May 2000 ~ Coventry City vs Sheffield Wednesday

"And what of Sheffield Wednesday?”

The first words spoken by a surprisingly modern-looking Gary Lineker, and how many great philosphers have posed the same question over the years when wondering what to write about on a morning off work. 

Its testament to his perceived ‘aged well’ reputation that its mildly unexpected that he looks younger 14 years ago than he does now – perhaps his incredibly husky voice as displayed on Sports Personality Of The Year was less a season affliction and the first point on a tick-list to enshrine himself as a full HWF.

“None of them have got any personality!”

Highlights via Steffan Bowen's YouTube channel

Less unanticipated however is the perilous plight of The Owls – as Gary intones “surely they need to win their three remaining games” to have any chance of staying up. After finishes of 3^rd, 7^th & 7^th between 1992-94, the next six seasons (with an outlier in 97, 7^th again) had seen a remorseless and steady descent – as if small iron girders had been patiently applied to both feet, then two two wings and their flight had been slowly impinged: 12^th, 13^th, 15^th, 16^th..... as Lineker says, maybe not in so many words, “it looks like that sadistic torturer may finally have decided to weight down the beak and finally send this bird crashing into the ground face first in a ball of feathers and shrieking”.

Unless! Unless they can see off Coventry City at Highfield Road.

 Here are those stellar line-ups. Coventry looks a very care-free, attacking set-up to me: probably a kind of 4-1-3-2 with McAllister sitting behind a very fluid and interchangeable front five. Peter Shreeves, we are informed, keeps the same side that played Leeds last time (I think Harry Kewell scored a peach in that), and I interpret that as a very of-the-era 3-5-2 approach, with Hinchcliffe and Alexandersson supplying the width. Alan Quinn will need to get about a fair bit in midfield as Horne and Jonk at this stage of their careers promise to be as mobile as a rusted Communist era battleship abandoned in Siberia – and a lot less evocative.

The first action, on a gorgeous spring day, looks like it could set the tone: wandering play by Noel Whelan on the left ends with some nice interplay between Zuniga & Hadji, with the latter firing in a shot which Kevin Pressman beats away.

GOAL!! 1-0 Coventry McAllister

Terrible defending by Wednesday and already Coventry look to be a different level here. This is McAllister’s 12^th of the season, so no excuse for Wednesday to not be aware of his forward runs even if he was nominally the furthest back of this flowing midfield unit. Robbie Keane opens the gap with a clever dummy, Zuniga’s involved again, laying the ball off to his captain who storms forward and slots past Pressman to give the home side a 38^th minute lead.

HALF-TIME. Wow, must have been some action there..... or is it one of those where the 2^nd period so incident packed they back-load the highlights? Only one way to find out....

It’s a promising start. Hinchliffe clips a neat ball down the line where Giles de Bilde holds it up well, then slips in a really clever back-heel, which Quinn, as we said he needed to do, gallops forward to run on to, hitting  first-time shot which goes not far wide of 42-year old Steve Ogrizovic’s post.

Analysis

Substitution – Haslam for Walker for Wednesday. Is that an attacking move? You’d have to assume so, not many players could be less forward-inclined than a player who scored 1 goal in over 700 professional games.

what is this wall even supposed to block/stop??

And no sooner had that change been made than Wednesday nearly found themselves two down. Paul Gerrard sadly obviously never saw this fantastic effort by McAllister, as from 35 yards or so out, with “everyone” expecting a cross, a shot is unleashed which Pressman has to get back across to, tipping the ball onto the bar and perilously close to being over the line as it bounces down. Commentator John Champion doesn’t acknowledge the keeper’s touch either live or on the replay but I’m sure he saves it.

GOAL!! 2-0 Coventry Zuniga

Fantastic stuff by McAllister again, after Keane runs the left hand channel intelligently and cuts inside, no-one gets near the veteran Scot, allowing him to outside-of-foot an arching effort fromm the edge of the box which, again, hits the bar and bounces down, only this time the little Peruvian Zuniga reacts well to dive in and head the ball into the net. On the replay, Champers this time does me a favour, by confirming I was right about that Kewell strike. The tense this is being written in is more all over the place at this point than Shreeves' Stoppers

GOAL!! 3-0 Coventry McAllister

This is shocking by Wednesday, Coventry rampant and McAllister utterly running the show. Hadji gets free in exactly the same space Keane did on the previous goal, does very similarly in turning back inside and laying the ball off for McAllister running onto the ball. No need for anyone else to follow up this time as the finish gives the keeper no chance and is drilled into the bottom corner. Champion misses the point somewhat, putting it down to “being in the right place at the right time” which doesn’t really cover any of the excellent play we’ve seen.

