Danny Welbeck’s conversion gave England a quality 2-0 win over the Swiss midweek.
Guy Bailey
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.
It’s a funny thing with English football. The season gets underway as the hype machine cranks into top gear, every match is given the Superbowl build up, pundits breathlessly exhorting you to watch the game because your children’s lives depend on it and Hull v Leicester turns out to be a 0-0 draw. Everything is keyed up for the start of a non-stop cavalcade of explosive excitement and then, three games in, internationals weekend – which means all domestic games in the top two leagues are postponed as several of the teams will be missing their key men. It’s like enforcing a league-wide bye week in the NFL in week three – an idea so preposterous and ludicrous I’m amazed Roger Goodell hasn’t suggested it yet.
England faced up to an underwhelming warm up game against Norway before the real business of European qualification with an away tie against the toughest team in their qualifying group – Switzerland – on the Monday. A word on the Euros quickly. The championships are being expanded to 24 teams, two teams will qualify from each group automatically and the eight best third place teams will play off so another four go through. In a qualifying group of Switzerland, Lithuania, Slovenia, Estonia and San Marino, England could afford to run a promotion where each fixture a lucky Sunday league team could be given the chance to represent the country and would still qualify. Like every team in who finishes third in their NFL division making the wild card round, the tournament will now be so diluted as to make qualification a non-event. Of course it’s been done to make sure there is no chance of future hosts missing out on the thousands of travelling English, Dutch and German fans.
The other problem with England’s warm-up games and qualifiers is the venue – Wembley. Rebuilt in 2004, it is something of a white elephant in football terms as not having a regular tenant but still requiring regular games to pay off the astronomical fees the English FA ran up building the thing. Hence the FA Cup Semi Finals, Final, League Cup Final and ALL England games have to be played here regardless of desire. Case in point with Norway, when Wembley was being rebuilt, England played at club grounds all over the country, selling out each and every one and having an EPL atmosphere attached to spur the players on, Liverpool. Manchester, Sunderland, Derby even Middlesbrough got games and the fans didn’t let England down. Now, these fans from the North East are expected to travel 200 miles south, midweek for a meaningless game when it could be staged in Newcastle to a capacity crowd, a reality made even more sensible as there are direct ferries between Newcastle and Norway daily! To a moribund chorus of disinterest, the game was petering out to a 0-0 until the ref took mercy on the crowd, gave England a feeble penalty which Rooney duly despatched. He went off to a muted ovation, replaced by Arsenal’s Danny Welbeck and the team suddenly sprang to life looking dangerous and lively – which left the manager with a conundrum as Rooney is the captain and figurehead.
Gareth Bale’s heroics saved Wales a tough fate.
Duly reinstalled for the Swiss game, England laboured against a sprightly but limited team and won 2-0 with two late goals, the first a total shin-in from Welbeck leaving Wenger to think ‘we paid how much?’ – after the game he even admitted as much saying that he only wanted Welbeck on loan but because he was out of town, the moneymen above him made the deal permanent. If you’re an Arsenal fan I guess the key is to send him on vacation in transfer windows if you want business done.
Elsewhere, possibly soon-to-be independent Scotland ran World Champions Germany close in a riveting game before going down 2-1 but the Scots could easily qualify for their first major championships since Euro 96; Both Irish teams came away with impressive 2-1 away wins, the North in Hungary and the Republic away to Georgia – the European one, not Macon and the ATL. Wales were losing 1-0 to ski resort Andorra for half an hour before Gareth Bale remembered he was the world’s most expensive player and woke up long enough to score twice and rescue the win, the Welsh FA subsequently being hit by a fine for their fans staging the most uninspired and undeserving pitch invasion of all time after the second goal – but they shouldn’t complain, another team shorn of their talisman – Portugal – lost 1-0 at home to Albania but will no doubt end up qualifying (see dire new rules, above).
Back to the EPL this week with Man Utd’s latest must-win game being QPR at home and the return of Rio Ferdinand to Old Trafford – except this one seriously looks like a must-win game. Liverpool, shorn of the services of Daniel Sturridge for a few weeks with an injury picked up for England host a twitching rather than resurgent Aston Villa. Chelsea welcome footballing Swansea City to the Bridge and Arsenal put their early season title credentials on the line in the first kick off when they welcome the champions Man City to the Emirates on Saturday Lunchtime.
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.