Tottenham v Everton – live!
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42mins: Which they very nearly do. Bale crosses low from the left and a lunging Defoe is inches away from turning it in at the near post.
40mins: Everton’s first and best chance, Neville crossing from the right and Rodwell sending a free header wide from eight yards or so. I still think they’ve got hope here, though obviously they can’t concede another.
37mins: “Can I just say how disappointing it is, from an Arsenal fan’s perspective, that Good Ol’ Harry has finally realised how good Pavlyuchenko is,” writes Chris Sturrock. “His previous neglect of the Russian had been a real source of amusement and reassurance to me. I just hope he has a customary change of heart about him before the derby game at White Hart Lane.”
35mins: It says something of Tottenham’s current inflated levels of confidence that Bassong just intercepted the ball on the edge of his own area, layed it off to a teammate, thundered 80 yards up the pitch, dummied the return ball and sprinted into the penalty area all set to collect his goal of the season award when he met Bale’s cross with a stunning header into the top corner. Bale’s cross, however, went straight into Phil Neville’s midriff.
33mins: Suddenly Everton are looking very much like they did on Thursday, letting their opponents pass freely in front of their defence and hoping for the best.
GOAL! Very good goal indeed! Croatia 2, Everton 0 (Modric 28) Corluka, Kranjcar and Modric play keep-ball down the right, totally befuddling the Everton defence and finding more and more space in increasingly dangerous areas with every tippy-tappy pass until Modric shoots over Howard and into the net very stylishly from 15 yards or so, possibly with the aid of a deflection. No non-Croatian foot touched the ball for about two minutes.
26mins: Pienaar crosses from the left, Gomes comes to claim, gets half a hand on it, spills it and wins a ludicrous free-kick even though Yakubu didn’t touch him at all. There’s hope here for Everton.
25mins: Quite an even game now. Everton have just had a couple of corners without creating a chance, then Bale bursts down the left, crosses well and Kranjcar heads at goal. Not very well, but it’s a chance.
21mins: Palacios passes to Pavlyuchenko, who cuts in from the left wing and lashes a shot from 20-odd yards that starts heading to the near post and then veers at the last moment towards the centre of goal. Howard pushes it away.
20mins: Bale does terrifically well to get back at Anichebe and win the ball, but the Everton striker, making his first start for aeons after a nasty injury, takes a worrying amount of time to get up. Seems OK, though…
19mins: It’s been emphatically different since the goal, with Everton having at least as much of the play as Tottenham. “They’re asking a few questions,” agrees Chris Waddle.
17mins: Everton win a corner, Heurelho Gomes comes to claim it. He jumps alone, gets both gloves on the ball, then drops it at an astonished Yakubu’s feet. The ball is eventually hacked clear, but that was abysmal goalkeeping.
16mins: Chris Waddle is letting rip at the Everton midfield, who have “done nothing” and are “all showing to feet” when what they require is “legs”.
14mins: Gina G is Australian, as Gary Naylor so correctly points out. I have changed the offending paragraph so it looks like I didn’t make the mistake in the first place [bursts into evil cackle].
GOAL! Tottenham 1 Everton 0 (Pavlyuchenko, 11) Spurs get their reward for all the early possession. They don’t have to work very hard for it, though – a longish ball to Defoe, who’s given way too much time to turn and run into the right side of Everton’s penalty area. His shot is low and hard and woefully off target, so much so that his strike partner is able to turn it in.
10mins: Tottenham haven’t quite had 100% of possession so far, but it’s close.
9mins: Phil Neville has been booked for a rather amateurish tackle on Gareth Bale out near the left corner flag.
7mins: It’s actually a perfect pitch, the ball’s zipping about like Zippy at the zip-lovers’ annual zip convention. Long, fast, true passes along the ground are the theme so far. I’m feeling optimistic about this one.
4mins: Anichebe gives the ball to Defoe, he feeds Pavlyuchenko – decent link-up between the Spurs strikers, but Phil Neville steals the ball before the Russian can shoot.
3mins: The character getting the early praise is Tottenham’s groundsman, Darren Baldwin. The pitch is looking pretty sharp given how close this match apparently was to being rained off.
1min: They’re off!
12.58pm: The players are on the pitch, we’re just a few moments (and adverts) from kick-off)…
12.48pm: This is the time when I would be bringing you the most exciting nuggets of pre-match blather from the ESPN team. I’m waiting.
