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SIDELINES TV WATCH THIS MONTH’S SCREEN REVIEW Wisdom, like sausage meat, can come from anywhere. Sometimes it can surprise us from an unexpected source – small child, lunatic, Simon Jordan – but usually it is at the end of an episode of The Wonder Years. Several forms of wisdom appear in the documentary, Man City: Together: 4-In-A-Row (Sky Sports), as it follows Pep Guardiola’s team over the course of last season, finally realising what no one thought possible: two colons in one programme title. Here are the complete range of sage archetypes: the academic (club psychologist David Young), the folksy life-experienced elder (assistant manager Juanma Lillo) and the charismatic seer (Guardiola). For the most part, Guardiola is his minimalist self. His small, neat head, precision clothes, the few, reluctantly released words – there is nothing unnecessary added. He is the human equivalent of the sensitively under-decorated Christmas tree in a funeral director’s anteroom. In sticky times, though, a different Guardiola is released. His players wait piously as he paces small, potent circles in the dressing room, preparing to speak. Erling Haaland, hair let down in the shock of defeat, resembles the type of Valkyrie that will never feature on an Athena poster. But even in anger and disappointment at conceding from an injury-time penalty, Guardiola observes a level of decorum: “It is unacceptable, Phil Foden, unacceptable.” No profanities, no shouting, but something more dreadful than that: the greatest living football brain cannot assimilate your behaviour. One half-time talk ends with the question: “Do your thoughts control yourself, or do you control your thoughts?” This is an interesting conversation to start, but it is also slightly reckless of Guardiola. It is possible, during a game, that his more reflective players will find themselves wondering who is the “I” authoring their conscious thoughts. And what if they are not the “I”? It follows that their entire identity is built on sand. Introducing your players to this type of thinking can lead to abstraction and, ultimately, conceding more goals from set-pieces. In the last game of the season, City concede a late first-half goal to West Ham and Guardiola races through a complex tactical remedy in precisely 20 seconds with whiteboard and magnets. You feel sorry for the players, trying to keep up, like first-term students of Oppenheimer. Perhaps Guardiola’s reputation for genius comes not from us understanding B R A D F O R D T I M his brilliance, but from him paying us the compliment that we do. Many enjoy watching Gogglebox because it allows them to watch ordinary people eating peanuts and reacting with astonishment when someone in a thriller breaks a lock. Gary Neville, Jamie Carragher, Roy Keane and Ian Wright attempted to recreate this entertainment in Stick to Football – Watchalong (YouTube, December 4). A camera was trained on the four as they watched Liverpool v Newcastle and Arsenal v Manchester United. Carragher here was the Freddie Mercury to the others’ Brian May, Roger Taylor and John Deacon, sliding onto his knees at crisis points, squealing “Watch the runner, watch the runner!” at the unseen Liverpool defence and acting with so little self-consciousness it was almost pretentious. Carragher’s son, Wigan Athletic defender James, joined halfway through and, having muttered brief responses to the occasional direct question, spent most of his time in mute discomfort, squeezed between Neville and Carragher senior. The zoological interest aside of watching a captive man suffer an evening with Dad and his lairy mates, the different styles of humour carry this concept far longer than it should work. Mike Dean, in his role as referee expert on Sky Sports, secretes comments that completely undermine his own position in a tone suggesting he is not completely undermining his own position. When, on December 15, Gary Neville asked why Rúben Dias wrapping his leg around Rasmus Hojlund’s was NUMBERS GAME The figures behind the facts $2,230 141 €41m The cost of a lower tier ticket for the 2025 FIFA Club World Cup final at the MetLife Stadium in New Jersey 6 WSC Spurs’ consecutive home League games without a 0-0 draw – the last was against Swansea City in September 2017 The prize money at the 2025 Women’s Euros, nearly €300m (£249m) less than for the men at Euro 2024 A L A M Y I M A G E S ( 2 ) , G E T T Y
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not a penalty, Dean commented: “I don’t think that’s enough [contact], mate, not in a game like this.” This is the same man who directs us to the inviolable “laws of the game” whenever even mildly crossexamined by a pundit. The next Sunday, with Spurs losing 6-3 to Liverpool, Dean is pressed by Neville to explain why Lucas Bergvall has avoided a second yellow card. The answer – “I think in isolation it’s a yellow card, Gary, but the way the game’s going, I don’t think it warrants a second yellow” – destroys, in seconds, the myth that refereeing consistency is ultimately possible for mankind. Dean is a fizzingly confused man who would be much happier giving up the pretence of logical thought, changing into looser-fitting clothes and dismantling jigsaw puzzles in the back room of a charity shop. Cameron Carter S C P H O T O S / W CO L I N M C P H E R S O N , I E L S T O R E Y D A N Sharp end CLUBS IN CRISIS Swindon’s fight against relegation from the Football League has gained extra attention since the appointment of Ian Holloway as manager and his claim that their training ground might be haunted, but a more worldly tussle with the ownership of Clem Morfuni has been taking place among the club’s fanbase. Around 500 fans took part in a protest march before the pre-Christmas game against Grimsby calling for the Australian owner, who has been in charge since 2021, to sell up and end a tenure that has featured relegation, a slide to the lower reaches of League Two and deepening divisions among the fanbase. While poor running of the football side of the club is the immediate cause of the discontent, a backdrop in which Swindon are losing £1.5 million a year and have (interest free) debts to Morfuni of around £9m points to deeper structural problems, many of which predate Morfuni’s reign. The owner, who runs an Australian plumbing business, was initially welcomed when, following a court battle, he took over from Lee Power who had bled assets from the club and saddled them with crippling debts, even if Swindon did at least challenge for promotion to the Championship at various points. But by 2021 the club were back in League Two. Enter Morfuni, and while there have been positive developments, such as the supporters’ trust’s joint purchase with the club of the County Ground in 2023, thanks to a bequest from lifelong fan Nigel Eady, on the pitch fortunes have nosedived. Directors of football have left and not been adequately replaced, and a lack of footballing knowhow has taken its toll. Morfuni has become more combative towards critical fans, who are increasingly calling on the owner to Left Dumbarton’s Marbill Coaches Stadium and surrounding land; Swindon Town supporters protest before their fixture against Grimsby sell, something he has shown no definite intention of doing. So while supporters have swung behind Holloway in Swindon’s relegation dogfight, off the field an alarming sense of drift continues. The club have only a year to submit the stadium modernisation plans that were part of the ground acquisition deal with the local council, which has a buy-back option if no progress is made within three years of the 2023 deal. And debts continue to mount under an owner whose aims and motivations remain unclear. “Our members are very clear they’ve had enough,” said the Swindon Town Supporters’ Trust chair, Neil Hutchings. “If Morfuni were to show indications he’s listening, started to professionalise, there’s still ways to turn things around. He inherited a mess, and walked into it willingly, but I think it’s caught him out. But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t challenge him.” The battle to save one of Scotland’s oldest clubs, Dumbarton, is underway after the League One club went into administration with unsecured debts of SCENES FROM FOOTBALL HISTORY No 394 D AV E RO B I N S O N WSC 7

