EPL Talk » Sunderland

Observations About Premier League Saturday Matchday 13

The Gaffer — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 21:21:26 +0000

Thank god the Premier League is back. Nothing against international football, but there’s something very comforting with getting back into the ritual of watching Premier League football and being familiar with the surroundings, the pace of the game and the excitement it creates.

So the Liverpool against Manchester City game on early Saturday was the perfect re-introduction to the Premier League. I found the first half not as boring as ESPN’s Tommy Smyth claimed it was. Sure, there were few chances, but the flowing football was easy on the eye which was punctuated by two unfortunate injuries for Daniel Agger and Ryan Babel.

The second half of the match erupted. The last ten minutes of the match were pulsating with both teams throwing everything forward to try to get the winner, but alas the game ended 2-2 — which I thought was a fair result for both teams.

For me, the player who had the biggest impact on the match was Carlos Tevez who came off the bench and transformed City from a team who looked soulless in midfield to a team that was suddenly dangerous on the attack and had more possession. The thing I love about Tevez the most is that he turns nothing into something. He constantly fights for the ball and a perfect example of this was how he won the ball down the left wing and ran with the ball, passing it to Shaun Wright-Phillips who planted a beautiful pass to Stephen Ireland to score a valuable goal for City.

In the other games I watched, the football wasn’t as exciting as the match at Anfield.

Sunderland’s 1-0 victory against Arsenal was a game that wasn’t for the soccer purist. Both teams played well but Sunderland suffocated most of Arsenal’s attempts on goal and the Mackems had few chances of their own. That’s not to take anything away from Sunderland’s performance. The team battled hard and deserved to get something out of this game, and had a bit of good fortune in the ball falling to Darren Bent to win the match. While Tevez was my man of the match in the Liverpool versus City game, my man of the match at the Stadium of Light was Andy Reid who delivered a performance equal of Tevez by constantly fighting for the ball and pouring his enthusiasm into everything he did for Sunderland.

Just as Liverpool and Manchester City didn’t look like Premier League champion material today, neither did Arsenal. It wasn’t that they were bad. Instead the Gunners were shut down well by Sunderland similar to how Steve Bruce’s side did the same against Manchester United at Old Trafford recently. I’m sure a lot of the excuses for Arsenal’s defeat today will be aimed at the unavailability of Robin van Persie due to injury, but I feel that’s unfair. Arsenal had a few golden chances near the end of the game to equalize but it just wasn’t their day.

With Arsenal’s loss in the northeast, Chelsea moved eight points clear of the Gunners with an emphatic 4-0 home win against Wolverhampton Wanderers. Seriously, Chelsea have become incredibly boring to watch this season. Don’t get me wrong. They’re playing wonderful football, but the matches they play are so one-sided that I find myself losing interest because they constantly cruise to victory with simplicity (except of course in a few games this season such as against Manchester United and Wigan Athletic, where the opposition was tougher to break down).

Last but not least, the match between Manchester United and Everton was exceedingly enjoyable to watch. Everton were very much in the game and fighting for every ball until the 35th minute when Darren Fletcher rocketed the ball with his right foot into the top corner of the net. Despite Everton’s constant persistence, they created very few chances against a Manchester United side that seemed to be buzzing after their recent drop in form during the past few matches.

The second half of this match was very wide-open with both teams trying to get the decisive goal. But it was another piece of class in this game that saw Manchester United scoring a goal. This time it was a perfect pass from Ryan Giggs to Michael Carrick who knocked in a shot with precision into the far corner of the net to make it 2-0 to United. Antonio Valencia’s shot near the end of the match which was deflected in to make it 3-0 made it a very convincing win for Manchester United although you have to think that the scoreline wasn’t a fair representation of how well Everton played at times during this match.

I’ll try to spend some time later tonight watching the other Premier League games played today. But in the meantime, feel free to post your observations about the games today and what was interesting for you.

Photo credit: Soefrie.

