what a disappointment! it's been a hard year, and the whole thing was actually blown the moment they let kevin phillips leave. it's always been my opinion that both parties made the wrong decision in this affair: phillips should have been able to see the opportunities that a season in the premier league would have brought him - not just in terms of the immediate prestige of premier league football - but also, for the sake of his own legacy as a player. the albion, on the other hand, should have realized that "exception" deserves to be extended to "the exceptional". perhaps there is a policy at the albion about not giving 2 year contracts to 35 year old players - but phillips importance to the club in winning promotion - and what chances he might have given them in terms of premier league survival - deserved consideration on a different level altogether. because, replacing him would have been impossible (how many available 35 year old top-flight strikers are there playing in england?) or prohibitively expensive; as would have been the case with a younger man of similar talent. i had a bad feeling throughout the whole negotiation period - as kevin held out for his 2 year guarantee, and the club stuck to their guns (offering a single year contract with a conditional 2nd year ensured if he stayed healthy) hoping that the lure of premier league football - and kevin's well-known reluctance to move his family from the birmingham/black country area - would be enough to keep him at the club. as the season drew nearer - and all major considerations known - i woke up one morning realizing that he would sign with the blues. two days later, he did. while i was pleased at my own powers of precognition, i was upset and concerned for the team that kevin phillips would not be a baggie in the premier league.
the albion then signed gianni zuiverloon, a right winger/fullback, as the most expensive defensive signing ever by a west bromwich albion team. as i read this on the BBC website, i was hit by a feeling of impending top-flight mediocrity. we needed to replace kevin phillips and the news of signing a potential superstar fullback, while definitely a positive move going into the premiership - coupled with the acquisition of england's number 2 goalie, scott carson, and a tough central defender in the likes of jonas olsson - all being welcome news; but none of it addressed the concerns that i was beginning to develop about the lack of a senior striker.
of course, tony mowbray still had his two junior strikers, in ishmael miller and roman bednar, and the highly skillful midfield of greening, koren, morrison, and brunt. the season started off well enough. i mean, one can't complain a 1-0 away loss to arsenal, followed by a 2-1 home loss to everton. but when i saw that in their third match of the season, they were knocked out of the league cup in extra time, 3-1 by hartlepool united, i knew that something was amiss. a desperately dull 0-0 with bolton raised little concern one way or the other. but a solid and exciting 3-2 home win against west ham, and a narrow 2-1 loss to the villa; followed by the only back to back wins all seasons: two 1-0 victories against middlesborough and fulham, had me thinking that the season had finally begun, and the albion were on their way to a mid-table finish and certain survival in the premier league. that is when the weaknesses started to show. the albion were involved a couple of drubbings - at the hands of manchester united and hull; but for the most part, the team was competitive and playing well, except that it was getting harder by the week to score and harder to keep from being scored against. besides the 3-0 and 4-0 drubbings at the hands of the top form teams, the albion were involved in a series of 1 goal losses and draws in which they were very often giving up losing and equalizing goals late on in the match; instead of what kevin phillips would've done, which would have been to score late winners and equalizers.
top flight football is pop. it has been since the 60s, and with the advent of television. but then "pop" is now distinctly less interesting than it was then. pop is now a pure consumer culture, with strict (if often imperceptible) codes and protocols - and despite all its "hip" pose and "high style" - has become completely transparent. it is completely cynical and lacking any of even the naive virtues created by the illusion of a previous "counter-culture"; and, with the vibrancy and excitement of discovery which was its most meaningful legacy. perhaps, at the moment, no where is this lack more evident - or important - as it is in english football.
in the early part of the 21st century, top-flight football - together and in conjunction with other media-based monopolies - contrives to control and maintain its traditional power base in their respective markets. the premiership was built on TV and the dominance of TV as the modern medium of football is all important. this was not always true, and the very existence of the premier league in england - and similar breakaways from other foreign domestic leagues - came about pragmatically as a move away from the medium of the over-crowded, predominantly standing room, and increasingly dangerous stadiums; to the potentials of television, where heretofore the football authorities - while realizing it was unavoidable - had had a tentative and resistant attitude towards the new medium, as it was a definite threat to gate-receipts. the resulting compromise was MATCH OF THE DAY; live internationals, and live cup finals. this was one of the reasons that the FA CUP felt so much more imortant than it does now. it was the annual showcase day for english football in every english home. it was a day that made heroes.
but somewhere in the middle of all this - and with the advent cable TV technology causing the rapid specialization and the interational localization of what had previously been a homogeneous mainstream - someone realized that a 30,000 gate with a million TV viewers around the world, was the more lucractive model than a 60,000 gate alone, and the little bits of money generated by MOTD, and BBC radio licensing.
in the 1950s, football in england was a way for a young person of working class origins to make enough money and (in the long term) "contacts", so as to raise oneself to the status of bourgeoisie or middle class. jeff astle retired from football after a successful ten-year career and went into the industrial cleaning business. at one time, bobby robson was the captain of west bromwich albion - then, one of the top teams in the country. he was also the starting right-half for england. he walked to training every morning kicking a tennis ball along the pavement, and had a part-time job, working at an engineering firm in the afternoons to help meet the bills required by a young man raising a family with a couple of kids. this was the state of a player's life before the phenomenon of football as pop culture.
