Scott Murray's Blog, page 218

Football transfer rumours: Tottenham and Arsenal target Juan Mata?

Today's nuggets of gold are hewn from the finest tin
• Follow all the latest on our transfer window liveblog

With only five days to go until the transfer window shuts, several of our big clubs are getting desperate as they scramble to overspend on players they don't necessarily need in order to placate people on the internet and the 0.0000000000000001% of their fanbase who print out unreasonable financial demands on sheets of A4 paper and hold them up near the dugout whenever the photographer from the Press Association saunters past.

Manchester United have a fully functioning team, having won the league with it last season, so will spend £30m on David Luiz, another £200,000 a week on Mesut Ozil, buy defender Eliquim Mangala from Porto, and offer bit-part player Wayne Rooney a new contract.

Tottenham Hotspur already have their best midfield since the summer of 1960 in place, so are in for Chelsea waif and stray Juan Mata, though they might solely be doing that to annoy Arsenal, who are desperate and willing, so there is some logic at least.

Arsène Wenger continues to fixate on his perfectly serviceable midfield to the detriment of the bits of his team which actually do need emergency attention. The imminent signing of Yohan Cabaye will cause Newcastle United a problem they'll require James McCarthy of Wigan to address.

Chelsea have only three top-name strikers on their books in Fernando Torres, Romelu Lukaku and Demba Ba, which isn't enough for a credible tilt at four trophies but is three more than the number required to follow José Levein's tactical blueprint. Samuel Eto'o should prepare for a season operating in a withdrawn role, perhaps at left-back with specific instructions not to go on the overlap or cross the halfway line at all.

Kolo Touré and Aly Cissokho both picked up injuries on Tuesday night against Notts County, so Liverpool do need a central defender, especially one who can play at left back too. That'll explain their interest in Paris Saint-Germain's Mamadou Sakho. But you know how these deals pan out for the hapless Anfield moneymen. So when their under-value offer is rejected, expect Brendan Rodgers to get fed up and go on a fruitless pursuit of wingers who cut inside rather than attempting to beat a man instead.

Manuel Pellegrini has spotted that all is not well at the back at Manchester City, but for some reason is attempting to solve the problem with a bid for Valencia's Adil Rami, who as far as we can make out is an outfield player and not a fully functioning replacement goalkeeper who can catch balls, claim crosses and stop pearollers from slithering under his body.

And Real Madrid do not need Gareth Bale. No they don't, no they don't.

Transfer windowScott Murray
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Fulham v Arsenal – as it happened | Scott Murray

Minute-by-minute report: The Arsenal crisis, such as it was, is over, as Olivier Giroud and two-goal Lukas Podolski see off Fulham at a sodden Craven Cottage. Scott Murray was watching

Scott Murray

Fulham v Arsenal – live! | Scott Murray

Minute-by-minute report: Arsenal face another crunch clash after last weekend's opening league loss. Follow the action from Craven Cottage with Scott Murray

Scott Murray

Football fans should quit diet of rage and try the Jason Dufner plan | Scott Murray

Football takes itself way too seriously and could learn from the blithe indifference of the taco-munching US PGA champion

Football was invented by privileged Victorian gadabouts as a means of passing the time agreeably when all the opium had run out. In the modern world, however, the game's ability to bring fun and pleasure appears lost.

The bottom half of the internet gets a lot of flak for this sorry state of affairs, with all the pious hand wringing, petty jealousies, and free-jazz approach to thinking arguments through. Although if we are being honest, the stuff written above the line does not help much either, with all the pious hand wringing, petty jealousies, and free-jazz approach to thinking arguments through.

When attempts are made to lighten the mood, discourse degenerates into banter, a jovial patois invented by Royal Air Force servicemen to lift the spirits during the war and honed in the 2000s by former Soccer AM presenter Tim Lovejoy into a form of humour so surface-deep it appealed to television commissioning editors. This afforded him the opportunity to build an entire career on it, the nation taking the popular entertainer to their hearts, much as they did with other beloved daytime stars such as Jeremy Kyle and Robert Kilroy-Silk.

Few enjoy themselves. The biggest current YouTube sensation that is not Lil Bub, the cat who cannot close her mouth, is a manic-street-preaching Arsenal fan who has similar issues with the operational status of his maw. Big Bub delivers a lengthy and strident polemic on the state of his club, emotionally calling for the sacking of Arsène Wenger, or the sacking of whoever it is that might sack Arsène Wenger. It is very much an energy piece, the star hopping around with so much impotent rage that at one point the performance threatens to segue into contemporary dance.

