A stalemate? No surprise there

It was a game many were looking forward to, Chelsea's power coming up against Barcelona's artistry, brawn against brain, lung capacity against grey matter. 'Beauty and the Beast', one of the Barcelona newspapers called it. Which is a little harsh on Chelsea's personnel, but we got the point.

Guus Hiddink had predicted a classic, just like Chelsea's wonderful quarter-final against Liverpool a fortnight earlier. The Camp Nou was full, the television audience massive, the expectation jangling. And what did we get? A stalemate.

Sure, it was on a more elevated level tactically and skill-wise than the bore draw served up the night before by Newcastle and Portsmouth. Yes, there were elements to savour, in the defensive obduracy of John Terry, the buzzing, inventive midfield play of Andres Iniesta and Xavi and the strength on the ball of Yaya Toure. Overall, however, it was not one to live long in the memory. 0-0 draws rarely do.

But then this was a semi-final. And how many classic semis can you recount? Maybe a couple involving England. There's France against Germany in the 1982 World Cup. There's Germany v Italy in the last World Cup, itself goalless for 118 minutes. There's Crystal Palace against Liverpool in the FA Cup 1990. I'm sure there are few others that might be recalled under sustained water-boarding. But generally they turn out like last night: cagey, careful, pragmatic. Which is perfectly understandable. The closer you get to the prize, the less you are prepared to risk.

Just consider what was at stake last night. For Barcelona there is a huge quantity of self-esteem on the table. This is a club that reckons itself different, apart from the rest of Spain by dint of history and geography, apart from the rest of football by the manner of its ownership, aloof from the forces of mammon as personified by the Premier League juggernaut.

Their fans like to see the club as the last representative of the forces of light remaining in the competition. This is a club that thinks of itself as doing things properly. Winning the European Cup only twice in its history is a gap in its CV everyone at the club is desperate to address. Now it has a team not only capable of winning it for a third time, but doing so in style. The pressure to get there is overwhelming. When Lionel Messi miscontrols a ball, you realise it is also a pressure that afflicts even the greats.

For Chelsea, the pressure is no less intense. The desire to right the wrongs of Moscow last season, to put their mark on history, finally to deliver to the man who has bankrolled so much his fervent wish: these are not small concerns. And they are concerns which, while always there, move from the back of the mind to the front as the prize hoves into view. It is ever thus: no-one wants to balls up a semi.

It was just the same in the FA Cup the other weekend. The game between Manchester United and Everton was one of the dullest in recorded time, a match which could have gone on another fortnight and still failed to deliver anything worth remembering. Ultimately Everton deserved their moment. But it was still a stinker. And that, whatever Alex Ferguson's urgent post-rationalisation, wasn't solely down to the pitch.

Unless I can be persuaded otherwise, it was down to this irrefutable law of football: semis are almost always rubbish.

By: Jim White

Let's hear it for Phil

Looking at this year's shortlist for the PFA Footballer of the Year, with no fewer than five of the six candidates hailing from one club, two things are obvious.

First, the list passes its sell-by date quicker than a prawn stuffed down the back of the sofa.

What might have seemed a good idea in February when nominations were sought looks decidedly odd come April. Clearly influenced by Manchester United's defensive record, the Premier League professionals nominated three players back then whose claims have been conspicuously undermined by subsequent lapses.

But the more significant thought raised by that shortlist is this: do professional footballers actually watch the game they play?

If they did they would surely realise that there are three names missing from that list that sing out for a nomination, belonging to three players who, week-in, week-out, not only put in the most colossal shifts, but, through their efforts, have altered the direction of their clubs.
Since the PFA selection is well populated by defenders, let's start at the back. How, you might ask, can any serious assessment of the season's finest players not include Brede Hangeland of Fulham?

The towering Norwegian centre-back was one of Roy Hodgson's first purchases when he arrived at Craven Cottage. And you can understand why. From the moment he arrived in January 2008, a defence that had been a byword for generosity started to get mean.

With Hangeland directing matters, a team that had looked doomed to relegation escaped at the last. This season, safety came in early March. What's more, that same bunch of players who last year looked doomed are in with a serious chance of European qualification.

