billy_loes

Terry - Why did you not answer my question ??

Terry - Do you accept, as it is widely, that great swathes of the Bible (James1 version) are pure fiction, written by priests on instruction for the purposes of fear and rule? I am a christian and occasionally attend Church of England services.

Terryczap - are you a fully fledged member living in Idaho?

General My son, aged 9, got a Christmas card off Martin O'Neil today. It means everything to him. Thank you. Merry Christmas and a happy new year to you and your family and everyone at Villa Park.

A referendum would prove a close finish....nose..short head as will the next election.

your guessing though aren't yano more than your good self, but the markets are on my side. According to the sage that is betfair, probability of an election in 2008, approx 8%, probability of an election in 2010, approx 33%. You see I think the Tories want a ready made policy for themselves according to the result. A lot can happen in politics and I wont be betting on the date .......... 8)

your guessing though aren't ya

Would the Conservatives actively support a NO ( against signing) vote? If so no point in wasting money on a referendum when an election will be called next year.

Hi General Some time ago I thought I heard it mentioned that a Membership scheme to the club was being considered. If this is true at what stage is the proposal? If one is to be constructed may I suggest the Arsenal club as a model (we could do better). It facilitates those who cant get to games and yet enables the chances for tickets to those who do in a fair and structured manner. On a three tier system (Claret, Blue, Gold) season ticket holders could automatically become a mid range member for a 30-40% discount, with a £30 pa entry level fee. The integrity of the club and rectitude of the supporter would be highly beneficial to all in a true ad-infinitum club membership.

General - It was wonderful to see the South Staffs (correct regiment?)parade around the ground! And what a great reception. I felt very proud. And so should you and the guys for inviting them.