in the 1960s, when brian epstein was approached by someone in the states with the idea of adding the beatles as a subject matter to a popular line of tin lunch-boxes, it never occurred to him that he should make any money from this - he could only imagine the publicity that they would get out of it, which would undoubtedly be catalyst in selling more records in the states. it was a different world; but we were obviously already looking to pop for salvation.
as children, the baby-boomers and the tail-enders to their legacy - had, in the TV, film, radio and electric music - a kind of fantasy image of the world; where, for example, it would never have occurred to me as a kid that george best would die broke; or that my first footballing hero, charlie george, would end up working as a tour-guide at emirates stadium. on the TV show "the avengers", diana rigg was originally payed less per episode than the cameraman. the musicians (including hendrix himself) were paid $500 each for recording the first jimi hendrix experience album. but there was an illusion that went with pop celebrity - surely, we must have thought as kids, that these people lived a life more glamourous than imaginable and never had to think about money(!?!?!)
the more you pay for something, the less you appreciate it. i was watching an old DVD i have of the infamous 5-3 match, where the 78-79 albion beat manchester united at old trafford. the third goal (i think) - that put united 2-1 up was scored by sammy mcilroy and came about through the albion forwards not being able to clear the ball from their own penalty area. what struck me as i was watching, was the attitude of the commentators, compared to what it might be today:
"... the albion are caught trying to football their way out of trouble... ali brown loses the ball to mcilroy who cuts back inside - changes feet... OH!!! WHAT A GREAT GOAL! WHAT A GOOD GOAL... AGAIN!!!"
there was no miserable colour-man with a regional accent making mean and emphatic pronouncements of so-and-so's "dreadful defensive mistake" or evidence the albion "being punished for poor defending in not being able to clear the ball"; just good commentary that - while appropriately building with the passage of play, attested to albion being "stuck... having to football their way out of trouble", losing the ball to mcilroy who then scores a terrific goal, cutting left then making a deft switch of direction to the right, bringing the ball toward the goal and onto his shooting foot. in other words, the focus was on the positive aspects of the play that had just passed and the skill involved in taking the opportunity and making it happen when it appeared. nowadays, there would be a practical pronouncement about the poor decision in not clearing the ball directly; and then an assessment on the poor quality of the actual play - or lack thereof. in the old days, this sort of thing was not anything to be overly critical of... a great tragedy, as it is today. the focus was on the skill required to take advantage of the situation; not the "mistake" that had facilitated it. in other words: the forward used to win the ball from the fullback; nowadays the fullback loses the ball to the forward.
when i was a little boy - maybe 11 or 12 - i remember how shocked everyone had been at the first six-figure transfer-fee. again, the more you pay for something, it seems, the less you appreciate it and the more you expect from it - sometimes to the point of resentment. you have to remember, as well, that amateurs were still occasionally used by top teams in those days. i'm not absolutely sure, but i seem to remember steve heighway played his first few games for liverpool as an amateur, in order that he could keep his full-time student status and complete his studies. although, and certainly by 1970, this would have been a most unusual situation, and was no longer common practice as it had been back in the 1930s.
just as managers today make the decision to rest certain players for cup competitions, and field their strongest teams in the important league fixtures, so has it always been. in the 1935 FA Cup campaign, the albion played an amateur - a school teacher, in fact - by the name of arthur gale, in place of star player, tommy glidden. he scored in every round except the semi-final, and was dropped for the final itself in favour of glidden. ironically, the albion - who were favoured to beat sheffield wednesday in the wembley final - lost the match 4-2.
on the 27th of may this year, barcelona will play manchester united for the uefa champions league title . in terms of european football, it is the football pop-fest of the year; and needless to say there will be no amateurs participating in this competition. constantly looking in the marshall mcluhan rear-view mirror, the british pundits will all be asking - and then either answering or obfuscating the response for themselves - as is the case with any particular provocative, pop media question: "is this the greatest manchester united side of all time?"
of all the unanswerable questions...
the football of today is played by top-flight athletes who play the game at twice the pace it was played 30 years ago. and 30 years ago, it was played by footballers and not athletes. footballers couldn't play the modern game; it moves too fast and the defensive strategies and positions that the players are required to move into in relationship to the ball would have been too much work for the alcoholic, cigarette-smoking footballers of the 1960s and 70s. jesus christ! they'd think after about 10 seconds of modern football, these lads close everything down so quickly there's no where to run!!! how am i supposed to get into position!?!
in its practical application, the modern game is all about pace and running like hell. after that, you worry about getting all this pace and running onto the end of a long ball and directing it at goal. believe me, nobody was looking at agbonlahor with an eye to his dribbling and ball control abilities. because those are things that would just slow him down... run like hell and try get on the end of the ball so it is directed towards the goal - and don't try to control it and push it on more than once - unless you absolutely have to!!!
i don't know what to say... another day and more of the same: another accomplishment unachieved (not managing a win after conceding first in a match); and maintaining their incredible run of "doubles" (home/away draws with pompey now) only distinctly more entertaining and exciting, it would seem.
