All posts by 234Radio

Set-plays have been in the headlines again this week, especially at corners with masses of players from both sides surrounding the six-yard box and the goalkeeper.

I watched and rewatched many of these incidents myself and witnessed defending players holding attacking players around the waist, and not even looking at the delivery. That’s a foul, and a penalty should be awarded.

In fact, we’re at the stage now where referees have to clamp down and give either penalties, or free-kicks to the defending team, if they see an offence.

Howard Webb, where are you, and what instructions are you actually giving out to your officials as the head of Professional Games Match Officials Limited (PGMOL)?

We are seeing players penalised outside the box for incidents that are nowhere near as blatant as the chaos we are witnessing in the six-yard box, and around the goalkeeper – so why is a foul in one part of the pitch, not a foul in this scenario?

One of the things this chaos has led to is teams not defending properly now. Why should they, when they can get away with not even watching the cross come in?

As a manager, I spent as much time working on defending crosses coming into our box as I did on us attacking crosses off set plays.

We are killing the art of good defending by allowing this to continue, and let me also say that set-play coaches should be ashamed at allowing their team to defend in this way.

The chaos at corners was not the only thing I’ve watched this week when I’ve thought something has to change.

Leeds boss Daniel Farke was sent off for questioning the referee’s time-keeping at the end of Leeds’ 1-0 defeat by Manchester City.

I felt for him – for years and years, the managers of the so-called smaller Premier League clubs have had an inward belief that the top teams tend to get more decisions go their way than they do. I certainly did!

The time being added on at the end of a game is getting longer and longer, with both teams often complaining about the rationale of the referee’s decision.

I have always believed that every game should have a time-keeper working in unison with the referee, and showing everyone in the stadium, including supporters, when the clock is stopped and restarted.

Rugby union uses this method, and it works so well. With stoppages, like the types we see in football when injured goalkeepers go down, or for substitutions and any other significant breaks, we can see the clock stop and start by the referee’s signal, but the time-keeper is overseeing it all.

Talking of Stockley Park, I can honestly say that place is having the biggest impact on professional football in my lifetime – and not, I may add, in a positive way.

Every week, I watch games with an open mouth, wondering how so-called refereeing experts can get so many decisions wrong.

The nature of football means subjective decision making is always going to be contested – handballs, penalties and what is or isn’t a booking. It’s impossible to agree on everything, and we have to understand that.

But red cards have to be given a more rigid framework for referees to work with, which would hopefully bring more consistency to decisions.

The laws around everything I have mentioned above in this column are far too ambiguous at the moment, and I think we have to remember what VAR was originally brought in for.

It was meant to protect and correct major or blatant wrong decisions – things like Thierry Henry’s handball versus the Republic of Ireland, Diego Maradona’s handball against England and Frank Lampard’s goal which crossed the line but wasn’t given against Germany, in the 2010 World Cup.

Incidents like that are examples of the kind of major wrong decisions which we can all agree on.

Unfortunately, VAR has become a monster, which is driving supporters away from the game, and things are getting worse – it seems to be involved more and more now, in every game I watch, and it is still not getting things right.

What grates with a lot of people in the game is that they are not asked what they think the problem is with VAR.

There are two other governing bodies of people in English football – the League Managers Association and the Professional Footballers’ Association – with members who have actually played the game or are currently playing and managing in it.

Even if the referees don’t want either of them involved in operating VAR, have they been asked how VAR could be improved – because they are the people it is affecting, not just the supporters.

Can I just emphasise that fans come to watch a football match and see their team’s players, not to be swamped by referees or VAR stopping games at every contentious moment.

These people must realise the effect they are having on our game. In my day as a player, referees were still judged on their performance but it was seen as a positive if they were not noticed.

Now, they are always noticed – but for all the wrong reasons.

Maybe it is time to remind our officials that the game is for the people, and not for them – referees should only be a part of the product when the game is going on, because people do not turn up to watch them.

Please, let’s get back to that, rather than being bombarded with the details of every decision. It is spoiling the game.

I appreciate that Howard Webb and his merry band of men have an enormously difficult job, but VAR has not helped them – instead, it has just exposed how inept they can be even with technology to help.

So, let’s get back to accepting that all referees make mistakes during games.

We should still correct them if they are major ones, but now it’s time to let the game breathe properly again – let’s give it back to the supporters, without this monster in the room ruining it any further.

Mateus Mane is reminiscing about playing with older brother Marcos and his friends.

“They used to bully me off the ball. I feel that’s helped me a lot, especially playing on concrete,” says the Wolves forward.

“I wasn’t used to good pitches. That’s probably why I’ve got loads of scars.”

The 18-year-old started to develop his skills in Moston, a suburb four miles north east of Manchester, after moving to England with his mother from Portugal aged eight.

He knew no English, taking a year to understand the language, but playing with Marcos was the foundation for his rise to the Premier League.