For all the Jose lovers out there have a butchers at this. Simon Barnes is one of the best sports writers around and The Guardians online stuff is good too. Mourinho October 2005 Come with me to any lower-division match. You’ll probably get a half-decent football game. You’re a journalist, you write down significant information in your notebook. The home team make lots of chances but convert only one, then get caught on the break. The match ends, but your intrepid information-gathering does not. You go to a room, generally bare and unloved, and wait. Eventually – always long enough to keep you in your place – the managers come in, one by one. “How did it go, Ron?” “Well, we made lots of chances. But in this league, you get punished if you don’t take them and that’s what happened today.” And you and your half-dozen colleagues write all this down as if the words were coming from a burning bush. “Were the substitutions tactical, Ron?” “Fresh legs up front.” Then one of the long, ugly pauses that characterise encounters of this kind, before someone asks: “Any knocks, Ron?” The experience of watching a football match is not valid until the manager has spoken. Many, if not most newspapers will be deeply unhappy about a match report unless there is a “quote” from the manager. “We’ve got to work hard in training all week. There are no easy solutions in football.” And we write this all down as if it were Analects of Confucius. Is it not surprising that managers get their heads turned? José Mourinho represents the ultimate triumph of this: The Cult of the Manager. He has done as much as is humanly possible to render the action on the pitch irrelevant. With Chelsea, the story was always the manager. Players, what do they matter? Like Alfred Hitchcock’s actors, they are cattle. Mourinho was football’s star. His entire career was a sweet revenge on the gods that made him unable to play the game. But he was never interested in football for itself; rather, it was football as a vector for power that enthralled him. That was his strength and ultimately his downfall. Because the truth of the matter is that, ultimately, football is a game about spontaneity; about fragments of individual brilliance allied to a corporate resolve. If you reduce football to a series of set-plays, you reduce the capacity for surprise and, therefore, the potential for winning. But Mourinho hated spontaneity. He sought control. He wanted people who only ever crossed on the pedestrian crossing, not realising, or rather, not understanding that a city without jaywalkers is a city without artists. He didn’t want artists. He didn’t trust them. He liked ordinary talents developed to extraordinary lengths: Terry, Lampard, Makelele, Drogba. These were people he could control, these were players who would not get between the manager and his public. One club, one star. Le club, c’est moi. Football’s traditional belief is that the team are an extension of the manager’s nature. Why, you may ask, were Chelsea not flamboyant, feisty, cocky, maverick, paradoxical, intermittently brilliant? Because Mourinho is primarily interested in power. The maverick side of his nature is merely the way he set about claiming power, for it is power, not perversity, that defines him. As a result, the team were in subjection to the manager. This wasn’t a team who cut loose, ever; this wasn’t a team you watched for the sake of this player or that player. You wouldn’t catch Mourinho signing Cristiano Ronaldo or Cesc Fàbregas, talents that need a certain amount of slack in the rope. Rather, Mourinho put his faith in method and control. Chelsea were effective enough but never reached beyond the brilliantly ordinary. The truly exceptional was always beyond their reach, perhaps beyond Mourinho’s understanding. How else to explain his failures with Andriy Shevchenko and Michael Ballack? To fail with one might be regarded as a misfortune; to fail with two looks like a personality disorder. A manager who takes on two of the finest players in Europe and gets scarcely anything from either – indeed, seems to delight in their misfortunes – must ask questions not about the players but about himself. These two players were stars and, as such, they didn’t fit into Mourinho’s plans. They were a threat to him. It was important for him that they failed, and they did. This is heresy: it should be the belief of every coach that anyone of sufficient talent can be accommodated. Mourinho preferred other methods. They work, too. They worked for Mourinho at FC Porto, where he won the European Cup, and they worked well enough in England to bring two league titles, even if a second European Cup was always beyond him with Chelsea. But these methods have their drawbacks. The first is that if you rule the exceptional out of your game, you are going to have problems when you encounter the exceptional among your opponents. You have eliminated the element of individual inspiration. In fact, the only place in which individual inspiration was allowed to flourish with Chelsea was with the goalkeeper. Petr Cech’s head injury was the single reason Chelsea failed to win the league title last season. The other drawback is that your team are going to be less fun. Less fun to watch, less fun to play for. And you can argue all you like that a win is a win and that it doesn’t matter whether you went the pretty way or the ugly way, the fact is that Mourinho found himself in trouble at Chelsea because of a disagreement on the subject of aesthetics. It is true, yet it is not true, that Roman Abramovich, the Chelsea owner, parted company with Mourinho because he was unable and unwilling to deliver football like Barcelona. That was the proximate cause, of course, an ever-growing dissatisfaction with the fact that Chelsea’s highest ambition was to achieve a sustained and brilliant mediocrity. But the ultimate cause was different. If it hadn’t been aesthetics, it would have been something else. Mourinho established a one-star club, with one man attracting all the attention, making all the stories, setting the agenda, one man as the centre of power, one man as the moving spirit, one man eclipsing all others. It really should have occurred to him that a man who had spent 500 million quid to establish the club as a publicity vehicle for himself may get a little bit irritated by that. Because the truth is that Mourinho’s power was only ever an illusion. He drew attention to himself, he had the nation’s football press delighting in every pose, every absurdity, every contradiction, but he was never truly in charge of Chelsea. Such power as he had was loaned, not achieved or given. Mourinho reminds me of the critic in Anthony Powell, whose goal “was to establish finally that the Critic, not the Author, was paramount”. The cult of the manager is designed to promote the idea that the manager, not the player, is paramount and Mourinho’s is the ultimate expression of this cult. And that’s why Mourinho had to go – because the cult is based on a false premise. In the end, the players are the stars. http://tinyurl.com/3d35u8

http://tinyurl.com/33h5yy

what a lot of uninformed rubbish this seems to be. can you back any of these statements up? Not quite a one man team, but close? please expand? you think Chelsea were a one man team and that CM was that man? :shock: why are you ignoring his porto record too? :? Can I back any of these statements up? Who are you, Special Branch? You've answered the second question by quoting me. Its my opinion and I won't be drawn into 'I know more about Football than you' argument. I will say this. As soon as someone sarts talking about themselves in the third person and calling themselves the 'Special One' its game over.

Mourinho has led a charmed life as a football manager. I'm tempted to say his decline has come hand in hand with the demise of Makalele. Not quite a one man team but close. His man management was not good, player power rising to the surface and has been totally undermined by an owner wanting instant gratification. The director of football position obviously doesn't fit with someone possessed with an ego. Tactically weak and insecure of his own abilities, little they are. No thanks I'll have Martin O'Neil.