well to start with, it doesn't seem like there's any TV broadcast of this particular match, and that is distinctly unusual. in fact - and although i know i didn't see that last middlesborough game, (for some reason) i am most usually - through my cable TV subscriptions to SETANTA SPORTS and FOX SPORTSWORLD CANADA - able to see all premiership games for the week - if not live, then at least in repeat; usually within 24 hours. so this one is strange, to say the least. i'm not even sure that there was radio coverage, unless it was on local BBC Radio Solent? perhaps they're already acclimatizing us to the fact that the albion isn't going to be around next year and their worth as a broadcast commodity has already seriously been diminished. the particular irony in this is what a good match it appears to have been, and would've made for real good TV entertainment - and given a boost, especially to the out of town (not to mention out of the country) fans of these two rather beleaguered clubs, who could both really use one. christ! i followed it on the BBC live text report - with the chelsea/bolton match on the TV - and it was exciting - and to think that that's all i'm gonna' get...
i was surprised by the gaffer's selection this week. i was thinking that he would keep martis in the team, since the young man made real account of himself in both the matches that he played. all i can imagine is that mowbray wants to get meite his confidence back... maybe, not such a bad idea. i was glad to see that dorrans seems to be winning his place in the starting team, it sounds like he had a great game, and is the one bright discovery of the season. he should have come into the team earlier. i was most surprised by the total absence of bednar, though, as i had been calling for him to start regularly, as a general relegation battle strategy - playing behind either fortune or simpson. i wonder what is going on there... was he injured, or suspended? i don't recall mention of anything like that. whatever the case, i can hardly complain, because greening scored the equalizer - and that is something i've been calling for all season, that jonno (along with koren and morrison) be more aggressive going toward goal. as well, brunt scored from a free-kick, a distinct talent which has developed over the season and is starting to serve him well as a scorer in the premier league. good stuff!
it has been said - and it might true - that tony brown would not have been able to play the modern game, because as a midfielder, he never came back to defend, and nowadays everyone has to get back and defend. but i don't think that the bomber would care too much about that and would tell you that he played that way because all he cared about was scoring goals. i have always wished - and especially on days when he actually scores - that jonathan greening had more of that interest in scoring and a little more gentle disdain for that aspect of the modern game that has seen the central midfielder primarily as a high-defensive player, responsible for winning tackles and ball distribution, rather than an attacker coming from the back.
as i said, it is ironic that this game might not end up on TV. this a year to test one's faith as an albion supporter, and it is no wonder that it has only been european and "big four" english football that has managed to cultivate active interest in north america. the fact is, it's all that most people ever see with 3 or 4 english games that are available, and as they appear on regular cable, along with the champions league coverage, which, is better covered on game days than english football is on the weekends. but i won't get into a media rant, instead, i'll prepare the text commentary and photos for posting. after all, i shall need to find something interesting and creative to do if i'm going to be following the baggies with only the BBC live text for 90% of the matches.
i couldn't help it... although i could wait and see the baggies play stoke on TV at some point this evening; and while there is conflicting listings on the internet this morning, with both the west brom and the west ham matches listed as 6.30 and 6.45 respectively on Setanta Sports Canada (?!?!?!) i started to follow the live text on BBC after seeing the 0-1 halftime score accidentally (i was trying to avoid it) while having the newcastle v chelsea match tuned in on TV and i got sucked in. i had the page up for a few minutes with no updates occuring, so i hit F5 key to refresh the page and saw that a james beattie goal in the fourth minute of the second-half put the match at 0-2. i know that stoke is a real bogey team for us. we haven't beat them in 6 years prior to today; and even from the text report, i can see that it is the long-ball counter attack beating the passing and possession football with albion having an everage of 60% of the ball and stoke about 40%. it reminds me of everything that the baggies haven't done this season; as today was just another thing that they didn't do.
this season, they have not won any significant upsets. they haven't dispelled any old bogeys or acheived any significant "firsts". for example, it now makes seven years since we've beaten stoke . the baggies have not split any home/away results all year - and have the biggest percentage of doubles (either positive or negative) of anyone in the premiership. if they have lost or drawn away, they have also lost or drawn at home; with only the middlesborough series producing victories. in short - and after the first couple of decent results (wins against fulham and middlesborough back to back) seeing the team off to their best premier league start ever - they lost form completely - save for a couple of good results in december and january that gave us reason to briefly renew our hope. but worst of all, they have delivered not a single welcome surprise all season.
hull beat just about everyone for the first 15 games or so and both stoke and middlesborough have beaten liverpool this year. sunderland has had a couple of surprise results. last year, and involved in a relegation battle, bolton managed to beat manchester united at a critical juncture of the season. there hasn't even been a sniff of anything of the like happening for the albion this year. just lots of clever, clean footballing in the midfield, accurate passing and a dogged (and frustrating) determination to walk the ball into the goal. other than that, they haven't defended consistently, they haven't scored goals, they haven't stopped goals. they have not come back to win a match in which they've conceded first. they haven't had a single special day that for even a moment rocks the established order and gives us at least a passing thrill with cause for celebration and a momentary lift from the doldrums of what has been a truly miserable season. yes, the feeling of emptiness is indescribable.
