Wherever you look for comment about the economy, the pundits tell you that George Osborne's policy is failing because there is next to no growth. The impression given is that growth is out there, and it's just Osborne's wilful stupidity which is preventing us from getting any.
Leaving aside a consideration I've often mentioned previously (that growth isn't the only measure of economic success), this is wrong: actually all the evidence suggests that there probably isn't going to be much in the way of growth any time soon, no matter what the Chancellor does.
During the Gordon Brown boom, the main drivers of growth were borrowing by consumers, borrowing to buy houses and, after about 2001, government borrowing. All these debt drivers are more or less exhausted. Government spending is flat, consumers are retrenching and the housing market is stagnant. Even if there were no other considerations, it would be irrational to look for pre-Credit Crunch growth levels.
But there are other considerations. The EU is flat on its back. How are we going to export our way out of trouble when one of our biggest trading partners isn't buying?
And yet despite all that, the commentariat generally assumes that if only the Chancellor could press the right buttons, pre-2007 levels of growth would return (incidentally, those levels of growth were distinctly modest - the trend rate was about 2.5%). They remind me of those fabled South Sea cargo cultists, forever waving at passing aeroplanes from their balsa wood control towers, planes perhaps towing banners marked "Economic Nirvana".
What to make of this? It seems to me that journalists reflect to some degree the views of the population at large, perhaps better informed in some cases but blinkered, prejudiced and lazy in others.
Most people in Britain know bugger all about economics. Most people think "it was all the bankers' fault" without asking themselves what the bankers were doing (finding more and more ingenious ways to lend money to people that couldn't repay it). Most people think we could return to pre-2007 levels of growth without asking themselves where that growth came from and whether the forces that drove it can be repeated.
Most people, in other words, don't understand that 2007 represented a watershed in the West's economic history. We exported our wealth creating capacity to the Far East and the Credit Crunch represents a crisis in our ability to paper over the resulting funding gaps by borrowing from Far Eastern economies.
I worry what will happen when people work out the true significance of what has happened; and I worry a little more about what will happen if they carry on deluding themselves.
So, growth, the elusive pimpernel. Elusive pimple, more like.
Thursday 21 March 2013
The budget: George Osborne serenades Fanny Mae
Nearly ten years ago, when the world was young, when Gordon Brown's boom sailed serenely on, when banning me from Comment is Free was just a gleam in Guardian moderators' eyes, I used to post on www.housepricecrash.co.uk. A haven for fellow nutters, HPC did at least get one thing right - one of their top threads was entitled something like "Signs of credit tightening": for they thought that at some point it would become harder to get mortgages, and then property armageddon would take place.
And partly this was true. Credit tightening, aka The Credit Crunch, did happen. And the property market did stall, although it hasn't gone crashing to the floor in the UK - rising population levels have seen to that.
My own take was slightly more cautious. I thought that people would always need houses, and that it was unlikely there'd be an outright crash. But given how much economic activity flowed from the property market - solicitors, estate agents, surveyors, builders, decorators, DIY stores and so on - it did occur to me that a slowdown would hit GDP badly.
Not surprising then that George Osborne has cobbled together a cunning plan to kickstart the market, hoping that will get some growth going again. There will be two schemes as far as I can see, to guarantee deposits for first time buyers and those trapped by negative equity. The cunning aspect is that the aim is to support new-build property, helping the construction sector, and because the Government isn't providing the loans, the money is off balance sheet.
Is it a good idea? Well yes and no. There might be some knock on into economic activity, but firstly, mortgage guarantee schemes can go badly wrong. Does anyone remember Fanny Mae and Freddie Mac? The Credit Crunch did for them. US banks, knowing that the government would foot the bill if anything went wrong, lent indiscriminately. Effectively UK taxpayers will be backstopping loans to people who otherwise wouldn't be able to afford them. This has an ominously familiar ring.