12.27pm: And we’ve already got some teams! And they’re quite interesting – Defoe: in! Pavluchenko: in! Saha: out! Bilyaletdinov: on the bench!
Tottenham: Gomes, Corluka, Bassong, Dawson, Bale, Kranjcar, Huddlestone, Palacios, Modric, Pavlyuchenko, Defoe. Subs: Alnwick, Kaboul, Crouch, Gudjohnsen, Kyle Walker, Dervite,
Assou-Ekotto.
Everton: Howard, Neville, Heitinga, Distin, Baines, Anichebe, Arteta, Pienaar, Osman, Rodwell, Yakubu. Subs: Nash, Yobo, Jagielka, Bilyaletdinov, Donovan, Vaughan, Gosling.
Referee: Steve Bennett.
12.23pm: Everton are England’s form side at the moment, but then as anyone who had the extremely depressing misfortune of seeing their Europa League performance in Lisbon on Thursday will know, they have the potential to be utterly rubbish. Perhaps they are, at present, the footballing equivalent of Gina G, who hit the high notes in Blighty but was distinctly second best when called upon to represent our nation in Europe (if your stomach is strong enough you can watch her 1996 Eurovision performance, introduced by Virginia Bottomley, for chrissakes, here). One defeat in 12 is their current league run, though eagle-eyed stat-hawks will notice that they have won just one of their last seven away.
Spurs, who closed their training ground last week after an outbreak of something totally hideous, are still grumbling about their game at Goodison in December, where they fluffed a two-goal lead and a stoppage-time penalty to draw 2-2. They list Jermain Defoe as a doubt today, and give Peter Crouch a late fitness test, leaving the way clear for Roman Pavlyuchenko to continue his recent goalscoring run.
You can still read some pre-match stuff here, if you like
If you’re looking for team news ahead of today’s game, you can check out our squad sheets right here. Whichever team Tottenham sends out, though, you have to wonder how much their routine has been disrupted after the club decided to close their training ground on Friday in a bid to contain a virus affecting players and staff.
James Callow reports: Harry Redknapp is hoping the virus sweeping through the club will not derail Tottenham Hotspur’s Champions League hopes as it did four years ago.
After several first-team players fell ill this week it was decided to close the indoor facilities at the Spurs Lodge training ground in Chigwell, Essex, for sterilisation. Redknapp instead held his pre-match media briefing at White Hart Lane ahead of Sunday’s home match with Everton.
Vedran Corluka and Wilson Palacios were the worst affected but could recover in time for what could be a key match in Spurs’ campaign to finish in the top four.
Read the rest of the article here
Carling Cup: Behind the scenes at the final
In order to commemorate the 50th League Cup final, the Football League have granted our award winning photographer Tom Jenkins exclusive and unprecedented behind the scence access to record the day’s events
Ramsey to miss season after leg break
• Young midfielder out for rest of season and perhaps longer
• Operation on horrifically broken leg described as successful
Arsenal have confirmed that Aaron Ramsey broke both bones in his lower right leg in a horrific collision at Stoke yesterday.
The young midfielder will miss the rest of the season after a successful operation on his tibia and fibula. Having been rushed to a local hospital yesterday afternoon, he is expected to be moved to London today.
Play was held up for five minutes after Ramsey was tackled by Stoke City’s Ryan Shawcross. Several players appeared distressed – two were sick. Shawcross left the field in tears after being shown a red card. Arsenal won the match 3-1.
Arsenal’s manager, Arsène Wenger, called the tackle “horrendous” and said a three-match ban for the red card would be “just ridiculous”.
Stoke’s Tony Pulis, while condemning the tackle, defended Shawcross, saying he “would never, ever go out to hurt a fellow professional”.
An Arsenal statement said: “The operation successfully reduced the fractures and whilst it is too soon to state an exact timescale for recovery, Aaron will certainly miss the remainder of this season. Our thoughts are with Aaron.”
Pompey ‘could escape nine-point penalty’
• ‘Assumption of automatic deduction has never been tested’
• Administrator is investigating all transfers made by the club
The administrator in charge of Portsmouth believes there is a chance of the club avoiding an expected nine-point penalty.
Andrew Andronikou, a partner at the accountancy firm UHY Hacker Young, has been advised that Portsmouth may be able to challenge the imposition of a points penalty for going into administration, should such a penalty be ordered by the Premier League. Portsmouth are four points adrift at the foot of the table.
