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- outings - Friday - Badminton Played at Clementi Sports Hall since our usual haunt, the Multi-Purpose Sports Hall at NUS, was still unavailable. Come to think of it, I've never said much about badminton despite it being my ECA/CCA in upper Primary and most of my Secondary school days. This may be partially due to the fact that I liked it, but not that much, and got banned from joining sports that I really liked in my younger and more pliant days - but that's a story for another day. From what I can remember, the formal training consisted mostly of set drills (e.g. rushing to the net to drop, receive a drop back, clear the ball to the back, run back for the clear, repeat), augmented with free practice - though I was never quite into it in Secondary school. I suppose all the basic stuff like returning to a central position should be obvious to most with some passion for the game; I certainly don't recall any concise how-to guide on badminton strategy. Anyway, regarding doubles (since that is what is usually played), there's actually just one overriding rule - attack. And attack means "hit smashes as hard as you can whenever possible, and let the opponents worry about it", with "whenever possible" being "almost every shot" in practice. Yes, it's not particularly smart, nor particularly fun if your training/playing buddies are not quite up to it, but it works right up to world-class level if one wishes to win. Singles is another matter altogether, and the smash-smash-smash rule doesn't apply since there's no partner to watch your back (or more accurately, frontcourt). This doesn't detract from the fact that the optimal stroke for any high return in the mid-court (or further forward) is still the smash, however. In general, aiming the shuttlecock to a specific location (and thus moving the opponent around) is rather more important in singles, and stamina becomes an even more important factor. Badminton wasn't the most notable thing about Friday, though. I think I might have propositioned for the first time in my life, in Singapore. Here I was, walking back from the neighbourhood market in the morning, and was at the void deck of the block next to mine when a reasonably well-dressed and foreign-looking lady approached me as I passed by her. Now, this is not an altogether unknown experience, as I have been asked for directions by visitors pretty often on campus. I was expecting a question on how to get to a nearby address, when she asked in a soft voice, "Are you happy?" Now that I wasn't expecting, and for a few seconds I struggled to put the query into context. I mean, if it were a philosophical essay, I would probably have to spend five minutes on an outline before an hour or two of writing. As she waited patiently (and a bit too closely for comfort), I could only come out with four main possibilities, in decreasing order of likelihood:
Oh, and it was only later that I realised that it was actually the equivalent of the "youhappynow?" 4O catchphrase. I'm getting a bit rusty. Saturday - Basketball Played at the Block 492 court since the only available people were all Jurongians. Luckily, nobody pangseh-ed despite it looking like rain. Mostly the usual stuff, with alvin being on the two-man team in the 2v3 games and being mostly unstoppable when he felt like it, and the pace dropping off measurably after a while. The special thing was that a middle-aged uncle asked to play with us, which edchong commented on as follows (I would have linked to his blog, but it seems as if he's determined to try and keep it private, so...): "And finally you will reach the conclusion that, hey man, we did a good deed today. We helped him roll back the years, we made him feel young again. We fed him through passes, made the runs, and played good D with him (whoever was on his team whenever). And when he go home tonight, eh no he should be home already, he will probably think back to the times when he was playing with his friends. IMAGINE THAT" Cue warm fuzzy feeling. Gathered at a kopitiam to watch Man United take on Arsenal for the title, after colin declined to host us this time (well, it was probably too much to ask, him being a Liverpool fan and all). The mathematics were very simple - United simply had to avoid defeat to win the EPL title outright. Frankly, it was one of the most boring matches between two of the Big Four that I have watched, certainly in a fixture that was known to generate a lot of heat several years ago. No goals is one thing, but the first and only shot on target coming in the 84th minute is another. When the referee blew the final whistle on the dot after the specified three minutes of extra time, it was a little... anticlimactic.  