The Footy Book 2009  keeps a month by month diary of the season's major action: selections, goals, controversies, quotes, cards, you know the kind of thing. Here's a taster from each month:

August: it's transfer Window time again:

In other words, the Transfer Window was introduced to try to make the whole system fairer for everybody. Some may argue that it’s been a success. Others hate the very thought of it and think it should be abolished. Certainly those last few days of August can seem both wonderfully exciting and a little unsightly. Maybe a bit like queuing up politely for hours outside Next, waiting with anticipation for the doors to open for their New Year sale, then when you’re inside, finding yourself frantically scrapping over the last pair of cut-price jeans with some wild woman from Wigan. Not a thing you’d look back on with pride.

 
Managers hate it (the transfer window, not Next. For all I know they may do all their clothes shopping there. It might be a way of relaxing on a Sunday morning after yet another Saturday defeat. “I know we went down 3-0 at home to the bottom club yesterday, but at least I can unwind by trying on some new woolly cardies and hunting a bargain on brown socks.” Or maybe not.). Those whose players are the prey dread hearing the phone ring as yet another improved offer comes in from some big spender. The predator managers, on the other hand, know that as the window closes prices are likely to go up, so they end up paying well over the odds. The best managers try to play a kind of poker game, publicly saying that they’re not that interested, that there are plenty of other players they’re looking at, or that their squad is already so strong that they don’t need to sign anyone else. Behind the scenes they’re wheeling and dealing with chairmen, players and agents, desperately trying to get the deal done for a reasonable price.

The people who love it most, maybe even more than the fans, are the TV and newspaper reporters. They know they can repeat just about anything they like and get away with it. Some bloke down the chippy happens to mention that his mate’s gran heard that Cristiano Ronaldo was spotted in a Midlands hotel, supposedly for high-level talks about a possible big-money move to Port Vale, and before you can say Jack Robinson it’s plastered all over the back pages and the poor old Port Vale manager has a Sky Sports camera crew camped on his doorstep 24/7, demanding tea, choccy digestives and a quote.

September, and Round 4 of matches:

In the clash of the billionaires, it was Russia who came out on top over Dubai. Roman Abramovich’s Chelsea went up to Eastlands to take on Sheikh Mansour’s Man City, for whom British record signing Robinho was making his first appearance. City fans were still pinching themselves to make sure the events of the last couple of weeks hadn’t been just a dream. They were probably pinching themselves even harder after thirteen minutes, when the Brazilian’s free kick hit the back of the net to put them a goal up. Unfortunately the dream quickly became a bit of a nightmare, as Chelsea showed their class and rattled in three goals from Carvalho, Lampard and Anelka. There was a ray of hope for City when Terry was red carded, but they were unable to take advantage of the extra man.

The weekend schedule gave us two episodes of Tynesiders (that’s Newcastle’s version of Eastenders, if you haven’t worked it out). In Friday night’s programme the action took place at Hull City’s out-of-town hotel. An argument with some members of a wedding party caused manager Phil Brown to order his team to pack their bags at 10 o’clock and move to a city-centre hotel, the worry being that his players would get no sleep if they stayed. The Saturday afternoon episode began with a demonstration by furious Newcastle fans demanding the resignation of Mike Ashley and his board, and the re-instatement of Kevin Keegan as manager. Unfortunately, neither Ashley nor Dennis Wise showed up at the ground, so the protests fell on deaf ears. Doubly unfortunately, Hull came away with a 2-1 win on the back of two goals by Marlon King, the second an absolute beauty. We all set our DVDs for Monday’s episode.
 

October, and a classic at The Emirates:

Sorry I rattled through those last few matches, but I had to save space for one of the games of the century so far, and quite possibly the best finish to a game you’ll see for many a long year. Spurs put their new confidence to the test when they went across town to the Emirates to face an Arsenal side beginning to find form after two consecutive victories. David Bentley started the ball rolling with a simply wonderful first goal. Most people agreed he hadn’t really got going yet since his transfer from Blackburn, so there seemed little threat when the ball was knocked to him 35 yards out. His first touch volleyed the ball up to himself, his second volleyed it high and handsome over Almunia’s desperately clutching fingers and into the Arsenal net. A definite Goal of the Season contender. Stung into action, Arsenal then proved what a classy outfit they are. Spurs hardly got a kick for the next half an hour, their players left chasing shadows as they were bypassed by the fluent movement and slick passing of their opponents. Mikael Silvestre equalised before the break, Gomes’ hopeless flapping at a Van Persie corner allowing him to glance home.

