The mighty vs the irritant.

I find a certain difficulty in my relationship with Fleetwood Town FC. I like the place (Fleetwood itself) a lot. There's a lot to like about it. I lived there. I lived there because I didn't want to live in Blackpool. I am a major advocate for the qualities of Fleetwood, which include, in no particular order,

- a stunning view from the beach.
- the North Euston Hotel - thus named because for a period, Fleetwood was the terminus of the West Coast Main Line.

- the best chippies in the world, bar none.
- A fascinating set of architectural gems, it being a largely planned town, designed by Decimus Burton consisting of Georgian Style terraces, gardens and man made lakes and amazing streets of terraced houses, each one distinct from each other with it's own architectural flourishes.  I'm not joking when I say, if Saltaire is a World Heritage Site, why is Fleetwood almost unknown? 

- An inland lighthouse, for no apparent reason. 

- A certain quality, that cannot quite be defined, but that is best explained by my mate asking me once 'Why is it 1974 here?' 

- Lots of other reasons.

Yet, I cannot extend that warmth to their football team. It's not hatred, or even dislike, it's just a sort of irritation. A shrug that disguises anxiety. A pretended nonchalance. 

It's not that I'm bothered that they seem to have a desire to deliberately court notoriety and bad boy chic in signing up Joey Barton and Ched Evans. Barton is what he is and Evans is a very good player. It's football, not the moral maze and everyone loves a good villain at the theatre.

It's not that I genuinely fear them - they've will find their ceiling very soon. In a way it's admirable and realistic what they've done - investing in training and community facilities and a tight, neat ground, bringing something to a town that frankly makes Hull seem positively metropolitan (I also like Hull) - It's a far cry from the ego driven madness of the Reynolds Arena for example.

Yet, never the less, they are problematic - they're Accrington Stanley without the milk advert and the heroic back story and the midas touch of John Colman. There's a whiff of Gretna FC about them - there because of the backer and not a lot else. They're not Yeovil or Dagenham and Redbridge, or even Morecambe. They're a bit of a construct. Plucky little moneybags Fleetwood.

That said, fair enough - all teams at some stage or other were 'a bit of a construct' - The teams we now romanticise as 'proper old fashioned clubs' were once the playthings of money men - Sunderland, nothing more down to earth and real than them, were 'The Bank of England Club' - Preston played fast and lose with the registration rules and fielded a team made up almost entirely of exotic foreigners (Scotsmen) and gave them fake jobs at the mills owned by their board as recompense to dodge accusations of excess professionalism, the first £100 transfer was pretty swiftly followed by the first £1000 transfer to the chagrin of the authorities and a press who viewed all this money and professionalism as terribly distasteful so, really, who are we to sniff at the new money and claim to be football aristocrats? (Even if we have history and tradition and won the greatest FA Cup final of all time, provided England captains, can claim 2 of only 22 men to ever be part of an English World Cup winning squad as well as possibly the greatest winger of all history anywhere ever and that's leaving out Jimmy Hampson, Stan Mortenson, that Micky Walsh goal, being robbed of the league title by Hitler and all the rest of it)

I think what it is, is that they are a bit like your little brother, wanting to come on a night out. You've got all your mates and you're off into town and then along comes your little brother insisting he can come too. You just don't want him there. He has a few drinks and he starts to join in with the banter and it just grates a bit. It's not that you hate him all the time, it's just that you don't want to have to deal with him right now, not here. A few drinks more and he is now getting feisty and giving it this and that, and you really want to just wait till he goes to the gents and leg it, because you can't be bothered with him at all. If he'd only know his place, you'd be able to get on very well.

The next bit only works if you've watched the second season of 'The Wire'. If you haven't you can skip it. 

Think Ziggy from 'The Wire'. That's Fleetwood Town FC. 

Blackpool, Preston, Bolton, Burnley, Blackburn are all drinking at the bar, Wigan are on the other side, still viewed with slight suspicion having only worked at the docks for 15 years, compared to the lifetimes of the other lot - but grudgingly accepted by now as long as they remember their place. Then there's Fleetwood, showing off, taking the piss, dancing on the bar with his pants round his ankles, behaving with no sense of decorum or tradition or understanding of the fact that if they carry on like that, they'll get a slap from one of the big, burly old time Stevedores. 

