Kenny Dalglish Won't Be Delivering the Module: English Premiership 2011-12

self loathing frog

Isn't there a quota this year?

self loathing british ilxors xpost

there a residual belief that BRITISHNESS confers some special qualities

maybe it does? it wouldn't be sniffed at around here if someone said those were shit qualities so why sniff at it when they're saying the opposite. isn't the reality that there's a better discussion to be had about potential differences between uk players and foreign ones than lambasting some sky sports/john terry strawman at every juncture, like we always do.

some stereotypes or national tropes are based on reality...to an extent. less so in football than in real life but at the least i think you can say people/players are highly likely to have different characteristics based on the country/league that produced them.

uhm....it doesn't

any nationality confers "special qualities"

sometimes it's difficult to appreciate dimitar berbatov's intrinsic footballing qualities because he just screams bulgarianness, you just can't get over how bulgarianly he behaves

Bulgarity, ffs

What are the special qualities of Irish footballers?

determinism via nationality is lazy shorthand at best, like every brazilian player getting defined wrt some 40 yr old notion of MAD SAMBA SKILLZ even though half of them are fullbacks or defensive midfielders

irish footballers are all game lads except john giles who was never a game lad even though he once was a lad, and game

determinism via nationality is lazy shorthand at best But exposure to 'national style' and hence national expectations does affect the way a majority of ppl raised there (and groomed for professionalism) play.

putting aside the fact that every country has its own system of coaches and training and its own league structure, and the fact that a player eventually transcending that after years abroad doesn't prove a lot, i think the fact you have to pick bulgaria to make that retort kind of says it all here. nobody here has a notion of bulgarianness yes, does that mean it doesn't exist? bulgarians prob criticising each other for dumb positive and dumb negative national stereotypes too. just like every other country in the world.

xpost it's not determinism via nationality at all.

What are the special qualities of Irish footballers?

i don't know because it's too complex, but it's totally logical to assume that people trained in one country vs another would have different qualities.

Aw, i was just hoping for joke answers

If there is an inherent British football identity, i'm not sure whether it would apply in the same way to, for example, David Bentley and Andy Carroll or Aaron Lennon and Jonjo Shelvey. Comolli's attraction doesn't seem to be to any particular facet of their game (speed, mental toughness, control, passing, etc). There doesn't seem to be a lot to bind them together other than nationality.

I guess the idea of the 'British spine' at Chelsea and United could have been influential. It's not just a case of EPL readiness, there'd be considerations like the general reluctance for British players to move away from the club to take up opportunities abroad. Gerrard, Terry, Rooney, Lampard etc, would probably have had offers from major clubs in Spain and Italy at one point or another. Perhaps it helps stability.

true, could be an idea that they're better investments in that sense

i only wish there was some way of proving that all countries don't produce the same type of footballer, some sort of global urn

x-post to shari, agree with most of that. esp the first par...i'm not even saying anything positive/negative about uk players, just think if we discuss why england do shit at a world cup then it's hardly wild to discuss what diff qualities, better or worse, english footballers might bring to a prem side.

But exposure to 'national style' and hence national expectations does affect the way a majority of ppl raised there (and groomed for professionalism) play.

― get even girls blue the cows (Michael White), Thursday, 1 September 2011 23:58 (1 minute ago)

yah u are arguing something else

BRITISH, as with BRAZILIAN is invoked as a numinous intensifying factor that somehow enhances the sum of a player's demonstrable techincal/athletic/mental qualities

this is altogether different to the way, rather predictably, trends in coaching affect the types of players produced in different places

That's an interesting point, I hadn't thought of. You're narrowing the pool of clubs that are likely to be interested in enticing your player away from you. Also narrowing the pool of clubs you are likely to sell to if you want rid as well, although EPL wages in relation to most of Europe does that anyway.
xxxp

But it hasn't been a 'buy British' policy? It's players who know the Premier League, can hit the ground running, and get us into the top 4. Or am I being really naive?

BRITISH, as with BRAZILIAN is invoked as a numinous intensifying factor that somehow enhances the sum of a player's demonstrable techincal/athletic/mental qualities

no way is british even close to brazilian here...find some actual examples of someone clearly using british to say that rather than just a vague "he gets stuck in" sense.

that's true, but it does mean you end buy with a lot of british xp

a vague "he gets stuck in" sense counts for a lot if getting stuck in is yr thing

ah look i guarantee you if we were in other euro countries people could argue the same about "italian", "spanish", "german" etc...and find strawmen to back themselves up. it's a global trait to big up your own country, and it's EVEN MORE typical to act like that's not the case and your own is the only country where people have this.

