Portsmouth was an alright game in as much as they put in a good performance... I felt we were held back a bit first half - or, more to the point, we held back a bit. They defended well and you could see that Adams had worked on it although the one chink in their armour at the back was none other than Calamity James. He's a brilliant keeper when he wants to win... otherwise - well, he's worse than shit.
Talking of keepers - Almunia is starting to worry me... he's great at a lot of keeper type stuff i.e. closing down, dummying and reaction saves but he has not got a fucking clue when it comes to coming off his line to collect or (see Tottenham game) falling back to defend it (see next game). There's a balance that he just seems to fail to understand - he could be a very good keeper if he worked on understanding this. I was a keeper once, and was PieFace - and our paternal grandfather (although he had more success at it than us), it runs in the family... PieFace still keeps goal in 5-a-side (rather him than me) but I gave it up as I kept dislocating my thumbs and it was affecting my bass/guitar playing... I was playing fretless bass in a band at the time and I also figured that I would be playing guitar longer than I would be playing football so I jacked it in - still got the bass, and my gloves - they gather dust.
I, like a lot of keepers, acquired my skills at school - I hated football and the lack of motivation I displayed that
- I always got picked last in the humiliating "who's the biggest cunt" competition which was the ritual of team picking.
- I got stuck in defence with all the other spazmoids while the glory boys all declared themselves strikers.
To avoid having too much of a social-suicide by association I placed myself in goal... still - I ended up programming computers anyway.
My main problem, when it came to football (and why I hated it as a child) was that nobody ever told me that you shouldn't generally kick the ball with you big toe as it was uncontrollable... I thought this was just my lack of talent at kicking - but I finally figured it out - of course it was too late then for me to be a striker as I was labeled a shit footballer but fairly handy in goal. I imagine that dads are supposed to tell you which bits of the foot to use... but my dad was a rugby man - and never there anyway.
As school progress I worked my way up the picking order - once I was picked 4th which was my best... I didn't go on to great things (unlike pieface who plays for xbox united 5-a-side or something) and only played for work teams - I was pretty good though... I would have been a better striker though on account of my ridiculously short legs in comparison to my height - oh what could have been!
Anyway - I digress. We won due to a James fuckup - and he is one of many players that I am starting to notice have 'off days' - his nemisis is Sol Cambel who, it seems, tries to second guess the way in which he might fuck up - I constantly entertained by rewinding the match highlights when Sol cleans up a fuckup and, instead of ranting, casts James a dead eyed 'you total cunt' look... watch for it next time - really quite revealing!
The other such paring like this is Berbatov and Tevez - I saw a match recently where Berbatov 'accidently' mis-kicked the ball when he had a clear shot on goal only to have Tevez sweep in and bury it - Berbatov just stood there and put his head in his hands like he was totally gutted! Maybe this is the reason why Tevez doesn't start many? Maybe that's why he's up for sale - i.e. he just wants to play instead of following the script..?
I tell you what - if there is any player worth opening the wallet for this January it's him - fuck Arshavin... but I'll get back to him and that murky saga in a later post.
