Like Arsene Wenger, I have often been dismissive of the League Cup – when it was sponsored by Worthington’s, it was derided as the Worthless Cup, usually as a way to not let the fans of the club who had won it get one-up on you. Then the era of the Big Four came along as they hovered up every domestic trophy going. Triumphs like those of Blackburn Rovers and Tottenham Hotspur were anomalies – maybe that of Birmingham City will prove the same; but yesterday the League Cup provided more excitement than the last four FA Cup finals combined.
Many managers do regard the League Cup as a take-it-or-leave-it competition, with Alex McLeish preferring a guarantee of ten years in the Premier League, but it provided the springboard for Chelsea to win the Premier League for the first time in 50 years and for Manchester United to seize the title three years running. The most it could for Birmingham is revitalise legs to escape the spectre of relegation, though that is worthwhile in itself, with a visit to Europe next season secured.
For Arsenal though it could be the beginning of the end. In the 1970s, a great Leeds side was on course for a treble of League, FA Cup and European Cup and ended up with nothing. The Gunners could be about to repeat that as a quadruple – a most unwanted quadruple.
They are running out of players. After the draw with Newcastle United – throwing away a four-goal lead- Abou Diaby tweeted that he was “a broken man” after getting sent-off in the most stupid fashion to give impetus to the Magpies revival. His red card for violent conduct led to him missing yesterday’s Wembley final. Now, Wenger claims that Wojciech Szczesny and Laurent Koscielny are “destroyed” following their hilarious, calamitous mistake. Frankly both were lucky to still be on the pitch, following the goalkeeper’s foul in the penalty box on Lee Bowyer, when the latter was incorrectly flagged offside and then Koscielny’s two-footed challenge on the same Birmingham City man. Arsenal are running out of players with the mental fortitude. “Mistakes make you stronger,” claimed Wenger, but only if you have the strength of character. There is no Tony Adams in defence, no Patrick Viera in midfield. Viera’s last kick for Arsenal was to win the penalty shoot-out against Manchester United in the 2005 FA Cup Final and the team hasn’t won a bean since.
Sick-notes Cesc Fabregas and Theo Walcott have been joined by Robin Van Persie, who has only once completed more than twenty league games for Arsenal in a season in all his time in north London. Fabregas’ most meaningful contribution on Sunday was to appear in an advert fund-raising for Comic Relief, as he always seems injured when the biggest matches are available (unless of course it is for his country).
But Birmingham were great in every department. They could be maligned as journeymen, but they were a team, in contrast to Arsenal, epitomised by the Keystone Kops moment of Szczesny and Koscielny in the last minute of normal time. I am happy that they have some recognition at last – especially ex-Newcastle men, Stephen Carr, Obafemi Martins and, erm, Bowyer. Martins is on loan from the exotic Rubin Kazan (well, they come from Siberia) – he is the striker who came in from the cold. I admired Roger Johnson’s attitude in just pushing through the pain barrier and Ben Foster has a hat-trick of consecutive League Cup medals and certainly earned his corn with the amazing and, occasionally brave, saves he pulled off. Well done, Birmingham City. Who knows how long for Arsenal but for yourselves nearly half a century at hurt at an end.