i have to stick with my man mowbray, though... he just didn't have a few of the essential players that he would have needed to play albion style football at premiership level. but going back down to the championship, i can't see us not being back for another run at it within 2 years... tops!!! and that's not something i felt that i could've said back in november - then, and following ishmael miller's injury. the albion looked like a club who might be setting up for a slow and monumental decline. but when you face the facts, and you remember how big a club it actually is, relatively speaking, there's never, for a long time to come, going to be a question of not being competitive in the championship - through the playoffs or whatever. with an experienced championship level winning manager and a solvent board able to assemble and manage a top championship side; plus whatever the FA gives you to buy championship players, the baggies'll be back for another kick at the premiership can within a couple of years.
to be fair to tony mowbray - like him, or hate him - he is a man of integrity, and is committed very deeply to certain principles concerning football; principles that are shared, and have long been a part of the albion ethos - and were long established at the club - at least, since the 1950s and the initial vision of entertaining, skilled, attacking football instigated by vic buckingham. at its best - and no matter what division we're in - west bromwich albion football is about entertaining, good passing, winning clean possessions and scoring goals; and that's why we're all fans and love the baggies so desperately. but a year like this, is the flip-side of the coin and is about the suffering, and reminding us that being an albion supporter is also about loyalty and integrity. we have to remember that not all the best skilled and technical football is entertaining, so the albion tradition is not always an easy thing to uphold. for example, the FA Cup final of 1968 will never be remembered as one of the classics; despite the fact that both teams played well in the midfield - and john osborne and the albion fullbacks had just about as a good a game as they ever had playing in albion colours. all the good football was played coming out of the back into the midfield. i was lucky enough that the baggies both won the division and had a cup run last year, as that allowed me to see them play maybe as many as five or six matches on television. i followed most of the games on the BBC live text report, happily looking forward to this year when i would see just about every game through a rather expensive subscription to SETANTA SPORTS CANADA. actually, i think i get to see all the games as long as the baggies are in the premiership - it's just that i can't find a listing for this coming saturday's match and i can't remember why i never saw the last middlesborough game (?!?) - because i remember distinctly that i didn't.
there's seven games left and it's still sufficiently tight that if a hero figure who could score a few crucial goals, stepped forward right now and the baggies tore through their last seven games with five wins and two draws, i've no doubt that they'd survive and pull off another great escape. fulham was able to muster something similar last year. the only thing i can see to do at this point, is start bednar every game now, playing behind either simpson and fortune, and get morrison, greening and koren attacking the goal at every chance. the back-line has looked passable since martis started playing and we might just get lucky. we'll have to see if any of this lot have got the technique and character to do something heroic at this level of the game.
at the moment, and being more limited than most other managers, mowbray has managed to bring in a good deal of talented youngsters in need of development, along with the departure of some key veterans. this is always a painful time for most clubs, but to have to deal with it simultaneously as a premier league promotion is crushing. despite this, the albion still have one of the better teams in the division at playing the ball coming forward from the back. the problem is that the forwards are all young and lack the necessary experience; and defensively the team has run afoul of the same problem at the back, where the the requisite experience has also been desperately wanting.
i thought i might have more to say; consequently it's taken me a week to post this, so now i'm off to follow the baggies play portsmouth on the BBC live text. after all... a dream lives on forever!
i haven't blogged in a while now... not since the arsenal game; which, at the time, seemed pretty much like the end of the season as far survival in the premier league was concerned. especially with the previous dismal performance against fulham - in which it looked that the team spirit that the baggies had (quite amazingly) been able to maintain all season in the face ever mounting and increasing adversity was gone altogether. there has, of course, been a long layoff between games, with a weekend of european competition and domestic cup play, and on top of that the albion's weekend fixture being a monday night game away to west ham. i think that makes it 11 days without a match.
West Ham United 0-0 WBA
it was the hammers' lowest turnout for any league match of the year, so far, and the famously intimidating upton park seemed no more than a sulky little environment with no real atmosphere generated by the crowd. therefore - and coupled with the horribly jaded attitudes becoming evermore present in the english football community every day - it was easy to miss that the baggies provided the only real entertainment on the evening, were the better of the 2 teams, should have won 1 or 2-0; and would have done so but for superior goalkeeping on the part of west ham's robert green, and an unlucky header by first time premier league starter, shelton martis, coming back off the cross-bar with no one in position to knock it in the otherwise open goal. so, and in the end, despite being entertaining going forward, displaying impressive midfield skills, both in attack and at winning defensive balls with good, clever footballing, and high quality passing; as well as a surprisingly beefed up and tidy defensive performance - the baggies were otherwise mired in a game against a depleted and somewhat deflated looking west ham side that dragged down the quality of play to the point of the match being deemed "mediocre" by the BBC. but then really, it's all a case of perspective. i guess if you are the team that looks most likely to get relegated ( as the baggies do at the moment, having become competitively a few points genuinely detached from the rest of the pack at the bottom) you're not much of a draw, and regarded as being of little consequence. in short, you're not going to get a particularly balanced critique of last week's performance in the mainstream press.
