The Importance of Sport (NEW CONCEPTS)

[Mick Harper]

You have as usual hit the nail with your head. Modern football at the top level is down to whether you need to have one or two defensive midfielders. Or maybe if you can afford the very costly players that can do both. However I am not sure it's down to the fallibility of defenders. More likely it is the ability of the whole team knowing instinctively how and where to deploy at all stages of open play.

It may be an example of my old bete noire about English footballers not having basic intelligence because (a) they get creamed off by middle class rugby and (b) English crowds demand blood and thunder. However, I am satisfied these two factors are no longer of any great significance so I find I have disappeared up my own Arsenal, Arsenal, Arseno-o-ol. Bournemouth and top o' the world, ma.

[Mick Harper]

It's not often the passing of a groundsman gets mentioned here but Steve Braddock was, as I have mentioned more than once, the father of modern football when he produced 'the Highbury pitch' which allowed ticky-tacky football every week instead of just on the first day of the season.

[Mick Harper]

Panegyric of the Week

[Mick Harper]

I know it's going to be boring watching us running away with the Premiership but have some sympathy. Being arrogant for a whole season can get pretty boring too.

[Wile E. Coyote]

The Commentators Curse

[Mick Harper]

So if there is anything to this curse, everything you've just commented on will turn out to be bollocks. But if that's the case then...

[Mick Harper]

One Shot Football Factory (Sky Documentaries)
South of the River (BT Sport)
The Academy (Channel 4)

You wait a billion years for mudskippers to evolve into south London footballers and three documentaries come along at once. But now, since one of them claimed that a sixth of premiership footballers come from sarf-east London, they deserve all the coverage they get. I would probably have been one myself except, after my trial for Lewisham primary schools, jealous rivals within my own family scuppered my chances by sending me to a rugby-playing grammar school. But enough about me, why South London? Here's a clue:

[Mick Harper]

Manchester United 2 Liverpool 1

An exciting relegation six-pointer between yesterday's northern power houses. Any team that has James Milner in the starting eleven for a must-winner is not going to be battling for honours. Any team that is 2-1 up with ten minutes to go and brings on Cristiano Ronaldo will not be battling for honours.

Chief moments of tactical interest:
1. The old gambit of playing a corner direct to a player standing centrally ten yards outside the box is both inefficient and dangerous. It only worked once, the first time it was ever used, but quite often results in the defending side galloping away up the park against minimal opposition. Unless you've got Alexander-Arnold. He didn't kick it toward Salah, he placed it on the end of Salah's boot. Who blazed it over but that's another story. He's looking less and less like the highest paid player in the world (o.n.o.) with every game.

2. United's second goal was clearly offside but the bung was in. The United player could have released Rashford when they were both in their own half instead of waiting an eternity for the Boy Wonder to run offside. There was no need for him to do so even then but his mind must have been on Michelin-star food handouts. Or listening to Roy Keane praising him at half-time. That must be unnerving.

[Mick Harper]

Both are unsuited to proper football. So just as Copacabana produced a generation of keepy-uppey ball skill maestros, so the cages of Peckham Rye, Brockley and all stops to Croydon West have produced a generation of footballers adept at wriggling out of tight spaces next to the fence while vicious hoodlums are trying to kick the living shits out of them. Exactimo! Just like today's Premier League. And why England produce wing backs the like of which the world has never seen.

Although the era might already be over. Wan-Bissaka, whose transfer to Man Utd paid for the Palace Academy's multi-million refurbishment, has been dropped to the reserves. We must look to the women from now on. When it comes to being kicked up the arse because you won't turn the light out, there is no finer gender.

[Mick Harper]

M J Harper's Annual Eurogroup of Death Analysis

[Wile E. Coyote]

The person who will be worst nightmare for any premiership defender will be Isak. The Newcastle signing is a centre forward from Real Sociedad, and he combines Carlton Palmer (for most of the game) with the the odd splash of Thierry Henry. Good luck ever trying to predict what he will do next. Alan Shearer he isn't. At 60 million he is massively overpriced.

[Mick Harper]

Simon Harmer had an interesting experience when he turned up at Old Trafford on the morning of the second test. He'd brought all his clobber and he had a note from his mum so he had to be given a game, but for who? He was qualified for both teams.

The captains did a quick ee-pah-voo, England won, so he's playing for South Africa.

[Mick Harper]

I was checking whether I'd spelled ee-pah-voo properly and discovered that apparently we were the only school in the world that didn't say Rock, Paper, Scissors or some similar plummy mouthful that would get your head stoved in at my school. And I was at one of the posher Catford primaries. Can anyone dredge up memories about this? I hate feeling alone.

[Mick Harper]

Talk of the devil, we've drawn both PSV and Sociedad

[Mick Harper]

In any case, who's heard of 'rock'. It's stone, paper and scissors, everyone knows that. Plus -- at our school anyway -- there was dynamite. This was mainly frowned on but if you came out with one finger and shouted "Dynamite" then (a) you blew up stone but (b) had your fuse cut by scissors or if (c) up against paper, did it again but now dynamite was tacitly agreed to be in play. The drawback of dynamite was that if your opponent had (a) he said, "We're not playing dynamite." But if (b) didn't.

Of course the truly weird thing is everyone always came out with stone first and anyone who took advantage of this by choosing paper was considered a girl. Only the fat kid started with scissors.

PS It was hic haec hoc at my mum's school which considering its demographic was pretty remarkable.