At their heart has been Hangeland, quick, intelligent, strong, a master of all he surveys. He is the most naturally talented defender this side of Ledley King. And he is blessed with two complete knees.

At many a junior club there is a category in the end-of-season awards for Most Improved Player. Hidden within it is something of an insult: last year you were crap but this you're all right.

But if you were going to include in the six a Most Improved it would have to be Wigan's Titus Bramble. At Newcastle, a laughable byword for comical ineptitude, under the tutelage of Steve Bruce at Wigan he has blossomed.

Always blessed with power and pace, he has added a level of concentration that was entirely missing from his game at Ipswich and Tyneside. When it came to reading the game at Newcastle he could sometimes look illiterate, now he picks up the nuances of an attack with an immediacy that marks out the good player. Bruce, understandably given his own approach and something of a connoisseur of fore-square centre backs, has allowed Bramble to develop largely by trusting him.

And like Hangeland at Fulham, his performances have provided a security in which the rest of the team can prosper. With him around, Wigan have never looked relegation fodder.

He might be the least considered footballer in the rest of the country - and certainly he's the most cackled at - but you won't find many Evertonians laughing at Phil Neville.

When Mikel Arteta ruptured his knee ligaments in February, it was widely assumed that would be that for Everton's season. Already bereft of strikers, Arteta was their most influential, intelligent midfielder. A slow sink towards mediocrity was predicted.

But that was to ignore Neville. Now fully relocated from defence, he has become an outstanding holding midfielder. When he leads his team out at Wembley against his old club Manchester United on Sunday, we can be certain of what we will get from Neville: effort, guts, many a teeth-rattling, in-your-cartilage challenge.

But there is something else to his game that largely goes unnoticed: subtlety. With Arteta no longer there to receive his three yard passes and do something clever with the ball, Neville has been obliged to do it himself. These days, around the edge of an opponent's penalty area, he is capable of the most intelligent of interventions.

If you remain a Neville-knocker, if you still believe that a man so closely resembling Cletus, the slack-jawed yokel, could not possibly be a proper footballer, then just watch him on Sunday. It will be an education. And don't be surprised if he gets a call up to Fabio Capello's end-of-season international jamboree.

For him, that would be the nomination that counts.

By: Jim White

Chelsea's Guus is cooking

There is no doubt who is the man of the football week. And no, however much we might agree with his comments, it's not Usain Bolt for calling Ronaldo a "wuss". It is Guus Hiddink, the self-effacing, part-time Chelsea coach who masterminded the destruction of Europe's form side Liverpool and then made out as if it was something anyone could have done just as long as they knew where to look.

In the stands at Stamford Bridge they must be asking two questions about the clever Dutchman who has landed in their midst. First: since Roman Abramovich has been paying his salary for more than three years now as Russian coach, how come he didn't get him to come and help earlier? And, now that he is here, can we keep him?

Hiddink's arrival has been a bit of a triumph for Abramovich. Far from being the interfering megalomaniac who doesn't know what he is doing (which is how I for one depicted him back in December) his removal of Luiz Felipe Scolari and hiring of Hiddink appears to have been a masterstroke. Not for one moment could you imagine a Chelsea team prepared by Scolari demolishing Liverpool like they did on Wednesday. Frankly, given how wayward they had become under his direction, you doubt they would have even made the quarter-final in the first place.

Sure, Hiddink has been blessed by the return of Michael Essien, the man who effectively emasculated Liverpool by cutting off all supply to Steven Gerrard. But it wasn't luck that did it on Wednesday night. It was analysis, finding a tactical approach and then preparing the players properly on the training ground for it. Football is a simple game when you know what you are doing. And Hiddink makes it simpler than most.

So, the important question is: will he stay beyond May? At the moment it looks hugely unlikely. Hiddink's is no small task in Moscow. He has been charged not only with ensuring qualification for the World Cup, but, once there, with taking them at least as far as he steered South Korea in 2002 - the semi-finals. Not even a man who makes it all look as easy as he does can do that and control a club of Chelsea's stature.

