How has the need for instant football gratification led us to a situation whereby Manchester United’s new ?18m midfield man Michael Carrick has to sit on MUTV and deny that there is any panic or crisis at Old Trafford on the back of their seemingly catastrophic 1-1 draw away to Reading in the Premiership?

Is it ironic that it’s Michael Carrick that had to field the questions following United’s meagre haul of only one point from their previous two games (conveniently forget that they played major competitors Arsenal in the other game) seeing as Carrick himself has hardly set Old Trafford alight since his big money move from Spurs and has United fans questioning already whether he will ever fit in at the club?

The Benfica game in the Champion’s League is obviously weighing heavily on United minds as the great European victories over Eusebio’s Benfica in the 1960s have been all but forgotten following last year’s shock defeat and early Champion’s League exit in the group stages with the ignominy of propping up their group.

With so many of the top clubs in so-called “crisis” already this season, Liverpool, Arsenal, Spurs and even Chelsea after their Middlesbrough defeat, is it the press or the fans who are creating this feeling of mass hysteria if a club so much as drops a point or two (like United at Reading) or doesn’t finish the season undefeated? Newspaper hacks need to fill column inches and fans are always eager to jump on a knee jerk reaction bandwagon and seemingly quicker than ever in the modern game.

The financial bandwagon of the Champion’s League has led the top clubs and their fans to expect success at every turn and with Manchester United’s own TV station bringing up issues like crisis talk with new signings who have barely played half a dozen matches for the club, the pressure must be unbearable.

Manchester United sit third in the table with 16% of the season gone and are only two points behind league leaders Chelsea. If that’s a crisis then there are 17 clubs below them in the Premiership who would just love to be involved in the same crisis as United are.

Ok, I’ve put my hands up. I’m not a hardcore Swindon supporter. I don’t have a scarf touched by Jamie Cureton. I don’t have a dartboard with Iffy Onoura in the middle and certainly I certainly don’t pray in front of a Dennis Wise poster. So I don’t go to the away games. Big deal.

But I have picked up on something.

Something bad.

But later for that. Right now, thanks to our tantalising 1 - 1 with Notts County, we’ve slipped to fourth. Fola Onibuje, the very man I was raving about last time, scored our goal just after half time, putting us very slightly ahead and reversing the Notts County dressing-room chat. But they found some courage and pulled back in there through Alan White in the 67th minute.

So now we’re fourth, at the bottom of a 4-team plateau made up of Walsall, at the top thanks to the 5-0 smashing of Peterborough. Then comes Lincoln, level on points but a little shy of goals. Then comes Wycombe, level on points with us and only 1 ahead on goal difference. Then us, backing up the rear with our red flags and shaky English football legends from a bygone era. Sorry. I shouldn’t speak about the governor in that way, even though he has as much involvement in the team as a banana does in NASA.
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Another Saturday, another capitulation, another raft of excuses on internet messageboards about why Spurs fans should sit tight and just suck it up after another game of missed chances and broken dreams.

Liverpool at Anfield hasn’t ever been an easy game and there were no Tottenham fans going into this one today thinking anything otherwise. Personally I shocked Liverpool fans on the forum by offering my objections pre-match to Martin Jol and his long term tenure as Spurs head coach and with every game that passes I feel my opinion being vindicated. Not that this makes me smug or happy I might add, the crisis (and it is now a crisis) at Spurs this season has been heartbreaking after the moves we made to regain some semblance of respect last season and shows no sign of being broken.

The Jol supporters only have the old story of “there’s no one to replace him” left as their only defence of his start this season and in that they do have a point. Chris Hughton would be the caretaker until a new manager was found and as I feel he is as much of the problem as Jol’s inability to put together a workable system then he’s of no use to us either.
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The one and possibly only contribution that ITV has made to modern day football is introducing U2?s Beautiful Day as an anthem for British footballing culture. It is another classic from the Dublin boys that I would like to propose head all previews to the forthcoming weekend?s matches though. Forget ?Smackdown Sunday? where the supposed top four of the Premiership went head to head in a blatant and unashamed choreographing of the fixture list by Sky. This ?Scintillating Saturday? throws up two clashes to be savoured between another of England?s top four clubs. Yes League One?s Port Vale versus Bristol City and Tranmere Rovers versus Nottm Forest is in the eyes of this footie fanatic, Even Better Than The Real Thing.

Whereas Arsenal v Manchester United and Chelsea v Liverpool sets up the biggest clubs in Britain with Premiership title aspirations thrown together in a must see for the viewing public worldwide, they are hardly the in-form teams of their division. The tenth game of the Coca-Cola 2006/07 League One campaign however will match up first with second, third with fourth.
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You?ve got to feel for Steve Harper. A very good goalkeeper and a great backup to the almost irreplaceable Shay Given, he has the dirty job of hoping that the latter gets a serious injury so that he can get a run in the team and maybe, just maybe, he can claim the No.1 keeper?s jersey. The trouble is for Harper, who started only his 3rd Premiership game in 5 and a half years last Wednesday, is that he cannot stop making mistakes when he does come in for a (rarely) injured Given.

I seem to remember a mistake he made against Villa a couple of years back and in the 2004/5 season his unfortunate kick rebounded to Jermaine Defoe who slotted in from close range, resulting in a 1-0 defeat at the hands of Spurs. Harper said himself that he was ?absolutely devastated? after that mistake and now he has to deal with this - although we never looked like winning against Liverpool at Anfield, I?m sure Harpers confidence could have done without the knock that comes from conceding a goal from all of 70 yards out which finished the game off at 2-0.