And Woody Allen loves what he’s seeing out there.

GOAL!! 4-0 Coventry Hadji

Mind-numbingly inept play by Haslam as Wednesday for a moment got into the other half, but he dallies and has the ball pinched off him, the Sky Blues speed forward again...look at this position, it 4 attackers against 1 defender

In a way they end up ‘not scoring as easily as they possibly might have done’ – a microscopically  small a glimmer of hope for Wednesday I suppose: “at least we got back” – Hadji plays in Zungia, the beleaguered Pressman repels the first shot but Hadji follows up and slices neatly into the far corner with outside of his left-foot.

Exposed at the back

GOAL!! 4-1 de Bilde for Wednesday

Is there hope yet?! Wim Jonk slides a ball through a defence which seems to be enjoying the carnival atmosphere a bit prematurely and de Bilde skirts past Ogrizovic nicely and tucks home. Its refereed to, in that slightly odd tone often struck by pundits/experts where it implies some far greater shame or malice than the crowd simply being pissed off, on commentary that the travelling supporters were booing their team in the build up to the goal. After what we’ve seen, getting ragged by Israel Zuniga and outpaced by a 36 year old AOTS, they were entitled to be a bit grumpy.

And, no, there was no hope yet as that’s the end of a fairly brief highlights package. Well, I’ve been screwed over there: 6 minutes into the billed 14:38 running time and it’s all over, 4-1 Coventry.

Ah, okay, is one of those ones where it’s intercutting between different Relegation-haunted strugglers. Possibly should have done some very basic research before embarking on this – how often do you get interviews with both Terry Burton & Peter Shreeves in the same package?? I wouldn’t recommend massively sticking it out to the end of the analysis, but as it goes Trevor Brooking seems breezily confident Wimbledon will stay up whereas Mark Lawrenson implies he thinks Bradford could beat Liverpool actually – which ended up being right as it goes. Wednesday alas, went down with Watford & Wimbledon.

I wonder if Steven Gerrard learned a lot from McAllister? If you look at everything the latter does in this game, you could picture the former doing in a very similar way and style...

Woody Allen Coventry films:

~ Marcus Hall

~ Everything You Wanted To Know About Jess (But Were Afraid To Ask)

~ Another Hedman

~ Deconstructing Huckerby

~ The Purple Rose Of Chippo

~ Everyone Says Ndlovu 

Film Roundup ~ Love and Death

1975. Director Woody Allen. Starring Woody Allen & Diane Keaton.
I remember at one of my infrequent gatherings at my humble, some would say less than swelteringly hot, flat, someone complaining once that the Woody Allen book in the bathroom was a bit creepy. It would be better if I could remember who/when it was, as it would sound a lot less like just a contrived recollection to work in as an opening to this entry, but it did happen – and is revealing as to a prevailing attitude and ignorance about the Woodster.

From the first reactions of some people, you'd think his litany of films should be filed under 'adult' and treated as a bit of an exception – a niche, semi-pornographic anomaly that would be of no interest at all to the majority. You get the impression that he wouldn't mind that and would probably actually take it as a perverse compliment – as he would the fact that someone would find a photo of him on the cover of a book a bit too repellent to go about their bathroom business.

It's odd that his kind of stock-in-trade romantic comedy (he arguably invented the entire genre of 'relationship films'), which he can turn out to a decent standard in his sleep, are exactly the style of movie that plenty of people are happy to watch ream upon ream of witless facsimiles of, without wondering what the market leader is like – like eating every type of Dairylea, processed Kraft or Babybel but never being tempted to go for a real piece of cheese.

