That's the conundrum for me this weekend, prompted by the action on the Premiership pitches, but also by the passing away of George Best, who was of course duly commemorated with respectful and not so respectful silences (and then by a minute's applause instead) before each weekend kick-off. Besty was obviously calling in a few favours from upstairs while watching all this, as his influence from beyond the grave seems to have helped on all of his former teams.
I am, I think, very slightly the wrong age to really remember anything definite about Best as a player, though some of the grainy footage put out in this weekend's various tribute programmes indicates that I'd have probably taken notice if I had ever seen him play in the flesh. So it prompted me to check if I might have done. For some reason, I'd had an idea that he was a Fulham player at the time I first got into football, but fishing out my well-thumbed Panini Football 80 sticker album from the loft today, it seems my memory was playing tricks on me as he wasn't in its Craven Cottage team - although a youthful Peter Marinello was, and the top half of the same (second division) page 51 had a Chelsea side managed by Geoff Hurst.
Googling away, it seems that sticker album must have been printed while Best was either with the Fort Lauderdale Strikers (1978-79) or the San Jose Earthquakes (1980-81), neither of which a ten year old Londoner without a passport was ever likely to see - the mention of him playing for Hibernian in between the two American sides also being belied by his absence from the almost without exception goon-like Hibs squad on page 62. Incidentally, I recall that at the time it was very unpopular with the swaps aficionados of the North London playgrounds that Scottish Premier teams were included in the Panini album, even at two players per sticker, because they added nothing of interest to the book and meant it cost a lot more to complete - the fact that this decision didn't even deliver a half-sticker appearance for Best which I could have scanned into this week's update some quarter of a century later has done nothing to dispel that early opinion.
So in the absence of seeing him for myself, I have always had the second-hand opinions of others (albeit many, many others) to tell me how George Best was a great player, like with Pele or Di Stefano, and I imagine that in twenty years' time I'll be boring people silly with descriptions of just how good some of the current players were to see in the flesh - actually, that might be a bit conservative given the comments to follow below! - whereas the only Best I actually really saw live was that of a fairly gaunt-looking Soccer Saturday panellist. On this evidence, it's probably better to remember him for how he started - including destroying Eusebio's Benfica to become "el Beatle", winning the European Cup against the same team a couple of years on, chipping the ball off Gordon Banks' boot for the greatest goal that never was and so on - rather than how he finished, which I think is well enough understood that I needn't spoil the mood by itemising his latter-day failings.
Back to the Premiership of today, then, and Saturday's matches were also all about finishing, the wins for Arsenal (over Blackburn), Chelsea (over managerless Pompey), Liverpool (away at Man City), Villa (at home to Charlton), Birmingham (away at luckless Sunderland) and Spurs (at Wigan) all coming about courtesy of very well-struck finishes which occasionally made the scorelines unrepresentative of the overall games.
Arsenal's 3-0 was especially true in this regard, Fabregas striking early on, Henry first-timing a sublime Pires pass across Friedel with the outside of his boot, and capped off by a wonderous van Persie dribbling run through the ever-petulant Robbie Savage's late challenge and a curling chip back in off the far post. Yet Blackburn were in the game throughout, being denied several times by a determined Lehmann, and on one occasion by Robert Pires on the line, while my grandmother from Dublin would have been more effective at left back than Pascal Cygan, and she's been dead since the year after that Panini album came out.
Crespo's intercepted finish to give Chelsea a lead they would never relinquish at Fratton Park was not only deliberate but brilliant, while Lampard struck the penalty that actually was given for one of the many fouls on Joe Cole with aplomb, and he certainly should have had another one to attempt shortly thereafter. At Eastlands, Riise struck a thunderbolt to settle the match in Liverpool's favour, and though the result was acceptable for the visitors, I thought I saw some notable signs that Crouch's barren
spell in front of goal has begun to weigh on his team-mates - Gerrard opting to try a curler rather than pass to the unmarked beanpole, Cisse's disgusted expression when substituted instead of Crouch, though that could admittedly equally well have been because of the fact he was having to trudge off the field to permit Kewell to come on.
Davis's strike for Villa was well taken after a number of venomous shots had come back off the woodwork, while at the Stadium of Light, the meeting between the Premiership's worst two clubs (19th and 20th in the table, both having lost their preceding five games in a row) was settled in Birmingham's favour by Julian Gray's poacher's finish after the Black Cats keeper could only parry Walter Pandiani's header. At the JJB, Spurs had an easier time of their visit than had their North London neighbours the previous week, De Zeeuw's airshot of a clearance letting in Robbie Keane for a soft opener, while Edgar Davids trotted forward over the halfway line and was left unchallenged the length of the pitch before shooting home once he'd run out of breath. This week, with Camara quiet until the death, when the rebound of his shot was tapped in for a consolation goal, Wigan were reduced for most of the game to long range off-target Kavanagh efforts which were as unlikely to go in as his hairdresser was to get a prize for artistic impression.
I've been tapping this commentary while watching Everton-Newcastle in progress, and I had been thinking that Newcastle were hard-done by to have been behind, considering they'd had a goal-bound shot cleared off the line by a Toffee hand just before half-time, only for Yobo to power home a header at that same end just after the restart, while arguably climbing for it on the shoulder of his marker. However, in what was already becoming a "tasty" game, the fact that the ostensibly responsible captain Shearer saw fit to briefly check were Weir was before elbowing him in the throat, has caused me to change my mind - Moyes and co did indeed deserve all three points, if only in recompense for that one cynical act.
The same was true of Manchester United at the Boleyn Ground, despite the oddity of a first minute sweeping move by the Hammers which exposed an amazing degree of miscommunication at the heart of the visitors' defence, and despite the heroics of former Old Trafford keeper Roy Carroll, who improbably maintained a clean sheet throughout the first half at least. Second half goals from Rooney and O'Shea turned the scoreline around, however, and ensured a clean sweep of results for former George Best clubs this weekend, or at least as far as I'm aware - Fulham having beaten Bolton in a slightly earlier kick-off (Diouf managing to get himself red-carded after the final whistle), Bournemouth of League One having dispatched the MK Dons 2-0 on Saturday, and even Hibernian securing a win despite their opponents being outgoing champions Rangers (who also ended the game with 10 men). I have no information about the recent results of Fort Lauderdale or San Jose, if indeed they still exist.
Oh, and in the final Premiership match of the weekend, Middlesbrough saved a point from a more than deserving West Brom side in a seesaw game due to a second half penalty dispatched with aplomb by Yakubu.