It’s beginning to look a lot like the usual bull…

 For those lucky enough to have had some time off over Christmas there will be the bind of having to return, but very quickly the Friday feeling - for ‘conventional’ workers - will be back, but then you wake up on Saturday without the festive bubble, and you admit to yourself that that mould patch on your bedroom ceiling really is spreading a bit, and then there’s the overflowing recycling bin problem because they did the last collection earlier than usual before Christmas but aren’t coming again until the end of the first week of January, and on top of that, you can’t temporarily use the black bin because you missed that collection just before New Year when your sleep was all over the place, as was your awareness of the days, and though back then it was kind of ok as it was still festive, the reality of the situation is now stark, on top of which, you still haven’t got a working car for when your kids return to school and clubs next week, and if all that isn’t enough then you find out that for next Tuesday’s Carabao Cup semi finals, the refs will be asked to announce the VAR’s decisions to the crowd. 

The EFL have taken responsibility for this latest terrorist attack on the game, but no explanation is forthcoming as to whether the announcing (which will presumably take place once the five-minute delays have been concluded) will constitute the same words broadcast on the big screen. They can save it, because I’m not really into explanations, although someone has decided that they are really important, and it will really please the fans, or ‘improve the in-stadium experience’ just like VAR has. 

The truth is the opposite of course, it’s not just an attack on the game but also the fans, whose input into the ‘event’ is further decreasing. The clubs and authorities have done a great job of taking the ownership of match day away from those keeping the game going. We are hosted on arrival by the adrenalin junkie on the PA system, then presented with the theatre of the Premier League music and adornments as the untouchable Gods shake hands, we are invited like 7 year olds to yell back the surname of the player who has just scored, we are encouraged to belt out Sweet Caroline under the illusion it is a feel-good anthem and not an act of crowd control in conjunction with William Hill. 

When Sepp Blatter (whose corrupt-controlled reign at FIFA elicits more dewy-eyed nostalgia with every passing day that Gianni Infantino is in the job) spoke against video replays, arguing that fans moaning about decisions was an essential part of football, he was derided (by Gary Lineker among others) but I honestly think he was promoting community. So many times I’ve been to games and missed why someone was sent off, or not seen how a fight on the pitch started, or even just seen the tail-end of the ball looping into the net. You used to find the answers from other people in the stand or even on the train home, and then you’d rush to see footage of the thing you partly witnessed.

Football is creating more of a distance from the supporters under the guise of serving us. I really wanted to go to the Newcastle game, only to receive the ‘unfortunately’ email that has followed every other home match I have applied to go to this season. For the first time though, I am not disappointed. The announcement announcement came seconds after the ‘unfortunately’ email and served as a consolation amid the despair of EFL’s atrocity. Not getting a ticket I can accept, outright vandalism is tougher to shrug off. 

I can only hope this trial fails. Above the emotional and passionate pleas, how would it even work out for deaf fans, unless we’re enrolling refs on sign language courses? No doubt the additional act will give something else for the front row tourists to film, but I can’t see how else this will do any good.

Football used to put a shield up against the strains of everyday life, but it has been edging towards the other side for a good while now, and we can only rely on Christmas, even with all its marketing excess and reminders of sadness and loneliness and expressions of prejudice around the festive table, that is keeping up its end of the bargain. 

The spirit of Christmas Day gone

 Monday December 30th and the Christmas spirit is with me: I saw an old friend in town today, someone prominent in my life for two years over 2 decades ago, someone who I was only thinking about the other day, and I went over and said hello instead of sneaking past him. He’d been looking away and on his phone so wouldn’t have even noticed if I’d just walked on by, dragged away by my natural avoidance tendency. 

I even took my hood down to reveal myself, and then there we were, reminiscing about shared laughter and the comedy quotes that got us through the tedium of labour when we worked the part time evening shifts at Royal Mail together between 1998-2000. His kids came over after their temporary fairground ride and I said hello to them and his partner. I didn’t take up much of their time, and we bid a fond farewell, my friend joking that we’d bump into each other in a few years from now when he was back in town now that he lives away. 

