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A Bunch of Fives So when all is said and done we translate the number of times a ball has landed in the back of a net, past and present, and somehow work out why it was so obviously going to be so and what will happen in the future!! That’s the unenviable task of our resident expert Professor Statto, Nobel Prize Winner in waiting, who’s been explaining the meaning of football life and giving comfort to his followers for years.  He’ll tell you why your predictions were bound to be wrong. He’ll tell you about the most outrageous possibilities to come. He’ll tell you…But whatever he says remember: “98% of all statistics are made up.” ~Author Unknown Professor Statto and his amazing statistics. ====================================== Previous analysis Week 37.... Week 36.... Week 35.... Week 34.... Week 33.... Week 32Scottish Edition, Featuring Fergie's Hero
Hello again, pals, or should I say Ceud Mille Failte, as the Scots do? Right: Man U are champions, Albion are relegated, and the identity of the two to accompany them is likely to depend on whether John Terry and Frank Lampard get to play golf on Sunday while Cristiano, Wayne and Nemanja are sat at home reading the papers – or at least, looking at the pictures. That’s the current state of the Prem in a nutshell, but this week, I’m concentrating on events in Scotland, where the title race is going to the last day. In addition, there’s still a Europa Cup place up for grabs, and at the bottom of the Scots Premier, there’s a three-way stramash (what we’d call a fight) to stay out of Div. 1 – so seven of the 12 teams in the division still have everything to play for in their season’s final weekend. The top first. While I was visiting a remote region of Patagonia in February, a tribesman asked me “Are Celtic going to retain their title this year?” On the steppes of Kyrghyzstan last month, an old goat-herder told me he thought it would be Rangers’ year. There are not many teams who are so big they don’t need the other half of their name to be recognised all round the world. Inter, Bayern, AC, CSKA perhaps, but without any doubt, for Rangers and Celtic, their ‘Glasgow’ prefix is superfluous. (Some teams seem to need more than their full name – I’ve seen TV listings this season in Germany for Champions League games featuring Chelsea London and Arsenal London!) Anyone who’s followed English football since the ’70s and thinks Man Utd and Liverpool have been dominant should look at Scotland. While the English pair have collected 19 of the last 30 league titles, Rangers or Celtic have won every one for the last 24 years. For a few years in the ’80s, Aberdeen, managed by a young chap called Ferguson, derailed the Glasgow duopoly, but when he went south in ’86, so did Aberdonian hopes of sustained dominance. No offence intended to them or other fine clubs like Hibernian and Dundee Utd, but they and the rest of the Scottish teams are pygmies compared with the Glasgow giants. Here’s how the Big Two stand today:
If Rangers win at Dundee Utd on Sunday, they’ll be champions. Even a draw might be good enough for them, but with Celtic (home record 14-3-1) odds-on to beat Hearts at Parkhead, they’ll be chasing a win. In three previous games with Utd this season, Rangers have only won one. This is the fourth time in seven years that the Glasgow pair have decided the title on the final day, and they always manage to serve up a thrilling conclusion - I’m looking forward to it! Meanwhile, at the bottom, the 11th and 12th placed teams meet, although both could survive.
The mostly likely outcome is that the loser of Inverness v Falkirk on Saturday will be relegated, but intriguingly, a Falkirk win coupled with a three-goal victory for Hamilton at St. Mirren would see the Saints for the drop instead. It’s every bit as exciting as the Prem’s lower reaches. Weekly roundup While a combined 70% of you went for Everton and Portsmouith home wins, hardly anyone pinpointed thee 3-1s – after all, this score only occurs once in every 25 matches. The smart/lucky few on target were manucfc10, dereka and Smoking Green Farmers. The game that provided the slimmest pickings was at Old Trafford, where less than 10% of you expected the draw, and only 2 said 0-0 – nice one, Gilberto and Kevin.
Top Players This week’s standout scores come from five familiar names, who, in the best sporting tradition, are all battling to the bitter end, as, coincidentally, the teams they support have done – and in one case, still are, eh, Michael?
