Loony Toons: Keegan issues a “Wise or me” ultimatum while Curbishley’s departure is dissected

Comment & analysis round up

Quote of the day: “There’s no way I’ll replace [Curbishley]. West Ham is a fantastic club with fantastic fans… But I love it at Portsmouth and I have one big advantage over a lot of Premier League bosses these days. I’ve got an owner who lets the manager manage. There are so many billionaires owning clubs now. They buy and sell who they want, managers don’t come into it. These days owners sign whoever they think is a sexy name and they sell whoever they want. The days of managing as I know it are coming to an end.” - Harry Redknapp.

Runner up: “When there are 95 registered Brazilian players in the Champions League, 94 French players and 45 Englishmen, then it is difficult. If you lose with the national team, that is the soul of the game… When I was with Juventus and we played against Arsenal you had 10 or 11 English players. OK, Europe is open now, but you need to take care. If you are Manchester United you need to have some players from Manchester. Football is beautiful and popularity brings money, but then people want to make more money, not because it is a game but because it is a product. I need to protect the game and say to people this is not a good way. My philosophy is to protect the identity of the clubs and the country. I like Arsène Wenger, I like Sir Alex Ferguson, I like their players and they do what is best for the clubs, but it is not my philosophy.” - Michel Platini.

Today’s overview: Having beaten Kevin Keegan to the exit door, Alan Curbishley’s departure from West Ham has been propelled into the lead story this Thursday.

There is a divergence of opinion as to the shock value of Curbishley’s departure. According to Dominic Fifield, Curb’s decision to quit was a shock as the board were “given warning that the wage bill for the playing staff… needed reducing.” But for Gary Jacob, “the only real surprise in the West Ham United saga is that Alan Curbishley did not leave at the end of last season.”

David Hytner argued that the breakdown at West Ham is evidence of a larger problem in the Premier League where managers no longer have the final say. Yet Paul Doyle delves into the specifics, arguing that £13m for Ferdinand and McCartney was too good to turn down. Jason Burt summed up the different viewpoints of the main protagonists at West Ham, saying “while Curbishley prayed for the return of Craig Bellamy from injury, the board pondered why Julien Faubert looked so lost.”

Looking to the future at West Ham, Oliver Kay calls out Slaven Bilic as the front-runner to replace Curbishley, with Harry Redknapp and Paolo di Canio as possible alternatives. Kay does admit however that “Bilic is a proud nationalist and could perceive abandoning Croatia at this pivotal juncture as a form of betrayal.” Jason Burt also gets involved in the speculation, suggesting Gerard Houllier, Didier Deschamps and Frank Rijkaard as potential managerial targets.

Kevin McCarra links the situations at West Ham and Newcastle by saying “in each case, a de facto sporting director was employed who gave the impression of acting without reference to the manager.” Louise Taylor shows how this situation is apparent at the Toon, with news filtering through that “Keegan had sent Ashley a letter… demanding control of all first-team affairs and contracts and the removal of Wise and Tony Jimenez.” Should Keegan walk, Colin Young predicts a fans’ boycott and player revolt at Newcastle.

In one of the two standout articles today, James Lawton argues that the realities of today’s Premier League has stripped managers of their main focus - to manage. “Why have a manager of the quality of Mark Hughes, if he is denied the classic role of all his great predecessors in the game, the one of shaping a team, making the jigsaw in his own image of what will succeed.”

The second must-read article comes from Henry Winter, who fears after years of work into Manchester City’s youth development system, acquisitions such as Robinho will stunt the progression of these English youngsters.

Other articles on Manchester City include Tim Rich’s doubts over the disruptive character of Robinho, Oliver Holt’s belief that it will take a season before Man City can mix it with the big boys, and Marina Hyde’s call for Manchester City to be turned into a TV Series.

In the best of the rest, Neil Ashton claims the pressure is mounting on Damien Comolli at Spurs, Martin Samuel speaks to Slaven Bilic about the lack of English talent, Sachin Nakrani whips out his abacus to prove how Fabio Capello is making inroads with England, Giles Smith relives the final day of the transfer window as broadcast on TV, Rob Smyth puts the case forward for why Barry Davies is a better commentator than John Motson, Richard Whitehead delivers a list of “The soul of Aston Villa in 50 moments,” and Raphael Honigstein lifts the lid on the betting scandal engulfing the Bundesliga.

