For me, Clive

William Hill Sports Book of the Year

In November and December 2019, I devised and co-hosted the official William Hill Sports Book of the Year podcast, released in the lead up to the Award.

The podcast features interviews from all six shortlisted authors covering a wide variety of sports, from football and cricket to ultra-running.

I also interviewed some of the Award’s judging panel, including Times journalist Alyson Rudd and broadcaster John Inverdale, on some of their favourite (and often controversially overlooked!) titles from the 31 years of the Award.

You can find all 7 episodes of the series here!

https://audioboom.com/posts/7425786-adharanand-finn-s-rise-of-the-ultra-runners-and-alyson-rudd-on-dark-trade

My press release on the longlist announcement is also below:

http://www.williamhillplc.com/newsmedia/newsroom/media-releases/2019/whsboty-2019-longlist-announcement/

Necessary merry-go-rounds under threat as clubs struggle to offload big ticket flops

In 2014, Brian Phillips published an excellent article for Grantland marking Lionel Messi’s 10^th anniversary at Barcelona, entitled ‘The Ball is the End’. Phillips articulates and marvels at the purity of Messi’s connection to the game throughout his career; one that remains so utterly fulfilling as to reduce everything that surrounds it – opponents, expectations, Martin Tyler – to mere white noise.

Which is great of course, but can make our own enduring obsession with Transfer Deadline Day sit a little uncomfortably in comparison. For us, there’s no ball. There aren’t even really any footballers. Yet still, for one night each August, every prospective arrival is feverishly endowed with our own giddy hopes for the season ahead. Almost all signings are regarded as ‘huge additions’ to the team until most likely proven otherwise. There are no Simone Zazas here, only Wayne Rooneys. And in every fidget, ipad scroll or adjustment of papers in the Sky Sports News studio the fate of our team’s destiny may hang. Only football can make you feel like this. Only faulty fax machines and the renegotiation of agent commission fees can do this to you.

So the early signs that the swap deal involving Paula Dybala and Romelu Lukaku has fallen through due to Dybala’s wage demands should be a source of immense concern to us all. Not even in the fact that neither player has found the necessary conditions at their current clubs to showcase their obvious talents. No, in the collapse of such a transfer exists a more pressing worry that a greater overarching crisis might be unfurling right in front of us – the increasingly endangered status of the deadline day domino effect.

The domino effect has been the climactic calling card of the very best deadline days, reaching a critical mass in the Carroll-Suarez-Torres extravaganza in January 2011. An intricate chain of dependent variables coming off, appealing to our fundamental need for resolution.

It is in this dynamic that deadline day has performed its best work over the years, its higher register found. With this sort of material to work with, Sky Sports’ deadline day custodian Jim White bears the striking resemblance to a flushed lead in a comic opera, reeling off frightening combinations of words, names, permutations and Sky sourced clauses at ludicrous pace. And in doing so pulling all other deals anywhere into this urgent orbit. ‘If Harry can ship Adel Taarabt out the door, then we’re hearing that Rafael Van der Vaart COULD arrive at the Lane in the next hour HOWEVER we’re also hearing that the Spurs computer is playing up BUT LOOK AT WHO’S JUST ARRIVED AT GOODISON PARK …’ And suddenly its 1am and yes this is all meant to be over by now and yes you’ve got work tomorrow but you also need to see if the paperwork for Frederick Piquionne’s loan move to Portsmouth got completed on time because he NEEDS THIS. And maybe at some crucial level we all do too.

And yet, all of this artwork is under attack, and not solely because of the new, and far too civilised, 5pm deadline in place. The continuous stratification of football is leaving expensively recruited players stranded, and with fewer club destinations to travel to.

In the fragile career cycle of the elite footballer, the likelihood is that only two, maybe three, big long-term contracts will be offered up to the very biggest names. A capricious asset-owner relationship therefore exists between player and club; disgruntled players can be kept against their wishes by the club. Ineffectual players can stay for longer than the club would like them to, maximising the earnings of their compressed career. The number of other teams that could afford the total costs of purchasing such ‘flops’ you could now count on one hand. Tellingly, since 2010, just 4 clubs have accounted for over £5 billion of the total market spend.

Even at a lesser level, this can play out with much more damaging consequences to the parent club. The fan-dubbed ‘Toon Spy’ Jack Rodwell doing significant harm to cash-strapped Sunderland recently by refusing to budge from his 5 year contract of £70,000 a week was one of the more tragic cases in this instance. A bottlenecking of resources at the top setting off a pungent fizz lower down.