Behind the Scenes at Fox Soccer Channel

Eric Altshule — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 13:00:43 +0000

Miles and Barton in the Studio

As Fox Soccer Channel’s Nick Webster told me, “Americans have more access to soccer from around the world than in any other country on earth.” That is undoubtedly true. On any given weekend, you can flip around the dial and find the EPL, Serie A, La Liga, the MLS, the Bundesliga, the Mexican leagues, French Ligue 1 and an odd assortment of other broadcasts from around the world, not to mention the weekday Champions league games.

Much of that bounty is provided by Fox Soccer Channel, which has become the most valuable kitchen to feed America’s expanding soccer diet. This last Saturday, they were nice enough to let me be a fly on the wall to see how their Saturday EPL package is put together. Working out of a fairly non-descript office building in West LA, FSC employs a mere couple hundred people (compare that to the names the scroll by for the credits of any single NFL broadcast) who put out a variety of original programs and broadcast feeds coming in from all over the world.

For their Saturday broadcasts, the process starts earlier in the week putting together the clips and animation for their Saturday preview show. Fox will request from Sky in England tapes of the managers’ weekly press conferences, game highlights and other recordings, and cut and animate that footage for the commentators to discuss.

For the Saturday pre-game show, those commentators are Christian Miles and Warren Barton. One of the “pleasures” of the having FSC headquartered in Los Angeles is that they are eight time zones away from England, which means their pre-game show begins at 6:30 am. Call time for Miles, Barton and the crew is 4:30 am. If that sounds a wee bit early, consider the relief that the crew must have felt when ESPN picked up the lunchtime EPL game on Saturdays. When FSC had that game, the crew had to be in their seats and ready to go at 3:30 in the morning.

From 4:30 until 6:30, producer Jaime Trujillo, Miles, Barton and the rest of the broadcast team analyze their video packages, discuss and refine their commentary and rehearse their on-air banter. These rehearsals are as valuable to Jamie and his team in the control room as they are to the on-air talent. They plan when to roll their video and animation, time the commentary to make sure their commercials fit, and properly teleprompt the commercials that Miles reads live.

The FSC Control Room

The studio is a surprisingly small room, made smaller by the set of Super Sunday Plus, which is pushed up against a side wall. It is kept cold to prevent the commentators from sweating under the hot TV lights, and has several big screen TVs dotted around the room so that the commentators can see the video and animation that they need to talk over. The control room down the hall is also small, and is right across from the new control room that will be activated in January when FSC begins broadcasting in high-def.

For this week, FSC’s game was Sunderland v Liverpool, so that meant lots of “Rafa on the brink” discussion as they talked about how Gerrard and Torres were missing and the team’s poor run of form on the 6:30 pre-game show. Aston Villa’s upset of Chelsea was completed just before broadcast so Miles and Barton had to quickly plan their comments on that game right before going on the air.

Of course, the one thing they cannot rehearse or pre-animate is the teams’ starting lineups, which becomes available about five minutes into the broadcast. For the production team, the line-ups drive a sense of concentrated urgency. Once the production team gets the lineups off the internet, one graphic producer has to quickly and accurately put all the names and positions onto an animation piece, and he finished his work with just seconds to spare. Miles and Barton are seeing the lineups for the first time at the same moment we at home are – and have to provide their insights (Liverpool started Jay Spearing?!) on the fly.

The pre-game show ends with Miles providing his last comments as the teams come out of the tunnel and the tense no-nonsense mood becomes suddenly jovial. Some of the production team meanders into an adjoining room where a bank of TVs is broadcasting all the games from England and staffers are taking notes on the timing of the important plays and goals so the clips can be retrieved for later use. Miles and Barton are watching the Sunderland v Liverpool game so they can provide their comments at halftime, and Darren Bent’s goal off the balloon becomes the obvious talking point.

FSC Crew Keeping Track of the EPL Games

Meanwhile, down the hall, in one of a half dozen little phone-booth like rooms, two commentators are huddled in front of a television calling the Sunderland v Liverpool game in Spanish for the FOX Sports en Español broadcast. During the mid-week Champions League broadcast, all the booths are being used to tape the broadcasts in Spanish for either live broadcasts or replays of the games in Spanish. Those are the same booths that Christian Miles ducks into to provide commentary for games from Spain, Italy, Germany and other non-English speaking countries.

