Urbane Londoners: UKIP welcomes your sneering

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mong urbane Londoners, admitting to a fondness for UKIP and its man of the moment* Nigel Farage is about as bad as confessing never to have watched Mad Men and The Killing. Maybe that’s a touch extreme; perhaps a better analogy would be about as distasteful as drinking blue top milk or serving up a Dairylea Dunker as a canapé?

Despite making inroads across much of the UK in the Local and European elections last week – Nigel was particularly excited** by UKIP’s gains in Wales – UKIP failed to convince a large chunk of London voters of its merits. And why was this? Well, one reason for UKIP’s London failure, as acceded by Suzanne Evans, UKIP’s communities spokesperson, when interviewed on Radio 4 last week, was UKIP’s difficulty in appealing to the ‘cultured, educated, and young’, of which it would seem London is absolutely packed to the rafters.

Rodgers: 4-2-3-1 is, like, so 2012/13

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n 1 June 2012 Brendan Rodgers was unveiled as Liverpool’s new manager. His appointment did not exercise the bulk of Liverpool fans. Many felt sheepish about King Kenny’s departure; others deemed him callow, ungarlanded with silverware, not a big enough name for a club of Liverpool’s stature*; many would have preferred ‘Rafa’ Benitez. I would have liked to have seen Jamie Carragher appointed as player manager for a giggle.

With a weak mandate, and inheriting a squad versed in the ‘swing the ball about’ culture of King Kenny, Rodgers’s task in reversing Liverpool’s downward trend was bordering on the herculean. And from a strictly outcomes focused, league table perspective, it appeared in the initial months that the task might be a bit too tricky for Brendan. Indeed, Liverpool were languishing in mid-table.  The fans were disgruntled and the media unimpressed.  Both were particularly vociferous in their criticism of Rodgers’s decision to send Any Carroll on loan to West Ham with a forward line lacking in numbers after Borini’s injury. Then came the unfortunate documentary (marketed for a US audience and the worst decision of the current Liverpool management) portraying Rodgers as not too dissimilar to David Brent. Personally, I don’t think that I would ever be bosom pals with a man possessing a self-portrait at his family home. Anyway, I digress: mild egomania is a pre-requisite of being a successful football manager. In fact, omit ‘mild’.

Barclays Fantasy Football 2013/14 – Top Tips

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arclays Fantasy Football 2012/13 was my annus horribilis. I should have known that my egotism and vanity in labelling myself the Warren Buffett of the Barclays Fantasy Premier League would come back to bite. Actually divine retribution had nothing to do with it; rather, the astonishing individual performances of Van Persie, Michu and Bale, all of whom I ignored for too long, overly deterred by their hefty values.

2012/13 was certainly a year that favoured concentrating your resources on a few individuals and less on a balanced approach. Defences were particularly poor with four point clean sheets markedly reduced amongst the big four teams. It also favoured the aggressive players willing to lose four points in transfers to a greater extent than previous seasons.

Anyway, although my 2012/13 was not great by my own Buffett standards, being the saddo and egotist that I am, I felt the need to reveal my 'Top Tips' for 2013/14 (not that different from 2012/13); adherence to which I reckon will stand you in good stead throughout the season.

Should Wenger unlock Arsenal's war chest for 2013/14?

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f you're Alan Shearer, Alan Hansen or the perma-tanned, newly buffed up, terrified of old age, Gary Lineker then the answer to the question is yes siree. After all 'Arsenal have 'NOT WON ANY TROPHIES FOR EIGHT YEARS'. Yes that's eight years: an age; a lifetime; an eternity. For many – not just the Match of the Day Holy Trinity – this state of affairs simply cannot continue and Arsenal must spend big to win competitions again.

Now, I'm not overly keen on the use of the phrase 'Arsenal have not won any trophies for eight years', which you might guessed, as it implies that Arsenal have underachieved in this period. I find this odd when you consider that Arsenal's net spend on transfers (not player wages admittedly) over the past eight years has been just £9 million; far less than the two Manchester clubs and Chelsea and less than the likes of Aston Villa and Sunderland. In fact on a transfer spend to league position ratio Arsenal have overachieved not underachieved. Mr Moneyball Billy Beane is impressed!

Sir Alex Ferguson's Dying Glory

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ike many across the country I'm not particularly fond of Sir Alex Ferguson. This wasn't always the case. Whilst I've never been particularly fond of his feverish chewing of Wrigley's Extras; his lack of graciousness in defeat; and the sense I have that his views of family and loyalty are not that far removed from Don Corleone, I used to be able to gloss over these traits and focus on the fact that he had an overwhelmingly positive impact on English football in the mid- to late-1990s. I saw him as a footballing visionary who challenged conventional wisdom (well, Alan Hansen's dull-witted assertion: one of many) that 'you could not win anything with kids' and helped bring English football clubs back to the vanguard of European club football. I was also captivated by his Manchester United team of the late 1990s and early 2000s which played with a swashbuckling majesty that was beautiful to watch and made the hair on the back of my neck stand up on those wonderful Wednesday Champions League nights.