The second thing is that the effect will probably be to push house prices up, and house prices are too high anyway. In the 2000s there was a massive misallocation of capital into property. Gordon Brown took house prices out of the measure used to calculate inflation, with the result that their rocketing value was never reflected in the higher interest rates which would have dampened their ascent. Ideally, some of the value needs to seep out of property and be better allocated elsewhere. I have no doubt that day will come - in fact it's happening gradually everywhere apart from the South East - but Osborne's plan will slow it in and some places perhaps even reverse it.
And partly this was true. Credit tightening, aka The Credit Crunch, did happen. And the property market did stall, although it hasn't gone crashing to the floor in the UK - rising population levels have seen to that.
My own take was slightly more cautious. I thought that people would always need houses, and that it was unlikely there'd be an outright crash. But given how much economic activity flowed from the property market - solicitors, estate agents, surveyors, builders, decorators, DIY stores and so on - it did occur to me that a slowdown would hit GDP badly.
Not surprising then that George Osborne has cobbled together a cunning plan to kickstart the market, hoping that will get some growth going again. There will be two schemes as far as I can see, to guarantee deposits for first time buyers and those trapped by negative equity. The cunning aspect is that the aim is to support new-build property, helping the construction sector, and because the Government isn't providing the loans, the money is off balance sheet.
Is it a good idea? Well yes and no. There might be some knock on into economic activity, but firstly, mortgage guarantee schemes can go badly wrong. Does anyone remember Fanny Mae and Freddie Mac? The Credit Crunch did for them. US banks, knowing that the government would foot the bill if anything went wrong, lent indiscriminately. Effectively UK taxpayers will be backstopping loans to people who otherwise wouldn't be able to afford them. This has an ominously familiar ring.
The second thing is that the effect will probably be to push house prices up, and house prices are too high anyway. In the 2000s there was a massive misallocation of capital into property. Gordon Brown took house prices out of the measure used to calculate inflation, with the result that their rocketing value was never reflected in the higher interest rates which would have dampened their ascent. Ideally, some of the value needs to seep out of property and be better allocated elsewhere. I have no doubt that day will come - in fact it's happening gradually everywhere apart from the South East - but Osborne's plan will slow it in and some places perhaps even reverse it.
Tuesday 19 March 2013
David Bowie and Michael Rosen - knights of the shires
David Bowie is at Number 1 again, it says in the Daily Telegraph. Seeing those two names in the same sentence rather sums it up. I liked Bowie quite a lot in his Hunky Dory period; come to that, Aladdin Sane wasn't bad, or Young Americans, or Low, or Let's Dance. One could go on. He still looks effortlessly cool in his 60s. But he is in the papers (and now in an exhibition at the V&A) because a lot of people my age are in charge there; and in the charts because a lot people my age have the nostalgia and disposable income to put him at the top. Not much to see here. Move on etc.
Where does Michael Rosen come into this? Every now and again the novelist pops up in the Guardian, writing "open" letters to the Education Secretary Michael Gove. His picture shows a cheery looking elderly man (a year older than Bowie, 1946 to the artist formerly known as David Jones's 1947), rumpled and casually dressed. I have always liked Rosen when I've heard him on the radio, and I expect I've read some of his books to my children, although offhand I can't remember any of them. One gathers from his articles that Rosen is not inherently sympathetic to Gove's zealous reforms of the education system. To put it mildly.
A couple of things strike me about this. The first and most obvious is, why does anyone think Gove cares what Rosen thinks? Rosen is not, after all, Nelson Mandela or Vaclav Havel. The other one is that Rosen, a teenager in the 1960s and therefore borne upwards on the tide of post-War liberalism, now looks rather old. To be fair, very few of us have worn as well as Bowie.
Private Eye does a neat line in parody letters from retired colonels living in the Tory shires, but its real-life Sir Herbert Gussets are now largely incontinent, incoherent or dead. Their opinions die with them.
It is the children of the 60s, the Bowies and Rosens, who are the old buffers now.
It is the children of the 60s, the Bowies and Rosens, who are the old buffers now.