I went off to complete my store returns in a heightened mood, glad I’d made the effort to make a tribute to a part of my life story. Perhaps I’d been inspired by a lovely night previously, spent with my sister and her girlfriend and my niece, who were visiting from the south coast. Reprising connections nourish the soul if you can overcome the pull against it. 

I don’t always go through with it, though, exemplified in my local supermarket, pre and post Christmas Day. I averted contact with two other significant social buddies of the 90’s and beyond, both from the two Sunday league football teams that were my life back then. Rival teams that I played for and against, like Mo Johnstone and Sol Campbell. On about 23rd, the captain of my first team was with his partner, providing the trolley while she put in the graft. True to his vision on the field, he appeared not to notice me as I skulked off down another aisle. This was nothing against him, just my natural setting. True, I did, in ‘98, take his then girlfriend (not the person in the supermarket) back to my bedroom after a night out and removed my trousers in front of her (you thought I was such a nice boy, didn’t you?) but all that had been ironed out back then (crucially, she’d opted not to cheat on him like he’d cheated on her multiple times), what’s more, I allowed myself this blanking as I’d previously acknowledged him in a prior supermarket encounter, which itself had been inspired by a sighting of him a time before that when I’d avoided him and later felt uncomfortable about it.

Yet, this time on the 23rd, I did end up actually making contact, noting him standing on the end of an aisle, potentially not noticing me, kind of staring into space, but I felt I couldn’t risk it and waved in his direction. He broke out of his trance, waved back, smiled and, hopefully got, by my frenzied put-on expression, that I was too rushed to talk. It wasn’t until today, after speaking with my Royal Mail friend, that I realised I’d missed an opportunity to tell him that it may well have been 30 years to the day that we’d had our inaugural Sunday league team Christmas night out that he’d played a starring role in. 

On Boxing Day, or maybe the day after, a player from the other, more successful team, who I’d  won trophies and gone out on memorable nights out with - including over the last couple of years - was in the same supermarket with his kids, appearing not to see me (a theme?!) in one aisle and then later picking up laundry detergent with his back right to me, as close as we’d been when having our arms round each others necks on the dance floor during £1-a-pint club nights on Monday and Thursdays. The only music playing now was Lucky You by the Lightning Seeds over the sound system, a tune he sang to himself as he walked away back up the aisle without interference from me. Again I forgave myself, as I’d chatted with him in there a couple of months before. I believed myself to be in credit, and I’m sure you agree, so with that cleared up, I’ll change tack and tune in on the Lucky You bit of that riveting story. Not just that song in particular, but the always strangely abrupt ending to the Christmas songs once 25th has passed. I say, keep ‘em coming!

There must be an argument, even if only I am making it, that Mariah and Brenda and WHAM! and Elton etc, (probably not Slade, as they inquire about stockings going up on walls) are better enjoyed after the big day of presents. Before then, the festive songs are just a soundtrack of anxiety to the mass spend, impossible organisation and impending intrusion of relatives insisting that you hear their thoughts on politics and quotas. Get all that out of the way and, if like me this year, there is no upset or tragedy affecting me during the festive period, then the true magic of Christmas, which is its power to catch all the day-to-day stresses in a sack and tie it up, allowing you to watch old festive Top of the Pops from years gone by (1998 is a smasher - Spice Girls, Bewitched, Leanne Rimes and a truly moving performance of No Matter What by Boyzone, interspersed by presenters Kate Thornton, Jayne Middlemiss and Jamie Theakston slap-sticking Jane MacDonald in a Santa outfit) and eat and drink just because it’s there, the wonder of all those Yuletide bangers can be truly appreciated. One year my missus was mildly irked by my wearing of Santa pyjama bottoms throughout the year, and while I’m not condoning that excessive behaviour, I’m still on the Christmas playlist during this (now) most wonderful time of the year. 

