Yeah yeah, it's been like 10 months since I've written anything longer than 140 characters. DON'T CARE. I'm coming out of my cocoon because I'm dying to fisk the latest SI piece by Jonathan Wilson in which he argues for the value of "pragmatism" in football:

Describe a team as, say, "reactive" and it's taken as a slight rather than an observation. Yet so long as a team is not cheating or intimidating, it is entitled to play as it wants, and the variety of possible styles should be celebrated.

To make this point, Wilson spends the first half of the article summarizing the innovation of Herbert Chapman, who flummoxed the 2-3-5 orthodoxy by creating the W-M formation. Wilson concludes:

Traditionalists hated it, but Chapman was highly successful, winning two league titles and an FA Cup before his death in 1934; Arsenal went on to win the league that season and the next. "Breaking down old traditions," a piece on his death in the Daily Mail explained, "he was the first manager who set out methodically to organize the winning of matches."

So far, so good: Chapman was an innovator and rejected the prevailing football dogmatism because he set out to win games methodically. I'm buying it. But then Wilson busts out the rhetorical questions:

Which, with the benefit of three-quarters of a century of hindsight, sounds a perfectly reasonable thing to do. Yet isn't that precisely what Tony Pulis, Sam Allardyce, Alex McLeish and the various other maligned exponents of direct football do? Don't they look at the resources they have, and work out how best to deploy them, not in terms of how pretty the soccer they will play will be, but in terms of the results they will achieve?

Like all faux footy intellectuals, I'm a fan of Wilson and his work. Sure, sometimes I had to read a page of Inverting the Pyramid 3 times to actually visualize the tactics, but it was intellectually rigorous, dammit! And that's precisely what's missing from this piece. Because not only does the Sourpuss Gang (Pulis/Allardyce/McLeish) not represent the innovative values of Herbert Chapman, I'd argue there's little evidence they're pragmatic. In Wilson's paragraph about Chapman, he leads with "traditionalists hated it." But is that true of the Sourpuss Gang? Unlike Mr. Wilson, I'll answer my own question: NEIN. Direct football is the equivalent of the 2-3-5 Chapman rebelled against. The football establishment adores direct football, and so does the media. This is why Roy Hodgson is revered by the Patrick Barclays of the world, and why the joke about "doing it on a wet Wednesday night at Stoke" isn't actually a joke to most of the people who utter it. Direct football is the establishment. Has been for decades. There is nothing innovative about it. The counter-argument: "Chapman wasn't used in the piece because he was innovative, he was used because he set about to methodically win games. And that's what the Sourpuss Gang does." My first counter-counter is to call the bluff. Sure, Wilson tries to use Chapman because of his pragmatism, but it isn't what actually draws people like Wilson to write about him, and it definitely isn't what draws people to read about him. It's the innovation that we're all attracted to, the idea that he bucked the system in a country that, um, isn't always enthusiastic about people bucking the system. That's what's valuable about Chapman, and we'll come back to this to prove it. Since direct football is the preferred style of the establishment, can we be sure that it's being employed by people like Pulis pragmatically, a.k.a. because it's the best use of resources to win games? I'd hardly say that's self-evident. It's equally likely they're employing the style because it's applauded by pundits and powerful FA figures, or that they were brought up in similar systems (virtually a certainty), or don't know how they'd employ anything else, or simply because they believe that's how real men ought to play. We could tell that Herbert Chapman was doing something pragmatic *because* it was innovative. He wanted to win games (presumably that's the pragmatic goal), and was so committed to this that he was willing to disregard standard tactics. That willingness was the proof of his paramount desire for pragmatic results. But you can't look at the Sourpuss Gang's use of direct football and draw any similar parallels. They're merely playing the English game the standard English way, and nothing about that says anything about pragmatism. Another counter-argument: "But look at the results! Pulis and Allardyce and McLeish stay up year after year, and that has to be because the system works for them, and is thus pragmatic!" And yet, straw man, you're wrong again. Correlation is not causation. If the Sourpuss Gang was pragmatic, surely they'd show signs of flexibility or adapting to different circumstances throughout their career. If you can't adapt, then you're merely dogmatic -- sorta like those 2-3-5 evangelists of old. Yet where was Allardyce's flexibility at Newcastle? His methods/approach were a disaster there, and all he could do was move on somewhere else and try to apply them successfully again. And if I can lump Roy Hodgson into the Sourpuss Gang (oh please let me lump Roy into the Gang!), we have an even better example of "direct football" being at least as much about dogmatism as it is about pragmatism. His constant cracks about how he'd done the same thing for 35 years and it always worked (ahem) was direct evidence of a hoofball acolyte/Paddy Barclay favorite using the system because that was "his" system and not because it was the best way to win. At Liverpool, it was the opposite. Blackpool pays players much less than the biggest names at Stoke, Blackburn, and Birmingham earn, yet they've managed to generate nearly as many shock results as those 3 combined. They might be falling down the table, but even if they wind up getting relegated, their results have already outpaced their resources and all of our expectations for the season. Does that make Ian Holloway a pragmatist? After all, he's getting even more out of even less than the Sourpuss Gang is doing, and he's doing it by flaunting tradition. Instead of playing for 0-0 every week with 10 men behind the ball like a poor team is supposed to do in England, he's going for it every night. And results have followed! If being results-oriented is Wilson's definition of pragmatic, then I'd say innovation and rebellion are inherently more pragmatic than following the establishment. People like Alex Ferguson know how to beat establishment football -- he's done it a thousand times. But he has far less experience with a team that plays like Blackpool, which is partly why a team made of up players on £10k/week almost beat his squad multi-millionaires. Going against the grain is the surest way to get surprise results against stodgy opponents used to the same game night in and night out, and that's exactly why Chapman did it. The Sourpuss Gang is playing right into the hands of their opponents, which I'd argue is anything but pragmatic. Towards the end, Wilson drops this bomb:

