Audacious. Arrogant. More than a little absurd. Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich’s statement last Friday responding (finally) to his arrest looked like Richard Nixon on speed, which is sort of what it was. Here is a man ruined, seemingly, by his own corrupt enterprises — chiefly the attempt to sell Obama’s vacant Senate seat (he has the prerogative to pick a replacement) — who barely has a leg to stand on politically or legally. But he comes out fighting. With Rudyard Kipling quotes.

It was good. He spoke with power, with great confidence. It had such clarity. You watch and think, “I’d like this guy to be innocent. It’d be more fun.” And then you remember his past and his record and the strength of the case against him and that feeling fades. The consensus is he’s guilty and it’s not ambiguous. Caught on tape apparently trying to sell Obama’s “fucking valuable” Senate seat, his clinging on to power seems brazen at best and worrying at worst. And then, right after his statement, he pardoned twenty-two people. And you think, “what is this guy on?”

I have a feeling that this mess will be forgotten — at least outside of Illinois — as soon as the court case is resolved. The reason it’s so important is the Obama connection. And, quite simply, the handling of the fall-out by the Obama team has been their biggest mistake of the transition thus far.

When you’re faced with tough questions about a scandal like this one, the best policy is to respond with absolute clarity. Clarity of message, clarity of approach. As soon as this thing heated up, as soon as the inevitable question of transition team involvement was raised, they should have told the truth, unambiguously, in detail. It’s what you do if you are innocent. If you’re guilty, you obfuscate.

Obama obfuscated: “I had no contact with the governor or his office and so we were not, I was not aware of what was happening.” Note the use of we, and then deciding instead to go with I. He was trying to give the impression of complete distance from Blagojevich, without lying. He was ‘economical with the truth’. The truth: Rahm Emanuel, his Chief of Staff, had spoken to the Governor and had been wiretapped doing so. He seems to have done nothing illegal; today a report says he was completely innocent of any criminal activity.

Which begs the question, why obfuscate? When Emanuel’s conversation with Blagojevich was first reported, all hell broke loose. And when more questions came, Obama was vague, his spokespeople quiet or saying very little. People thought, “what are they hiding?”

It was a bad strategy, bad media management. They were innocent but they’ve made themselves look implicated. They look like they’ve tried a cover-up — a cover-up of perfectly legal and legitimate activity, but a cover-up nonetheless. And it might have hurt them.

Some mistakes politicians make impact upon the microtrend — the short term state of public opinion. Others impact upon the macrotrend — the less fickle, more solid and enduring opinions people hold. The macrotrend tends to be more important: it’s about our overall impression of something or someone, not individual little happenings that vanish from our consciousness soon after. Naturally, our overall impression is partly a product of an accumulation of microtrends: if a politician keeps saying daft things, we eventually get the impression he or she is a bit daft. The macrotrend is all about ‘bigger’ stuff, like trust, integrity, personality, character, values.

Here’s my point. In the wake of this mess, the perception about the Obama team is not “they’re innocent”, nor “they’re guilty”, but rather “they tried to mislead us”. And that impacts upon trust.

Real Madrid have already tied up two big buys for January 1 : Klaas-Jan Huntelaar and Lassana Diarra – each costing roughly £20million.

While Real’s title challenge appears over (twelve points behind Barcelona already), they do at least have the Champions League to pursue.  As such, they were hoping Diarra and Huntelaar could play major roles in the European campaign.

Not so. UEFA regulations allow for only one player who has played in UEFA competitions already to have their registrations switched.  Given both Klaas and Lass played UEFA Cup earlier this season, Real now have to choose between the two of them!

How can Sporting Director Pedja Mijatovic have got this so wrong? Well, he is the man who thought that Royston Drenthe and now, apparently, Jermaine Pennant were good enough for a team with nine European Cups.

Ricky Sbragia’s done ok so far – although wins against West Brom and Hull, with the squad Sunderland have aren’t huge achievements – but he is a surprise pick for the full time job.

Given the recent record of Assisstants given the top job, would Big Niall have been smarter looking to the lower leagues?

Here are the most recent internal promotions to the manager’s job, as far as I can remember.

Sammy Lee – 14 games, 3 wins at Bolton.

Chris Hutchings – 12 games, 1 win at Wigan.

