on the trot ,  the first from their hated rivals, Manchester United  eliminating them from F.A. Cup , their best chance of silverware  this season, the second plunging them into the relegation mire.
Dalglish looked less like "King Kenny" and more like King Canute, unable to turn back the tide of despair that has engulfed Liverpool and threatens to wash them up on the less salubrious beaches of the Coca Cola Championship if they are not careful.
But at Anfield on Sunday there were  the first signs   that "The Second Coming "  may  produce  a miracle  after all.  Whilst Liverpool's first half performance hardly brought back memories  of their seventies and eighties heyday,there were signs of improvement , it was a typical derby , played at breakneck speed,full of passion and commitment, but with little  skill  and sophistication  - indeed the most invigorating moment was the Kop's welcome for Dalglish complete with an impassioned rendition of the club album "You'll Never Walk Alone" before kick off.  There were however,  a couple of moments  that suggested better days ahead for the home fans.
One was the opening goal scored by Raul Meirelles , one of Roy Hodgson's  many summer signings who have yet  to fully convince the faithful that they have what it takes to play for the once mighty reds, the other was a run and shot by  Fernando Torres  which cannoned of the post.
It was the Spaniard's best moment in a first half performance that  suggested  Dalglish  may be able to coax out of him  something like the displays that delighted English football in his first two seasons in the Premiership. It was the lack of such that has, more than anything, marked Liverpool's decline  over the past two seasons.
Dogged by injury last season which preceeded a dreadfully disappointing World Cup, despite Spain's victory,  Torres returned to Merseyside  lacking fitness and  with a new manager; Roy Hodgson having replaced his Spanish mentor, Rafael Benitez. The striker has lived up to his knickname El Nino - the kid , by appearing to sulk like a child  at the departure of the man who brought him to these shores from Madrid. During the opening half of the season as Hodgson struggled to steer the reds through the  takeover battle and poor run of form Torres  contributed little to the cause.
To this observer, Torres' body language was indicative of someone who  was working his ticket.  He never seemed happy under the Hodgson regime as he battled for fitness  and form and, had Dalglish not been appointed , it seemed odds on that  Torres would engineer  a transfer this summer. Although where he would have gone remains a mystery , his star has waned since the days Chelsea and Manchester City were allegedly willing  to pay £50million for his services and a return to his native land seems unlikely as the only clubs that could afford him and satisfy his ambitions ; Barcelona and Real Madrid have better options . With Benitez  recently losing his job as coach of Internazionale, another door appears to have closed
Torres , who reputedly earns £110,000 per week owes Liverpool : it was the former European Champions who put him on the  footballing map following his transfer from AtleticoMadrid in 2007. In Spain he was a promising youngster , nothing more, it was at Anfield in his first two seasons that he became a scoring sensation and made the continent take notice.
In his defence, the twenty six year old has been the victim of Benitez 's unfathomable transfer policy . First Peter Crouch was allowed to leave Anfield, then Robbie Keane  was hired expensively and then inexplicably sold at a loss six months later, leaving Torres to shoulder most of the striking  duties on his own without a partner or adequate back up  when his notoriously weak hamstrings would fail him. Let's not forget , also that footballers are human beings. There may be  some  other, unpublicised  factors in his private  life  that may  be affecting  him.
That said, Hodgson and the Liverpool fans that idolise him should have expected more  from their star striker than a couple of sensational goals against Chelsea  and the surly demeanour he has shown recently. To quote Liverpool's most famous sons , the club face a " long and winding road" back to where they once were but  if Dalglish can get  Torres back on track  they may find the streets paved with gold and silver once again.

This article first appeared on The Bleacher Report and Backpage Football.com

Keep Smiling Jose -Why Mourinho may be the REAL winner from Camp Nou capitulation

Barcelona, Tuesday.

When Jose Mourinho woke this morning he may have felt a little less special, his ego has been battered every bit as much as the Real Madrid defence had during the Monday night's El Clasico mauling .
Mourinho's matadors were well an truly gored by Barca, but the five nil humiliation may well be a blessing in disguise for the self styled "Special One".