On top of the tree in this window is, of course, Chief Logjam himself, Gareth Bale, whose basic refusal to want to go and kick a ball anywhere at all is one of the most fascinating subplots of this sport. But Bale is well supported in an assemble cast of well-remunerated outcasts, including Alexis Sanchez at United, Gonzalo Higuain at Juve and his teammate James Rodriguez at Real Madrid. All too costly to keep, but too costly to offload.

This is before you even get into the arena of the still wanted but merely disgruntled victims- Neymar, Mbappe, Pogba, Sane. It is not unreasonable to think that were this kind of impasse happening even 5 years ago, some kind of Bale-Pogba-Neymar exchange bonanza could be thrashed out between the interested parties. However there are now simply too many motivations at play here; agent’s fees to be negotiated, disproportionate wages demands to be met, other priorities for those handful of clubs to pursue. And above all this, the clubs’ anxiety of repeating still-felt mistakes in the market.

Chelsea’s current transfer ban also represents an enormous loss in all of this. Even in the more recent days of the morsel-sized fist at austerity bringing Stamford Bridge to a gridlock (Chelsea have somehow managed to recruit £100 million worth of players this summer under their transfer ban), their unorthodox selection of strikers and owner Roman Abramovich’s oil millions have helped grease the wheels that keep the merry go round spinning nicely. The Aubameyang-Batshuayi-Giroud mega swap in 2018 for example simply could not have happened without this, let alone the late night Torres feast of 7 years previous.

Which is just as well. For the crux of deadline day, and the transfer window itself, recalls to mind a New Yorker review by Anthony Lane of the 1994 classic film, Speed. If it ever went at less than 50 miles an hour, even slowed down for just a single frame, you’d have enough time start questioning the basic plot points. The source of all its components. And the fact that maybe, just maybe, it’s not absolutely okay for a record £320 million to be spent on all of this in just a few hours of actual decision making.

But fear not, fellow passengers, for Deadline Day is unlikely to break down fully and may not even stutter this year. Exorbitant amounts will still be spent. For the transfer window itself is essentially a portal into our own caprices – everything new bestowed with the fresh optimism of the moment rather than the uncertainties of the future. And more importantly, Paulo Dybala is favourite to join Spurs now instead of United which would free up room for Lukaku to complete his move to Juventus and then if only Christian Eriksen could seal that 11^th hour switch to United from Spurs….. Ah, that’s better. We’re moving again.

Nicolas Pepe to lead attacking charge into new dawn at Arsenal

(First published:24th August 2019 on William Hill Transfer Hub site)

After 2 years and 3 Europa League place finishes since former chief-executive Ivan Gazidis’ now infamous ‘catalyst for change’ statement preceding Arsene Wenger’s departure, Arsenal fans may be forgiven for thinking the winds of change have not blown through the corridors of the Emirates with enough gust. The act of transforming soundbite into reality is something that also clearly preoccupies the mind-set of the newly established hierarchy. Beginning with the decentralisation of power away from Unai Emery, through to the recent appointment of technical director Edu, the latest phase in Arsenal’s self-imposed transfiguration has arrived in the form of the club’s record breaking signing this week of winger Nicolas Pepe from Lille.

‘Announce Tierney’ trending

It was telling though that no sooner had the club officially unveiled Pepe, the Arsenal fan Twitterati had, in their uniquely pervasive way, launched their own counter attacking hashtag, ‘Announce Tierney’ – a pointed reference to Arsenal’s summer-long pursuit of Celtic defender Kieran Tierney, who is 1/8 to join the Gunners before the end of the window. Plus ca change, the more Arsenal fan twitter stays the same etc etc.

It is indeed a reaction that has been played out before. On the three previous occasions Arsenal have broken their transfer record it has been for similarly perceived attacking indulgences, Mesut Ozil, Alexandre Lacazette and Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang (coincidentally the players Pepe has singled out as his reason for joining the Gunners). Such incomings have not been welcomed without a feeling of guilt, the nervousness that so accompanies excess; and above all a lingering worry that what is really needed to banish the spectres of the past is to be found less in the search for the glamorous new, but more in the escape from the old.

And maybe for good reason. The current defence still bears all the hallmarks of a late Wenger era soufflé; something more to be served up to rival attacks than merely selected. Doubts remain at the club over Calum Chambers’ ability to make the top grade. Shkodran Mustafi beats on, despite remarkable reputed attempts to offload him in every transfer window since he joined in 2016.

With Hector Bellerin still out with injury and Ainsley Maitland Niles struggles in a back four well documented, the very tangible prospect of Pepe linking up on the right flank for the first game of the season against Newcastle alongside one of the great survivors of the Wenger reign, Carl Jenkinson, somehow looms large; an avant garde composition more likely to be found on the Soccer Aid pitch than in the most financially powerful league in world football.