And sixteen years on... (Main image source: Redcafe; Inset image source: Utdforum) What did make the match more special than a dozen blood-and-thunder affairs was the result, which however uninspiring, meant that United had equalled Liverpool's long-standing English record of 18 top-flight titles. The two teams' history of titles won makes compelling reading - Liverpool won two by 1906, then United tied it at two apiece by 1911. Liverpool then stretched their take to five in 1947, before a United side that had finished second for four of the previous five seasons finally got their third in 1952, and pulled level again in 1957. Now neck and neck, Liverpool won their sixth in 1964, and United matched it the next season. Liverpool won their seventh in 1966, and of course United would level again in 1967. It then appeared as if the Merseyside club had finally left their rivals behind as they entered into their glory decades of the 70s and 80s, as they picked up a staggering eleven titles without reply, so that by 1990 the record was 18-7 in their favour. Surely they could not be caught in a lifetime? The little taunt of "Come back when you've won 18!" appeared safe enough then, even as United finally got their eighth title in 1993; they could not have counted on United nabbing 11 titles in just 17 seasons to return in style. Ferguson's promise to "knock Liverpool off their f**king perch" hasn't quite been achieved, but a nineteenth title would certainly do it - and move United ahead of their most ancient foes for the first time. As with most magnificent sporting rivalries, the United-Liverpool (or Liverpool-United, depending on your affiliation) one is built on deep foundations. The cities of Manchester and Liverpool, not sixty kilometres apart, would naturally have jostled if only due to their geographical proximity. This was exacerbated by their contrasting economic fortunes as well - Inland Manchester had traditionally been involved in manufacturing and other industry, while coastal Liverpool depended on commerce, leading to the saying, "The Liverpool gentleman and the Manchester man". The building of the Manchester Ship Canal to bypass Liverpool probably didn't help relations much, but their real decline occurred later on, especially in the 1970s when the docks became obsolete, with the city probably hitting bottom in the 1980s, coinciding with the end of their then-footballing dynasty. Manchester by all accounts adapted somewhat better, becoming a "poor cousin made good", which couldn't have gone down well for the formerly prosperous Scousers. Personally, some degree of rivalry is good, as the competition serves to keep both parties on their toes and probably perform at greater heights than they could have otherwise. Some light ribbing (heck, it occurs between fans of random sides) is only to be expected. Of course, there are small minorities that spoil it for everyone, such as United "fans" singing about Hillsborough, and Liverpool "fans" about Munich (which, it has to be said, happened some thirty years earlier). Now, having self-proclaimed "superfans" robbing tickets and rushing gates (this amazingly for a club that suffered Hillsborough) isn't going to help anyone's reputation much, but to be fair it probably happens to some degree for any big club - Idiocy is universal, after all.  A gesture of support by United supporters (Source: KRAP Campaign Starts Here) But back to the present, as United were on the verge of picking up the title, Liverpool manager Rafael Benitez couldn't manage anything more than a backhanded statement that "If United have more points, it only means they have more points, that's all, nothing else.". Well, as Wenger once famously said, "Everyone thinks they have the prettiest wife at home." - which is a good thing, mind. Keeping in mind that Ferguson is not exactly an angel either (with his dogpile on Benitez for being "disrespectful" against Blackburn being slightly ridiculous [see gesture - nothing much in that]), he did manage to acknowledge Chelsea when they won in 2006: "But Chelsea deserve all the plaudits they will get and, especially on their home form, they are worthy champions.". Mourinho was similarly gracious when the tables were turned next year: "I have to congratulate the champions, the players, the manager, the fans, the board; all the people that helped them to be champions.", though as with Rafa he stopped short of actually acknowledging that United were better. Fair enough, prettier wife and all that. Avram Grant and even old nemesis Wenger too managed it. At the height of the United-Arsenal rivalry in 2002, Ferguson even described them as "worthy champions without question" and offered "sincere congratulations to Arsenal". Did any of them really mean it? Perhaps, perhaps not. But the point was that they were able to rise