INCOMING! (Winter)

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Right. That’s it. Summer ended a couple of weeks or a bit more ago, and Autumn has clearly just been bypassed.

I say this because OMG WTF BBQ have you seen the rain forecast for tomorrow and Monday in the Western Cape?

Bad in Cape Agulhas:

Badder in Cape Town:

I’ve been doing some rudimentary calculations, and that’s a lot of rain.
And this is Black South Easter rain, not a cold front. An overflowing shelf of precipitation, pinned against the Cape coast for 48 hours, not going anywhere.

Might be advisable to check your gutters ahead of the winter, like, now. Today.

And then wrap up warmly, grab some red wine, light the fire, and hunker down.

Let’s revisit the European Super League idea

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Remember about three years ago, when several (or more) of the top clubs in Europe thought that they should leave their respective leagues and just play against each other instead?

That idea included six clubs from England, whose bosses thought that they were too big for the puny challenges of the domestic arena, and clearly needed something bigger and better.

And more lucrative.

But the project fell apart pretty quickly amid acrimony, recriminations and legal action. The six EPL clubs involved apologised, got a baby slap on the wrist, absolutely no-one got banned from the Champions League as threatened by UEFA, there were no points deductions as threatened by the FA, and we went on with life as usual.

As soon as I heard about it, I was immediately against the idea of the ESL. It was clearly formulated by the boards of the teams involved with no thought for the grassroots support of the clubs, and the traditional values and history of football. And while there’s still some rumbling behind the scenes, and the idea does seem to have gone away for the moment, I’m still against it.

But also, I’m actually not.

That idea that the ESL would ruin the tradition and values of football, and that the project was only about making money for “the suits upstairs” rings a bit hollow when you look at where we are now, three years on, because actually it’s happened anyway, just in the domestic league setting instead of a continental one.

The “Super League” ethos and its money already clearly exists within the Premier League.

Liverpool’s three goals last night (the first one gifted by our useless keeper, the second an absolute thunderbeagle after a very helpful clearance, and the third one just showing how squad strength in depth (via – *gasp* – money) is such a huge thing), came at a cost of £190,000,000.

That’s far more than our entire club is worth.
Not just the players on the pitch last night.
Not just the squad.
The entire business – the ground, the staff, the infrastructure, the training academy, the women’s teams, the name, the history, those solar garden gnomes in the gift shop: everything. All of it.
Versus three players.

Erik Ten Haag took charge of Manchester United less than 2 years ago. He’s spent almost twice as much on players in that time than we have in our entire 135 year history.

Arsenal shelled out just under a quarter of a billion pounds on three players this season.

Chelsea: it’s just billions. Billions and billions. A never ending pot of cash that is carefully spent over almost complete decades to avoid breaking the rules… maybe.

“It’s not sport if you can’t lose”, said Pep Guardiola, in his criticism of the ESL idea back in 2021.

That comment was about the limited relegation possibilities for ESL teams, but it’s steeped in irony now, given that his club are facing 115 charges for breaking financial fair play regulations. Charges which they will likely never actually face given that they have more money than the Premier League, can afford some ridiculously expensive legal teams and are already adopting a Stalingrad defence*.

And even if they ever do get punished, it won’t be in any meaningful form, thanks to new regulations conveniently just announced by the EPL.

How can we, or anyone else without money (or ok, yes, any sort of regard for the financial fair play regulations), ever hope to compete?

We can’t. And that’s why the Premier League is broken.

And before anyone points out plucky “little” Aston villa and their amazing league position, well yes, it is great, but even they’ve spent almost half a billion quid over the last 4 years.

The Premier League is clearly hugely divided. There’s absolutely no chance of relegation for the “Big Six”, they buy all the best players, they win all the trophies, and they have pots and pots of money. For them, most games are pretty much a foregone conclusion. The only interesting matches are when they play each other.

And that’s exactly what the ESL was going to give us.

