And, make no mistake, that celebration was golden. Even if you like Arsenal — and I love them — that image is brilliant, iconic, exhilarating.

In this age of lifeless all-seater stadiums, the interaction between fans and sports stars is not something I would like to see discouraged.  It is very unfortunate that a steward was hurt at Eastlands because of a few idiots, but I think this is the kind of moment that only augments football as a spectacle. I watched Eastbourne Borough vs. Chester City at the weekend and the ongoing banter between fans and players was an excellent addition to the game itself. (It was a 1-1 draw by the way; Boro gave away another soft penalty at home.)

The assault on Van Persie was obviously not something we want to see — I think there’s universal agreement on that — however, I wonder if we’re missing a trick here regarding Adebeyor’s gamesmanship and crowd interaction? If only people could learn than offence is taken and not given.

Aston Villa’s single victory was against Hull and the results don’t lie: the last time O’Neill guided Aston Villa to a victory against a team anywhere near the top six was 27 games ago against Everton.

You might remember this victory; afterwards O’Neill suggested that Ashley Young was a “world class” player comparable to Lionel Messi. A comment, before you spit your cornflakes out, which he qualified by saying:

This is my opinion. I look at players; I see a lot of games in Europe, I watch a lot of football.

Phew! I was starting to think he was a manager completely out-of-touch with reality for a moment.

Criticising O’Neill’s antics in the transfer market is a risky business, and one which saw the 365 Media Group sued. My concern isn’t whether his dealings are shady or not; I have no evidence either way. However, there is a growing catalogue of evidence demonstrating his inept judgement in the transfer market.

And this one is a classic…

In December, Aston Villa were still riding high, but lacked an out-and-out goalscorer. Someone with a proven goal scoring record. The January transfer market offered O’Neill a chance to land his man, and, by all accounts, the Villa board were willing to bankroll a substantial signing. The push for the Champions League was too irresistible not to.

In January, O’Neill did sign a striker. Emile Hesky for £3.5m; a player with a stike rate of approximately one goal every five games.

The more you look into it, the worse it gets for O’Neill.

Carlos Cuellar for £7.8m; a centre-back he wastefully plays at fullback. Nigel Reo-Coker for £8.5m; a midfielder who can’t tackle, goes missing for entire matches, and has scored 1 goal in ~60 games. James Milner for £12m; this… is… just… beyond… words…

Despite this, I still think O’Neill can do a good job for Aston Villa. He is known to a be an excellent man manager and a popular coach. With a decent Director of Football with well-established contacts to sign new players — and a less myopic scouting network — Villa might just threaten to win some silverware. The trouble is, I think O’Neill is a rather old-fashioned type of manager; he will not relinquish any of his power or recognise his own deficiencies against someone more qualified.

The way Allardyce came in at Newcastle, he was planning for the long-term. The staff he brought in, he was looking at a bigger picture. The plan might have taken three, four, five years.

To take Newcastle forward, Allardyce identified two primary needs: first, a focus on footballing basics, like fitness and discipline, which had been neglected under previous managers; second, a radical reassessment of the club off of the field. For years, Newcastle presented the thin veneer of being a top modern football club: big name signings, a great stadium, and high attendances; but, beneath the surface, things were quite different.

Allardyce — just as he did at Bolton — assembled an enormous backroom staff, including specialist coaches, dietitians, and a sports psychologist. He knew that fundamental, ground up, changes were needed to the way that Newcastle operated.

Back in May 2007, Newcastle had some talented players; however, they were variously unfit, undisciplined, unmotivated, and unprofessional. They were failing to perform as individuals or as a team. Sam Allardyce knew that the club needed a revolution to take the big step up to compete with the Premiership’s best. Unfortunately for everyone involved, this revolution was not given sufficient time to come to fruition.

A lot has been said about the merry-go-round of managers at Newcastle in recent years, it’s an obvious thing to point out. However, I believe this is a symptom, not a cause of the club’s problems. In my view as a neutral — I don’t support any Premiership side — two main elements led first to the Allardyce regime’s failure, and then the subsequent decline of Newcastle United.

Cause 1: The Fans

No-one doubts the passion of the Toon Army and their love of the club, however their impatience with Allardyce — and their dislike for his style of play — seemed irrational, even hysterical at times. It unquestionably damaged the club.

Newcastle United is a big club, they would moan, we should be higher in the league.

Both true, naturally, but years of expensive signings at the cost of more fundamental investment in the club had only ever led to erratic form.

We used to play attractive attacking football under Kevin Keegan but Sam Alladyce plays ugly donkey football, was another frequent lament of Newcastle fans.

This, to me, is the most ridiculous complaint of all against Allardyce’s time as manager. It demonstrates a misunderstanding of what Big Sam was trying to achieve and the nature of Premiership today.