They - we - thought their notions of personal freedom had changed the world forever. But that probably isn't true. Like the Eye's Bufton Tuftons, they are merely people who had a view, which will be (and this is the crucial point) superseded by those of younger people, formed in a different age.
Younger people, for example, formed in the age of Thatcher.
Younger people, for example, formed in the age of Thatcher.
Be afraid. Be very afraid.
Sunday 17 March 2013
England's humiliation - opera meets rugby
After the interval of last night's Opera North production of Othello in Manchester, an apparatchik came out on stage to make an announcement. One of the singers had picked up a bad cold in Belfast last week, it appeared; he asked for our indulgence. Another, the apparatchik said, was a little hoarse because he had been "shouting his support for Wales all afternoon".
There was certainly plenty to shout about. In the Six Nations decider at Cardiff's Millennium Stadium Wales thrashed England comprehensively. They outplayed us in every department of the game - line out, scrum, breakdown, handling, kicking, decision-making, the lot. The 30-3 scoreline did not flatter the Welsh. I found it almost unbearable to watch. It helped of course that the majority of the crowd - the best part of 100,000 - passionately wanted Wales to win. Or that their dislike of England borders on the visceral.
What would be the prospects of a similar announcement being made at WNO in Cardiff? "Joe Bloggs would like you to know that his voice is hoarse because he has been cheering on England during this afternoon's thrashing of Wales". I can't see it happening personally. Our desire to stick it up the Welsh is not quite so intense, for one thing; and although the audience at the Lowry laughed last night, a Welsh audience would not have been so kind. Knowing that, the announcement would not have been made, or perhaps even suggested.
No doubt the Welsh today have some good reasons to feel resentful of the English. If one disregards events so long ago that Wales, properly speaking, was not yet a nation, I can't think offhand what those might be. Nationalism - and this is particularly true north of Carlisle - is always the same toxic mixture of sentimentality and fascism - sentimentality because it relies on a historical narrative which is false; fascism because one of its principal motivating powers is dislike of other people.
Here is the truth about the English. We are actually a bit pathetic. Particularly middle-class English people like me. A hundred and fifty years ago we were the workshop of the world, and ruled a great deal of it with a mixture of adventurism, greed and a misapprehension that Johnny Foreigner would be better off doing things the white man's way. Having expended a great deal of manpower and specie defending Europe from tyranny, we then saw the error of our ways, and gave most of our colonies back. Nowadays we have neither the resources nor the self-confidence to knock the skin off a rice pudding. That's why you can say in England that you have been cheering on the biggest rugby humiliation our team has suffered for years and an English audience will laugh politely.
A month or so ago my daughter took part in a fantastic evening the Halle put on - a concert performance of Act III of Meistersinger with extracts from the first two acts tacked on at the beginning. As the opera winds to its conclusion, Hans Sachs utters a famous defence of German art, warning what would happen to Germany if "foreign vanities" were planted in German land. Knowing how German history turned out, it's impossible to listen to this without a feeling of foreboding, but that doesn't stop the opera being widely performed.
What would be the chances of getting an opera put on in which the word German and Germany were replaced by English and England? Zero. No matter how magnificent the music. And anyway an English Hans Sachs would say, "English art can be jolly nice. But the best bits are the bits we've borrowed from other nations. And if they want to bring their art in to our country, we're totally OK with that! As for foreign culture, that can come in too. It makes our country so much more interesting and rewarding to have a diverse mix!"
The English are as embarrassed by English nationalism as they are indulgent of other people's. You could regard this as weakness. On the other hand perhaps we deserve more credit than we get for disdaining nationalism so thoroughly. It's good to be good at something after all. Even if it's not rugby.
PS The scorer of Wales's two tries, Alex Cuthbert, was born on 5 April 1990 in Gloucester. Yes, that's Gloucester, England.