The greatest manager of all time? There was a Scots bloke who, for 12 years, managed the club he used to play for. In that time, they won 10 league titles (including nine in a row), plus eight Scottish Cups and six League Cups. “Ah, but there’s only two teams in Scotland….” I can hear a few of you saying. Let me finish… This bloke’s team did something else – they were the first British (and even the first Northern European) team to win the European Cup. “Ah, Celtic 1967” say the cognoscenti, nodding sagely “That’s different”. If piling up wins at St. Mirren and Dunfermline wasn’t a guarantee of greatness, defeating Inter Milan, twice European Champions in the previous three years, was. Inter just didn’t concede goals. Their manager, Helenio Herrera was widely reckoned to be the best in the world. Celtic, as underdogs, were expected to finish a distant second. There is one statistic attached to the team that defeated Inter in the final on May 25, 1967 in Lisbon that to my mind, dwarfs all other football team achievements. Celtic’s unfathomable, impossible, unrepeatable triumph was this: all 11 players were born near enough the Celtic ground to have walked there on match day. Repeat that to yourself and let it sink in. It’s scarcely believable. The manager who masterminded this feat was Jock Stein. Some clubs, their managers, and in the case of Real Madrid, their Presidents, fail to remember that football is a team game. Even squads costing hundreds of millions sometimes play as though they’ve hardly met each other. Think Real (2-6) against Barcelona at the beginning of this month, or both teams in the 1994 World Cup Final. On the other hand, you’ll find a good number of ‘nobodies’ among history’s champions, and most of them were teams in the truest sense. Jock Stein’s supreme talent was to mould teams from the raw material of talented Glasgow lads, and then to add scientific training methods and tactical innovations that brought the best out of them. In this, he was years ahead of other managers of his time. For a start, he played with a pair of attacking full backs 10 years before anyone had heard of wingbacks. With the top club sides today having squads drawn from a dozen or more countries, they must have a hard enough time just understanding each other. Harry Redknapp was complaining last week that Roman Pavlychenko’s interpreter gets in the way during training games! Stories of the demarcation line in the Arsenal dressing room being between the French speakers and the rest are well known. What chance has a manager of building a team spirit in such circumstances? Stein knew his squad’s shared Clydeside culture was a good starting point. His players were a balance of the rugged and the cultured, but all of them shared an unshakeable team spirit. The Celtic team was boldly announced two days before the final, with Stein, no mean psychologist, stating publicly for Herrera’s benefit that their plan was for all-out attack. When Inter’s squad came to the stadium the day before the final to watch a Celtic training game, the boss moved all of his players to unfamiliar positions and noted the confident smiles of the Italian watchers as the Celts floundered, apparently clueless. Next day, before the 5pm kick off, as the teams stood side by side in the tunnel, the Glaswegians sang Celtic supporters songs to the bemusement of their opponents. The Scots bombarded the Inter goal from the start, and despite conceding a 7th-minute penalty in a counter-attack, they continued to take the game to Inter. Undeterred by failing to breach the resolute defence of Facchetti, Burgnich and the inspired Sarti in Inter’s goal, the men in hoops poured forward incessantly. The equaliser arrived in the 65th minute via a 25-yard thunderbolt of a shot from Tommy Gemmell, one of those attacking fullbacks. Not content with this, the Celts redoubled their efforts. In the 83rd minute, Bobby Murdoch hit a precise ball across goal and Steve Chalmers ran in to steer it home. It was a move they’d practised on the Barrowfield training ground back home. Other than those involved in the goals, you’ll notice I’ve made no mention of the Celtic players. Some of them deserve a column to themselves. I’ll save them for another day. Likewise, there is much more to Jock Stein than the 1966-67 season, when his team won every competition they entered. He went on to manage Scotland, and died at Ninian Park, Cardiff after a World Cup qualifying game versus Wales in September 1985, at the age of 62. Is there any chance that any manager will ever again be able to train a team of his local lads to win
A helping hand? Given the magnitude of their team’s achievement, you can’t blame the Celtic fans for celebrating enthusiastically – too enthusiastically in the case of some. The Lisbon authorities complained that the behaviour of a few got completely out of hand, resulting in two policemen being shoved through a shop window. All responsible Celts tut-tutted politely, until it became clear that the coppers in question were still in their car when it happened. Cue hysterical laughter. My favourite tale relates to the pair of fans who arrived, unsteadily, at the airport for their flight home in the early hours of the next morning and found a fellow Celt passed out, completely insensible near the terminal building. “Dinnae worry, Jimmy, we’ll see ye hame” they said, or words to that effect, as they dragged him upright. All was chaos in the departure area, where the wild celebrations continued. The authorities abandoned any attempts to get Passenger X onto his correct Flight Y, and simply herded anyone a) wearing green, b) the worse for wear or c) singing onto the next in a long line of planes that queued up like oversized taxis outside a trendy nightclub. Our pair managed to get Mr. McComatose onto their flight, where he continued to appear dead until the plane was taxiing towards the terminal back at Glasgow Airport. Finally awakened, he was informed that he was back home. Instead of showing his gratitude, he started cursing and swearing. It was sometime before he was calm enough to explain his anger. “I drove there!”, he fumed. It’s getting late… On Saturday May 31, 1947, Liverpool beat Wolves 2-1 at Molineux in their last game of the season, and thus took over from the Midlanders at the top of Division 1. There was still one team who could catch them – Stoke, who had two points less but a better goal difference – and one game to play, against Sheffield United, at Bramall Lane. For reasons I’ve never been able to discover, that match didn’t take place until two weeks later. Stoke lost 2-1, so the title went to Merseyside. That day, Saturday, June 14, is the latest on which the Championship (of any division) has been decided. Right pals, the Supremo’s tapping his watch: time for me to be off. Next week, I’ll have the outcome of our Prem competition for you, and the identity of our Top League, plus updates on our three other competitions still to be resolved – the FA Cup, Champions League and Bundesliga. Until then, look after yourselves, and any paralytic Scotsmen you find in airports. Regards, |
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