while it's more than likely going to become a case of "too little too late", but the baggies have every reason to feel positive about last monday's performance; and mowbray may have found a team that would - under better circumstances - have a decent chance of staying up. but with just 9 league games left there is just not enough time for this particular set of individuals to develop... well, anything! the only thing in which i can take heart, is that there are still a lot of "firsts" to be achieved and precedents to be set in the premier league; and while the FA Cup and the european places all look set to end in upholding the status quo - i can't remember a year like this at the bottom of the table.
i've been saying all year, that there are no bad teams in the premiership this year. period. you can point to the baggies' difficulty in scoring goals, for example; but you can't say they've played bad football. even borja-valero, who has been a player of little impact or consequence this year - is a tidy, talented midfielder with above average skills on the ball; and not short on footballing creativity. he - like much of the team - have been ineffective in producing final product.
how the season got away
there are two defining moments to the albion's season this year: even though i have called him a "pirate", and it became evident early on that the baggies needed him much more than the blues did - letting kevin phillips go was the biggest (and i believe the only really serious) mistake on the part of the management. i know there was the issue of the 2 years guaranteed - but i think in this case both parties should have just found the middle ground or some reasonable compromise, since i think he would have had more impact over a longer period of time with the baggies; as well as seen more actual playing time - as i think the baggies would have found just as much use for him as a starter, as well as, substitute; and he'd have been good for at least a dozen goals at this point - and his presence alone, in terms of confidence... perhaps as much as another fifteen from bednar, koren, greening, morrison and miller/moore/simpson. that's 24-plus potentially very important goals. anyway, that's how i imagine it would have been and i think he could have seen that through and gotten the second year that he wanted, as easily as albion could've just given him the 2 years straight off the bat. i figure both sides were wrong-headed in this one, and either side accepting the other's terms would have been preferable to the eventualities - or so it would seem. phillips would have been a more important presence at west brom than at city - and he would have been a central figure, even in the capacity as mentor amd inspiration to the younger players who were coming in this year. beyond that, an eventual coaching position with the club... maybe? but that all happened and was part of the machinations before the season started, and we weren't quite sure where we were going to be. the first couple of months went ok. the albion spent the best part of august, september and october hovering around the middle-top half of the table - their best premier league start ever. even though it was clear by that point that no great burst of goals was welling up to take the premier league by storm, the baggies played well, and showed that they could scrap out tight victories (WBA 1-0 Fulham) with some unfamiliar tactical formations. for example, they were very clearly working on a system that was not at all in the model of the 4-4-2 and 4-3-3 formations of last year and of years before. these were formations dedicated to the idea of the single striker as the primary target man and a basic 4-5-1 formation flexing into a 4-3-3 on attack, with brunt and morrison playing wide like old fashioned left and right-wingers respectively. part of this experiment was to bring greening higher up in the attack formation playing directly behind the single striker - who, at the time was ishmael miller. as the baggies went into november and started their slide to the bottom of the table, this tactic began to come under a lot of criticism from the supporters, as pro-mowbray supporters stuck behind the gaffer and his detractors started calling for him to resign or get the sack - citing the poor performance of the single striker formation and poor quality in the selection (and availability) of central defenders; and the 4-5-1 formation was baffling everyone. i, myself, was not at all convinced of the tactic. i thought, surely two strikers and an attacking central midfielder is the proper style for "west bromwich albion" football. i thought that mowbray was distracted, perhaps with the defensive difficulties that were beginning to show, and that that was his motivation in sticking with the five midfielders? i just didn't know. that is - up until the match when pompey came to the hawthorns - then did i understand.
jonathan greening scored to put the baggies ahead. this was a direct result of having him attack and penetrate the box behind single striker, ishmael miller. the baggies played a good game... the usual tidy passing and retention of possession; and as this made the game fairly open in the midfield, the portsmouth fullbacks were starting to get caught out by miller's pace on the break. i could see what the gaffer had been working on all along: the traditional albion passing game with a central midfielder playing high in attack, and a first-rate counter attack. as the second-half wore on - and with the albion 1-0 up - miller kept finding himself free to attack goal, and on several occasions - including the incident that took him out for the rest of the year - when he looked like a goal was well on and would only be a matter of minutes before he scored. in fact, as i said at the time, i thought he hurt himself because he could feel that he was on a goal - and that with the thrust of what he and the team had been working on starting to gel - he went all too enthusiastically after a ball that was never his. when miller came off - and it looked serious from the outset - you could see how that at the very moment that the team had coalesced, everything was about to come together and the baggies were going to set the tone for how they would play out the rest of the season and remain competitive in the bottom half of the table, it all unraveled. without a player with miller's pace the 4-5-1 formation that the gaffer puzzled us with all season, and was suddenly making itself evident and its merits plain, went out the window - and within a few minutes peter crouch had equalized and the 2-0 home win that looked apparent ended in a 1-1 draw and half the season's work and planning gone - out the window! the albion - and with olsson out injured for a number of weeks - were left to scramble for someone who could score and a massive hole was now left in their back line. despite 2 or 3 good results that eventually followed (manchester city and tottenham) the albion have struggled with all their secondary plans, despite bringing in a couple of potentially talented young strikers and returning to a more conventional 4-4-2 formation. barring any late season heroics and a five game winning streak that rescues them from relegation, i will always see the miller injury as the turning point of this season.