Real lined up at Camp Nou with four forwards - Ronaldo, Benzema, Di Maria and Ozil-  leaving just  Khedira and Alonso to protect the vulnerable Madrid defence. This is the way Mourinho has set his team up for most of the La Liga season so far, but against the Champions his team unravelled almost from the kick off. Barcelona were able to slice through their opponent's midfield  at will, allowing them to torment the  back four, pulling them one way then the other, sucking the full backs into the centre, providing space for Villa, Messi and Pedro to run riot on the flanks. By the time the Real coach had corrected this, by swapping Ozil for  Lassana Diarra, the damage had been done and the Catalans were two goals ahead.

This was most unlike a Jose Mourinho team. He has built his reputation as a master tactician and his success with Porto, Chelsea and Inter, including victories against  Barcelona, has been based on a 4-4-2 formation with a water tight defence , hard working midfield and counter attacking mentality. These are the methods he favours.

One of the many questions raised by his appointment at the Estadio Santiago Bernabeu was how  this tactical approach would work at a club who demand a style of football befitting the true aristocrats of the European game. Against his will, Mourinho bowed to the demands of his troublesome president Florentino Perez and attempted to play a more expansive game. Everything  was going well until in their first real test , Los Blancos' hated rivals unceremoniously removed them from the summit of La Liga.

This disastrous setback may actually have some benefits for the Portuguese. At a club where politics is never very far from the surface , he can now make the argument that the first clasico shows Real must change. If they try beat Barcelona at their own game , the Catalans will destroy them. Mourinho can now argue that they have tried the Perez way and failed miserably. It is now time for a more pragmatic approach and who better to have as coach than the man who has won the Champions League twice doing it his way?

The Clasico calamity may also give Mourinho some room for negotiation during the forthcoming transfer window. He does not appear entirely happy with the players at his disposal. It is no secret that he wanted a big centre forward in the Didier Drogba mould. In fact, it was claimed that Madrid signing his old Chelsea talisman was a prerequisite for Mourinho accepting the job at the Bernabaeu. Perez and director of football Jorge Valdano failed in that task and will almost certainly be required to remedy that situation in January.
Also on Jose's post Christmas shopping list must be a left back . Marcelo was found completely wanting in that position on Monday night and his clearly not good enough. On the  other flank, Spain's World Cup winning right back Sergio Ramos may find himself surplus to requirements. The suspicion with Ramos is that he is better  going forward than defending and he had an awful night in Barcelona, capped by his red card for punching Carlos Puyol in the  last minute .

Thirdly, this defeat will give credence to the arguement that he needs time. Real are a work in progress , just five months into the Mourinho Project. Barcelona are the finished article. They are a team in every essence of the word and have grown together in the last few years into the formidable force they are today. it is no surprise that seven of the starters on Monday came up through the youth ranks where they learned the Barca way from an early age. How many millions could Real have saved over the  last decade if they had followed the same route?

Even if Mourinho does win the battle over tactics and gets the players he wants , there can be no doubt that this is the biggest challenge of his career.Barcelona completely dismantled the expensively remodelled Real team , so much so that Pep Guardiola's side are being talked about in the same breath as the great sides of European history, such as the Milan side of the late 1980s, the Ajax "total football " team and even the legendary Real Madrid team of Di Stefano, Puskas et al. So dominant were they, that Barca  captain Puyol was able to take a break from his defensive duties to assist the match officials in refereeing the match!

If Jose can build a team to put this  Barca in the shade he will be a very special one indeed.

This article first appeared on The Bleacher Report on December 1st 2010

The Professor's New Clothes- The British Press and The Cult Of Arsene Wenger

It is back to the bread and butter of  league action this weekend , chaps after sampling international cuisine during the European Championship qualifiers and one Fabio Capello can return to the shadows after a few days of opprobrium and ridicule from fans and media alike.

How he must wish that he were Arsene Wenger! Feted by his followers in the media who hang on his every word as the Israelites did on Mount Sinai when God informed them of the Ten Commandments. Every pronouncement from the Frenchman is celebrated as a far sighted vision, every recommendation is seen as sound, every discovery of a new young talent compared to a scientist making a new medical breakthrough.

