Arsene Wenger and The Kick Ins

I doubt that Arsene Wenger watched much non-League football in England during the 1994-95 season – he was managing Monaco in France and Nagoya Grampus Eight in Japan during those years – so he will have missed the experiment conducted in the Isthmian League (then known by its sponsor’s name, the Diadora League) that season when kick-ins were trialled as an alternative to the throw-in.

Arsene Wenger

It wasn’t just in England that kick-ins were trialled. They had been tried previously in Japan, and further trials took place in Belgium and Hungary alongside the Diadora League experiment. Whatever the Belgians and Hungarians thought of it, they can’t have been keen, as the experiment did not lead to the universal adoption of the idea. The Diadora League clubs had to complete a questionnaire at the end of the season, from which it had become clear that managers didn’t like them, players didn’t like them, and fans didn’t like them.

A kick-in taken during the Chertsey Town v Dorking Diadora League match in 1994-95

As a keen student of the game, I would have thought that Arsene Wenger would have done his research into the experiments with kick-ins though, but if he has, there is no reference to it in press reports of his proposal – which the International Football Association Board (IFAB), the body responsible for football’s laws – have agreed to trial (again).

What’s wrong with kick-ins? you may ask. After all, it’s football we are talking about, does it not make sense for the ball to be returned to play from the touchline with the foot, rather than with the hand? Maybe, but the fact that the previous experiment with the idea was quickly abandoned suggests that there are issues with it.

I confess to not having watched any Diadora League football during the 1994-95 season (my football watching was confined to the Essex Senior League with Romford and the Football League with Leyton Orient that season), so I do not have first hand experience of seeing the kick-in in action, but everything that I have read on the subject suggests that it was a resounding failure. In fact, it was so unpopular with some, that then St Albans City manager Alan Cockram threatened to sack any of his players who adopted the kick-in.

Rory Delap of Stoke City launches a long throw into the opposition penalty area. Cynics say that the problems these throws caused Arsenal back in the day are responsible for Arsene Wenger's thinking!

A major drawback with kick-ins was that many teams simply took them as a means of lumping the ball into the opposition penalty area, reducing games to a constant stream of aerial penalty area battles, particularly with there being no offside from a throw-in, and therefore not from a kick-in, either. In a similar way, an experiment with not having offsides from free-kicks, conducted in the Alliance Premier League (now the National League) in England in the 1990s, was another abject failure as it resulted in a tedious procession of long free-kicks hoofed into the opposition penalty area with a dozen or more players crowding the goalkeeper as they fought for the ball. In one game that I saw at Enfield featuring this rule, virtually every free-kick pumped into the box resulted in a free-kick to the defending team for a foul on the goalkeeper. The experiment was abandoned after a season.

Kick-ins at most levels of the game are unlikely to improve the game as a spectacle; quite the opposite in fact. In the rarefied atmosphere of the Premier League, La Liga, and Serie A, kick-ins will probably work. Teams in the top leagues across the world generally want to keep the ball on the ground and pass, so kick-ins are likely to be quick, short, and aimed at keeping possession. The idea that kick-ins will speed up the game may even work in those leagues, but those leagues only represent a tiny fraction of the global game, and in more pedestrian levels of the game the effect will be quite the opposite, as teams delay taking kick-ins while their players trot into the opposition penalty area, before delivering a high ball into the box.

IFAB seem to tinker with some aspect of football’s laws almost incessantly; I can’t think of any other sport that does so, so frequently. Some changes are better than others. Sin bins in grassroots football have proven successful in reducing dissent; changes to the offside law and handball have been less popular. Goal-line technology has fitted in pretty seamlessly, but VAR has raised almost as many problems (some would say more) as it has solved, so you must pardon my scepticism about kick-ins, especially in light of the failed experiment of thirty years ago.

I have similar reservations about the idea that has been mooted on more than one occasion – and which has raised its head again recently – that football matches should be reduced to two halves of thirty-minutes each, but with the clock stopping whenever the ball goes out of play.

The most famous clock in English football was at Highbury. 

The rationale behind the idea is sound; in the average Premier League match the ball is in play for fewer than 60 of the allotted 90 minutes, but adopting the idea raises a number of questions. How long is the elapsed time between kick-off and final whistle likely to be? In the Premier League, where the ball is returned fairly quickly, it could be that a game lasts no longer than it currently does, end to end. Elsewhere, in non-League and park football, where retrieving the ball can take longer and other delays inevitably ensue, it may be much longer. Not knowing the approximate time that a game ends will bring its own set of issues for players, fans, and officials.

