Garry Potter And The Same Old Nonsense, David Backhim [the mitten read aloud txt] 📗

I have had plenty of practice. This is not a manifestation of sour grapes or a fickle football follower who quits when times are hard. Chelsea’s fortunes have been infinitely worse many times in my painful memory. However, there comes a time in any relationship where assessment is required. I have expended so much time, thought, expense, and emotional energy to a club that is no longer a pleasant distraction. Chelsea no longer make me feel good. Mind you, bragging rights based on the success of your football team is vastly over-rated. When all is said and done, you cannot take the silverware to bed with you or on holiday.
I was neither angry, tearful, nor sad at Chelsea’s routine Champions League exit. I felt nothing for a team who could not deliver a solitary goal in two hours of shambolic endeavour. Watching the stone-faced Steve Clarke and impassive Jose Mourinho perfectly encapsulated the proceedings. Sitting immobile on the bench, they had nothing to offer, pretty much like their hapless team. John Terry and Petr Cech deserve so much better, and so do the fans. This ex-fan could not even complain that Liverpool were lucky. Their penalty success was emphatic and merited. Chelsea no longer command my sympathy and respect. When one has reached this state of mind, it means that the spark has gone, the love affair is over, and it is time to move on.

‘THE DOC’: ANOTHER SPECIAL ONE
Long before the advent of the so-called ‘Special One’, there roamed another unique character in football management. His name was Tommy Docherty. Docherty had been an excellent servant of Arsenal, Glasgow Celtic, and Preston North End before he succeeded the admirable Ted Drake as a 33-year-old manager of an under-achieving Chelsea football team. By his own admission, Docherty (with no managerial record) was thrown in at the deep end and it was a case of sink or swim. Chelsea went backwards (via relegation) before Docherty getting into his stride advanced his ‘diamonds’ not only back to the top flight of English football, but the charismatic Scotsman launched a decade-long golden era at Stamford Bridge which his coach and successor Dave Sexton reaped the rewards from.
Docherty was hard work. He confessed to being a strict disciplinarian and like any good sergeant-major, he didn’t suffer fools. In the 1960s, long before football clubs recruited nutritionists, there was a drinking culture amongst the playing staff at Chelsea and other teams elsewhere. Docherty, no stranger to raising a glass or two himself, once infamously sent most of his team home to London from Blackpool on account of an alleged late night drinking session. Consequently, a patched-up Chelsea team were trounced 6-2 in their next fixture. The 1960s was a rollercoaster ride at Chelsea as Docherty and his young team quarrelled one moment and came close to success the next. The favourite story of ‘The Doc’ is undoubtedly his summoning of the local fire brigade to flood the Stamford Bridge pitch in order to oblige a postponement of a Fairs Cup semi-final with the mighty Barcelona, enabling one or two injured Chelsea players to recover in time for the re-arranged fixture. The Catalans were a trifle bemused that a bout of light rain should result in a waterlogged pitch!
Docherty left west London in October 1967 whereupon in his own words, he would accumulate “more clubs than Jack Nicklaus”. The Doc even managed his national team and I was startled to hear that Alex McLeish’s recent debut win as a Scotland manager was the first since Tommy Docherty in the early 1970s. Docherty, never far from the headlines, was appointed as a trouble-shooter at the ailing, post-Busby Manchester United where again the club went backwards (via relegation) only to advance back to Division One instantly, with glory in the 1977 FA Cup final thrown in to the mix. However, Docherty’s uncompromising attitude meant that the unreliable genius of George Best was dropped, transfer-listed, and eventually obliged to depart Old Trafford. Docherty’s own tenure characteristically was short-lived as his hero status was tarnished by tabloid revelations of an affair with the club physio’s wife. Never short of job offers or invitations for ‘after dinner speaking engagements’, ‘the Doc’ may or may not have been special, but he was certainly a one-off.

