Continental Divide

Another week, another dismal showing for English clubs in Europe, another bout of communal psychotherapy.

Though the poor results achieved by the Premiership’s alleged finest in the Champions League last week are unlikely to have any significance in the context of qualification for the knockout stages, it’s a bit sad when they can only muster a single goal between them (that being a penalty smacked in by Ruud van Nistelrooy), and even sadder to be eclipsed by the fine showings of (spit!) Rangers and, especially, Celtic. It’s no exaggeration to state that the Bhoys played more good football against Lyon than the three English sides managed between them in their respective games.
You wouldn’t be too worried about Manchester United yet, given that it’s traditional for them to make a disgrace of themselves just the once in the Champions League group stage (Anderlecht 2000, Deportivo La Coruna 2001, Maccabi Haifa last year), before accelerating away to win the section by three or four points.
Nonetheless, on the evidence of Wednesday night they can forget about actually winning the thing for at least another year, or until such time as they overhaul a defence which seems totally unable to deal with the step up from Premiership level to European competition.
The day after the Stuttgart fiasco, the United message boards were full of ignorant goons giving it to Phil Neville with both barrels. I’ll grant you that his performance hardly made the blood sing, but there was little good reason, bar that of his surname, why he was singled out on an evening when not one United player acquitted himself creditably.
Tim Howard looked uncharacteristically ropey apart from his penalty save, especially when dropping a succession of crosses early in the second half. The entire back four were a disgrace, particularly Gary Neville (whose lack of close control was embarrassing) and Rio Ferdinand, who can surely never have played worse. And in midfield, with Keane, Scholes and Giggs all dormant, the burden of trying to engineer a comback fell to Cristiano Ronaldo, an 18-year-old making his European debut.
So why Phil Neville was made to carry the can for this collectively lame performance is beyond this observer. True, he was poor, especially after half-time, but no more than anyone else. Scholes, by contrast, escaped all criticism, presumably because his name is not Phil Neville.
However, one silver lining is that the defeat increases the (already considerable) likelihood of a stung United taking six points off Rangers. Keane’s grim-faced comments afterwards, when he talked of having to “knock Rangers down and lift ourselves up”, emphasised that after the dreck served up in Germany, nothing less will be permitted.
Elsewhere, it was another unsatisfying evening at the office for Arsenal, who still don’t seem to have quite recovered from their rogering by Inter Milan.
In normal circumstances, a cagey draw behind the old Iron Curtain would be fine, especially given some of the pastings Arsenal have received in that part of the world recently. Now they just have to do it all over again: a mildly intimidating-looking double header against Dynamo Kiev stands between them and the second place that is now surely the limit of their ambitions. Kiev is not the easiest place to pick up three handy points at the best of times, and especially not when half your team is missing, for reasons ranging from dodgy ankles to aerophobia.
You would still, however, put plenty of money on the Gooners going further than their blue-shirted neighbours. To think, just a short week or two ago, Foul Play saw Chelsea as a huge and viable threat to the United-Arsenal duopoly this season. But that was before being treated to the full, unexpurgated footage of their horror-shows at home to first Aston Villa, and then, most graphically, Besiktas.
Seriously, write this down, or cut it out and keep it in your wallet to potentially use against me in eight months‚ time: Chelsea will win nothing, nothing, of significance with that clown managing them. In their current state, they are the football equivalent of the soapbox racing car that Homer Simpson made.
But then, we cannot expect anything else from a man who seems to believe that Juan Veron has a viable future on the right wing.
Claudio Ranieri’s enthusiastic embracing of the nickname “The Tinkerman” indicates an unhealthy obsession with single-handedly disproving the dictum that all winning teams are settled ones. He has already used a staggering 23 players this season, and the way things are going, Winston Bogarde will get a game. Be careful out there, Claudio.