Finally, Giles Mole quotes extracts from Jamie Carragher’s new autobiography: “I was never sure if Eriksson was an international manager or international playboy. I know what he was best at.”

In the Guardian, Dominic Fifield reports that the West Ham board gave Curbishley notice that financial cutbacks were in the offing. “The West Ham board were startled by Curbishley’s decision to quit, because they had given warning that the wage bill for the playing staff, which has increased by £25m over the past year, needed reducing. The board felt the summer sales of Bobby Zamora and John Paintsil to Fulham for £6.3m were good business, and insisted there was sound reasoning behind the departures of Anton Ferdinand and George McCartney to Sunderland - no agreement could be reached with Ferdinand over a new contract and McCartney wished to return to the north-east and had made a formal transfer request. Nevertheless, the sale of McCartney convinced Curbishley he was being undermined, the manager saying he had been assured last week that no more departures would be required.”

For The Times’ Gary Jacob, the only surprise in Curbishley’s resignation was that it didn’t happen at the end of last season. “The only real surprise in the West Ham United saga is that Alan Curbishley did not leave at the end of last season. His tactics, too negative for many fans, did not endear him to the majority of the Upton Park faithful and his position became increasingly insecure as his relationship with certain players and the board grew more fractious during the summer… it was becoming evident that the players had lost faith in playing for him. Their dismal 3-0 defeat by Manchester City 12 days ago was followed by a shabby performance in which they came from behind to defeat Macclesfield Town after extra time in the Carling Cup second round in front of only 10,055 supporters, some of whom chanted: ‘You’ll be sacked in the morning.’”

David Hytner (Guardian) believes that the breakdown at West Ham is evidence of a larger problem in the Premier League where managers no longer have the final say. “Curbishley believes that the arrivistes in boardrooms up and down the country, largely from overseas, as is the case at West Ham, with their Icelandic owner and chairman, Bjorgolfur Gudmundsson, will be the ruin of English football. He feels that among their ills, which include impatience and unrealistic expectations, is a lack of empathy for the role of manager. In time, he believes, the traditional British manager such as his great friend Sir Alex Ferguson at Manchester United, who has the final say on all football issues, will be no more. Curbishley, with 17 years of managerial service behind him, and Keegan are cut from a similar cloth. Curbishley could not bear to become little more than a glorified coach and yesterday he reached his breaking point.”

For Paul Doyle (Guardian) however, there is a rationale behind the West Ham board’s decision to cut costs. “West Ham’s cost-cutting could be just a temporary necessity caused by the extravagance of the previous regime. Anton Ferdinand and George McCartney are competent enough players, but any club hoping to trim its wage bill would find it hard to resist an offer of around £13m for the pair. Indeed, some would say that by paying so much, and the concomitant salaries, Sunderland have just concluded the sort of deal that landed West Ham in their current predicament in the first place.”

Jason Burt (Independent) looks closely at the individual issues which led to the departure of Curbishley from West Ham. “The timing [of George McCartney's sale], amid claims that West Ham were conducting a fire sale and with the transfer window closing, was terrible. They tried to get Chelsea’s Paulo Ferreira but the Portuguese refused to move. Eventually they signed Herita Ilunga from Toulouse – hardly the kind of player Curbishley will have heard of. The misunderstanding, disagreement or, as Curbishley put it, ‘point of principle’ was at the heart of his problems at West Ham. While technical director Gianluca Nani was scouring Europe for imaginative recruits such as Lazio’s Valon Behrami, Curbishley wanted to sign 32-year-old Ben Thatcher. While Curbishley felt he needed strength and depth, the board was looking to cut the wage bill. While Curbishley prayed for the return of Craig Bellamy from injury, the board pondered why Julien Faubert looked so lost.”

As always, speculation is building momentum as to who will take over at West Ham, with the Telegraph’s Oliver Kay claiming Slaven Bilic as the front-runner. “Club insiders confirmed last night that Bilic, the Croatia manager and former West Ham defender, was among the names being considered as the search began for Curbishley’s successor, though Portsmouth manager Harry Redknapp and Paolo di Canio were both linked to possible returns to their old club.”

