It’s been a truly helter skelter year, turned even giddier by a global pandemic verging on near-apocalyptic proportions, threatening to decimate all and sundry in its path of destruction. And right smack in the middle of the football season, letting loose the bats of hell to wreak total havoc not only off the pitch but also on the quirky behavior, antics and performance of some particularly fascinating players, a manager and even a club owner!
A midfielder who barely played, a forward who barely scored and a goalkeeper who could barely get his hands on the ball are some of the idiosyncratic football personages covered in this quacky expose to titillate you.
Danny Drinkwater
Three full league matches during his tenure at Chelsea. That’s all he has played in the three years since this 2015-2016 Premier League winner – achieved during his stint at Leicester -donned the Blues colors at Stamford Bridge for £35m.
If ever any player needed a fresh start at the beginning of the season, it would have been Drinkwater. Burnley was given the first option to come to his rescue but inevitably the effort was in vain as all Drinkwater could contribute to the club’s league campaign was a mere 59 minutes of play that eventually culminated in a 4-1 drubbing by Manchester City. In all fairness to the bloke, he might have had the opportunity to see more action and given a better account of himself had it not been for an injury suffered outside the Manchester Chinawhite nightclub in September, having been set upon by thugs after supposedly trying to bed another footballer’s paramour. The Chelsea star, on loan at Burnley, clashed with the player after having ingested copious amounts of alcohol.
January saw Drinkwater being given another opportunity to redeem himself, signing this time for Aston Villa on loan until the end of the season. It was again another stroke of coincidence as his first league appearance after this loan move was also against Manchester City and this time he lasted a creditable 79 minutes, but the team was handed a humiliating 6-1 trouncing. Undaunted, he proceeded to feature for Villa on three more occasions, unfortunately having been subbed off in all three matches. Drinkwater’s brief tenure with Villa also wasn’t without its fractious moments as the last tumbles were heard in March, where he was hauled up and he fined for his role in a training ground imbroglio head-butting his teammate Jota.
To reiterate, if ever a player needed a fresh start, it’s still Drinkwater. But then having been fortuitous enough to have been handed quite a few, one wonders if any more new fresh starts would be able to turn the tide around for this once promising star.
Joelinton
When the likes of Mike Ashley actually approves the purchase of a forward for £40m, the thought actually springs immediately to mind that the player in question must be quite the phenomenon to justify such an acquisition actually sanctioned by the Newcastle boss himself. Naturally one would assume too that Joelinton Cássio Apolinário de Lira, or Joelinton for short, would be the perfect fit in the role he was assigned to play in. Yet, despite having been entrusted with the task of leading the line for the better part of this season for Newwcastle, the Brazilian looked incongruously out of place, and actually even uncomfortable. The outstanding incisive passing moves and dribbling wizardry that highlighted his stint at Hoffenheim were rarely displayed and, worse still, he almost never scored.
Understandably being only just 22 and his very first season in a new country, not to mention the sensation and hype surrounding his much-anticipated arrival, it was unquestionably a very difficult time for the highly-touted young star. To his credit, though, he deserves merit for his valiant efforts as he never stopped trying and actually did show glimmers of quality, giving some measure of credence to the hope that as he continues to adapt to English football, he could yet emerge stronger from this sorry experience. Provided of course that Newcastle and Steve Bruce work out the best way to use him as the club, and the manager, are awkwardly immersed in angst and uncertainty pending the final outcome of the Saudi takeover of the club.
Pep Guardiola
While some may have been fine, and even suitably impressed, with the wool being pulled over their eyes watching Manchester City doing demolition jobs on the likes of relegation-bound Watford and an Arsenal still trying to find their own feet and balance under a relatively inexperienced albeit promising manager, it is a matter of concern that the previous season’s Premier League champions faltered in home and away losses to Manchester United and Wolves. Not only that but they also conceded defeat to Chelsea when they needed to win to make their last seven matches of the season relevant. The soufflé crumbled when they also lost to Norwich.
All throughout the campaign they were shown to have a susceptibility to crumbling at crunch times, with Guardiola somehow failing to strengthen their defensive ramparts and mental fortitude, besides keeping a vigilant eye and grip on their all-too-frequent slack finishing, even from the penalty spot. The new pre-season £27m signing of full-back João Cancelo, did little to provide the impact needed. Interestingly in January, Guardiola deflected the negative attention onto City fans, suggesting that they were part of the problem.
“Hopefully they will support us more,” he said, with the clock going back to when fans could still attend matches prior to the pandemic lockdown.
Well, it should be interesting to hear who Guardiola blames if his team implodes in the Champions League too.
David de Gea
When Manchester United loanee Dean Henderson’s bungle gifted Liverpool a goal against Sheffield United in September, irate and exasperated Blades manager Chris Wilder opted for an arm’s-length-policy-away and wryly said:
“I’m not going to put my arm around him. He wants to play at the highest level, he wants to play for Manchester United, he wants to play for England. He’s got to do a bit better, he’s got to concentrate a bit more.”
Fortunately, in his favour, Henderson did not make the same mistake again. On the other hand, Ole Gunnar Solskjær took a diagonally opposite approach with De Gea, publicly wrapping an arm around the keeper to motivate him every time another ball inadvertently slipped through his hands. Which is actually fine even if the Norwegian is borrowing a page from a Freudian chapter on reverse psychology as everyone’s differently wired. After all, there’s no certainty either that inviting, and invoking the fury of, Roy Keane to bludgeon the Spaniard would have been the right catalyst for the desired results. One thing’s for certain though – De Gea has looked like a totally different kettle of fish to the forlorn goalkeeper who used to be the last man standing between Manchester United and humiliation. It’s not been easy having to watch a goalkeeper of such talent implode and disintegrate into pieces but, fortunately for him at 29, time is still on his side for him to get his act together again.
Gino Pozzo
Last but not least, much thought had been given to the inclusion of Watford’s idiosyncratic, or is it indecisive, owner in this list. A considerable period of time was spent vacillating between leaving him out of the equation and same processes alternating repeatedly. Call it eccentricity or just knuckle it all down to pure fickle-mindedness but just don’t knock the approach. Or very. After all, Pozzo himself wouldn’t be wont to complain because it’s a quirky process he seems to be very enamored with and given in to in his decision-making, as his selection and sacking of managers bears ample testimony to.
After four matches of the season, he sacked Javi Gracia and replaced him with Quique Sánchez Flores, whom they had sacked a few years previously. Then the attention turned to Nigel Pearson, who lasted 19 league games before he too got the buzz-off sign, and Hayden Mullins was asked to carry the baton for the last two matches in the relay run. Right till the end, Watford, or more appropriately Pozzo, kept everyone guessing.