The influence of a teenage prodigy

 ‘Southampton versus Brighton & Hove Albion in the Premier League. What is the worst possible way we can treat that derby?’

This was the daunting task befalling Sky Sports’ executive match-ruining committee a few weeks into the season, a responsibility eventually handed down to a work experience  student to properly crown the end of their two-week placement. 

Said 16 year old Joanna Furlong: “I’d sensed that the task was becoming overwhelming for the group, not least after a long day of pressing high against the lounge bar, and like all top temporary staff, I was on my toes waiting for a chance to come my way. I knew that the scheduling of the south coast derby had been the number one item on the agenda, but reading the game like I know I can, it was clear that when my superiors returned to the office they’d become distracted. It can happen, procrastination is the curse of the workplace, be it on site or online, but I was determined it wasn’t going to be my master.’

The tenacious Furlong explained that she had to tap in to flowering leadership skills to get the supporter-averse arrangements over the line.

‘As they came shuffling through the door, puce-faced and boisterous, I decided to make my mark: “It has to be a Friday night. A Friday night derby”, I boomed in front of them, stopping them in their disjointed tracks. “Saturday lunchtime, Monday night, they’ve both got their strengths in belittling the supporters, but with a Friday we can finish their football interest even before the weekend’s started!” 

‘I concluded the argument with growing confidence, and I could tell they were impressed. They went with it in a heartbeat.’

Furlong is warm and engaging during our short interview, happy to talk about her motivations for learning about the dark arts of fixture rescheduling. 

‘I’m only young but I am keen to make a difference’, she added. ‘Sky Sports literally gave me a platform to do that. Before we got involved, Southampton v Brighton & Hove Albion was an eagerly anticipated Saturday 3pm local derby, with folks happy to end the week with a tipple or two in the Friday night hostelries, glad to have packed the working week away and looking forward to the next day’s big game. Excitement would rise on the morning of the match, still time to spend with families and friends or admin, and then maybe head out for a bit of lunch or another tipple or two on route to St Mary’s, just like it always used to be before 1992 (I’ve done my research!) But with just one decision, I managed to change all that: instead, in came the Friday rush hour factor and the opportunity for our loyal subscribing neutrals to flick through the channels and settle down for a bit of reliable old footy. To be responsible for that, well…I have to say it was quite empowering’.

I asked Furlong where she saw herself in twenty years.

‘Well, that’s the question! I have a vision, so many ideas, so many time slots to tap into. The Christmas Day match is there for someone bold enough to implement it, in between the King/Queen’s speech and ‘Enders. Amazon are inching towards it, but I question their ability to go the extra mile. Wherever I end up, I want to be innovative, a trailblazer, a disruptor. And if a work experience student wants to put forward a 1am kick off to pull in the Kuala Lumpar audience, who would I be to not to listen to that?!’

It’s quite clear that Furlong is one to watch for the future. With FIFA president Gianni Infantino set to rename the FIFA Club World Cup the ‘Gianni Infantino Trophy’ (or GIT, for short) by 2029 (or ‘27 if his full dreams are realised) whose to say she won’t have her name on it in years to come?

Growing the game

Cowering in the corner, the Carabao (nee League) Cup is whipped into action this week, serving its sole purpose to ensure that a week doesn’t go by without any football being played, or rather, broadcast. 

There has been talk of the competition being withdrawn, some of it by Pep Guardiola, but how exactly would that help, oh master - surely you can’t be advocating a bit of breathing space for the players and supporters, to actually miss the game for a bit, appreciate it?

What people don’t understand is that if you’ve got a good thing going you have to flog it to death before the subscribers, er supporters, lose interest. You’ve got to create overloads, press to the point of strangulation, bully them with goodness.