Besides, Abramovich faces a sizeable problem if he tries to alter the employment conditions of his Dutch associate. After Russia beat England to qualify for Euro 2008, Hiddink became a national hero. Anyone attending the Champions League final in Moscow in May could not escape his image, beaming down from advertising hoardings across the city. He is their adopted son. Abramovich, on the other hand, has a much less savoury public image in his homeland. He is regarded by many as the most brazen of the country's asset strippers, a man who has exported huge chunks of the wealth of the nation. They don't all wander round in Chelsea shirts in Moscow, largely because they wonder why Abramovich didn't pump his booty into a local side. How come Dinamo or Spartak aren't in the Champions League quarter final beating Liverpool? How come all that money extracted from Russian resources is being used to promote English interests?

Thus for him to poach Hiddink would be political suicide. Never mind that, in effect, it would be just a case of a slight switch on the payroll, the wider consequences would be dramatic. And, with so many of his assets still in his homeland, Abramovich cannot afford to antagonise the Russian bear any more than he already has. However much he may dislike it, he knows Hiddink is off limits as far as Chelsea are concerned. This is one man even his money cannot buy.

So therefore, just as it seems as if the solution has been found to Chelsea's managerial woes, it will be taken away. Hiddink will have to leave in May and Abramovich will be obliged once more to begin his search for a coach. Carlo Ancelotti has been widely tipped. The players have said they want a return of Jose Mourinho. Chief executive Peter Kenyon is said to favour the old Chelsea hero Mark Hughes. But whoever comes in will know that they are not the boss's chosen one. That particular individual will be working elsewhere in the Roman empire.

By: Jim White

United's biggest threat? Arsenal

Before his team's Champions League tie with Chelsea, the Liverpool manager Rafael Benitez said something interesting. Responding to a journalist's question about Alex Ferguson's recent generous comments about his old sparring partner Arsene Wenger, Benitez suggested that the Manchester United boss was happy to be magnanimous because he no longer regarded his Arsenal counterpart as a threat.

In which case, if Benitez's psycho-analysis is correct, you wonder what Fergie will be saying over the next few weeks about the Frenchman. While it is undoubtedly true that Arsenal's chances of winning the Premier League title are about on a par with Luton's hopes of remaining in League Two, on two fronts the club are beginning to look a plausible barrier to United's all-conquering ambitions. In the FA Cup and Champions League they could prove to be a nemesis.

Indeed such are the delicious possibilities of Arsenal's late-season rush, you wonder what all those Gooners who, in the depth of winter depression, were seriously and consistently calling for the removal of Arsene Wenger are now thinking. Those who booed the team's departure from the Emirates pitch after insipid goalless draws against Sunderland and Fulham, what would have been their reaction as Emmanuel Adebayor cushioned the ball on his chest before volleying it over his own head into the one unprotected area of the Villarreal goal on Tuesday night? Presumably they would have been working out how they might get tickets for finals that suddenly look reachable. How quickly things turn round.

The funny thing is, with Arsenal's season, the clues were always there. The team was never in terminal decline. No side, however well endowed, can afford to miss their centre forward, their most influential midfielder, their electric-heeled wide man and half their defence for long periods of time and hope to make sustained impression on the league. Not even a player as in-form as Robin van Persie can do it on his own. That really was all that was wrong with Arsenal. Despite what his vocal critics were muttering all winter, Wenger had not lost the plot. He was simply suffering from the most appallingly ill-timed collection of serious injuries.

Now fortune has swung back in his direction and he is gaining the benefit of their enforced absence. Adebayor, Cesc Fabregas and Theo Walcott have returned rested and ready to freshen up the team at precisely the moment they need it. If nothing else, what a relief it must be for Arsenal fans, to see Nicklas Bendtner returned to the bench.

How Wenger must be smiling after Tuesday's results. Whatever happens in the second leg between United and Porto (and if it is as exciting as the first, who can wait to find out?) he will fancy his chances against the winner in the semi. Porto are clearly an excellent side, but they leak goals; four of them without reply at the Emirates in the group stage.

United's defensive vulnerability to pace is becoming a liability. How they missed Rio Ferdinand's positional sense as three of their back four were in the wrong place when Porto scored their last-minute equaliser. Wenger will have seen that and relished the thought of what Walcott, Van Persie and Adebayor might do to the back-pedalling red line if United manage to overcome the odds and progress.