Mane has been the brightest spot in Wolves’ bleak season, which will end in relegation with Rob Edwards’ side having won just twice this season.

In his breakthrough campaign, he has started every Premier League game since making his full debut against Liverpool at Anfield in December.

He faces the Reds again in the FA Cup on Friday at Molineux – three days after Tuesday’s dramatic 2-1 injury-time win in the Premier League.

Two years after being on the bench for Rochdale in the National League, Mane is already becoming a household name.

Soon after moving to England he started to admire Manchester City pair Sergio Aguero and David Silva and tried to copy Neymar after watching YouTube clips.

Having joined City Select Academy, Mane played for Manchester Cobras as a youngster as well as Moston Brook FC.

There was little time for much more, yet he still gave parents a run for their money.

“They’d say I was a bit cheeky as a child, but I was a young kid,” he said. “Every kid can be cheeky and I’ll say I was hard work for my parents. Most of the time I feel like I’ve grown up, I matured.”

Mane still goes home on a Sunday, when fixtures allow, to go to church and his maturity is showing on the pitch too after joining Rochdale’s academy in 2023 aged 15.

It was run then by Tony Ellis – now Wolves’ head of northern recruitment – with Mane asked to sign after his first training session.

“He lit the place up. He’s technical, his attributes were ridiculous for such a young boy,” recalled Ellis, who also recommended the frontman to Wolves.

“The way he received the ball, the way he drove, his decision-making. Just a technically good footballer.

“He was happy in the environment, always had a ball, always communicating with players and staff.

“When you’d finished the session, he’d be the first one to go and put the cones away or get the balls. He gained the trust of staff and players really, really quickly.”

It has been a steep curve since, with former boss Vitor Pereira handing him his debut against Brighton in May last year, while Wolves assistant Harry Watling quickly identified his talent after he and current manager Rob Edwards arrived in November to take charge.

Mane has blossomed and wants to look at his clips as soon as he is off the pitch, striking up a close relationship with Watling.

In return he has two goals in 20 appearances, including his first in Wolves’ long-awaited opening win of the season against West Ham in January.

Mane’s belief shines through as he added: “I’ve said to myself one day I’ll play in the Premier League, I’ll score goals in the Premier League.

“My plan was just work hard, keep going every day and it came sooner than I thought, I was grateful.

“Every young kids’ dream is to play in the Premier League. I jumped off my seat, took my bib off, ready to come on and when I came on, my nerves just started coming up.

“But when I won my first header, my nerves just went. I was like, ‘yeah, I deserve to be here. I want to be here’.

“I feel like, as a youngster coming into a team where there’s loads of senior and experienced players, it’s a bit hard. But if you earn your respect then you can tell him, ‘come on and keep going’.

With Liverpool, Manchester United and Real Madrid among the clubs reportedly interested in a summer transfer, Mane’s confidence and form has also got Portugal and England battling over his international future.

Both countries have watched him, with Portugal boss Roberto Martinez close with Wolves technical director Matt Jackson – the pair having played together at Wigan.

England Under-21 boss Lee Carsley is also taking a keen interest and Mane, an England Under-18 international, will have a decision to make.

“He’s got a really high ceiling, I think because of his mentality, because of his quality and because he’s not finished developing yet,” said Wolves boss Edwards.

“He can go a long, long way. It’s been a really good start for him but that is all it is.

“He’s getting a lot of headlines and there’s a lot of noise about him, there’s not many 18-year-olds in the Premier League doing what he’s doing at the moment, especially in a team that’s been struggling this season.

Aston Martin’s dire start to the season has left Fernando Alonso in a “hard mental place”, says team principal Adrian Newey.

Aston Martin are beset by continuing reliability problems with their Honda engine which are preventing any meaningful running.

The Spanish two-time world champion was not able to run in first practice for the Australian Grand Prix because of a problem with his Honda power-unit.

He was able to do 17 laps in the second session but was 4.933 seconds off the pace.

Alonso, 44, has already been in a similar situation with Honda at McLaren from 2015-17, when the engine was unreliable and uncompetitive for three years before the two parties split.

Newey said: “Fernando is one of the true greats. His ability, his talent, his all-round capability, he should have won, in truth, far more than the two championships he has to his name and however many races wins (32).

“I’m not sure how old he is. Nobody quite knows what his age is. But he’s still super-quick, super-talented, super-sharp.

“Talking to him, he doesn’t think he’s suffering in any way. His eyesight is still very good. His reactions, he’s very proud of the fact he was the fastest starter last year, in reaction time. So, he’s an amazing person.

“We’ve been trying to contain our hopes because we knew this was going to be a difficult year, a build year. We started very late and on a very compressed cycle on the chassis side, but we knew that meant in the first half of the season we would be able to catch back up and we would very much have done without the distraction that’s now caused.