This carry-on has been lauded as a shining example of the people's passion, the special stuff that fuels football. But should Arsenal losing one match to Aston Villa, a club after all with more European Cups to their name, be an event that generates this much rage? It is a question that needs asking, preferably by a medical professional with a soothing voice and several cold flannels.

When did losing become, to use post-Bakerian 606-speak, totally unacceptable? Defeat used to bring its own amusements. One of the great joys of soccer, alongside deliberately irritating misinformed anti-American pedants by deploying the word soccer, is the quiet trudge homeward following a five-goal reverse, via a pub where pints are stared at in silence for 45 minutes, untouched, before low sighs of "I knew it" ascend into a reverie of resigned moaning. But there will have been no such soothing early-evening catharsis for Big Bub!

The needlessly intense attitude of the professionals is not helping anyone retain perspective. The highly strung Sunderland manager, Paolo Di Canio, spent the run-up to the new season zig-zagging around with a face on, looking for things to ban as part of his in-no-way-dubious-sounding Complete Revolution.

This cheery 1930s mindset cannot be healthy. He has threatened to fling all of his squad's mobile phones into the North Sea, a promise with uncanny echoes of another manic character from the north east, Michael from I'm Alan Partridge, who once dispatched a monkey into the briny in the throes of a thundering nervous breakdown. Michael was last seen in the Partridge movie Alpha Papa, living in a cupboard and defecating into his lunchbox. The janitor at Sunderland should do a thorough sweep of the Stadium of Light every evening, just in case.

Di Canio has also banned ketchup, mayonnaise, Coca-Cola, and other items commonly associated with "American fast-food chains", in the hope of turning his pleasure-deprived players into serious high-performance machines who might one day score a goal. Does a squeeze of Heinz really make that much difference? Good luck watching the lads go about their bloodless business, Sunderland fans! God speed!

It would be lovely to know what this frowning menace thinks of Jason "The Somnambulist" Dufner who, despite subsisting on a diet of beef, cake and chewing tobacco has, if his heavy-lidded insouciance is any guide, a resting pulse of 12. The new PGA champion has revealed that he celebrated his recent win by filling up the Wanamaker Trophy, possibly the largest pot in professional sport, with a late-night order of 49¢ tacos from Taco Bell – before getting up for a hearty breakfast of grits.

The sports scientists will trot out the lame canard that golf is not sport, arguing Dufner is the exception proving the rule, nothing more than an enigma wrapped in a tortilla with extra cheese. Yet surely in his blithe indifference lies the key to a better world. He is the one enjoying success, free of angst and strife; whose devoted legion of fans, win or lose, go home happy; who is tucking into a pyramid of fried meat and mayo washed down with full-fat pop.

The Dufner Plan's working, people, and it is the healthier option. Football should give it a whirl, and to hell with it if the midfield pressing loses some intensity. So quit staring, Paolo, and pull up a chair. Life is too short, and these burritos are excellent.

ArsenalUS PGA 2013US PGAUS sportsGolfScott Murray
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The Joy of Six: sporting flukes

From Cliff Thorburn's lucky red on his way to a 147, to Steven Bradbury's triple whammy of fortune at the Winter Olympics
• Click here to read The Joy of Six on football flukes

1) Cliff Thorburn (Embassy World Snooker Championships, 1983)

Cliff Thorburn, the smoothest gent ever to glide a cue between his fingers, had racked up several 147s back home in Canada during the early years of his career. But none of them counted for much in a country where the pockets on the tables were significantly larger. Then in the UK, in 1979, he found himself on the wrong end of the first ever maximum in tournament play, though John Spencer's 147 in the Holsten Lager event at Slough was later struck from the record books, as it too was found to have been made on a table with oversized pockets.

Steve Davis, then, became the first player to make 147 in an official tournament on a championship-standard table, in 1982. But that had a distinctly low-rent feel: it came at the Lada Classic, and it was televised on ITV. The one that would really matter was always going to come at the Crucible. And in the 1983 World Championships, it finally arrived, delivered by Thorburn's steady, steely hand. In an era when 147s weren't 10-a-penny, such a break had a stop-the-world feel to it. The frame wasn't shown live on television, but the BBC cleared the decks at supersonic speed, transmitting the tape within 48 seconds of Thorburn's final pot dropping into the pocket. Meanwhile, the match on the other table, featuring Thorburn's good friend Bill Werbeniuk, ground to a halt as the big man stopped to peer round the partition at history being made.