Early in the second half the Gunners were in front. Another Van Persie delivery, this time a free kick from wide out, was whipped wickedly into the danger area where Gallas rose highest to get the vital touch and send it beyond Gomes. Twenty minutes later it was 3-1. Van Persie’s delightful ball set Nasri free and he was able to flick the ball over Gomes. As the ball trickled towards the empty net Hutton and Adebayor both gave chase, but it was the Arsenal player that won the race to prod it over the line. Moments later Spurs were given hope when Almunia spilled a routine shot from Huddlestone, letting in Darren Bent for simple finish to make it 3-2. Those hopes seemed to have gone up in smoke two minutes later however, when Van Persie, so often the creator, turned finisher, hammering home from Adebayor’s feed after Hutton had given the ball away. Trailing 2-4 with a minute left, many Spurs fans would have been forgiven for giving up and legging it home, but those that stayed will never forget the next few minutes for as long as they live. People might dwell on the fact that Arsenal were too naive to shut up shop and boot the ball up the Spurs end to waste time, but credit where credit’s due, the fightback was memorable. Clichy lost possession when he slipped near the halfway line, Jenas was given far too much space to run and run, but his finish was exquisite, measured to the millimetre and curled beyond Almunia into the corner. There were no great scenes of celebration as the game was virtually over and we all thought it was just a consolation goal. But no! Back came the boys in white, and Luka Modric almost became an instant Spurs legend as his tremendous dipping shot cannoned back off Almunia’s post. Instead legend status went to Aaron Lennon, who smacked the rebound in before being mobbed by delirious team mates. Breathless? We all were. If ever there was the perfect advert for the Premiership, this was it. Bravo to both teams.
 

November. Heroes, villains and the Respect initiative:

You would’ve thought the ideal preparation for a clash with one of your greatest rivals would be to be visited by the hand of God. How could you go wrong? The only problem in this case was that the hand in question belonged to Diego Maradona, ex-World Cup villain and now coach of the Argentina national team. All the Man United players flocked to have their piccie taken with him - maybe they were all too young to remember the pain of 1986. As it turned out it did them no good, as they were soundly beaten 2-1 by Arsenal in an epic lunchtime encounter, Samir Nasri bagging both goals for the Gooners.

Elsewhere Anelka continued his super-season with two more goals to beat Blackburn, Spurs’ revival was maintained with a 2-1 away win at Man City and Sanli’s double was enough to give Boro a surprise away win at Villa, Steve Sidwell gifting the visitors a late winner on his full debut. Hull, Sunderland and West Ham suffered home defeats at the hands of Bolton, Portsmouth and Everton respectively, and West Brom were no match for Liverpool at Anfield.

Toon boss Joe Kinnear did the Respect drive no favours with his verdict on ref Martin Atkinson’s performance after his team went down  2-1 at Fulham, branding him a “Mickey Mouse referee”. Oddly enough, the linesmen’s names just happened to be Mr B. Bunny (Bristol) and Mr F. Flintstone (Bedrock). The fourth official wished to remain anonymous, though our sources suggest that he may have been a Mr T.T. Tankengine from the Clapham area. And if you believe all that, you want your head seeing to.

December. Great goals, chilly half-times, and an interruption by my annoying editor:

Plenty of action too at the Emirates, where Arsenal and Liverpool fought out a 1-1 draw. Both goals came in the first half, and were two of the best finishes you’re likely to see in this or any other season. First Van Persie took a Clichy pass on his chest before swivelling past Carragher and beating Reina with a right-foot bullet from the edge of the box. Then Robbie Keane ran onto a long punt out of defence by Agger, waited for the ball to come down and then absolutely buried a half-volley past Almunia. Liverpool looked the more dangerous team after that, particularly when Fabregas was forced to leave with a knee injury and Adebayor was red-carded for two fairly soft bookings. On the whole a fair result.

Liverpool’s draw meant that Chelsea had the chance to be the Christmas Number 1. A win at Everton would allow them to look down on the rest of the league as they tucked into their turkey and roasties, but their task was made harder after England skipper Terry was red-carded by Phil Dowd for his aerial challenge on Leon Osman after 35 minutes. From then on it was pretty much one-way traffic, but fortunately Petr Cech was in great form, and when he was beaten by Pienaar the linesman’s flag came to the rescue. Scolari looked back on the game as a point gained rather than two points lost, but he would surely have loved to take over at the top at such a sycho psyco psico [are you trying to spell ‘psychological’?] no, leave me alone...... psychologically important time.