I must say that the uprising in the Great Socialist People’s Libyan Arab Jamahiriya has surprised myself. I calculated that Colonel Gadaffi, being the ruthless bastard he was, would not hesitate to crush any opposition. To be implacable, as the Romans used to be, usually guarantees subservience. I pooh-poohed any suggestion that he might be toppled because of his brutality. I didn’t realise how weak he was from an internal perspective, especially in the east of the country. I knew he had to secure the release of Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, the Lockerbie Bomber, to bolster his position at home among the clans – it was always more than just an achievement of prestige – but never that he would lose effective control over more than half the country and with the capital, Tripoli, in uproar against him. The world’s longest ruler has survived many times in the past, notably the US bombing in 1986, but after 42 years, his time has surely run out – it just depends how bloody his exit will be.
Interestingly, the West chunders on about how unacceptable it all is, but they are just words and given the defections of so many Libyan diplomatic staff, how can the western politicians be sure they are complaining to those who speak for Gadaffi? With jet fighters strafing protestors and foreign mercenaries showing no mercy, these actions are far worse than that of Slobodan Milosevic or Saddam Hussein in the years leading up to the West declaring war on these dictators (Milosevic changed from forcibly removing people to killing them only when NATO opened the conflict – the difference between ethnic cleansing and genocide, a distinction most people overlook). Yet the West sits on its hands. We see pictures of a supercilious Tony Blair presiding over oil deals with Libya (a gurning Tony Hayward signing the agreement – could this man be any more loathsome) and we have the answer. Gadaffi is supposedly pro-Western, though he threatened British investment if al-Megrahi was not handed over to him. The USA has little leverage but would be unwilling to see a replacement because of his ‘war on Islamism’. Crucially though liberal interventionism has been thoroughly discredited by the Iraq war – there’s the vindication of your legacy, Blair, the rise of injustice in less developed parts of the world.
So we have Laurent Gbagbo flouting election results in the Côte d’Ivoire and violently crushing those loyal to the victor, Alassane Ouattara, while the African Union is Clouseau-like in its attempts to mediate and these massacres in Libya (not to mention Bahrain). In the late 1990s, Britain sent the SAS to Sierra Leone to assist the democratic government in its survival – it was an overwhelming success (unfortunately leading to Blair’s hubris). A few thousand troops and the closure of military airspace to all but western aircraft and Gadaffi and Gbagbo would be almost immediately swept away.
Côte d’Ivoire is relatively simple as there are established norms there – Ouattara would take his rightful position and cocoa prices would fall on the return of stability (there are global economic issues here too). Libya is more a curiosity as there is no ready-made successor to Gadaffi. Maybe it would be best for the United Nations to send a force in with a mandate for aggressive action – given the defection of the entire Libyan delegation, the latter could present it, as ‘representatives’ of Tripoli, as an ‘invitation’ to prevent – in their words – ‘genocide’. Then, the international community would own the outcome in Libya and not just the West or a ‘coalition of the willing’. Given the jitters in Russia and Ukraine over these Middle Eastern protests, the former might veto such a proposal, let alone what China would do. It would then fall to NATO to oust Gadaffi and his mercenaries and for the EU to assist in reconstruction – the Italian stock exchange has been falling over fears of a massive refugee influx into southern Europe, so there are issues of self-interest for NATO nations as well.
Lest we forget, Gadaffi is a tyrant. Back in the 1984, Libyan diplomatic staff gunned down WPC Yvonne Fletcher from their embassy balcony as they dispersed protestors, though the UK did not go to war (take note Israel, not every murder by foreigners needs a military reaction). Gadaffi has supported the IRA, the Red Brigades and many revolutionary Arab movements in the days when he saw pan-Arabism as a positive thing, not today’s democratic pan-Arabism. He has admitted responsibility for the Lockerbie bombing and belatedly paid out for it (Fletcher’s family are still waiting for compensation). And he has eliminated all elements of civil society in Libya. Barack Obama has vacillated for he does not want to become embroiled in a Pandora’s Box leading up to trying to be re-elected in 2012 but he is missing a chance to regain the trust of the Arab street after his missteps in the Israel-Palestine dispute. The Libyans seem to believe thee is no way back, for if they give up there will be ferocious reprisals to follow it up. In this scenario, any person of democratic inclinations can only support one outcome – Gadaffi must go and go now.

Out of the frying pan...