“The assumption that there is an automatic deduction of points has never been tested before but we will do our very best to avoid a deduction,” Andronikou said.
“Our solicitors believe there may be a slight opportunity but I don’t want to say anything more because that prejudices my position in achieving it. I would say everyone has taken for granted that there will be a deduction of nine points.”
Andronikou, speaking on BBC Radio 5 Live’s Sportsweek programme, said: “I would imagine [the debts] will bottom around £78m.
“We will know more towards the end of the week. There are lots of contingent creditors I need to look at. I will probably need another week to get to the bottom of it all and see the exact figures.”
Andronikou is investigating Portsmouth’s transfers in the hope of discovering how the club found themselves in such a mess, despite raising around £100m in player sales over the last 20 months.
“Everyone asks how Portsmouth can generate so many funds from player sales but be left with residual liabilities,” Andronikou said. “I am going to go through every transfer on a one-by-one basis. The transfers that have been reported in the press, I am told, aren’t actually the figures of the funds received by the club.
“The most difficult area to discuss at the moment are the cost, expenses, of selling each player. I will go through every single transaction and find out where each penny has been accounted for.”
Adebayor ‘never wanted to leave Arsenal’
• Togolese striker claims ‘Arsène didn’t want me anymore ‘
• Predicts hostile reception at Emirates Stadium on 24 April
The Manchester City striker Emmanuel Adebayor knows his return to the Emirates Stadium will be “hell” but says he never wanted to leave Arsenal.
“Arsène Wenger can never say that I wanted to leave,” Adebayor told the French television channel Canal Plus. “It was because Arsène didn’t want me any more.”
Adebayor’s move to City was shrouded in mystery, with reports of dressing-room bust-ups. The Arsenal manager has always maintained the forward asked to leave.
“The most annoying thing about the whole story is when people say I wanted to leave for the money,” said Adebayor.
“If I had really wanted to, I would have left two years ago for the money and gone to Milan or Barcelona.
“I read that it was me who was the troublemaker in the changing room. That’s unbelievable. If one player can say that I, Emmanuel Adebayor, spoke badly to anyone in the changing rooms then I’d honestly like to know who it is. It has never happened in my life.
“If Arsène has a big heart we can go on a TV show to have a debate and he will never say I told him I wanted to leave the club. He’ll never say that. He knows it full well.”
Adebayor spent three and a half years in north London before moving to City for £25m last summer.
“It will be 90 minutes of hell,” he said of City’s scheduled trip to the Emirates on 24 April. “The fans will boo me, insult me, because, until now, they haven’t understood why I left. I’m the bad guy.”
The Togo international caused a row in September when he ran the length of the Eastlands pitch to celebrate a goal in front of Arsenal fans.
He said: “I shouldn’t have done that [the celebration] but we are all human. I made a mistake, but who doesn’t?”
Adebayor, who scored twice in City’s 4-2 win in that match, was also found guilty of violent conduct after an incident involving a former team-mate, Robin van Persie.
Tottenham Hotspur v Everton – live!
Hit refresh for the latest entries or set your page to update automatically using the button below. Email any questions, thoughts or gags over to simon.burnton@guardian.co.uk
12.23pm: Everton are England’s form side at the moment, but then as anyone who had the extremely depressing misfortune of seeing their Europa League performance in Lisbon on Thursday will know, they have the potential to be utterly rubbish. Perhaps they are, at present, the footballing equivalent of Gina G, who hit the high notes in Blighty but was distinctly second best when called upon to represent her nation in Europe (if your stomach is strong enough you can watch her 1996 Eurovision performance, introduced by Virginia Bottomley, for chrissakes, here). One defeat in 12 is their current league run, though eagle-eyed stat-hawks will notice that they have won just one of their last seven away.
Spurs are still grumbling about their game at Goodison in December, where they fluffed a two-goal lead and a stoppage-time penalty to draw 2-2. They list Jermain Defoe as a doubt today, and give Peter Crouch a late fitness test, leaving the way clear for Roman Pavlyuchenko to continue his recent goalscoring run.
Kick-off is at 1pm but Simon will be here from 12.30pm to let you whether Tottenham can successfully reclaim fourth place from Manchester City.
If you’re looking for team news ahead of today’s game, you can check out our squad sheets right here. Whichever team Tottenham sends out, though, you have to wonder how much their routine has been disrupted after the club decided to close their training ground on Friday in a bid to contain a virus affecting players and staff.
