Eerie Silence: The Mighty vs Sunderland

Thursday: 

I'm looking forward to this one. I really enjoyed the atmosphere the Tranmere fans brought and our second half performance in the last game. Sunderland are still in the mix and they'll bring the biggest away following of the year so it should be a cracking atmosphere. The away game was the point after which everything seemed to go wrong and it seems a lot more than 3 months ago.

Dear Neil. Please don't be Roy. Thanks.

It'll be interesting to see if Neil 'I hope he doesn't turn out to be Roy Evans' Critchley will go for a more pragmatic approach or will favour 'we'll score one more than you' - I hope for the latter but the fact we don't score very often might be our undoing. Still, it's probably in our interests to create a defined style and play to it and then recruit to suit that, given as there's not much to play for.

Friday: 

I'm starting to get slight second thoughts about the game but I'm reassured by my mate's confidence in the fact that 'it's outside, so you'll be ok' and I weight it up against the crime of 'going to the pub' or 'going to work' and I think it'll probably be ok. Won't it? The fact it might be the last game for a while has a lot of sway. It'll be fine. I'll just not breathe.

Friday part 2: 

The game is off. It's a weird day. It's like what we've all been pretending isn't going to happen is happening.

Saturday: 

The radio is full of confusion as people try to work out what will happen to football and how we can ensure the league is completed or at least prizes and punishments divied up fairly. I'm all for coin tossing. If it's good enough for a world cup it should be good enough for the humble Football League.

I can't bring myself to feel *actually sorry* for Liverpool. Martin from Slough is probably calling in to TalkSport right now to explain how he's watched all the games he can on Sky and even once rearranged a badminton match so he could follow his 'beloved' side. In my heart of hearts though, I reckon it must be a bit shit to spend a lot of money, following them home and away and then to get nothing.

I'm surprised no one suggests a few days of five a side matches to sort it out. Or 40 minute matches, like when the Football league managed an entire 16 team tournament in 2 days.

The Mercantile Credit Trophy 1988-89

It's depressing to hear all the talk of legal challenges. It's a no win situation. Stop it now and the teams who go up or down haven't really earned the right. Void the league and everyone doing well is left with a sense of deep unfairness. Force the games to be played in the middle of what could be an unprecedented modern health crisis and you have to wonder about the priorities of the people in charge of the league. Insist on finishing it after the crisis and given the experiences of countries further down this grim curve, you'd wonder how long we can wait to sort it all out. We've been going since 1888 and I don't know of an instance of overlapping one season into the next.

We're implored to think of the impact - It's a business and all that. I'm not especially aware of the circumstance around 1914-15 or 1939-40 but I can't imagine many legal challenges were launched then.

We're warned by sage expert pundits about 'of course, the clubs will look to protect their interests' and by that, we know that means everyone wanting to grab the prize money that is due or protect themselves from losses in revenue by preventing relegation.

This is what happens when a sport becomes a business. It's always had money in it. From almost the very beginning but never has the winning and losing mattered so much in financial terms. It was never about making money like this. It certainly isn't Corinthian. Today's non visitors provide a lesson in the history of money in the game. What can be said for sure - their wild spending in the 1950s wasn't in the hope of securing 'broader revenue streams' and ensuring 'a next level financial portfolio' - It was the pursuit of glory and nothing more.

That's where the game has changed within my lifetime. Glory alone is not enough.

It's perhaps worth reflecting on where we began with all this. St Domingos church football club became Everton. Newton Heath Railway workers became Manchester United, Blackpool FC were formed in a pub. By some blokes.

It's hard to imagine some blokes in the pub, some Scouse church goers or a bunch of lads from the railway depot thinking of legal action as the first resort to a Victorian public health crisis.

The debate over the next few weeks and months will be endless. Fairness will be cited time and time again as if football is fair.

As if the teams at the top haven't colluded to break down a system that ensured money coming into the game was distributed fairly. As if those teams didn't force a break away that screwed over everyone else. As if those teams didn't create a self perpetuating system of champions league prize money that kept them at the top and guaranteed qualification the next. As if they aren't financed to the hilt by global corporations whilst the rest of us deal with local butchers shops and taxi firms.

I think, as I listen to some ex pro talking about the 'integrity of the league,' of the story of the Scottish footballers employed in non jobs in mills to get around the rules against professionalism, being paid just to sit in the office whilst people were getting their fingers lopped off and arms mangled by machinery for a fifth of their wage. I think about the way the beauty of everyone kicking off at the same time on a Saturday or Tuesday has gone out the window on the alter of TV money and how it seems next year there's plans for yet another pointless European league to add yet more games that no one but sponsors and telly want.

I marvel at how much time they spend on this conundrum without one of them going a bit mad and telling the rest to shut the fuck up.

I think about how football was conceived as a game primarily to entertain the players. How it grew into a national obsession on the basis of being the best game in the world to both play and watch. How it is still, at its heart that same game but how it's weighed down by legalise and business.

I marvel sometimes at how fans seem as enthused and passionate about the commercial activities of the club as what happens in the actual game.

I think about lengthy threads I've read online dissecting marketing and commercial operations of various clubs, of the fascination with contracts, wages and the clubs 'standing' in the media or twittersphere. I think of something I heard about how Manchester United fans are ashamed of how Old Trafford isn't as plush as some of their new money rivals. I wonder what they'd make of the old Bloomfield Road or, for that matter, of just about any of the pre Taylor report grounds.

I wonder when football became a destination, an experience, a consumer choice on par with a hotel chain or an expensive restaurant and not just a place you went to watch the football.

I decide I can't think of this any more. There's no football and none of this is football.

- Give Liverpool an engraved clock for a good effort. At least they can keep it.
- Acknowledge that Blackpool's 1939 100% record is better.
- Sort out how to keep clubs alive...
- Switch off the radio and wait for something to actually happen.

Recognise that football is meaningless and unfair and ultimately pointless. Know that we'll all burn up in the dying sun anyway in the long term. No one will care about the unfinished season then.

It's ghostly quiet. It's like summer but without cricket.

At least we've got panic buying to talk about.

Strange times.

UTMP