Newcastle fans pining for the free-spirited attacking football of Kevin Keegan is a bit like your grandmother lamenting how no-one serves dripping sandwiches any more. Yes, they probably tasted great at the time, but these days we know about cholesterol and we know that dripping sandwiches are going to kill you.

To put things into perspective, Keegan’s first reign lasted from 1992 to 1997; over a decade before Big Sam took charge at Newcastle. Make no mistake, these were, if not simpler, then remarkably different times in Premiership football.

It may be hard for Geordies to accept, but by 2007 Keegan’s brand of naïve, seat-of-the-pants, attacking play had long since had its day. We saw this during his time at Manchester City, where, despite not winning a single game for three months in 2003 to 2004, Keegan — either through belligerence or incompetence — did not change City’s playing style. We saw it even earlier than this with England in Euro 2000, where, despite having leads against Romania and Portugal, we lost both of the matches 3-2.

Today we live in the age of the counter-attack; the ebb and flow of a Premiership match now has different demands upon players and coaches. To get to a position where you can play attractive attacking football within the context of a counter-attacking system, very firm, almost instinctual, positional understanding must be in place. There must be real discipline and fantastic levels of fitness within the team, and this does not happen overnight.

The football under Allardyce was not pretty, but James Milner confirms that was not his intention:

He [Allardyce] never told us to just hit it. We had the players to play and Allardyce wanted us to do that.

Getting the basics right was something Newcastle had neglected for years, and Big Sam recognised that this was the overriding reason for the club’s erratic and worsening form. It had to be addressed. The fan’s misunderstanding of what was happening at the time, their reaction to it, and the reaction of the board, was the turning point in the club’s fortunes. It was the key moment, a point where progress or decline hinged on a single decision; the firing of Sam Allardyce.

Cause 2: The Chairmen

At the start of the 1990s, Kevin Keegan being allowed to abandon development of a competitive reserve team was an astonishingly stupid move by Sir John Hall. Make no mistake, having no route for fringe players to develop their form, and having no bridge for youth players to the first team, set Newcastle back a decade. It was a catastrophe.

With Keegan’s blinkered focus on the first team, youth development from 1992 to 1997 bore almost no fruit. Keegan’s attempts to buy success failed, and only now are Newcastle gradually clawing their way up to the level of youth development they should have.

If Sir John Hall was merely a servile to Keegan’s myopic vision for Newcastle United, then what came next was — amazingly — even worse.

Freddy Shepherd got his foot in the door by virtue of two things: 1) the signing Alan Shearer for a then world record fee; 2) no small amount of nepotism. Whatever the reasons for his appointment as chairman, the Shearer signing, for a period, made Shepherd popular with the Newcastle fans.

It didn’t last.

Freddy Shepherd and Douglas Hall (son of John, natch) were exposed by the News of the World — in the famous “Fake Sheik” story — deriding the club’s supporters for the money they wasted on merchandise and calling Geordie women “dogs”. Shepherd also labeled Alan Shearer the “Mary Poppins of football”; a statement which I still can’t figure out if it’s offensive or not.

Following the scandal, both Shepherd and Douglas Hall stood down from their positions; however, just 10 months later, they voted themselves back on the board.

There’s a reasonable list of Freddy Shepherd’s controversies whilst Newcastle United chairman, but, for me, the one that bites the most is the firing of Sir Bobby Robson just four games into the 2004 season.

On top of all the bad press Freddy Shepherd courted, by the time his era ended there were bigger problems at Newcastle United. The club, according to current chairman Chris Mort, had incurred such toxic debts that it was just six months from folding.

Despite this, with new owner Mike Ashley came an initial wave of optimism. He wore the club shirt, stood with the fans, drank beer, and most importantly — thanks to his lack of due diligence! — grudgingly shored up millions of the club’s debt.

However, for all the good Ashley did, he shot himself in the foot with the re-appointment of Kevin Keegan as manager.

Keegan’s return was a massively popular move with the Toon fans, but a shockingly naïve one by Ashley. Keegan had effectively retired from football management following his departure from Man City, instead he was focusing his efforts on the white elephant that is his Soccer Circus. He had walked away from football, become even more out of touch, and done nothing to improve his coaching skills or develop his knowledge of the game.

Keegan’s appointment, unsurprisingly, did not last. He failed to win any of his first eight matches in charge and, not for the first time, seemed to cast a sad and abject figure in interviews.

Despite managing to avoid relegation, Keegan quit the club following a frustrating close season in the transfer market, saying:

A manager must have the right to manage and clubs should not impose upon any manager any player that he does not want.

Not for the first time in his career, Keegan found himself out of step with the modern game and Mike Ashley must take a large amount of blame for not having the foresight to see that he was wrong type of manager for Newcastle United.

The Future

No club is too big to be relegated, and Newcastle United’s fate seems sealed to me. As a Coventry City supporter, I can offer some comfort.

