The Sunday Times May 1, 2022 11struggling to understand signing both
Donny van de Beek and Dele Alli amid
a relegation battle) but he’s an intelli-
gent man who has made Everton suit-
ably pragmatic of late. What they
showed in the Merseyside derby was
not pretty but represented the fight,
focus and unity they need. I think
they’ll just survive.
WHO IS YOUR PLAYER
OF THE SEASON?
GS: This will depend on how the final
few weeks go for City and Liverpool.
Kevin De Bruyne and Bernardo Silva
are obvious contenders for City and
Mohamed Salah for Liverpool, but it’s
easy to gravitate towards attacking
players and overlook the contribu-
tions of Virgil van Dijk in defence and
Alisson in goal. It may have changed
now but personal accolades were not
a big conversation in the Liverpool
dressing-room when I played. Our
education was all about winning the
major trophies. Personalities come
into it with the players’ award, with
people picking their mates at other
clubs.
JN: Salah is the Football Writers’
player of the year and got my vote.
The Premier League’s top scorer and
assister, he is simply English football’s
foremost match-winner and for Liver-
pool he provides leadership that gets
overlooked. Half of his 22 goals have
come in matches against Everton and
the “big six” and his solo goal against
Manchester City at Anfield was as
good as any you’ll see in a major game.
When Liverpool desperately needed
to make something happen against
Everton last Sunday, it was notable he
was the player to step up and do it,
creating Andrew Robertson’s crucial
goal. Honourable mentions to Ber-
nardo Silva and Declan Rice.
WHAT’S YOUR TAKE ON
CHELSEA’S RECENT MALAISE?
GS: The upheaval has been unique.
The owner has been sanctioned and
who knows how much turmoil that
has caused in the inner sanctum.
Antonio Rüdiger will be a loss. They
have given Thiago Silva another con-
Oldham the latest club
in North West to sink
in vast shadow of
City and United
Rod Liddle
There was a pitch invasion at
Boundary Park last week. A couple of
hundred Oldham Athletic supporters
disrupted the game against Salford
City by staging a sit-in, holding
banners saying stuff like “Get out of
our club”. That message was directed
at the club’s Moroccan owner,
Abdallah Lemsagam, who has guided
Oldham with great skill and dexterity
in the four years he has been in
charge, all the way from the middle
of League One to the National League
for the first time in their history.
They were relegated that day,
having been beaten 2-1 at home by
their (comparatively) noisy
neighbours. The last 11 minutes of the
game, after the pitch invasion, were
played out in front of empty terraces,
which must have been a cheering
occasion for the players and the long-
suffering manager, John Sheridan.
And so Oldham became the first
former Premier League club to find
themselves out of the League
altogether — and they were a founder
member of the former.
You may remember that skilful
Oldham side of 1991 — the fairly lethal
Andy Ritchie upfront, with more than
a century of goals in over 250
appearances, plus the likes of Neil
Redfearn and Graeme Sharp. They
lasted two more seasons in the top
flight, which was some achievement
even back then, when the various
playing fields were a little more level
than now. But today there’s a chill
wind blowing across Boundary Park.
Oldham’s fall from grace has not
quite been precipitous, although it
has indeed hurried along a bit in the
past few years. Who, or what, is to
blame? Founded 127 years ago,
Oldham were not even habituated to
League Two, spending most of their
lives in the middle-two tiers.
Something has gone badly wrong?
The fans blame the owner,
Lemsagam. It is true that he has
followed the tried and trusted route
to catastrophe by employing ten
managers in four years: not quite a
record, but not terribly far off. He has
also been a little slow to invest:
Sheridan blames a lack of depth in
the squad and not being able to bring
players in when he rejoined for a
fourth spell as manager in January.
For his part, Lemsagam claims to
have invested £5 million and he is
now avidly seeking a buyer. But who
would buy the club, and why?
Oldham is situated in GreaterManchester and there are five or six
other clubs within seven or eight
miles of Boundary Park and another
nine or ten within 15 miles.
