A Falcao loan capped United’s drunken binge. Or was it a draw to Burnley?
Editor’s Note: Guy Bailey returns for another campaign of columns for The Yanks Are Coming throughout the Barclay’s Premier League season. He’ll discuss the happenings overseas in the world’s most popular sports league, as well as The Championship, where many Americans ply their trade. Guy offers a unique perspective on the league as a Brit who lived for a long while in the United States before moving back to Teeside a year ago. He can be reached at guyrbailey@gmail.com and you can follow him on Twitter all EPL season at @guyrbailey.
So much to cover in the first “Whiney Limey” of the campaign. Let’s start with the transfer window…
Transfer Deadline Day in England has been built up for the past few years now as some kind of alternative holiday with the necessary hype and hyperventilation that accompanies it, reporters stationed outside grounds up and down the country attracting the kind of pants-on-the-ground, gurning reprobates one seems to attract when deploying any broadcast-standard AV equipment in the public space these days. We usually expect a couple of v-signs and loose-wrist gestures behind the reporters but Stoke Fans took things to a new high, or low, this week with a graphical representation of what Sky Sports (Murdoch’s broadcasting arm in the UK) has done to the English game since the advent of the EPL in 1992 (https://vine.co/v/OBUpp7h0KKH).
So the greatest show in town has ended, the transfer deadline has passed at 11 pm GMT on Monday Evening and now we can supposedly get on with the business of actually playing some football. But who are the winners and losers at this early stage?
Manchester United’s manager now resembling a drunk in a casino more than ever in both behavior and appearance is top of the tree for spending money. Not only the £60m for Angel Di Maria but £13 for Daley Blind, weeks after spending £23m on Luke Shaw, who Van Gaal is eyeing suspiciously, probably for cutting in line ahead of him at the all-you-can-eat buffet, and lastly £6m for Radamel Falcao on loan. That has to be the most expensive HP deal in history. All eyes will be on Old Trafford in a week’s time when QPR and Rio Ferdinand return to Old Trafford to see how the Salford Lakers settle in.
Welbeck bolts for Arsenal.
I have hypothesized for some time that an average, workaday premier league centre forward like Nicola Jelavic or Shane Long would get 20 goals in this very creative and fluid Arsenal team and after spending £16m on Danny Wellbeck from Man Utd, we’ll see how this theory plays out. The Kid from Kid n Play lookalike will finally get the starring central role he felt he was gypped out of by such mediocre talents like Wayne Rooney and Robin Van Persie.
Hull raised a lot of eyebrows, not just for the amount of players they brought in and money spent including Uruguayan hitman Abel Hernandez, Mo Diame from West Ham, Gaston Ramirez from Southampton and most incredibly Hatem Ben Arfa, the martyr of St James Park who while immensely talented, now looks more like he’d fit in working at a kebab van outside the KC Stadium than parading around the centre circle within it. A player for whom the word mercurial was invented for, no doubt Newcastle manager Alan Pardew could add a few more to the list.
Fabio Borini secured himself a key position on Liverpool’s bench for the season turning down moves to QPR and Sunderland before turning to Twitter to defend his actions and referring to himself in third person as ‘the MAN’.
A total of £835m was spent in the summer period more than twice the total of La Liga and four times the amount Serie A clubs spent. I don’t even want to know how much the Bundesliga collectively spent but as Cardiff City got more for finishing bottom of the EPL last season did than Bayern Munich did for winning the Champions League and the Bundesliga, it will assuredly be less.
Nearer home, better philanthropist than Footballer Kei Kamara left Middlesbrough under a cloud as nobody sent him a get-well-soon card after he contracted Malaria while on international duty with Sierra Leone. Most likely because nobody could be found to deliver it to him, he left Boro too late to rejoin Sporting KC as the MLS deadline had passed but expect him to turn up there or somewhere, sooner or later, even if it’s just to help a team with a playoff push. Because he’s out of contract, he can be added after the deadline. Another somewhat malleable MLS rule, but hey, whatever blows your hair back…
Bond villain.
Meanwhile, it was “back to the well” for many clubs prior to the closing of the window. Let’s review where we are at through August.
After England’s terrible World Cup, the apologies and recriminations loom large and this years flavour of the month – Germany are now the emulated model with long-term planning being the core. The message didn’t seep through to Crystal Palace where last years miracle worker and Manager of the Year Tony Pulis decided that he was going to preserve his reputation at its highest and walked of the job.
Ex-Cardiff manager Malky Mackay was the shoe-in for the job and then realised that Vincent Tan not only looks like a Bond Villain but acts like one too, releasing a series of ever more outrageous texts between Mackay and his director of recruitment at Cardiff and now Palace which took in sexism, racism, homophobia, Ophidiophobia and to put the tin hat on it – Homoophidiophobia – fear of gay snakes!!
The role went to annoying former Palace manager and now breakfast radio pundit Neil Warnock, more commonly referred to among English football fans as his anagram name – Colin Wanker and Palace now jump to the top of one table at least – the relegation favourites.
A less welcome returnee to the Premier League, unless you’re a headline writer also reared his distinctive head. Mario Balotelli signs for Liverpool and Brendan Rodgers reacted exactly as my six year old son Vince would when his nana asked him if he enjoyed the game she got him for Christmas – exactly the one he didn’t want. Another, darker analogy is that assuming Rodgers actually wanted him, then he’s like one of those women who shack up with a domestic abuser, convinced that they are going to be the one that doesn’t get hit.
Arsenal start the season brightly with Arsene Wenger adding another attacking midfielder to his collection with Alexis Sanchez while Olivier Giroud, the only proven striker at the club, finds himself sidelined until Christmas which caused the notorious scrooge Wenger spend money, on Danny Welbeck no less.
Did MK Dons really score four?
Manchester United fans feel like the kids in Friday 13th who wake up in hospital convinced last season was all a dream then see a blood splattered nurse come flying through the window as the nightmare just keeps happening. Losing 1-2 at home to Swansea City at Old Trafford on the opening day of the season followed by a 1-1 draw at Sunderland after taking the lead culminating with their worst defeat to lower league opposition in the League Cup in over 30 years when MK Dons, aka Franchise FC aka Frankenstein FC, the only team in football less popular in England than Man Utd, beat them 4-0. Half the team were rested but they were still packing six internationals. This is as big a shock as Mercer beating Duke in the tourney, a result the writer is still unhappy about as he’s a Kennesaw State alum. To ice the cake, they drew with just promoted Burnley, so things are getting ugly real fast down Sir Matt Busby Way. City of course swept Newcastle and Liverpool aside and stride imperiously on and now look on United as the minor irrelevance they once looked upon them.
Never mind trophies and the Champions League, Van Gaal’s most pressing task at Old Trafford appears to be reestablishing relevance.
As noted, Guy Bailey writes on the Barclay’s Premier League for The Yanks Are Coming. Want more Guy Bailey? We highly recommend his new book, Blessay From America, a collection of writings made while living in America, where he married a southern belle and saw his son born, which you can purchase here.