Play by Play Booth for Calling Games for US Audience

The halftime commentary is trickier to produce than the pre-game show. There are no rehearsals and because of the more frequent commercials, the time for commentary is far more compressed. Timing is everything. In the NFL, the referee is not allowed to blow the whistle to start the second half until the TV people give him permission. There is no such luxury for the folks at FSC. If the commentary runs over for just a few seconds, they can’t cut the commercials and are liable to rejoin the game just after the kickoff or run the game with a few seconds delay – neither choice is really all that great for a crew that prides itself on its production technique. That is exactly what happened on Saturday, and just as he was about to organize the delay, producer Jaime Trujillo caught a lucky break – Sunderland started the second half with a substitution which delayed the kickoff just enough for them to broadcast everything in real time.

After the final whistle blows in Sunderland, Miles provides a voice over for the result and Barton heads off for a quick taping for the foxscoccer.com website. As busy as this all seems, this is actually an easier day because the normal wrap-up show has been pre-empted by a Serie A game.

Throughout the day, one thing becomes clear: all the FSC employees seem to have a real passion for soccer. As Trujillo emphasized, he takes pride in the way his production team “respect the game.” I asked several different people at FSC about the new investment ESPN is making in the EPL, and while they admire ESPN’s technical ability, the FSC team takes pride in their ability to authoritatively deliver soccer in a focused way that ESPN never will.

Respect the Game!

Why Can’t David Healy Score In The Premiership

Paul Bestall — Sun, 06 Sep 2009 21:52:58 +0000

If you were your country’s top scorer with a healthy 35 goals in 73 appearances, chances are you’d be an established top league player in most countries in Europe. Add to that record a career that has seen you start out at Manchester United and take in spells at Leeds United, Sunderland and Fulham, you’d expect a pretty good record. Yet, if that player was David Healy, you’d be scratching your head.

Here’s a man who scored a hat trick against Spain in September 2006. In fact, during qualifying matches for the 2008 European Championships, Healy bagged an incredible 13 goals in 12 games, making him the top scorer in qualifying for the tournament. Yet in the last 18 months he’s scored just 2 Premier League goals in 20 matches and his time at Sunderland has seen him struggle to maintain a place in the starting line up.

His time under Roy Keane never really took off and when Keane walked out after spending the best part of £100 million to make a team worse, his replacement, Ricky Sbragia preferred pragmatism to striking options and played with only Kenwyne Jones up front. As he’s just turned 30, is it too late for him to force himself into Steve Bruce’s plans? With Darren Bent joining over the summer, Healy has yet to play any Premiership football so far this season.

Healy has almost had the reversal of some players careers, in that he is so prolific at international level, but so inconsistent at domestic level. How is it that someone can score 35 goals against sides such as Sweden, Spain and Denmark, yet struggle to score more than 15 goals in a league season? He’s managed that feat only once, in 2003-04 when he was at Preston and currently has scored a total of 90 goals in English domestic football.

He’s the only player to score a hat trick twice for Northern Ireland; even George Best never managed that, but only scored one in league football. I doubt I can remember a striker with such a strange record in the modern era. When he joined Fulham in 2007, it was supposedly the move that would finally see Healy establish himself as a top flight striker but he only scored 4 Premier League goals for the Cottagers. He hit two in his first two league appearances, so then hit 2 in another 28 games.

How is it possible? I don’t understand it at all. When you look at someone who was the complete opposite, Ian Wright, who was so prolific at league level but only scored 9 goals for England in 31 games. Or even Andrew Cole, with just one international goal to his name in 15 games but 289 throughout his domestic career.

Healy has the talent, his international record cannot be a continual series of flukes spread over a series of years. If anything, the early part of his international career could be written off, as Northern Ireland struggled to win any game for nearly16 matches and two years between 2002 and 2004. His international career is currently going through a similar spell, with only 1 goal in his last 12 appearances. No doubt a hangover from his domestic struggles but Healy is an international footballing enigma.

The question is can he finally find the right relationship with Steve Bruce at Sunderland to finally ignite the touch paper under his career? Northern Ireland’s fans will be hoping he can find his form as soon as possible.Unfortunately they need him to be in form right now, but the next match could see him end his bad run and if he ever needed to do it, now is the time.

