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,
Midfielder Neil Webb joined Manchester Utd in 1989, and spent two-and-a-half seasons at Old Trafford before rejoining Nottingham Forest. While with the Red Devils, he won the League Cup and UEFA Cup Winners’ Cup, and set up the winner in the 1990 FA Cup final against Crystal Palace.
Since hanging up his boots in 1997, the 46-year-old has worked as a programme seller at the Madejski Stadium, a postman and a forklift truck operator. He has auctioned off much of the memorabilia from his career to raise extra cash, and his FA Cup winners’ medal will go under the hammer next week with an estimated price of £8,000-£10,000.
Webb, who obviously holds little regard for nostalgia, said:
“I don’t want my lads (he has two sons) to fight over them and this way they get to enjoy the benefits of them now. It’s obviously a very hard thing for me to do as they mean a lot to me, but I have got the DVDs of all the games I was involved in. The medals are great fun to have, but it’s time to let other people get enjoyment from them as well.”
If you fancy owning a medal that you didn’t earn, head to Cameo Auctioneers in Midgham next Tuesday. You ought not to have too much competition - the same medal was expected to reach £6,000 at auction in London last year, but it failed to reach its reserve price.
The players who fell from grace but refused to quit
Such is their love of the game, a number of former Premier League stars have forged managerial careers in the ever-so-slightly less glamorous world of non-League football: Luton’s Mick Harford and Newport’s Dean Holdsworth are notable examples. Some however, are still plying their trade on the pitch in the lower echelons of the football pyramid.
Spoiler correspondent Russell Greaves brings us ten former top flight heroes who have swapped the international acclaim of the top flight for the bumpy pitches and humble attendances of the grass roots game…
Paolo Vernazza (4 Premier League appearances for Arsenal)
Once a promising youngster at Arsenal, Paolo even got a run out in the Champions League, but has since worked his way down the leagues - way down. Having scored the winning goal against Coventry City in front of 37,000 fans at Highbury in 2000, the midfielder’s most recent goal was for Conference South giants Woking, and 2,000 people were fortunate enough to see it. A cautionary tale for the current crop of Arsenal youngsters. Credit where it’s due, though, his supporting lady is top-class.
Jason Lee (69 Premier League appearances for Nottingham Forest) If you recognise the name, it could be because he scored over one-hundred career league goals, but it’s more likely to be because he was relentlessly lampooned on Fantasy Football League. He’s now banging them in for Corby Town in the Conference North, minus the pineapple.
Alan Wright (Over 300 Premier League appearances for Blackburn Rovers and Aston Villa)
Perhaps best remembered as the shortest player in the history of the Premier League (a pocket-sized 5’4’’), Alan Wright is now best known as the shortest player in the Blue Square North. Aston Villa once paid £1m for his services, but Fleetwood Town recently secured his signature without a fee and gave the 38-year-old his non-league debut in a 2-1 victory at Solihull Moors.
Manchester City have spent over £125 million since Mark Hughes took over last summer but despite that huge investment, they need to win all six remaining league games to improve on last season’s points tally.
The Spoilerasked back in December whether Hughes was the right man to take City forward, to which only 31% said yes. Following last night’s UEFA Cup exit, it feels like an appropriate time to conduct another straw poll.
The positives of Hughes’ first season have been the respectable European run, the 3-0 win over Arsenal and the fact they have played some fantastic football at times. The biggest success story of an indifferent campaign however has been the emergence of Stephen Ireland, a player Hughes fought to keep in the summer, as arguably the player of the season.
The negatives are fairly obvious: City will almost certainly finish with a worse points haul than last season, they lost in both domestic cups to relegation-threatened lower league teams, they haven’t won a domestic away game since August and Hughes has reportedly struggled to handle his Brazilian stars.
So should he stay or should he go? Tell us with a vote and comment below:
In the biblical tale of the Prodigal Son, a young man ventures to the big city to fill up on wine and hookers before going home to lead a normal domestic life as an accountant, or something. In some ways, it’s exactly the same tale as that of Shaun Wright-Phillips and Manchester City, only without the fatted calf, the hookers, the wine… the bible. But no matter.
This, along with Heskey’s suspected return to Liverpool, got The Spoiler to thinking, and by the time we’d polished off our lunchtime amuse bouche followed by soup, we’d pretty much compiled a team made up of returning players. All with varying degrees of success.
In goal, we went for everyone’s favourite drug-eating maniac, Mark Bosnich.
Just when you thought things couldn’t get even more bizarre at St. James’ Park, Newcastle have announced former Wimbledon boss Joe Kinnear as their new interim manager.
Having left his previous Premier League post at Selhurst Park in 1999 after a heart attack, Kinnear is surely ill-advised to make his return at a club in freefall, where the fans feel a hatred towards the chairman, and Dennis Wise is hugely influential.
The Irishman resigned from his last job as manager of Championship side Nottingham Forest in 2004 with the club stuck in the relegation zone. Kinnear is under no illusions that he won’t be at the club for long and said:
It’s better in the Czech Republic, claims Roman Bednar
The FA and Premier League’s Respect campaign took another blow today when Czech forward Roman Bednar admitted that the standard of officiating in the top-flight was poorer than in his homeland.
The Baggies striker voiced his concerns after being left disappointed by referee Mike Dean’s performance in Sunday’s Midlands derby defeat to Aston Villa at The Hawthorns. He said:
All the latest transfer rumours, gossip and damn lies
The mire of spurious summer transfers has thrown up an interesting player/ club combination today: according to the rumour vine, Andriy Shevchenko could be on his way to warming Barcelona’s bench in the near future. To compensate for selling approximately 57 attacking players this summer, Barca want to bring the Ukrainian in on a season-long loan, which means they pay no transfer fee but Chelsea get him off the wage bill. With the Milan option fading, he may just have to take this one.
Emmanuel Adebayor to Chelsea
New stories every day tell us the same stuff about Ronaldo, Ronaldinho and Drogba, so it’s nice to see the press get more inventive. Chelsea want shot of Drogba and it seems they view Adebayor as the perfect replacement.
The Spoiler Truth-o-meter: Surely he won’t do an Ashley Cole
Robbie Keane to Liverpool
Could a (reasonably) big club have finally realised Robbie Keane is one of the best strikers in the Premier League and that despite Berbatov’s moments of brilliance, Keane works harder and is more consistent?
The Spoiler Truth-o-meter: May want to stick around at Spurs this season
Gareth Barry to Liverpool
One transfer saga that definitely looks
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