Thorburn sunk to his knees in jubilation as he completed his break, a genuinely gleeful Werbeniuk racing round to hug his pal, one of the sport's great feelgood moments. Yet none of it would have happened without one of the most outrageous flukes in championship history, a red rattling in the top-right jaws, cannoning into another red back along the top rail, and sending it with a gentle cut into the top-left pocket to open the break.

"Why bring that up?" laughed Thorburn when reminded of his good fortune afterwards. But why indeed? Such a stroke of luck so early in the break, before it was apparent a 147 was on the cards, had no bearing on the overall quality of the maximum. Still, along with the final black and the moment Thorburn paused to wipe his hands and blow his nose, it remains one of the three signature snapshots of this most famous of breaks. There have been nine Crucible maximums since, but none, not even Ronnie O'Sullivan's whirlwind five-minute effort in 1997, gripped the viewer like this gloriously dramatic 15-minute grind.

The feelgood vibe in the Crucible that day didn't last much longer, mind. Werbeniuk went back round the corner to resume his match with David Taylor and, high on life and pints of Steadier, subsequently smoked so many fags in quick succession that the Silver Fox, desirous of escaping the nicotine fug forming around the Canadian like rings around Saturn, dragged his chair down the other end of the arena in a fit of passive-smoking aggression. SM

2) Steven Bradbury (Winter Olympics, 2002)

In the aftermath of victory, Olympic medallists often describe themselves as being "on top of the world", and in the Winter Games it has usually been literally true, in a manner of speaking: until 2002, every single gold-medallist had been from the northern hemisphere. But when the run was finally broken, it happened in unprecedented, glorious, ludicrous and hopelessly comic style.

But the skater Steven Bradbury was no Eddie the Eagle. Hopeless as he seemed as he gamely circled the Salt Lake City rink 15 yards behind the other finalists, he had long been an established, top-end performer, and a second-generation one at that – his father had been a national champion in the 1960s. At the age of just 17, Steven had been part of a world championship gold-winning relay team, and Olympic bronze followed three years later in 1994 – Australia's first Winter Olympic medal of any colour.

Later that year, though, his thigh was sliced open by a rival's skate mid-race and he lost four litres of blood, needed 111 stitches and was out for 18 months. At the 1998 Games, he was promising to "skate tactically" because he was "not quick enough" and his "leg speed is not great". The tactics were to come good eventually, but in Nagano he got food poisoning, which didn't exactly help that dodgy leg-speed, and he went out in the heats. Then, in 2000, he broke his neck in training. His name might have become a byword for good fortune, but his lucky streak took a while to show itself.

The great thing about Bradbury's success is that it was the result of not one, not two, but a statistically improbable triple-fluke. He was knocked out in the quarter-finals, but Canada's Marc Gagnon was disqualified, giving him a second chance. In the semi-finals, he was slowly sliding to inevitable failure before the two leaders collided, he avoided the melee and won. This was what he meant by "skating tactically" – staying well out of trouble and hoping the faster skaters knocked each other over. "I didn't think I was as good as the other guys," he admitted. "My best chance was to stay out the way."

In the five-man final he was last by some distance before, on the last bend, China's Li Jiajun ran into America's Apolo Anton Ohno – Ohno by name, Ohno by furious post-fall exclamation – everyone else fell over and Bradbury calmly coasted to victory. "Going into the race, I was pretty confident there was going to be some sort of crash, and I was very confident that I'd pick up a bronze medal with two guys going down, but I never envisaged four of them going down," he said.

The phrase "Doing a Bradbury" has since entered the Australian sporting lexicon as a byword for an indecent fluke. And he doesn't mind one bit: "Every time it's used I love it and I hope they're still using it when I'm dead," he says. His success, fluky as it may have been, certainly inspired his countrymen: having waited 76 years between their first failed attempt at Winter Olympic gold and their first successful one, Australia's second gold medal followed two days later. SB

3) Mark Calcavecchia (Open Championship, 1989)

Greg Norman was the man on the receiving end of golf's two most famous smash and grabs, Bob Tway's hole-out from a bunker down the last at the 1986 PGA, and Larry Mize's ridiculous 140-foot chip at the 1987 Masters. Few mention Mark Calcavecchia when the subject of the Golden Shark's appalling luck in the majors crops up, though his antics at the 1989 Open at Troon were probably the spawniest of the lot.

Norman had started the final day seven shots behind the 54-hole leader Wayne Grady, and had been advised by his pals Jack Nicklaus, Ray Floyd and Tom Weiskopf to roll the dice and play some aggressive golf. The plan paid off. He birdied the first six holes. He picked up three more shots on the back nine and, with only a single bogey on his card, signed for a course-record 64. He had the clubhouse lead. With Grady struggling to get going, hopes were high of a second Open title. "I've had them taken away from me," Norman told reporters as he awaited his fate. "I would just love to sit here and have one given to me. I don't wish anyone any ill, but I hope they fall over out there."

