Given not prepared to walk away just yet

SOCCER ANGLES:In a conversation with him yesterday morning, the Republic of Ireland goalkeeper sounded like a man determined to stay at Eastlands

SHAY GIVEN must feel like a man who has lost his door key. There he is stood outside Manchester City’s sky blue entrance, where so recently he breezed through, one of the main men, now reduced to knocking. But the door is unanswered and as he pats his pockets Given can but look at it, his mood shifting from bemusement through anger into confusion. What does he do now?

It is a question that has kept Given awake prior to being informed face-to-face by Roberto Mancini eight days ago that he would be second choice to Joe Hart at the start of this season.

Given felt the news was coming from days and weeks earlier, he had read the mood music and it wasn’t playing his song. But there is still the shock of being told directly and definitively.

If it can be called definitively, because added to the shock and disappointment was the oddly contradictory message that Given received from the club and its manager. The Irish goalkeeper was informed he was wanted by City, to the extent he would be offered an extension to his contract, one that would take him to his late 30s on the sort of money that would enable him to buy half of Donegal should he choose to.

It is a consideration of course.

Given will be paid handsomely wherever he plays the remainder of his football but there is more on offer at City than possibly anywhere else on planet goalkeeper. That makes you think, but it is also making Given ponder what else the money at City may do.

Already it could be said it has helped the Premier League’s tectonic plates shift to the point where Martin O’Neill felt squeezed by them at Aston Villa.

There is an accumulation of individual talent which at some stage Given feels must yield a collective breakthrough in terms of trophies. That is significant to someone who spent his career at Newcastle United missing out on silverware.

Speaking to him in casual conversation as well as formally since he joined City 18 months ago, the enthusiasm for the City project, for want of a better term, is real.

The rest of us may not share that. What City are doing in the market with the likes of Yaya Toure makes us squeamish. But we are not in the building day-to-day. From there it looks like a brave new world is being created. They are girding themselves for a major challenge.

It is just that for Given, as of last week, he feels like he is being ushered out of the building while being told how much he is wanted inside. He has seen Hart promoted above him and then seen Hart produce a man-of-the-match performance at Tottenham last Saturday.

There is again talk of Arsenal-Given in the air, but it has been that way since before Jens Lehmann moved to Highbury to replace David Seaman. A move has never happened and Fulham’s Mark Schwarzer is preferred by Arsene Wenger. That would leave a vacancy at Fulham, now managed by Mark Hughes who took Given from Newcastle to City. It is all so neat in a way.

But it would mean Given tearing himself away from City and in the last conversation with him – yesterday morning – he did not sound like a man determined to leave Eastlands. He sounded more like a man determined to stay.

Given mentioned the Irish games forthcoming this autumn and into November, the likelihood of some matches for City in the League Cup and the proximity of January, when another window would provide an opportunity to reassess. That is 4½ months away, hardly forever.

By then one imagines that the Premier League will have settled into its rhythm. Even City, with their rapid turnover, should have discovered some pattern of play, though whether it can accommodate all those new stars is up for debate.

The club will also have seen Hart in the number one jersey for around 20 matches. They and Given will be more certain as to whether Hart has the ability and temperament to cope with such a high-profile role. As it stands, City know they have a fine number two.

It is hardly Given’s favourite phrase but that is not Hart’s fault. The 23-year-old cannot have been chuffed when Given arrived from the north-east to displace him but he knuckled down at Birmingham City. It is part of a goalkeeper’s lot that there is one jersey and Given will not be churlish towards the younger man. He accepts the situation even as he disagrees with it. And things can change again. There is no virtue in waiting for Hart to make a mistake, that is not good for anyone, but if Arsenal or another club that rivals City suddenly said “come be one of us” then he would have to rethink.

As of yesterday, though, Given seems like a man minded to stay and see what comes. He was in Munich having a scheduled check-up – not on his shoulder but on his groin – having taken a different flight home from Romania where City played in the Europa League. The image of Given on a separate plane from City seemed to suit the moment, but he is as ready for a fight as he is for a flight.

Holloway's ability to inspire will be tested at the Emirates

THE ALMOST baroque tone of Ian Holloway’s Bristolian burr and the elaborate orchestration that accompanies the opening of his mouth makes him an easy target. But Holloway talks sense.

Admittedly he does so in a manner that often camouflages that common sense but he is worth listening to. For two hours 10 days ago, a few of us were given that chance upstairs at unfinished Bloomfield Road.

Holloway ran through a personal agenda that went from referees to style to agents and to Blackpool’s place in the Premier League scheme of things.

At one point he threw himself on the carpet beneath a signed photograph of Stanley Matthews but there was very little to disagree with.

Then he sent out a team thrown together in the final week of pre-season to win at Wigan emphatically.

This is Wigan’s sixth consecutive season in the Premier League; Blackpool had not appeared in the top flight since May, 1971.

Anyone who can do that, regardless of their accent, deserves admiration. Holloway has something and, listening to him rant, you discover that one of those things is an ability to inspire. Doing so at Arsenal today is an even greater test, of course, but it would be unwise not to take Holloway seriously.