Not the bar from 'The Wire'

The Wire reference is over now. 

Anyway - the convoluted opening is to basically say, until we are out of the same division as them, it's a bit like an annual commitment to playing one of those arcade games where you have to hit stuff with a mallet - they pop up once a year, we knock them down, but then, there they are again. All flares and drums and desperate to be taken seriously. And you know what?

We hate Preston. We all hate Preston. Stand up if you hate PRESTON.

The game seemed a bit stodgy to begin with. It struggled to get going, it was rugged, without really being a proper needle match. We got stuck in, they got stuck in but nothing much went right. Then, a ball from the right, Matty Virtue found some space, miscontrolled it but it dropped to Liam Feeney who belted a diagonal shot home, just reward for being essentially fucking brilliant all year.

Then it seemed we'd score more, Fleetwood just weren't on their game - they were overrun in midfield and we, despite not looking quite as fluent as we can (Gnanduillet seemed a bit rusty after a few games out) found it quite easy going. A couple of beautiful runs from Delfouneso came to nothing, but begged the question of why a player with his close control and ability to explode from a languid trot into a slaloming firework of a dribble has achieved as little as he has. There's no one I want to succeed more with us.

Matty Virtue - who I like more and more each week for his endeavour and willingness to try something from time to time threw himself at a near post ball from Feeney and the ball squirted over the top.

Fleetwood got a bit more control of the game and half time came with a feeling that maybe, we should have scored more.

Not to worry, though because second half, Sullay KaiKai (when he's good he's outrageous, when he's not, he's invisible) squeezed a free kick that looked like a cross straight into the corner of the net and  now we're flying.

The bloke a few rows down is giving it large to Joey, who is stood in his technical area dressed in his weird outfit and 'trademark' cap that makes him look like a cross between a redneck trucker and a skier.

Then, from the left, Pool get free, there's space and time for a delicious cross and time stands still as Big Armand (now linking up play beautifully having had a quick brasso rub from Phil Horner at half time and definitely free of any rust) leaps about 12 feet in the air and nods it in. Only diving headers are better than proper strikers headers at the far post and we're all singing the big man's name because he's mint. Now, there's a Fleetwood fan on the pitch and we can't really even be bothered with the animosity and to be honest, it's quite good fun as the stewards seem baffled by his decision to run and to also change direction when one of them comes near, then there's two Blackpool fans who get fed up with watching him run free and run on and take him down, then the Fleetwood fans want a scrap and it's all a bit feisty but also a bit like when a small dog barks at a big dog and finally the game is off again... 

Now we're utter class. Jay Spearing is dictating things, Matty Virtue is flicking things into the path of oncoming players, Gnanduillet is nimble, strong and lithe, gliding around like he owns the place. Fonz and Sullay are running at them, creating back peddling chaos and when they get the ball, Big Ben Heneghan who is fucking mint is calmly martialling things, pointing, keeping the line tight and heading everything, seeming two cuts above.

It's like when we had them in the cup and LuaLua destroyed them. It's the natural order restored.

Then they score. 

And suddenly it's all a bit tense for a bit as they remember they can play. Madden and Evans link and move, their full backs push on and suddenly they pass crisply, are all triangles, movement, sharpness and we get tetchy. 'Larry! Where are the subs!?' 'Larry, if you're good for one thing, it's making a game killing defensive sub!' 'Larry!'

Of course, Larry responds, because in Larry we trust and the game is killed, What's left of about 4% of Fleetwood's population file off home on the 14 or the tram and there's no repeat of the grandstanding of last year, no bus windows kicked out and thankfully no equine horror stories.

We're delighted and relieved. It's the 'not a derby annual match against out most local football league team' that we REALLY don't want to lose and we won, quite easily. But it's not the gloating ecstasy that would come with a win over PNE or Bolton. It's just a sense of a job done that needed to be done.

