October 2008 Archives

ALBION'S dreary defending against Hull brought to mind another game, from another time.

Then assistant boss Frank Burrows watched Sekou Berthe - remember him? - perform a 'step over' and then execute a back heel across his own goalmouth during a League game at Gillingham back in 2003.

Burrows raced into the technical area and threw his flat cap onto the ground in utter disgust at Berthe's wanton act of defensive treachery. This was a period where stoppers cleared the ball into touch or down the field.

Quite what Frank would have made of Albion's defending against Hull on Saturday is open to question. Although you can guarantee his reaction would have had a spot of Norman Wisdom about it.

Another time, during a training drill on the club's pre-season tour of Denmark, the same player dropped his shoulder and tried to dribble the ball out of his own penalty area. Gary Megson stopped the session soon afterwards and yelled at SB: "...You can cut that fancy French c**p out while you're at it..."

Fair comment - or at least it would have been had Berthe been from France, as opposed to Mali.

It could also explain why he only played four times for the club.

(With thanks to Albion's matchday programme for jogging my memory)

It's encouraging news.

Geoff Horsfield plans to watch Blues tonight following his operation for testicular cancer.

He is making a good recovery.

Here he speaks to my Birmingham Mail colleague at length about how he is coping - and how humbled he has been by the public's support.

And he also has a special message for all the men out there.

How times change.

Six years ago I was sent to Villa's Bodymoor Heath training ground to interview two of the club's rising stars just before their FA Youth Cup Final against Everton.

Luke and Stefan Moore were introduced to me as two shy lads. They spoke politely, with great enthusiasm for football and were excited about their ambitions for the future.

They were to score three of the four goals (Luke scored once, Stefan twice) which helped Villa win 4-2 on aggregate against an Everton side featuring a 16-year-old Wayne Rooney.

Since then the Moore brothers have lost their way a little. I know little of Stefan, other than the fact that he's now at Kidderminster following a brief spell at Walsall.

Luke, as we know, is busy warming Albion's bench. And try as you might, it's difficult to know what makes him tick.

The enthusiastic, raw and polite boy I met in May 2002 has gone. In his place is a sullen, unenthusiastic individual, who gives the impression of wanting to be anywhere other than a football pitch. It makes you wonder whether he even enjoys football - his body language and demeanour suggests otherwise.

The hunger and spark appears to have gone from his belly. Tony Mowbray assures us that Moore is part of his plans - but then he has to say that, not least as only has three senior strikers to choose from. Moore should be at the front of that three-man queue yet it's fair to say that he's very much a third-choice. You can't help wondering whether Mowbray is losing his patience a little.

So what makes Moore tick?

One theory is certainly worth looking into. Football academies are a wonderful environment for youngsters to develop and polish their game. Villa's is among the best and has been for years. Albion's is catching up fast. In the long run they can save clubs millions in transfer fees and make them money.

Yet these centres take youngsters away from a natural environment and nurture them through a cosseted footballing sphere where they are groomed for the game from an early age. They effectively swap their childhood and young adulthood for football. This can have its advantages. Naturally, the kids will know how clubs operate, the demands they will become accustomed to and the environment in which they will work. They want for nothing as far as their football is concerned.

But there is another side. Reality. Take this kind of footballer out of their little world and they're struggling to grasp what you and I take for granted - that being normality.

Geoff Horsfield gave up a life in the building trade to pursue his dream. Likewise, had it not been for football, Lee Hughes might currently be sat on your roof replacing tiles. Bob Taylor, brought up in Durham's mining community, would have spent most of the mid-80s worrying for his livelihood against the backdrop of the dying coal-mining industry had he not pitched up at Leeds United. These footballers know hard work, knew the realities of life outside of football and it was reflected by their performances and work-rate on the pitch. They played football knowing that they could end up back on the roof or the building site if they didn't pull their weight on a Saturday afternoon. As a result the three players performed with a smile on their faces and could relate to supporters who, likewise, knew where their heroes were coming from.