Wednesday night sees them entertain the group leaders Slovakia and a win will put Northern Ireland top of the group and just one game away from a return to the World Cup for the first time since 1986 and wouldn’t that be a phenomenal achievement.

Darren Bent’s Rant Goes A-Twitter

Ethan Armstrong — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 17:57:00 +0000

When I first heard of Twitter, I thought it was a dirty verb, like: “Get Twittered!” or “Go Twitter yourself!” (And maybe there’s still potential for that.) Turns out it’s a social networking website. And it has undeniably become the Next Big Net Thing.

In addition to allowing friends to keep up with each other’s day-to-day goings-on, all kinds of organizations from restaurants to sporting clubs to Ashton Kutcher are learning to use its free marketing potential to promote themselves. EPL Talk’s own The Gaffer uses it to keep folks current with our site’s updates.

But alongside the benefits, there’s plenty of room for error as well. Controversy arose this week when Tottenham Hotspur’s Darren Bent used Twitter to vent his frustration over stalled transfer talks. He reportedly posted the following items on his Twitter account:

“Why can’t anything be simple? It’s so frustrating hanging around doing jack s**t. Seriously getting p***ed off now.”

“Do I want to go to Hull City, no. Do I want to go to Stoke, no.”

“Do I want to go to Sunderland, yes. So stop f*****g around, Levy.”

There was speculation it wasn’t really Bent’s account (I was hoping it would prove to be Steve Bruce’s), but today Bent owned up to his posts when he apologized on Tottenham’s official site:

“I appreciate that transfers are seldom straightforward and are often complex. However, after a long period of waiting following my withdrawal from the plane to China, I had become incredibly frustrated by the time these things take and I posted inappropriate comments on my Twitter site.

“I allowed my emotions to get in the way of my better judgement. I regret my actions and did not intend to offend Daniel Levy or anyone with the nature or the content of my posting.”

Bent’s retraction aside, does this mean Twitter will play a bigger role in our football media terrain? Will we see players and managers using Twitter to wind each other up? Complain about refereeing decisions? Flush out transfer speculation? Will we be reading articles every week about professional football Tweets?

The possibilities are endless…

A_Zaki: I was completely onside. Linesman was drunk. Time to sulk.

RafaBeni: Getting nervous. Bought Xabi case of Rioja in case he’s on fence.

Fergie99: TiVo’ed Rafa’s latest press conference. Hoping for rant pt 2.

BexInLA: Took Landon bowling to ease tension. Kicked his arse. Oops.

City_Hughes: Players in place. Time to shop for chemistry.

J_Barton: Anybody know a good lawyer?

In 1998, when I started going to the University of New Hampshire, AOL Instant Messenger was the big rage. We were bent over our computers all hours of the day, keeping up with old friends from home and getting to know new ones at school. I remember many the awkward moments and endless misunderstandings that come too easily with such brief, faceless, voiceless interaction. We learned some big lessons. Like: sarcasm is hard to convey over the internet. And: always talk about the big issues in person. Eventually, we succumbed to communicating using the away message function (the message one left when away from Instant Messanger: at the library… at the dining hall… surfing for porn…) in an attempt to avoid the real-time electronic faux pas. These “status updates” became the template for today’s Tweets.

Later, this desire for online social networking gave birth to sites like Friendster, MySpace and Facebook. Each one seemed to catch on for a while before getting knocked off the perch by the next. But Twitter seems to reach all the way back to Instant Messenger and amplify that concept to a mass scale.

Bent’s comments might have once been some quiet griping to personal friends. No story there. But today it gets broadcast the world over. Anyone who’s paying attention gets wind of his complaints. And it ends up on all the media sites as the controversy du jour.

As we demand more and more information in shorter and shorter bursts, it’s easy to get caught in the stream. The lesson those in the public arena need to learn—similar to what we students learned at University long ago—is despite the ease of transmission, you need to watch your words. Now more than ever. The world is potentially listening.

Oh, by the way… keep an eye my upcoming can’t-live-without-it social networking site: TweetMySpaceBookster.com™. It’s going to be huge. Coming soon to a laptop near you.