So all is well and I can go back to generally quite liking Fleetwood (the place) for at least another few months. 

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What is the best thing?

My lad asked me what was my favourite thing about football. It's obviously goals. You'd have to be a hipster fool to say it wasn't goals. They're really good. I like headers in general, I love a good flick on, I'm all about a booming defensive header, but a headed goal is great - I especially like downward headers from crosses from the byline, where the winger took it right to the chalk before whipping it in. The absolute best goals are without question diving headers and it's my unproven theory that diving headers are less prevalent today than they once were.

That's possibly because one of my formative football memories was the 1987 FA Cup final. The picture below says it all.



Even though Andy Carroll is obviously not very good at modern football, nor is he very fashionable, I really like the fact he looks like he might launch himself, like a cannonball, like one of those bullets with an evil face from Mario and make contact with the ball at just the right time, flying horizontally, defying gravity, all momentum, suddenly finding a different dimension, literally playing a different level, a weird zone between your standard heights of kicking and conventional heading.

I like the way you can't actually defend against a diving header. You can't tackle it and usually it would be impossible to react with a counter diving header as the change in direction required to do it would be impossible to execute in the time available. They're like a glitch in a computer game, an unstoppable piece of magic that evokes some kind of buried generational memory of Dixie Dean or Len Shackleton, launching themselves at a rain soaked medicine ball, then crashing down on to the turf, before rising to shake hands like real men, perhaps allowing themselves a little skip in their step as the trot back for the kick off if they felt especially frisky.

The second best thing? That's obviously when an outfield player goes in goal. Substitute keepers was a terrible idea, denying us the chance to appreciate what it looks like when one of the players doesn't really know what they're doing. The outfield player in goal is absolutely the embodiment of the fan on the pitch. Your average supporter can probably run like a footballer, they can make out like they're following the ball, tracking back, doing that little sideways funny running jog they do, but when the ball comes near them, the result is panic. That's when the imposter gets found out. The outfield player turned keeper is the same, spitting on the gloves, clapping their hands, squatting on their haunches on the edge of the box, pointing, holding their gloves up to their mouth to amplify shouting - all of this is good. Yet when the opposition forward runs at them, they look like they'll fall over their own legs as they back pedal, when the corner swings in, they run out too far, or retreat under the crossbar and hope things just turn out ok. How can you not love the sight of a professional player, baffled, looking like a kid who turned up for the wrong exam, for a class he doesn't take but decided to give it a go anyway.

Who ever came up with the substitute goalie idea is a killjoy. Nothing less. It's like outlawing bowlers from batting in cricket or not having Formula One in the rain - there's a great joy in seeing a bit of incompetence and the fact it's not 'fair' or 'spoils the quality' is missing the point to the extent that I don't think whoever did that actually likes football at all.

I also really like long throws. I like they way they transform the mundanity of a throw in to an exciting moment. I like industrial, rough teams who upset everyone by being good at just two things and I like it when one of them is a long throw. I like the feeling of dread you get when another team turns up and everything seems to be going fine, they don't seem especially good, then you discover their full back can throw it 45 yards and you know that your cultured, classy passing side, with its balance of flair and industry is fucked. Largely because one lad can chuck it at the head of a big lad and your defence will melt and then your team will lose all ability to string passes together, all because they've got this one lad who can hurl a ball. It's deadly - it's rare enough that I assume teams don't actually practice against them that much. Corners are really over rated, they never caused anywhere near as much chaos as the strange catapult effect that a long throw practitioner achieves.

I really don't know why their aren't more players who can do long throws.

Same as I don't know why on earth teams do that short goal kick stuff. That just seems to be some sort of football homeopathy - it's based on some kind of belief, but I have no idea how it's supposed to actually work. How is giving the ball to the full back who is two yards next to the goal keeper going to help? Don't come at me with your 'ah, but it helps draw the other team on you see and stretches the midfield allowing your player to drop into the space' - it's nonsense, faddish rubbish with no actual basis in evidence. It should be swiftly outlawed to prevent its spread. It's one thing Pep doing it, with his incredible almost wizard like tactical nous of managing the best, richest team in each division, then amazingly winning stuff with them all whilst managing to wear clothes, but quite another when Barnsley do it.

