Quelle surprise

I'm sure a good psycho-analysis expert can explain that common theme in people's dreams, when they're running to escape something and but can't seem able to get ahead of it. As a child I used to have a dream in which I was being chased down by an object which resembled a giant kneecap, much like that enormous round boulder that tumbled after Indiana Jones (or, in the form of Homer Simpson, down the stairs after Bart).

The only reason I bring this up is that I currently have the same sense of weak-legged uselessness by the current state of the world, especially the encroaching political and social divisions in my home country and in the US, where the needs of certain individuals to satisfy their ambitions are running roughshod over decency and respect.

But in a somewhat lesser ranking, global importance-wise, I also feel frustrated by yet another woeful England performance at an international football tournament. The ignominy of England going out of Euro 2016 to Iceland compounds a four-day period in which the UK chose to leave the EU, it's prime minister resigned (and in the process triggered a contest amongst people like the gormless Jeremy Hunt who have precious little to offer the post other than "that job looks a lark, I might give it a go”), and Her Majesty's Opposition began collapsing faster than a house of cards in a tornado thanks to a well-meaning and well-principled but lukewarm leader. But enough of all that. The less pressing, but more acutely annoying boil du jour in need of lancing is that of England (the football team, not the increasingly isolated corner of the former Great Britain).

No one went into Euro 2016 with much expectation about England's prospects, but there was at least a modicum of excitement about the attacking options at Roy Hodgson's disposal - the it-shouldn't-work-but-it-does goal prowess of Jamie Vardy, Harry Kane's prolific season with Tottenham, Daniel Sturridge's return to hunger, the mercurial Raheem Stirling and even the untried but exciting prospect of Marcus Rashford. But there were also the same-old, same-old problems of midfield cohesiveness and the even bigger lack of real strength in defence.

We can analyse these points to death, of course, but the frustration we're all left with is that surely there was enough in the 23-man Hodgson took to squad to France that would have had some fighting chance of progress? But, no. A promising first half against Russia on the opening weekend was undermined by a dozy second half (and not helped by the savage hooliganism in and around Nice's Stade Vélodrome). A spirited win over Wales reminded us that luck can work for you at these competitions, but then it was back to usual against Slovakia with a forgettable 0-0 draw. And thus England just about progressed into the knockout stage, with little to be really proud of but, progress is progress, and bring on Iceland and a slew of corny jokes about Kerry Katona and Bejam supermarkets.

When I first took up blogging six years ago, almost to the day, it was to vent a considerable amount of froth at England's ejection from the World Cup in South Africa. Apart from a very valid complaint about a disallowed Frank Lampard goal against - guess who? - Germany, much of my fizzing was about the ever-present hubris that has followed England into these tournaments, pretty much ever since the penultimate day of July 1966. It's that sense of entitlement - because England invented association football, because it created the first national team, because it hosts the world's most lucrative domestic league, because it used to be the seat of an empire, and because England won the World Cup once in the competition's 86-year history. No wonder our soon-to-be former EU partners can't wait to see the back of us...

This time around the expectation may have been worse: a squad comprised of players like Kane and Vardy, who'd enjoyed remarkable domestic seasons, on top of a ten-out-of-ten record in England's somewhat soft qualifying group for Euro 2016 gave false hope. And with this Roy Hodgson, a decent enough journeyman of a manager, masked his inadequacies in being able to make the right decisions at this level.

Hodgson did the decent thing by resigning on the spot after last night's defeat to Iceland. The FA even dragged him back to face the press today, though it's hard to tell what they intended to achieve. "I don't really know what I'm doing here," he told reporters in his first answer, "but I was told it's important for me to appear as everyone is still smarting". On reflection, we didn't know what he was doing in France either. Certainly not adhering to the sporting adage about playing to your strengths, which he didn't with dozy substitutions and starting line-ups that undermined the entire 90 minutes' performance.

As for the "everyone still smarting", that will probably include Danny Baker, who launched into a Krakatoan tirade on Twitter during the Iceland game and was still going when I went to bed. Already flaming the dreary statements-of-the-obvious of ITV commentator Glenn Hoddle (sample: "Oh we are getting Glenn Hoddle's reaction now. Next up the reaction of a paving stone in Blackpool."), Baker went into a fury of tweets - almost all unrepeatable - about the state of England, its manager and the motiviation of its players, including "I simply do not buy that footballers feel bad after game like that when they will be back on £200k in a few weeks. Its impossible."

While it is right for Hodgson to take responsibility - and some blame - for England's performance, the players will need to take a long hard look at theselves. Baker, again: "Absolutely disgraceful, #England. You useless over paid, over indulged mollycoddled shits. You are beyond shame. Disgrace to working people" and even ex-England forward Chris Waddle on BBC Radio 5 Live: "We haven't got leaders. They're all pampered, they're all [listening to] headphones and you can't get anything out of them."

