Early Doors - Your morning briefing blog

The saviour of English football

Thu Aug 28 09:00AM

Behind the strangely fake-looking facial hair that Early Doors can't get used to after more than a year perched precariously on Rafa Benitez's face (the facial hair, not ED), lies the saviour of English football.

The Liverpool gaffer might just have saved the nation's bacon with his brazenly self-serving decision to send Steven Gerrard for groin surgery.

As a result, Fabio Capello will not get the opportunity to "kill" Stevie G in the World Cup qualifiers against Andorra and Croatia.

(Indicentally - before Scouseland goes off half-cocked - ED has no problem with Liverpool sending Gerrard for an operation ahead of the international break. He's their player after all. But it's fairly cynical.)

Given England managers' pathological inability to pick just one of Gerrard and Frank Lampard, that could be great news indeed.

Only once can ED remember an England manager dropping either man, and that was when Steve McClaren, of all people, kept Gareth Barry in ahead of Lampard for the Euro 2008 qualifiers against Estonia and Russia.

Of course, McClaren lost his bottle, by bringing Lampard back, and then his job, by losing to Croatia (the second time, with the umbrella. Not the first time with the Robinson airshot; or indeed the third time - signature calamitous moment to be decided).

Otherwise, successive coaches have attempted to shoehorn them both into the same, alpha-male-heavy midfield by playing either one or both men hopelessly out of position.

Remember Sven's attempt to convert Fat Frank into a holding player? Or Gerrard's recent deployment on the left (ED doesn't care what Don Fabio's Christmas tree says; he was playing out wide)?

Now Capello is more or less forced to pick a midfield with some balance, with Joe Cole on the left, where he is good, and Barry and Lampard in the middle.

Even with David Beckham strolling around on the right, day-dreaming about his courtside seats at the Lakers and pinging corners straight at the nearest defender, it looks a hell of a lot better.

So, if England go on to win the 2010 World Cup - a big ask, admittedly - Capello should share his honorary knighthood with Benitez.

- - -

People are very keen on putting a price tag on goals, particularly important ones like Dirk Kuyt's extra-time winner against Standard Liege, which cruelly robbed ED of the delicious spectacle of penalties.

Kuyt's tap-in, bringing as it did the guarantee of Champions League football, was valued at £30m; a handy way to repay his vastly inflated transfer fee more than three times over.

But surely the real value to Liverpool fans is not the financial worth, but the facts that: a) They can still win the flipping Champions League, and b) They were spared the embarrassment of getting turned over by a moderate Belgian outfit. The £30m is really neither here nor there.

- - -

Gareth Barry's announcement, via his agent, that he has "decided" to stay at Aston Villa made Early Doors chuckle.

This, of course, is the same Gareth Barry who two months ago said: "My mind's made up, I want to join Liverpool. There's no going back, it's time for me to move on. I'm desperate to play Champions League football and that's why I have to leave Villa."

What's more, the Barry saga demonstrated that he is no more able to decide which club he plays for than he is to sprout wings and fly the entire Villa squad to Cleethorpes.

Contracts are only "not worth the paper they are written on" if clubs spinelessly give in to their players' every whim and allow bigger clubs to bully them.

Villa told Liverpool to meet their valuation of Barry, which they didn't, so the player stayed put. That's how transfers used to work.

In a similar spirit to Barry, Early Doors would like to announce that, after much speculation, it will not become Barack Obama's running mate for the US Presidency.

ED made the decision to stay two weeks ago and informed Senator Obama of his intentions.

ED wants to concentrate on getting up at six in the morning to write some crappy blog, and hopes this draws a line under the matter.

- - -

QUOTE OF THE DAY: Nemanja Vidic on his alleged unflattering comments about Manchester: "I'd like to clarify that I did not make these particular remarks. I spoke about the difficulty I had settling in to life in Manchester, but that does not reflect how I feel now."

Er, so which was it? Are the quotes made up or did you just not mean them? Even Manchester United's official site is confused, saying the remarks "have either been taken out of context or misquoted."

FOREIGN VIEW: "Not Cristiano, nor Villa, nor Cazorla" - Marca laments that, despite the paper's best efforts, Real Madrid have drawn a big fat blank in their pursuit of their main transfer targets this summer.

TALKING POINT: lordofjapes: "ed is a t*** gland. since when has vidic been known as such a hard man? answer? only by man united fans which ed, based down south no doubt, evidently is. the constant digs at city are ridiculous. we've spanked your local team three nowt at the weekend. why don't you take your s***ty column and **** off."

master7525 "Whoever wrote the article is either an idiot or just hates the fact that Manchester United are losing they're best players...."

Today - Who would you most like to see ruled out of England contention? And is Early Doors really a t*** gland?

COMING UP: It's the Champions League draw this afternoon at 5pm - we have live video streaming and traditional text comment coverage. Plus there's UEFA Cup football today, with Manchester City in a spot of bother and Aston Villa, well, not.

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