But majors never worked out for poor old Greg like that. Calcavecchia had gone into the final round three behind Grady, and quickly picked up a couple of shots. But after missing a short par putt on 7, he crumbled. "He just lost his brain for a couple of minutes," explained his caddie Drake Oddy. Going down 11, Calc sliced his drive into thick filth, sent his second whistling into a bush, his third 40 feet past the pin, and did well to get down in two for his par. Finely scrambled, but so, still, was his head. Down 12, he sent his five-iron approach onto a ridge overlooking the green. With little space on the putting surface to play with, a bogey looked likely. Instead, he slamdunked a looping chip straight into the cup.

The one-in-a-million shot, and the birdie, allowed Calc to recalibrate, and find some new momentum. He picked up another shot on the way back home, signing for a 68 that would tie him with Norman. Grady came in with 71 to join the first-ever three-man, four-hole playoff, which Calc would win after Norman (suffering more astonishing bad luck) sent an adrenalin-fuelled drive into a seemingly unreachable fairway bunker down the last.

But it was Calcavecchia's basketball stylings on 12 which had really secured his only major. And he was gracious enough to acknowledge his good fortune. "How lucky can you get?" he spluttered. "That shot changed everything. It was a miracle. I was more embarrassed than anything. I was the lucky one and Greg got the bad breaks. There is a lot of luck involved in golf, and I certainly had my fair share." SM

4) David Gower (England v Australia, Ashes, 1985)

The teams were tied at 1-1 with two to play in the 1985 Ashes, going into the fifth Test at Edgbaston. England won the toss, chose to field and took two-and-a-bit rain-affected days to dismiss Australia for 335. They then scored 595 for five, with Tim Robinson bowled for 148, David Gower amassing 215 and Mike Gatting unbeaten on 100 when the declaration came. But Australia's second innings was hopeless – their top five scored 32 runs between them, and only Wayne Phillips enjoyed notable success.

He was on 59 and facing an extremely attacking field when it happened. Phil Edmonds bowled, Phillips attempted to swat the ball through the off-side, Allan Lamb, at short leg, leapt and twisted to avoid the speeding ball, failed (there was, to be fair, quite a lot of him to get out the way) and it flicked off his leg, looped into the air and was pouched by Gower, the England captain, at silly mid-on. After some debate between the umpires, Davids Shepherd and Constant, a finger was raised. It was the moment the nation's headline-writers had been dreaming of, and the story in the following day's Guardian was duly trailed, with utter inevitability: "England savour leg of Lamb".

In the scheme of things – Australia were bowled out for 142 to lose by an innings and 118 runs – it didn't matter much. But that didn't stop Allan Border getting in a bit of a funk about it. "Phillips told me he hit it into the ground," he fumed. "If Constant was right, he was guessing. He must have been obscured by the close fielders. England's umpires are the best in the world, but one of them made a bit of a blue today."

It was a bizarre dismissal, but Australians have made something of a habit of that kind of thing. In February 2004, in a first ODI against Sri Lanka, Damien Martyn hit a ball from Upul Chandana a little too close to his partner, Ricky Ponting. "I tried to get out of the way and it hit me on the pad and bobbled in front of me and he caught it, caught and bowled," Ponting recalled.

Two years later, Andrew Symonds, after scoring a 61-ball 66 in the first innings of another first ODI against Sri Lanka, this time the opening match of the VB Series, drove Jehan Mubarak hard and low down the ground. Totally safe, at least until the ball hit Michael Clarke's pad at the non-striker's end and, instead of screaming to the boundary, looped harmlessly into the hands of Tillakaratne Dilshan at wide mid-wicket. "I thought it was funny at the time but then when I got into the rooms and saw how many overs there were left I was actually quite frustrated and annoyed," he said. "It was sort of freaky wasn't it?" SB

5) Doug Flutie (NCAA college football, 1984)

November 23 1984. The day after Thanksgiving. In a match being played at Miami's Orange Bowl and broadcast live on CBS, defending national collegiate champions, the Goliaths that are the Miami Hurricanes, are entertaining the Davids of the Boston College Eagles in a match nobody expected them to lose. With just six seconds left on the clock in the final quarter and the Hurricanes leading a massively entertaining to-and-fro contest 45-41, the Eagles have possession on the Miami 48 yard line. There's just one option open to them: a desperation play called the "55 Flood Tip", which called for Miami's receivers to run toward the endzone and attempt to tip the airborne ball to an unmarked team-mate, assuming their quarter-back Doug Flutie had the requisite strength to throw the ball that far in the first place. As plans go, it wasn't exactly subtle: with so little time left on the clock and just one realistic option open to their opponents, Miami's defence knew exactly what was about to happen and only had to stick tight to their opponents to prevent them securing the most unlikely of winning scores.