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SIDELINES

TV WATCH THIS MONTH’S SCREEN REVIEW

Wisdom, like sausage meat, can come from anywhere. Sometimes it can surprise us from an unexpected source – small child, lunatic, Simon Jordan – but usually it is at the end of an episode of The Wonder Years. Several forms of wisdom appear in the documentary, Man City: Together: 4-In-A-Row (Sky Sports), as it follows Pep Guardiola’s team over the course of last season, finally realising what no one thought possible: two colons in one programme title.

Here are the complete range of sage archetypes: the academic (club psychologist David Young), the folksy life-experienced elder (assistant manager Juanma Lillo) and the charismatic seer (Guardiola). For the most part, Guardiola is his minimalist self. His small, neat head, precision clothes, the few, reluctantly released words – there is nothing unnecessary added. He is the human equivalent of the sensitively under-decorated Christmas tree in a funeral director’s anteroom. In sticky times, though, a different Guardiola is released. His players wait piously as he paces small, potent circles in the dressing room, preparing to speak. Erling Haaland, hair let down in the shock of defeat, resembles the type of Valkyrie that will never feature on an Athena poster. But even in anger and disappointment at conceding from an injury-time penalty, Guardiola observes a level of decorum: “It is unacceptable, Phil

Foden, unacceptable.” No profanities, no shouting, but something more dreadful than that: the greatest living football brain cannot assimilate your behaviour.

One half-time talk ends with the question: “Do your thoughts control yourself, or do you control your thoughts?” This is an interesting conversation to start, but it is also slightly reckless of Guardiola. It is possible, during a game, that his more reflective players will find themselves wondering who is the “I” authoring their conscious thoughts. And what if they are not the “I”? It follows that their entire identity is built on sand. Introducing your players to this type of thinking can lead to abstraction and, ultimately, conceding more goals from set-pieces.

In the last game of the season, City concede a late first-half goal to West Ham and Guardiola races through a complex tactical remedy in precisely 20 seconds with whiteboard and magnets. You feel sorry for the players, trying to keep up, like first-term students of Oppenheimer. Perhaps Guardiola’s reputation for genius comes not from us understanding

B R A D F O R D

T I M

his brilliance, but from him paying us the compliment that we do.

Many enjoy watching Gogglebox because it allows them to watch ordinary people eating peanuts and reacting with astonishment when someone in a thriller breaks a lock. Gary Neville, Jamie Carragher, Roy Keane and Ian Wright attempted to recreate this entertainment in Stick to Football – Watchalong (YouTube, December 4). A camera was trained on the four as they watched Liverpool v Newcastle and Arsenal v Manchester United. Carragher here was the Freddie

Mercury to the others’ Brian May, Roger Taylor and John Deacon, sliding onto his knees at crisis points, squealing “Watch the runner, watch the runner!” at the unseen Liverpool defence and acting with so little self-consciousness it was almost pretentious.

Carragher’s son, Wigan Athletic defender James, joined halfway through and, having muttered brief responses to the occasional direct question, spent most of his time in mute discomfort, squeezed between Neville and Carragher senior. The zoological interest aside of watching a captive man suffer an evening with Dad and his lairy mates, the different styles of humour carry this concept far longer than it should work.

Mike Dean, in his role as referee expert on Sky Sports, secretes comments that completely undermine his own position in a tone suggesting he is not completely undermining his own position. When, on December 15, Gary Neville asked why Rúben Dias wrapping his leg around Rasmus Hojlund’s was

NUMBERS GAME The figures behind the facts

$2,230

141

€41m

The cost of a lower tier ticket for the 2025 FIFA Club World Cup final at the

MetLife Stadium in New Jersey

6 WSC

Spurs’ consecutive home League games without a 0-0 draw – the last was against

Swansea City in September 2017

The prize money at the 2025 Women’s Euros, nearly €300m (£249m) less than for the men at Euro 2024

A L A M Y

I M A G E S ( 2 ) ,

G E T T Y

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