One of soccer's greatest fallacies is that it is an entertainment.

He defends this claim by arguing that football was originally created for men to test themselves against each other. Fine, but that has nothing to do with what soccer has become. And it's laughable to claim as fact that football isn't entertainment in the modern day. And Wilson knows this deep down, which is why he then immediately falls back on defending direct football on the grounds of entertainment:

Barcelona plays beautiful soccer -- that is hard to deny -- but if all teams played like that, soccer rapidly becomes predictable. Watching, say, Stoke at its best, pounding an opponent with crosses and long balls can generate a similar visceral charge.

I don't know about you, but Stoke has never given me much of a "visceral charge." Regardless, Wilson is defending the game as entertainment -- which is why the real thrust of the whole piece is the bit about how if everyone simply played like Barcelona, "soccer rapidly becomes predictable." And that blew my stack most of all. What about watching Barcelona is predictable? Is it Xavi's brilliance? Messi's brilliance? Villa's brilliance? Don't they do something different and amazing nearly every single game? Suppose Arsenal and Barcelona played 1000 times in a row. How many of those matches would be boring? How many of them would be predictable? I'd venture that there would be a wide variety of differently brilliant moments in each game, and that they'd constantly adapt to try and get an edge in attack over the course of those 1000 games. Attacking football doesn't have to be predictable at all. Is the left back of your opponent a weak spot to exploit? How many strikers should you employ against Team A vs Team B? How much width will you try to create? Do you want to run everything through an advanced midfielder, or wingers, someone else? When a system's objective is to score as much as possible and create as much space as possible, I'd argue that it's going to be inherently less predictable and stale than a system like direct football. Direct football dares you to test your mettle against your foe, which can (and often does) devolve into a predictable slugfest. But attacking teams want to score, and thus will be more inclined to seek weakness and exploit it. They are encouraged to design a gameplan specifically for each foe. That approach will keep the game much more fresh than direct football. I don't know if there's a moral argument for attacking football over direct football. But if you value creativity, unpredictability, and evolution of the game, there's little room for defense of the dogmatic ways of the Sourpuss Gang. Innovation is often a critical component of being truly pragmatic, just as it was for Herbert Chapman. And Paddy Barclay Football is hardly innovative. As Ian Holloway has proven, it's not even necessarily the best use of resources -- that's just the standard, accepted opinion of the establishment. Even if the whole football world was full of wanna-be Blackpools, Arsenals, and Barcelonas, I fail to see any proof that it'd be a boring one. And until we get a little closer to some style balance, especially in England, brilliant writers like Wilson should be pushing for such a world instead of crawling into bed with grumpy old men.

In late May, UEFA's exec committee passed a few new rules. You've probably heard about them:

Uefa has approved plans to force clubs in European competition to spend only what they earn. The financial fair play rules will require clubs to break even over a rolling three-year period if they want to play in the Champions League or Europa League.

This will take effect in 2012, though clubs will be given leeway over a six-year grace period. UEFA boss Michael Platini justifies the new rules thusly:

"This approval is the start of an important journey for European football's club finances as we begin to put stability and economic common sense back into football. I thank all the stakeholders who have supported this along the way."