Mel Machin, who isn't the Barnsley manager anymore but who, for the purposes of the narrative, you will have to believe still is. The picture above will help you picture the action that follows to some extent. You will have to imagine Mel's facial expressions other than this one, which will do for the first part of the action, but which you'll later be invited to imagine are more emotional and expressive of his inner existential angst. 

I am willing to bet, if you stopped the game and asked every single Barnsley player, 'why?' they'd not have an answer. I'd like to then see the Barnsley manager (who hasn't been Mel Machin for some considerable time, but lets just say it is as I can't be arsed looking up to see if they've still got that exotic lad who had a scrap with Joey Barton) brought on to the pitch, stood in the centre circle and then the referee given a microphone, the floodlights dimmed and a single spotlight illuminating the sports coated manager. The crowd would fall silent as the referee asks

"Mel Machin, former Barnsley manager in real life, current Barnsley manager in this hypothetical situation - I want to ask you one question and one question only...(pause)... that one question is ...(second pause)... 'why the fuck are you telling your team to do that shit passing it to the full back at a goal kick thing?'

Mel Machin would shuffle, his hands in his early 90s Umbro sports jacket (he has to trawl ebay to get them, it's costing him the earth) - he'd look down at his fat late 80s style club tie and his grey slip on faux leather shoes he sometimes wears when he goes and plays a game of snooker and thinks to himself 'I'm tired - I've been managing Barnsley in this imaginary world for about 25 years, maybe more and I just don't have an answer any more...' before mumbling

"I dunno, I just thought... I... Look... I dunno - I just saw Man City doing it ok? I just saw it and I said to the lads to do it, they just nodded and carried on chewing gum and flicking each other ears and stuff and I don't have a footballing reason why! - Is that what you wanted? Me to say that? Me to admit I just did it because other people do? Is that was this? All a set up to have a go at me? To laugh at the incongruity of funny old alliterative named yesterday's reletively minor footnote in football management history Mel Machin? Eh?"

Mel Machin's Mel Machin face would be red, his voice rising, his anger at having to explain, week after week after week, the same things, the same problems, the same frustrations. He's tired. Tired of football and tired of trotting out the same cliche's and tired of having the hope kicked out him every year. Mel Machin just lets go...

"I did because I thought it would look good! OK? I fucking did it because of that. Ok? Like when I played the left winger on the right and the right winger on the left, even though it made no fucking sense to do it, because they're both shit and the only thing they can actually do is cross with their left and right foot respectively and swapping them over just made them even shitter - like that. It was the same thing. I did it because other than putting a big man and a little man up front and twatting it at them, I'm out of fucking ideas, because fucking football is chaos and luck and mostly just gnarly lads kicking shit out of each other and Pep and Poch look so fucking cool, chewing their gum and talking philosophy and being all cute and enigmatic and I bet they don't have to break up a fight because Daz has done a shit in Stevie's boot again, or do a corporate meeting with the matchball sponsors who are a fucking cut price carpet company and feign some kind of interest. I bet they don't. I bet they get fucking airlines and diamond salesmen and fucking spies and the queen and that lad that played Harry Potter, not Des's Carpet discount warehouse and cowboy fucking builders... I did what I did cos for once in my life, I wanted to feel a bit continental. I just thought I could live like that for a few minutes. Like I was innovating, Like I was ON THE CUSP OF THE NEW. LIKE I WAS FEELING THE FRONTIER OF TIME PASSING THROUGH ME, LIKE I WAS THE WIND OF FUCKING CHANGE, Ok? IS THAT OK? Happy now?"

That's what we have to stop. We have to stop Mel Machin trying to be someone else and just ensure he's happy with who is. Even if he's imaginary (or at least, this portion of his career is an imaginary fork in the space time continuum).

After all, we might all be a figment of someone's imagination. How would we even know?

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Repeat it often enough and people will believe you...