Les Reed – 7 games, 1 win at Charlton.

Tony Adams (not sacked yet) – 14 games, 4 wins at Pompey.

It’s no wonder the Glazers let Quieroz take the Portugal job.

There was the the 3-0 win at Sunderland in August.

Then we beat Portsmouth 6-0 in September.  That was special.

In October we smashed Stoke City 3-0 at home.

November saw a great 3-0 win against Arsenal.

And we had to endure three losses and two draws this month, before today’s 5-1 mauling of Hull.

I just can’t wait for January’s.

After a disappointing fifth placed finish in the RPL, there could be an exodus from Zenit St Petersburg this January.  Leading the way will surely be their talisman Andrei Arshavin.  His agent, Denis Lachter said this week that the player and club have reached an understanding that it is team for him to move on – with Arsenal and Spurs said to be circling.

But isn’t the most obvious move to another London club? Arshavin has made clear his desire to play only for Champions League clubs, thus ruling out Spurs or big spending Manchester City.  If Arsenal are to spend £20million next month, it would surely be on a world class midfielder – Barry, Alonso or Senna rather than another mercurial forward.  But who needs unpredictable genius more than Chelsea? Scolari’s Plan A has been completely found out in recent months.  They are in need of something different up front, having failed to get Robinho to fulfil this role.  And how hard would it be to convince Abramovich to shell out for the chance of seeing one of his compatriots starring at Stamford Bridge?

All I want for Christmas is…

To see Tim Cahill score a goal, approach the corner flag, unload his pathetic three-jab combo and watch the recipient hit him back twice as hard in the eye. And as he hits the ground and writhes in agony, he sees the linesman flagging for offside anyway.

Merry Christmas, everyone.

Anatoliy Tymoshchuk, holding midfielder, 28, Zenit St Petersburg and Ukraine

The man whose defensive solidity gave Andriy Arshavin the freedom to make magic in the final third, Zenit’s captain could leave now the 2008 Russian Premier Leauge season is over.  The Ukraine vice-captain (who has won 78 caps) was a stalwart for Shakhtar Donetsk for years before taking Gazprom’s rubles in 2007.  He won the Russian Premier League and UEFA Cup last season, but Zenit finished a disappointing sixth in the RPL this year.  With coach Dick Advocaat and star man Arshavin set to leave this winter, could captain Tymoshchuk follow them out of the door? Zenit have already signed an effective replacement, Russian regular Igor Semshov from Dinamo Moscow.  There are not many holding midfielders of his quality and experience on the market – look at the price Real Madrid had to pay for Lassana Diarra.

Matthew Upson, central defender, 29, West Ham United and England

With West Ham in a dire financial situation, all of their players are open to offers.  But England international Upson could represent their most saleable asset.  Started off at Arsenal but struggled with injuries and loan moves for years before settling at Birmingham City.  West Ham paid £6m for him in the January 2007 window, where he has looked (when fit) like a dominant and dependable old fashioned centre half.  Available for cheap (West Ham surely couldn’t turn down £7m) and not cup tied in Europe, has been mentioned as an option for Man City or Arsenal already.

Lukas Podolski, forward, 23, Bayern Munich and Germany

With Miroslav Klose and Luca Toni keeping him out of the Bayern team, ‘Poldi’ is prepared to leave for some first team football.  Stocky, quick, and with a low centre of gravity he plays like a low-key Wayne Rooney, either behind a front man or from the left wing.  Already has 60 caps and 31 goals for the German national team, having decided to represent them rather than his native Poland.  This should make him an attractive prospect but Bayern are yet to receive a bid matching the €10million they paid FC Koln for him in 2006.  Bayern Chairman Karl-Heinz Rummenigge admits he’ll leave in the summer, but a strong bid could land him this year.  Has been linked with Spurs, Everton and Dortmund.

Elano, attacking midfielder, 27, Manchester City and Brazil

A severe personality clash with Mark Hughes will see Elano sold in January.  Bought by Sven-Goran Eriksson for £8m from Shakhtar Donetsk in 2007, he immediately settled into the Premier League playing in the hole.  He lost form and fitness in the new year, but finished as City’s top scorer in 2007/08.  Has not enjoyed Mark Hughes’ intense fitness training or club discipline, and has had to play central midfield in a 4-3-3.  Hughes accuses him of undermining his leadership and stirring up the Brazilian players against him – and dropped him from the 18 for the trip to West Brom.  Lazio and Espanyol are interested in a loan move.

