The body beautiful

The modern elite professional footballer plying their trade in any of the top leagues in the world is an athlete.  They come in different shapes and sizes, but they are still, on the whole, finally tuned machines...quick, strong and have more energy than a well know battery operated bunny...not that type, the wholesome family type.  There have been a few exceptions to the rule gracing the Premier League in the last few years, players like Andy Reid, Benni McCarthy and Mido all carry a bit of timber, but it is noticeable that the further down the echelons of the football league and into non-league football you go, the athleticism starts to waver some what.

 Benni McCarthy shows off his new implants

We've no need to get into some homo-erotic worship of the elite players we see on a weekly basis, the muscular Cristiano Ronaldo, the short stocky Lionel Messi, the solid bulk of Wayne Rooney, nippy speed mechants like Lennon and Walcott or standard athletic build of a Mikel Arteta.  We all know what these guys look like, we know what their physical strengths and what they bring to their game.

So lets move on, down past the league structure, past the upper knockings of the non-league structure, past even the Saturday league teams who turn out for the preliminary rounds for the preliminary rounds of the preliminary rounds of the preliminary round of the FA Cup and to the standard bread and butter Sunday League teams that so many of us have "perfected" our trade playing in.  The basic few shapes remain the same...sometimes the proportions have just changed.  You still get your nippy winger type, usually the 17 year old kid playing his first season of adult football and being given a warm welcome by trundling middle aged full backs who love nothing more than putting 17 year olds firmly into Row Z.

Short and stocky make an appearance too, usually more horizontally affluent than Lionel Messi, but has the quick feet, touch and vision that show he used to be a good player before he found the sultry combination of beer and kebab.

My favourite will always be the rotund centre half, usually called John or Keith.  John will always turn up drunk/hungover from the night before, his first port of call will be to turn the changing rooms into a biohazard area swiftly followed by a rousing call to arms for the rest of the team before spending a full 90mins trundling between goal line and half-way line(the opposition half yields no reward for yer man) leaving stud marks in anything that moves...woe betide anyone silly enough to go past him with pace for it shall be the first and last time that happens on this fine morning.

John is the true face of Sunday League, and we're all glad he's on our team...you can keep your Messi and Ronaldo, we've got big John.

"I'd give it 5 minutes boys..."

For all you Italian fans

Eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth, just desserts, karma, ying and yang...call it what you will, but Italian fans will no doubt be having a sly smile today at the news coming from across the pond that Ecuadorian ref Byron Moreno has been jailed for allegedly attempting to smuggle heroin into the USA.

For those who don't know who Moreno is, he's the guy that refereed the game between South Korea and Italy in the 2002 world cup during which he sent off Francesco Totti and disallowed a perfectly good Italian goal before the South Koreans went on to win 2-1 and knock the future champions out of the tournament.

Needless to say this isn't the first time Moreno has made the headlines (he was also banned for 20 games having added 12 minutes of added time onto the end of an Ecuadorian League game), but I think this could be one that doesn't end up on Question of Sport.

Merry-go-rounds

We've become all too used to the "managerial merry-go-round", to use the parlance of our time, and a sacking usually comes after the dreaded "vote of confidence", sometimes chairmen and owners are criticised for being to hasty with their decisions, other times its the fans who call for change.

In the modern game we see managers relieved of duties on such a regular basis we don't really bat an eye lid.  Sackings usually occur after a loss of form, the relegation of a team or lack of success; however this week saw the sacking (sorry "enforced gardening leave") of Sean O'Driscoll at Doncaster Rovers.  The fans had been calling for him to leave for the last few weeks having endured of run of 19 games without a victory.  Club owner John Ryan had publicly backed his manager earlier in the week saying "...who would you replace him with? Who is better?" before placing O'Driscoll on "gardening leave" on Friday and appointing Dean Saunders as his replacement.

The reason Ryan gave for the decision is not the usual blurb from one of the reasons above but instead he pointed to the injuries picked up by the players.  Ryan had become concerned that O'Driscoll couldn't get his squad fit and that there were too many injuries to key players saying "I've been worried that we've never been able to field our strongest eleven for months".

