Beefy Bites 26th August 2024
Your Monday munchables from a weekend in the world of football
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Read on for the National League North, Manchester United being crap, Sunderland not being crap, Dundee doing bits and a long ban north of the border.
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The same but different
With two consecutive Saturdays off for Coventry Sphinx, I spent some time in the National League North. First, I watched Leamington win 3-1 at home against Spennymoor Town. Then, this weekend, I went to St James Park to see Brackley Town beating Curzon Ashton 4-0. It wasn’t a 4-0 game and that just made it all the more entertaining.
When I watch Step Two football, I’m always impressed by the jump up in quality from Step Four – where Sphinx play – and the relative lack of a leap up to League Two. There’s a difference, certainly, but these players can play. I’m also struck by the extent to which football is really two sports now. Compare even the top end of non-league to the Premier League and it’s like watching two different games with similar rules.
Then again, the influence of the elite does gradually filter down as far as the National League North and South, so perhaps it’s a matter of time rather than division. Players in non-league take their steer from above and trends drift down the pyramid, performance tracking included. Tactics take their cue from the top as well, and the differences in how they’re applied is one of the National League’s real points of intrigue.
Is this just what Manchester United are now?
When I was growing up, Manchester United were two things: good and evil. They haven't been either for a long time now, not by the standards they set in the nineties, and all they have on either shoulder is a disappointed Erik ten Hag, forlornly shaking his pate at Joshua Zirkzee.
It's not accurate to say they're under-performing now – they are a top six or seven Premier League team capable of excellent performances and nabbing a trophy or two, and that's what they look like – but United will find a way to be good again eventually. But they don't feel like the ruthless bastards we knew and loathed, and that aura doesn't come easily.
Instead it was Brighton & Hove Albion who won Saturday's match deep into stoppage time. We used to have a nickname for those dying embers, so frequent was it that United throttled the opposition into submission before breaking them late. Not many of their scorers were as unmarked as João Pedro.
Sunderland survive their skipper’s sending off
Sunderland’s EFL Championship meeting with Burnley was billed as the biggest match on the docket so far and new manager Régis Le Bris will be pleased that his players rose to the occasion. Romaine Mundle scored a fabulous goal to maintain the Black Cats’ perfect start to 2024/25. They’re yet to concede a goal.
The victors were good value for the points in a game of few chances. They had less of the ball but were able to be more attacking with it – they made three times as many penalty area entries from open play as Burnley and had three times as many shots on target. In an otherwise close game, the home team seized their one moment.
Mundle’s effectiveness off the left wing was a welcome boost for Le Bris on the day Jack Clarke signed for Ipswich Town. The manager will be frustrated with his captain, though. Dan Neil was sent off late after collecting the second of two monumentally dim yellow cards. Sunderland held on and Scott Parker’s tinkering went awry for Burnley.
Murray unlocks Dundee’s attacking potency
The fledgling Scottish Premiership table tells us as little as any league table in August but it does reveal something about fourth-placed Dundee.
Celtic have scored nine goals in their three games so far. Rangers have eight. Dundee and Aberdeen have seven each. Dundee are also conceding for fun but extend your gaze beyond the league and you’ll find a team with 24 League Cup goals to its name ahead of September’s quarter-final against the Gers.
Scott Tiffoney and Luke McCowan have both scored twice in the Premiership. Tiffoney is an important contributor for Tony Docherty, while McCowan cleaned up at the club’s awards shindig at the end of 2023/24 and looks set fair for another fine season. He’s capable on the ball and that’s exactly where he likes to be. His set pieces aren’t bad either.
But the catalyst is Simon Murray. The Dundee-born forward moved to Dens Park from Ross County in the summer for a second spell with the Dark Blues and has made a flying start.
Murray scored 16 times in the Premiership last season but it’s the things defenders would say about him that really make a difference. He’s a bloody nuisance. He’s aggressive and tenacious as well as calm in front of goal. He was involved in Dundee’s first in Saturday’s draw with Hibs before scoring their late equaliser.
Sidibeh’s stupidity will come at a cost for the Saints
You might be hearing about St Johnstone's Adama Sidibeh a lot this week and then not at all for quite some time. If Murray was a pain in the arse of the opposition manager on Saturday, Craig Levein will be cursing his own player after a calamitous display of dipshittery at Dundee United. St Johnstone ultimately lost 2-0 but the repercussions are still in the post.
Sidibeh picked up a yellow card for flicking the ball over the United goalkeeper with his hand in the first half. Late in the second, at 1-0, he was shown another yellow card – possibly questionable, though I think it was justified – for a foul that was a little elbowy. The melee that followed culminated in Sidibeh jabbing Kevin Holt in what I’ll assume to have been the stomach. He was still raging as he finally left the field.
The trouble with losing one’s head after being dismissed is that it leaves the authorities with nowhere to go. That’s what the red card is for. So, when players commit obvious violent conduct offences after being sent off, nothing good will be coming their way. Sidibeh will be out for a while.
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