Some of you older peeps will remember Alf Ramsey. For those that don’t, he managed England a thousand years ago when we won the World Cup. Ramsey espoused a footballing model that came to be known as “The Wingless Wonders” which he developed at Ipswich, and, truth to tell, was adopted pretty much universally after England’s success. Alf Ramsey was the architect of the modern game and was the first England manager to pick his own players. It was previously done by FA committees. You couldn’t make this stuff up.
What have we learned from all this? Well, the first thing we learned was that the bog-standard winger was obsolete. I’m not talking about your Stanley Matthews or your Tom Finneys who could tear you apart, but lesser mortals who would contribute very little to the end product.
Nowadays, a winger needs a few more strings to his bow to get picked. It’s no good trolling up and down the touchline playing with yourself, anymore. A winger has to take defenders on, be capable of beating them, and creating goals for himself or others. Not controversial, I would have thought. Additionally, teams have learned to cope with wingers – you just double-team them and render them ineffective. To be a winger, one needs a lot of self-confidence, or he will be made to look silly. When a winger gets the ball, every eye in the stadium is on him, waiting for him to produce a piece of magic. Compared with the rest of the team, he’s fairly isolated. Once confidence is gone, the winger find himself training with the kids again. Or in counselling sessions with Frem.
Which brings me to Martin O’Neill. O’Neill believed in wingers and, when you do, you’re obliged to play with target men to get on the end of crosses, and his striker of choice was John Carew. John Carew was a legend in his time at Villa Park. He worked hard at Bodymoor Heath and Broad Street to perfect his game. He inclined to the “enigmatic” at times.
The trouble with this approach to the game is that it becomes a bit one-dimensional and teams soon work you out. A second problem was that Martin O’Neill was a James – as in James Blunt. He couldn’t help it. He just was.
But, who am I to judge? O’Neill believed himself to be the finest manager in world football and it would be churlish to deny him the accolade. If only his wingers had the same self-confidence. O’Neill bought Ashley Young from Watford, and, at first, Young appeared to be the dog’s. He, by all accounts, worked studiously on the training ground to improve his technique and, by the time he left Villa Park for Old Trafford, he was able to put free kicks into row Z with precision.
Young possessed an ability, on his arrival at VP, to put fierce, dipping corner kicks into the box. O’Neill, of course, soon showed him the error of this and taught him to drift his corner kicks, high and looping, into the box on the prevailing wind. Insiders have said that Young complained that this type of cross was easy to defend. O’Neill took his knickers down and spanked him.
Young, for a while, was forced to train with Nigel Reo-Coker in the Wendy House at the training ground.
Which brings us to Nigel Reo-Coker. OK, perhaps not.
It has been said of wingers that they’re a bit like Arabs – “You can’t buy ‘em, you can only rent them.” I have no idea what this means, but Frem would know; and, setting aside his distaste for talking about wingers, I’m sure he’ll enlighten us. Frem could start a business – RentaWinger, to go alongside his other business: RentaRumour. In a couple of years, he could sell it to Avis.
Which brings me to Monty…
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