It is the Lockean view that people get the government they deserve, formulated as a response to the Glorious Revolution of 1688, where King James II fled his kingdom never to return. For Hosni Mubarak, decamping to Sharm el-Sheikh can only be a staging post on the route to exile (unless Israel sets up a protectorate in Sinai with him as ruler to stop anyone opening the borders with Gaza – as one member of Likud said yesterday, the Jewish state has always looked to its own security rather than rely on some treaty or other). For the masses of Egypt, they have a new government, but it bears more resemblance to William III’s rule than democracy. Whereas the Nasserist state was part military, part civilian, now an Army Council is in complete charge – they used to call such councils juntas. In fairness, the army is overwhelmingly popular in Egypt (despite losing two wars with Israel with two more indecisive) and in absence of any prominent leaders emerging from the protestors, someone had to take charge. There is no Lech Walesa or Vaclav Havel in the crowds. But military men have a poor record of setting up democracy (witness Fiji or Myanmar) and then staying out of it (see Turkey and Thailand). Moreover, in Africa, political rights are fragile, if they exist at all.
I agree with Sir Malcolm Rifkind (and William Hague) with the call that Israel needs to be less bellicose in its language, for that will only antagonise the Arab street of those autocrat rulers who are pliant to Western concerns, but I disagree of his choice of targets next on the list as Syria and Libya. I myself thought of this as an Arab 1989, to have it confirmed by John Simpson, Timothy Garton-Ash, Sir Malcolm and indeed innumerable other analysts – it’s like when that cargo ship ran aground off the south-west coast of England and I thought ‘Whiskey Galore!’, as a million others had exactly the same brainwave.
We saw with the so-called Green Revolution in Iran last year that states with a strong security apparatus and implacable leaders don’t fall, in Tommy Cooper’s phrase, ‘just like that’. 1989-91 was only possible because while the instruments of repression were available, the leaders (with the exception of Ceaucescu) had no stomach for turning the guns on their own people, either because they were reformist or fearful of the consequences if they did turn to violence. In Romania, the army turned on their dictator and his hated Securitate. In Egypt, they had a wobbly neutrality.
Syria is a bête noire of the USA and Libya has always been maverick – they have little to lose if Washington disapproves of their repression and, like Habsburgs in the Netherlands in the 1550s, a timely display of force has stifled opposition baying for change. Egypt though is one of the key cultural hubs and the most populous nation of the Arab region. It will embolden the original instigators of this zeitgeist in Tunisia to continue with what they have started and hearten others to think if Egyptians can do it, so can we. I was surprised to see protests in Khartoum, given that the regime there in Sudan is not flavour of the months in the West, but incidents have now been seen in an arc from Mauritania through Algeria, Jordan to Yemen. The latter is particularly weak as it was already battling both an Islamist insurgency (when is a war not a war – when it’s an insurgency) and a separatist uprising; on the verge of being a failed state, were the long-time leader to go the result may be less happy than along the Nile.
Israel can’t complain if the peoples of neighbouring countries want to choose their own governments – it has long bragged of being a shining democracy in a sea of autocracy to justify nationalist policies. Peace with Israel may be unpopular in Egypt and Jordan, but politicians with legitimate mandates in Cairo and Amman will not necessarily tear up international treaties. The absence of the death penalty in the UK is unpopular with much of the electorate here, yet the sanction is still banned as a form of judicial punishment. And indeed Tel-Aviv is detested by many Turks, yet Ankara, though recently hostile, has not begun a conflict on the back of that. Any real fear is not that Egypt and others will be another Iran in 1979, but an Algeria in 1992, when the military cancelled elections that Islamists (who ironically cared little for democracy) were about to win, prompting a backlash that led to tens of thousands dying in the uproar during the years that followed. People get the government they deserve. For the moment, it is military. Who knows what will follow?

Today, the Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee begin their comprehensive inquiry into the failings of English football – in the World Cup, in the 2018 World Cup bid and the general Wild West atmosphere pervading the leagues. Richard Scudamore, who has pound sterling signs instead of pupils in his eyeballs, made a pre-emptive strike on the weekend, exhorting us to remember February 5th (41 goals in eight games) and taunting parliament and the select committee to improve on that. That’s like saying you can’t top the shoot-out at the OK Corral for excitement so there should be no effort to improve law enforcement. This is the man who in an interview made a retort to the claims that the Premier League was bad for the game by saying that Newcastle United and Leeds United were undergoing renaissance – this interview taking place when both those clubs were in lower leagues at the time and thus not under his jurisdiction. Yes, undergoing renaissance when having no more to with him – in his own words! What an idiot.
The Football Association needs overhauling, with more former footballers than the token ex-pro Trevor Brooking to be able to take places in the higher echelons of the decision-making body for a start. The Premier League is only interested in money, which has remunerated handsomely a few hundred footballers with wages even bankers would drool over, while not helping one jot the national team (despite a statement back in the early 1990s that its creation would do so, with administrators giving the go-ahead on that understanding), if not actively hindering it. Let us remember February 5th, in that not a single goal was scored by Richard Scudamore or any at the FA and the only ball kicked by the former was a political one designed to protect his fiefdom, like an eighteenth-century German prince who can be as laissez-faire as they like.

