Harry’s Parker punt pays
He is an arch-pragmatist who does whatever he thinks is a good idea at the time. The drawback of this approach is a certain short-termism — he is literally making it up as he goes along — and looking back over Redknapp’s career, we can see that he has rarely left clubs on a sounder footing than he found them. But the advantage of embracing pragmatism over principle is that you never allow purely theoretical concerns to scare you off a good idea.
When Redknapp arrived to speak to the media after Spurs’ win over Arsenal, the first few questions were all about Scott Parker. The midfielder has been the difference between the wretched Spurs team that was crushed 5-1 by Manchester City in August and the formidable unit that has beaten Liverpool and Arsenal in successive home games.
Parker’s know-how, energy and awareness has transformed Spurs, bringing the best out of Luka Modric and liberating the pace and athleticism of their wide raiders Gareth Bale and Kyle Walker. That’s some impact for a player who cost as little as £5m. Every manager in the league would love to have done such a deal.
Yet he was hardly plucked from obscurity. Parker is the reigning Footballer of the Year. But no other top teams were interested, because he is 31 next week. Current transfer market wisdom dictates that a 31-year-old player is virtually worthless. Spurs’ results since Parker joined suggest otherwise.
Redknapp lavished praise on the Spurs chairman Daniel Levy for having had the courage and insight to do what Redknapp had told him to do. “It wasn’t easy for the chairman to sign him, with his age and so on,” Redknapp said, “But I knew he’d be a massive influence on the team. I was confident with Adebayor and Parker that the team would take shape.”
The shape they assumed was a little unusual, with the somewhat out-of-shape Rafael van der Vaart frequently deserting his post on the right side of midfield and Adebayor hunting the ball all around the pitch, but Spurs looked much more formidable than Arsenal, who lined out in the same 4-3-3 they always use.
What must be most frustrating for Wenger is that even after he was forced to temporarily abandon his dearly cherished team-building principles in the panic following the 8-2 defeat at Old Trafford, not one of his emergency signings have hit the ground running in the manner of Parker. Mikel Arteta has been neat without being influential and Andre Santos looked good in the Champions League in midweek but was left out here.
The biggest concern is Per Mertesacker, the 6ft 6ins German international who was supposed to make Arsenal’s defence scary again. After a couple of Premier League games, Mertesacker seems to have settled in rather too well — swiftly falling victim to the lapses of concentration and positional blunders that have become Arsenal’s trademark.
One of those contributed to Van der Vaart’s opening goal, and though Ramsey redeemed a poor performance with an equaliser, another error from Szczesny meant Arsenal have now lost four of their first seven games, conceding 16 goals in the process. (In 1998, when they won the double, they conceded 17 goals in 38 league matches).
When the Arsenal manager was asked whether his team could still win the league after this costly defeat, he gingerly sidestepped the question and the “Wenger’s Defiant Title Blast” headlines, saying: “We have to set ourselves realistic targets.” This morning the best they can do is fourth, and even that looks a long shot.
KENNY DALGLISH has lately been affecting bemusement at the media “obsession” with the performances of Andy Carroll. Carroll’s goal against Everton at last gave him the chance to round on the critics.
“I think the problem with Andy Carroll is the media. His stats and everything in training are better than most people’s,” Dalglish said. When Sky’s reporter began to point out that three goals in 14 league games was not a spectacular return for a player who cost £35 million, Dalglish cut him off. “The price is irrelevant. No, to us the price is irrelevant. He’s every bit as important to us as wee Jay [Spearing] and Steven Gerrard and [Jamie] Carragher, who cost us nothing. So forget about money.”
Money has been a sensitive subject for Dalglish in the past. Last year, he published a book called ‘My Liverpool Home’. It dealt mainly with his history at Liverpool, yet perhaps the most interesting revelation was to be found in the short section on his time at Blackburn. Dalglish wrote that his relationship with the Blackburn owner Jack Walker had cooled when Walker asked to be convinced that a player Dalglish wanted to sign was really worth the money. Most people might think that quite reasonable, but Dalglish was angered by what he considered unwarranted interference.
Hopefully Dalglish has developed a thicker skin since then, because the days of the manager treating the chairman’s money as his own are over. Liverpool’s owners come from a culture in which value for money is vying with trophies as the ultimate measure of success.
The most influential figure in American sports over the last few years is arguably Billy Beane, currently being played by Brad Pitt in the movie ‘Moneyball’. There is not an owner in American sports who does not at least pay lip service to the principles of value associated with Beane. Last week, Arsenal owner Stan Kroenke told the Daily Telegraph that one of the reasons he would never consider sacking Arsene Wenger is that Billy Beane has so much respect for him: “[Beane’s] idol is Wenger. You know why? His ability to spend money and extract value.”
Beane is friendly with Liverpool’s director of football Damien Comolli and is said to be informally consulting at Liverpool. It would be fascinating to hear what Beane and Comolli would make of Dalglish’s announcement that “the price is irrelevant”. One hopes Dalglish doesn’t take the same line in his meetings with Liverpool’s owners, or there could be some awkward moments ahead.
EVEN if Liverpool manager Kenny Dalglish’s attitude to questions can seem gratuitously confrontational, see story right, it’s still an improvement on the waffling of his predecessor, Roy Hodgson.
On Saturday, Hodgson illustrated how losing a 2-0 lead was actually quite a good result for West Brom. “If we’d been 2-0 up and got two goals and got away from here with a 2-2 draw we’d be turning cartwheels and congratulating ourselves. When the other team gets two goals back you can get very harsh on yourself and say, we’ve squandered a lead, we’ve let something slip. I don’t think it was a question of that.”
You feel like you’ve let something slip because you have let something slip, namely a 2-0 lead.
The remark summed up why Hodgson has never been successful at a really big club.
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