I'm currently reading 'Can We Have our Football Back' - if you enjoy this post, you really should read that. It's excellent and it defines with precision and a deft touch, what is wrong with the Premier League era. It's quite a long book and there's quite a lot wrong with football according to it - yet it manages to transcend mere grumbling and links football to wider social attitudes in entertaining and powerful manner.

So, with that book in mind, I took advantage of being able to watch a bit of Premier League Football courtesy of Amazon Prime - a free trial furnishing me with exclusive access to the greatest league ever in the history of everything and free one day delivery of the greatest products ever packed in the greatest warehouses ever by the greatest workers enjoying their great freedom to life, liberty and all the wonders of the universe. All without worrying too much about whether my customer service experience would be tainted by the nasty smell of too many taxes or the unpleasant sticky residue that comes with treating workers like people not robots or slaves.

I tuned in to Burnley v Man City. Here are my observations: (At this point, it is important to avoid disappointment, that you let go of any expectation that I am actually going to talk about the football. You can get that elsewhere, all the time)

1) Turf Moor wasn't full.

2) I was so excited at the prospect of watching a Premier League game legally, in my own home for the first time in 27 years, I forgot it was on. (I then repeated this mistake with the Merseyside derby) Maybe some people in Burnley were so excited at City coming that they had an embolism and forgot the game was on. I dunno.

3) The commentator - (who I believe was Guy Mowbray) greeted the third goal with a rapturous celebration of all things Premier League and 2019-2020 based. The subtext was 'this is the best league and it just keeps getting better, it's never been so good and it just keeps reaching NEW HEIGHTS - it might actually burst through the fabric of time and space into a NEW DIMENSION if gets ANY BETTER - WHICH IT WILL, NEXT WEEK!!!' - (He didn't actually say that, but that's how subtext works. It would be dull if I said what he actually said, then explained the subtext as if you couldn't interpret it for yourself. You can imagine what he actually said for yourself. It's a reverse of telling you what he said and letting you interpret the subtext - to be fair to me, I wasn't really listening to him, more sensing him holistically, attuned to the deeper levels of meaning.) 

That shameless sales pitch (after a goal that had essentially ruined any sense of fun in the game) did pique my interest a little and I listened to what he said after this more carefully...

'So, Man City keep up the pressure on Liverpool, who just don't look like losing - actually, the last time Burnley won the league, they lost 11 times and drew 7 - which goes to show, the standards today in the Premier League are something else' (or very similar words)

This is what interested me.

First, Guy Mowbray - I don't know who he is, he's not exactly Brian Moore or Peter Jones, he seems a fairly harmless 'commentator for hire'. He's a bit like a mid range estate car - hard to form an opinion about, a bit indistinguishable from other models. I don't really have an opinion on him. I neither loathe nor like him. He may or may not work for any of the channels on the telly or the radio. See also Jake Humphries.

I tell you this, so you don't think what I write next comes from spite or malice. It doesn't. Me and Guy have no history. I have no axe to grind with Guy.

but...

Guy Mowbray - what the fuck are you on about - are you just a wind up mannequin, spouting empty words from a clockwork mouth, powered by some weird mechanism whose handle is turned by the oil barons, the marketing executives and the Rolex salesmen who run the shitshow of dullness that is the Premier League?

I'll tell you this 'Guy Mowbray' - if that is even your name. It sounds a bit like a made up name to me. The kind of name that is just a bit too 'everyman' to be real, the kind of name you'd give a propaganda spouting robot that was algorithmically programmed to say only the most positive things about a product if you wanted it to blend in to it's surroundings - 1959-60 wasn't shit. It was an amazing season. Burnley (that's Burnley everyone) won the title.

A little crap milltown of 80,000 people, were the best team in England. That is Roy of the Rover's shit, right there. In your generic Guy Mowbray face. They didn't finish 7th. They weren't a miracle (bank rolled by Thai investment) never to be repeated, unbelievable, I never thought I'd live to see this day, it just goes to show what a great league this is, flash in the pan success. They were the best team in England. They were good. They had Ray Pointer. Who is so good I have heard of him even though I was born years after he retired. They were a proper, decent, consistent force in English football.