This doesn't seem like a real reason to me, most of the running of the playing side of the club is the managers remit, but isn't the fitness of the players is down to the medical staff.  Surely if the manager hasn't had his first choice eleven at his disposal for months he can't be expected to be that successful without further backing from the chief, which wasn't particularly forthcoming, especially for a man who took Doncaster to the Championship in the first place by beating Leeds in the play-off final in the 07/08 season and has subsequently kept them there.  The reason O'Driscoll lost his job was the poor run of form stretching back to last season, 19 games is a long time, especially across two seasons and most club owners would have given O'Driscoll the sack long ago, so why do we need the excuses?

Fantasy Football - Update 1

Now that I have successfully negotiated the opening weeks of the season and the ever tricky holiday with no internet access, maybe its time for a quick Fantasy football update.

At the risk of sounding like I'm gloating, its also convenient that this post also coincides with a fairly good run of form for the Balfour Warriors, leaving them sitting approximately 10,500th out of the 2.5million worldwide players and sitting pretty at the top of the private leagues my boys are competing in (albeit by a very narrow margin in one).  "But footyfile!", I hear you cry, "tell us how you did it", I'd love to say it was full of tactical nouse, in-depth analysis of each team, the predicted line-ups and wind conditions pitch side at the time of kick-off, but in all honesty I've just been a bit lucky.

The first week was a bit of a disaster and I fully took advantage of the extended "unlimited transfers" making 6 changes for week two, which didn't go much better, whilst the core of my team (Given, Richards, Smalling, Young and Rooney) were performing the early season running was a little bit of a mystery to me.  Sure enough week 3 saw the deployment of my Wildcard and a bucket load of changes followed.

Since then, things have picked up, a current front three of Rooney, Aguero and Adebayor has given my strikers a certain edge, and with Juan Mata and Ashley Young marshaling the midfield the defence has looked a little sparse.  Luckily for me though, goals have flowed freely so far this season, so clean sheet bonuses have not really been rife.

Still, whilst I'm doing fairly well I am taking quite an interest and its at that magical point where I'm trying to work out the best combination of results/scorers to ensure I extend a lead over my rivals...I'm sure the bubble will burst soon and I'll start to drift down the league and eventually lose interest...but what can I say, I'm a bad loser, I always have been, just ask anyone who's ever played football with me!

Top 10 Overrated Premier League Players

Ok then, its money where my mouth is time...top 10 overrated players to be the yang to my underrated ying.  So, in no particular order;

• Andy Carroll - I've no doubt the boy will improve, but lets face it, £35million for a player who has had at best half a good season in the top flight.  He's got the physical attributes to have been a force in the mid-90's complete with the shots (of the alcoholic variety)/minutes played ratio (thats sitting somewhere at around 50:1 at the last count)
• Gael Clichy - I'm sure Arsenal fans will agree with me on this one.  He had such potential as a young full-back at Arsenal, but in recent years he's lost his way a bit.  In fact the best aspect of his game is the schoolboy enthusiasm at which he receives the ball, gets his head down and runs in a straight line towards the oppositions goal, before reaching the final third and panicking.
• Maxi Rodriguez - For a man who has won over 40 caps for one of the top footballing nations in the world, the boy is severely average, he has a fairly good 11 goals in 45 appearances for Liverpool, but be honest, how many times have you ever noticed him on the pitch (in a good way, not in a shanky, cows backside banjo way).
• Ramires - Similar to Maxi, another average player who has started racking up caps fora top international team, although this time the Selecao.  Another one who is remarkable anonymous in any game until you see what you think is a teenager receive the ball and either a) passes it sideways or b) passes it long.  Almost the definition of 'the boys got a good engine'.
• Salomon Kalou - Only just sneaking into the overrated category by the skin of his teeth, otherwise would be firmly on the sh*t pile alongside Chelsea flop Franco Di Santo.  Somehow has racked up an impressive 135 appearances for Chelsea, but has only found the net 35 times...which for a striker is pretty useless.
• Nicklas Bendtner - Enough said....next.
• Kieran Richardson - its not often that Fergie gets it wrong, and in my opinion Richardson wasn't 'one that got away'.  Don't get me wrong, he has a fairly impressive set piece talent, and a better than average passing ability, the problem is he just doesn't have the football brain to go with the technical ability.
• Ben Foster - at one time I truly believed that Ben Foster was the man who would be Englands number one for years to come, after two successful spells at Watford he looked to have the raw shot stopping ability to go on to big things once the decision making caught up...unfortunately it never has.  Always a worry when your 'keeper is scared of round white things.
• Jay Bothroyd - Much like Kieran Richardson, how often does Wenger get it wrong (we'll come back to that in a later post)?  Bothroyd was not one of those, Championship striker at best, but never a 20 goal Premier League man, or England international.
• Danny Graham - struggled when I used to go and watch him in League 1...Premier League may be a bit beyond him, good little piece of business for Watford though getting that much money for him.