above all the mutual barbs and mud-slinging at the end. Well, perhaps Mr. Benitez does not want to say what he does not feel, and that's alright too. But what he does say, that "...but always they spend more than we can spend", thus putting United's achievements down to one of greater resources, is rather questionable. We can begin by using some statistics. This subject is usually met by the Transfer League website, which attempts to total up the transfer spending by Premier League sides. The exercise is made slightly more complicated with the existence of undisclosed fees and add-on clauses (e.g. the club will pay an additional X pounds if the player makes Y appearances or they win Z title), but it should serve decently as a ballpark estimate as individual fees are comprehensively stated, and there is furthermore an error reporting system. The site counterintuitively has Liverpool outspending United both in the Premier League era (1992 to the present) and the Benitez era (2004 to the present). How can this be? I checked the Liverpool figures with those put on LFChistory.net (in) (out), and it appears that they are mostly in agreement. There is a 22 million pound difference (about 10%), which is composed mainly of the 14 million pound cost of Cisse (he is arguably a Houllier, not a Benitez signing, but Benitez was presumably speaking of his club spending money, not himself, and anyway he got to use Cisse too), and disagreements on the actual costs of Torres and Keane - Transfer League has them at £26.5M and £20.3M respectively, while LFChistory lists them at £20.2M and £19M respectively. It is possible that the Torres deal was worth just £20M, but otherwise there seems to be no real dispute about the sums. What about money recouped from transfers out? Transfer League gave a more generous figure for Diouf (by £0.5M) and Mark Gonzalez (by £0.7M), and assigned £0.4M to Hamann against a free from LFChistory. However Transfer League omitted Alou Diarra's transfer to Lens for £2M (easy to get confused with so many Diarras floating around nowadays), and guessed that Nunez's move brought in another £2M despite it being undisclosed. LFChistory also claimed an additional £1M or thereabouts for each of Paletta, Keane and Crouch, and a bit more for Owen, Kirkland and Mellor, with the final disagreement being in the region of £6M, or two-thirds of Dirk Kuyt. Then, the difference in United's and Liverpool's net spending since the 2004 season should be somewhere between £17M more for Liverpool and £8M more for United, taking the two extremes. In other words, the most Benitez can reasonably claim is that United have spent about 5% more than Liverpool, which is hardly a significant gulf (hint: look south at a certain Arsenal Football Club), and of course the Newcastles and Tottenhams of this world prove that it is very possible to spend and end up with next to nothing. One might extend the transfer spending analysis to the whole of the Premier League's history (i.e. from 1992 on, just a couple of years after Liverpool won their eighteenth league title, and covering a whole generation of players), and the big surprise is that Transfer League still puts Liverpool ahead in net spending over the period (with Russian-powered Chelsea far ahead of both). But how could that be true?
(figures in millions of pounds) The usual argument is that Benitez inherited a crappy team from Houllier (which had finished 4th, 5th, 2nd and 3rd the previous four seasons, and managed to win the Champions League with few modifications), and thus had to rebuild with tons of mid-range squad players, while United had an established, winning team (that would remain titleless for three seasons with luminaries such as Eric Djemba-Djemba) that allowed for buying £30M stars to make the difference. "Had to" is debatable, and in any event Vidic, who should probably have been Player of the Season, cost only £7M; Evra, the first-choice left back now, £5.5M - hardly that expensive. Benitez has been more than willing to splash as much or more for stars such as Dossena, Riera, Lucas and Pennant in any case. There is something that skews the balance in United's favour, though, and that is their Golden Generation of home-grown players such as Giggs, Scholes, Beckham, the Nevilles and Butt, whom didn't cost a penny. Beckham left in 2004 for £25M , Butt in 2005 for £2.5M and Philip Neville for £3.5M, though I always suspected they were worth rather more in intangibles alone. Indeed Butt and Neville both went on to captain their new clubs, Newcastle and Everton respectively, neither of them small (though Benitez may respectfully disagree). Giggs, Scholes and the elder Neville were never, and will probably never be, sold, and as such it will be hard to put a value on them. However, in their