Written for The Courier in the immediate aftermath of Real Madrid’s sacking of Santiago Solari and subsequent re-appointment of Zinedine Zidane in March, 2019.

The crisis at Real Madrid has reached breaking point. Club president Florentino Perez has finally lost patience with interim manager Santiago Solari after arguably the worst week in Los Blancos’ illustrious history. A 4-1 trouncing in Europe at the hands of relative minnows Ajax and two defeats in a week at the hands of arch-rivals Barcelona have effectively ended their season, the Spanish giants 12 points off the pace at the top of La Liga, eliminated from the Copa Del Ray and humiliated in the Champions League.

Such is the cyclical nature of football, the club’s hierarchy immediately announced the sensational return of treble Champions-League-winning manager Zinedine Zidane who had left the club less than a year earlier. Returning to a familiar managerial face is always going to be a gamble, especially when that manager is a certified club legend as is the enigmatic Frenchman. Although Zidane could hardly do any worse than his predecessors at Madrid this season, Lopetegui and Solari, one has to admire the risk he is taking in terms of the possibility of tarnishing his glittering legacy with the club.

Madrid are by no means the only club to take a punt on a former employee. Here we take a look at some of the most high-profile managerial comebacks in recent years:

1. Kenny Dalglish: Liverpool

King Kenny: the name could hardly be more synonymous with the red half of the city. The Scott won a staggering nine league titles and three European Cups with Liverpool, both as a player and a manager. His already mammoth legend was enhanced by his valorous handling of the Hillsbrough disaster in 1989, Dalglish attending dozens of victims’ funerals, a gesture which secured him a place in the hearts of thousands of Koppites.

His second spell was less successful. After title winning spells at Blackburn and Celtic, and an unfortunate period at Newcastle, King Kenny returned to Liverpool in 2011 following the departure of Roy Hodgson. He was initially given the role as caretaker but was ultimately given the job on a full-time basis. Despite a League Cup win, the club’s first trophy in six years, and an F.A Cup Final appearance, Dalglish was relieved of his duties following a disappointing 8^th place finish in the Premier League. Although his second spell was mixed, his legacy has endured. The club renamed a stand after him in 2017 and he remains an unparalleled hero on Merseyside.

• Kevin Keegan: Newcastle United

Keegan enjoys a similarly eminent reputation amongst Newcastle fans as Dalglish did at Liverpool. He too was a hero in his playing days at the club, the former two-time Ballon Dor winner spending two seasons on Tyneside during which they returned to the first division after a six-year absence. Keegan returned to the Toon as manager in 1992, taking the Magpies from the foot of the First Division (now the Championship) to nearly winning the Premier League in the 95/96 season, ultimately surrendering a 12-point lead at the top of the table to title rivals Man United, a collapse immortalised by Keegan’s infamous ‘love it’ rant. Despite this, Keegan certainly overachieved in his time in his first stint in the North East and was adored by the Geordie faithful. 

His second stint, like Dalglish was decidedly less emphatic. Although Newcastle were no longer the big-hitters they were in 1992, Keegan’s reign was still disappointing. Although they survived a relegation scrap in the tail end of the 07/08 seasons, Keegan was dismissed amidst reports of a fall-out with owner Mike Ashley – a situation which has become all too familiar for Newcastle fans in recent years. However, the fans took Keegan’s side. Although the rift between Keegan and Ashley remains, and as such the relationship between Keegan and the club’s hierarchy has not improved, double-K, like Dalglish, remains a legend in the city.

• Fabio Capello: Real Madrid and AC Milan

Although remembered primarily on these shores for a disastrous 2010 World Cup campaign with England, renowned disciplinarian Fabio Capello is rightly considered a giant of the game on the continent. He is also unique in this list in that he has had two spells at two different clubs: Real Madrid and AC Milan.

His initial time in Italy was an unreserved success. Managing a team full of the world’s best footballers, he won the league 4 times in 5 years and the Champions League once. Following this trophy-laden spell, Capello made the switch to Real Madrid in which he enjoyed a successful, albeit brief, tenure, the Italian guiding them to League campaign success in his one and only season in this first spell.