But with added Bayern Munich and Real Madrid.

So actually, why not go and do that and make domestic football better again?

Why are we allowing our domestic game to be ruined by letting these clubs to do exactly what they were trying to do anyway by inventing their runaway league? If that’s the way it’s going to be, let them go.
It’s broken and it’s not going to get any better while they’re still here.

Sadly, of course, that will never happen.
Because of – you guessed it – money.

[sighs deeply – gets on with his day]

* Ironically, Stalingrad were never invited to the ESL party.

New Music

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Big new music news.

Out today: Khruangbin’s new album A LA SALA probably (I’m guessing, anyway) named after the village in the Isle of Man.

Chilled rock, lo-fi beats and psychedelia, released just in time for those long, relaxing summer evenings on the beach, and therefore with absolutely no thought for those us living in the Southern hemisphere.

Thanks, guys.

But still probably worth a listen.

And I shall.

Also, while we’re on the chilled vibe, how about some Adam Wiltzie? He was pretty much exactly half the guys behind two-guy collaboration A Winged Victory For The Sullen, and I heard one of his new solo releases Mexican Helium on the wireless just the other day. I can’t find it anywhere at the moment [UPDATE: Got it!] but I am assured that it’ll be out and about on his new album Eleven Fugues For Sodium Pentothal (after the Paul Pearl track?) today as well.

And then just three weeks until Nonetheless the nth studio album from the Pet Shop Boys comes out.

I’m filling up some playlists ahead of what promises to be an epic few days away towards the end of this month, and my cup is quite literally runnething over.

Indeed, we are #blessed.

Let’s try this

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I was reminded this morning of a mate back in the UK who would love to catch people out with a little trick whenever he was about to do something he was looking forward to. Simple stuff, but just funny. Mate’s humour.

An example:

Him: Hey, did I hear that you’re going away to Crete for two weeks?
Me: [somewhat wistfully] No. Not this year.
Him: Oh, just me then.

Bastard.

Yeah, he got me a couple of times, but it was always more amusing to see him get other people with it over a beer at the quiz or after some football. Even better because we could all see he was lining one up, and they had no idea.

Halcyon days.

Anyway, on a different subject… Have any of you readers covered your hands in superglue and then stabbed yourself with a screw whilst trying to repair a wooden clothes horse that should probably have been thrown away a couple of years ago?

No?

Just me then.

Great.

Choke

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Looking back on the matches from the Easter weekend, I’m still annoyed. And it’s the lack of consistency in the refereeing in the Premier League that annoys me most. I don’t mind errors being made. Refs are only human, and they make mistakes.

You don’t expect all the players to go through the entire game without a single error, so why should we expect it of the officials?

But sometimes, there are some easy decisions that can be based on some really high profile precedents that are seemingly – and mystifyingly – ignored. The hands around the throat thing: it’s a red card. Unequivocally. It’s not hard.

It was a red card for Casemiro last February:

It was a red card for Rodri in September.

And… er… it wasn’t a red card for Calvin Bassey on Saturday.

And honestly, I really don’t understand why. Show me the difference in those three images.

There’s no point in crying over spilt milk, and that’s really not what I am doing here. I’ve seen enough decisions go for and against us over the n years I’ve been watching United to waste time, effort and pixels on that.

But we have a saying in our family: Everyone makes mistakes. It’s how you sort them out that matters.

And the most annoying thing is that nothing will be sorted out from this. Nothing will be learned. The next “hands around the throat” incident will result in a red card. Or it won’t. We really don’t know. Because exactly the same action is getting punished (or not) in different ways, despite the same laws apparently being applied.

Sometimes, things are tight (like those hands) and subjective and difficult to judge. I get that.
But this really isn’t one of them. Every Sunday league ref would get this one right.

And since the Premier League referees are full-time professionals with annual salaries well into into six figures, they really should be doing better.

Especially on the easy stuff like this.