I'm all for fair play, and everyone reading this blog would probably like to see more of it in European football. The 'haves' at the top of the EPL and La Liga, along with giants like Juventus and Bayern Munich, have a stranglehold on the vast majority of the cash in the game. A look at the revenue numbers tracked by Deloitte reveals 10 teams pulling in at least 196m euros per season, with Real Madrid, Barcelona, and Manchester United dwarfing everyone else by pulling in over 300m each. Teams raking in that kind of dough should have to work hard to wind up in the red... which is apparently just what they're doing. There's the insane debt at Man U from the Glazers' leveraged buyout, the monster loan taken out by Real to go on their Galacticos spending spree last year, and Barca's recent loan taken out to pay staff and players -- and that's just off the top of my head. With teams like these unable to spend within their earnings, it's easy to see why Platini's new rules would appear helpful. But spending within your means is only half of an equation, and on its own can make matters of fairness worse. Teams also need to share revenue to avoid entrenching the elite clubs and blocking anyone else from joining their ranks. Let's take a look at why UEFA's financial fair play rules, as they stand, have a chance of making the problems in the game worse, not better (unless you're running one of the top 10 clubs, of course).

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Will he or won't he? The question's plagued Arsenal fans for the last two years. Sometimes, he seems a lock to stay in London. Others, a lock to return to Barcelona. If you find this all a bit taxing, imagine how Cesc Fabregas feels. After winning the World Cup alongside Barcelona stars Iniesta, Xavi, Puyol, Pique, Valdez, and Pedro, the Cesc Fabregas Dilemma has to be reaching a fever pitch. Clearly, Barcelona players want him to come home, and new Barca president Sandro Rosell said last week, "The whole world knows he wants to come and that we want to sign him." "Will he or won't he?" is fun to discuss, but the more challenging (and less exasperating) question is "should he or shouldn't he?" Based on the information we have, what is the right personal choice for Cesc Fabregras? Fabregas was born a Catalonian. He "attended" his first Barca game at 9 months old. He worshiped Pep Guardiola and moved into a dormitory with the Barca youth squad at age 14, where he played alongside Leo Messi and developed a powerful connection with him on the pitch. Sounds like a lifelong dream of his to be part of Barcelona, right? Not so fast. Fabregas said of this time:

It was great to play for Barcelona, but when we played it was 30-0. What’s the point? I need to have competition. From when I was in the under-13s we started winning by 15 goals and I was thinking about leaving. If the coaches can see you’re better than the opposition, why don’t they let you play against a higher age group?

Some people tell the story of Fabregas as though he was reluctantly plucked from Barcelona, or somehow abandoned by them and salvaged by Arsenal. But the truth is that, despite captaining their U-16s, he was looking to leave. According to Cesc, he almost went to rival Espanyol, a curious choice for someone who supposedly bleeds their stripey colors, but he was talked into staying... until Arsenal called:

I stayed [after considering Espanyol] but then Arsenal came and I knew it was the chance of a lifetime. The first time I came to London I saw the facilities. I talked to the boss, they treated me as if I was an adult, a big player. I had the feeling something special could happen for me here.