In the 1930s, Arsenal had a clock that showed game time, but it was banned by The FA

Another question is, who keeps time? Sports like American football and ice hockey have taken responsibility for keeping time away from the on pitch officials, and no doubt, football would want to do the same. Which would work fine in the game’s top echelons, but not so well in grassroots football where not all games even have a neutral referee, and finding someone to keep time would be difficult and the absence of a game-time clock would create its own issue. Giving a hard-pressed park football referee (especially a club volunteer) the additional responsibility of stopping and restarting their watch to ensure 60 minutes of actual play seems onerous and unreasonable.

As an aside, I was at a game last season where the unexpected amount of additional time played at the end of one half was attributed by some people to have arisen from the referee having neglected to restart his watch after a lengthy stoppage for an injury. One would worry that if the referee was sole timekeeper and had to ensure 60 minutes play by constantly stopping and restarting their watch, this might become commonplace.

Despite my doubts, Arsene Wenger’s kick-ins idea may turn out to be a success, but honestly, given the failure of the previous experiment, I feel it will likely prove the aphorism that those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it.

 

 

 

 

Rail Strikes: This One Is Personal

In less than two weeks we face the prospect of the most widespread and disruptive industrial action on Britain’s railways since the 1980s. Since 1989 in fact, when Britain’s rail unions withdrew their members’ labour in pursuit of a pay claim in excess of the rate of inflation, which was then over 8%.

Rail strikes will mean scenes like these at many bus stops.

The unions eventually accepted a rise of 8.8% back then, but not before engaging in industrial action on no fewer than six occasions. At the conclusion of the strikes in 1989, Roger King, MP for Birmingham, Northfield, told Parliament that “the dispute revealed for all to see the sheer incompetence of British Rail's management and the bone-headed stupidity of the NUR (National Union of Railwaymen).” He was by no means alone in holding that view.

While 1989’s dispute was purely about pay, the current dispute - which is likely to see no rail services on 21^st, 23^rd, and 25^th June, with London’s Underground workers set to strike on 21^st June as well – is because Network Rail and the train operating companies have “subjected their staff to multiyear pay freezes and plan to cut thousands of jobs which will make the railways unsafe”” according to the National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers (RMT).

Based on the typical Daily Mail rhetoric that depicts the railway workers as greedy, hard-left malcontents who aim to cripple the country, the knee-jerk reaction is to side against them on this occasion. Sympathy for the striking workers is in short supply when one reads that train drivers can earn in excess of £60,000 per annum, and that their unions, the last remaining powerful ones in the country it seems, appear to take industrial action frequently, at the drop of a hat, and as a first response rather than a last resort.

No surprise which mast the Daily Mail has nailed its colours to.

It seems that this strike is not about the well paid drivers however, but rail workers in other, less generously remunerated roles; about job losses and concomitant safety issues, and potential negative impacts on pensions.

The bottom line is that there are likely to be no rail services on three days in June, and most people’s position on the strike is going to be based on how that affects them.

When London Underground workers went on strike on 7^th June, it had a minor impact on Val and I, as we were going to see a BBC Radio recording of Alone at The Shaw Theatre in Euston Road. As it was only the Tube that was affected, getting there and back home again was not badly affected; we used the rail services that were running and walked the rest. While we were there, it dawned on me that the next strike, affecting all rail services and the Tube, could be much more inconvenient for me.

Alone is a BBC Radio comedy starring Angus Deyton. Series 4 is on air from August.

On 21^st June I am due to see Yes in concert at the Royal Albert Hall. The show has been rescheduled a couple of times due to covid, and my attendance this time is going to be somewhat tricky if the strikes go ahead. The Royal Albert Hall is about 17 miles from where I live, so about an hour and fifteen minutes by public transport when everything is running fine. Without tubes and trains, I could get a bus – about three hours, although with the inevitable increased traffic, I can probably add an hour to that. Or I could get the Uber boat from the new Barking Riverside Pier to Westminster and then easily walk the remaining two and a bit miles. At a pinch, I could walk all the way, after all I did nearly that distance when I walked from Romford to Tilbury in 2015 (see The long Walk To Tilbury).