More is more, momentum the holding midfielder keeping it all together. It’s about educating people. The Super League revolt was a terrible disappointment, and a sad indictment of the average fan’s intelligence. It’s like they don’t want to be force-fed Real Madrid v Juventus twice a season every season! Just harming themselves really. Some people are even against the FIFA Club World Cup! You’d think they’d be grateful to have something on in the summer while we hang around every other year waiting for a World Cup or a Euros or a Copa America or an AFCON or a Confederation Cup. Think of the boost to economies. Of employment. More travel, more accommodation, more games, more pundits - more opinion creating more emotion. Another underwhelming Spurs or Aston Villa player from the 2000s having their scripted say. Can people not see the social media rollercoaster? It’s a tornado of football comment; it’s so clear people need this, yet some choose to deny themselves, to deny others. Only today there have been millions of posts on the subject of injured players.

Sky Sports provides the perfect model. Listen to friend of the game, and friend of the world, Richard Keys, reassuring viewers tuning in for the inaugural Monday Night Premier League episode (Season One.) “Depressing Mondays are a thing of the past”. Now look, we have Friday Night football, 12:30 Saturday football, 5:30 Saturday football, not to mention the enlarged European feasts spread throughout the week - a working week that now brings comfort instead of overrated anticipation. There was once an advert, in between a comedy sketch show, highlighting all the football all of the time. Values that chime perfectly with the modern day.

Reductions should only be made when necessary, and you can see that the Carabao Cup is proof that sacrifices have been made, two-legged games cut, replays banished. It’s a two-way process. We listen. We understand our cherished top teams need to rest the top players so that they are ready for that beautiful expansion of those European games. There’s examples of this in the FA Cup too, a competition where fan priority is again evident: it is there, in the hotly anticipated draw for the next round taking place while the current round is still ongoing. None of that preposterous stuff of (thankfully) old, making people crowd round a radio on a Monday lunchtime - nearly 48 hours after the last piece of action - as if in some desperate scramble for bread. One vision of the future is to stop games mid-flow to make that draw, perhaps during a VAR check. We know there are tedious critics of the VAR system, and once more, here’s a solution. Hear it again: the FA Cup draw read out during a VAR check. It’s mind-blowing, I know.

It’s also called growing the game.

Something borrowed, something claret and blue

 Is the Aston Villa team that beat Bayern Munich 1-0 at Villa Park in the Champions League on Wednesday better than the Aston Villa eleven who beat Bayern Munich 1-0 in Rotterdam to win the 1982 European Cup Final?

Comparing eras is difficult, I understand, (during his co-commentary of England-Argentina at France ‘98, Kevin Keegan said that after a period of even five years such a thing was pointless, let alone forty two), and for a start this year’s Villa have entered the competition after a fourth placed finish in the Premier League, while the ‘82 vintage went in as champions of the First Division (the only other English club joining them was Liverpool, courtesy of having won the cup the previous season.)

You could argue that finishing fourth behind the Manchester City empire and an Arsenal team just two points behind them, followed by a good Liverpool, was as equal to the achievement of winning the top flight in ‘82, but it’s not just budget and power that’s the difference, it’s also about not being allowed to get pissed in the build up to the biggest game of your life or, as Ken McNaught did, go on a long run the night before it. Different times, different tools, different culture.

The names of the players involved in the goals perhaps underlines the disparity: Gary Shaw (RIP) to Tony Morley to Peter Withe in Rotterdam, Pau Torres to Jhon Duran in Birmingham. Withe’s shot went in off the post despite him being only a few yards out; Manuel Neuer was caught out being 20 yards removed from the goal line. 