?Shay has been outstanding but I’ve never resigned myself to the fact I am No 2. I work my socks off and then I’m like a bear with a sore head when the teamsheet is put up because I want to play.
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So the time has finally come that The Championship’s most inconsistent manager Kevin Blackwell of my beloved Leeds United has had his marching orders, he took over in May 2004, and managed to get us to the play off final, now if he only he had told his players it was the play off final and not just a day trip out to Cardiff, things could have been so different and we wouldn’t find ourselves second from bottom and on a fall from glory nearly as fast as Sam Allardyce’s looks set to be.

This interestingly leads us on to who will be the next person to take over at Elland Road, and i’m afraid to say who ever it is Leeds fans will surely be dissapointed, i first started supporting Leeds when they were in the equivelant league they are in now, and were managed by Howard Wilkinson, he was then replaced by George Graham who at the time was out of football because of a bung scandal, (funny how these things come round again) he then left us for Spurs and we replaced him with wait for it ….. his assitant, now David O’Leary did a good job no denying that before he was sacked and replaced with Terry Venables, who had been out of the game for a while, so we got rid of him and replaced with Peter Reid who proved his managerial skills by being unable to recognise Ian Harte (his own player at the time) on A Question Of Sport, he kept us up, but then he had to go to, and Eddie Gray, another assistant took over, only for his assitant Kevin Blackwell to come and go.

What i guess i’m trying to say it doesn’t really matter who leeds get linked with the likelyhood is they will make the wrong choice, Alan Curbishley seems the most likely candidate at the moment and that would not really be a suprise as he appears to be Mr Reliable, i mentioned to Alan in the forums, that we might get O’Leary back and he seemed suprised i suggested it, but if i’m honest i don’t blame him, it was all Risdales fault, who would be my ideal candidate, well apparently Ken Bates is very good friends with Claudio Raneiri and if that was to happen i would finally get my dream of a big name manager who may actually do something, and who wouldn’t like to have Claudio’s wisdom back in the Premiership.

After another week spent sifting through the comments on SOTG to root out the bad seeds who just can’t help themselves but dish out uncalled for abuse to both writers and other readers I’ve decided that in future all debate and discussion will be better served on State of the Game Forums and comments will be closed from this moment on.

SOTG is evolving as anyone who has been involved as a writer or reader over the past year will know and we feel separating the discussion side of the site slightly from the articles will give us the best chance of getting some intelligent debate in the long run.

Registering for the forums only takes a few seconds and is completely free of charge, sign up now and get entered into September’s free prize draw for a signed copy of Alisdair Gold’s new football book “Ode To Jol - A Spurs Fan’s Diary” as well as getting involved in the discussion and football chat going on in the forums on a daily basis.

We really feel that this is a positive move for SOTG and hope that our loyal readers will agree.

All the best, keep reading our wonderful feature articles every day and get registered on the forums to get discussing and arguing like a group of old married couples about what’s happening day to day in the beautiful game

Alan
Editor, www.stateofthegame.co.uk

Welcome to a brand new competition from State of the Game where one lucky winner will be getting their hands on a signed copy of Alasdair Gold’s brand new football book “Ode To Jol - A Spurs Fan’s Diary”.

Ally Gold is a former State of the Game columnist and one of the funniest football writers I’ve had the pleasure of being involved with in my time running this site.

To get involved just move over to the Ally Gold competition thread on SOTG Forums, register as a member (it’s completely FREE and only takes a few seconds) and have a read through the few rules for entering.

Basically we just need you to sign up as a FREE registered member of our forums and you will be entered into a draw on the 30th September at 5pm to win “Ode To Jol” , whether you are a Spurs fan or not, Ally Gold’s “Ode To Jol” is well worth a read for any football fan.

Check out the Amazon.co.uk reviews and availability now for Alisdair Gold’s “Ode To Jol”:

and then enter the State of the Game competition to win your own signed copy!

Not many Rangers fans are predicting victory over Celtic in the season?s first old firm game this coming Saturday.

Within the space of a week, a slightly disappointing start to the season has tuned into a potentially disastrous one, with awful performances in matches against Molde of Norway in the UEFA Cup and then away to Hibernian on Sunday.

Yet again, an early season month of ?must wins? for Rangers have started with a couple of adverse results, while our city rivals appear to be efficiently if unspectacularly plodding along nicely.

It was the abject manner of our 2-1 defeat on Sunday which has caused most consternation among the fans.

Rangers were totally dominated throughout by a Hibernian team vibrant with youth, guile and experience. The Ibrox side failed to register a single shot at goal until they scored, over an hour into the game.
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Before the draw for the semi-final was made, Celtic had already decided to move their home leg from Celtic Park to Hampden in order to accommodate the large number of fans eager to see the game.

Jock Stein spoke about his hopes for the draw, ?Sure, I?d like to miss Leeds, for I feel an all-British final would be a terrific morale boost to our country.?

But he was not to get his wish, as the draw in Rome paired Celtic with Leeds United, with the first leg at United?s Elland Road ground.

Leeds had started their first European Cup campaign in style, disposing of Lyn Oslo 10-0 at home and 6-0 in Norway. In the second round they knocked out Ferencvaros of Hungary, the team they had beaten in the 1968 Fairs Cup Final, winning 3-0 both home and away.

In the quarter-finals they came up against Standard Liege, who had disposed of Real Madrid. They triumphed in Belgium thanks to a Peter Lorimer goal. The job was finished with an eightieth minute Johnny Giles penalty at Elland Road.
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