And Then There Were None

Dean Ashton announced his retirement from professional football today at the age of 26. This had been on the cards for almost five months now and honestly, the only surprise about this announcement is that it has come as such a surprise to so many people.

My first memories of Dean Ashton go back to the 2003-04 season when he was still at Crewe and, though highly rated by everyone, was thought of as no more than another stellar product of Dario Gradi's dynastic production line of cultured footballers who had a shot at a decent professional career once he became too big for Crewe to hold on to.

Right on cue, while I was in mourning over the dramas unfolding at Elland Road, Ashton moved on, fairly unnoticed, to Norwich City and it is here that his flames of his promise (an unfortunate one-word tag that would haunt him as he moved up the footballing ladder over the next three-and-a-half seasons) were actively fanned. This was helped in no small part by the sad fact that the Darren Huckerby's of this world were never going to be long-term goalscoring solutions for the Canaries, as they revved up for an assault on the top-end of the Championship. The fact that Ashton's core strengths were so far removed from the archetypal 'hard-running, working the channels, hustling the back four, more useful playing alone up front away rather than leading the line at home' strikers that populated Norwich's benches and reserves only made his potential path to superstardom more straightforward.

However, in another bit of punditspeak that would chequer his short career, a lot of people didn't understand why Ashton's goalscoring record wasn't that great--indeed, he averaged rather less than a goal every two-and-a-half games throughout his senior career--and said that he needed to score more goals in order to really hit the spotlight as a header-winning, link-up playing front man. There was a blatant double standard in that particular criticism--the same people were fawning over Peter Crouch and, more inexplicably, Emile Heskey, neither of whom fulfilled this strike rate requirement. Cast your mind back to Heskey's famous season at Liverpool where he scored twice in thirty-four appearances and led the line for England no less than six times the same season. Even leaving that aside, Ashton's game was never about being that big frontman whose mere presence on the field would instantly convert the back six into a giant slingshot to lump the ball forwards aerially. I always felt he was one of those excellent footballers who would fit any system and the quality of his overall play was good enough to play him practically anywhere (an opinion a lot of people held of Alan Shearer, another player Ashton was often unfavourably compared with).

Towards the back end of his spell at Norwich, when it was almost certain that West Ham were coming in for him, I remember a weekend of football where he'd created an opportunity out of nothing and scored a ridiculous twenty-five yard goal against Middlesborough at the Riverside and how there was unanimous raving, with everyone who watched that game, curiously, highlighting different strengths about Ashton's game. It was a bit of a shock to me because I hadn't heard such consistently varied opinions about a striker's strengths since the time Sir Alex Ferguson had plucked Dion Dublin out of obscurity. Dublin's Old Trafford career had been finished by a horrific leg fracture against Crystal Palace on the second day of September that season (something that eventually prompted Ferguson to unsuccessfully try for David Hirst, Mick Harford and, famously, for Eric Cantona, who, people forget, he secured for exactly the same money that he paid for Dublin) and from that day on, I constantly feared for something similar happening to Ashton.

Sure enough, his 2006-07 season was finished by the same ankle that has now caused his retirement and, by the time 2007-08 (Ashton's only relatively injury-free season after leaving Gradi and Crewe) was coming around, you had to feel for Alan Curbishley who, with anywhere between nine and thirteen first-teamers perpetually injured, was really running out of options, though the same lack of options would prompt the signing of Newcastle captain Scott Parker and, gee, hasn't that turned out well!

Ashton began the process of repaying seven-and-a-quarter million pounds very faithfully in the league in 2007-08, the inevitable England debut (tragically, also to be his last appearance for England) followed and the feeling that he would make up for lost time was irresistible to most observers, who finally realised that season that Ashton was every bit as good as the hype.

Sadly, that ankle of his was literally being held together by a thread and when Shaun Wright-Phillips mistimed a tackle in England training, Ashton fell in a heap and never, in reality, got back up again. And the tragedy of Dean Ashton is not that a promising career has been cut short or that he will not enter the pantheon of legendary English centre-forwards by becoming the next Alan Shearer or even that he has nothing to do in the immediate future apart from trying to find a bit-part job within or outside football. The tragedy is that he is fine. It's just that if he wants to continue doing what he loves, he's going to risk not being able to walk unassisted when he eventually retires. The same could have happened to Shearer, if that tackle from behind in the preseason game at Goodison Park in July 1997 had been even a second later. But it didn't. And Wright-Phillips' tackle on Ashton did. On such ironies do footballers' careers depend.

Here's wishing Dean Ashton all the best. I can't think of any English footballer in recent times who deserves it more.


      

Of Optimism

Late post. I wrote this a week ago today.

I've woken up with a real sense of optimism today. Not even a cancelled first hour has managed to tarnish that. I've also realised that The Raconteurs make excellent morning music.

