Friday 14 June 2019

Broken Stones 2

John Stones got caught out again by playing too much football as the last man between the opposing team and his goalkeeper as England disappointingly lost a winnable semi-final for the second time in a year in last week's Nation's League match.

I have been a huge fan of Stones. He moved to Everton from Barnsley when David Moyes could not get any of his transfer targets in January 2013. Moyes told his team on deadline day that the deals he wanted weren't going to happen but Everton chairman Bill Kenwright would let him spend a million or two on promise. His question was "who should we buy". The answer was 18 year old Stones. Apparently Moyes hadn't seen Stones play but trusted his backroom team. He made his Everton debut in August 2013 and by the following May he had played for England. By then I had predicted that once Stones got into the England team he would be a fixture in it for a decade, for much of it as captain.

After a good start these predictions are not turning out well. Everton fans saw for themselves that Stones has skill and confidence in abundance. But they also saw that he has overconfidence and an apparent reluctance to learn from experience. On one occasion he drove the Goodison faithful to distraction with a series of three turns, one of them the Cruyff version, under pressure from an opponent in his own penalty area. The first turn brought gasps, the second shouts of concern and the third howls of anguish and derision. Stones got away with it that time but what those fans know and Stones won't learn is that all too often you don't.

When Stones moved to Manchester City for around £50M in 2016 I thought that Pep Guardiola would help him get the right balance between playing the ball out and taking too much risk. Again that has proved incorrect. What these guys don't seem to appreciate - and sorry for repeating myself here - is that because football is a low scoring game the balance between risk and reward means that while of course playing composed football will bring rewards, taking too much risk is not likely to give a positive return overall. Yes you can get away with it playing inferior opponents: I remember Man City being commended by a journalist for playing out from the back and getting an equaliser against Bristol City some time ago. Quite, Bristol City. In the first half. In a League Cup tie. I pointed out at the time that this approach could cost Guardiola's team in a crucial match against better opposition, say a Champions League final.

Will Stones learn? I wouldn't bet on it. Will Southgate? Maybe. He gave Joe Gomez a game in Stones's place against Switzerland. Whether this constitutes being dropped depends on what Southgate said to Stones.

I would have said why did you take the risk of fannying about in extra time of a big match when the risk of conceding a goal and with it the game is always going to be higher than the chance of setting up a winning goal by doing so? The fact that Stones got disorientated and fell showed that at least part of his brain knew he was taking a big risk and his brain and body miscommunicated as a result. I'm not suggesting he should have whacked the ball into row Z - he had an easy pass back to his keeper the way he was facing. Having drawn Holland up the field Pickford had a better chance of starting the decisive move than Stones.

When Rio Ferdinand arrived at Manchester United with a reputation as a ball-playing centre-back he automatically reined in his risk taking. It wasn't anything Ziralex said to him (though it might have been concern about being on the end of the hair dryer treatment). Ferdinand assessed the benefit of risk and reward when playing in a good team for himself. Some people can learn by experience others need to be told. I am generally in the latter category and it seems Stones is too, incapable of the self awareness Ferdinand had. And it seems he's not going to get told by either of his current managers. So he probaby won't improve.

The promise shown by the teenage John Stones has not been fulfilled to the maximum extent possible despite, or maybe because of, playing for the manager recognised as probably currently the world's best in club football. I've lost faith in Stones. So, possibly, has Pep Guardiola, preferring the superannuated Vincent Kompany to him through much of the last season.

Gareth Southgate had faith and moved away from his policy of picking players who are playing regularly for their club team. David Walsh, writing in the Sunday Times last week was more sympathetic to both Stones and Southgate, saying that the England manager had little choice as the alternative, Joe Gomez, had also hardly played for his club side lately having just recovered from injury. But hang on - there was a third centre half in the party, Michael Keane. Keane was a fixture in Everton's side and was a key part of their strong run in, with no goals conceded in their games against Arsenal, Chelsea, Manchester United and Liverpool. Keane has played seven times for England, the last as recently as March, when he scored against Montenegro. Keane isn't a silky smooth footballer like Stones but he can pass and, rather importantly for a centre-back, he can defend. And he is used to playing with England's regular goalkeeper, Everton's Jordan Pickford. Sorry, David, you're plain wrong; Southgate had a choice a made the wrong one.

Everton sold Stones for about twice the price they paid for Keane. I wouldn't swap them myself at the moment if the valuation was the other way around.


P.S. Broken Stones 2 because Broken Stones was my post of 16 June 2016 about Paul Weller, that being the title of his song inspired by Marvin Gaye and which does achieve a Marvin Gaye like feel. Fortunately the Marvin Gaye Estate didn't sue Weller, or at least not yet. I still find it incredible that the estate's case against Robin Thicke and Pharrell Williams over the alleged similarity of their song Blurred Lines to Gaye's Got To Give It Up was sustained at appeal in March 2018 by a two to one majority verdict*.

The dissenting judge said the decision let the Gayes “accomplish what no one has before: copyright a musical style,” and expanded the potential for further copyright litigation. She said the songs differed in harmony, melody and rhythm and the verdict "strikes a devastating blow to future musicians and composers everywhere".  The only common factor was the party feel of the two songs. Party feel wasn't exactly novel when Gaye did it: I'm sure Trini Lopez's If I Had a Hammer 15 years earlier in 1962 couldn't have been the first such song. But wait, Gaye's song also influenced Michael Jackson's Shake Your Body and Don't Stop Til You Get Enough. Jackson adapted Gaye's chant of "let's dance, let's shout, gettin' funky what it's all about" to "let's dance, let's shout, shake your body down to the ground" on the former, which sounds pretty similar to me. But Jackson's estate could presumably hire better lawyers than Thicke and probably Gaye's estate too.....

All popular music is derivative, with generally a modest amount of something novel or different in any song, a bit like most PhD theses. The case sets a troubling precedent which could stifle the creative process of building on what's been done before.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-music-blurredlines/marvin-gaye-family-prevails-in-blurred-lines-plagiarism-case-idUSKBN1GX27P


1 comment:

  1. I enjoyed reading this one Phil. I've often pondered on those footballers who don't seem to live up to their potential. Character flaws will be at the root I guess but also whatever happened to the hard and strict management of Shankly and Clough? They must have saved many a young lad from letting fame go to their head. Now a days though strict and hard management will probably lead to the young lads flouncing off to where they don't get a hard time. Young players hold all the cards these days and it's not in their interests. How many of them will look back and realise they could have been great rather than good?

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