For once, on Boxing Day, all twenty Prem clubs were in action, and without doubt the oddest sight was at Eastlands, where Phil Brown marched his team over towards the Hull City fans at half time, sat them down and gave them a tongue lashing out on the pitch. He was understandably fed up after seeing his side humiliated by a rampant Man City, but most experts agreed that it was dangerous to show your players up in public (he did let them go in for a wee later, in case you were wondering). Stephen Ireland repeatedly pulled the Tigers’ defence apart as Caicedo and Robinho claimed two goals each, and in fairness it could have been a lot more than four at the break. The second half was much more even, and Fagan pulled one back before Ireland finished off the scoring to make it 5-1 to the light blues and ease the pressure on Mark Hughes.
 

January. FA Cup and a cold snap:

No league action until the second week of Jan, due to the FA Cup third round taking centre stage. This is when the so-called ‘big boys’ of the Premiership join in, and we all look forward to shock results like Liverpool losing to a last-minute disputed penalty, smacked in off the underside of the bar by Mavis Griggs, the barrel-chested striker for Bradford University Cleaners and Dinner Ladies United (“It’s like a dream come true! One minute I’m scraping congealed baked beans into a rubbish skip, the next I’m being interviewed by that Graham Lineker bloke on Match of the Day! I won’t half cop some stick when I gets back in the kitchens on Monday morning!”) Except that those shocks hardly ever happen these days, given that the lower clubs have as much money to spend on players as the Prem clubs have to spend on paper clips and pretty yellow post-it notes.

Actually, I tell a lie. The richest club in the world (Man City can even afford lime green post-it notes with superstickability) was humbled at home by one of the giants of yesteryear, Notts Forest. So it was scarves and rattles out in Nottingham, knives and cheque books out at Eastlands. More of that later.

Round 21
It weems odd, don’t you think, that with all the cash flowing around in the Premier League bank accounts, clubs can’t make sure their pitches are properly protected from the weather? Ok, so it was a bit on the nippy side, with temperatures dropping to minus 6 and icicles forming on the ref’s nose (or were they bogeys?), but surely in this day and age you’d expect the top clubs to have efficient systems to keep pitches warm enough to play a game of football on? I mean this is 2009 after all! But no! The Fulham/Blackburn and Portsmouth/Man City matches were called off due to prozen pitches, and my latest rant is now officially over. Thank you for listening.

February. Sackings and speculation:

But before that could happen, the league was hit by another bout of Sackitis, or SLOMS (Severe Loss Of Manager Syndrome). Everybody had been saying that despite the poor results Tony Adams had been doing a great job at Portsmouth ....... so I suppose it should’ve come as no surprise when it was announced on Monday morning that he’d been given the boot. If only Saturday’s match had finished five minutes or so earlier, when they were 2-1 up against Liverpool, he would’ve been hailed as a hero who was set to lead the club back to the glory days. Instead he was out of a job. Even more of a shock, only hours later we learned that Chelsea had parted company with Luiz Felipe Scolari. They said that results just hadn’t been acceptable, and that senior players had lost faith in him. Wouldn’t it be refreshing if sometimes the senior players stood up and said ‘It’s our fault really. After all we’re the blokes who actually go out on the pitch, and we just haven’t been playing well enough or trying hard enough.’ Somehow it always seems to be someone else to blame. Maybe the change from managing a national team to managing a club side was too tough, maybe there was a language problem, maybe the loss of coach Steve Clarke to West Ham had affected the whole set-up. Or maybe it’s just that football clubs have become so much the investment tools of super-rich owners who can’t afford their value to fall. There’s little or no opportunity for managers to slowly build a team for the future, to invest wisely in young talent, to produce attractive football that the fans will enjoy coming to watch even if the team doesn’t win every week. It’s results, results, results ..... NOW! Or else!

So far this season the Premier League had lost: Alan Curbishley, Kevin Keegan, Roy Keane, Paul Ince, Juande Ramos, Tony Adams and Phil Scolari (and that’s not counting Avram Grant and Sven Goran Eriksson, who lost their jobs before the season began). Every one of them highly respected in their own way, and every one of them out before they had the chance to develop a team properly. Contrast that with Man United and Arsenal, easily the two most successful teams of the Premiership era, whose managers had been in their jobs for 22 years and 12 years respectively. An interesting fact was quoted in some papers: 923 football league managers had now lost their jobs since Fergie took over at United in 1986.

Within minutes the usual speculation game started - Sven Goran Eriksson, Frank Riijkard, Carlo Ancelotti, Avram Grant, Roberto Mancini and Guus Hiddink were all possible Chelsea targets, while Pompey apparently had their eye on Sven Goran Eriksson too, along with Alan Curbishley, Avram Grant, Graeme Souness, Roberto Martinez and Joe Jordan. A slightly more controversial suggestion was Batman and Robin working as a Coach/Director of Football partnership.