Not to mention Andrei Arshavin's contribution in domestic competition. Yes, Arshavin, his brilliant riposte to all those armchair critics who told him what he needed to strengthen his squad. Sure, we all agreed he was crying out for an experienced midfield enforcer, a Patrick Vieira reborn. Plus a centre-back. Someone hard, robust, to give a bit of bite to a side too often lightweight in the absence of its injured heart. There was no doubt about it, we all insisted: muscle was required. So what did he do? He went out and bought yet another ball-playing sprite. You might call it stubborn, but it was a glorious re-statement of principle.

Now Wenger has been rewarded. Rightly so: the espousal of quality should always gain the upper hand. And the fact is, over the next fortnight his team could find themselves within touching distance of two serious pieces of silverware. So all those boo-ers: what do you think now?

By: Jim White

Fan power can save Newcastle

£1.8 million for eight matches.

Or £225,000 a game.

Or £2,500 a minute.

Now we know the cost of a Messiah on Tyneside. No wonder Alan Shearer decided to forsake his comfortable perch on the Match of the Day sofa. No wonder he decided Gary Lineker was not necessarily the most convivial Saturday night company. Frankly for that sort of money he would have been tempted to try and save Charlton Athletic.

Mind, if he does it, if Shearer proves that a total lack of managerial experience is no bar to success, if he does significantly better than that other dugout rookie Diego Maradona and manages to remain unthrashed for his two months of graft, then it will have been money well spent. Indeed, it might - just might - turn out to be the shrewdest spin of the dice in the career of Mike Ashley, [the ownwer of Newcastle] a man for whom sizeable gambles have become part of his life.

Consider the options open to the Newcastle owner. He has been anxious to sell the club since the point last summer that the previous Geordie Messiah - Kevin Keegan - walked out in disgust. It was at that moment that the relationship between him and the barcode-clad masses soured to the point of no return. He too wanted out. But it was also the point at which the international financial system decided that it could not longer sustain itself on a diet of unseasoned debt. No-one was going to buy a used football club from a man like him, particularly at the price he was quoting.

So, in an evident strop, he turned his back on the place, allowing a pernicious drift to set in. For a while Joe Kinnear did a reasonable job stemming the inertia. But when his health began to succumb to the pressure, the sense of hopelessness really set in: this appeared to be a club sleep walking to disaster. For the many faithful (and let's not for a moment forget it is ultimately their money - in ticket and replica shirt sales - that sustains the club) nothing seemed to be being done to counter the inevitable.

Indeed there were those among the season ticket holders who felt that relegation might just act as the purgative necessary to rid the club of the poisonous elements which had leached off it too long. For Ashley the disaster would not have been one of pride or passion. It would have simply been financial. The asset he hoped to offload would be worth half as much in the Championship.

He had, however, let things slip way beyond the point where conventional medicine would help. Eight matches to go and relegation looks less a possibility and increasingly a certainty. Especially with the rivals for the drop beginning to show evidence of fight and form sorely lacking at St James' Park (well, Stoke and Hull at least).

With the transfer window shut, with the dressing room full of mercenaries looking for the exit, with the crowd subdued and distressed, the room for manoeuvre had long disappeared. The only way to face down impending doom was to galvanise the one thing that might now at this late, late stage make a difference: the renowned local passion. And persuading Shearer to step in will do that. The noise of welcome at St James's will be astonishing.

Sure, anyone who has seen him on Match of the Day might baulk at the suggestion that Alan Shearer is some sort of passion alchemist. As a pundit the man appears to define the word bland. But that is wholly to misunderstand the relationship he has with the crowd at St James's. Tomorrow when the team runs out to face Chelsea, the sound will threaten the superstructure of the stands.

A mix of relief, excitement and possibility, it will stir something in everyone concerned. It might just be enough to remind the players of their responsibilities. It might just be enough to alarm the opposition. It might just be enough to do it. What all this means in short, is that Newcastle have done what every crisis club who have run out of options ultimately has to do: they have turned to the fans.

By: Jim White