In a secondary article, Oliver Kay explains why Bilic is the most fancied of the candidates. “Bilic, on the surface, satisfies all the criteria: the youngest manager Croatia has ever had, at 39, and the youngest manager to lead his side to the knockout stages of a major tournament, at Euro 2008. He has the crucial advantage of having played for West Ham before moving into management and would assuredly be the fans’ No 1 choice… Bilic is a proud nationalist and could perceive abandoning Croatia at this pivotal juncture as a form of betrayal. Money could be a sweetener in such a conundrum – Bilic could swell his salary from £100,000 to £1.5 million a year should he be enticed to Upton Park – but this needs balancing against the fact that he already has an enviable squad with which to work. Eduardo and Luka Modric measure up well against Dean Ashton and Craig Bellamy.”

The Independent’s Jason Burt also speculates over who will fill the Hammer’s hot seat. “The club’s board met yesterday afternoon, soon after accepting Curbishley’s resignation, to draw up a shortlist. They have been contacted by the representatives of the former Liverpool manager Gérard Houllier and former Juventus coach Didier Deschamps and while they have ruled out moves for Harry Redknapp, Avram Grant or Sven-Goran Eriksson, an approach to former Barcelona coach Frank Rijkaard cannot be discounted.”

Kevin McCarra (Guardian) argues that both Newcastle and West Ham’s management created financial environments which made working untenable for the managers. “Newcastle and West Ham failed dismally to come up with an approach to which all parties at each club could subscribe. In each case, a de facto sporting director was employed who gave the impression of acting without reference to the manager. At West Ham, Gianluca Nani, fairly or not, came to be considered as some kind of adversary for Curbishley. Meanwhile, in the north-east, Kevin Keegan seemed excluded from policy-making… Keegan hardly knew Wise. As with Nani and Curbishley, scant attention was paid to fostering a partnership. Instead there was the potential for division. Clubs will be in peril unless far more care is taken to ensure agreement and solidarity behind the scenes.”

Moving onto Newcastle, Louise Taylor (Guardian) reports on how Kevin Keegan has demanded that transfer issues rest with him, or he walks. “Reports last night went as far as to say Keegan had sent Ashley a letter through his legal advisers demanding control of all first-team affairs and contracts and the removal of Wise and Tony Jimenez, the vice president (player recruitment)… if Ashley continues to refuse to sack Keegan while preserving Wise’s position and powers, the manager could launch a legal claim for constructive dismissal. With spiky Newcastle fans waving banners demanding that Keegan stays and calling for the departures of both Wise and the club’s owner, the suddenly deeply unpopular, and reportedly shocked, Ashley has some major decisions to make.”

The Daily Mail’s Colin Young speculates about the fallout should Keegan’s walk. “Ashley is hoping to avoid a supporter backlash at Newcastle’s next home game against Hull a week on Saturday, and Real Zaragoza coach Marcelino Garcia Toral has emerged as a surprise contender to take over. But there is more trouble ahead with Ashley facing a player revolt. The entire squad are furious with the decision to put them all up for sale on Monday, transfer deadline day, and the board’s handling of the Keegan crisis. There is unequivocal support for the manager within the dressing-room and anger, particularly among senior players, that they have not been contacted or consulted.”

In a standout article, James Lawton (Independent) argues that the realities of today’s Premier League has stripped managers of their mani worth - to manage. “The core of the problem in football terms came when the new billionaire figurehead boss of City, Dr Sulaiman al-Fahim, stood before the cameras and trailed his shopping list : Robinho in, Dimitar Berbatov missed, and Cristiano Ronaldo possibly the £100m-plus target in January. Some problem, the average City punter might be forgiven for exhaling, but why have a manager of the quality of Mark Hughes, if he is denied the classic role of all his great predecessors in the game, the one of shaping a team, making the jigsaw in his own image of what will succeed… fans of City, like those of Chelsea before them, had something new to celebrate, but something about as organic and meritorious as a winning lottery ticket. There was a time, we will soon have to remind ourselves, when a football supporter had some reason to believe he was part of something. He had an interest in flesh-and-blood, trial and error, win and loss. Now he cheers for a product, one that failing some financial cataclysm, or maybe a new trend in investment, will always belong to someone else.”