If Luke Moore was to lose his footballing livelihood what would he do? The fact he could probably retire to a life of wealth suggests that maybe life-after-football wouldn't be an issue. Perhaps this too is a problem. Maybe he loves the trappings of his footballing life and the wealth a little too much to appreciate what he has. Is the motivation and ambition what it should be for a player of his ability and age? Does he care enough when he walks out onto the pitch or the training ground?

Albion fans are struggling to warm to Moore. He's a footballer who had all the talent and boyish enthusiasm in the world just a few years ago. The talent remains, but the sparkle seems to have long gone. One can forgive a lack of ability and even a poor strike rate as long as the effort is there. But supporters will never forgive a lack of drive and determination. And they are currently being short-changed.

Somewhere within Luke Moore there is a great footballer waiting to be unleashed onto the Premier League stage. Moore has the hallmarks of being a great player. If he wants to be.

Whether we see this player re-emerge onto the pitch remains to be seen.

Only Luke Moore can do this.

AMERICAN football fans will have to forgive me but I didn't really know too much about Vince Lombardi two years ago.

Google quickly became a close confidante.

When Tony Mowbray walked into the Hawthorns for his first press conference, on October 18 2006, he brought with him a 'bag of humility' (his words) and spent long periods of the afternoon commenting on how he was influenced by the Green Bay Packers coach Lombardi. The 'philosopher-coach' (again, his words) went onto quote Muhammed Ali, Abraham Lincoln and spoke about the need to spend 'seven hours sharpening the axe' if you're going to spend 'eight hours chopping down trees'.

It was all stirring stuff really. Joe Kinnear he clearly wasn't.

Not all agreed. A few cynics walked out of that press conference sneering at the new Albion boss and his unorthodox comments. How wrong they were. They no longer mock.

Mowbray checked into B71 to be told that promotion was his to lose. He was managing the 'best team in the Championship'. He was also replacing Bryan Robson - much less a favourite of the fans, more of the national and broadcasting media who could bleed him dry by asking him about Manchester United and England when the need arose. Which was usually every week. How on earth were they going to make Tony Mowbray, ex-Hibs manager and Middlesbrough captain, sound interesting?

Worse still, for them, Mowbray doesn't do cliches, he doesn't care much for predictable answers or angry outbursts of neanderthal nature. If he has a problem with a journalist then he just allows it to simmer. His private thoughts never come to the fore.

I spent the 22 minutes of a recent half-hour pre-match press conference listening to a couple of reporters desperately trying every method to get the answer they wanted about Scott Carson and his England prospects. In the end they simply gave up. They never did get the quote they wanted. The same day Mowbray was bemoaning the fact he'd been asked about Spurs and Newcastle by the broadcasters - despite the face Albion were facing Fulham that weekend. He's only interested in Albion. Not even Fabio Capello's goalkeeping conundrum or the St James' saga could draw a public comment.

As someone who speaks to him several times a week, I've noticed a huge change in his demeanour when dealing with the press. He's more confident, articulate and even created his own jargon, I would suggest. His muffled, uncomfortable whispering, apparent when he first took over, has bubbled over into full-blown banter at some media conferences. He even started singing on one occasion. Honesty doesn't always work. He was a little too blunt - some would say reckless - when commenting about Roy Keane's Sunderland a few years back, but that was pretty much a one-off.

Football is a results-driven industry. Pleasing-on-the-eye football will win you friends, success with earn you much more. In two years, Mowbray has taken Albion back to the Premier League, an FA Cup semi-final, a play-off final and watched his side score more than 100 goals last season. He doesn't need accolades - witness the way he brushed aside talk about an open-top bus tour back in May, claiming that the club had not really achieved anything yet. A decision that many disagreed with but a statement which also carried a certain degree of logic and humility (that word again) about it. It also underplayed, rather than over-stated, Albion's relative success. His argument was whether promotion should be deemed as success for a club's of Albion's status...

His record currently stands at 90 League and Play-off games, of which 44 have been won and 19 have been drawn. Just 27 have ended in defeat.

So how highly do supporters rate him?

