WHY SAY ANYTHING?

(A captain, of course. What did you think I meant?)

Of the old top four only Chelsea have what I would consider to be a captain in the true sense of the word and this is possibly going to be his last season.

Vincent Kompany, at Manchester City is also topnotch, but misses too many games to be considered a great captain. His deputy is usually Yaya Toure and we all know how temperamental he can be. Sometimes a good example, sometimes a very bad one, he is more likely to shout at the referee than at his teammates.

The captaincy at Manchester United and Arsenal is a joke. Arsenal have Mikel Arteta, who can’t even get in the team and may leave soon. His deputy, the BFG Per Mertesacker, who has worn the armband for most of the season, is only inspiring in size, nothing else.

United, of course, have Wayne Rooney, who never was captaincy material. A lot of United fans are baffled as to why he is still there, never mind captain. Two goals against Newcastle do not excuse his woeful performances in general over the last couple of seasons.

So what is required of a captain? Does he need, for example, to be an ambassador for the club off the pitch? Yes, he does, but so do the rest of the players so this is not uniquely a captain’s requirement.

Does he have to be a good player? Yes, because he has to get into the team every week. This is where Arteta and Rooney are examples of bad choices as captains. Had he not been captain, the odds are that Rooney would have been dropped quite some time ago. Arteta WAS dropped quite some time ago.

Does he have to be a leader and a shouter? Yes, definitely. I can’t think of many great captains over the years who haven’t had these two qualities. Yes, teams have won trophies with the cool, calm and collected type in charge on the field, but not as often as the teams with a bullier, a nudger, a cajoler and a sometimes nasty piece of work leading them out of the tunnel.

Do you think, honestly, that if this Arsenal team had Tony Adams playing in it, that there would still be a chance of somebody else winning the league? No there wouldn’t, it would be virtually over. There is no way he would have accepted some of the performances when Arsenal were losing, so you have to assume that they wouldn’t have lost some of them with Adams on the field.

What about putting Roy Keane into this United side? They would certainly be challenging for the title even with the players they have now. If a system wasn’t working he would change it without worrying what the manager may think. As it is, when they need someone to shout at them there is nobody there.

Even with City, going back to their most famous United-hating skipper, Mike Doyle, there is no chance they would have lost all of the games that they have with Doyle in the side. He wouldn’t have allowed it, and that is the problem. Too many of the “top” teams allow themselves to lose games without putting up much of a fight. That would never happen with the captains I have mentioned in charge.

So what about Chelsea, I hear you ask? They have a captain in the same mould as the aforementioned, yet look where they are in the table.

Chelsea’s problem was something that John Terry could do little about in fairness. If the manager has a problem with one of the players then the captain can secretly take both sides without arousing any suspicion. If, as appears to be the case at Stamford Bridge, the manager has a problem with several players then the captain can only hope that it gets sorted out. Chelsea still have the problem players but they have sacked what they saw as the problem manager. With Hiddink off the pitch and Terry on it, they are starting to climb the table again.

I imagine that some of those players will be leaving in the Summer.