Large cash injections to keep big earners onboard, despite the huge reduction in television revenue, cannot be sustained for more than a season. If you don’t go straight back up, the Championship offers other opportunities.

Life outside the topflight of English football can provide you with a stronger focus on the fundamentals of running and managing a modern football club. It has taken the Skyblues a few years, but we have made fantastic progress on the infrastructure of our club and our finances are now secure. Not many clubs can say that. Our focus is on youth, and this, to my mind, is the right platform for sustainable development and, hopefully, success.

We’ll see you at the Ricoh.

The Fluzão player spent a week training at Ashburton in January, where he turned out for the Gunner’s Under 16 side against Norwich. Impressively, the cheeky whipper snapper bagged himself four goals against the Canaries in an 8-4 victory. He’s been doing the business for Brazil’s Under 16s too — check this goal (around 50 seconds in) against Peru.

Scoring against youth teams from Norwich and Peru is all well and good, but whether or not he can deal with the pace and energy of the Premiership is another question entirely. However, if anyone can mold a player into something special for Barcelona to sign, it’s Arsène Wenger and his team of umpa lumpas at the Ashburton Chocolate Factory of Football Goodness.

Wellington would be in good company at Arsenal, who already have two young Brazilians in Denlison (21) and Pedro Botelho (19), but a last minute contract offer from Real Madrid may scupper things.

To a degree, I think Vickery is right. The disparity between the Campeonato Paulista and, say, the Campeonato Carioca, is a large one. On the one hand there’s some pretty serious teams from São Paulo (Corinthians, Santos, Palmeiras, and São Paulo themselves), whereas Rio’s top teams face comparatively weaker opposition. Vickery’s theory is that the São Paulo teams are going to be closer to their “fighting weight” by the time the Brasileirão rolls around. 

This may be so, but I wonder if he’s missing a very important point here. Brazil is massive country and not a rich one. Traveling across the country to follow your team must surely be seen as the preserve of the well off. Heck, I can’t afford to get up to Coventry very often! I can’t imagine what it would be like for a fan of Recife team Sport having to travel down the coast to Porto Alegre to play Grêmio. That’s a journey of over 2,300; or two solid days driving.

It’s always struck me that the football in Brazil is very much still of and for the proletariat; unlike our Premiership, it’s still more of a working man’s game. Being able to see the top local teams playing in your town just seems like a good thing to me; kind of like the league system of college football in America. Who can afford to travel — week in and week out — across such huge distances for games that are anything less than a final or a semi final? Not people with regular jobs and probably not a lot of regular football fans in Brazil.

You hear a lot about how wonderful Arsenal’s training ground and scouting network are, but it sounds like Liverpool can easily rival them. The Liverpool “Rafalution” includes:

• A 70-strong scouting network, with information on over 14,000 individuals (I bet he just uses Football Manager)
• Transformation of the training ground, even building a hotel at Melwood for the players to stay at before a European match
• Revolution of the players’ diets
• Building a film room and hiring staff who can source any game from the world’s top 12 leagues

Acccording to Herrera:

“Everything started when we arrived there. I signed on as assistant manager but three months later my role changed because we all realised that there were serious problems in the technical department. Liverpool was very antiquated in that sense. So Rafa asked me to change my role and occupy myself with this issue. He wanted me to become the chief scout and start organising, along with himself, the technical department.”

Fascinating stuff.

So why do I hate him?

He reminds me of the kids I used to play football with at school, who would kick the ball into the farthest corner of the playground where no-one else could be bothered to chase it; winning the ball from everyone else by sheer, mindless, attrition. The trouble is — just like those kids I played with — once SWP has the ball, the odds are he’ll do something absolutely pointless with it.

If SWP is not running head first into a centre half twice his size, then he’s playing the ball into utterly unproductive positions. Yes Shaun, if you run the ball into a tight corner — thirty yards and an impossible angle from goal — you achieve precisely nothing. Like the kids in the playground, kicking the ball miles from where the game was actually taking place, you also have the ball all to yourself. Well done lad. Unfortunately, although it is a simple game, football ain’t that simple.

Which brings me onto my next, and strongest, complaint about SWP.

What is the point of a winger who can’t cross the ball? We can forgive poor old right-footed Joe Cole, stuck out there on England and Chelsea’s left wing, having to cut inside every time he gets the ball in an advanced position. But SWP is a right-footer, cannot even cross from the right wing! His endless squandering of possession for England drives me mad, but if I was a Man City fan I would be unable to attend matches without a generous valium prescription.

The weird thing is though, people love SWP. Next time Man City are playing, check out the BBC’s player rater; I can practically guarantee that he’ll be man of the match.

To some degree, I can understand this. Even though SWP lacks footballing intelligence and technique, compared to the other twenty-one players on the pitch, at least he appears to be doing something. However, what these fans fail to realise is just what SWP is doing: Continuously wasting their team’s posession and disrupting any hope of a proper build up of attacking football.