A recent poll on fans' website wbafansonline suggested that Mowbray was by far and away the best Baggies manager of the last 40 years (on that particular forum at least), taking nearly twice as many votes as Ron Atkinson, with Johnny Giles and Gary Megson some way behind.

Two years ago Tony Mowbray promised to bring back attacking football. Preferably in the Premier League.

He's achieved that. But clearly wants so much more.

In the meantime, as a result of his side's confidence and brand of football, there will be many Albion fans actually looking forward to - rather than dreading - this Saturday's game at Old Trafford.

And when was the last time that happened?

Sometimes the club could do a lot worse than listening to their paying public.

I had a message from Baggies supporter Ant Bailey this week, who alerted me to an idea that had been posted on a message board.

With Albion currently wearing brand-free shirts there are calls for the club to show their support in the fight against cancer - not least as a result of Geoff Horsfield's recent diagnosis - by displaying the name of a prominent charity during this Saturday's teatime clash against Manchester United.

It's an issue which can affect us all.

To raise awareness certainly makes sense.

Over to you Albion...

A few years ago Albion stayed up on the final day of the season. You may remember it.

Radios were attached to ears, Palace drew, Southampton lost, Norwich were hammered, Albion beat Portsmouth and Bryan Robson spent the following day needing to find a dry cleaners for his suit.

One of my own most vivid memories of the day was receiving a text message from my colleague Colin during the second half. He informed me that Blues fans were singing 'Feed the Horse...' during Birmingham's game against Arsenal.

Funnily enough the play list was similar at The Hawthorns.

It was only right that one of football's 'Boy's Own' heroes should score one of the two goals - with his first touch of the ball - in a game where the Premier League script book was simply ripped up.

Predictably, the Horse had a story to tell after the game.

While most players prepared for one of Albion's biggest games of all time by putting their feet up, he turned to a spot of DIY.

Which was bad news for a brick wall at his house.

He said at the time: "I knocked a wall out on Saturday for five hours - anything to keep my mind off it.

"I've got a house that I'm doing up so I just wanted to keep occupied.

"I just needed to get my head around something. I used to do it as a job so I'm used to it."

A bricklayer and builder by trade, Horse has spent all of his football career working as hard as he would if he was still on the site.

He regards football as a privilege. Considering he was a Premier League performer and hero to thousands, he has always remained refreshingly down-to-earth. He remains 'one of the lads' to team-mates, Albion staff members, the press and generally anyone he meets. The Horse also got promoted with four different clubs (including Blues and Albion) - an incredible achievement in itself.

Geoff has just been diagnosed with testicular cancer.

Let's hope he deals with it in the same manner he disposed of that wall.

Get well soon Horse.

So what do you call them:

1. (The) Albion

2. The Baggies

3. The Throstles.

4. All three perhaps?

It's September 1981.

Princess Diana has been practicing her new signature for a couple of months, the Mini Metro is selling rather well and Visage are re-writing the laws of facial cosmetics against the backdrop of synthesizer pop. Steve Strange? Yes, he probably was.

Bryan Robson, meanwhile, is about to play his final few games for Albion. With a bushy perm and still finding England caps hard to come by, Robson is clearly not long for the Black Country.

But, before he travels up the M6, he has one final bit of an eight-year Throstles' chapter to finish off.

It's September 7, 1981. Ulleval, Oslo. Ring any bells?

No.

Let me remind you.

"Vi er best i verden! Vi er best i verden! Vi har slått England 2-1 i fotball!! Det er aldeles utrolig! Vi har slått England! England, kjempers fødeland. Lord Nelson, Lord Beaverbrook, Sir Winston Churchill, Sir Anthony Eden, Clement Attlee, Henry Cooper, Lady Diana--vi har slått dem alle sammen. Vi har slått dem alle sammen. Maggie Thatcher can you hear me?

"Maggie Thatcher, Your boys took a hell of a beating! Your boys took a hell of a beating!"

The words of Bjørge Lillelien, the famous commentator who was to start an annoying trend for post-final whistle sign-offs. England lost 2-1 to Norway.