The second highlight in today’s news comes from the Telegraph’s Henry Winter, who fears for the precedent set by Manchester City’s capture of Robinho on England’s youth. “If England as a sporting institution are worth continuing with, the Three Lions must become a protected species. Not only must technically adept youngsters be nurtured, as City have been doing, but they must also be granted first-team chances. Forming an elegant but insurmountable barrier between the academy and the first-team base are virtuosos such as Robinho and possibly Ronaldinho and Ronaldo – and those are just the Rs on the Arabs’ shopping list. City’s teenage dream factory is worth fighting for. They are the FA Youth Cup holders, seeing off Chelsea in an entertaining two-legged final.”

Staying in Eastlands, Tim Rich (Telegraph) raises doubts over the disruptive character of Robinho. “Robinho is a player who requires careful handling. Few people, let alone a 20-year-old footballer from one of Santos’ many dirt poor suburbs, have had to endure the kidnapping of their mother, as he did in 2004. That, rather than the lucrative transfers to first Madrid and then Manchester, was perhaps the key event in his life. Robinho is, however, not a team player. At Madrid he demanded near financial parity with Raul and Guti, irritating his then manager, Fabio Capello, by demanding to start games – a policy he also employed with the Brazil national team. Carlos Alberto Parreira did not appreciate being told that Robinho should be leading the Brazilian attack with Adriano.”

Oliver Holt (Mirror) believes it will take a season before Man City can mix it with thew big boys. “My suspicion is that Robinho had never heard of Eastlands until his agent told him that was where the money trail ended. But now that he’s there, others will follow. Robinho will be like a beacon lighting the way for more of the world’s elite. The word will go out that there is a Chelsea in the north and that they’re the new best way to get rich quick. And in the Greed is Good League, spreading the riches around seems like a little corner of nirvana. It may be too much to hope that City can threaten the Big Four this season but if Abu Dhabi’s Donald Trump and his backers really have got deep pockets, they will make a proper challenge next season.”

Marina Hyde (Guardian) calls for Manchester City to be turned into a TV Series. “The show - call it Manchester Dhabi - could run along standard lines, with team-mates set a variety of amusing tasks, such as finishing in the top four of the Premier League, or enticing Cristiano Ronaldo to join without being able to promise him Champions League football, or stimulating $2bn property investment in Abu Dhabi, at the same time as distracting from its human rights record. These tasks will ideally lead to the holy grail of reality: conflict. Having said that, a credible punishment system also stimulates ratings, so failure to comply could result in team-mates being sent to one UAE’s fine prisons, which may have failed to meet with the approval of those Lord Longfords in the US State Department, but are probably built in the shape of palm trees.”

The Daily Mail have two stories today from Neil Ashton claiming a rift between Damien Comolli and Juande Ramos. According to Ashton, “There are more target lists inside Damien Comolli’s office at that club’s training ground than you can shake a stick at and yet the club’s director of football could not deliver under pressure. Now Comolli really is under pressure.”

In his second article, Ashton continues to explain why Comolli is facing the boot. “Three of Comolli’s signings - Kevin-Prince Boateng, Ricardo Rocha and Adel Taarabt - have not even been given squad numbers at Spurs this season, but it is his performance on Monday which is under intense scrutiny. Levy told Comolli, along with manager Juande Ramos, that he would personally oversee the Berbatov deal to United and the club’s sporting director was expected to line up a series of recruits that Spurs could sign at a stroke. Instead he failed in a deal to bring in Sergio Garcia from Real Zaragoza - ‘nailed on’ to sign for Spurs early on Monday - and the striker instead joined Real Betis… Instead, Spurs were left scrambling for the season-long loan signing of Fraizer Campbell to increase their limited attacking options.”

Martin Samuel (The Times) speaks to Slaven Bilic, who argues that the problems with English football is a lack of English talent. Bilic: “Before I did this job I was Croatia’s under21 manager and three of my best players, including Luka Modric and Vedran Corluka, moved up to the A team with me… Not just because they were good for the under21s - they were also playing for Dynamo Zagreb, one of the biggest teams in Croatia. They played in the Uefa Cup regularly, in big matches all the time. Your players do not do this, not every week, so they do not develop. You can say they are learning from Eric Cantona or Gianfranco Zola or Marcel Desailly or Slaven Bilic, but they are learning only in training, not on the pitch. Look at your England Under21 team – they don’t play.”