This in fact isn't one of the 'template' genre ones – it's very difficult to say what this film is actually going for – and because of that reveals one of the qualities he has , which may be more praiseworthy than all the usual epithets lobbed at him ('wry', 'observational', ' nihilistic' etc) and that is: He does not give a fuck.
What was he thinking putting out a 90 minute, virtually plotless, period piece that is basically a loose through-line for him to get as money one-liners and smart-arse quips in as possible and have he and Diane Keaton dress up in some fantastic Russian costumes? Was there ever any focus-group, 'what do the public want?'-style think tank that produced a pitch remotely like this:
"Parody of classic literature. In czarist Russia, a neurotic soldier and his distant cousin formulate a plot to assassinate Napoleon. With Marx Bros/Chaplin-esque slapstick vibe"

Sonja: Judgment of any system, or a priori relationship or phenomenon exists in an irrational, or metaphysical, or at least epistemological contradiction to an abstract empirical concept such as being, or to be, or to occur in the thing itself, or of the thing itself.Boris: Yes, I've said that many times.

To just fancy doing something like this, do it, put it out and not pander in any way to audience maximisation or any such nonsense is a fairly brave thing to do. It's absolutely unimaginable to think of any comedic celebrity nowadays coming up with anything within a million miles of such an unusual and non-commercial idea.
Five years before this, he was still writing jokes for other people and doing stand-up sketch shows on TV. What is the likelihood that , say, by 2015 Michael McIntyre will write, direct and star in a totally individual feature-length film simultaneously celebrating and satirising the key figures and literature from the collapse of the Soviet Union?

Current would-be peers of similar stature do indeed tip-toe into the film milieu – but the way in which for arguments sake, Russell Brand & Ricky Gervais have done it is so much more cynical and planned to the most small detail.

Both are very clever and funny, and you'd imagine both do have fairly interesting opinions and thoughts, but if you compare the safeness and predictability of the roles they've taken in 'Hollywood' to the type of film I'd guess they'd like to be associated with in an ideal world, the conclusion would have to be that they're either not ambitious & brave enough - or more worried about doing something alternative that flopped than following their own instinct.

Part of his lack of concern for critical reception I think must come from the decision to just keep on ploughing his own path and have almost decided that barring exceptional circumstances, he's going to put out a film every year regardless of reaction to the previous release. This taps into a much bigger truth that is not often mentioned in critical assessments, maybe because it's very simplistic: artists are more interesting the more they put out, erreors, mis-steps and all.

Invariably, when a band takes four years working on an album it's a huge let-down. It must be difficult when you're the person actually charged with creating something, and the temptation to over-do it and the desire for everything to be 'perfect' is understandable, but when you step back and look from an uninvolved perspective, the folly is frustrating.
REM put out their first 8 albums in nine years, and two stone-cold five star classics in successive years (91&92). If they'd spent three years making sure every single note on Automatic For the People was "perfect" (e.g. taken out the off-script laugh on 'Dr. Zeus' in Sidewinder... etc) it wouldn't have had the same feel at all.
In the 70s alone Woody Allen released ten films, and clearly there were bits and pieces that he could have re-done, agonised over nuances and fretted over. But the pattern of constantly moving on seems to produce a far better overall cannon , and you end up with the progression from Play It Again Sam (my favourite out of all his films) to Annie Hall – the first being effectively a dry-run to be learnt from and improved upon for the Oscar winner.

Boris: I have no fear of the gallows.Father: No?Boris: No. Why should I? They're going to shoot me.

Segments of Love & Death make absolutely no sense and a smattering of the gags bomb completely, but because its done so honestly it just emphasises the smartness of the ones that do worked – helped his a co-star, described by the NY Times at the time as "Miss Keaton, a wickedly funny comedienne" building on what must be the most consistent on-screen chemistry pairing ever ("There are dozens of little moments when their looks have to be exactly right, and they almost always are").

t looks sensational throughout, spurns some of the most quotable lines he's ever managed and manages to mix references to classical literature seamlessly with knockabout nonsense – as Roger Ebert put it, it's a great film "because it's been done with such care, love and lunacy"

"Sex without love is an empty experience. But as empty experiences go, it's one of the best."
To finish on a trite point – haters gon' hate, and they will find plenty to dislike about Woody Allen if they want, but they shouldn't. Get past, if needs be, being 'creeped out' by the cover of the book and read some of it:
http://woodyallenitalia.tripod.com/short-uk.html

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