So to what extent is Pepe’s £72 million transfer a case of money well spent? And how can this be seen as a step change from the perceived top heavy decadence that marked the late-Wenger dynasty?

Perhaps it is best to look as much outwards at the game’s shifting landscapes as within. For one, Pepe’s arrival happens to come on the eve of VAR’s long awaited introduction to the Premier League this season.

VAR’s timely introduction

The impact of VAR is by no means a fully known entity but from early indicators at the recent men’s and women’s World Cups, as well as its implementation in Serie A last season, the new system does suggest a re-rendering of the scales in favour of attack over defence. Every point of contact in the box will be slowed down, amplified, with each viewing further implicating the defender for the slightest of touches. For a winger with directness and skill who earned 5 penalties in Ligue 1 last season, including in a match winning display against PSG where he scored, provided two assists and was hauled down by a red-carded Bernat in a 5-1 victory, this is surely a welcome introduction. To this end, Arsenal’s regular penalty taker and joint top scorer last season Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang is a decent 7/1 to take the golden boot this season.

Internal solutions fail to impress

In terms of the club’s failings to find a source from within, it is notable Arsenal were a lowly 10th in the league for dribbles attempted in dangerous areas last season.

In spite of this shortfall Alex Iwobi, a much maligned figure at the Emirates over the years, was able to exert a game changing influence from the wing last season; most notably in home substitute appearances against Liverpool and Cardiff City, where Emery ditched his notoriously measured approach at half time to introduce width and caprice into his favoured 4-2-3-1 formation.

But even the moderate success of Iwobi’s cameos felt like a cause for concern for the club’s top brass. Since the departure of Alexis Sanchez, whilst acknowledging the minimal and limited contributions of Mkhitaryan and Iwobi in that time, Arsenal have arguably been the only team in the league’s top 6 without a high performing specialist winger, at a time where the position is only gathering significance. Each of Mkhitaryan and Iwobi’s infrequent contributions have held a similar air to the sticky tape implementation of Francis Coquelin as an emergency holding midfielder in 2015. That simply by occupying previously abandoned spaces, in running different angles, some kind of workable solution to a crucial problem can be found. Lucas Torreira has since arrived to fill the holding role, but an upgrade on the flanks has remained an itch left unattended, a void unknown. With the arrival of a 22 goal forward last season in Ligue 1, this might not be left an unknown for much longer.

It is perhaps unusual for a club with such a clear eye on escaping the recent past and with such obvious defensive shortcomings (laid so brutally bear in damaging defeats to Wolves and Leicester at the back end of last season) to reach a self-diagnosis of further attacking outlay to remedy the team’s continued absence from the Champions League places. But as a wise man once put it, ‘if you can find someone who can help you win and make a difference, no matter how expensive they are, you should do it’. And Pepe’s arrival is as clear signal as any that the club are ready to step out of Arsene Wenger’s long shadow over the club, embrace the emerging patterns of the modern game, and finally step back into the light of Champions League football.

That wise man? ‘Le Professor’ Arsene Wenger himself of course, with a typical word of caution to those placing loftier expectations on the shoulders of their 24 year old new signing: ‘however, there are not many players in the world who can make a real difference’.

Pressure on Maguire to leave cult figure behind and become defensive titan of Old Trafford folklore

First published on William Hill transfer hub site

From Charlie Chaplin to John Wayne, Hollywood can be fertile ground for the typecast. First impressions, as they say, go a long way, and the very existence of the typecast suggests that at some point the particular impression made on the viewer by such a performer was so strong as to render the terms of that arrangement too good not to be continued.

The term now takes on a broader lens and is more often than not used in a derogatory sense, a perceived marriage of convenience between viewer and performer. But therefore within the typecast lies the easy capacity to shock, for better or otherwise, purely by doing something outside the narrow role we have helped place them in: Adam Sandler pausing his goof act for the film Punch Drunk Love, Theresa May ‘doing the Maybot’ . And now 2018 World Cup’s unlikely lad Harry Maguire joining Manchester United this week from Leicester City to become the most expensive defender of all time.

Maguire yet to shake off outsider perception

Because yes, Harry Maguire really is the 80 Million Pound Man. And perhaps the powerful impression of Maguire lodged so firmly in the nation’s collective memory following the World Cup in Russia helps explain the general air of bemusement that has greeted his transfer fee.

It is often said that footballers are defined by the era they play in. To the wider footballing world Maguire has, up till now, been defined by the retrospective view of a month where he trundled into the public eye to play an unexpected lead in England’s World Cup run. Less Clint Eastwood’s well-worn Dirty Harry, more Billy Crystal’s Harry Burns in When Harry Met Sally; someone both coming to terms with the significance of what’s in front of them and simultaneously all too aware of the unusual dynamics at play.