Yes at London Palladium in March 2018

Whatever means I use to get to the Royal Albert Hall, the bigger issue will be getting home again. According to Transport for London (TfL)’s Journey Planner, leaving the Royal Albert Hall at about 11pm and using just buses to get home will actually be quicker than the journey there by the same means (it would mean getting home in the wee small hours and having to use the infamous Night Buses though).

You’ll notice that I have dismissed driving; London will probably be gridlocked that day, plus there are the Congestion Charge and parking costs to factor in, so taking the car will be a last resort.

In 1989, when the trains and tubes went on strike back simultaneously, I was working in the City at Threadneedle Street. The bank that I worked for – Midland Bank at that time – laid on coaches for workers in Central London, and on the morning of the first strike, June – then my girlfriend, later my wife (who worked in the same office as me) and I arrived at the pick up point in Chadwell Heath at about 6.45am. The coach arrived, already nearly full. “Stay at the back of the queue,” June insisted, “we may not get on!” Which was how it turned out as the remaining seats on the coach quickly filled up.

Less hyperbole from the Daily Mail when it covered the 1989 rail strike on the Summer Equinox.

Someone at the head of the queue asked when the next coach would be along, but apparently this was the only one. To varying degrees of disappointment (June was delighted!), those unable to board went home.

The following week – there were strikes, one a week for six weeks, remember – the bank was better prepared. There were more coaches and we were able to board one. I seem to remember that having left Chadwell Heath at 6.45am, we didn’t get to work till about 10.15am: Three and a half hours to do about eleven miles. At 3pm we had to leave work and do it all in reverse, getting home at about 7pm, so out of the house for more than 12 hours to work for less than five.

The lengthy journeys became routine however, with people taking advantage of the time to read or catch up on some sleep. Imagine the shock then, when on the last day of the strike our coach diverted from its usual route and drew up at Royal Wharf, from where a boat took us to Tower Pier. Much to many people’s dismay (June among them) we arrived at work earlier than many would have done on a day with no rail strikes.

In the evening, on the return trip from Tower Pier, we had to fend off a number of tourists who thought that the boat was a regular service and not exclusively for Midland Bank staff, although why they would have gone to Beckton is anyone’s guess.

During my commuting years rail strikes seemed to come along with monotonous regularity, but that’s probably the frequency illusion and my faulty memory. These days strikes are fewer, further between, and they affect me less, although I am not best pleased about the upcoming strike on 21^st June. Having seen so many gigs go for a Burton thanks to covid, to have another in jeopardy due to industrial action is a big pain in the posterior.

Words That Make Me Go "Aaaargh!"

Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me. But there are words that offend me, or rather they irritate and annoy, infuriate and exasperate. There are some words and phrases that make me want to yell “aaargh!” whenever I hear or read them. These are some of them.

“Not the result we wanted. We go again.”

This one pops up frequently on Twitter, invariably posted by a footballer, to express their disappointment at a particular result. Usually it appears after a defeat, but sometimes it comes after a drawn game the tweeter expected to win. Since the object of most sports is to win, “Not the result we wanted” is clearly a truism. “We go again,” says no more than they will try and win the next game. We can therefore boil this down to “We lost today, but we’ll try and win the next game,” which in the immortal words of Basil Fawlty, is “stating the bleedin’ obvious.”

“Time to draw a line under it and move on.”

We’ve been hearing this a lot recently, what with the daily dose of Tory misdeeds sometimes involving more than one scandal of some description or another. In the aftermath of Wallpapergate and Partygate, and after the PPE procurement shenanigans and the eye-watering cost of the Test and Trace app, we are all implored to draw a line under events that embarrass politicians and the government and move on.

Tony Blair, attempting to draw a line under the WMD fiasco.

In fairness to the current government, this is nothing new: I’m pretty sure we heard similar after the Iraq war/Weapons of Mass Destruction debacle, for example. Time to move on has been wheeled out by politicians of all persuasions, seemingly since time immemorial and means, “Please, for the love of God, stop talking about this, I know I’m bang to rights but I’m not going to resign or apologise.” The regularity of the expression’s use is as tedious as it is objectionable, the belief of the entitled that their transgressions are too trivial to be pursued.