Legends of English Football: #3 Len Shackleton

Paul Bestall — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 22:31:06 +0000

For most Sunderland fans, there is nothing finer than taking a player from Newcastle and making him one of your own. When the Mackems broke the transfer record in 1948 by paying £20,500 to bring Shackleton to Roker Park, they captured one of English football’s most mercurial talents. Shackleton was a mould breaker, a player who refused to conform and loved to entertain the public.

Born in Bradford in 1922, Shackleton ended up as a trainee at Arsenal but was freed, aged 17 as the Second World War started. Managing to avoid being drafted, he signed a contract on Christmas Day with Bradford Park Avenue. At the time, it was illegal to sign a contract on Christmas Day, but Shackleton reminisced about breaking the law when he signed. “I didn’t care and neither did the club. It was all I wanted to do”

Park Avenue, whilst now stuck in the Unibond League, were a steady lower league side at the time and throughout the war Shackleton used to play twice a day. He’d turn out for B.P.A in the morning and then appear as a guest for Bradford City in the afternoons. He hit 171 goals during 6 seasons of war time football and he became an idol at Park Avenue. At the end of the war, Shackleton was highly sought after and the club turned down several offers but they eventually received an offer they couldn’t turn down from Newcastle United and Len made his way to St James Park for £13,000.

As debut’s go, Shackleton’s first game for Newcastle couldn’t have gone much better as he scored six and set up four in a 13-0 romp against Newport County. Yet, Shackleton didn’t enjoy his time at the Geordies at all. Asked later in his career about his feelings towards them he summed it up as “I’m not biased when it comes to Newcastle United, I don’t care who beats them”

In February 1948, Shackleton made the move which would make him a legend and joined Sunderland. The club was earning a reputation for spending big money, becoming known as the Bank of England club throughout the early 50’s, but Shackleton perhaps never received the credit he deserved as Sunderland simply couldn’t win a trophy that they’re investment suggested they should. Adored by the fans and management at Sunderland, he was not popular with power brokers of English football.

You see, Shackleton was known as the “Clown Prince of Football”; he loved to entertain the crowd and bamboozle any opponent that came up against him. Scoring the simply goal was not enough, he needed to entertain. He would dribble once, twice, even three times past a defender just to show he was completely in control of the ball. Famously against Arsenal, he dribbled his way into the box, stood on the ball and looked at an imaginary watch on his arm. As the defender came flying in, he simply rolled the ball to one side and continued dribbling around the mystified Arsenal defenders.

Against Sheffield United, he once held up play by smashing the ball in to a snowdrift to waste time and his most famous trick was to play a one two with the corner flag, leaving many a full back on their behinds, cursing their luck to marking him. Yet, for his popularity with the general public, he was despised by the F.A. The England manager of the time, Walter Winterbottom once remarked “I wish Len would come half way to meet the needs of the team, there wouldn’t be anyone to touch him.”

It is clear to anyone who knew about football in the late 40’s and early 50’s that for Shackleton to only ever have received 5 caps for England was a disgrace, but the man himself didn’t care. “England play at Wembley Stadium, not the London Palladium.” In 1955, he published his controversial autobiography that included the now legendary chapter entitled “The Average Director’s Knowledge of Football”. It was a blank page.

A niggling ankle injury sustained in the 1951-52 season eventually caught up with Shackleton and he was forced to retire after the first game of the 1957-58 season. In retirement, Shackleton continued to be a thorn in the football authorities side, comparing footballers in the 1940’s and 50’s as modern day slaves and as a journalist for both the Daily Express and the Sunday People continued to criticise the suits he felt ruined the sheer joy of football.

The Prince passed away in 2000, in Grange upon Sands after suffering a heart attack and his legacy still continues to bring joy to the legions of fans that saw him at his pomp in the 1940’s and 50’s. A true maverick of the English game, he claimed that Paul Gascoigne was the only player he’d ever pay to see as he was the only one who almost as talented as he was.

The world record transfer in 1948 of £20,500 when he joined Sunderland
309 goals in 612 games
1 goal in 5 England Appearances
First footballer to publish his autobiography