When the ball was snapped back to Flutie, his wide receivers duly sprinted towards the endzone, their progress bizarrely unimpeded by Miami's defensive backs, who presumed the retreating quarterback would be unable to hurl the ball past them to opponents who were now behind them in the endzone. Having received the ball, rolled a pass-rusher, then scrambled backwards and to his right in a bid to give his receivers time to take up their positions, Flutie launched the mother of all Hail Mary passes in the general direction of the Miami goal from fully 63 yards.

"When I ran down the field and ran past the free safety at the five-yard line, I was very surprised that he allowed me to go by him," recalled Boston wide receiver Gerard Phelan some years later. "Maybe he didn't think Doug could throw the ball that far." If the free safety in question was in any doubt that Doug could throw the ball that far, he was quickly disabused of the notion. Furiously back-pedalling along with a fellow defensive back, the pair leapt in the air together, impeding each other as the ball dropped just beyond their outstretched fingertips into the arms of the unmarked and waiting Phelan, who almost certainly couldn't believe his luck.

"All I see is the ball go down over two defensive backs heads," said Flutie. "I see them go up for it and I just assumed it was incomplete and all of a sudden I saw the offical's arms go up at the back of the endzone … like, 'you gotta be kidding me'." Amid ridiculous scenes of delirium, the scoreboard quickly confirmed there was no joke: through a mixture of skill and ludicrously good fortune, Flutie's monster pass had won what is now regarded as one of the greatest matches in college football history with zero seconds remaining on the clock. BG

6) Reinhard Libuda (European Cup Winners' Cup final, 1966 – a bonus football one)

Hampden Park, 5 May 1966. Before sunrise, more than 12 hours ahead of the European Cup Winners' Cup final between Liverpool and Borussia Dortmund, an artistically minded Merseysider bunked into the stadium armed with only a pot of emulsion and a brush and, fresh from painting the town red in celebration of his team's recent league championship victory, did a similar decorative job on a set of goalposts. "Liverpool, champions, Roger Hunt," he added to a nearby wall in blank verse. "I cannot understand why anybody would want to do this," a (presumably heavily edited) Hampden groundsman told the Guardian as he ferociously scrubbed the red daubing from the bricks in time for kick-off.

Whether the poor janny should have wasted his energy is a moot point, for the final could have done with a splash of colour. Only 41,647 turned up for the match – Hampden held 130,000 at the time – causing the Daily Mirror to rail furiously about "the lunacy of live soccer on TV". Those who stayed at home to view the match, on either BBC1 or Granada, would have been forgiven for turning over to the only other channel, BBC2, whose transmission of Orson Welles' adaptation of Franz Kafka's The Trial would suddenly have felt like a carefree romp.

The game, played out under grim, grey, Glaswegian skies, was a non-event for an hour. Sigfried Held broke the deadlock just after, and the aforementioned graffito subject Hunt equalised minutes later, a mildly controversial move featuring a Peter Thomson cutback which had appeared suspiciously out of play to all but the linesman.

Any luck Liverpool had regarding that decision was soon paid back with interest during extra-time. With an unlucky 13 minutes left on the clock, Aki Schmidt launched a long ball down the middle. Held raced after it and, on the right of the D, managed a prod towards goal. But Tommy Lawrence, always quick off his line, was up in his grille and parried well. The ball looped out to the right wing, where Reinhard Libuda was waiting, 30 yards out. He sent an arcing shot towards the left-hand side of the unguarded net, but the ball kept drifting to the left and hit the post.

Unfortunately for Liverpool, captain Ron Yeats was tracking back with a view to heading off the line if required. When Libuda's shot rebounded off the woodwork, it flew into the small of the helpless Yeats's back, and ricocheted into the net, soon to be followed by the crumbling frame of the upset defender. The flukiest goal to win any European final, Nayim included, and one which meant Liverpool were destined never to complete the slam of all three continental trophies. The result left Bill Shankly fuming, condemned to a seven-year wait before finally getting his hands on a European pot. Bill went off into the night. The wind and the rain. Bill went home. Bill cleaned the cooker. SM

Barry GlendenningScott MurraySimon Burnton
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