If tonight’s Panorama, promising a gritty investigation into life on a Bristol estate, doesn’t appeal, some even grittier action is available on ESPN this evening. Hull did the double over Fulham last season, so Hodgson’s men will be hoping to take a tentative step on the recovery road back from such shame, by dealing with the Tigers tonight.
Sky Sports 1 at 7:30 is the place to be if you like your Premier League nostalgia, as Leeds host Norwich. Whilst for those curious to see how the younger members of Chelsea squad can defend the dead ball, Chelsea TV at 7 is the place to watch Chelsea Reserves vs West Ham reserves.
As Spurs fans jauntily swagger down the street, whistling the Champions League theme tune, and Everton supporters sit hunched in their garages considering their very existence, its worth remembering that the Opening Day is often as misleading as a blood substitution in rugby union.
There may be plenty of examples of markers being laid down for the entire season on day one, but Spoiler correspondent Eliot Pollak recalls five matches which prove that even a blind hen pecks the odd bit of corn.
19th August 1995
Aston Villa 3 Manchester United 1
The apotheosis of opening day anomalies. First half goals from Ian Taylor, Mark Draper and Dwight Yorke saw the Holte End bouncing with optimism, while Alan Hansen told the nation later on Match of the Day that Fergie’s summer boot sale of Paul Ince, Mark Hughes and Andrei Kanchelskis was unlikely to bring success. “You win nothing with kids,” deadpanned Hansen, turning up his nose at Beckham, Scholes, the Neville brothers and Nicky Butt.
By May, United had won the double, and the stunning 25 yard consolation a certain Mr D.Beckham whacked in at Villa Park that afternoon, was soon to be his trademark.
17th August 1996
Coventry City 0 Nottingham Forest 3
Frank Clark certainly wasn’t one of the most charismatic of Premier League managers, but he proved competent, at least until the 1996-97 season. A Kevin Campbell hat-trick and stellar performances from summer signings Dean Saunders and Nikola Jerkan more than accounted for Big Fat Ron’s Coventry City. The Sky Blues were booed from the pitch, and Atkinson’s wisdom in splashing out £3m on the 31-year-old Gary McAllister was cast into question by the following day’s press reports.
Forest ended the season bottom, and even worse, with Harry Bassett in charge. Campbell only scored three more league goals the entire season, whilst Coventry, as always in the 90s, survived on the final day.
7th August 1999
Chelsea 4 Sunderland 0
An unusually early start to the Premiership season,
The players who won’t make the grade at their new clubs
In the spirit of writing people off at an unreasonably early stage of the season, we asked Spoiler correspondent Joe Thompson to list the top ten newbies who are likely to struggle in 2009/10. Thankfully, he obliged…
Alberto Aquilani (Roma to Liverpool, £20m)
‘What?! I’ve seen him on YouTube, he’s a maestro! Great vision, long range shooting! Like Gerrard with nice hair!’ True, but he’s also crocked enough to make Darren Anderton look like The Terminator. In all competitions, he’s made 90 starts in five seasons. Look at the YouTube compilations again, he’s got a different haircut in every clip. OK, he’s Italian - it proves nothing- but he doesn’t play much. At £20m, Benitez has taken a massive gamble. By the time he plays it’ll be nearly Christmas, and a crunching (or even soft) tackle away at Stoke or Bolton might mean he’s glad to get back to the comfort of the treatment room.
Ronald Zubar (Marseille to Wolves, undisclosed)
Very few players are immortalised in a football expression– The ‘Cruyff’ Turn, The ‘Blanco’ Bounce and ‘Zubrelances’. The latter is a term the Marseille faithful coined to describe Zubar’s regular defensive howlers. He’s played for France U-21’s, but then Titus Bramble also played U-21 football when he was clowning around at Newcastle. Mick McCarthy is already ‘pleading for patience’ with his new signing - Wolves fans are going to need it.
Roque Santa Cruz (Blackburn Rovers to Man City, £17m)
Initially, this looked like a great match. Hughes had long been giving him the eye after re-launching his career
The Championship’s biggest club ain’t such a big draw no more
The Workers Stadium in Beijing looked set to claim yesterday’s highly un-coveted “Embarrassingly Low Attendance” award, as approximately one man and his dog turned up to see West Ham’s utterly useless performance against Tottenham.
However, the St James’ Park faithful pipped our Eastern friends to the post last night, as just 16,000 people turned up to see the Toon Army face Leeds. When you consider that 5,000 of those were Leeds fans and Newcastle usually fill their 52,000 seater stadium, this is pretty shocking stuff.
The crowd - whose fercious support was augmented by cheering noises played over the tannoy system - was rewarded for their efforts with a dull 0-0 draw. We were going to post a highlights video, but it’s probably best that we all just get on with the rest of our lives instead.
In case you missed it - Phil Brown celebrates guiding Hull to the second-worst surviving Premier League points haul of all time with a songJose Mourinho signs a new contract to stay with Inter until June 2012
[The Guardian]
Former owner John Hall states the obvious by calling Newcastle “rubbish”
[Sky Sports]
Berbatov says he’s not lazy, he’s just so good that everything looks effortless
[Daily Mail]
Leeds put Jermaine Beckford on the transfer list after he rejects a new deal
[BBC]
Another claret-and-blue team break Sheffield United’s hearts
Sheffield United chairman Kevin McCabe laughably claimed before the Championship play-off final that they would be a top-half Premier League side now were it not for only picking up 38 points in 2006-07 Carlos Tevez.
However, Burnley were the team who showed top-flight quality at Wembley and deservedly won with a brilliant 13th minute goal by Wade Elliott. Having beaten Fulham, Arsenal, Chelsea, Tottenham and West Brom this season and seen Sunderland and Hull stay up despite being dreadful, Owen Coyle should be confident that the Clarets can survive their first Premier League campaign.
Kevin Blackwell, as you would expect of a former assistant of Neil Warnock, struggled to be gracious in defeat and insinuated that Mike Dean’s performance
The Owls give a chance to a polite young Frenchman
In January 1992, Trevor Francis’ Sheffield Wednesday attempted to fuel the trend of importing foreign talent by giving a trial to a promising Frenchman named Eric Cantona.
Despite not speaking a word of English, they found him to be very polite, and were quite satisfied that his bad tempered days were behind him. When he impolitely joined rivals Leeds instead and proceeded to spit and kick his way through the rest of his career, they probably decided their initial assessment was a little off the mark.
As Off The Post point out, we love the fact that Wednesday appear to be training in a school sports hall - how humble those pre-Premier League days were…
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