prime (probably the early years of this decade), what would they have been worth? A quick scan at the 2002 transfers shows that Veron cost £28M, van Nistelrooy £19M and Stam £15M. Surely Giggs at his peak could not have been worth less than Beckham's £25M to the right club (and probably even wrong ones), with Scholes worth somewhere from £15 to 20M at least. Defenders generally don't bring as much, but for Gary Neville some £6 to 10M sounds right. That's some £80M of invisible value from Fergie's Fledglings, most of which won't show up on any balance sheet. So in a way, Benitez was right - United have had the equivalent of huge cash injections, albeit from their youth setup. Then again, whose fault is that exactly? Benitez has also argued that if only Torres and Gerrard had both stayed fit, Liverpool might well have won. Leaving aside the fact that Liverpool have still performed on par, both in the (just four) games that Gerrard failed to start [getting the equivalent of 76 points for a full season], the 15 that Torres has failed to start [87 points], and the two that both did not start [since they won both, 114 points!], Des Kelly of the Mail Online makes the incisive observation that "...By that logic, my aunt would have been my uncle had she been born with a different set of genitalia." And of course, other clubs can just as easily present their cases to be crowned Champions of England: "What if United had started the season with a completely fit Cristiano Ronaldo and Wayne Rooney? Would the title race have been over long ago?" "What if Owen Hargreaves [£17M of talent stowed away on the treatment table] had been available and running the midfield?" "What if Guus Hiddink had been Chelsea manager from the kick-off? What if Michael Essien had been fit all season?" "What if Arsenal had not lost William Gallas, Tomas Rosicky, Eduardo, Gael Clichy, Robin van Persie, Cesc Fabregas, Theo Walcott and others at various points of the season, do you think that might have made a difference?" Liverpool have undeniably had a very good season by any standards - they have beaten United home and away (though City did that last season, and Stoke City held them to two 0-0 draws and I don't see Potters fans claiming to be on a par due to that), topped the Top Four League, achieved the best goal difference (barring major upheavals in the last round of games), thrashed Real Madrid 5-0 on aggregate (more fool C.Ronaldo if he still wants a move after that), and actually played some quite entertaining footie. Some of their squad players such as Kuyt and Benayoun have also forced me to re-evaluate them, kind of like Fletcher for United. They have also put in a credible title challenge for the first time in years. Amid this cheery backdrop, I feel that it is a slight pity that their manager did not show a bit more class - Liverpool have a proud tradition, after all. Xabi Alonso for one appears to have a decent head on his shoulders: "It's only natural to think where would we be if we had managed to get another good result? But then all the teams in the Premier League can say the same thing." Not that Benitez lacks for support - there are comparisms of him with Abraham Lincoln, his bloodline stems from Zeus, and he commands a quite fanatical belief: "And some day soon, maybe next May, maybe the one after or the one after that, a middle aged man in a suit will wade through the sea of scarves in front of the Kop, pick one up and tie it around his neck like a docker, make a fist with his left hand and hold the Holy Grail in the other, and stare at us the way the Christ risen looked at his disciples, eyes blazing with an intensity that says: "Tell me you never questioned me. Tell me you harboured no doubts. Tell me the pain and emptiness was worthwhile. Tell me I've just put flesh on your dearest dream." (can't help but note the many maybes, and the similarities with doomsday predictions...) Despite all that, the Reds would still do well to keep him on for a few more years at least, in all seriousness. They just have to look at Newcastle to see where manager-juggling can get you. And in any case, Liverpool have not even been matched - remember, they won two additional titles when the rest of the country was fighting world wars, so says their official site! With the top of the table settled, four teams are still in contention for relegation. West Brom are gone, and Middlesborough, Hull, Sunderland and - get this - Newcastle - may yet follow them. Newcastle United have always been quite huge, as English club sides go. By most measures, they would roughly be in the biggest five sides. Unfortunately, that may not keep them from going down. Their fate is not even in their own hands, since if Sunderland and Hull win, they are down whatever they may manage