WBA 1-1 Bolton Wanderers
this was, i believe, the same team that started against west ham with exception of dorrans, who came on as a sub. it was the usual sort of thing we've come to expect this season. with the added presence of shelton martis - and graham dorrans looking a clever little footballer - the team is highly improved, and this is probably the basic line-up that will see out the season. all i can suggest from this one - and as robert koren showed us - is that the baggies should be working to create opportunities for a few more 12-15 yard shooting chances and have a crack at the bloody goal instead of trying to walk it in on every possesion!
they didn't play as well as they did against everton, but the team is playing ok again. but, what has happened to meite?!?! for the duration of olsson being out due to injury, he's gone from looking the only half sufficiently experienced, motivated and hard-working central defender to something akin to a frightened deer caught in the headlights of the TV cameras... alarmingly nervous.
although they're probably well enough drilled and either have or are developing (as with donk and barnett) the knowledge, skills and work rate to be a professional footballer, but the best of the back four is zuiverloon and he's essentially an attacking player in the model of an old-fashioned right winger. the central defenders - and the defending done directly in front of goal is league 1 level, and just not quick enough by half for the pace of the premier league game. scott carson is a top goalie, and was easily the best albion player on the day, as this one could have been 5 or 6-1...
the team is going to have to take a step (and perhaps back to the championship) and develop this element in their game in order - through personal improvements and player acquisitions to be competitive in the premier league at some point in the near future.
although i'm perfectly delighted that i will have the opportunity to see the baggies play today; by virtue of a 4 hour delay broadcast on Setanta Sports Canada (liverpool v sunderland is the live broadcast at 2 pm EST) - and of course - as i will avoid any football news for a couple of hours - when i sit down to eat dinner with the game on, i will have no doubt that today's the day and the albion will deliver the performance of the season (we haven't really had one yet... have we?!?) and give us a glorious, emphatic and shocking victory over arsenal. but that's not really what i want to write about - and might not get this posted until after the match.
anyone who has followed my blogging here, knows that i am writing about english football from a north american perspective and, consequently, i write a lot about how the game is broadcast here, as well as the relationship of english football to cable TV, and new media technologies. my biggest issue being the rights to radio and, consequently, live online streaming of audio commentary for english football matches and how the "broadcasters'" rights to these audio media are exercised. the other thing i write about here is FREE and OPEN-SOURCE software, and how the general philosophy behind these ideas extends into other areas, mostly concerning information and the control exerted over it by copyright holders and the large commercial broadcasting corporations.
when fighting corporate control in the digital information age, you can't find a more formidable target than professional sports. the whole industry has distinct advantages in terms of information control due, in large part, to the constitutional structure of the medium. for example, once an audio cd is copied to someone's hard drive, it becomes potentially accessible to anyone - or on any network - that you choose to make it available to. the same thing goes for dvds, as long as one has the software to do it with. the same is now true for television and radio through streaming sites like JUSTIN.TV where people have figured out how to stream TV and radio online to a non-restricted audience. my favorite example of this is how a blackpool f.c. supporter has created a channel that streams the BBC local audio commentary of his team's matches to an international audience. this is significant because the match as streamed from the BBC website is unavailable to listeners outside the UK. that is, it's online transmission is blocked at the server level, and cannot be accessed outside the UK; unless it is streamed through an alternative site with enough bandwidth.
of course this happens with just about every game that Setanta and Skysports broadcast, someone streams the manchester united or chelsea match online at JUSTIN.TV and it becomes free for people to access, within the sites bandwidth limitations. for example, there is a limit as to how many people can join the chat room that enables them to access the stream. as long as you can get in on it at the time, this would benefit those wishing to avoid added expenses to their monthly cable/satellite bill, as everything here emanates from a TV broadcast - which i can pay for and watch on TV anyway; and that provides it at much better quality. so, i am here and now, much more interested in the radio broadcasts and live streaming online of audio commentary than i am with video streams or TV broadcasts for the moment.
as it is now, individual clubs retain the rights to audio broadcasts inside the UK. typically, they will license the BBC to do a live radio broadcast - which is available through the BBC online to any UK users. the club's reserve the right (and through a mutual agreement with the FA) to use these broadcasts to stream online through their website as DRM (digital restrictions management) streaming content that is part of the services offered to paying members of the website. the only trouble is that the websites don't exactly seem to belong to the club, but to the FA - and with whom the club has entered into an agreement.