Bayern, for once, didn’t win the Bundersliga last season - didn’t even come second - and would you say Harry Kane is as effective as Karl-Heinz Rummenigge? Is Joshua Kimmick at the same level as Paul Breitner? Seems it is good not to compare and just enjoy the respective eras. But you can, though, appreciate the echoes of Emiliano Martinez’s save-heavy performance standing between victory and something else on Wednesday, just as the largely unknown Nigel Spink did when coming off the bench for the injured Jimmy Rimmer to keep Bayern at bay in the 1982 Final. Martinez undoubtedly has a bigger ego than Spink, but he also owes the surge in his career to an injury, sustained by Arsenal’s then No.1 Bernd Leno at Brighton & Hove Albion in the Covid-hit season of 2019-20, which introduced the 27 year old perennial loanee/ reserve Martinez to Arsenal’s first team, impressing as they went on to win the FA Cup under Mikel Arteta, who had replaced the sacked Unai Emery in November, a situation that has suited both parties, with Emery now leading Villa back to the grand stage via a successful rehabilitation at Villarreal. 

The season that Villa won the European Cup, they finished 11th in the league but won the Super Cup against UEFA Cup winners Barcelona. The following season they went out in the Champions Cup quarter final to the Juventus of Platini and Boniek and most of the Italian World Cup winning team, including top scorer in ‘82 and European Footballer of the Year, Paolo Rossi, who was substituted in the Final that they lost to West Germans Hamburg thanks to a goal by Felix Magath, former boss of Fulham, where Leno now plays in goal. Four years later, Villa were relegated, a jet-propelled decline that would later be matched by Blackburn Rovers (Premier League winners 94-95, relegated 98-99) and Leicester City (Premier League winners 2015-16, relegated 2022-23.)

Two seasons after Leicester’s title win, Hamburg were relegated from the Bundersliga for the first time in their history, but perhaps one day there will be a Champions League match-up between themselves and Juventus - a 1-0 win for the home side maybe. Impossible though it seems for a Villa or a Hamburg to win their respective leagues, the modern format at least gives hope for romantic reunions, if only because it’s in the past that romance exclusively lives. 

A foul red card but I’m above it all

 The Big Controversy involved an Arsenal player this weekend just gone, one that went against the Arsenal player involved, in the first match of said weekend. It turned the game and cost Arsenal the lead at home to Brighton & Hove Albion, emulating Arsenal’s second game at home last season when they also ‘dropped’ two points at home to Fulham.

Following that 2-2 draw with Marco Silva’s side back then, I resigned myself to the reality that Arsenal wouldn’t win the league, because you don’t get pegged back at home to mid-table opposition, conceding two very avoidable goals, if you claim to have a chance of usurping Manchester City. As it turned out, the title challenge went right to the last day, so although I was right, I was also premature, which is likely after just three games into a season.

Thomas Partey was blamed for one of the Fulham goals, or rather his positioning as stand-in right back (centre back Gabriel was kept on the sidelines with Saudi interest alive, and usual right back, Ben White, moved over to cover him), and this weekend Partey was again blamed, this time in his customary midfield role, for allowing the goalscorer Joao Pedro to run off him and equalise. 

Partey’s midfield partner Rice had been sent off minutes earlier, the victim of a Letter of the Law red card, already on a yellow and nudging a rolling ball away that Jan Veltman conveniently missed and followed through on Rice, felling him and prompting Chris Kavanagh, the kind of man who gives the impression he hangs around bars judging women while holding his pint over his mouth and smirking, to send the Arsenal man off.

I was of course fuming when I heard about this, no, seething (if that’s a stronger emotion), as the injustice gathered pace, twinned with news that Pedro hadn’t been cautioned for booting the ball away in the first half. This was just the thing I said would be beneath me in the summer.

My righteous indignation may be devalued by the fact that, three days on from the incident, I still haven’t seen footage of it. Other people, like lapsed West Ham fans or those catching the first half before heading out to the Bescot or glory-hunting Man U supporters (ha!) will have seen the whole darn shooting match live on whatever self-serving shit-stirring channel the match was on. But not me, an actual fan of the home team, caught up in (pleasurable) trips to Adventure Golf on the Watford bypass, Oriental food courts in Collindale and all-series reruns of The Americans and early starts for the beach. I’m in the ballot for Southampton at home in October. Couldn’t get Leicester City for late September, but let’s hope once more. 