And there lies the real rub. An England squad populated by some of the highest paid young men on the planet, with a manager earning a salary of £3.5 million a year, who went about Iceland with a patent lack of respect that came back to bite them on the arse. It was plain for all to see. I've seen it at Chelsea, when lower-tier cup opposition comes along, and the arriviste millionaires in blue play with such palpable disdain you almost end up willing them to lose, not that, on last season's evidence, that would deliver the slap to the chops that was warranted.

Iceland may have been a team drawn from a national population of just 330,000, but they played with determination, discipline and a complete absence of fear when hitting England on the break. And look what happened when they did. But why should they have fear at all? Only in England do we have this view that our footballers are rarified beings, that somehow these young men have ascended the rest of us, simply because they are in their early 20s and driving cars that you or I wouldn't ever be able to afford in a lifetime. That's not a statement of material envy, but a reflection on how England's so-called elite managed to look worse than average against a team managed by a part-time dentist, who took the game to England and were rewarded for it.

So, the inevitable: what next? I've been here before. You've been here before. We've all been here before. We've tried different managers, different nationalities of managers, different coaching combinations, different 'grass roots' initiatives, you name it, England and the English FA have tried it to no avail. This lack of a plan is also informing the suggestions coming forth for Hodgson's replacement. It's a list that includes both the obvious and the just-thought-of random: Gareth Southgate (because he coached the Under 21s so...er...it's his turn); Alan Pardew (because it's his turn to); Steve Bruce (because he may be available); Arsène Wenger (because some people don't really take these things seriously).

Whoever gets the job - and I think I'm even on the list, given the number of possibilities so far explored - the one quality I implore them to apply to their charges is a little humility. England needs a manager prepared to tell the players "Look lads, face facts. They're just as good as you. They may not walk into games clutching their Louis Vuitton washbags like you, with an army of flunkies carrying their luggage for them, as yours do, but they'll match you out there, player for player. What's going to be your reaction to that?". Because up until now, I've not seen much evidence of any of that.

The North London derby - time for Arsenal to grow a pair

Football derbies rarely stand up to the hype and expectation, but then rivalries in football rarely actually deliver the goods when the teams involved actually meet. Tomorrow's encounter between Tottenham and Arsenal at White Hart Lane does, at least, come at a truly fascinating time for the Premier League, with Leicester City finding themselves unexpectedly in the "it's theirs to lose" position, with Spurs - who were hardly regarded as stalking horses back in August - holding something of the psychological upper ground over their near-neighbours Arsenal.

If, though, one expectation has come good, it's the manner with which Arsenal have frustrated yet again with their own shortcomings. In August we were - as is tradition - entertained with predictions that this would "definitely" be their season, and that Arsène Wenger's signing of Petr Čech was a masterstroke (though now he's out for the next three or four weeks with a calf injury, perhaps less so). And, yes, the fact that they're still in-principle challenging for the title pays certain lip service to that general belief.

But then, to anyone with even basic perception, the facts remain as plain as the noses on our faces, that Arsenal are doing just what they always do - dozing off in January and then scraping into the Champions League.

Perhaps that's what Wenger wants? Perhaps he holds so much power around the Emirates Stadium (and there is plenty of anecdotal evidence to suggest that he does) that the Arsenal hierarchy have no greater ambition than ensuring the turnstiles keep turning and that perpetual European qualification each season can be measured in terms of revenues, profits and a business model, rather than exciting the fans.

Because it can't be fun to start a season with so much self belief that predictably and, apparently, relentlessly, it comes unstuck once the Christmas decorations have been taken down. Arsenal fans surely can't be satisfied with the relative mediocrity of European qualification each season without anything really meaningful to show for it. And, clearly, they're not.

"I have never heard the Arsenal supporters as angry as they were at the Emirates on Wednesday night when their team lost at home to Swansea," Thierry Henry has written in The Sun. "They were less patient than I have ever known, booed one of the manager’s substitutions and groaned every time a pass went astray or a tackle was lost. The stick that Arsene Wenger has been getting is not personal. People judge what they are seeing, although some maybe go too far in the way they express their unhappiness."

Wenger has hit back with a statement that reflects both his perceived lack of passion and his legendary myopia: "Thierry Henry has his opinions. He has not found the measurement of the fans' angriness, of 60,000 people, straight away - because he sits in the best seats of the stadium."

I'm not going to trot out the old 'boring Arsenal' trope because they are, or should be, better than that. But you can't help pointing the finger at Wenger's demeanour as the reason for Arsenal's 'just so' record in recent seasons.