They won the title by ONE point. A single point. Over Wolves as it happens. They were just TWO points ahead of Spurs. Thats THREE teams, separated by TWO points. Imagine the response if that were a modern Premier League season - picture and listen to the orgiastic frenzy of helicopters and super sunday-tastic hot-air blasts of 'this is the greatest division, greatest season, wow, I honestly don't know if Football can get any better before it bursts all over the world and destroys the universe with it's (insert name of large corporation here) sponsored fantasticness'

That sounds good to me. It's sounds exciting. It sounds competitive. Surely these are the standards by which we judge a sport. Not how dominant the best team is. I hate to say it everyone, but Preston didn't lose a game in 1888-89. Presumably Guy thinks they are the best ever team and that was the best ever season ever ever ever.

Of the top 3 - two of them (Burnley and Spurs) didn't even make the top six the preceding season, suggesting a healthy level of competition within the league. When was the last time two of the top three didn't finish near the top the year before?

I would humbly suggest to Guy Mowbray, if he were programmed to receive such information (I doubt he is), that if he wants to watch a super power, rolling over team after team, week after week then he is welcome to it. He gets paid for it after all. They pay him in chips. Microchips. He eats them. Yum.

Read this next fact and let it settle.

There is already a bigger gap (in new and old money) between first and fifth in 2019 than there was between first and tenth at the end point of the season in 1960. 

The entire top 6 were split by just 7 points - the top TEN by just 11. Yes, this was 2 points for a win, so the gap would be greater in modern money, but not as large as the 20 point gap (after just 14 games) that exists between 1st and 5th right now. 

In other words after less than half the season, the league is more than half as competitive. It's quite hard to put that into words, but let me try. It is half as fun, entertaining, tense, worthwhile, engaging, interesting, meaningful. More than twice as many teams have nothing to play for already. More than twice the number of games are between teams who have nothing really riding on those games.

I'd say judge a league by the standard of excitement, the noise, the atmosphere, the tension, the drama. In 1960, the tenth placed side were Fulham. They'd have started the next year thinking 'we're not that far off - a few more wins, a few less losses....' (they subsequently finished 17th, but that's not the point, it was the fact they had hope.) Hope. It's quite important to a football fan. It's a bit too human to factor into the balance sheets the new era of football as business and product, but it's never the less important

They wouldn't have started off, like everyone from Chelsea down, thinking 'Not much point trying to win this thing is there?' Or like Burnley, who after qualifying for Europe in 2017 (finishing 7th, significantly better than 1960 Fulham's tenth) would have reflected that with a FORTY SIX point gap between them and the title, it would take more than a few results here and there to take them to the top. Probably not much point in trying to 'push on' eh Sean? Only so far having an impressively gravelly voice can take you against the Petro-chemical billions.

Standards Guy. Standards.

If standards is watching athletic male models balletically strike a ball in matches that are basically glorified training sessions and then fawning over it, great. That's what you like. Those are your standards.

Get a fucking grip. This is shite. Give me 'shit' football any day of the week if the cost of this miserable parade of predictability is the utter pointless procession of the same teams to the top of the league every fucking year*

Also Anfield was a morgue tonight and that's supposed to be some kind of cauldron of football or something. And what are those shit 'This is Liverpool - this means more' adverts? Fuck off, you're all on a birthday present visit to Anfield from Scandanavia or Surrey and you think that because you learned the words to shit dirge pop song from the 60s that's some kind of spirituality and kinship. It's shite and the fact you might win the league is down to you hanging around the top, bankrolled by unimaginative, frightened home counties kids who were too scared to go to their local ground because it was noisy and a bit cold, buying your kits in Sports Direct and now eventually it's possibly your turn to win a division that only about three teams can win anyway. Well done. It only took 27 years to win a league it's basically impossible not to nearly win if you are Liverpool. I bet you all call the players by their first name too. 'Jordan' and 'Sadio' and have a fucking podcast to talk about what you watched on telly and do a section called 'banterzone' or something where you read out tweets as if that's a thing, just reading out something someone said on what medium on another medium.

How can you look yourself in the face?

*Except that one time.

UTMP!

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