On Sky Television’s excellent “Sunday Supplement”  Brian Woolnough , not for the first time , quizzed the doyens of punditry  about whether Wenger could remain in the job for as long as he wanted, without pressure from the board or fans to actually win something and looked on incredulously as the three wise men: Holt, Dickinson and Hayward conferred on Wenger the wisdom of Solomon , Nostradmus’ gift of prophecy and proclaimed him a genius ! Holt revering the Arsenal manager for delivering a new stadium, I don’t recall Arsene in a hardhat pouring over architectural plans for the Emirates Stadium , or raising the finance! The Arsenal board delivered the stadium.

Richard Keys was at it again a few days later , during the last round of Champions League games, looking bewildered as he talked of Wenger’s critics as if they were dribbling idiots who should retire to a padded cell.

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How ironic that the stout yeoman of the English press can lose their hearts to a prickly, pig headed Frenchman ! and how fortunate for Wenger that he does not have the pressure of winning that Roberto Mancini, Carlo Ancelotti , Roy Hodgson and Alex Ferguson do.

I don’t proclaim to know which teams these writers support, but I will wager it is not Arsenal. If it was might they have some sympathy for the denizens of North London who would like to see some silverware now and again and grow weary at hearing yet another neutral laud them for the attractive football their team plays.

Some of us were aware of him before he arrived at Higbury in 1996, unlike the majority  of football writers in England . He was successful in France with Monaco before departing to the obscurity of the J League. The Monaco title winning team of 1988 had artists like Hoddle but also robust physical types such as Mark Hateley and Manuel Amoros and Luc Sonor.

Likewise , during his glittering early successes at Highbury, his team had as many artisans as artists, but since the middle of the decade he has eschewed the tactics that made him successful, much like a pop star would dismiss  his early commercial successes when he wanted to become known as a serious artist.

But football is not art , it is competitive , it is about winning, Wenger is in danger of become football’s equivalent of the obscure and talented artist, adored by critics but ignored by the public. His problem is that he does not know how to win or finds the means distasteful. This pig headed belief that his way his correct despite any discernible evidence of success is bordering on negligence and yet his critics are rounded upon as unsophisticated barbarians.

Unfortunately, the abomination that is the Champions League has created a comfort zone for the top English clubs. As long as Arsenal can stay in that elite club their finances won’t suffer and they can continue every year to challenge for top honours without actually winning any. Slowly the competitive streak is being eroded from the English game.

One thing is for sure, if the tide of feeling in the Arsenal boardroom or in the stands ever changes it is a good job that Wenger would not consider Glasgow as a potential  new home . Here , if you manage the Old Firm you have to win and win regularly or you are out. Second is nowhere and while the Scottish Premier League is poor in quality the pressure is unique and would be too much for the sensitive Frenchman, just ask one of his proteges Paul Le Guen , whose disastrous reign at Rangers lasted six months before he fled in despair.

If he does take up semi retirement at Paris Saint Germain as their director of football when he leaves Arsenal , a certain Signor Capello should rush straight to the Emirates with his c.v. in his hands. Where better to redeem himself for past transgressions in the eyes of the English media  than at a club where winning is clearly not everything?? One hopes he gets there before a certain Mr. S.G. Eriksson.

Can Wenger continue at Arsenal until he wishes to leave or does he have to start winning trophies?

This article was first published on The Bleacher Report and Football Talk websites on October 18th 2010

Liverpool F.C. - The Decline and Fall Of the Reds and a Football Empire

Not everybody looks back fondly upon the 1980s. For the legion of bitter little socialists that inhabit the media establishment, it was the decade of Thatcherism. For fashion snobs, it was the time that taste forgot. But for the Merseyside clubs and Liverpool fans in particular, it must seem like a golden age following the week that wasn't.