Newey’s Red Bull cars prevented Alonso winning at least two further championships, when he was at Ferrari in 2010 and 2012, and the two have long wanted to work together.

Aston Martin signed to become Honda’s works partner in May 2023, while the Japanese company was in the course of four consecutive drivers’ titles and two constructors’ championships with Red Bull.

Newey, a design legend regarded as the finest aerodynamic engineer in F1 history, said Honda’s problems were founded in its decision to quit F1 in 2021, only to change its mind on the basis of the new rules that are being introduced this year.

Newey, who joined Aston Martin in March last year, said he and the team did not know about Honda’s problems until November, when he, team owner Lawrence Stroll and chief strategy officer Andy Cowell visited Honda’s base in Tokyo “to discuss rumours” that the Japanese company “wouldn’t achieve” their “original target power”.

He added: “Out of that came the fact that many of the original workforce had not returned when they restarted.

“When they reformed, a lot of the original group had it now transpires disbanded and gone to work on solar panels or whatever.

“A lot of the group were new to F1 and didn’t have the experience they had previous.

“Plus, when they came back in 2023 that was the first year of the budget cap for engines.

“All their rivals had been developing away through 2021-2022, with continuity, existing team and free of budget cap.

Newey said the current problems are rooted in vibrations from the engine affecting the batteries of the hybrid system. There are only two of those left for the rest of the weekend in Melbourne.

“If we lose one of those then it’s obviously a big problem. So we’ve got to be very careful on how we use the batteries,” he said.

“We came here with four batteries. We’ve had conditioning problems or communication problems with two of those batteries, which means as we sit here today, we’ve only got two operational batteries. And that, given our kind of rate of battery damage, is quite a scary place to be in.

“Obviously, we’re hopeful that we can get through the weekend and start two cars and so on and so forth, but it’s very difficult to be concrete at the moment about that.”

Newey said that, from his point of view, “I kind of feel a bit powerless because we’ve clearly got a very significant power-unit problem.

“And our lack of running then also means, at the same time, we’re not finding out about the car. So our information on the car itself is very limited because we’ve done so little running.

Aston Martin’s dire start to the season has left Fernando Alonso in a “hard mental place”, says team principal Adrian Newey.

Aston Martin, who ended the first day of practice for the Australian Grand Prix nearly five seconds off the pace having done only 17 laps, are beset by continuing reliability problems with their Honda engine which are preventing any meaningful running.

The Spanish two-time world champion was not able to run in first practice because of a problem with his Honda power-unit.

Alonso, 44, has already been in a similar situation with Honda at McLaren from 2015-17, when the engine was unreliable and uncompetitive for three years before the two parties split.

Newey said: “Fernando is one of the true greats. His ability, his talent, his all-round capability, he should have won, in truth, far more than the two championships he has to his name and however many races wins (32).

“I’m not sure how old he is. Nobody quite knows what his age is. But he’s still super-quick, super-talented, super-sharp.

“Talking to him, he doesn’t think he’s suffering in any way. His eyesight is still very good. His reactions, he’s very proud of the fact he was the fastest starter last year, in reaction time. So, he’s an amazing person.

“We’ve been trying to contain our hopes because we knew this was going to be a difficult year, a build year. We started very late and on a very compressed cycle on the chassis side, but we knew that meant in the first half of the season we would be able to catch back up and we would very much have done without the distraction that’s now caused.

Newey’s Red Bull cars prevented Alonso winning at least two further championships, when he was at Ferrari in 2010 and 2012, and the two have long wanted to work together.

Aston Martin signed to become Honda’s works partner in May 2023, while the Japanese company was in the course of four consecutive drivers’ titles and two constructors’ championships with Red Bull.

Newey, a design legend regarded as the finest aerodynamic engineer in F1 history, said Honda’s problems were founded in its decision to quit F1 in 2021, only to change its mind on the basis of the new rules that are being introduced this year.

Newey, who joined Aston Martin in March last year, said he and the team did not know about Honda’s problems until November, when he, team owner Lawrence Stroll and chief strategy officer Andy Cowell visited Honda’s base in Tokyo “to discuss rumours” that the Japanese company “wouldn’t achieve” their “original target power”.

He added: “Out of that came the fact that many of the original workforce had not returned when they restarted.

“When they reformed, a lot of the original group had it now transpires disbanded and gone to work on solar panels or whatever.

“A lot of the group were new to F1 and didn’t have the experience they had previous.

“Plus, when they came back in 2023 that was the first year of the budget cap for engines.

“All their rivals had been developing away through 2021-2022, with continuity, existing team and free of budget cap.

Newey said the current problems are rooted in vibrations from the engine affecting the batteries of the hybrid system. There are only two of those left for the rest of the weekend in Melbourne.

