MOYES MUSTN’T QUIT
DAVID MOYES was offering no guarantees about staying on following Sunderland’s relegation. The suggestion is he has been stung by events and may step down rather than endure another torturous campaign or an inferior budget in the Championship. If he wishes to remain in football long term, he needs to be careful. It would be hard enough for Moyes to find another job this summer, after the Sunderland debacle. Wait six months, or a year, and he will slip even further from mind. Memories will largely be negative ones. The man who failed at Manchester United, the man who took Sunderland down after 10 seasons in the Premier League. There are mitigations for Moyes’ career decline since he left Everton, but employers will be hard pushed to explain them to fans. There will be newer, younger, fresher names on the block, too — options that contain considerably greater public appeal. With gates averaging more than 41,000 and a record of either winning promotion or snaring a play-off place in each of five second-tier seasons dating back to 1995-96, Sunderland are the biggest and best that Moyes could attract now. If he rejects them, there is no certainty where, or when, he gets back at all.
ANYONE who saw Steven Gerrard’s final game against Manchester United will know he did not get every tackle right. But he was better and braver than most and his preference for combat rather than showboating in Liverpool’s age group teams is spot on. A common complaint among coaches at senior level is that graduates from modern academies are soft. They play on perfect pitches, against boys of their age, and are illprepared for what awaits them when they graduate to the first team. It is the reason clubs who field younger players in cup ties often find them startled by the physicality of teams from lower divisions. Gerrard will make mistakes with Liverpool’s Under 18s, but his ideology is sound. He will expect to find good technical players throughout his academy. What he needs to produce is men.
RIGHTLY, golf’s authorities have outlawed the television sleuths and ruled that any infringement that cannot be seen with the naked eye will no longer be punished at tournaments. The days of a slow-motion replay picking up an error neither player could have seen, or known about, are over. Yet the onus now shifts on to golfers to speak out. Phil Mickelson, among others, has recently said that there are players on tour who are loose with their ball-marking. Why don’t the others report it, then? The reason television viewers have grown increasingly empowered in recent years is because this silence has created a void. Players should be reminded: if you see something, say something. Had they spoken up sooner, the video re-run would never have trumped the view on the course.