“Partygate”

Not Partygate itself, although goodness knows that is outstandingly bad enough, but the suffix “-gate” when added to some sort of scandal, outrage, or misdeed. Since the original Watergate affair, named for the Watergate Office Building in which the Democratic National Committee’s offices were burgled, there have been just shy of 300 '-gate' scandals or controversies, according to Wikipedia, and probably countless more that haven't been widely publicised. It is without doubt, time to draw a line under the expression, stop using it, and move on.

If we don’t stop, we might find that were Andrew Marr involved in some scandal, we’d have to call it Marrgate. If there were some outrage in the Kent seaside town of similar name, that would be Margategate. If Kew Gardens were embroiled in controversy, we’d have to call it Gardengate. And, if there was a further scandal centred around the Watergate Building, would we have to call it Watergategate?[1] Thankfully, when Bill Gates and his wife Melinda announced their intention to divorce, there was no Gatesgate, although inevitably that did get wheeled out to describe the story that some Americans thought that Gates wanted to use the coronavirus vaccine to microchip them.

Adding “-gate” to the controversy over incidents like the cost of decorating the flat in Downing Street (Wallpapergate), or Keir Starmer’s beer and curry in Durham (variously Currygate or Beergate), the parties in Downing Street (Partygate), and Boris Johnson diving into a fridge to avoid a reporter (Fridgegate), is lazy, trite, hackneyed, and so outmoded that it really needs to stop.

I imagine that many hacks who use’-gate’ are too young to remember Watergate, and genuinely think it is normal English usage – and perhaps now, it is (sadly).

“Let me be perfectly clear about this/We’ve always been perfectly clear about this.”

As soon as someone says “Let me be perfectly clear about this,” then you can be fairly sure that what follows will be opaque at best, will contain much obfuscation, and may be a downright lie. In the same way, “We’ve always been perfectly clear about this” will lead to a statement that claims to be in complete accord with previous pronouncements on the subject, but which totally contradicts them. In certain circumstances this leads to someone denying ever saying something even after being shown video evidence of them saying it, as you can see from the video embedded in this article on The Guardian website: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/dec/23/us-ambassador-netherlands-apologises-fake-news-interview-muslim-no-go-zones)

The counter intuitive stuff

I’m not talking about any particular phrase or expression here, but rather the explanation that defies logic, the statement that bends facts into something so breath-takingly egregious that you have to pinch yourself to be sure you actually heard what you thought you heard.

It has been reported in the media in recent days that there are fears there could be power cuts this winter. A "reasonable" worst-case scenario predicts major gas shortages in winter if Russia cuts off more supplies to the EU, which could lead to power cuts for up to six million households. It’s easy to imagine a government spokesman spinning this as a positive rather than a negative, explaining that power cuts will help those on low incomes to budget their fuel bills more efficiently by reducing their energy consumption by as much as 180 hours per month, resulting in considerable savings.

In much the same way, in the event that there were food shortages and rationing had to be introduced (unlikely, I hope), then I have no doubt that, in answer to TV interviewers saying that this was a terrible state of affairs, some minister would proclaim that on the contrary, the British people were grateful for this opportunity to better balance their diets, to eat more healthily, and to have the strain on their budgets eased by being given the opportunity to buy less food.

Like Humpty Dumpty, when politicians use a word it means what they want it to mean, not what we mere mortals usually expect it to mean. Last week Chancellor Rishi Sunak said, with a completely straight face, that his ‘temporary, targeted, levy’ on the energy companies was not a windfall tax, but  actually a tax on windfall profits. Interviewer Chris Mason’s incredulity when Sunak said this was palpable.

Rishi Sunak - It's a tax on windfalls, not a windfall tax!

So inured have we become to alternative facts, fake news, and barefaced lies, that the Prime Minister lying to Parliament, or a government minister spouting falsehoods in TV interviews has become so completely unremarkable we don’t even notice most of the time, and nor do many interviewers, who seem content to allow such nonsense to be spouted, unchallenged.

For that reason, I believe that the time has come to have teams of full-time, real-time fact checkers in the House of Commons, and present in radio and TV studios, who could sound a QI style klaxon every time a falsehood is uttered. It would make PMQs very entertaining indeed!

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[1] If I thought that my idea here was original, but a quick Google search shows that David Mitchell and Robert Webb got there first (and funnier).