Category: uk

All for nothing?

Posted on

No matter who wins this afternoon’s little matchup in North London, it’s going to be a massive struggle for them to stay in the Premier League next season. The last six clubs promoted to the top flight have come straight back down, and between them, scored a record number of points. And not a record number in a good way.

Why is this? Well, the gulf between the two leagues has always been opening up, but it seems that soon after Covid, it widened into a chasm of epic proportions. And if you were in there when this happened, you now seem to have some sort of protection against relegation.

So suddenly, you have the likes of Bournemouth, Fulham, Brentford and Brighton battling it out for European places. And no offence to those clubs, but they’re not exactly historically the biggest teams. But they were in the mix when it counted and now they are the new biggest teams.

Of course, 95% of it comes down to money. Plucky performances and passionate support can only do so much. And how on earth are Championship cubs meant to compete when there’s this level of financial disparity?

When you don’t have European football, and when you don’t have an assured place in the Premier League, you simply can’t attract big players. And the double whammy is that the opposition can.
And thanks to English teams performing way above the average in the European competitions this year, there could be as many as 10 of the 17 existing teams in the Premier League playing in Europe next year. Six of them will be in the top tier on the chart below, another four in that second tier.

There’s a lot of money splashing around for the other clubs when you aren’t in those top two bands.

Spurs and ManU might have had absolutely awful seasons this time around, but they were still miles clear of the relegation places. There’s just no competition anymore when it comes to going down. And while that might be a very comfortable position for the established clubs, it will slowly(?) kill the league.

Of course, I hope we go up this afternoon. We have played brilliantly all season and we deserve to celebrate with something to show for it. But at the back of my mind (and those of dirty l**ds and Burnley fans, if they’re being honest), is the tinge of realism that next season will be a hard watch.

Still… let’s deal with that if and when we have to.
COME ON YOU RED AND WHITE WIZZZZZAAAAARDS!

EDIT: OK, a few days later now and that didn’t go well.
But I have just spotted this:

Which does kind of prove the point.

Opponents and internet hypocrisy

Posted on

So, thanks to a 120+2 winning goal, it’s Sunderland that get through to face United in the Playoff Final next Saturday. Got to love that last minute winning feeling. As the “Football Away Days” FB page shared:

And it is a great photo, depicting a great moment. I’ve spotted at least two phones, but let’s not let that detract from the image and the impressive description.

No, let’s allow… er… the “Football Away Days” FB page to do that for themselves, by suggesting that the last minute winning goal (see above) should never have been allowed to happen:

Extra points for using an image taken a whole 2 seconds before the one at the top of this post.

Got to keep all the fans happy? Easy!
Simply use the narrative that Sunderland fans are amazing, and that Coventry City were cleared robbed. Just don’t do it in the same post. Separate them by at least a couple of minutes.

Well done. I’m sure that no-one has noticed.

Just Yorkshire things

Posted on

Here’s the headline that piqued my interest:

Of course he does.

And here’s the quote which drew me in:

Mr Trevelyan said: “Those who know me well know I was eventually going to build a giant curlew.”

Of course they did.

It’s all good, though. Mr Trevelyan – an ex-puppetmaker, obviously – is raising awareness of the loss of habitat, land-use changes and climate pressures on the Eurasian Curlew (Numenius arquata) – by walking 53 miles (that’s 85.29km) dressed as a curlew.

He crafted the 10ft-long (3m) costume of a Eurasian Curlew – Europe’s largest wading bird – out of polystyrene and bamboo.

It’s an admirable endeavour. Although not without its dangers:

It’s got a 4ft-long curved bill…

[the costume, not the actual bird]

[Jesus. Can you imagine?]

…which I’m quite worried about snagging in trees on the way, or tripping over and it snapping, but I’ve got a splint and I’ve got strong tape in case that happens.

But that’s not even the most dangerous bit.

It’s very lightweight luckily, but I am a bit worried about getting up on the tops because it’s quite windy today.

Actual Curlews can fly. 3m long bamboo and polystyrene costumes of Curlews aren’t meant to.

Still, if you’re going to die in a horrific freak gust of wind/giant Curlew costume-related accident, it’s a beautiful part of the world for it to happen. Just look at those views (only mildly spoiled by the ubiquitous massive beak).

You can follow Mr Trevelyan’s journey on his IG, and you can donate to his (and the Curlews’) cause here.

It sounds good until you read it

Posted on

No, not this blog (more on that tomorrow, by the way).

No: This BBC Press Release:

That sounds great. What’s not to like?

Well, that would be the small matter of the small print halfway through the thing:

As part of this launch, the BBC will also be making BBC Sounds available exclusively to UK audiences and ending access to the service for international users beginning Spring 2025.

u wot m8?

Yep. They’re taking 6Music (and everything else) away from anyone not in the UK.

This is sad, because I’ve been a loyal listener there and here since the very beginning of the channel, and I listen for literally hours every day. Of course, there might be ways around the geofencing, which I am obviously completely unaware of, but even if I had an inkling of how to get round it, that surely just means an extra step, extra expense and more not to work.

A quick note here that the BBC makes it quite difficult to access their visual stuff via a VPN.

Or so I am told.

And sure, I get it. I don’t pay my BBC Licence Fee, I know (not that there is a Licence Fee for radio), but this isn’t really costing the BBC anything to share. The programme is made and broadcast anyway, I just pick it up somewhere else via the internet (a reminder here that 6Music is a digital only station anyway).

Except of course, it does, because music rights or something or other. No-one (including this radio expert) really seems to understand how these work, but the upshot of their messy implementation is that the BBC aren’t going to let people overseas access their content any more.

Although I’m not quite sure why, given that that side of their business is doing rather well:

The main commercial arm of BBC Commercial Ltd, BBC Studios generated revenues in the last year of £1.8 billion and a third consecutive year of profits of over £200 million.

It’s weird, because I would imagine that there’s a good percentage of 6Music listeners who aren’t in the UK. Calls and messages to shows come from expats all over the world, and the presenters read them out almost as a badge of honour. It’s going to hurt all the stations, but 6Music might notice the biggest drop, given that it has one of the smallest audiences (although it’s not clear what the UK/non-UK split is here).

Either way, I have to make a plan, because the other day, having left my phone at home, I listened to a local radio station on a short journey. It was more horrific than I had remembered.
I cannot do that again.
Let alone every day.

If he can do it…

Posted on

…why can’t everyone else?

See, this is the thing when people start making daft, unilateral decisions without considering any of the potential consequences. It suddenly gives carte blanche to everyone else to do the same thing.

Still, that said, not all of the ideas that comes out of these things are necessarily bad ideas…

This, for example, seems like a perfectly reasonable name change.