He then returned to Milan for what was, all things considered, a disastrous spell with the Italian giants. He was relieved of his duties before the end of the season, a season in which Milan finished in an abysmal 10^th place.

Then, following, spells at Milan’s Serie A rivals Roma and Juve, Capello returned to a Real Madrid side who were in crisis, without a trophy in 5 seasons. His second tenure was controversial, successful, and brief in equal measure. He managed to bring league success back to the Spanish capital but did so while attracting media attention for off-field controversy and a pragmatic and dull playing style. Capello is a manager not considered a legend at either club, despite a haul of 11 trophies.

• Harry Redknapp: Portsmouth

Long before his recent success in Australia and before he had earned a reputation for hanging out of car windows on deadline day, Harry Redknapp was earning winning plaudits as manager of then Championship side Portsmouth. He earnt promotion to the Premier League in his first season as manager in 2002 and guided Pompey to safety the following season.

Then, much to the outrage of the Portsmouth fan base, Redknapp moved to local rivals Southampton. His two seasons there were disappointing, the side being relegated to the Championship and then failing to mount a promotion push the following year.

Redknapp returned as a prodigal son to Portsmouth and it is in this second spell that he enjoyed arguably the best years of his managerial career, the highlight of which came in the FA Cup where they beat Cardiff City to secure the club’s first success in the competition since 1939. His departure to Tottenham meant Redknapp’s reputation in Portsmouth is mixed, but he remains an iconic figure in the city and in English football at large.

• Jose Mourinho: Chelsea

The most recent managerial return on this list is also arguably the most divisive. Over his career, Mourinho has earnt himself a reputation as a controversial figure, both in terms of his playing style and his off-field attitude. Mourinho first came to public attention following an incredible spell with Portuguese side F.C Porto, winning the UEFA Cup in 2003 and then, sensationally, the Champions League in 2004. This remains the most recent time a true underdog, perhaps bar Chelsea in 2012, has won the competition.

This success earnt him a move to newly minted Chelsea, Mourinho dubbing himself the ‘special one’ upon his arrival, the nickname which has stuck with him throughout his career. In his first season, Mourinho turned Chelsea into a dominant force in English football, winning the title with a then record points total. He repeated this feat the following season. Chelsea were forced to relinquish the title to Manchester United the in 06/07 but Mourinho remained a fan favourite despite growing unrest about the relationship between himself and owner Roman Abramovich. He acrimoniously departed Chelsea in September of 2007.

After winning the treble at Inter Milan and league title success at Real Madrid, Mourinho agreed to re-join Chelsea in June 2013. His first season was relatively uneventful, Chelsea finishing 3^rd but showing definite signs of improvement. Then, in the 2014/15 season, Mourinho guided Chelsea to Premier League title, becoming the first manager to win the title in two separate stints with clubs.

What followed was a string of events which has typified the Portuguese’ career ever since. Mourinho lost the dressing room and the remainder of his time at Chelsea was a crisis management situation. He finished his second, and presumably last, spell at Chelsea in the bottom half of the table and his relationship with Chelsea fans has deteriorated in his subsequent returns to Stanford Bridge with Manchester United.

Written for the Courier’s music section.

Supporting Lauryn Hill over the past 20 years has, for many, been a thankless task – the labour of a love which has been, on the most part, unreciprocated. Bar one rambling live album in 2002 which many now see as the product of a period of intense mental instability for the singer, fans have had to endure an almost complete drought in terms of new music from Ms. Hill. There is also, of course, Lauryn’s incessant habit of turning up hours late for gigs. She recently announced she would be performing in Oakland for a special New Year’s Eve concert. Knowing the singer’s track record, she’ll probably arrive on stage some time around April.