I may watch it tonight, though time is ticking. Everyone else’s rage or mirth is wearing off. I remember a Saturday in 96-97, knowing Arsenal had lost at struggling Nottm Forest, managed for the first time by Stuart Pearce, with Ian Wright sent off and Dad directing me to Arsene Wenger’s words on teletext, gearing us up for the outpouring of ire on Match of the Day. It was then quite disappointing to see that Wright did actually bash Alfie-Inge Haaland and there wasn’t much to cry about. It was tempting to see Haaland, like Ole Gunnar Solskjaer back then, as a menacingly evil Scandy noire, and when you see how upset he made Roy Keane, perhaps there’s something in it. But then the fact Keane and Wright were involved…it’s not clear-cut. How do they manage praising Erling Haaland, I wonder. At least ITV don’t have much football, and Norway don’t qualify for any tournaments. 

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I’ve seen the incident now and it’s a farce. The non-booking for Joao Pedro makes it almost comical, like the Guimaraes elbow-to-the-head assault on Jorginho that went unpunished last season. When Arsenal next get a massive helping hand like that, I will reference it. Hopefully it’s in the next league game, at Spurs, after that most treasured of fortnights, the international break. For now, I hope the 5 year old Brighton manager presides over an astonishing derailment of form that sees his whinging, cheating little babies relegated to the championship. 

Sometimes you have to allow a bit of perspective in.

Back for Good: The ‘new’ season

 “I don’t know know what we were doing last night”, said the Spurs fan in the row of desks in front of me on Tuesday morning. 

Yes, the new football season is back, a full half an hour since the last one ended. The gate is never really locked, only ever tentatively closed so that the transfer speculation and the friendlies can gain easy access. The Back to the Football signs have long since been dispensed with. 

“I don’t how much longer he’ll last”, the Spurs fan moaned on, his team’s surrender of a one-goal lead at newly-returned to the Prem Leicester City placed firmly at the door of manager Ange Postecoglou, a man who found Spurs in the gutter last summer, saw their all-time leading goalscorer leave and yet still drove them on to 5th place and European qualification with a brand of To Dare is To Do football. 

“When you’ve been watching the game for fifty years, you know it isn’t over” the Spurs fan added. Good to know that he’s picked something up from that half-century of hearing full-time whistles.

Once upon a time, the anticipation of a new season was heightened by the absence of any football news in the summer, when May-mid July gave way to tennis and cricket and when even a few paragraphs given over to the most popular game in the world would be treasured and probably re-read. 

Eventually, the goals would go back up over the local park and then there would be photos of new signings in new kits, soon followed by some 6-2 wins over non-league sides in the west coast. I can still recall the thrill of seeing Viv Anderson, scarf aloft in Arsenal’s 84-85 number at Highbury, where the new youth team coach was Pat Rice, another esteemed right back. What excitement was promised. And when the season started, Arsenal went top in September, and then beat the unbeatable Liverpool. 

“They might win something this year”, said my Spurs-supporting grandad.

You can’t hold back reality for ever, though, and League Cup embarrassment at Division 2 Oxford United in November was eclipsed by FA Cup humiliation at Division 3 York City in January. But at least I had the thrill of late summer and early autumn. 

The new signings for Brentford this summer won’t have been captured in the club’s new attire, the west London side proving the exception to the Premier league rule by keeping the previous seasons’, a commendable move, but one perhaps offset by a gambling company being emblazoned on it. Star striker Ivan Toney’s future at the club is unclear at the moment. 

Arsenal in 2024-25 have a black 2nd kit and a light blue 3rd one, and still wear Visit Rwanda on their sleeves while playing in the Emirates Stadium. But they will challenge Manchester City again this season, and the Abu Dhabi project may finally face the consequences of those actions that have led to the 115 charges that have become something of a cult  worship around the Etihad. 

You see how it gets you, these new seasons?