The era of two European Cups, seven League titles, two F.A. Cups and four League Cups must seem a lifetime away after the past seven days. Defeat to bitter rivals and usurpers Manchester United, exit  from the League Cup at the hands of Northampton and then a scraped draw against Sunderland at Anfield on Saturday that owed much to refereeing generosity, sees the once mighty Reds consigned to sixteenth in a league they once dominated.

Yet in 1988, when the negotiations for a breakaway Superleague began, the top two in the "Big Five" conducting negotiations were the two Mersey giants (the others being United, Arsenal and Spurs).

Liverpool won their last title in 1990, and since then there has been a drastic change in English football. The model that proved so successful for Liverpool, careful fiscal planning and letting their football do the talking, has been swept away by the debt laden style of commercial behemoths like Manchester United and Chelsea.

The baton has passed from Anfield thirty miles along the road to Alex Ferguson's marauding Red Devils who have dominated the Premiership era. What must be galling for the Liverpool fans is that the only resistance to United has come from Leeds, Newcastle, Blackburn and Chelsea. Only Arsenal of the old order has had any success in the intervening years, using a financial model similar to the old Anfield bootroom plan. But the Gunners have not won a trophy in five years and their move to the Emirates Stadium was tacit acceptance that the old model could no longer compete in the cash laden new era.

The old Moores dynasty realised this and reluctantly made plans to introduce new capital and find a new home. Alas, as  David Conn magisterially records in his article in "Four Four Two" this month, Americans Hicks and Gillette saddled the club with huge debts that they incurred during its purchase. As a result, Liverpool was limited in its ability to produce the a better stadium that could allow them to compete with other top tier clubs financially. At a time when the Reds were ready to reclaim their throne under the guidance of new management, they became subdued by debt and the spectre of administration that presently stalks the fallen giant. 

Given the travails of the last couple of seasons, the Champions League triumph of 2005, the Final appearance in 2007 and the runners up position in the 2008 Premiership season demonstrates over achievement during the era of Rafa Benitez as manager. Yet for all the quality he brought in, such as Torres, Reina, Alonso, Mascherano, Agger etc., there was also a lot of money wasted in purchases of £15m and £20m for Glen Johnson and Alberto Aquilani respectively.

As a consequence of the dire financial situation, at least one top star must be sold every summer. It was Xabi Alonso to Real in the 2009 season, Mascherano before the start of 2010, and next year likely between Fernando Torres or Steven Gerrard. Unfortunately, the replacements have not matched the quality of the players exiting the club. 

When Benitez decided to leave in the summer, the likes of Jurgen Klinsman, Gus Hiddink, and other top talent were out of reach. Liverpool's next best option was found in Roy Hodgson, an experienced, talented manager with a good track record of success. Up for the national team job in 2012, Hodgson sacrificed this opportunity to focus his efforts on recapturing past glories for Liverpool.

Hodgson's decision to lead the Reds' resurgence was aided by the presence of reliable players such as Pepe Reina, Fernando Torres and Steven Gerrard. Now, however, the present condition of the club casts these players' future into doubt. Only a brave man would wager that all three will remain at Anfield for the start of next season, and it has become apparent that the pressure has begun to affect their performance: Reina has made uncharacteristic and costly lapses already this season, and the injury ravaged Torres looks like a pale reflection of "El Nino" who blew the Premiership away in 2007.

Hodgson has not been helped by the fixture schedule, hosting Arsenal in the opener and having to travel to the two Manchester clubs in quick succession. But, truth be told, in these games against the main title challengers Liverpool has always looked second best.

Liverpool is known to give managers time to adjust and become comfortable with the club. Hodgson will hope that new signings Cole, Poulsen, Konchesky and Meireles will settle quickly. The team will have to adapt to the manager's new tactics, which differ tremendously from Benitez, as the New England Sports Consortium aim to rectify Liverpool's financial situation. But if none of these events occur, Liverpool could soon be considered one of the weaker establishments involved in the English and European games. 

Will Liverpool recapture the glory days of the seventies and eighties or are they in terminal decline? A question that seems debatable today but that would have been unimaginable in the glory days of the 1980s

This article first appeared on the Bleacher Report and Football Talk websites on October 18th 2010