“If we lose one of those then it’s obviously a big problem. So we’ve got to be very careful on how we use the batteries,” he said.

“We came here with four batteries. We’ve had conditioning problems or communication problems with two of those batteries, which means as we sit here today, we’ve only got two operational batteries. And that, given our kind of rate of battery damage, is quite a scary place to be in.

“Obviously, we’re hopeful that we can get through the weekend and start two cars and so on and so forth, but it’s very difficult to be concrete at the moment about that.”

Newey said that, from his point of view, “I kind of feel a bit powerless because we’ve clearly got a very significant power-unit problem.

“And our lack of running then also means, at the same time, we’re not finding out about the car. So our information on the car itself is very limited because we’ve done so little running.

Aston Martin’s dire situation before the first race of the season was laid bare when they finished practice 4.9 seconds off the pace.

And team principal Adrian Newey revealed that all the problems had left their legendary driver Fernando Alonso in a “hard mental place”.

The continuing issues around the team are one of the biggest stories of the new season, particularly as their signing of design great Newey and engine partnership with Honda had created great expectations for 2026.

But Aston Martin, who ended the first day of practice for the Australian Grand Prix nearly five seconds off the pace having done only 17 laps, remain beset by continuing reliability problems with their Honda engine which are preventing any meaningful running.

Last year, the field was covered by not much more than a second from front to back.

But this sort of margin is not unusual in the context of either the history of F1, or a major regulation change, when gaps between teams tend to expand.

In modern history, the British racing car manufacturer Lola faced an 11-second deficit when it launched a new team in 1996. It survived for only one race.

But for a team of this profile, funded by a Canadian billionaire, with an engine produced by one of the world’s most respected automotive companies, with two all-time greats designing and driving the car, it is an unacceptable deficit. And an unsustainable one.

On Thursday, it was revealed that Alonso and fellow driver Lance Stroll were at risk of nerve damage because of the vibrations from their Honda engines.

Spanish two-time world champion Alonso was not able to run in first practice because of a problem with his Honda power-unit.

Alonso, 44, has already been in a similar situation with Honda at McLaren from 2015-17, when the engine was unreliable and uncompetitive for three years before the two parties split.

Newey said: “Fernando is one of the true greats. His ability, his talent, his all-round capability, he should have won, in truth, far more than the two championships he has to his name and however many races wins (32).”

On his age, he added: “Talking to him, he doesn’t think he’s suffering in any way. His eyesight is still very good. His reactions, he’s very proud of the fact he was the fastest starter last year, in reaction time. So, he’s an amazing person.

“We’ve been trying to contain our hopes because we knew this was going to be a difficult year, a build year. We started very late and on a very compressed cycle on the chassis side, but we knew that meant in the first half of the season we would be able to catch back up and we would very much have done without the distraction that’s now caused.

Newey’s Red Bull cars prevented Alonso winning at least two further championships, when he was at Ferrari in 2010 and 2012, and the two have long wanted to work together.

Aston Martin signed to become Honda’s works partner in May 2023, while the Japanese company was in the course of four consecutive drivers’ titles and two constructors’ championships with Red Bull.

Newey, a design legend regarded as the finest aerodynamic engineer in F1 history, said Honda’s problems were founded in its decision to quit F1 in 2021, only to change its mind on the basis of the new rules that are being introduced this year.

Newey, who joined Aston Martin in March last year, said he and the team did not know about Honda’s problems until November, when he, team owner Lawrence Stroll and chief strategy officer Andy Cowell visited Honda’s base in Tokyo “to discuss rumours” that the Japanese company “wouldn’t achieve” their “original target power”.

He added: “Out of that came the fact that many of the original workforce had not returned when they restarted.

“When they reformed, a lot of the original group had it now transpires disbanded and gone to work on solar panels or whatever.

“A lot of the group were new to F1 and didn’t have the experience they had previous.

“Plus, when they came back in 2023 that was the first year of the budget cap for engines.

“All their rivals had been developing away through 2021-2022, with continuity, existing team and free of budget cap.

Newey said the current problems are rooted in vibrations from the engine affecting the batteries of the hybrid system. There are only two of those left for the rest of the weekend in Melbourne.

“If we lose one of those then it’s obviously a big problem. So we’ve got to be very careful on how we use the batteries,” he said.

“We came here with four batteries. We’ve had conditioning problems or communication problems with two of those batteries, which means as we sit here today, we’ve only got two operational batteries. And that, given our kind of rate of battery damage, is quite a scary place to be in.

“Obviously, we’re hopeful that we can get through the weekend and start two cars and so on and so forth, but it’s very difficult to be concrete at the moment about that.”

Newey said that, from his point of view, “I kind of feel a bit powerless because we’ve clearly got a very significant power-unit problem.

“And our lack of running then also means, at the same time, we’re not finding out about the car. So our information on the car itself is very limited because we’ve done so little running.