Richard Stallman on DRM (repost)
for those of you who are wondering, richard stallman is the founder of FREE SOFTWARE FOUNDATION and, thus, is the originator of the idea of free software. he is also the author of the GPL (general public license). as well, he contributed a lot of code early on to the original set of programs (the GNU project) that served as the basis for the deployment of the LINUX family of operating systems. for those of you who are still unaware that you do not need microsoft - there are, in fact, loads of alternatives. my personal recommendation is UBUNTU since it is easy enough to install and use that anyone who knows how to install and run windows would be able to do so with a minimum of preparatory reading.
this is a statement of requirements for accessing live or archived media as it appears on all of the premiership and football league (championship/leagues 1 & 2) websites, developed by a professional digital content management company, and under the auspices of something originally called PREMIUMTV.CO.UK:
Platforms Supported - In order to access our World subscription products you will need Microsoft Internet Explorer 6 or above on the following PC operating systems, Windows 98SE, ME, 2000 and XP. Other browsers on these PC operating systems (eg Netscape, Opera, Galleon etc) will not work and are not supported
Under the terms of our rights agreements that enable us to bring you this service we have to take every effort to protect the content from piracy. We therefore use Windows Media DRM which means this service will not work on Macintosh PC's at this time
You will also need Windows Media Player 9, 10 or 11 in order to be able to access our World subscription products. If you do not already have the latest Windows Media Player you will be able to download one here
replace the word "piracy" with "file-sharing" and see how it reads to you...
the above conditions are completely unacceptable and incompatible with the interests of the computer user's freedom; and it is totally unethical as it attempts to coerce the user to run microsoft software... and let's face it: even most people who use microsoft hate it, with all the information lost to trojans carrying viruses and the slow boot-up and execution times caused by constantly running anti-virus software, as well as all kinds of needless background programs that the user is unaware and has no control of - and accept it only out of the perceived inevitability of what it takes to run a PC computer. there is no issue here except the blatant attempts to control; which i do not see as being in the interest of anyone including the broadcast companies, and the football clubs themselves. which brings me around to the point:
after years and years of resistance to the medium of TV on the part of the FA and its member clubs, imagining that it would damage attendance and thus, gate revenues - the more powerful and successful teams (the old 1st division) eventually broke away from the governing body (the football league) so it could form "the premier league" and take control of those revenue opportunities that it finally saw were there to be made from both domestic and international cable television broadcasts - and that the age of digital information.... rather digital information itself should now supply a similar change with a very much different effect; that will, for quite different reasons - meet again with much more tenacious and hysterical resistance.
Stephen Fry on Free-Software
copyrights, patents and other conventions and systems of the analog information era - that themselves were responses to the needs of a culture that depended first - and for a very long time, uniquely - on the medium of printed information; then, in the 20th century and with the rapid growth of electric technologies - sound recording, radio, film, and television. the constitutional nature of digital information, is that it changes all of these conventions as to be unenforceable or more simply (and more honestly speaking) obsolete in regards to their original functions. while patents and copyright are very different things covering very different areas of information, both were originally designed as systems of collecting and retaining information for the benefit of advancing science and the useful arts. as well as, giving some reasonable length of time to the originator to retain certain rights, in order to provide the opportunity to collect monetary recompense for his industry and invention. copyright was never intended as a way for any corporation or individual to hold a monopoly on that deemed "intellectual property" in perpetuity, simply to advance what are assumed to be the natural rights of capitalism. in an information age - like we have experienced since the invention of the electric circuit in 1847, news, education, entertainment, sport, drama... all have become big business. it's only a matter of time, however, that - and as with anything, we encounter or we will encounter, a reversal of form.
one of the biggest problems, with this particular reversal of form, is that those who would benefit from a more free use of digital information media haven't figured it out yet. for example, with manchester united being one of the most well known and popular teams in the world whose league, cup and european matches are all broadcast on international TV - would have little reason to worry too much about the audio commentary accessed by paid subscription to their website. it probably doesn't amount, relatively speaking, to very much in terms of revenues when compared to its many other sources of income. only the most isolated of fans, with no television access, might choose audio commentary accessed through a paid subscription as a preferred method of following manchester united. i mean, even if you don't have a TV (let alone the expensive digital-cable subscriptions that are required to watch the full complement of english football each week); one can go to the manchester united supporters club which locates itself at a local bar, and a widescreen live broadcast of the manchester united match is offered. in the case of cup games that do not have a regular cable broadcast, the club pays for closed-circuit TV coverage, and in turn charges an extra-fee in the guise of a "cover-charge" to its attending members. there are similar clubs for arsenal, liverpool, and chelsea; but looking for other such activity, all i could find was a spurs club and an everton club - both of which appeared to be more or less inactive - with the toffees fans congregations listed as being at the pub that i know to have been taken over by the liverpool supporters; and the spurs information had not been updated in several years. as for the baggies, i managed to find a contact in victoria, british columbia - but all there was in terms of information, was a private email address - and it appeared to be a project that never got off the ground. besides, being located on the other side of the country puts me in closer geographical proximity to the hawthorns than i am to the canadian WBA supporter(s) club, as it may or may not exist.
as interest in football - especially the premier and champions league - continues to develop here at an ever-increasing rate, there are also more than a few traditional sports bars that have begun to cater to the interests of the saturday morning english football fans. in fact, there is a small sports-bar on bathurst street, here in toronto, aimed exclusively at meeting the needs of the growing football market by adopting soccer as its full-time theme.
