For football, summer used to be the close season – or perhaps
that should have been the closed season. Either way the game more
or less shut down for three months and was pushed to the back of
the nation's mind while cricket, Wimbledon, the Open and the big
race days took centre stage. Apart from the retained lists – when
clubs announced which players they were keeping and who could take
a hike – and the occasional big transfer, the domestic game kept a
low profile from May to August. And the only agent the public was
aware of was Dick Barton.
Take 1953, a momentous year for English football, the year when
Stanley Matthews at last gained an FA Cup winner's medal, an ageing
Arsenal team won what was to be their last League title until 1971,
and the Hungarians handed out a football lesson to England at
Wembley, the repercussions of which continue to reverberate as the
national side still struggle to come to terms with the need to play
at a high tempo while not giving the ball away.
Exciting, exacting times, yet that was the summer when Gordon
Richards achieved the Derby win that had eluded him for so long;
England won back the Ashes from the previously invincible
Australians; and a pleasant-looking young woman turned up at
Westminster Abbey on a wet morning to be weighed down with the
clutter of crown, orb, sceptre and so on. It's still raining. And
so is she. Football was not much missed.
Now it does not really go away. Clubs just stop playing for a
few weeks before embarking on exhausting,
money-making tours to those parts of the world for whom life
is not complete without the latest Manchester
United shirt. Come Christmas, the managers will begin
their annual gripe about the need for a mid-season break while
hoping that no one will query the need to cut short the players'
summer in order to drum up a bit of foreign trade. Premier League
footballers of various nationalities who take part in the 2010
World Cup will be performing virtually non-stop for the next two
years.
It is a bit like the rumour mill, which spends the first half of
each new season speculating about who will buy whom in the January
transfer window and the latter half cranking up the hype for the
summer sales. For news value the best transfer story this year
has got to be Sir Alex Ferguson's decision to sign Michael
Owen from Newcastle United on a free transfer. Not so long ago, the
thought of anyone getting Owen for nothing (apart from his wages,
that is) would have been considered
as daft as Darren Bent making two moves for a total
of £26m, but these are bizarre times.
At 29 Owen should have a lot of football, not to mention a few
goals, left in him. The main doubt is his fitness, specifically the
number of times a player so dependent on explosive pace and speed
of reaction in scoring situations can suffer pulls, tears and
strains without losing his elasticity for good. Nonetheless, Owen
remains England's leading scorer in competitive internationals and
if, in nine months' time, he still has a World Cup in him, even
Fabio Capello might permit himself a rare smile. But it is an
awfully big "if".
Clearly Ferguson hopes Owen will recover with Manchester United
the appetite for playing he appeared to lose at Newcastle.
Not that the player was alone there. Footballers hate
uncertainty at a club, and it is a wonder Owen and his colleagues
at St James' Park did not end last season suffering from collective
anorexia as well as relegation. Will the latest potential buyers
eventually stump up for a club that should carry a warning: May
contain nutters?
Who knows, Newcastle could be playing Notts County in a year's
time if all continues to go badly on Tyneside while Meadow Lane
experiences a revival under the football directorship of Sven-Goran
Eriksson.
Not that the Swede is the biggest thing to hit County. That
honour goes to Tommy Lawton, then the England centre-forward, who
in 1947 left First Division Chelsea to join the Third Division
(South) club for what was a jaw-dropping £20,000 plus Bill Dickson,
an Irish international.
And to think that this summer Notts County could have had Owen
for nothing. Well sort of...
