Eddie Howe looked like a man passing a compacted stool as Newcastle lost
You may think the talking point of the weekend was Coventryâs unlikely win over Wolves, or all the weekendâs controversial VAR decisions or perhaps Cole Palmerâs haircut, which looks like the sort of tonsorial torture the council used to inflict on kids with ringworm in the 1960s. Whatever happened to ringworm? Itâs gone. It used to be so common. And they say everything is broken.
But for me it was not these things; it was the sight of Eddie Howe peering at a screen in puzzled disbelief, watching Manchester Cityâs second goal. It summed up the random nature of football. Eddie looked confused, lines of concentration across his forehead, with the earnestness of a man trying to pass a compacted stool. He clearly couldnât believe what he was seeing.
Football is all too often reduced to 100% right and 100% wrong decisions like in the West Ham game. Nothing else matters, everything comes down to the VAR, which promised to find the correct decision, even though it cannot.
Modern elite football has, for too long, been trading under the definition of being sophisticated, when it is anything but, as Sven Botmanâs head can attest. Offside or onside without a thought for one of lifeâs most important concepts, that of âthatâll doâ and its close relation âthat looks about rightâ anymore.
Itâs analogue, but for years we were happy enough with it and accepted that football was a sport so open to random happenings that a decision, even if it was a guess, was good enough. Not perfect but good enough. This was a moment which underlines the true nature of the game and the attitudes which should govern it.
But by the look on Eddieâs face as he watched the ball fired at goal relatively innocuously by Bernardo Silva, one of the leagueâs only Bernards, and bounce off Sven Botmanâs head totally randomly into the net, Eddie couldnât believe it or conceive of it. A totally unpredictable, random act. Whoâd have thought it? And after they had tried to iron out randomness from the sport too. But you canât out-think the random.
READ: Who will be the next manager of Newcastle United if Eddie Howe is sacked?
The rain beat down. Theyâd have to do something about this. What good is rehearsing triangles until you are so bored you go blind, instead of just hoofing it, if you just concede a goal by deflecting the ball off Botmanâs head? Have we split our centre-backs for nothing? Thatâs the sort of thing that could happen in park football not to a superior Premier League club. This was the sort of ugly randomness that took the mick out of the whole affair. Whatâs the point if you cannot control everything?
Eddieâs puzzled, strained expression suggested this wasnât supposed to happen. Here he was, officially a Good Young English Manager being derailed by a random act when they had a whole team dedicated to making sure football at the elite level was not subjected to such âit could happen anywhereâ events.
Anybody would think football couldnât and wouldnât be controlled by the Opta Stats bods that measure things of no consequence for money and pretends they are valuable. If you can just kick the ball and it bounces off a manâs head, even one humorously called Botman, to score, where was the skill in that? How could they sell football as elite entertainment if goals are scored like this? Itâs no better than a kick around.
Could they keep calling Guardiola a genius? How much would it reduce your wages if they couldnât sustain such deceptions? Soon even blinkered acolytes would realise the game was not the advanced sporting entertainment theyâd long said it was and that was never its attraction in the first place.
How much could you charge for a goal diverted off a head that you couldnât over-vaunt in a video package for people who only want to see the goals? It devalues everything if you just accepted these things. No wonder he looked puzzled but he soon shut up and picked up his bulging pay packet anyway.
