By Myles Palmer
It’s interesting to receive such varied, encouraging and endearing e-mails.
And essential to have my blunders corrected.
Seedorf is not Davids. I was not even midnight-tired when I wrote that-must have been a brain malfunction.
Seedorf plays for Inter Milan with Recoba, Vieri,Zanetti, Cordoba,Materazzi et al.
Gilles Grimandi will always divide fans.
Ben Joseph makes a very good point about GG’s blocking off of spaces and angles in midfield.
In certain games Grimandi does a lot of good work OFF THE BALL.We know he is no Beckenbauer, but he has his virtues. He’s brave. He’s busy. He can win high balls.But when he has a stinker he really has a stinker.
Ray Parlour is a completely different footballer.
His main virtue is that he sets the tempo of a game when he is playing well.
And Ray has a great attitude, a very sporting attitude, even though he does make a few reckless tackles and kicks opponents occasionally.
When Ray was a teenager we heard on the grapevine that George Graham thought he was the one player in that reserve team that would make it.
Ray can dribble,tackle,keep going,go past people and win free-kicks.And he can sometimes hit thunderous shots.
What Ray can’t do is cross a ball or read defensive situations.His game, as I explain in The Professor, is about making things happen, and accelerating things by joining in at high speed.
So Ray is effective in a fast game. And Arsenal are very effective in a fast game.
Yes, they lose the ball in a fast game, but they lose it less than their opponents AND THEY TERRIFY THEM WITH THEIR RAPIER THRUSTS INTO THE BOX.
Arsene’s strongest midfield this season was Ljungberg-Parlour-Vieira-Pires.
That quartet was not perfect but it gave Arsenal a bit of everything : initiative, drive, power,penetration,craft and finishing ability.
The disadvantage was that Vieira stayed back too much.
Now that Edu is in the team everything has changed.
Because Edu is everything that Parlour is not.
Edu has vision. He sees things early. He can’t dribble, he lacks Parlour’s powerful engine, but he pick out through passses and knock off first time balls, which is what Arsene often wants.
When I watch Edu I recall Bill Shankly, who said, “The ball never gets tired.”
Edu makes the ball do the work.He is touch player, not a power player. He has suddenly become important since Pires suffered that cruciate ligament injury last week against Newcastle.
Some of you want to know : What is Myles Palmer’s background?
Alleyne’s Grammar School, Stevenage, Manchester University, advertising copywriter in Soho, feature writer for Radio Times,rock critic for The Times, Oz, Time Out,Zigzag, Rolling Stone, The Scotsman.
Also, football writer for The Scotsman, Scotland on Sunday, The Scottish Sunday Herald,FourFourTwo and 90 Minutes.
Author of books on Woody Allen, Mark Knopfler (I’m not a fan of either, but when they ask me to write a book I often do), a book on punk-New Wave, a book of rock quotes called Small Talk, Big Names.
Co-author with Mark Jacob of What’s The Story? Boring Glory.
I also co-managed several groups and we released some singles on 4-Play Records (Sounds for Engaged Couples).
I have never been a coach or a player.Didn’t become interested in football till I was 15.
Saw Denis Law on TV, thought he was impossibly brave, skilful, fast, theatrical,compelling, electrifying.
Went to Manchester University so I could watch Denis Law every week, but that did not work out.
First day, Freshers Week, joined the Independent, the fortnightly student newspaper, as soccer reporter.
Second day, went to The Firs sports ground to meet the team, led by player-coach Graham Edwards, a lecturer at Tech who was, I think, 24 at that time.Everyone in the team was older than this skinny kid who had just left school.
First Saturday we were away to Wigan Reserves in the Manchester League. Graham drove me to Wigan in his grey Sunbeam Alpine sports car.
Wigan had a player who had played for a Welsh club in the European Cup Winners Cup the previous season, but we beat them 2-0 on a mudheap.
And that was it. I was hooked.
That was what I did every Saturday and every Wednesday for the next three years, travelling in a coach on Wednesdays to Liverpool, Nottingham, Leeds, Sheffield, Birmingham, to play other universities, singing Beach Boys songs as we motored over the Pennines,diving into fish and chip shops on the way home.
And on Saturdays we travelled in cars and played in this semi-pro Manchester League against very tough, talented guys. And we also played in the Lancs Amateur Cup against good clubs like Prestwich Heys.
That was where I started to learn about football : from young amateur players who were architects, doctors, engineers, mathematicians and language students.
Our president Len Langford had been a goalkeeper behind his friend Matt Busby and one day Matt came down to the Firs in a beige Rover driven by Jimmy Murphy,his assistant, to see us play his youth team.
I talked to Matt and Jimmy and had my photo taken with them but I never saw the photo as I was only concerned with photos that went into the paper and I would never have published a photo of myself because that would not have been hip.
It would be nice, now, to have that snap, but it was no big deal.My memory of Sir Matt is enough
The Man United youth team featured Brian Kidd, then 17. I thought Johnny Brooks, our No 10, who was 19, was better than Kidd.
The game, against a bunch of whippet-fast teenagers who trained every day, was very hard work and they beat us 3-1.
On another Wednesday when we didn’t have a game we played Blackburn Rovers reserves and they beat us 8-0.
They had Keith Newton at right half, who later played right back for England in the 1970 World Cup, and Andy McEvoy, who was the Ruud van Nistelroy of 1967.Andy scored four or five.
One thing about Denis Law, my super-hero. I interviewed him for The Independent and he changed my life forever.
Denis asked if he could bring Pat Crerand in to share the interview “for moral support”. Afterwards Pat gave us a lift back to the University Union in his big Ford Zodiac.
That day changed my life because I realised that famous people were not another species, just folks who could do one thing very well.
So after that I was never in awe of famous people, which was a help later on when Radio Times sent me to interview Ralph Coates, Anthony Hopkins, Dave Allen, Richard Briers, Chuck Berry, Edmundo Ros, Don McLean, Alan Price, Cliff Thorburn, Elton John and many others.
I guess that’s my background….
30th March 2002.