Rafa Benitez was probably stealing the job of a deserving Englishman, and that's bad. But Joe Cole might be stealing the job of a Frenchman now, so that kind of balances it all out. Maybe. Mostly I'm just confused. In any case, I think this is the Wednesday news and notes. Probably…
* Jamie Carragher went on TalkSport today to have a little chat with the regrettable duo of Andy Gray and Richard Keys. Not entirely surprisingly given the hosts, stage, and some of the less savoury whispers that stuck to Carragher towards the end of Rafa Benitez' tenure, he decided to pull out his best Henry Winter impersonation, banging on about foreigners stealing England's game away from the good old boys:
If every club had an English manager, someone would have to win the league. Someone would have to win the FA Cup. And then they’d accumulate these trophies.
Capello had an aura and presence that maybe McClaren didn’t have. And it was the same with the likes of Benitez and Houllier at Liverpool, and Mourinho at Chelsea.
Chelsea have appointed a 33-year-old manager, Andre Villas-Boas, this summer. Years ago someone like David Moyes would have got that job.
So if David Moyes managed all 20 Premier League sides, David Moyes would win a lot of trophies and therefore be good and also qualified to lead England to glory on the international stage. Makes sense. As part and parcel of all that, he goes on to suggest that England's next manager must be English, no matter there's hardly a glut of English managers lying who would seem candidates for the job on merit—when the best name on the table is Harry just effing run around a bit Redknapp, it probably means the FA needs to reevaluate not only the youth development situation nationally but also coach development.
To think Moyes somehow should have been a legitimate candidate for Chelsea over the summer is absurd, and England's long-term fortunes won't be fixed by shoving less qualified but home-grown managers into the top jobs while pretending everything's hunky dory. Rather it will depend on overhauling the system from the ground up to develop a new generation of coaches who are qualified to lead England—and English clubs—onto the world's biggest stages. Simply moaning that current English managers are losing jobs to Spaniards, Italians, and Frenchmen doesn't do anybody a whole lot of good, and mostly it just reflects badly on those complaining about the situation. And also David Moyes isn't English.
But Carragher also thinks Luis Suarez is boss. Just he probably wouldn't want to see him as boss one day. In England, at least:
I know there are great players in the league; Aguero has started well, so has Rooney, but I can honestly say I wouldn't swap [Suarez] for anyone. I think he is fantastic.
All of which is a bit of a mixed bag, but it's a long international break we're in the middle of and if Jamie Carragher's going to go for a little ramble, then at this point so are we.
* If all of that's a bit too heavy for some random mid-week time-wasting, there's always video of Luis Suarez getting pissed off when a sprinkler and Charlie Adam conspire to interrupt his warm-up routine ahead of the match at Goodison. I dare say if Adam had been holding the sprinkler during their brief exchange it would have ended in blood and a pile of knotted garden hoses. Thankfully, in the end it was only the ball that ended up with its ass kicked.
* Elsewhere, Kenny Dalglish did some talking about Liverpool's players out on loan, from Joe Cole heading to play in France—where he'll get a chance at Champions League football along with domestic action Dalglish hints might be better suited for Cole at this stage in his career than the Premier League—to Aquilani's move to Italy in order to have the player in the proverbial shop window in the only league he was ever really interested in playing in. In particular, though, he takes time to single out Jonjo Shelvey's recent move to Blackpool:
Jonjo’s a very promising player for us, but the difficulty for us is to get him a game. He needs games and it’s a fantastic opportunity for Jonjo to do that. Blackpool have got a good quality player and it’s educational for us because we’ll get to see him play.
It’ll also be educational for Jonjo because he’s playing at a good level with a good club—and another real bonus for him is he doesn’t have to move house.
It is important for us to use as many opportunities as we can to develop the players—if we can’t give them games here, then we’ve got to look to get them playing somewhere else.
All of which would seem to support the recent rumours that Danny Wilson, another player who desperately needs games if he's to have any hopes of developing further, will be joining Shelvey out on loan any day now, though the upcoming friendly against Rangers would make even less sense if Wilson isn't involved in it.
We'll be back later, but in the meantime, have a quick reminder of how terrifying it can be when continental types set up on England's shores. And maybe spare a thought for Joe Cole, who probably has to put up with just this sort of thing on a daily basis…