It was therefore no surprise for those in attendance at the Manchester Arena to be waiting for well over an hour after the advertised time for the legendary neo-soul singer to make her bow. In a way, I enjoyed this period of anticipation. Perhaps this is an instance of some sort of musical Stockholm syndrome but Lauryn’s relaxed attitude towards punctuality has become such a common feature of her gigs that it would not have felt like a truly authentic experience had she arrived on time. Having said this, I did not have a train to catch. Nor was I waiting outside the venue on a typically rainy Manchester evening to pick someone up. Paying customers unquestionably have a right to be indignant about this laissez faire approach to starting times.

The fact that the 21,000-capacity arena was packed to the rafters despite this approach being common knowledge is an illustration of the enduring appeal of one of the all-time classic 90s Hip Hop/RnB albums. Fans expecting to see a carbon copy of the Lauryn Hill who released Miseducation in 1998 however will have been surprised to hear a performer whose delivery has moved away from the silky, luscious vocals of 20 years ago toward a more raw and erratic style.

While her performance style may have changed, her immeasurable charisma and stage presence have not. Nowhere was this more evident than in the opener, ‘Lost Ones’. Ms. Hill belted out the timeless lyrics in a version of the song which featured a raised, almost manic tempo. By no means was this the only outlandish performance of the night.

Her career with the Fugees and as a solo artist has always been marked by a refusal to pander to a particular demographic: an insistence on doing things on her own terms. For an anniversary tour one might have expected Lauryn to perform, for the sake of nostalgia, in a manner which stuck more rigidly to the original format. This was not what transpired. Lauryn was theatrical throughout, as if trying to throw the audience of balance. She performed deliberately out of sync with her backing vocalists on ‘Forgive Them Father’ and ‘To Zion’, a divergence from the angelic harmonies of the original record.

As the lights came on, the organisers clearly wanting Lauryn to wrap up the set, we were treated to more conventional renditions of ‘Doo Wop’ and ‘Killing Me Softly’, the only hit from Lauryn’s Fugees days which made an appearance. An impromptu speech on the gravity of the album’s impact followed, Lauryn remarking enigmatically on the political relevancy and artistic roots of her magnum opus.

She closed with her remix of Drake’s ‘Nice For What’ in which Miseducation’s ‘Ex-Factor’ is sampled. It was a fitting conclusion that felt like a celebration of the genre bending, era defining album’s ongoing influence. The musical climate around her may have changed, as has L. boogie herself, but The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill remains as timeless as ever.

Written for the music section of a friend’s streetwear company’s website. Sadly, the company has since changed ownership and the said section was discontinued.

Since his 2016’s EP Six Paths, the inconspicuously named Dave has been forging a reputation for himself as one of the most lyrically dextrous and absorbing rap artists around. His two career highlights in terms of public attention – 2017’s ‘Question Time’ and ‘Funky Friday’, released the following year – proved him an artist capable of rolling out both searing, overtly political protest anthems and finessed, commercially workable radio hits.

The breadth of the South London rapper’s artistic horizons has allowed Dave to proceed in the creation of this, his debut studio album, relatively unbound by typecasting and expectation. The results are astonishing. Psychodrama is a near perfect body of work, almost Dickensian in its social apprehension, its subtlety and its poetic ingenuity. It will be an injustice if it doesn’t win this year’s Mercury Prize.

The album is built around Dave’s interactions with his therapist. Given this narrative, one might expect the album’s 11 tracks to be fundamentally introspective. But, while Dave certainly looks inward for a great deal of Psychodrama, he sees this process as fertile ground for social commentary, confronting the issues that have shaped his psyche up until this point: fame, race, violence, family and life in London. In this vein, the album’s opener ‘Psycho’ fades away with Dave defiantly proclaiming “I ain’t psycho but my life is” – clearly, these therapy sessions are for us as much they are for him.