James Callow reports: Harry Redknapp is hoping the virus sweeping through the club will not derail Tottenham Hotspur’s Champions League hopes as it did four years ago.
After several first-team players fell ill this week it was decided to close the indoor facilities at the Spurs Lodge training ground in Chigwell, Essex, for sterilisation. Redknapp instead held his pre-match media briefing at White Hart Lane ahead of Sunday’s home match with Everton.
Vedran Corluka and Wilson Palacios were the worst affected but could recover in time for what could be a key match in Spurs’ campaign to finish in the top four.
Read the rest of the article here
Martin O’Neill rules out succeeding Alex Ferguson at Manchester United
• Aston Villa manager has ‘never thought’ about United role
• Says: ‘For anybody it would be absolutely an impossible job’
The Aston Villa manager, Martin O’Neill, has ruled out taking over as manager of today’s Carling Cup opponents, Manchester United, when Sir Alex Ferguson retires.
The Internazionale manager, José Mourinho, is favourite to replace the 68-year-old Scot when he stands down – but many believe O’Neill would be a good choice.
However, O’Neill said: “I’ve never thought about that at all, not for one second, not even way back when I was at Celtic.
“I think Sir Alex will decide, and I would think in about the year 2033 when he thinks to himself, ‘Yeah, I think that Champions League has gone past me for the final time’, then I will have departed this earth long before him – because I’ve got a lot more worries.
“It’s never really bothered me. And of course there’s always somebody coming up, somebody whose name is relevant at the time.”
O’Neill, who will be 58 tomorrow, added: “For anybody it would be absolutely an impossible job to succeed [Ferguson]. What can you do? Win the Premier League 10 times? You’d still be just starting out against him.
“I know Brian Clough went to Leeds and said he could win it better but he only lasted 44 days and to be honest it wasn’t his most inspiring moment.”
Aston Villa’s James Milner: a future England captain
James Milner has no agent, doesn’t drink and trains harder than anyone – no wonder the Aston Villa midfielder is being talked of as a future leader of his country
Monday mornings in the staff room at Horsforth school in Leeds invariably involve animated analysis of an old boy’s latest weekend television appearance.
“We love talking about James Milner,” Steven Weeks, the head of maths, says. “Everybody’s thrilled by his achievements with Aston Villa and England; some of my colleagues have even kept bits of his old work.”
It is nearly eight years since Milner swapped the classroom for the local football team where, almost immediately, Terry Venables catapulted the 16-year-old into the Leeds United first team – the manager later described it as a rare high point of his spell at Elland Road. At the time Milner’s father, Peter, a quantity surveyor, and his mother, Lesley, an estate agent, feared the boy might be wasting 11 GCSEs while Weeks lamented the loss of one of Horsforth’s brighter mathematical brains. “I’d have loved James to stay on and do A level, he was extremely able,” he says. “But I accept his football taking him a little further than maths might have done.”
Indeed Milner’s mastery of the game’s most intricately advanced geometry promises to carry the versatile Villa midfielder to South Africa for this summer’s World Cup finals. Fabio Capello is not known for adopting favourites but all the indications are that a 24-year-old whose immaculate middle-class manners conceal a zealous inner drive is the Italian’s star pupil.
The first clue arrived in December 2008, eight months before he won his first senior cap in a friendly against Holland. “The player I like is Milner,” Capello said. “He is the future, my future.” Milner has another chance to impress Capello in today’s Carling Cup final, and can expect to be back on the Wembley pitch for Wednesday’s international against Egypt. He has featured in the past six England matches.
Weeks is not surprised Milner is doing so well. “James is still exactly the same really nice, calm, quiet, totally unassuming, popular lad he was at school but I always thought that, inside, he had the sort of controlled aggression that takes people to the very top.”
Significantly, England’s approving coach deflected some of the rather sordid unpleasantness surrounding John Terry’s loss of the national captaincy by offering journalists an ode to a genuine role model. “Milner is a fantastic player,” Capello said. “He has improved more than any other player in the squad. He is intelligent on the pitch, can make good passes, assists for goals and score himself.”