The relevance is this - it was to be the last competitive England international to feature an Albion player. Sure, Derek Statham, Cyrille Regis and Steve Hunt followed, but they played during tours of Australasia, the Home Championships or in friendlies.

Robson's game was the last time an Albion player performed (and scored, as it happens) in an England game which mattered.

That could be about to change. With England playing Kazakhstan and Belarus in World Cup qualifiers, what price Scott Carson being given a go?

While you ponder that, here's the offending clip - just for old times sake.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PqZTP8-8wIs

In the meantime, Let's fire up the Quattro!

Observations from Saturday's game.

* Interesting to see ex-FA chief executive Brian Barwick and Premier League CEO Richard Scudamore at The Hawthorns. The latter almost caused a diplomatic incident by parking himself in chairman Jeremy Peace's seat before the game only for peace (pun intended) to be restored fairly quickly with a swift round of Musical Chairs. As for Barwick, he still has the look of a man who might have played a Labour MP, alongside Tory Alan B'Stard, in the legendary 1980s' ITV show The New Statesman. All he needs is a bit more tweed in the suit and some elbow patches.

* Roman Bednar still sounds like a Bond villain. And who's going to argue with a man who admits that he enjoys nothing less than a bit of pre-match banter on away trips. Describing one such incident, he said: "We took the swipe cards from the hotel reception, burst into the rooms and splashed water over each other. Robbo and Jono jumped so far into the air." Footballers eh?

* Never underestimate the power of the press. A colleague was asked to hand over his stop watch after fourth official Peter Walton found himself without a working watch. Given that the fellow scribe is part of the West Midlands' contingent, it could also explain why only two minutes were added onto the end of the second-half, despite five subs being brought on - 30 seconds are supposed to be added for each change. All good and well, although the journalist was rather miffed to find that the official was washed, dressed and heading back to his Northamptonshire home having completely forgotten to hand back the stop watch.

* Full marks to Fulham No1 Mark Schwarzer for checking on the health of an Albion fan who got struck by the ball as the two teams carried out their warm-ups. And before you ask, no, it wasn't Pascal Zuberbuhler's mis-kick. It was a Fulham coach, who was putting their two keepers through their paces, who sliced the ball into an unsuspecting fan in the Smethwick End.

* Paul Robinson may be Albion's hard man but he's clearly mellowing. How else could you explain the full-blown kiss on the lips he gave to former team-mate Zoltan Gera as the two teams exchanged their pre-match handshake procession.

It's a pain in the neck for all fans.

You've picked out an away game that you quite fancy, taken a day off work, made travel arrangements, bought your match ticket, perhaps even booked a hotel...only for a TV company to blow all of your plans out of place by rearranging the game often at short notice.

It's inconvenient, worse still it costs you money.

Which is what happened to Albion fan Barry Brisland, who contacted me earlier this week - no doubt one of many supporters in the same boat.

The trainee solicitor had booked time off work and arranged to go, with three friends, to Albion's game at Newcastle, originally scheduled for Wednesday October 29. He booked time off at work, the hotel was sorted out and train tickets were arranged swiftly to take advantage of discount fares.

And then Sky decided to bring the kick-off forward.

As a result the train fares of £26.50 per person have been lost. Because the game was rearranged so late there are no cheap rail tickets available - the least expensive option is £38.50p/p. As they were originally stopping overnight they also have to hope the hotel will reimburse them with a £145.00 refund - or at least allow them to rearrange the dates.

It has left Barry at least £26.50 out of pocket, before he even worries about buying further tickets and whether the hotel play ball.

All of this at a time when football fans are feeling the effects of a credit crunch.

Barry isn't happy.

"It's okay saying that these games are subject to change but they need to be sensible - people are losing money in what are difficult enough times as it is. No consideration whatsoever has been given to fans."

In fact, Barry is so disgusted that he is looking into the feasibility of pursuing a legal action.

He would like to hear from any fans who have been affected by this fixture change.

Supporters can email me on chris.lepkowski@birminghammail.net. I will then pass details onto Barry.