The Peterborough Evening Telegraph

Troy story is a load of bull

- Chief sports writer Alan Swann shares his views

For someone who hadn’t scored a Premier League goal since April, Watford FC’s Troy Deeney had a lot to say for himself last weekend. Indeed converting a wrongly-awarded penalty against Arsenal was all it took for this journeyman plodder (right) to start ripping into superior players and athletes.

Apparently he knew he would unsettle Arsenal’s defence purely by being physical. The Gunners’ players lacked the balls to deal with him, he said in an interview which went down rather well with the braying half wits who follow football through soundbites and social media.

Watford are enjoying a decent Premier League season so far. They have a bright new manager who displays his football intelligen­ce by preferring to select more gifted, natural talents than the very ordinary Deeney.

Deeney had played less than a half of football in the Premier League this season before starting against West Brom a couple of weeks ago. He must have failed to unsettle anyone in the Baggies back four as he was back on the bench for the Arsenal match last weekend.

Deeney did however start in the home game against Arsenal last season when he presumably failed to ruffle a defence that included topflight rookie Rob Holding as Watford lost 3-1.

Deeney has to speak controvers­ially as his football alone will never generate any headlines.

Unlike Manchester United manager Jose Mourinho who can dominate the weekend media agenda whether his team is smashing the lesser lights in the Premier League or if they are stifling the life out of a fixture that remains one of the most eagerly-anticipate­d of the season.

However ordinary Liverpool become under their myth of a manager, a point at Anfield is decent, but the lack of attacking ambition from a squad with a mass of forward talent is very frustratin­g.

Liverpool can’t defend and yet Mourinho ignored this fact in favour of boring a huge TV audience to death. Watching this 90 minutes and then 90 minutes of Posh v Gllingham was one of the more dispiritin­g afternoons I’ve had for many a season.

Those commentato­rs mystified as to why Mourinho once let Kevin De Bruyne leave Chelsea are missing the obvious. Mourinho doesn’t place flair at the top of his priorities in a player. He’s probably happier coaching Marouane Fellaini than he was looking after De Bruyne and Eden Hazard.

For the sake of all lovers of the beautiful game let’s hope Manchester City win the title.

I doubt they will go to Liverpool, or anywhere else for that matter, to defend. They will back Sergio Aguero and Gabriel Jesus to run rings round Dejan Lovren and Joel Matip which they will of course.

Pep Guardiola also would never ask De Bruyne to concentrat­e on marking fullbacks as Mourinho does with supposed flair players Marcus Rashford and Anthony Martial.

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 ??  ?? Have your say . . . email alan.swann@peterborou­ghtoday.co.uk, or twitter @PTAlanSwan­n
Have your say . . . email alan.swann@peterborou­ghtoday.co.uk, or twitter @PTAlanSwan­n

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