He can also play a variety of roles, a point emphasised by Martin O’Neill after Milner’s man-of-the-match performance in Villa’s 3-0 win over Hull in December. He set up Villa’s first goal with a sublime pass to Richard Dunne, then scored the second with a delightful lob. Afterwards O’Neill reminded Capello that the versatile Milner was outstanding in several positions and was just what England need in South Africa. The two-footed prodigy can not only operate in central midfield, on both wings and behind a main striker, but as a full-back. It has even been suggested that, in the wake of Ashley Cole’s broken ankle, Milner might yet make a World Cup left-back.
If that seems a waste of the former England Under-21 winger’s attacking gifts, all-rounders rarely come more spherical. As good at arts as sciences at school, he also excelled in cross country running, 100m sprints and cricket.
“James’s really is Mr Perfect, he’s an A-star person,” says Glenn Roeder, one of his managers during a turbulent spell at Newcastle where, tellingly, Milner ignored an 11-year age gap to strike up a friendship with the goalkeeper Steve Harper, a former Open University student.
“He said ‘no thanks’ to Newcastle’s brat pack,” Roeder recalls. “James can seem a goody two shoes but he deserves every bit of success going. Unlike the vast majority of professional footballers he works to his maximum and extracts every last ounce of ability.
“Most professional footballers, England internationals included, know they could have worked harder and been better but not James. Frank Lampard is the only other player I’ve managed who does as much extra training.”
During Milner’s Tyneside days he frequently crossed paths with Jonny Wilkinson. The England rugby union star, then with Newcastle Falcons, used to borrow United’s indoor training facility and, sometimes watched admiringly by the young winger, would spend hours fine-tuning his kicking.
At first glance the similarities between the pair are striking. Milner seems touched with the young Wilkinson’s obsessive perfectionism and almost romantic idealism about his chosen path. He grew up dreaming of playing in a World Cup finals and regards remaining strictly teetotal while spending numerous early nights watching DVDs of Friends as a worthwhile sacrifice at glory’s altar.
Typically, when Peter Taylor managed Milner at England Under-21 level his principal problem was dragging him out of the gym. “James would be in there all hours,” Taylor says. “I’d tell the fitness coach, ‘He’ll be too exhausted to play’.”
While other Under-21s compared designer watches, Milner regularly toiled alone on the training field. “I couldn’t find a vice,” says Taylor, who gave him many of his record 46 under-21 caps. “The only area where he may have defied me was when I’d tell him to just work with light weights in the gym but I’m pretty sure he used the heavy ones.”
Back at the Sutton Coldfield home he shares with his girlfriend, Milner’s existence is not, however, quite as reclusive as Wilkinson’s once was and definitely encompasses more of a hinterland. “I do leave my house and go out sometimes,” he says. “I like a round of golf, and a quiet Italian or Chinese meal out.” Milner was recently photographed looking slightly out of place during a rare post-midnight visit to London’s Whisky Mist nightclub on a team jolly.
“You can paint parallels with Jonny Wilkinson but they aren’t quite right,” says Mick McGuire, Milner’s long-standing friend and former representative. “James is not your standard young lad and he is a perfectionist in training but, off the field, he’s nowhere near as fanatical or meticulous about things. Where James is different from a lot of footballers is that, although he understands the importance of money, he’s not that interested in developing commercial opportunities. He doesn’t want to be distracted from playing.”
Milner is also extraordinarily loyal. Despite an enduring closeness to McGuire, when the Professional Footballers’ Association’s former deputy chief executive left the players’ union last year – amid considerable acrimony – he felt it would somehow be “not right” to drop the PFA as his representatives in order to follow a key mentor.
“James was always a bit unusual,” explains Eddie Gray, who coached him at Leeds. “His background was slightly different to a lot of players and he never got distracted by the usual temptations. He always loved the game more than anything that went with it. Even as a teenager James knew he was very fortunate to have natural talent.”
Like Weeks, Gray noted Milner’s “inner hunger” and laughed off suggestions he was too nice, or too middle-class. “James will always listen but he’s a strong character who knows his own mind,” he says. “His one aim in life has always been to be the best footballer he can. His right foot was initially stronger but he just worked hard on his left and made himself two-footed.
“Apart from being naturally talented, he was also very tough. He’s extremely brave, he’d constantly throw himself into challenges and he could run for ever. Knowing James, he won’t just be content with being in England’s World Cup squad, he’ll want to shake things up and get in the first XI. He’s got great self-belief.”