There was certainly plenty to shout about. In the Six Nations decider at Cardiff's Millennium Stadium Wales thrashed England comprehensively. They outplayed us in every department of the game - line out, scrum, breakdown, handling, kicking, decision-making, the lot. The 30-3 scoreline did not flatter the Welsh. I found it almost unbearable to watch. It helped of course that the majority of the crowd - the best part of 100,000 - passionately wanted Wales to win. Or that their dislike of England borders on the visceral.
What would be the prospects of a similar announcement being made at WNO in Cardiff? "Joe Bloggs would like you to know that his voice is hoarse because he has been cheering on England during this afternoon's thrashing of Wales". I can't see it happening personally. Our desire to stick it up the Welsh is not quite so intense, for one thing; and although the audience at the Lowry laughed last night, a Welsh audience would not have been so kind. Knowing that, the announcement would not have been made, or perhaps even suggested.
No doubt the Welsh today have some good reasons to feel resentful of the English. If one disregards events so long ago that Wales, properly speaking, was not yet a nation, I can't think offhand what those might be. Nationalism - and this is particularly true north of Carlisle - is always the same toxic mixture of sentimentality and fascism - sentimentality because it relies on a historical narrative which is false; fascism because one of its principal motivating powers is dislike of other people.
Here is the truth about the English. We are actually a bit pathetic. Particularly middle-class English people like me. A hundred and fifty years ago we were the workshop of the world, and ruled a great deal of it with a mixture of adventurism, greed and a misapprehension that Johnny Foreigner would be better off doing things the white man's way. Having expended a great deal of manpower and specie defending Europe from tyranny, we then saw the error of our ways, and gave most of our colonies back. Nowadays we have neither the resources nor the self-confidence to knock the skin off a rice pudding. That's why you can say in England that you have been cheering on the biggest rugby humiliation our team has suffered for years and an English audience will laugh politely.
A month or so ago my daughter took part in a fantastic evening the Halle put on - a concert performance of Act III of Meistersinger with extracts from the first two acts tacked on at the beginning. As the opera winds to its conclusion, Hans Sachs utters a famous defence of German art, warning what would happen to Germany if "foreign vanities" were planted in German land. Knowing how German history turned out, it's impossible to listen to this without a feeling of foreboding, but that doesn't stop the opera being widely performed.
What would be the chances of getting an opera put on in which the word German and Germany were replaced by English and England? Zero. No matter how magnificent the music. And anyway an English Hans Sachs would say, "English art can be jolly nice. But the best bits are the bits we've borrowed from other nations. And if they want to bring their art in to our country, we're totally OK with that! As for foreign culture, that can come in too. It makes our country so much more interesting and rewarding to have a diverse mix!"
The English are as embarrassed by English nationalism as they are indulgent of other people's. You could regard this as weakness. On the other hand perhaps we deserve more credit than we get for disdaining nationalism so thoroughly. It's good to be good at something after all. Even if it's not rugby.
PS The scorer of Wales's two tries, Alex Cuthbert, was born on 5 April 1990 in Gloucester. Yes, that's Gloucester, England.
Tuesday 12 March 2013
George Osborne and Mr Micawber
At the risk of trying the patience of anyone who doesn't want to read two blogs in a row about the economy, George Osborne's critics have been annoying me again. To be clear, old Bumnose isn't my favourite politician either, but perhaps we should judge him relative to his detractors, who look muddled and blinkered. In particular they make three assumptions about the economy that don't bear examination.
The first is that growth is the only way of judging success or failure of economic policy. It's not. It would be good to have growth, but when we are dependent on the gilt markets just to survive from week to week it might be more important to persuade them that we are serious about getting on top of the deficit. Surely keeping our heads above water is the key?
It's possible to suggest, as Vicky Redwood from Capital Economics recently has, that you might lower the deficit more quickly in the medium term by borrowing more in the short term; but I've never heard her, or any of Osborne's less well-qualified critics, explain exactly how this mechanism works; and in fact Ed Balls seems rather to have given up the more-borrowing-equals-less-borrowing case.