I'm sure any of the Premier League's perennial strugglers would love to have Arsenal's problems, but even I find myself exasperated at Wenger's apparent inability to deliver on the potential. He talks a lot about his team's mental strength, but when it comes to actually applying it, they fail. Look back over the 2007-8, 2010-11 and 2013-14 seasons, when Arsenal had the league's whip hand in the first few weeks of the new year. This season, as in those, history has repeated itself.

Even their remarkable 2-1, dying-seconds victory over Leicester on Valentine's Day should have been the spur to climb to the very top and make camp. And, yet, they haven't won since and are now six points adrift of Claudio Ranieri's league leaders, and three points behind the North London rivals they meet tomorrow.

Football purists are drawn to Wenger because of his footballing intellect and the fact that he has clearly produced teams of elegance and impact. But that reputation is fading before our eyes and if we were to be honest, league positions and European competition oddly mask this fact. The gap between greatness and failure isn't much. Look how Chelsea went from all-conquering champions to relegation-threatened disappointments in the space of just three playing months, only to be picked up again as the Premier League's form side under Guus Hiddink.

This actually prompts comparison between Wenger and his bête noire, José Mourinho: because Chelsea's stunning demise from August to December was clearly the result of the wrong pyschology, attributable to Mourinho's own negativity. Wenger might have the same problem, albeit with a more attritional effect. Yesterday, Arsenal's Alexis Sánchez told US satellite broadcaster DirecTV: "With the players we have, I believe we can win the Premier League. However, sometimes we lack the hunger, the mentality that we are winning 1-0 when we go out on to the pitch. Sometimes we lack this hunger to believe that we can be champion." Isn't this exactly the malaise that befell Costa, Hazard, Fábregas and Co.?

Contrast that with Tottenham: 66/1 outsiders to win the Premier League title when the season began (Leicester, by the way, were 5000/1...) they were expected by several pundits to end the season no higher than 6th. That could still happen, of course, but Mauricio Pochettino has confounded the experts with his young side, one that still shows deficiencies, especially up front, but which has applied greater resillience and without all that much hyperbole, either. Moreover, he has brilliantly exploited the travails of Manchesters United and City, Liverpool, Chelsea and Arsenal - all of whom were predicted, in August, to complete the top five.

Compared with Wenger, there is an air of absolute reality about Pochettino. He is neither daunted by the challenge of tomorrow's derby, nor stoked up on hubris to take it for granted. "It’s not a decisive game," he says, "but it is important for us and for them." He knows that the points distribution between the top five can still change as the run-in looms, but his reaction to Wednesday's defeat to West Ham - a game that could have taken them top - contrasts with the blustering from Wenger.

As a Chelsea fan, I'm clearly conflicted as to whom, out of Spurs and Arsenal, I'd like to see win more. Which is why, like almost every football fan in England and, I believe elsewhere, I hope Leicester City go on and pull off the unprecedented. Nobody deserves the league title more out of any of the teams in sight of the prize, even if in the north-eastern part of London there remains a residual sense of entitlement.

As those of us in south-west London have had to concede, bloodlessly it has to be said, success is not only earned, but the effort requires the right mindset. If Arsenal still want to go for it - and there's nothing saying they can't - their manager needs to end the torturous pondering and instill in his team a sense of achievable achievement. And, to put it crudely, a pair of bollocks.

The Pep in the Premier League's step that it needed

I am experiencing both dread and delight by this week's not-exactly unexpected news that Pep Guardiola will become Manchester City's new manager.

The dread comes from the fact that a patent talent - a Jamie Vardy or a John Stones - on the shopping lists of the big clubs, is more likely to want to play for the celebrated Catalan than opt for the managerial uncertainty and dysfunction at either Manchester United or Chelsea. Or the truly odd world that is Arsenal, who, once again, have started a season with all of the usual "This is our year!" and "We're better placed now than ever to win the league!" before it all starts to fade away in January. All of which means sloppy seconds elsewhere. OK, those are the breaks.

The delight, however, is the prospect of arguably the world's greatest club coach, currently, applying himself in the Premier League and bringing to it a pedigree that has netted, by the age of 44, 14 trophies in four years at Barcelona, including three Spanish league titles and the Champions League twice, and two Bundesliga championships with Bayern Munich in the course of his two full seasons at the club. That's beyond Mourinho form, and without the antics. Or the third season syndrome.

The Premier League will be, though, a very different beast to La Liga and its German counterpart. I don't say that out of arrogance, but just as players have been lured to England by the money and prestige of the league, they've also struggled or at least initially laboured to adapt to its speed and physicality.