so given the situation and realities concerning the continuing development of english football as an international entity, we are going to have to get beyond the premier league in order for a fuller, more complete and satisfying understanding of the game. while the so-called "big-four" - and its relationship to the champions league - may serve as a foundation for a sustained and ever increasing interest in english football in north america - the only real way to go for expansion of that interest is down. just as TV served as the eventual and deciding catalyst for the founding of the premier league, and the eventual and subsequent development of a significant and all important international following for the sport; the internet, and digital information - if allowed to do its work - will provide development to the game by opening up access to the lower leagues. it took almost 30 years for the football bureaucracies to fully embrace the medium of television - and there's every chance that the changes i am expecting could take quite some time to achieve, as i fully expect corporate resistance to the internet to be much less accepting of it than it was of television. it did, after all, start compromising with television fairly early on as reflected through the venerable and seemingly eternal Match of the Day.
digital information inverts the old broadcast structures by giving users a medium in which they possess the control over content creation, and the general effect is a broad "localizing' and "democritization" of the process of information dissemination. by "localizing", i mean to describe the advent - through the internet and digital technology - of international and non-geographically based communities that form around specific or esoteric subjects, values and ideas. in other words, where we were previously faced with the sharp distinction between "mainstream" and "underground" in our cultural options - much is redefined in the face of digital technology. the making of a "home movie" with a digital video camera and using your favorite song as soundtrack, becomes a subversive act as soon as it is posted to a site like YOUTUBE; as, if it comes to the attention of the copyright holder of the music, then it is quite likely that you will have the audio portion of your video removed by YOUTUBE at the copyright holder's request. likewise, the use of a site like JUSTIN.TV as a way to make TV available free to other users, is to be using the mainstream media as a radical statement against itself. whether by default or design - that is the effect.
as i've written in earlier blogs; blue square premier matches - that have a similar relationship to the league matches in terms of broadcast rights - both in TV (Setanta Sports... of course!), the radio rights (differing only in that the club retains the international rights, as well domestic) and the crucial part that the BBC plays in all this. this means that i can listen to every cambridge united or histon (just to use BBC local radio cambridgeshire as our example) match live on the BBC, i cannot listen to the audio stream of peterborough united which is transmitted through the same local radio. the truth of this is quite insidious, as it serves no purpose - and as i have pointed out before - requires the added effort of blocking the server transmission for the specific time period of the match.
so just as the richer and more powerful teams broke away from the traditional governance of the football league and formed the premiership to take advantage of what they had identified as an opportunity to promote english football to whole world through the advent of cable TV, ultimately making it the richest and most followed domestic sports league in the world; leagues 1 and 2 should similarly breakaway from the football league, in order to take control of their radio broadcast rights. as this is the essential licensing that they would require to be able to stream their matches live to an international audience, in the same manner as the blue square conference is able to do now.
this type of scenario (or some variation thereof - for example, the championship could decide to go with them) would have two profound effects on english football, one cultural, and one a simple democratic expansion of capitalism.
culturally, it completes, to no small extent, the ability for an increasingly engaged, international audience to follow the game in depth and have a full complement of teams they can effectively follow, and continue their support for over many years, and from season to season. for example, someone who followed leeds united during their hey-day of the 1970s, replete with FA Cup wins, League championships and European Cup competitions, would, at this point, have effectively long lost their ability to follow the team except through reading score-lines and news reports. how many potential team, t-shirt, scarf and hat sales were never realized due to this situation?!? how many video tapes (and now DVDS) might have been bought? nobody really knows and the crazy thing is, nobody has seemed to take much notice... but with the digital media age upon us, it can't be long before somebody makes this observation; especially given the present potentials!
the reason that there are no streaming audio commentaries from any of the premiership or football league clubs has to do with outdated thinking about broadcast licensing. the FA, realizing that full TV coverage is still too expensive for the average cable TV subscriber - retains the international rights to audio broadcasts in order that they can license "big four" matches to local sports radio in the big north american markets. where they have miscalculated is that online streaming of the audio commentary of championship, league 1 or 2 would not interfere or take audience away from the larger broadcast - as football, even in the realm of the "big four" is about team loyalties and rivalries... there is absolutely no way that the development of an audience that would be familiar with and want to follow teams like leyton orient, preston north end, leicester city, hartlepool united, brighton hove albion, ipswich town, millwall, brentford f.c., cardiff city, wycombe wanderers or accrington stanley would ever be competition to a similar transmission of manchester united or chelsea.
in my promised "modest proposal", i suggest that the lower leagues work to get control of their audio broadcasting rights and stream their broadcasts free online to an unlimited, unrestricted international audience. it would simply be more football all around, and develop the interest in a wider and more complete scope of the english game. after all, it's been well over a hundred years since promotion/relegation divisional play has been a part of north american sport, as it was with baseball in the old federal league of the 19th century - and nobody has thought through the logic yet - still employing outdated and outmoded models of capitalist broadcast protocols as related to TV and radio in the 20th century.
let's hope that soon, doncaster rovers, sheffield wednesday, macclesfield town, and coventry city realize how many more shirts they could sell with free, live, international streaming of their home games.