It all seems light years since Graeme Souness – one of his 11 club managers – sneeringly opined that Newcastle would “not win anything with a team of James Milners”. The Scot underestimated a startling capacity for self-improvement. “James is my all-time favourite Under-21,” Taylor says. “Blimey, if all players were like him the job would be pure joy. Coaching James was a pleasure but, at first, there was a problem with his end product, his crossing wasn’t quite right.
“Unlike a lot of players, though, James really listened to advice and acted on it – he was a very serious boy, old for his age. His crossing improved immensely but I moved him to central midfield, albeit in a 4-3-3 formation where he could hurt teams with his excellent passing range and shooting.”
McGuire suspects the centre will prove his best position. “People have consistently written James off, they’ve said he wasn’t quick enough to go past people and his final ball wasn’t good enough but he’s kept proving them wrong,” he says.
“In central midfield he’s spotting openings people thought he didn’t have the vision to see but a lot of his development in the last year or so has been down to playing for Martin O’Neill at Aston Villa. A few clubs were interested in James but I was desperate to get him into Villa, I knew Martin would give him extraordinary confidence.”
Recent comments from O’Neill confirm McGuire’s hunch has paid off. In spades. “James is getting into little areas outside the box and giving us passes which weren’t part of our game – or his – a year ago,” Villa’s manager said. “James is a character and a half who has grown greatly in confidence with the ball since arriving here. He’s moved his game on to a new level. He’s seeing the pass now and moving into better positions.
“James could play in central midfield for England – absolutely. Playing there for us in the Premier League you’d think he owned the place.”
Certainly if Milner, whose goals tend to be of the spectacular variety, does not yet make late Lampard-esque dashes into the box before scoring from 10 yards, he has thoroughly eclipsed Villa’s previously much vaunted Ashley Young.
The only regret is that he joined in 2008 rather than in 2006 when, thinking he was on the brink of signing for O’Neill the then winger drove to Birmingham only to be turned back at the gates of Villa’s training ground after Mark Viduka’s mooted move to St James’ Park collapsed.
“It was Freddy Shepherd’s [Newcastle's then chairman] decision to sell him, I always wanted to keep James but I don’t think he believed me,” Roeder recalls. “A lot of players would have mentally gone under in similar circumstances but he simply got on with it.”
Such deceptively understated determination forms a recurring theme. “We sometimes see James when he visits his family,” Weeks says. “He’ll go down to the local park and watch the kids enjoy a kickabout, then he’ll have keepy-uppy contests with them.”
The resultant image is of a young man still deeply in love with football, reassuringly nice – and, above all, achingly competitive. “I’ve told James he’ll end up as England captain,” McGuire says. “He just laughs at me but I’m convinced it will happen.”
Noisy neighbours turn up the volume as Rangers turn the other cheek
• Celtic desperately trying to close the gap at the top
• Undue pressure placed on referee in Old Firm battle
Every Old Firm match tends to be promoted as a “showdown” in the way that each James Cameron film is billed as a “masterpiece”. The game is, in truth, an event in which tradition and reputation often fail to reflect reality.
The renewal that is staged at Ibrox this afternoon, for example – the third in the SPL’s four-match series this season – features two great rivals separated by Rangers’ notional 10-point advantage (seven ahead with a match in hand) and all quarters of the media insisting it could have a profound effect on the outcome of the championship.
Those who speculate that the deficit can be eroded in the coming weeks are, of course, entitled to posit the possibility. But the credence they give to such a likelihood simply body-swerves the manner in which the Ibrox side’s potentially conclusive lead was established.
Tony Mowbray’s team are so far adrift because they have been emphatically more vulnerable and conspicuously less fortunate than Walter Smith’s – especially in the matter of injudicious refereeing in the two previous Old Firm confrontations – throughout an almost relentlessly unimpressive season.
The claim that Celtic could significantly reduce Rangers’ lead by embarking on a protracted run of undefeated matches, while the pace-setters are simultaneously dropping points like matches out of an open box confounds all known form.
The statistics suggest that, if anything, the gap between the two should widen in the remaining 12 to 13 games of the campaign. There is certainly a chance of Celtic reversing the probability by securing their first Old Firm victory of the season, but the two previous outings testify to the inability of Mowbray’s side to win even those games in which they have been incontestably superior.
It is equally unarguable that Celtic have been victims of poor refereeing in both matches, but their decision a few days ago to leak the news they have expressed their concerns over match officials’ performances to the Scottish FA seems to have been taken for no other reason than mischief-making. The national association condemned the club for deliberately exerting further pressure on today’s referee, Dougie McDonald (pictured), but their defence of McDonald’s integrity and assurances of his strong character came too late. He would not be human if he was not affected in some way by Celtic’s widely publicised misgivings.