Arsenal delivered Cesc 1st team football as a 16 year old (albeit in Cup matches) in 03-04, a chance to play in the Champs final the following season, and the #4 shirt and a starting place in every league game in 05-06. Now, he's the squad captain and talisman for the team. He's Arsenal's version of Barcelona's Xavi Hernandez (the only player on earth who could/does displace Cesc as a starting playmaker). This mini bio tells us a few things: 1) The loyalty factor is overrated. It was Cesc who chose to leave Barcelona, and he was so bored of dominating with their youth squad that he almost left for a hated rival. If he chooses to return there, it'll probably have much less to do with childhood loyalty than the media will make it seem. That's a good thing, by the way -- making major life decisions based on over-romanticizing your childhood can often lead to disappointment. 2) Fabregas values a challenge and a starring role as much as winning trophies. What offensive-minded player complains about winning 15-0? This one, apparently. He was bored with the lack of competition against Barca youth and also wanted first-team football badly. Today, some of the details have changed, but the choice between Arsenal and Barcelona still features many of the same dimensions. In 08-09, Barca pulled off the treble, and last year they won La Liga with a record-high points total. Winning will come (relatively) easily with one of the best club sides in a generation. But to go there means sitting behind Xavi and Iniesta in the biggest matches, unless he somehow displaces Pedro (a rising star in his own right) elsewhere on the pitch. At the very least, he will be placed in a more regular rotation with other starters and won't run with the starting XI for every game right away. Arsenal offers him *his* team, a squad built around his talents which he captains. Obviously, Arsenal's no Espanyol, either -- they're a top 10 team in terms of income and world fan base, and they're probably the most financially stable elite club on the planet. Sure, they won't be favorites in the Champions League like Barcelona, but they'll be in the title mix in the EPL every year, especially with Manchester United and Chelsea aging. They've suffered 5 trophy-less seasons, including a Champs loss to Barca last year (and the Champs final loss to them in '05), so if Arsenal brings home silverware this year or next, it'll be a huge accomplishment. And the odds are extremely high that it'd have everything to do with Cesc Fabregas. Based on what motivated him as a teenager, the choice is clear -- he should stay at Arsenal. He captains a top-10 club that presents a greater trophy challenge than Barcelona, where he'd be more likely to win but less likely to be the main reason. However, it's possible his priorities have changed. Maybe winning is now the most important thing to Cesc Fabregas. He's tasted international glory with Spain in 2008 and 2010 as a part-time player and still managed to make his mark. He found Iniesta for the World Cup winning goal -- surely he could have the same sort of impact at Barcelona immediately with the promise of a greater role in coming seasons. But f*** that. I say this as a Liverpool fan: choosing Barca over Arsenal is a LeBron-James-level copout. Cesc can pal around with his friends in Spain when he retires, which will arrive more quickly than he thinks. Very few people are handed the responsibility of shaping a good team into a championship team, and even fewer are capable of it. Fabregas has shown he might be one of those people, and the next 5 years of his life will define his entire legacy. He shouldn't spend them abdicating leadership so he can be just one of many names people remember as part of this great Barcelona team. And given that he's already missed out on 2 historic seasons, who's to say he'll ever rise into the top handful of players we associate with Barca's era of dominance? Whatever Arsenal accomplishes will be due much more to Fabregas than anything Barcelona achieves. And when you have no idea how high your ceiling is, you ought to push yourself as hard as you can to see if you can find it. Maybe Cesc will learn that he's not one of the best players in the world or one of the best leaders in the world. Or maybe he'll win the Premier League as a 24 or 25 year old captain and feel a sense of personal accomplishment unlike anything Barca can offer. Fabregas won't win nearly as much if he stays at Arsenal. In fact, he might not win anything. But my life experience tells me that people feel better when give everything they've got in the highest-pressure situations they can handle. Even if they come up short, they feel a satisfaction of pushing themselves to the limit that merely being good in a great situation never delivers. I think Fabregas understands this at some level, and that's why he chose to leave Barcelona's youth team in the first place. He wanted to see what he was really made of, and there's no reason to change course now. Forget fans -- players owe them full effort on the pitch (and arguably not being a total embarrassment off it), but after 7 years of service from a player like Fabregas, he shouldn't have to subjugate his personal goals to fans who will stab you in the back the minute you struggle (see: Torres, Fernando). Forget loyalty, childhood or otherwise -- neither Cesc nor Barcelona owe each other anything. Ditto Arsenal, by the way; he's done his job very well for a long time and has earned the right to make his own decisions. Forget friends -- he'll have the rest of his life to run around with them (not to mention the national team matches). This all comes down to legacy, the chance at true greatness. Fabregas can only learn who he truly is and how much he can actually accomplish in an Arsenal shirt, and that's worth more than a shelf of trophies that you know your team could've won without you. There are two reasons I'd legitimately accept for Fabregas leaving: 1) the loyalty factor, which we've already shown is not his thing, and 2) the physicality of the Premier League. Fabregas has struggled to stay healthy lately, and if he feels like the EPL delivers unreasonable physical abuse, I can understand why he'd leave. The typical English/American fan might see that as a masculine failure, but going somewhere you won't be stomped on for 90 minutes every week and see that called a defensive "strategy" would be appealing to any of us in his place. So if he plays that card after a move, I can accept it. Other than that, though, Cesc Fabregas ought to remain with his club. Unless he wants to be the new LeBron.

Will the Red Devils' ho-hum midfield be the undoing of United?

Ferguson's reluctance to acquire a player of the type of Luka Modric, Joe Cole, Deco or Stephen Ireland – not to mention any of the clusters on show at Barcelona or Arsenal – is particularly odd since the man he most regrets failing to acquire during his time at Old Trafford is Paul Gascoigne.

EPLTalk offers fantasy advice:

West Ham have spent big on a new striker from Italy, Alessandro Diamanti. They’re desperately short of fit strikers, so he should get some action up front and might be a surprise signing if you want to take the risk.

Nate @ Oh You Beauty performs that rarest of feats in footy commentary -- meaningful statistical analysis!

So, through four games, Liverpool's conceded seven goals. All seven have come from set plays (if we count Ashley Young's penalty). Zonal marking has been a scapegoat since Benitez came to the club, so it's worth a look at the proportion of goals Liverpool's conceded that have come from set plays over his five seasons.

Hooligan Talk discusses the impact around Europe of the Dutch evictions from Real Madrid:

Indeed, only days after the move, The Adventures of Bayern and Robben have begun. In this season’s first episode, the Dutchman was brilliant. As Bayern Munich took on Wolfsburg, Robben entered the game as a second-half substitute and in only a half-hour’s time, netted two goals, both of which were assisted by Ribery.

Speaking of Madrid, The Offside has a great write-up on the debut of Galapagos 2.0:

Alonso had less of an impact on the game then Lass did, which to me is not acceptable considering his talents. Few cross field passes and accurate long ball switches today, but it was the first game, and his laid back, almost anonymous approach to the game is sometimes hard to keep your eye on.