Jimmy Bullard, midfielder, 29, Fulham and England

The all-action midfielder’s wage demands since his England call up – after a rise to £50,000 from £25,000 per week, apparently – have not been met by the Fulham board.  Despite his high profile Fulham’s success this season as been more to do with Danny Murphy alongside him and the Brede Hangeland-Aaron Hughes defensive partnership.  Roy Hodgson said that the club would listen to offers, which will surely be forthcoming.  A hard working midfielder whose Premier League experience and deadly free-kicks make him a very attractive prospect, Bullard will surely attract Spurs at the least.  Not cup tied for European competition, should Man City, Aston Villa or even Arsenal be looking for another body in midfield.   

I spend a lot of time thinking through what’s gone so wrong this season. How can last years squad + Robinho = relegation fodder? It doesn’t add up. Clearly, something deeper is wrong. We’re suffering from a severe lack of confidence. I don’t mean confidence as a function of results, either. There can only be something wrong within the club which is impacting confidence, which in turn damages results. So what is it? Why has the confidence been drained from the squad?

I think the root cause lies in Hughes’ misunderstanding of our last season. He has cast himself, very publicly and consciously, as the anti-Eriksson. The complaints that the players were insufficiently fit, the taking of them all on that German fitness camp, saying that Sven had brought the wrong sort of players for the Premier League, the establishment of the ‘football factory’ – the expulsion of agents and girlfriends from Carrington – it was all part of one project: to define himself as an order-destroying manager.

Everything he said and did put out this message that the Eriksson regime stood for comfort, for laziness, whereas he and Bowen would introduce an era of discipline and rigour and physical fitness. I think that this overhaul of approach and methods at the club is the best explanation of the general decline in confidence: most noticeable in Dunne and Richards, but also to varying degrees in Elano, Hart, Gelson and Hamann. Not only is it a radical and disconcerting change in routine, it also quite insulting. For Dunne and Elano to be told that the Eriksson season, in which they played such big roles, was a failure and a bad example cannot be good for their confidence. The fact that the two players most improved under the Hughes regime, Ireland and Garrido, did not look fully at home under Eriksson further supports this point.

Based on this reading of last season, Hughes has torn down much of the Eriksson system, and tried to rebuild it in his own image. Such transitions are always painful in the immediate term. If our bad performances looked like a simple by product of these changes, with an improved team around the corner, I could accept them. But that’s not how it looks at all. Today was an improvement on the last few games, but we still lost to West Brom. And it took a big change in approach – no Brazilians, no 4-3-3, just getting the ball quickly to Vassell and Benjani. It seems quite clear that the Hughes approach is nowhere near to reforming City into a quick, physical, fit unit, but has merely drained the squad’s confidence.

The real shame of this is that the Hughes interpretation of 2007/08 is wrong. Yes, it wasn’t a great season. It ended with the sort of shapeless, spineless, goalless shit that we’ve been enjoying this November and December. But before then we played some good football, and as the media love to remind us, we were fourth at this stage in the season. 9th place and 55 points is at least respectable. To get to 55 this year we’d need 37 from the last 20 games: an average of 1.85 points/game, which would translate to a 70 point season – somewhere between fourth and fifth place last year. On current form we’re right on 1 point/game, which is enough to stay up most years but a total embarrassment for a 55 point squad + Robinho.

So where does this leave Hughes? I fear that after five months of fitness training, strict discipline and so forth we are too far down the Hughes road to simply bring back the Eriksson way. While SGE himself may be unwilling to return (although I’m not sure he’s loving it that much in Mexico), there are other similar characters we could look to: if we want a relaxed, continental, multilingual manager of superstars we could surely tempt Frank Rijkaard: a coach who got lazy Brazilians to do special things. But that being the case, would we be wisest to stick with Hughes? While Hughes surely deserves the censure and humiliation of sacking, I still believe that his age, track record and transfer nous make him the best man for the job in the long term. Unless we can find someone to carry on down the Hughes path, without being the man himself – Martin O’Neill surely has too much honour to abandon Villa for our money – we may just be safest in sticking with Hughes.