A Football League report some
dozen or so years ago predicted that a
number of clubs in this region of the
North West would go bust simply
because there were too many serving
too few people. And so it has
transpired, with poor Bury and
Macclesfield Town biting the dust
and others, such as Stockport
County, Bolton Wanderers, Chester,
Wigan Athletic and Blackpool, going
into receivership or administration.
Others, such as Oldham, have
clung on, but with much reduced
success. Look at the demography of
the town and the way in which it has
changed since they were in the top
division. The white working-class
population, from which the fan base
was largely drawn, has reduced quite
dramatically and especially in the age
group 25-35. Into the borough have
come people from Pakistani and
Bangladeshi cultures, for whom
football has generally not been a
favoured pastime.
And so over the past 30 years, at a
time when attendances have risen
sharply, Oldham’s has declined, and‘If you did live there
but had no great
feeling of investment
in the town, wouldn’t
you go to the Etihad?’now hovers around the 4,000 mark,
which puts them in the lower half of
the fourth tier.
There is something ineluctable
about the decline. If you weren’t
actually from Oldham, why would
you support them? And if you did live
in Oldham but had no great feeling of
cultural investment in the town,
wouldn’t you go to the Etihad
instead?
Oldham were relegated with
Scunthorpe United — a club who
were in the Championship 12 years
ago. Their chairman, Peter Swann,
copped some blame and resigned.
But they too have not benefited from
demographic shifts — and their fan
base was a lot lower than Oldham’s to
begin with. They will join similar
post-industrial northern towns in a
new refuge, the National League.lIn the period since more than one club from
each of the leading European leagues qualified
for the Champions League, there have been
eight finals between sides from the same
countries — three involving English teams:1999-2000 Real Madrid v Valencia
2002-2003 AC Milan v Juventus
2007-2008 Man Utd v Chelsea
2012-2013 Bayern Munich v Borussia Dortmund
2013-2014 Real Madrid v Atlético Madrid
2015-2016 Real Madrid v Atlético Madrid
2018-2019 Liverpool v Tottenham Hotspur
2020-2021 Chelsea v Man CitylOnly four times in the past decade has the
footballer named PFA Player of the Year won
the Premier League title in the same season:2011-2012 Robin van Persie, Arsenal
2012-2013 Gareth Bale, Tottenham Hotspur
2013-2014 Luis Suárez, Liverpool
2014-2015 Eden Hazard, Chelsea
2015-2016 Riyad Mahrez, Leicester City
2016-2017 N’Golo Kanté, Chelsea
2017-2018: Mohamed Salah, Liverpool
2018-2019: Virgil van Dijk, Liverpool
2019-2020: Kevin De Bruyne, Man City
2020-2021 Kevin De Bruyne, Man CityRULING THE ROOST
tract, but when someone gets to that
age (38 in September), they can look
great in pre-season then be done by
Christmas, or it can be a slower
decrease in quality. That’s an area
they will have to focus on this summer
plus an athletic midfielder. I don’t
think anyone will buy Romelu Lukaku
for anything like the money Chelsea
paid for him or pay him the wages that
Chelsea do, so if they sell him it will
have to be at a discounted fee and/or
paying some of his wages.
JN: The worry is that it’s not just
“form” but the start of a protracted
slide. Key players like Rüdiger are
leaving, others are fading with age
and Lukaku’s return has been a disas-
ter. On top of this, Thomas Tuchel
seems ground down by the schedule,
injury list and off-field issues. Life
comes at you fast in football, and 11
months on from Champions League
glory it feels like a rebuild is needed.‘Everton are
making
Manchester
United look like
the world’s best-
run business’
While Conte, below,
and Manchester City,
above right, are
contesting matters at
the top end, Lampard,
right, is in a relegation
battle with EvertonON TV TODAY
Everton v Chelsea
2pm, Sky Sports Main EventOldham fans
protest on the
Boundary Park
pitch during
the crucial
defeat by
Salford eight
days ago