You need to generate more in tax revenue and reduced welfare payments than you lose in the extra interest payments on borrowing right across the public and private sectors, and if it were easy to do, no government anywhere would ever have gone bust. All they'd need to do was borrow more.
The second assumption Osborne haters make is that out there growth is readily available. Actually I've never seen any suggestion, beyond the stimulus of the additional borrowing, where this growth is going to come from. In fact the evidence there is suggests that growth is going to be extremely hard to come by. Why? Because during the long years of boom (between 1993 and 2008) most of Britain's - extremely modest - growth came from the additional debt taken on by HMG, by house buyers and by consumers. All those sectors are now retrenching.
And yet on the left, the right and in the broadcast media commentators assume lazily that growth is there to be had. It doesn't seem to have occurred to them - or to the vast majority of the general public - that the main drivers of past growth might be exhausted. I want to get hold of them and give them a good shake. "Look at this week's manufacturing output", I imagine yelling at them. "The Eurozone is a basket case. America is emerging from recession only to face its own fiscal contraction. Who are we going to export to?" Criticising Osborne for failing to conjure any growth is a bit like having a go at an explorer for failing to find the Holy Grail.
Thirdly, the Chancellor's foes are guilty of a category error. They are assuming that our current economic woes are ones that George Osborne - or someone better at his job - could solve, now and without pain. I think they're wrong. Our problem belongs in the category of things not soluble in those terms, and possibly not soluble at all.
I think there's actually not much Osborne can do to make the economy grow, and the best he can hope for is to avoid doing something which we can be pretty sure would make things worse.
If you look at the range of advice and criticism the Chancellor is getting, from the Left (borrow more money) and the Right (cut welfare faster), from the Keynesians (borrow more money) and the Hayekites (improve the supply side), it's clear that Osborne's policy - hoping, like Mr Micawber, that something will turn up - is one among many potential alternatives. Given that no-one knows what is the right thing to do, he is as likely to be right as anyone else. Leave the guy alone.
The first is that growth is the only way of judging success or failure of economic policy. It's not. It would be good to have growth, but when we are dependent on the gilt markets just to survive from week to week it might be more important to persuade them that we are serious about getting on top of the deficit. Surely keeping our heads above water is the key?
It's possible to suggest, as Vicky Redwood from Capital Economics recently has, that you might lower the deficit more quickly in the medium term by borrowing more in the short term; but I've never heard her, or any of Osborne's less well-qualified critics, explain exactly how this mechanism works; and in fact Ed Balls seems rather to have given up the more-borrowing-equals-less-borrowing case.
You need to generate more in tax revenue and reduced welfare payments than you lose in the extra interest payments on borrowing right across the public and private sectors, and if it were easy to do, no government anywhere would ever have gone bust. All they'd need to do was borrow more.
The second assumption Osborne haters make is that out there growth is readily available. Actually I've never seen any suggestion, beyond the stimulus of the additional borrowing, where this growth is going to come from. In fact the evidence there is suggests that growth is going to be extremely hard to come by. Why? Because during the long years of boom (between 1993 and 2008) most of Britain's - extremely modest - growth came from the additional debt taken on by HMG, by house buyers and by consumers. All those sectors are now retrenching.
And yet on the left, the right and in the broadcast media commentators assume lazily that growth is there to be had. It doesn't seem to have occurred to them - or to the vast majority of the general public - that the main drivers of past growth might be exhausted. I want to get hold of them and give them a good shake. "Look at this week's manufacturing output", I imagine yelling at them. "The Eurozone is a basket case. America is emerging from recession only to face its own fiscal contraction. Who are we going to export to?" Criticising Osborne for failing to conjure any growth is a bit like having a go at an explorer for failing to find the Holy Grail.
Thirdly, the Chancellor's foes are guilty of a category error. They are assuming that our current economic woes are ones that George Osborne - or someone better at his job - could solve, now and without pain. I think they're wrong. Our problem belongs in the category of things not soluble in those terms, and possibly not soluble at all.