Premier Leagues most underrated players

There will always be players who have the 'underrated' tag, some shift it and others will keep the label throughout their career until they become obscure trivia in the stands at ground up and down the country.  Most of these players aren't so much underrated as unfashionable is as much as they are not regularly lauded over on MOTD or in the sports section of the papers week in, week out.  Much of this can be to do with the club the are at, look at the Blackpool team from last season, for the majority of the season pundits and fans alike waxed lyrical about how they played the game in the right way etc. etc....but how many of you can name a starting XI from Blackpool last season?  I'll take this one step further, if Charlie Adam and DJ Campbell were unavailable, who would the starting XI be?

Obviously there are some people out there who will have absolutely no problem with the above brainteaser, and I would be willing to place a sizable amount of money that these people could also have a fair stab at naming the Burnley starting XI from a couple of seasons ago.  Funny isn't it how none of you would struggle if I said name the Chelsea starting XI from last season, or the Man United starting XI...we may struggle a little bit more with Man City, but to be honest most of the time I think Mancini gets his Premier League sticker album out and throws darts at the Man City page to pick his team (FYI - he's got a lot of David Silva, but no Johnson or Tevez and last season Joe Hart hid all his Shay Given stickers).

But I'm going slightly off topic, so lets haul this back to where I started.  The 'underrated' thing has come to my mind having read a number of articles on various websites where 'experts' have given their list of the top 10 underrated players in the Premier League.  Let me tell you now, those lists are rubbish.  To save you all the time of looking yourself the majority of them do agree with players but have players like the following; Park Ji Sung, Jordan Henderson, Matt Jarvis, Chris Samba, Clint Dempsey, Darren Fletcher and Hugo Rodallega...no one rates them do they!? Oh, no wait a minute, they are almost all international players, the combined transfer value of them would be somewhere in the region of £80million and they have all definitely been subjected to Alan Hanson's probing post match analysis.  In fact the only players I did see on the lists who I did have to admit were Stuart Holden, Chu Young Lee and Dickson Etuhu.  Alll three of these guys are obviously immensely talented, but because of the club they play for in the case of the first two, and the role played in the case of Etuhu they genuinely don't get the plaudits they probably deserve.

Holden and Lee are both on the verge, people were starting to sit up and take notice of them both last season, however injury has curtailed that.  Holden in particular is another one of those young American players who could play a pivotal role in the USA continuing their rise on the world footballing stage. 

Lee is an international player granted, but that hasn't stopped people being truly surprised when they see just how good the guy is.  I'm not sure if he and Park suffer from the same snobbery that people think the Asian nations don't produce good footballers, but they can definitely both play a bit.

Etuhu has suffered from not playing at the same time as Claude Makelele, when Makelele was at Chelsea it was oh so fashionable to talk about the unfashionable Claude and the role he did, well Dickson is doing the same role now, only this time no-one seems to care, yet it can't be denied that the guy is a beast and an asset to any team.

So...I suppose its time for me to put my nuts on the block and give list of players I would define as 'underrated'.  In no particular order, my top 10 underrated Premier League players are;

• Stuart Holden
• Chu Young Lee
• Dickson Etuhu
• Ben Watson
• Simon Cox
• Jerome Thomas
• Jason Roberts
• Younes Kaboul
• Lucas
• Emile Heskey (everyone needs to recognise the importance of the Big Man)

There we go, now for the sake of Ying and Yang, I suppose I need to get working on the overrated players...this should be easy...Number 1 - Donkey Graham...