against Aston Villa. Fortunately for them, Sunderland and Hull face Chelsea and Manchester United, so Newcastle can rightly feel confident if they do manage to beat Villa - but that is in itself a very big if. Newcastle manager Alan Shearer isn't leaving anything to chance, though, and he trusts that Ferguson will put out a good team against Hull, since a Hull result would mean that even a credible draw would not be able to save the Toon. United however have a Champions League final in a few days, and are well within their rights to field their reserves - other clubs have put out weakened sides for far less significant games. The situation is intriguing as Ferguson had criticized Benitez for fielding a weak team against Fulham, as Liverpool braced for the 2007 final in Athens. Sheffield United boss Neil Warnock predictably blasted Benitez for that, since Fulham were relegation candidates too, but did Warnock really expect Benitez to risk his best players with a Champions League trophy waiting? Well, Ferguson could go with something like Kuszczak - Neville Ferdinand Evans Fabio - Nani Fletcher Gibson/Scholes Tosic/Giggs - Welback/Tevez/Berbatov Macheda and risk at most a couple of players whom might expect to play in Rome, where I would expect something like van der Sar - O'Shea Ferdinand Vidic Evra - Ronaldo Carrick Anderson Park - Rooney Berbatov. That would probably be strong enough to give Hull a good go, but I have a hunch that Newcastle won't make it against Villa and render all this discussion moot. Sunday - Bicycling occ had the bright idea to go cycling at East Coast Park, and thus a bunch of merry fellows gathered at Paya Lebar MRT station at 2 pm and took a bus to Area C. Bikes were to be had for $6 for two hours (inclusive of a free drink), and I confess that I was mildly apprehensive at getting on one - I hadn't had reason to cycle for years.  Number F-203 The old cliche that one never forgets proved to be true, though, and I was soon happily pedalling away. We kept close at the start, with wenhoo soon taking the lead, and I was soon sold on the merits of cycling, at least with a clear path available - coasting along is a big improvement over running. It was the first time that I remember riding a bike with gears, but I was content to spend all my time in Gear Six as the uphill portions were still manageable.  Proof of exploration (Inset: Route taken in dark blue) We decided to turn back after an hour, by which time we had made it to Changi Airport, though not quite Changi village. Enjoyed taking in the sights, which included cable skiing, kitesurfing (wondered then if a poor surfer might just take off in flight - there were some cries of "Medic!" though), and a strange ceremony where maybe half a dozen people clad fully in white were surrounded by dozens of watchers... we agreed that it was probably either a baptism, or a PAP initiation. I also unhappily discovered how annoying it can be to ride in a crowded area on the way back, with little kids trundling about on little bikes the worst culprits, but with rollerbladers in a group not far behind. At least I got my first glimpse of inline skateboards. Downed the free 500ml bottle of Polar distilled water at one go, and followed that with a large Coke Slurpee. Dinner at Parkway Parade, one of my favourite outing locations when I was a small kid for its arcade, where the tiny portion of fried kway teow from the food court was made up for by its taste. And how far did we cycle? Preliminary discussion on the MRT threw up estimates around 7 or 8km one way, or about 15km both ways. However, given that we spent two hours, this gives a speed of 8km per hour, which is pretty slow - put into perspective, that's 15 minutes for two kilometres, or 18 minutes for the 2.4km, which is not much more than walking pace, and which didn't seem quite right. smk did the grunt work with maps from the National Parks website and elsewhere, and came up with a distance of about 9km for travelling from Area C to H, and a further 6.8km after that since there was a sign that said 8km to Changi Beach Park at the end of Area H, and we stopped maybe 1.2km from the park. Indeed some sites give the length of the ECP trail as 9km, but since we began at Area C it was probably more like 6 or 7km, which gives a speed range of some 12 to 16km/h. That sounds more reasonable, even if we did take a few breaks along the route. And I nearly forgot to mention how freakishly difficult it was to download the images from my antique Nokia 3220 using a CA-42 cable - I ended up having to reinstall the drivers that came on the cable's CD each time, just to have it work. Am seriously thinking of getting a model with Bluetooth or infrared someday. Next: Takeoff Imminent
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