"the irish are terrible begrudgers etc"...it's self aggrandising via self hatred.

dowie and lol bassett were all over this britishness trip last night on ssn

yeah i don't the british predilection for this sort of venal nonsense is much worse than in other comparably sized post-imperial countries

/think/

The Bassett/Dowie combo was a serious visual affront

Definitely a "go British!" thing at Liverpool last summer. There's a good Balague quote that sums it up better than I could.

And Jim White. That was some serious o_O TV last night.

the EPL's huge spending power ought to have invalidated this whole britfetish since it has allowed teams to buy the best BRITISH players from all over the world, whereupon it will have been discovered that the best BRITISH centre halves and centre forwards come from the cote d'ivoire and serbia

dowie and lol bassett were all over this britishness trip last night on ssn

― diouf est le papa du foot galsen merde lè haters (nakhchivan), Thursday, September 1, 2011

yeah i saw this

What were they saying? I missed that bit.

"great bit of business for them, he's british" no really

the internationalism of the EPL is one of the best things about it

a few years ago blackburn had the most nationalities of any team, sthing like 14 i think, and they played really very bad and BRITISH football

it was wonderful

what about ibrahimovic then? Ey? EY?

Can we draw conclusions about the footballing characteristics of orphans from cron?

Gary doherty is as irish as damien duff. Run with that.

I think the approval of britishness from british pundits in britain is pretty much as sharivari says, no cultural, language or settling in issues to trouble simple football men like arry. Or big ron.

Big problem with people who big up Britishness as a positive quality in a footballer is they tend to have ideas about what qualities e.g. Africanness brings to the game.

Interesting discussion, not sorry I missed it tbh

I think there's also the British club culture where the team and club is this charisma-led gang, rather than the more orthodox corporate structure that continental clubs seem to follow. Buying British would be more likely to produce someone who understands and accepts this, and is almost inherently capable of working within it because that's what they've known since they were playing boys' football. Look at it the other way and what happens sometimes when you get a foreign manager parachuted into an English setup, complaints about Sven's halftime speeches or Capello's coldness.

I don't know, maybe it's better expressed as a negative; it cuts down your chances of ending up with a misfit like Andrea Silenzi or Džo Cole.

Think we're possibly underrating the value of team spirit here - it's what Liverpool with their various cliques seem to have lacked in previous years. What Bellamy's talking about isn't really "BRITISH PASSION!!!!!" but "good bunch of lads to go go-karting with".

The problem with this is that said bunch of lads now include Bellamy and Andy Carroll, who are not exactly known for their level-headedness. There'll be a bargain-basement equivalent of the same thing at QPR. It's what killed Newcastle in the mid-00s. Dunno, I'm happy that there are good English/British players coming through but on the other hand I'm not sure that rebooting Liverpool as Spice Boys 2.0 is the way forward.

Also, it means Jamie Carragher and his moronic ilk have won.

Also inherent Britishness with regard to football, like it or not, does mean kick-and-rush. The English players that look most promising - Wilshere, McEachran, Cleverley etc - strike me as far more continental in their approach, but that might not get noticed amid all the hubris.

Probably no coincidence that this discussion is happening at the time the Wenger approach has suddenly and massively gone out of fashion.

Should also be pointed out that anyone who thinks this Liverpool team stand a chance of getting into the Champions League without Best-of-British Luis Suarez is kidding themself.

Tbh the spine of the best current LFC side - Reina, Agger, Lucas, Suarez - isn't particularly British.

LFC lacking team spirit? Istanbul etc

Distilled in the spirit of ONE MAN

a few years ago blackburn had the most nationalities of any team, sthing like 14 i think, and they played really very bad and BRITISH football

Also Big Sam fielding a team without any British players and still being about as lumberingly route-one as it's possible to be.

I dunno, management philosophy strikes me as more important than personnel to an extent, and Dalglish shows every sign of not being an antediluvian idiot.

Never thought LFC lacked team spirit tbh Maybe 2010 team, but for most of the 2000's I'd have said it was one of the biggest pluses of the team. Making up for a lack of quality in some areas imo.

who knows, maybe the lack of banter drove them to such mindless rage that they had no choice but to attack each with golf clubs, but in their polyglot way they didnt lack for determination, indefatigibility or any of the other abstract nouns invented by iain dowie

your americans, your cubans, your mexican lads, they'll be comin at you with a baseball bat most likely. Watch out for that, slightly different arm angle required to block any high swing. The welsh and english boys will favour a golf club, maybe a long iron- the paddies too, most likely, but don't discount the hurl with them or the scots boys. Your french, italians, spanish- those boys will have a blade, every time, watch out for that. The eastern europeans are a facking liability, you could be walking into anythere there, so be on your guard- we all remember balaban pulling an uzi out of his sock during a particularly tasty pace lap in brighton.

Ronaldo is not an orphan

Gary Neville weighs in. I haven't seen him punditing yet but this sort of thing is promising.