Torre Andre Flo, football's tallest ever player, missed the MK Dons' eight penalty kick tonight to crush the club's hopes for promotion this season. Disaffected Dons fans later suggested that the former Norway international was overly preoccupied by the 8/11 price tag the bookies have placed on him to win the Eurovision singing for his country tomorrow evening.
Sometimes the pressure just gets too much.
Moments after coming off the bench to replace an ineffective Michael Owen, Obafemi Martins slotted home to put Newcastle in front against Middlebrough on Monday night. Alan Shearer has had praise heaped on him ever since. "A masterstroke," said the Daily Mail.
The praise managers often get when a substitution pays off is not something I'm necessarily comfortable with. Why didn't they just start the player who inevitably comes on to play a critical role?
Let me offer an example. Take Shearer's friend here, the priest in the picture above. He's clearly gone to the wrong place of work: a building site, not his parish church. To make things worse, he's put on the wrong uniform as well. He's made a error, in other words, a grievous error. To give him his due, he probably realised this after a few minutes, and duly remedied the situation. By 10am, he was most likely back at the church, just an hour late for work. His fellow priests are glad to see him, but the fact remains he made a mistake, missed the mass he was supposed to say, and he won't be winning any Priest of the Month awards just because he realised it.
Michael Owen has managed just four shots in the six games Shearer has been charged with. He's not match fit, and shouldn't have been on the pitch in the first place, not in such a massively important game. This was a blip of his manager's part. In taking him off and throwing Martins on, his manager made no masterstroke, he simply made a mends for his earlier miscalculation. The fans should be pleased, but they shouldn't start thinking that their manager's a tactical genius.
Mark Hughes has always had the faint air of a tinker about him, hasn't he? Take a look at him there, and then remember what they called him: Sparky. I mean, for God's sake. He's been given a good scrub since, of course, but if you were ever to end up at a party back in his house, you wouldn't be completely shocked if every room in the place reeked of old dog shit, or at the very least, old dog food. Well, the City manager has been true to those suspected roots this week, wingeing about the flak he gets from the press.
His club, the richest in the world, currently languish in mid-table. With a trip to White Hart Lane, one of the Premiership's most formible grounds this season, a European position looks unlikely for the club which has managed just 11 points on the road this season. On the face of it, most would probably argue that the media's criticism is justly delivered.
In fairness to Hughes though, it's not as if he's been able to exploit the club's great and newfound fortune. An attempt made to land Kaka in the last tranfer window failed and, apart for the signing of Robinho at the start of the season, the club has been unable to lure any more superstars to the City of Manchester Stadium. Hughes manages the richest squad in the world, but has an only slightly above average squad to choose from.
But this is the whole point, I feel: his inability to exploit the club's wealth. Hughes is more than qualified to manage mid-table squads and finish mid-table. But with money in the bank, City fans (myself included) expect that the team will move beyond that next season. As the last transfer window showed, Hughes hasn't got the renown which will be needed next season to bring big names to a relatively small club.
To attract big name players, we need a big name manager.
After Jens Lehmann claimed that the modern football can actually pick up speed mid-air, the good guardians over at The Knowledge were asked if Lehmann's argument was scientifically sound. They asked a few physicists, who all replied doubtfully.
In principle a spinning ball can be made to speed up by transferring energy from spin to linear speed – but only under the right conditions, eg when a tennis ball with top-spin hits the ground. It's difficult to see how this could happen to a football in normal air.
Ronaldo has scored a over half dozen free kicks this year. An impressive record to be sure; one to match the impressive technique he employs. But, against Wigan on Wednesday night, he had three free kicks within shooting distance, and each one careered straight into the wall. It wasn't just a off-night. Ronaldo's free kicks, I would guess, hit the wall more often than not.
I would suggest (only half-jokingly) that, although the ball doesn't actually gather any further speed in flight, it seems as if does to everyone watching; because, consciously or otherwise, aren't we all expecting the ball to come to an immediate halt tens yards from where the free kick is taken?
Things don't look great for Hull City, and this evening's Sky Sports piece does little to improve the reputation of Britain's least popular tourist destination. Newcastle's win against Middlebrough on Monday night pushed the Tigers behind the bars of the drop line for the first time this season, and the city's residents are not hopeful of escape.
They braved an inevitably blustery day to meet the press and assert a pessimism, embodied in their every rain mac, which even the city's most famous librarian, Philip Larkin, might have balked at. "We're going down quicker than the Titanic," said one fan of the seaside club. At 1/3 to go down, the bookies are inclined to agree.
We're at the butt end of the season, I'm afraid to say. Just two weeks of Premiership action remain, and there's precious little international football in store this summer. And so it seems a strange time, I admit, to begin this football blog. It's a little late, for sure. But the smoker's last drags are often the sweetest. Just ask Dimitar.
United look like they've got the title tied up now. But it wasn't always so. An Educated Right Foot intends, for the moment, to retrace the key movements in this Premiership season, while at the same time anticipating the next. And then there's always the final drags of the present. We wouldn't just flick that away.