March. Dodgy pens:

Wigan climbed up to 7th, courtesy of Ben Watson’s clever lob after Hull couldn’t clear a corner. We had to wait 84 minutes for the goal, but only because of fine work from both goalies and the woodwork (has a post ever won Man of the Match?). Over at Eastlands, Sunderland soon found themselves a player down following McCartney’s slight tug on Wright-Phillips, and should’ve been a goal down too after Malbranque fouled Richards. Robinho sent his spot kick to the same side as Martins and Gerrard had sent theirs. His, like Martins’, was saved as Fulop guessed the right way. Don’t you find that annoying? If you roll a pen gently towards a corner and the goaly goes the wrong way, it’s a great finish and you’re cool as a cucumber with nerves of steel. If the goaly guesses correctly the same pen is complete rubbish and you’re a bottler. Hey ho. Fortunately Richards saved his team-mate’s blushes by heading in Elano’s free-kick to win it for the Blues.

April. Mission Impossible?

Think of a club languishing in the relegation zone of the Premier League for the first time in years. A club torn apart by squabbles between passionate fans and an owner who’d been actively trying to sell off the club he supposedly loved. A club that had already had two managers this season - the first walked out when the board overruled him on transfers, the second was forced to take temporary leave due to illness, possibly as a result of the immense stresses and strains of the job.

Now think of a former player who had repeatedly ignored calls to take a hand in the running of the club. A player treated almost as a god in the city. A man who had succeeded at the highest levels of both the club and international scene, who had retired at the top and now led a comfortable life, doing a bit of cushy work for the BBC, safe in the knowledge that his name was already inked into the record books as one of the all-time greats.

Why would this player change his mind, give up the comfort of a BBC armchair to take on the toughest job in English football for the toughest two months of that club’s recent history?

And why, oh why, would he do it on April 1st ........ All Fools Day?

The news broke late on the Tuesday evening and was confirmed the following day. Alan Shearer was to take over at Newcastle for the remaining eight games of the season. Toon fans were over the moon. The rest of us were not so sure. Great players don’t always make great managers - as a timely reminder, on this same day Argentina’s new coach Diego Maradona, possibly the greatest player of the last thirty years, saw his team of superstars brought to their knees by a 6-1 hammering at the hands of Bolivia. Whether or not you’re a fan of Southampton, Blackburn or Newcastle, you had to admire Shearer for his brilliance, his work ethic and his honest approach to the game - we wanted to remember him wheeling away in triumph, arm raised, after another stunning strike, not standing forlornly on the touchline, watching helplessly as his beloved Newcastle slid out of the Premiership for the first time in 16 years. Even worse was the prospect of seeing him head back down the tunnel to a torrent of abuse, the chant of ‘Shearer out!’ ringing in his ears.
 

May. FA Cup and a cold snap:

Ding-a-ling-a-ling! Seconds out ........

Round 38!
No prizes for guessing who the four most nervous managers in England were at kick-off time on Sunday May 24th: Ricky Sbragia (fairly), Gareth Southgate (a bit more than fairly), Phil Brown (very very) and Alan Shearer (off the scale). Sunderland knew that two other teams had to win to send them down, so they were probably safe. Boro knew that only a miracle would keep them up, so they were probably down. Hull and Newcastle knew that it was pretty much a straight fight between the two of them. As Alan Sugar might say: “the team that gets fewest points loses, and out of that team one of you will be fired .... the manager.”

It’s traditional at this point to spend some time coming up with weird and wonderful combinations of results that would send different teams down, so as I’m a creature of habit, here goes:

A.     Hull 1 - 0 Man United               Villa 1 - 2 Newcastle
        Sunderland 1 - 3 Chelsea        West Ham 0 - 1 Middlesboro         Sunderland go down, along with Boro.
 

B.     Hull 0 - 2 Man United               Villa 2 - 2 Newcastle
        Sunderland 0 - 1 Chelsea        West Ham 1 - 4 Middlesboro         Boro, Hull and Magpies all finish on 35, Hull and Boro down on GD.
 

C.     Hull 9 - 4 Man United               Villa 13 - 12 Newcastle
        Sunderland 27 - 0 Chelsea      West Ham A* Middlesboro       

* (match abandoned after 87 mins due to invasion of wobbly green alien beings in gigantic spacecraft, with Hammers leading 3-0. Result: Win for West Ham)
        Newcastle go down, along with Boro. Ok, it’s unlikely, but football is a funny old game you know.

At the end of each month there's even a stats page to keep our anoraks happy: