Just read the following in David Goldblatt’s monumental “The Ball is Round” (it’s almost a thousand pages long, which is why I’ve referred to it as work in progress over so many months):

Touch is everything, from the spine tingling, hair raising reflex that football brings to the back of the neck, to the soft precision pressure that brings a high swirling ball to a stop.  Johan Cruyff would judge the quality of a shot or a pass by its timbre.  His team mate Gerrie Muhren hated high winds because ‘You have to hear the ball during a game.  You can hear from the sound it makes on the boot where the ball is going, how hard, how fast.  If there is a big wind you are angry with the ball.  You kick the ball but it doesn’t listen to you.’  It is amazing that they could hear so much, high winds or not, for football’s crowds have not merely cheered and booed and sung, chanted and roared.  As Arthur Hopcraft put it: ‘The sound of a big football crowd baying its delight and its outrage has no counterpart.  It is the continuous flow of football that excites this sustained crescendo.’  That flow is based on motion, on the continuous making and breaking of patterns and spaces that so dazzled the man from The Times* under floodlights; no still photograph, no graphic, no painting can do justice to this.

*he’d mentioned a Times correspondent at the start of the chapter

Bit of a ‘wow’ moment for me, that.  Isn’t this what football’s all about?  I remember last year Jamie saying how he’d heard the ball hitting the net at Eastlands when Diomansy Kamara scored.   It must have been an astonishing moment.   The flow, motion, making and breaking of patterns: this is what draws us isn’t it?  The almost infinite variety, knowing that of all the hundreds of possessions, only one or two will count, but being transfixed nevertheless.   True, I’m guilty of selective memory here - it wasn’t long ago that Fulham forwards were there to try to control bouncing balls or to head on high punts - but the stuff we’re seeing now is bloody entertaining isn’t it?

Aesthetically pleasing too.   Players like Simon Davies aren’t just good players, they’re good to watch.  There’s a natural athleticism, a fluidity of movement that makes their work interesting.  Dempsey is the same, and Murphy’s economy of movement in his new role is fascinating to study.  Bullard and Johnson are less fluid, more busy in their running style perhaps, but they’re good to watch too, magnetic sometimes.  Zoltan Gera makes me laugh:  a friend of mine suggested that Gera runs like a marionette, and I can see that.  But he has his moments too, those surging tackles or those surprise soaring headers.   All good stuff.   Easy to like this team Roy’s assembled isn’t it?

England:  sadly Jimmy wasn’t required by England tonight, but hopefully he had a nice trip.  Watching Carrick and Barry out there may have been instructive.    They looked pretty good whenever I was watching.

Alrighty, we conceded another goal on Saturday, so let’s have a look and see what we think of it:

Conclusion:  probably Spurs got through us a bit too easily there, but they played their hand to perfection as the move developed.   Looking again, the key seems to be Jenas beating Bullard and attacking a space that Murphy had just vacated to cover infield (before he realised Jenas was beating Bullard) and that was not watched by Paul Konchesky (who had been attacking).

This meant that Jenas could keep running until he half-encountered Brede Hangeland.  Drawing Hangeland was one thing, but Aaron Hughes had (rightly) followed Roman Pavlyuchenko so John Paintsil was left on his own in the middle, caught between the devil and the deep blue sea.   He really did have to close down Bentley, it was just a question of whether he might have somehow been able to do this while also keeping an eye on Fraizier Campbell.  If he erred in his positioning it wasn’t by much (that’s how I see it anyway), it’s just that by now the defence was so broken we didn’t have much chance of salvation if Spurs played the attack well, which Bentley and Campbell certainly did.

So no real finger pointing this time, although in retrospect Bullard might have been a bit cleverer in stopping Jenas, by fair means or foul.   After that the only thing that might’ve saved us would’ve been Dempsey or Murphy getting back, but as you can see they were both 10 yards behind the attack.  Ho hum.

Interested to hear others’  views here, it looks like a couple of mistakes growing into something bigger through circumstances and good attacking play to me.

Dear American readers

I need to borrow $5.94!

If anyone out there can think of a way to retrieve this ‘album’ then send it to me electronically then I’ll happily send you PayPal for the full amount (more maybe: you could make 6c or more on the deal).   As it stands the LimeWire store is US only, so it’s not possible for us Yurpeans to buy owt from there.  And it’s the only place the songs are available.  Sooooo…..

If this is illegal then I apologise and retract my request.

Enormous thanks to anyone who might be able to help!

Rich

Here.

We get down on him when he doesn’t play well, but we all know that an in-form Jimmy Bullard is a huge asset to the Fulham team.   It’s sometimes hard to keep track of how good a player like him is:  first he’s clearly underrated, then his game slips subtly and at once formerly underrated player becomes overrated by fans but is still underrated by the media, then he gets called up for the England squad and he’s overrated by the media and the fans, then he plays quite well again and maybe becomes underrated again.

Anyway.  Well done that man.  I didn’t even mention him in Saturday’s report, but he had a good game didn’t he?  Some cracking shots, did everything we could’ve asked him to, with and without the ball.

You won’t see this again. Danny “centre-back” Murphy.

Is John Paintsil moonwalking here?

What’s happening here?  On the left it looks like the ball’s flying, on the right several players have fallen over one another.  All in all it may be my most action packed photograph ever.

Ah, beautiful.