Swanning around

The awards season has rolled around again with dreary inevitability (as opposed to zestful inevitability). The BAFTA nominees, the Golden Globes, the Screen Actors’ Guild awards, the Oscar nominees and soon the BAFTAs and Oscars proper (and that’s just the Anglo-US contribution). This time of year is a massive luvvie-fest which may account for the good notices for Black Swan, as if in the medium of ballet they recognised a kindred spirit.
One might think that a young woman’s schedule in preparing for the lead role in Swan Lake would be more of a collector’s item than box office or just dull á là the opinions of the two blowhards that appear fleetingly midway through the movie. But this is a Darren Aronofsky flick, with all that goes with that. He went seriously off all known reservations with his last outing, but there were probably enough good memories of Requiem for a Dream and π to give him another crack at the directorial reins. For this is a major release with a good deal of expensive CGI (is there any other kind?). But his auteur side is too prevalent to make this film great. In contrast to Natalie Portman’s lead, Nina, with her initial rehearsals, this cinematic offering let’s itself go much too readily.
The plot is, essentially, a psychodrama, with gore, horror, melodrama and ultimately pretentiousness all getting a whirl. The world of ballet is indeed demanding, stressful, even self-destructive for some (I’ve read a few interviews of dancers currently in the trade), yet to have it painted in such a lurid way, one can understand why the real professionals are irritated by this release. I have learnt that there is an upsurge in turn-out for ballet performances, but for me, if anything, the film was a turn-off.
This is not to say the story is universally bad – though it flies dangerously close to the ‘it was all a dream’ device, with so many hallucinations by Nina that the whole projected reality can be questioned – for my heart at the end would have given competitors at Aintree a good run for their money. Black Swan is effective. I had sat down with virtually no pre-conceptions of what was to follow. The masochism and sexual ‘violence’ are a couple of notches lower but reminded me of the bludgeon that was The Piano Teacher. Altaa, afterwards, posited that Black Swan was challenging. I would of further – it is brutal, relentless. This is exacerbated by the quality of the acting. In addition to Portman, excellent contributions are turned in by Vincent Cassel, Mila Kunis and a mature Winona Ryder. I would have no complaints if Oscar recognised this.
This is a movie that yearns to be on a film studies course. All manner of conceits are deployed: Nina’s metamorphosis into a swan (of which one interpretation is that it is indicative of her determination to be perfect); the mother whose failed career induces her to live tyrannically through her daughter, who is thus infantilised before going off the rails like Britney Spears (what will those earnest students say about the absent father…); and the parallels to Swan Lake itself, told as a nihilistic, secular fairytale (only missing the MASH tune Suicide is Painless), among many, many paraphernalia. By the same measure, it could be sent up mercilessly.
The pretension is victorious at the end when [SPOILER] Nina expires to triumphant applause - a twist on the saying ‘to die for’. Pare it down, it is just going out on a high. Rather than being tragic though, it is not far removed from Oscar Wilde’s reaction to the death of Little Nell. This continues into the arrangement of the final credits, with needless tricksiness unfortunately reinforcing this effect. It is not a film I would see in a hurry again, but it does the job. Boosting the audience for ballet can’t be too bad. Next time though, could we have a discursive debate about Karl Popper’s theory of black swans please? 3 out of 5.

A club in an abusive relationship

I am gutted. Not as much as when Chris Hughton was sacked, which felt like a bereavement because he given the heave-ho for no credible reason and was doing a good job. But Andy Carroll joining Liverpool – two points above Newcastle Utd having played a game more – is still upsetting. Even more so, given that it seems he didn’t want to go. With the recent death of Nat Lofthouse and his lore at Bolton Wanderers, Carroll, at his boyhood club, could have remained there his entire career. But that doesn’t take into account the pondlife and gangsters that inhabit the St James’ Park boardroom, asset-stripping the club for every penny before they sell it. Mike Ashley is only going to leave Newcastle Utd with someone putting a wodge of money in his pocket or exiting in a bodybag. There are no doubts which option Tyneside finds the most preferable.
It is the carpet-baggers who get the £36 million, not the squad, which is now left without an adequate striker, given that Carroll had scored more goals than all the other forwards combined. Twelve league goals at this stage of the season is not a bad return, especially after a month-long injury. At the start of the season, one commentator dismissed Carroll as getting his club no more than twelve goals a season. Well, inadvertently he has been proved right. Carroll was Newcastle’s best player and it was said that he was not for sale at any price. But the board have been proved to be pathological liars in a court of law – why should they change now? Maybe Carroll will do a Michael Chopra and bottle opportunities in front of goal against Newcastle Utd or at least a Beardsley and come back to Newcastle United at the tail-end of his career. Yet it should not have come to that. Duncan ‘Big Dunc’ Ferguson never wanted to leave Everton, but Newcastle paid top dollar to bring him over in the late 1990s and after several semi-productive years at Gallowgate, he returned to Merseyside. Ferguson was older than Carroll’s 21 years though.
What is more galling is Blackpool had the gumption to retain Charlie Adams – who wanted a move to Liverpool. Their chairman, Karl Oyston, was in breach of the FA’s Fit and Proper Person test for an alleged bankruptcy (a clerical incident since resolved), yet Mike Ashley would fail a true Fit and Proper Person test, both as a football club owner and as a human being. (The FA should be sued for breach of trading standards with that test’s name). Spurs made a bid for Sergio Aguero in the region of £34 million but his club, Atletico Madrid, responded by improving and extending his contract. That could have happened with Andy Carroll but unlike Newcastle United, Blackpool and Atletico are clubs run by people who care about the welfare of the institutions they are entrusted with running, not how much money can be wrung out.