Is Anybody Still Enjoying This?

'[Insert bad things here].'

The darker side of football has been rearing its ugly head for so long now that its neck must be in real trouble. Diving? ‘Rar!’, football roars. Incorrect and costly offside decisions? Rarrrrr! Dubious red cards and insulting language from the officials? Raarrrrrrrrr! Pelting players with coins? RAAARRRRRRRRRRRRR!

The problem with this weekend was that it felt like one omnishambles (see also: ‘clusterfuck’) too far. Firstly, a procession of all things wryly considered to be the worst and most controversial aspects of the game occurred in front of our very eyes, as usual, and secondly, Ed Chamberlin’s eyes lit up like a fat lad at a hog roast as yet another chance arose to eschew analysing the actual football in favour of ‘great talking points’. As usual. And thirdly, an increasingly irrelevant Match of the Day 2 barely gave any analysis of anything. AS USUAL. A great advert for the Premier League, indeed. Well done, everyone.

Enough is Enough

Whenever we’ve found ourselves ‘compelled’ to write something on this blog in the past, it’s usually been at the revocation of decorum and very much at the behest of some semblance of sanctimony. Wrighty and Brighty have copped it a fair few times for crimes against punditry and speaking/writing. Adrian Chiles, too, may have been labelled by us, variously ‘a potato that a child of below average intelligence has drawn a face on’ and ‘the peawet on a fish supper: only popular in one pocket of the country and reviled everywhere else. Green, disgusting and irrelevant. THAT’S YOU ADRIAN’.
And even England’s bravest man was never immune either from the abuse of two washed-up, semi-alcoholic, northern bloggers.

Cole-de-Sac

"I used to be Joe Cole."

When Brendan Rodgers was appointed manager of Liverpool, one member of the Magic Spongers fraternity (population: two) – a full-time York City fan, part-time Liverpool fan – was pretty happy. ‘Just think’, he crowed, like a crow that had just won a £30 accumulator despite not having arms, opposable thumbs or a brain big enough to put one on in the first place; ‘Just think of Joe Cole in a Brendan Rodgers team. It’ll be f*****g class’.

‘You c**t’, he added, for good measure.