PETE ON THE BEAT: January, a month where football has to manufacture a show

NOBODY really likes January. The Christmas festivities are over and it’s mainly cold, wet and miserable.

Sport – especially racing and football – suffers from an outbreak of postponements for floods or snow or frozen tracks and pitches. For Rugby league fans, the new season is still a month away.

There has to be something to cheer us up, so why not open a bazaar or a bring-and-buy sale, or – as it is known in the football world – a transfer window?

Suddenly, it’s a time for players who most of us have never even heard of to step into the limelight and become household names for a month at least.

Suddenly, it’s a time for players who most of us have never even heard of to step into the limelight

I don’t think Cenk Tosun was the most familiar name on the lips of Everton fans until about a week ago. Now he is, according to the club’s own news site, “a striking sensation” who is manager Sam Allardyce’s first signing for the club.

Everton paid a reported £27m to Turkish club Besiktas, where Tosun has scored 41 goals in 96 appearances in three years.

And will Norwich fans be getting all excited about the possible arrival of Nigeria right-back Tyronne Ebuehi at Carrow Road from Den Haag?

Bordeaux’s Brazilian winger Malcom has taken to Instagram to remind clubs who he may think have forgotten his name – especially Manchester United, Arsenal and Tottenham – that he wouldn’t mind having a crack at the Premier League, while further down the pecking order the list of players going out on loan stretches by the day.

Naturally enough there were the real headline grabbers. Philippe Coutinho’s move to Barcelona earned somewhere between £140m and £150m for Liverpool (depending on which paper you read), but he will be out for three weeks with a thigh injury.

Meanwhile, Ross Barkley, once the golden boy of Goodison, has joined Chelsea for a fee that would hardly raise an eyebrow

What can you get for £15m these days? A 24-year-old who has made 22 appearances for England and represented the country at all age groups, that’s what.

January is a good month for agents, and it’s a fair bet that they will still be wheeling and dealing until midnight on the 31st of the month. Then things can return to normal… if there is such a thing in football.

CAPTAIN Joe Root ends up in hospital suffering from dehydration, the Australians carry off the Ashes without breaking into a sweat in 40-degree Sydney heat, and England’s record over the last 10 Tests Down Under is drawn one, lost nine.

But things are not so bad really. Just ask one of our rare successes of the tour – James Anderson.

“Other series have been absolute disasters, but this doesn’t feel like that,” said our top bowler. “We have actually played some good cricket along the way. We have not been blown away in every game.”

You have to admire the lad’s optimism and that of fellow fast bowler Stuart Broad, who says England will be favourites for the 2019 series in this country – “and I expect us to win”.

Surely both men are kidding themselves – in sporting terms, disasters don’t come much worse.

Where was all this good cricket along the way?

First Test – Australia won by 10 wickets; Second Test – Australia won by 120 runs; Third Test (the one that settled the series) – Australia won by and innings and 41 runs; Fourth Test: Let’s call it an honourable draw; Fifth Test – Australia score 649 runs and win by an innings and 123.

If there is a bright side to look on in all that, then it escapes me.

Hopes of success were never high, but total humiliation was not on the agenda either. Assistant coach Paul Farbrace didn’t pull his punches: “If England are serious about winning in four years’ time the planning needs to start in the next couple of days to identify the type of personnel we need.”

Changes are inevitable – Liam Livingstone will be due a call soon – and the selectors will scour the counties for men to replace Moeen Ali, Mark Stoneman and James Vince, among others. If they are out there, then maybe Broad’s prediction will come true.

IT was good to see Aston Villa, Arsenal and Leeds United dumped out of the FA Cup, and I don’t feel the slightest bit guilty about that view of the weekend’s third-round matches.

Arsene Wenger thought a team showing nine changes and without his big names to call on could beat Nottingham Forest. They didn’t. The holders are out.

Steve Bruce made 10 changes to his Aston Villa side and they lost at home to Peterborough United. Leeds, who made nine changes, lost at Newport County.

There were other wholesale changes by other managers with nothing else to play for than a cup run, but some, like Leicester boss Claude Puel, escaped with a draw at Fleetwood.

Cup attendance figures have been declining for, but it is hardly surprising when clubs treat fans so shabbily.

It is not a reserve-team competition, so why would a club comfortably placed in no-man’s land with no hope of winning anything else (Arsenal, Leicester and Leeds for instance) treat the FA Cup as if it was an interruption to more important games? It beats me.

Let's block ads! (Why?)

Read Again http://www.nwemail.co.uk/sport/PETE-ON-THE-BEAT-January-a-month-where-football-has-to-manufacture-a-show-3231cfd1-38b3-4f5d-8fcf-f93a88d0a094-ds

Bagikan Berita Ini