I think there's actually not much Osborne can do to make the economy grow, and the best he can hope for is to avoid doing something which we can be pretty sure would make things worse.
If you look at the range of advice and criticism the Chancellor is getting, from the Left (borrow more money) and the Right (cut welfare faster), from the Keynesians (borrow more money) and the Hayekites (improve the supply side), it's clear that Osborne's policy - hoping, like Mr Micawber, that something will turn up - is one among many potential alternatives. Given that no-one knows what is the right thing to do, he is as likely to be right as anyone else. Leave the guy alone.
Monday 11 March 2013
1st Past the Post, the Eurozone and UKIP
Just over two years ago, in February 2011, I wrote about AV, the Alternative Vote, suggesting it amounted to a Second Past the Post system. Pleasingly, the electorate roundly rejected it. Our system, for all its faults, tends to produce clear winners and to marginalise the smaller parties.
The consequences of retaining it are being illuminated by events in Europe, where PR is widespread. It's been apparent for a while that the damage done to southern Eurozone economies by the currency mismatch with the north is going to be played out in terms of domestic policies. Mario Draghi's OTR mechanism has put the lid of bond yields for the moment, but austerity is driving up unemployment and increasingly making it clear to the richer nations that there will be a price to be paid in terms of bailing out the south. On both sides of the divide this is having political ramifications which can only grow. Extremist parties, mostly on the far right, are flourishing in Greece, Italy has Beppe Grillo and now in Germany there is a new party, Alternative fur Deutschland (AfD), calling for a Eurozone split. These countries' electoral systems give fringe parties a real chance of power in a coalition government.
It couldn't happen here. UKIP may be on the rise in the polls, but the most they can do is derail the Tories. And actually this illustrates a way in which First Past the Post works rather well. Whether you like UKIP or not, their increasing popularity encourages elements in the Conservative party to demand an adjustment in policy rightwards. When Labour lost repeatedly in the 80s and 90s it made an adjustment rightwards to accommodate the public. So when it is said that FPTP leads to monolithic, OK duolithic, politics, that demands at least the observation that the two biggest parties don't remain the same. They are in fact consistently shifting like trees in a wind to catch the smallest gust in voter sentiment.
PR can of course work much more quickly than this. I don't like it much, or AV, but it may in the end bring down the Euro. A consummation, to borrow from Hamlet, devoutly to be wished.
The consequences of retaining it are being illuminated by events in Europe, where PR is widespread. It's been apparent for a while that the damage done to southern Eurozone economies by the currency mismatch with the north is going to be played out in terms of domestic policies. Mario Draghi's OTR mechanism has put the lid of bond yields for the moment, but austerity is driving up unemployment and increasingly making it clear to the richer nations that there will be a price to be paid in terms of bailing out the south. On both sides of the divide this is having political ramifications which can only grow. Extremist parties, mostly on the far right, are flourishing in Greece, Italy has Beppe Grillo and now in Germany there is a new party, Alternative fur Deutschland (AfD), calling for a Eurozone split. These countries' electoral systems give fringe parties a real chance of power in a coalition government.
It couldn't happen here. UKIP may be on the rise in the polls, but the most they can do is derail the Tories. And actually this illustrates a way in which First Past the Post works rather well. Whether you like UKIP or not, their increasing popularity encourages elements in the Conservative party to demand an adjustment in policy rightwards. When Labour lost repeatedly in the 80s and 90s it made an adjustment rightwards to accommodate the public. So when it is said that FPTP leads to monolithic, OK duolithic, politics, that demands at least the observation that the two biggest parties don't remain the same. They are in fact consistently shifting like trees in a wind to catch the smallest gust in voter sentiment.
PR can of course work much more quickly than this. I don't like it much, or AV, but it may in the end bring down the Euro. A consummation, to borrow from Hamlet, devoutly to be wished.
