Crack of the Whip...

Spare a thought to today for Big Phil Scolari and 'Little' Tony Adams, twin casualties of the managerial credit crunch, both released into the bleak midwinter and probably down to their last million.

Okay perhaps your sympathies aren't wholly engaged by the travails of wealthy men in the current financial clime, when you're forced to survive by throwing your last orphan on the fire. But, unlike Max Mosely it's difficult to believe either man has had a fair crack of the whip.

Adams certainly cuts a sympathetic figure: having to step into 'arry's shoes mid season was a tough act to follow at the best of times, but to have financial uncertainty your constant companion and two of your best players decamp to Spurs and Real Madrid can't have helped either.

Scolari on the other hand: well this was the big boss we looked to, to challenge Sir Alex's death grip on the silverware and yet now he's gone in just over half a season? Madness. His reign promised so much, but delivered very little. Dressing room dissent, a failure to capture key signings like Robinho to revive the Blues aging squad and Abramovich looking like he couldn't give less of a toss all means we've been denied a chance to see Big Phil make his mark.

If the Premiership can eat up and spit out a manager of the Scolari's calibre, what hope is there for anyone else?

The mask slips...

We’ve been waiting for this one all season: nope not Cristiano Ronaldo winning the Ballon d’or (more on that tomorrow), but for the mask to finally slip and for Big Phil Scolari to reveal his true colours.

Big Phil, like Vesuvius has been strangely dormant all season, winning friends and influencing people with his halting ‘please love my Chelsea’ English and an unprecedented charm offensive which has seen him fail to rise to Sir Alex’s bait, and perhaps most surprisingly of all, make Chelsea a watchable enough side.

Could this really be the same Big Phil who once punched a Serbian sub and is said to have a temper as volatile as wearing Nitro Glycerene underpants while watching Penelope Cruz strip?

Has it all just been a cunning ploy to lull us into a false sense of security while Big Phil secretly smirks and covertly plots behind his bound human skin copy of The Art of War?

The answer is yes! For just like those poor Pompeians suspecting that distant rumbling signalled something ominous, the kraken has finally awoken and Big Phil has asked, nay demanded, an apology from ref Mike Dean after Chelsea succumbed 2-1 to Arsenal over the weekend.

Splendid, now the gloves off, Big Phil should go for the jugular. Despite the Scousers currently sitting top of the table, this season like the OK Corral, is going to boil down to just two teams of elite gun slingers, Man Utd and Chelsea.

Time for the real Big Phil Scolari to please stand up!

Value for Money

After the excitement of the Olympics, there’s not much cooking on the spurting front today* and we cast a desultory eye over the weekend’s footy with scarcely a backward glance.

We’re sure that’s a phrase that’ll resonate with Andriy ‘Sheva’ Shevchenko, England’s most expensive player and the Chelsea striker who never was.

Today Sheva’s slunk back to Italy with his tail between his legs completed a move back to his spiritual home at AC Milan for an 'undisclosed sum' after failing to make much of an impression apart from on Chelsea’s treatment couch (which now has it’s own permanent memorial Sheva arse-print).

Why this formerly most lethal of strikers couldn’t translate his finishing skills to the PremierShip remains a mystery. Injuries played a part no doubt, but he cast a forlorn figure under Jose Mourinho and big Phil wouldn’t even grant him an audience with the bench this season.

At £30m quid and just nine goals from 47 Premier League games that works out at around 333k recurring per goal which is not exactly a good return on Roman’s investment.

Still we remember the glory days or Sergei Rebrov (another failure in England) and Shevchenko banging them in for the Ukraine and Dynamo Kiev and we wish him well at the Milan home for retired warhorses.

*We did have a strange anecdote concerning ex-Indian skipper and ‘Prince of Calcutta’ Sourav Ganguly and the Sound of Music to fall back on, but we’ll save that for a rainy day.

Opening Shots....

We’re so close to our summer hols now we can almost smell the fromage and taste the quarts of delicate vin rogue we intend to quaff like l’eau.

However before we depart it’s comforting to realise some things will never change and that when we return to Blighty, our treasured summer spurting rituals will remain largely untroubled by the passage of time.

Of what do we speak? Of Sir Alex Fergie’s annual pre-season mind games of course, with today’s target Big Phil Scolari and his merry band of Chelsea millionaires. As we’ve said before forget Calzaghe versus Roy Jones Junior, this is really the fight that everyone wants to see.

Fergie’s gone on the offensive with a none-too-subtle leading jab saying the Chelski squad are a touch on the seasoned side and ‘I don't see outstanding progress coming from a team in their 30s.’ Marvellous an almost perfect inversion of Hansen’s famously dis-proven Law which states ‘you can’t win anything with kids'.

Hitting his stride Fergie continued, “Maybe they have reached a plateau - although perhaps that's not the right word” which roughly translates as 'That’s exactly the write word’. And he wasn’t he even threw in a little feint and misdirection with "I wouldn't write off Liverpool or Arsenal either.”

Hilarious.

Quality stuff from the big man, who quite clearly sees Chelsea as the major threat. But how will Big Phil respond? In print? Online? By buying Kaka or Robinho? Or both?

This is going to be fascinating stuff....

Playing Catch Up

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Euro 2008: Germany 3 Portugal 2

Well what a turn up for the books that was… by chance a double booking took us to the Twenty20 last night in dear old St John’s Wood which meant we missed most of what must go down as one of the classic Euro encounters

While we were swilling down great quantities of beer and wine and getting agreeably shit-faced in NW8, one of the great quarter-finals was unfolding as an apparently rocky Germany took on the much-fancied might of Portugal.

Now it’s a universally held truth that betting against Germany in the knock out stages of any major tournament is like betting on the white guy in a boxing match; it’s something you just don’t do, even if you’ve as little sense as we have.

But the German 2008 vintage had looked spectacularly poor in the group stages and had not so much belied their billing as pre-tournament favourites, but had seemed determined to set out to systematically dismantle it.

Shows what we know, with Ballack’s boys exposing some really poor set piece defending and consigning Big Phil - in what turned out to be his last game in charge - to being one of the also rans... again.

With a wealth of talent and such an impressive manager Portugal probably the finest modern international team never to have won anything and must remain filed under ‘unfulfilled’.

But credit to Big Phil who was man enough to shoulder most of the blame himself.

That was classy. Interesting times in the Premiership await.