By Myles Palmer
Tuesday night’s 0-0 against PSV was a yawn.
And the red card for Toure was predictable.
Arsene wanted to rest Cole. Juan has done his cruciate.Van Bronckhurst is just back from a seven month injury and in no state to face a greyhound like Rommedahl.
So the manager, stuck between a rock and a hard place, gambled on the raw Toure.
Toure’s level of dynamism is very high. But his level of naivity is also very high.
He was bound make a rash tackle or two and he deserved to be sent off.A great shame for him, but predictable.
Overall, a snooze,a dead game.
But Shaaban, even on this glimpse, looks better than Taylor.
I fancy Shaaban to do well against Spurs.He will have plenty of crosses to handle and more saves to make than he did against the dull-as-ditchwater Dutch.
Cygan played solidly. And Arsenal kept a third clean sheet in a row, for what that’s worth.
TONIGHT’S Newcastle effort in Rotterdam was energetic,naive, shaky, improvised, determined.
Newcastle played with tons of spirit and won 3-2 to qualify Because Juventus won 2-1 in Kiev.
Bellamy’s first goal was excellent, Viana’s for 2-0 was pretty cool. When it went to 2-2 and the Geordies were in the Uefa Cup.
Then Dyer burst through on his own in the 90th minute.
The keeper parried his shot and Bellamy smacked the loose ball in from a very narrow angle.
Feyonoord v Newcastle was a European Cup tie. Remember those?
I said Basle were rubbish and that Liverpool would win over there. Another own goal!
It was a 3-3 draw after Basle took a 3-0 lead in 29 minutes.
Liverpool are too rigid to react to the ebb and flow of a game, as Newcastle were able to do against Juventus and Feyonoord.
Houllier’s reds needed a win to go through.
But they went 1-0 down in 90 seconds when Basle did to them what Arsenal did in Eindhoven: won the ball, broke very quickly down the left and an unmarked man ran in and scored (Gilberto,Rossi).
Houllier tinkers, never consistently picks his strongest side.
And Owen can’t get into these games.That is my main
conclusion this week.
Michael Owen, European Footballer of the Year, does not know how to get into these games.
We have seen Owen struggle with this again and again for two years.
Why can’t Owen get into these games? Well, it’s 60% down to the way Liverpool play, and 40% down to the way he plays.
He has a one-dimensional style, always looking for the ball thatputs him in on goal.
But he has no Cantona, no Bergkamp, no Beardsley , no Sheringham to play him in.
Owen is almost never in a position to take a pass and play somebody else in. As a team player in the Champions League he is pretty clueless.
Because of this Houllier brings in Smicer for these games
because Smicer can invent it as he goes along, like the Valencia players, like the Newcastle players.
Liverpool play in straight lines and Smicer gives them a bit of wriggle and squiggle, like Bellamy, like Dyer. Ball-players create unusual situations, unusual angles.
Smicer set up the first goal for Murphy, scored the second, a fine opportunist strike.
Owen hit a weak penalty, the keeper saved, and he just scrambled in the rebound for 3-3.
Failure, yes, but Liverpool didn’t go out with a whimper. They failed because they could not react quickly enough to an early goal, followed by a second early goal.
This week’s Time Out has my Mick McCarthy interview.
Mick resigned as Irish manager the day before my deadline, so I rewrote the piece.
I was then forced to say what I think of Roy Keane. I had not done that on ANR during the World Cup. I did 42 pieces about the World Cup without mentioning Roy Keane.
It was a subject I tried to avoid, but it caught up with me.
I read Mick’s World Cup diary. Then I interviewed Mick for 45 minutes. Then I read Roy’s autobiography.
Needed to hear both sides of the story before I put fingers to keyboard.
My conclusion is that Roy Keane’s timing was abysmal.
He was an unexploded bomb who chose the wrong moment to detonate himself. He should have dropped out before the World Cup.
Then, having gone to Saipan, he should have shut his mouth and played football.
Roy’s body is worn out now.
I bet he won’t play in the next World Cup, even if Ireland qualify, which is a big if.
Mick’s book is interesting because it shows what a strange and taxing job national managers have.
Roy’s book is interesting because it shows how a shy Cork kid becomes an intense, lonely, intolerant superstar.
In case you didn’t know, Bryan Robson advised Keane to be patient, to bide his time before taking revenge on Alfie Haaland.
I’m sure Robson does NOT appreciate Keane telling us that.
13 November 2002.