Switching gears to England, the Guardian’s Sachin Nakrani whips out his abacus to prove how Fabio Capello is making inroads with England. “In each of Capello’s five matches in charge the side have maintained more possession than their opponents, even in the 1-0 defeat in France, where the visitors had 56.6% of the ball. The figure was even higher in the supposedly muddled draw against the Czech Republic - 56.8%. England also passed the ball better than their five opponents, reaching a 87.7% completion rate in Paris. Interestingly, the team are tackling less as Capello’s regime develops. They made 22, 24 and 22 tackles in his first three matches in charge but only 12 in each of the last two. Their tackle success-rate is, though, improving overall, from 77.3% in the 2-1 victory over Switzerland to 83.3% in the most recent fixture. What this all suggests is that although Capello’s England may look very similar to the team that went before, they are playing in a more composed manner, consistently keeping the ball better than their opponents and showing a decisive, measured approach in the tackle.”

In The Times, Giles Smith relives the final day of the transfer window as broadcast on TV. “General election nights wish they could be half as exciting as this. Robinho looked a certainty to be voted in at Chelsea, but an unexpectedly high turnout of cash in the Eastlands constituency of Manchester brought about a massive swing to the north for the tearful Brazilian. Alan Myers was live in the borough, improvising the part of a returning officer, while a group of about 40 City fans pogoed on top of him, honking: ‘We’ve got Robinho, we’ve got Robinho’… ‘I’ve been joined by a few Tottenham fans,’ our reporter said. Two, to be precise. Neither of them seemed to be in a party mood (“I just feel disappointed, in the main”), but nor would you be in the circumstances. You’ve lost your best player to Manchester United and you’re being questioned at the bottom of an abandoned lane in Essex at midnight. Those kinds of things can bring a person low.”

In an offbeat article, Rob Smyth (Guardian) puts the case forward for why Barry Davies is a better commentator than John Motson. “This is not to criticise Motson, who for most of his career was a superb broadcaster. But Davies simply had more going for him. Davies wore baldness with a roguish majesty; Motson wore a sheepskin. Davies had a wonderfully expressive, almost operatic voice; Motson spoke like someone whose mouth had been invaded by Chewits. Davies focused on detail, narrative and character; Motson often commentated by numbers in more than one sense. Davies was chic; Motson a geek. Davies, like Richie Benaud, spoke little and often; Motson spoke lots and often. Davies, you imagined, had a dictionary by his side; Motson probably had a Rothmans.”

The Times’ Richard Whitehead delivers a list of “The soul of Aston Villa in 50 moments.” “48 Defying Hitler Brummie Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain was not great at standing up to the Austrian with the little moustache, but his hometown football team did a better job. On tour in Germany in May 1938, Villa – unlike England the previous day – refused to give the Nazi salute as the teams lined up before the kick off. And, just for good measure, the Villa beat a Germany XI packed with German and Austrian internationals.”

The Guardian’s German football correspondent Raphael Honigstein, lifts the lift on the betting scandal engulfing the Bundesliga. “A middle-aged Malaysian man with grey hair and stomach ulcers, named William Lee Wah Lim, is alleged to have fixed the outcomes of at least one Bundesliga match and a 2. Bundesliga game (the second flight) in 2005… Hours of recorded Skype conversations and internet chats are said to reveal that Lim had bet nearly €2.2m on Kaiserslautern losing away to Hanover in November 2005. They did - after what were described as some terrible defensive mistakes, it ended 4-1 to 96. Kaiserslautern were relegated at the end of the season. All Lautern players have naturally denied any wrong-doing but Marco Engelhardt, captain at the time, admitted that they were “Schweinetruppe”, a dodgy team, to Spiegel. And Lim had allegedly been going to casinos with Kaiserslautern players.”

And finally, the Telegraph’s Giles Mole quotes extracts from Jamie Carragher’s new autobiography in which he talks his England experiences under Sven-Goran Eriksson. “I was never sure if Eriksson was an international manager or international playboy. I know what he was best at. The longer he spent in the job, the worse his status became as a football coach and the better he became a Casanova. Before one of his early World Cup qualifiers, a story broke about girls finding their way into the team hotel to provide some of the players with pre-match ‘entertainment’. Eriksson summoned us for what we expected to be a stern warning. Instead we received some fatherly advice. ‘There’s no need to have girls in the team hotel,’ Sven told us. ‘If you see someone you like, just get her phone number and arrange to go to her house after the game. Then we will have no problems.’”