Wednesday 6 March 2013
Why I love . . . #5 Jose Mourinho
A strange thing for a Mancunian to be writing, I know, after The Special One's Real Madrid knocked United out of the Champions League last night. And that dodgy sending-off. But Jose is irresistible. To be fair, there's more grey in the hair and more pork in the chops than there was when he did that famous sprint down the touchline after his Porto team did the same thing to United all those years ago. But he still broods with that air of utter self-possession that those of us who resemble a gibbering peanut would kill for.
Mourinho's record as a manager speaks for itself, but, curiously, I'm not sure how much he actually knows about football. His real skill - and this is also true of Sir Alex Ferguson - might be in man-management. Manipulation in other words. It doesn't matter whether he is a good coach or tactician, because he is a genius at making players want to please him and do their best for him. Interviewed after the match last night he said, "The best team lost". Would he have said Madrid deserved to lose if United had won? I doubt it. Slagging off your team when they've won reminds me of another big-mouth genius - Brian Clough. Madrid will be trying even harder in the next round.
And what about Mourinho's way with words? This is what he had to say about Christiano Ronaldo, returning to Old Trafford for the first time since his departure. "Mentally it was not easy for Ronaldo. I played at Stamford Bridge after I left. Not easy. I played Porto. Not easy. One day I will go back to the San Siro. Not easy. One day I will go back to the Bernabeu. Not easy. So Cristiano, not easy. It is not easy".
Upstairs, I hope Harold Pinter's taking notes.
PS About the sending off - the referee can only have been invoking the "serious foul play" law. That's defined as when someone "tackles an opponent with excessive force or brutality when the ball is in play". But Nani was not tackling Arbeloa. Nani was trying to control the ball, and didn't realise Arbeloa was coming until the last moment.
FIFA have muddied the waters by saying "any player who lunges at an opponent in challenging for the ball from the front, from the side or from behind using one or both legs, with excessive force and endangering the safety of an opponent is guilty of serious foul play". Again, Nani didn't lunge at Arbeloa and didn't use excessive force. The force came from Arbeloa who was running. When Nani began his movement the Madrid player was nowhere near him. Arbeloa in fact runs on to Nani's foot from the side. Arbeloa then made the most of it.
The referee wrecked a great occasion with a bad decision. We was robbed.
Mourinho's record as a manager speaks for itself, but, curiously, I'm not sure how much he actually knows about football. His real skill - and this is also true of Sir Alex Ferguson - might be in man-management. Manipulation in other words. It doesn't matter whether he is a good coach or tactician, because he is a genius at making players want to please him and do their best for him. Interviewed after the match last night he said, "The best team lost". Would he have said Madrid deserved to lose if United had won? I doubt it. Slagging off your team when they've won reminds me of another big-mouth genius - Brian Clough. Madrid will be trying even harder in the next round.
And what about Mourinho's way with words? This is what he had to say about Christiano Ronaldo, returning to Old Trafford for the first time since his departure. "Mentally it was not easy for Ronaldo. I played at Stamford Bridge after I left. Not easy. I played Porto. Not easy. One day I will go back to the San Siro. Not easy. One day I will go back to the Bernabeu. Not easy. So Cristiano, not easy. It is not easy".
Upstairs, I hope Harold Pinter's taking notes.
PS About the sending off - the referee can only have been invoking the "serious foul play" law. That's defined as when someone "tackles an opponent with excessive force or brutality when the ball is in play". But Nani was not tackling Arbeloa. Nani was trying to control the ball, and didn't realise Arbeloa was coming until the last moment.
FIFA have muddied the waters by saying "any player who lunges at an opponent in challenging for the ball from the front, from the side or from behind using one or both legs, with excessive force and endangering the safety of an opponent is guilty of serious foul play". Again, Nani didn't lunge at Arbeloa and didn't use excessive force. The force came from Arbeloa who was running. When Nani began his movement the Madrid player was nowhere near him. Arbeloa in fact runs on to Nani's foot from the side. Arbeloa then made the most of it.
The referee wrecked a great occasion with a bad decision. We was robbed.
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