After a weekend of footy, do you ever have a chat with a mate? Sometimes, I get a phone call from Palace fan Pudding Pete. This incident-packed and error-strewn Premier League weekend, the last for three weeks, he had so much to say – well, here’s some of it.
Let’s start with Palace and the ref’s very own public horror show in front of a full house at Slurst and countless millions watching on TV around the world.
As our chat began, Pudding Pete took pains to remind me what refs are there for. The ref is there to make sure the rules are applied correctly and fairly. And they weren’t. My mind instantly flew back to when I worked in the 50p tower by East Croydon station years ago. The admin manager in the firm I worked for was a National League ref. One Monday morning, I asked how Saturday’s game went. 3-2, said the little man who was hard to imagine bossing a serious semi-pro match. Sounds a good game, I said. Not really, he answered. “First, I gave the away team a pen that was dodgy, the fans were all on my back, so I had to even it up. So, when the home team scored from a blatant handball, I gave a goal. Just after half-time, the ball bounced off me, putting this super-quick winger through on goal and he scored. So I had to even that one up too. By the end, I was personally responsible for 4 of the 5 goals.” Such integrity!
I thought of the admin guy as I watched Liverpool’s Friend unravel on Sunday, driven by his seeming absolute determination to deliver three points to Liverpool and in the process open up the Premier League title race after City only drew at Southampton. In Pete’s view, Friend produced a performance well worth an investigation, if only anyone in charge cared.
Personally responsible for two Liverpool goals that changed the result and gave Liverpool two extra points. Friend also produced yellow cards for four Palace players when, hanging on to a 2-1 lead, Liverpool were committing all kinds of fouls but only once were carded. Of course, as Pete pointed out, putting Pawson at the controls in VAR Tower was only the day’s second most “clear and obvious error”. Still, in the months and years ahead, when they look back, it’s only results that count. Not performances. No points for moral victories or unjust defeats. And Patrick Vieira knows this only too well.
What a curious Premier League weekend this was. Ten games, just eighteen goals – not even two a game – perhaps advertising the need for bigger goals. Four games delayed – one at Watford for a conventional floodlight failure, one at Chelsea for a goal net with a hole bigger than regulation size, one at Brentford for an overhead drone (for some reason without a Manager Out banner, said Pete – opportunity missed) and one at Arsenal for a referee radio failure (how is a ref supposed to bend the result if there’s no voice in his ear telling him what to do, asked Pete).
On Saturday, Steven Gerrard took Villa to Everton, and Pete told me how glad he was at the end to see Gerrard smile, because he and his entire team had, up to then, worn a permanent scowl – Pete cited professional fouls (only one earned a yellow card), frequent lying down with non-injuries (as Villa did at Palace), kicking the ball away repeatedly, time wasting wherever possible but only once getting booked for it, two more bookings for a comprehensive clobbering from behind and for a sly kick with the ball far away. It was a miserable show, made worse only by the crowd chucking stuff at Villa players, a moronic trick repeated by Spurs fans at Chelsea on Sunday. Monkey see, monkey do, said Pete.
Meanwhile Watford have now fired Ranieri, their third manager this season, and – strange but true – Roy and Ray have popped up to replace him. I think Pudding Pete was spot-on when he asked, “Is Roy too old to remember being fired before by the Pozzo family who now own Watford. That time, at Udinese, they gave him just 17 matches.” Curiously enough, Watford now have eighteen matches left, so which record will the Pozzo family break this season – how long they keep Roy or, if they fire him sooner, how many managers has one team fired in one season?
Last week, integrity had already taken a battering as the much-abused Covid rules permitted so many postponements. Over the weekend, in the first complete Premier League fixture list for weeks, integrity seemed to evaporate once more. Not just the ref at Slurst, although – as Pete said – isn’t that enough? Move on, I said. “OK, how does Jon Moss (from Manchester) referee Manchester United’s last-kick time-added-on win over West Ham?” asked Pete, quoting #playtilltheyscore. It’s like an Englishman being given the ref’s job at last summer’s Euros Final. Wouldn’t happen, would it? And then there’s Newcastle. Pete warned me to be careful here, but he wanted me to know he phoned his fave Magpie mate over the weekend and asked, “how do you feel about your team now?” “Do you mean morally?” came the answer. When did you ever hear a football fan respond like that to a question about his or her team?
Completing our review of the weekend’s games, we can never forget our dear friends at Brighton who earned some grudging respect from Pete – he said their late equalisers happen too often to be an accident so, sadly, the Seaweed under Mr Potter must be doing something right. And Chelsea left Conte disappointed on his return to Stamford Bridge, inducing post-match comments that led Pete to dig out his lucky underpants so he could put money on Tottenham firing their fourth manager in a year and entering the market for a new manager in the next month.
It’s January, so no footy chat can ever end without touching on the transfer window, where time is fast running out.
This must worry Eddie Howe as not enough bodies are arriving at St James’s Park (while presumably bodies will be moved out too). Three first-teamers were injured at Leeds, so badly they had to be replaced. Accordingly, Newcastle’s transfer net is now trawling the globe even more widely as the club’s hunt inevitably intensifies for desperately needed replacements for the players who took them to the foot of the Premier League. A high-volume spew of names is now being crammed into media stories, coming from four sources. From the club itself (to keep its supporters happy), from clubs who want to sell (hoping to cash in on some unwanted and/or overpriced players), from clubs wanting to cash-in by selling to clubs like Burnley (newly enriched but needing to replace Chris Wood, sold to Newcastle for much too much), and from agents (seeking to pick up some winter commission from an opportunity that’s far too good to be missed).
As the clock ticks down, ticktock, ticktock, the aching pressure grows and grows. Pudding Pete is keeping a close eye on the Palace, ever hopeful that one or two high-quality young players may yet join even while he told me that he’s disappointed to see youngsters like Rich-Baghuelou and Webber leaving, yet always utterly believing that Patrick knows best.
Finally, Pudding Pete informed me about the prediction software he’s written (I don’t believe him, he can barely write a letter but he is a statistics expert). His system tells him where Premier League teams will be in the table come the end of the season, and the news for Palace fans is not good.
He must be wrong, but I’d be wrong too if I didn’t let you know that his system was 90% accurate in its first year (last season). It’s all very close in the bottom third of the Premier League, and the 14th to 16th spots in his 2021/22 predictive table go to Everton, Watford and then Leeds. Just below them, on equal points are Palace, Burnley and Newcastle, with Norwich rock bottom.
Golly gosh, let’s all hope somewhere in his software he’s made an error, even if it’s not clear and obvious to Pudding Pete!