‘Black’ – the single which, earlier this year, bafflingly provoked outrage amongst certain radio 1 listeners, leading Annie Mac to address the blatant unwillingness of this demographic to even enter into a conversation about race – is the album’s most unambiguously political moment. The enveloping throb of Dave’s piano, the percussion which is integral to so much of this album, is a fitting sonic backdrop for an unsubdued castigation of persisting racial inequalities, cultural appropriation and fragmentary racial reductionism. In the hands of another artist, this tirade, however righteous, might easily have manifested itself as a lecture. This is not the case on ‘Black’, or indeed any other track on Psychodrama. Dave’s phraseology and diction display an artist who is mature and informed while simultaneously impassioned and performatively engrossing.

‘Purple Heart’ follows. A cool down after the intensity and broad-address style of ‘Black’, the track takes the form of a more intimate oration, one  to his romantic partner. Laced with double entendre, ‘Purple Heart’ is a show piece of Dave’s ability to take standard hip-hop subject matter and turn it into something which feels palpably shrewder and more inventive.

Although a fundamental constituent of Dave’s artistic makeup, the sheer volume of these Lil Wayne-style double entendres is such that they can occasionally feel crowbarred. For me, this is one of the only drawbacks on Psychodrama. Ultimately however, this is the tiniest of footnotes and, as much as anything, displays the prolificacy of wit within Dave’s penmanship. 

instrumentation is undeniably subordinate to the exhibition of Dave’s lyrical prowess on Psychodrama, but there are standout musical moments as well: ‘Location’s’ distant saxophone undertones, the bouncing, thunderclap synth on ‘Disaster’s’ and the tropical beat switch up at the tail end of ‘Screwface Capital’.

Dave’s propensity to choose, not the path of least lyrical resistance but themes challenging to comprehensively address in their entirety, culminates in the much talked about ‘Lesley’ – a track nothing short of a triumph in storytelling. A truly Grand Don’t Come for Free-esque cinematic experience is conjured up with the instrumental, a cacophonous mix of swelling string sections and jangling piano keys, which progress along with Dave’s visceral, quasi-spoken word description of an abusive relationship. So compelling is Dave’s delivery of this heart-wrenching tale, it track feels a great deal shorter than its mammoth 11-minute runtime.

The album closes with ‘Drama’, a poignant message to his currently incarcerated older brother. It’s a conclusion which hammers home one of the overriding themes of Dave’s magnum opus, “the pill I had to swallow wasn’t bitter it was cyanide”: assiduous resilience in the face of overwhelming adversity.

Psychodrama is not a passive listen; Dave grapples at length with the abstract as much with as the concrete but does so without coming across as ostentatious. In fact, the figure Dave cuts throughout these 11 tracks is one of sincerity: unrelentingly grounded and actively self-aware. While musically it is relatively unassuming, his poetry and wit is what propels this album, in my opinion, into the pantheon of all-time great UK hip hop albums.

9/10

I wrote the following, with a 200 word limit, for The Courier ‘s album of the year list. ‘Kids See Ghosts’ was ultimately ranked 7th by the team – it should have been much higher, in my opinion.

“Kids See Ghosts was a collaboration many dreaded. Kanye was in full on pro-Trump mode and headed in a seemingly absurd artistic direction (see the semi-incestuous lyrics of ‘Xtcy’ and, of course, the whole “poop-di-scoop, scoop-diddy-whoop” business ). Meanwhile, Cudi’s discography over the previous 8 or so years was at best unremarkable and at worst farcical. Most significantly perhaps, both were in the midst of deep-seated mental health problems…

But, on the opening track, as Kanye’s maniacal ad-libs echo out like gunshots over bullish industrial drums before seamlessly transitioning into an uplifting bridge that sounds almost like pitched up whale song, it becomes clear these circumstances were treated as opportunities to be seized rather than as obstacles to be avoided.

Kids See Ghosts is a perfect storm, combining Kanye’s frenzied energy and pursuit of artistic perfection with Cudi’s ponderous, melancholic wisdom and enigmatic crooning. The result is a rhapsodic album which is simultaneously mournful and triumphant; Psychedelic yet grounded in the tangible, real life experiences of the two artists. It is a masterpiece from two of Hip Hop’s most scrutinized outsiders.”