DO I NOT LIKE THAT
In my humble opinion, one of the greatest-ever television documentaries featured Graham Taylor’s ill-fated attempts to ensure that the England football team would qualify for the 1994 World Cup finals. The cameras followed Taylor around to observe at close quarters his foul-mouthed frustration at his team’s apparent under-achievement. It might have been shocking for the nation to hear what Graham Taylor referred to as “industrial language” but his vocabulary was the norm rather than the exception among the practitioners of soccer management.
Back in 1990 Bobby Robson bowed out as England manager after the national team had recovered from their failure at the 1988 European Championships and a sluggish start to Italia ’90 to reach the semi-finals for only the second time ever in the World Cup. Only penalty heartache (a recurring theme) prevented the English from playing in the final. The question was could the new appointment Graham Taylor build upon England’s quarter-finals and semi-finals appearances in successive World Cups? Taylor’s own reputation was based on outstanding service at Watford allied with taking Aston Villa to second place in Division One in 1990, their highest place since their championship-winning year of 1981.
The omens however were not encouraging when England yet again flopped in a European Championships, this time in Sweden in 1992. Prolific striker Gary Lineker bowed out prematurely from the England set-up after this tournament, vowing never to return. Nevertheless, with promising new striker Alan Shearer emerging to assist the likes of Paul Gascoigne and David Platt, England’s chances of appearing at the World Cup finals in the United States ought to have been reasonably good. However, the only concern was being drawn in a group that included the dangerous Holland and Poland, but it was Norway, not for the first time, who turned the form book on its head – at England’s expense.
By the early summer of 1993, the wheels were starting to come off the England World Cup campaign. Back in the spring, the Dutch had escaped from Wembley with a draw when Des Walker had conceded a penalty to Dennis Bergkamp. Worse was to happen when England first failed to score in Poland and then were soundly beaten 2-0 in Norway. Poor old Taylor lamented in the dug-out to his assistant Phil Neal about how his team were seemingly paying no attention to his pre-match instructions. On top of this major setback, England failed to impress on a brief visit to the United States. It was becoming increasingly likely that the national team would not be returning there in a year’s time.
On to the autumn and a resounding 3-0 home victory against Poland gave rise to hope that England would still be travelling across the Atlantic Ocean the following summer. Everything now rested on a trip to Holland, with Paul Gascoigne crucially suspended. On the fateful night in question, dubious refereeing decisions conspired against the visitors en route to a 2-0 defeat and as a tabloid headline subsequently suggested, it was ‘End Of the World’ for the England team – and not least the despised Taylor who had been slaughtered in the press as a turnip head whose strategy was exclusively one of ‘route one’ football. Taylor in a moment of supreme farce approached the official on the touchline and told him to relay to his colleague on the field the fact that his decisions had got him the sack. He wasn’t wrong. England had the remaining formality of overcoming San Marino in their last qualifying match but contrived to concede an early lead to compound Graham Taylor’s embarrassment.
I for one have much sympathy and respect for the much-maligned Taylor. He called it ‘the impossible job’ and claimed that Princess Diana thanked him for taking her off the newspaper headlines. Compared with Ericsson and McLaren’s under-achievement with a considerably more talented squad of players, the Taylor era doesn’t seem quite such a dismal failure. Furthermore, as a Radio Five Live expert analyst, Taylor talks an enormous amount of sense, though like many an English football observer, Taylor talks a good game, but then of course delivering it is not so straight-forward when confronted with the poisoned chalice of the impossible job. I’m sure this wise owl was relieved to be sat safely in the commentary box instead of charged with the task of justifying his team selections to a sceptical press conference or sitting in a dugout, cringing his way through a 0-0 with Israel or a 2-0 defeat in Croatia.

FOOTBALL CRAZY
Is it my imagination or is there a lot of stupidity in the world of football? Take football players first. How often do we read about soccer stars filling sports pages in newspapers in which they talk up their chances before a match while disrespectfully dismissing the possibility that their imminent opponents might actually play well and even win? Can there be anything more counter-productive than motivating your opponents by almost ridiculing the other team’s chances? If they had a modicum of sense, football players would pay tribute to the team that they are about to play, almost as a shrewd attempt to cultivate complacency. Unfortunately this level-headed approach is either conspicuously absent amongst soccer stars or else is frowned upon by newspapers that thrive upon gloating and provocative remarks from sneering sports competitors. Speaking of sneering soccer players, Ryan Giggs and his Manchester United buddies were less than generous when they narrowly succumbed to defeat by Chelsea in the FA Cup final. Bemoaning their luck and particularly a controversial refereeing decision merely confirmed them as bad losers who do benefit from the referee when they play at Old Trafford. Manchester United are certainly not alone in the predictable practise of paying tribute to the team they have just beaten but throwing their toys out of the pram when they have lost. It’s hard to respect soccer players who cannot admit that they lost to a better team and who instead resort to empty promises of revenge next time.
Let’s now examine the fans. Why do football supporters unleash a barrage of abuse on an opposing player on the premise that he used to play for their club but now has the cheek to play for the opposition? If a player has made a hundred appearances or scored dozens of goals for a club, why does its supporters single him out for vitriol during the course of a match, and not his colleagues who never played previously for that club? I’m sure that Leeds United fans would hurl abuse at Alan Smith