Guardiola may be a master of innovation and guile, but he should not expect to have it all his own way, any more so than City, with Sheikh Mansoor's money, have done under Roberto Mancini and Manuel Pellegrini. But given the scale of Guardiola's proven ability, and the transfer budget that will be at his disposal, it's entirely possible that the once less-fashionable Manchester club could become the greatest in Premier League history, eclipsing their city rival in wealth and superlative, though not necessarily, one suspects, in heritage and status. But, then, that's the problem for United, as it has been for Liverpool. You were great, but what now?

Alright, this may be a little over the top. City have been there before, with preposterous, Galactico-sized spending that has still only netted the two Premier League titles since the Abu Dhabi United Group took over the club eight years ago. And it still hasn't won anything in Europe since the 1970 Cup Winners Cup.

We shouldn't, either, fall victim to creating a deity out of Guardiola. There's no doubt that he has set the bar high for exciting football and for applying an intelligent, cultured approach to football management. But even with the money, the existing squad and the potential for reinforcements, we should be cautious about installing Guardiola as a nailed-on cert.

That said, I have liked what Manchester City have done over recent seasons. It's hard for me to take a queasy stance over their monied resurgence, given that my own club has, too, benefited from the questionable largesse of an oligarch. But their arrival as a fourth big player, not to mention the somewhat satisfying sight of Manchester United's hubris being brought down a peg or two, has made the league infinitely more interesting.

There's little doubting that Guardiola will elevate City to another level, but credit should be given to Manuel Pellegrini, who is, in essence, a good manager, blessedly lacking in the histrionics of certain others, and who has acted with supreme dignity while the club has openly courted the younger Spaniard.

Though two different characters, there have been strong parallels between the Chilean and Claudio Ranieri's "dead man walking" period at Chelsea. Ironic, then, that both Pellegrini and Ranieri have been mentioned as candidates for the vacant job at Stamford Bridge.

Which is what makes Pellegrini a very interesting and unexpected candidate for Chelsea, or even the surely-soon-to-open vacancy at Old Trafford. In theory he could walk into the job at United (as would any manager given the opportunity - viz D. Moyes). But while Chelsea have been considering the likes of Antonio Conte and Diego Simeone - unproven, both, in the Premier League, and with no guarantee that they'd fit - as well as Mark Hughes and Ranieri, Pellegrini would bring Chelsea the experience of managing a big club with big expectations of quick success.

Pellegrini also possesses the sort of personality that Abramovich would like. He is without doubt a top manager, but unlike his former rival José Mourinho and all the manias that came with him, Pellegrini has demonstrated a knack for just getting on with things. Not for nothing has City been challenging for the title or fending off challengers under this refreshing character.

And what of now? Dignity personified, as he continues to compete for four titles whilst knowing for certain that his time in charge at the Etihad is drawing to a close. In spite of City's capricious managerial policy, Pellegrini came to Manchester with a very decent managerial record, from South America and then in Spain (look at his Villareal stats and then against Guardiola's Barcelona when in charge of Real Madrid). Even if this season, in which all the so-called big clubs have shown intermittent desire to win the Premier League, Pellegrini's ethos has been one that would also fit Chelsea's ambition for style of play and a style of success (on Premier League history alone, his win rate is third, behind Mourinho and Alex Ferguson).

At 62, and not, for example, the insane 34 years André Villas-Boas was when appointed to effectively restructure the Chelsea dressing room, Pellegrini would be the safe pair of hands that the club will need to pick up in the wake of John Terry's departure and following the restorative effect of Guus Hiddink, who will be 70 in November and unlikely to want to remain in club management for the long term. Moreover, Pellegrini would be charged with rebuilding Chelsea, possibly without European football next season, which is unlikely to bother his apparent lack of ego.

Yes, it may well take a fallow year for Chelsea to re-emerge with youth on its side, with the wealth of it in the current squad and, ridiculously, out on loan, exceptional quality like Dominic Solanke, Ruben Loftus-Cheek and the Brazilian Kenedy, all of which could build something very special indeed for the '17-18 season.

But back to Guardiola, sort of. With just under four full months of the season to go, Manchester City under Pellegrini still have plenty to deliver. Chelsea, under Hiddink, still have damage to repair and confidence to restore, with an exiting captain to maintain too. Manchester United need to do something to retore their status as the biggest club in the world and not a running joke. Arsenal need to give themselves a kick up the...er...Arsène and deliver on the false dawns they so unfuratingly - even for a Chelsea fan! - keep serving up. Liverpool need to calm down and settle under the delightfully eccentric Jurgen Klopp. And Leicester City? They just need to win the damn thing and put a smile on all of our faces.

Because next season will be a very different animal, with a Premier League "starring" a manager who has been coveted by more clubs than anyone in the history of the sport, who will be paid more than any manager in the history of the sport, and who will have more expectation placed on him than anyone in the history of the sport. And that means I can't wait for August.