These times also mark the most bullish I've felt about Leeds United since Robbie Fowler chipped that orange ball over David James' head for the third in a 3-0 demolition of West Ham at a snowy Elland Road on New Year's Day 2002. It's been way too long. But with a six-point cushion over Charlton and a further three points back to fourth place with a game in hand, I have the irrepresible feeling that this is the season that the swagger comes back to Leeds United. If Grayson holds on to the squad in January, nothing short of administration (and it's happened before, so always beware) will stop an ascent into the Championship. The players are committed, the crowds are hot, the substitutions are sharp, the football is pretty and one Jermaine Beckford is on fire.

I know it's only sixteen games into the season, but there's a feeling, more than a feeling, that redemption for the dark days of 2005 is just around the corner. And that will be sweet.

Down The Corridors, Round The Corners

I'm writing this in the library. And it's because I've spent fifteen minutes here about an hour back that makes me feel like I've had the wind knocked out of me. That's a shame because what I saw and read in those fifteen minutes was actually very beautiful.

It's just that it also reminded me that there is no substitute for time, that five years don't really melt away. That my attempts at "creating our own history" will fall obviously and painfully short. That, for all the compliments and the rose-tinted glasses, this is still the most uneasy compromise I've ever been a part of. That I'm being unfair in expecting, forgiving, forgetting and then expecting all over again.

If I'd written this an hour ago, I might've told myself, "you saw it coming, this was always going to be the knife in your back, whenever it came" but the fact that I'm not really thinking such things itself tells me that there is, in fact, no substitute for time. Which is also perhaps why I don't understand why I haven't spoken to my best friend in over a month.

God forgive me if I end up sacrificing a Fairy Tale or two before I sleep tonight. But there's very little else that can make up for the fact that, despite everything I've (and, indeed, we've) tried, when it comes to those perfect little visions of happiness I make myself believe in, I'm as as far away from those ideals as I've ever been.

Closing Doors

Yesterday was loaded with significance in many, many ways. Everything from literally locking the door shut on my last ever Legala to enjoying three hours of brilliant music outdoors at my last ever Strawberry Fields was marked with the conscious feeling that what was happening was very, very special.

I was reminded this evening of things I said last night about 'happiest times in law school' and 'how each year in college has been typified by how I felt on Strawberry Fields Finals night that year' and I realised that I wasn't off at all--I actually meant all of those things.

I've also found a unique way to let the dust settle on this truly fantastic weekend--a probable wisdom tooth extraction and an Undertaker interview prior to King of the Ring 1997. Since words aren't enough to describe the first, I'll reproduce the second:

"Well, I'd like to take this time to talk about Faarooq. Last week, Faarooq decided to play the race card. Well Faarooq, you need to understand that the Undertaker, he's not the white saviour, because I don't recognise colour. I'm not white, I'm not black. What I am is the reaper of wayward souls. And when it's all said and done, and when the King of the Ring is all over, and you're sitting in that dressing room and you're wondering why you're not the World Wrestling Federation champion, well, you can rest assured it's not because you're black, it's because you couldn't beat the Undertaker."

Man, I love YouTube. :)

Your Jesus Really Died For Me

For the first time in a really long time, Robbie Williams has made me smile. His first album in three years--"Reality Killed the Video Star" (originally titled "El Protagonista" but later shafted because, you guessed it, it sounded too pretentious)--comes out November 9. It would be fair to say that, the odd song (such as "Advertising Space") apart, there hasn't been something like a good Robbie Williams song since the "Escapology" album six years previously. Given that RW formed almost a fifth of my musical taste at one point ("Sing When You're Winning" in 2000 was the first "Western music" album I ever purchased), this has been an incredibly long wait.

Once bitten, twice shy, unfortunately. My hopes were as high when 2006's "Intensive Care" came out, but that turned out to be a gigantic disappointment. The feeling that I got cheated out of my money only intensified with RW's next album "Rudebox", which he put out inside twelve months. Despite initial promotional hysteria, it has to certainly rank as his worst album ever and perhaps one of the worst to come out that year.

So I approach RKTVS with a significantly greater degree of caution. However, even if this album turns out to be crap, the first single off it--"Bodies"-- is fast assuming all-time RW favourite status. I have often been told how certain songs are Eashan Ghosh-type songs and though that's usually meant as a mildly deriding categorization, I'll happily go on record to say that "Bodies" is most certainly an Eashan Ghosh-type song!

It has all the elements of a classic Eashan Ghosh-type song: it begins with an (evidently post-"Rudebox") electronica/banjo hangover, builds a "deep" verse and culminates in an epic, expansive, slightly mournful chorus full of emotion (or, as DPS students would say, "meaning"). There's an extra-long bridge which makes no sense but, by then, it doesn't matter because you're usually sold. Full opera-style final chorus and the punch line/tune repeated ad infinitum till the finish.

Whatever you may think of this kind of song, you have to doff your hat to someone who comes up with "God save me rejection, from my reflection, I want perfection" to round out a chorus. The video is a classic piece of work as well, especially the last forty-five seconds or so--RW walks with a swagger, positions himself on an airplane wing, sits on his haunches and stares at the camera, air-violins, does a jig, sticks his arms out Jesus-the-saviour-style and generally looks like he owns the world.

You'd begun to wonder where the arrogance had gone. "As good as 'Angels', if not better", said one review. Let's see. He may be England's best-ever solo artist yet.