During a giddy, sun scorched and ale sodden World Cup summer, the idea that Maguire could be an all conquering world king appealed to a swaying nation swept up in the silver-platter escapism provided by Gareth Southgate’s team. In the time since however, the hangover has set in, Maguire’s improbable prowess on the biggest stage deemed as merely that; a time fondly remembered but unlikely to be repeated. A return to the law and order of the established Premier League top 6 has been duly accepted, the harsh realities of Maguire’s outsider status underlined in bold.

Market factors will not diminish expectation

Which in the light of his record transfer have been viewed as stark reading. Maguire has spent more seasons of his career in the Championship and League One than in the top tier. His individual stats are not dissimilar to Shkodran Mustafi’s. He is indeed costing United at least £5 million more than Liverpool spent on Virgil Van Dijk, last season’s PFA Player of the Year, and a reported £10 million more than Juventus paid this summer for arguably the most promising defender in Europe, Matthijs de Ligt; 7 years Maguire’s junior. You could buyout Bury 20 times over for that sort of money. Each Maguirebite offered a desperate attempt at relativism so as to haul the unfathomable distribution of resources within the game back to a firmer ground of mutual understanding.

Mitigating market forces have been offered up to explain his fee: Maguire is home-grown, de Ligt wouldn’t join United anyway and there are a chronic lack of proven centre-backs available elsewhere. All of which might be legitimate, but these factors are not necessarily ‘priced in’ to the thick fog of expectation that awaits Maguire when he steps into the defensive breach at Old Trafford.

Costly mistakes still leave United adrift

What isn’t in doubt is that Maguire also faces a greater challenge than that of Van Dijk or de Ligt. Both players joined elite teams in positions of power with a clear planning structure. Maguire on the other hand joins a club whose developed fiscal muscle regularly manifests itself as a weakness rather than a strength.

Pricey trinkets have been collected and tacked onto the Old Trafford fridge with no real understanding as to how that’ll help bring back former glories. An Alexis Sanchez here, an Angel Di Maria there, recklessness in the market has repeated itself, a corollary of lessons unlearned. A new official mattress and pillow partner to recoup overspend – repeat. The lasting damage is such that Maguire joins a United side bent badly out of shape, one that shipped more goals last season than in any of its previous Premier League campaigns – 6 more than Newcastle – and are a lofty 33/1 to win the league this time out.

Consistent underestimation of abilities

Not that Maguire is the papier-mâché headed imposter many have consigned to failure in Manchester. He has 20 England caps during a promising period for the national team. He has patiently risen to every step up in level required of him to date. For Leicester, Maguire retained his calmness and tiptoed intrigue on the ball amongst the general trend of pressing forwards and the often suffocating denial of space. In some ways Maguire’s cult status has camouflaged the inherent composure and skill he possesses. Even his widely used nickname ‘Slabhead’ feels more like a direct challenge to those who seek to overlook the basic perceptive biases that exist both in sport and in life; the Moneyball smearers, the flat-Earthers, the Maguire deniers.

It would not be the first time a critical underestimate of his abilities has unspooled. On his departure in 2013 Sir Alex Ferguson recommended a young defender plying his trade at Sheffield United as someone who had the potential to become a world class centre-back, available for just £4 million. The opportunity was passed up on by the club’s hierarchy and Harry Maguire, the player in question, ended up joining Hull City.

Since then United have spent over £100 million on a reel of centre-backs – Eric Bailly, Victor Lindelof, Marcos Rojo – to no real great end or silverware. With Maguire now belatedly in the ranks, a return to the top 4 for United at Evens surely at least represents better value than their aggregate spend in this area.

Sizeable task awaits

In a significant nod to Mancunian folklore that fits well with the increasing pebble-kicking wistfulness with which the management stroll the floors at Old Trafford, Maguire has stated that his reason for leaving Leicester to join United is to emulate the likes of Rio Ferdinand and Nemanja Vidic; to start the rest of his career as soon as possible, if you like. Needless to say this will be a sizeable task, not least given the differing role and stage Maguire now finds himself occupying.

For no matter how much finance the United board thrust on the hands of time, Harry Maguire is not yet Rio Ferdinand, Ole Gunnar Solskjaer cannot be Sir Alex Ferguson, the class of Phil Jones is definitely not the class of 92. However, the potential transfiguration of Maguire from cult figure to Old Trafford hero would unquestionably cap a fitting story to accompany the lasting goodwill that has followed him ever since that heightened summer of 2018.