One Month Off

Well, it’s actually been more like two months since I last posted but I like the title.

A lot has happened during the month I spent in Thailand, most notably the start of what’s been a very interesting World Cup, and in the weeks before I left there was the end of the Premier League season as well as the Champions League final. There’s also been more than a few major talking points in the MMA world, so instead of linking it all together like some sort of skilled writer I’ll settle for addressing each topic individually.

Everton

A phenomenal run of form throughout the second half of the season was still only enough to see Everton secure an 8th place finish. It’s easy to cite injuries and Joleon Lescott as reasons for the blues’ terrible start to the campaign, but the fact remains we’ve slipped three places and failed to make Europe for the first time in four years.

It’s difficult to see how David Moyes can realistically hope to get this team back in the mix for Champions League qualification while he continues to operate on what is effectively a transfer budget of zero. Of the seven teams who finished above us only Liverpool look vulnerable, but with rumours of an Arab buyout refusing to go away it seems likely that they’ll be bailed out sooner than later.

Moyes has been active in the transfer market though, making several modest acquisitions early on. Jermaine Beckford has signed on a free transfer from Leeds United, which says a lot about the manager’s opinion of Louis Saha and Yakubu. Beckford has a fine goal-scoring record in League One but it seems strange that at 27 years old no club at a higher level has taken a chance on him before now. He was the subject of an unsuccessful bid from Championship winners Newcastle United in January, and the woeful performances he put in after Leeds refused to let him go make Moyes’ decision to bring him in all the more surprising.

Jan Mucha, a goalkeeper who reached the second round of the World Cup with Slovakia, has also joined on a bosman. Judging by his World Cup showing he should certainly make reserve and League Cup fixtures more interesting with his madcap, Jens Lehmann style of goalkeeping. He’s made some cracking saves but overall it seems unlikely that he’ll depose Tim Howard as Everton’s no.1 anytime soon. The way he steamed off his line to try and clatter Dirk Kuyt, only for the unsightly Liverpool striker to beat him to the ball with ease and set up a goal, was positively Richard Wright-esque.

Portuguese striker Jao Silva is another new addition. Apparently he was mustard in Portugal’s second division last season so I can only assume that defences in the reserve league are in for a torrid time. I feel a bit bad for just dismissing Silva straight away but these obscure purchases never seem to amount to anything.

As always the papers are keen to get Everton’s best players sold off. One rag has been talking about Arsenal making a pair of ultimately failed bids for Phil Jagielka, but it seems very unlikely that such a story would fail to at least make the Sky Sports News ticker bar if there was any truth in it.

Little has changed with regards to Steven Pienaar’s situation. He had a quiet World Cup, but surely no one expected him to single-handedly drag South Africa out of the group stages anyway? If someone like Arsene Wenger is serious about moving for Pienaar then he’ll have made his mind up long before this tournament kicked off. I’m still hoping that he’ll sign a new deal but it seems extremely unlikely at this point.

The most alarming bit of gossip has been the news that Mikel Arteta is apparently pining for a move away from Goodison. The Spaniard being linked with a move away has become a staple of summer transfer windows, but the fact that the Echo ran the story with direct quotes from Bill Kenwright is a worrying sign that there could be something in this one.

Kenwright admitted that both he and Moyes had been working over the summer to persuade Arteta to remain at Everton beyond his current deal, which has two years left to run, though the chairman did refute claims that Arteta’s uncertainty has anything to do with the midfielder’s young son recently being diagnosed as partially sighted.

If Everton really are on the verge of losing Arteta and Pienaar then Moyes needs to act fast. No one wants to see our two most gifted footballers leave, but if it’s going to happen then it has to be done as quickly as possible so that we don’t start the season with a completely disjointed side and end up scrambling around in the last week of the transfer window looking for replacements.

The World Cup

It was a bit difficult to follow the World Cup while in Thailand as you never really watch the match properly when you’re drinking in a bar, but since getting back a week and a half ago I’ve found it extremely engrossing despite the number of high profile teams and players failing to perform.

England getting knocked out by the first decent team they faced was almost too predictable to be funny. Almost. As was always going to be the case, Fabio Capello’s authoritarian approach, which was the greatest thing ever when England were rolling over Croatia and Kazakhstan in qualifying, has now been derided as out of touch and the Italian has already been labelled Sven mkII.