This is not to suggest that major decisions are likely to be governed by an awareness of the possible consequences of his actions, but he will be at least more acutely conscious of scrutiny of his performance, enough to cause subliminal hesitation and perhaps even self-doubt.
Celtic’s pre-match stirring – the story of their complaint to the SFA was fed to BBC Scotland by an unknown, but “highly placed source” – was a guaranteed headline-maker for days, but David Weir, the veteran Rangers captain, less than three months off his 40th birthday, took a predictably philosophical view.
“First of all, you can’t really take something like that seriously when whoever is supposed to be behind it doesn’t put his name to it,” Weir said. “In any case, I think the identity of the referee is irrelevant to us, the players. We go into every game and the referee is the last person on our minds. Normally, I don’t even know who the referee is. I don’t know until I turn up for the match.
“I have no doubt referees do the best they can. Sometimes they make mistakes, sometimes the players make mistakes. But if players perceive a decision one way, the other team will see it as the opposite.
“But I think what we’ve been reading about is irrelevant, simply not a factor. Genuinely, it has not had any effect on us. I know it has been big news for everybody else, but, from the players’ point of view, it’s just background noise.”
There will be considerably more background noise from the stands at Ibrox and it will be delivered in considerably more inflammatory terms. In that respect at least, the fixture remains constant.
John Terry left empty-handed as Wayne Bridge gives him cold shoulder
Deposed England skipper John Terry endures miserable day after drubbing follows Wayne Bridge snub
It could have been two children on a school playing field. One was happy to shake hands and be friends, the other still bore a grudge. This was John Terry and Wayne Bridge yesterday.
They lined up against each other for the first time since the revelations that Terry had had an affair with Bridge’s former partner and mother of his child.
As part of the Premier League’s fair play campaign, players from each team are expected to shake hands with their opponents before the kick-off, but yesterday Bridge, the Manchester City player, just could not do it.
He made his feelings known during the week, telling the England manager Fabio Capello he could not bear to share a dressing room with Chelsea’s Terry and therefore did not want to be picked for the international team. Terry did hold out his hand and for a second it looked as though Bridge would do the same. But he pulled his arm away and stared the Chelsea captain straight in the eye.
If you blinked you missed it and Sky Sports, which had given the confrontation the big build-up, failed on this occasion to do an action replay… at least until half-time. YouTube had no such scruples and the video was soon posted. By the end of the 90 minutes there were hundreds of hits.
The build-up to the non-handshake was not quite on the scale of Nixon and Mao, or Rabin and Arafat, but viewers of Sky could have been forgiven for thinking it was a worldwide event.
Both managers were interviewed beforehand. Chelsea’s Carlo Ancelotti said he did not expect the atmosphere to affect his captain: “John Terry is professional and doesn’t have a problem in staying focused on the match. He has… a good mentality.” City manager Roberto Mancini urged defender Bridge to concentrate on the match, which came only 48 hours after he withdrew from England’s World Cup plans. Mancini said: “He is a strong character.”
The BBC was also all over the story.On its live football website, just before kick-off, an anonymous blogger remarked: “For once my wife wants to watch a ‘football’ match. I wonder how long she will last in front of the screen after the handshake/non-handshake.”
Ten minutes later another blogger on the same site was able to put the spat in context, writing: “My nephew is playing an under-11’s match later today against his ex-best friend, who he thinks stole his Creme Egg at school last week. Do you want me to report in on the handshake (or lack of)?”
Those in the ground played their part in the pantomime. When Terry, who lost the England captaincy for playing away with Vanessa Perroncel, touched the ball for the first time there were cheers. Thirty seconds later the boos rang out as Bridge played the ball out of defence, and for the rest of the match there were catcalls and whistles.
Sky commentators joined in, saying with all seriousness when City went 3-1 up, “what a great result for Wayne Bridge on this day of all days”. Seconds later Bridge was substituted as Mancini tried to put a stop to the panto.
Unfortunately for Chelsea, there was an extra scene when Michael Ballack became the second Chelsea player to be sent off, following Juliano Belletti’s red card, and City scored a fourth.
Bridge was over the moon and Terry sick as a parrot as the game ended 4-2 following a late Chelsea penalty.