Taking the Mick

I've blogged nothing for ages, which is not necessarily a bad thing for anybody involved. Especially me, as it shows what a busy November I've had both at work (busy is on balance better than not busy) and on the exciting going out type front. Sadly, everything seems to have gone tits up in the last couple of days, especially on the football front.

It's not just Wolves who are depressing me - that would be bad enough on its own. A deeper malaise seems to have descended around football in general, and it's bloody annoying. Thing is, this season was meant to be a great one for the neutrals. Man U sold two world class attacking players in the close season, and it felt like Chelsea had missed their best chance for glory when Hiddink went back to Russia, leaving an ageing team with yet another new manager. Meanwhile, Liverpool appeared to have hit on a formula for success, Arsenal surely couldn't fail to improve, Man City were spending stupid money and looked like genuine top 4 contenders, and even Spurs and Villa seemed capable of sustained challenges. Surely a tense, nail-bitingly close season was on the cards?

Now look at the table. Chelsea are 5 points clear and look nailed-on to win everything after they made Arsenal look depressingly ordinary on Sunday. Ancelotti has made them even better if anything, whilst the opposition looked as far away from silverware as ever. Indeed, that match has become one of those watershed moments for the media, who are now convinced that poor old Arsene will win bugger all unless he abandons his dearly-held principles and, y'know, buys a keeper and some defenders and that. I love the man and my heart doesn't want him to change, but in the cold light of day his choice is either to make his team more boring and cautious or allow them to carry on dancing their way up a beautiful yet neverending blind alley.

The two halves of Manchester are in a post-Ronaldo transitional season and an appalling run of underachievement respectively, and Liverpool's calamitous demise, whilst of course very funny, doesn't do anything for the competitiveness of what is becoming one of the worst Premier Leagues in living memory. And that brings me to Wolves. Not only are we cast adrift in the bottom two with only one farcically-run club below us (who nonetheless managed to beat us at Molineux), but there are so many other rubbish teams doing considerably better than us, and the other two promoted clubs are actually making a decent fist of things.

The problem with Mick McCarthy is that the warning signs were always there. No matter how brilliantly he turned our club around, no matter that his overall managerial record is very good and now includes two Championship trophies with two different clubs, in the back of our minds there was always the nagging voice pointing out how appalling his last attempt at Premier League management was.

I ignored that voice for a while, but instead of building on a reasonable start to the season the team has become a complete mess - Mick doesn't appear to have a clue what formation or players he should be playing, we're barely creating any chances and seem incapable of defending properly at the other end. He is constantly second-guessing himself, and as many pointed out, looked like a beaten man on Sunday. He's pointed out the evident lack of confidence amongst the players, but how can he sort that out if he has none himself?

I really don't want to be one of those twats who turns on the manager at the first sign of trouble. I think McCarthy has certainly done enough in the last three years to earn himself a chance to turn things around. However, if we're in this position come the new year, with no signs of life on the horizon, then I'm secretly hoping that Steve Morgan displays his purported ruthless streak and puts poor Mick out of his misery. Then he can go to another Championship club, where he should lead them to promotion and then quit management on a high. The Prem is a cruel league, particularly when chancers like Tony Pulis and Gary Megson can cope with it better than you. But nobody - least of all Sepp Blatter, or Thierry Henry - ever said football was fair...