It was clear from the squad England picked that they weren’t getting very far. The only decent goalkeeper was told he was too young to play, Jamie Carragher, who couldn’t get a game for England back when he was actually a good centre-half, was taken as a backup full-back, and Rio Ferdinand was named as captain after managing about twelve appearances for Manchester United last season.

Capello will probably have to go because his reputation in this country is pretty much shot in the wake of the battering he’s taken in the press since Sunday. Given how he banged on about not considering any injured or out of form players it’s difficult to imagine anyone taking him seriously again.

The folly of picking someone like Ledley King doesn’t need any further discussion. Carragher, Ferdiand and Terry all demonstrated rapidly declining abilities last season, while Matthew Upson has never done anything to suggest he could cope at the highest level. The very least a team needs to do well at a major tournament is a competent defence.

The reasoning behind spending obscene amounts of money on appointing a strong and experienced character like Capello was that he wouldn’t be afraid to make the tough decisions and leave players out without consideration for their reputations. But after all the talk it turned out that the supposedly ruthless autocrat was gripped by the same fears as the rest. Capello knew that as much as the press would lap it up if he chose to play only one of Lampard and Gerrard, as soon as England suffered a negative result he would be slaughtered for leaving out a star player.

Dunga and Burt van Marwijk were heavily criticised for leaving big names like Ronaldinho and Ruud van Nistelrooy out of their respective squads, but both Brazil and Holland have reaped the benefits of having twenty three fit and firing players at their disposal.

Anyway, now that England are out we can enjoy the football in peace. I like Spain a lot, but I reckon Vicente Del Bosque’s determination to shoehorn Xabi Alonso and a half-fit Fernando Torres into his team will cost them in the end. Spain played a perfectly balanced 4-4-2 when pissing the Euros two years ago, and as good as Alonso is it’s not like anyone watched that team and thought they were lacking a passer in midfield.

I didn’t think Brazil had the firepower to win the whole thing, but after the way they took apart Chile I wouldn’t bet against them. Argentina look good but are yet to be tested by a side who can get at their shaky defence or overrun what I think is a suspect midfield. Their game against Germany should be a cracker as neither team is very strong at the back while both are fantastic going forward.

MMA

Fedor Emelianenko’s stunning first round loss against massive betting underdog Fabricio Werdum has to go down as one of the biggest sporting upsets of recent times. Fedor dropped Werdum early in the bout before diving straight into the Brazilian jiu-jitsu world champion’s guard with reckless abandon. After powering out of a few submission attempts Emelianenko chose to remain on the ground, throwing wild hooks at a man who no heavyweight in the world should consider getting horizontal with.

It was then, at 63 seconds of the very first round, that hell froze over. Werdum caught Fedor in a deep triangle while simultaneously cranking an armbar, tapping out the man who had ruled the heavyweight division for seven years prior to this most unexpected of losses.

Fedor’s future looks uncertain at this point. With only one fight left on his much-maligned contract with M1-Global, Emelianenko could conceivably rematch Werdum sometime this year before finishing off his career with the UFC. However, with ‘The Last Emperor’ talking about retirement more and more frequently in recent months it seems more likely that his one remaining bout on US soil will be his last.

Werdum’s improbable victory is the latest in a series of surprises served up in 2010. Whether or not you regard Rashad Evans’ grounding out of Quinton Jackson as an upset or not, there’s no denying the cataclysmic shock caused by Frankie Edgar taking a decision over BJ Penn to win the UFC lightweight title. Added to that has been the sight of Lyoto Machida being knocked out cold in the first round of his light-heavyweight title rematch with Mauricio ‘Shogun’ Rua, Chael Sonnen becoming the no.1 contender for Anderson Silva’s middleweight crown by dominating Nate Marquardt, as well as Jake Shields rallying back from a disastrous opening round to thoroughly outmuscle Dan Henderson in their Strikeforce middleweight title fight.

There’s every chance we’ll see another title change hands come Saturday night as Shane Carwin faces Brock Lesnar to decide the undisputed UFC heavyweight championship. Lesnar has been on the shelf for almost twelve months following a battle against a career-threatening intestinal illness, during which time Carwin became interim champion with a brutal first round knockout of former title holder Frank Mir.

Much will depend on how the time off has affected Lesnar in terms of ring rust, but either way expect a short fight.