Well, that was QUICK....

 

The advent of the World Cup nearly took me by surprise this year!

With the expanded format, I suppose it's starting about a week earlier than usual - after our domestic season, with its many 'international break' interruptions, now lingers a week or so longer than it generally did in the past... and we have European Finals extending into the week beyond that. We've had less than two weeks' break from football: barely any time for the participating teams to get in any warm-up friendlies (England's second one isn't until the day before the tournament officially begins!).

And yes, the opening games are kicking off on a Thursday this year (for the first time ever??) - what's up with that??!!

So, damn, we're barely more than two days away from the greatest sporting event in the world getting under way again. And we Fantasy Football enthusiasts have really had next-to-no-time to get ready for this. I am in a frantic rush today to put together my initial squad for the official FIFA World Cup Fantasy Game.

I am excited, yes - but also a little trepidatious. Trying to follow the unfolding drama from a timezone where most of the games take place in the middle of the night is going to be a royal pain-in-the-behind.

Makes you want to GIVE UP, doesn't it?

 

For the past four or five years, I've been running an experimental side-team, with a severe self-imposed budget cap. I started off at just 75 million, but a couple of years ago, upped it to 80 million. (At least, at the start of the season. I allow myself to take advantage of any growth in squad value, but always keep at least 20 million of my budget unspent.) In Cole Palmer's debut season for Chelsea - when it was actually possible to afford the best player in the game, even with this severe restriction - this team actually did modestly well overall, top 2 million or so. And every season, there are at least a few gameweeks where it does spectacularly well - putting my regular selection to shame.

And so too this year: my best score of the entire season, by far, came in Gameweek 33, with a 141-point total haul for this team - including a very handy 39 points coming from my subs with the Bench Boost (a total lift of 23 points, because, on this showing, Gross and Flemming really should have been playing; I only count my 4 lowest-scoring players in assessing the impact of the BB chip).

I find this exercise is a useful reminder that it is - to some extent - possible to get by pretty well without the big-name, top-priced players. (Only to an extent: while a super-low-budget team like this can have some extraordinarily good weeks, and occasionally even an extraordinarily good month, it's unlikely to climb out of the bottom third overall. Giving up that much budget is just too constraining!)  And also as a reminder that there is almost always some excellent value to be found among the cheaper options. Players like Lewis-Potter, Aaronson, Gross, and Flemming were well worth having in any team this year, for spells when they were in a good run of form. (You just wouldn't want all of them, all season,.... and no Fernandes or Haaland...)

It is a funny old game, indeed.

The ultimate REFRAME

I was asked - yet again - on one of the forums the other week what my rank is. And instead of just ignoring the enquiry, or castigating the questioner as an ignorant lout, I came up with this flippant response.... which I find contains a kernel of important truth. This is not silly bragging or empty, delusional consolation; it is a valuable reminder of where our true focus should lie.

"I am FIRST in the only league that matters."

This is always true, for all of us. Because the only competition that truly matters is the struggle with ourselves - to do the best we can, and to constantly seek to improve on what that 'best' can be.

Fretting about your 'Overall Rank', or even your status in mini-leagues, is a VANITY of VANITIES. It is not what the game of FPL should really be about.

Had we but world enough and time.....

 

.... we'd all win FPL one day!

I said last week, in my major post on what actually makes the most difference to your FPL season points total, that smart FPL managers should out-perform not-so-smart ones.... most of the time.

But alas, I'm not convinced that is true: at least, not as often as it should be, not over a single season - not in our unitary existence.

The thing is, with such a huge number of manager accounts in the game every year now, you're inevitably going to get a huge number of them that prosper by sheer dumb luck (even among 'zombie accounts' that are rarely or never active!). And because the impact of luck in our game is far greater than that of skill, that unfortunately means that a very large number of those who do so prosper will prosper so extravagantly that they will outperform a lot of the merely skillful managers in the game who haven't had any out-of-the-ordinary luck, and hence that... not all, but a very great many of the folks in the upper reaches of the rankings most years are likely to be not really very good at all, to have reached that eminence mostly or entirely by luck.

It is my belief that the truly smart FPL managers would only be able to convincingly display their superiority over the masses across a very long timeframe.

You do see some evidence of this, with some of the best long-time managers having now produced fairly consistently decent - though rarely or never outstanding - results over 10 or 15 or 20 years. But even for this to happen, for one's 'true average' level of attainment to emerge, for you to prove your ascendance over the majority of other managers in the game (many of whom will have averages buoyed up by one or two extraordinarily lucky seasons...), it will usually take many, many years - maybe, in some cases, too many years, more than one human lifetime.

And for a really smart manager to win the global crown, or even to crack the top 50k or 100k, it might take him or her hundreds or thousands of lifetimes.

I speculate that if some sort of 'multiverse' hypothesis is indeed the case (that there are many parallel realities, perhaps an infinite number, all subtly different - and that hence, across that infinitude, everything that can happen, will happen somewhere), then smart FPL managers are enjoying their just reward somewhere each year. But within a single reality, it might take centuries or millennia before the dice fall that kindly for us.

For most of us, it will never happen - because life is too short.

The End of Civlization

Another Youtube channel I'm rather fond of, again with a heavily philosophical leaning, is Aperture - run by a Toronto-based digital media company called Underknown. 

This recent video explores the importance of the Hierarchy of Cognition developed by American educational psychologist Benjamin Bloom, a taxonomy of 'levels of thinking' intended as a framework for the planning of more effective teaching.

While the opening sections about the 'dumbing down' and the increasing tribalism of modern society under the adverse influence of digital media saturation are pretty depressing stuff, the film does ultimately take a more optimistic track, explaining how we can try to break free of these negative influences and continually advance our thinking towards the upper strata of Bloom's pyramid.

And it is absolutely chock-full of ideas I've been talking about in relation to FPL for the past few years...

"Analysis requires emotional distance. Evaluation requires neutrality. Creation requires clarity."

“Thinking begins where impulsivity ends. When you slow your mind, you create the space necessary for thought to grow.”

It is a fantastic video, brimful of thought-provoking quotes. Go and watch the whole thing. And then try to apply its lessons.

The nuclear option

 

I mentioned in my weekly review of the last gameweek how very unsatisfying the end of the West Ham v Arsenal game had been - for all true lovers of football, even Arsenal fans.

It is unsatisfying that any game should be interrupted for such a painfully protracted delay, while the VAR process grinds slowly on. It is unsatisfying that a foul on the goalkeeper should be arbitrarily deemed to outweigh 4 or 5 penalty fouls being committed against the attacking team. And, whether that decision was technically 'right' or 'wrong', it is unsatisfying - intolerable - that such a remote intervention might have decided the two most important issues of the season, the destination of the title and the last relegation place.

But we only find ourselves in this vexing situation because PGMOL has so signally failed all season to get to grips with the epidemic of wrestling in the penalty area at every set-piece. When there are this many fouls, or potential fouls, now happening multiple times in the game, the on-pitch referee is naturally overwhelmed and unable to cope with the decision-making being asked of him; but so now too is the VAR team - when there are this many bits of grappling going on simultaneously, it becomes impossible for the back-room team (or at least, impractically time-consuming for them) to fairly and consistently adjudicate which incidents are 'consequential' and which are not, and which should 'take priority' in a final decision.

When former referee Darren Cann appeared as a guest on Sunday's 'Match of the Day' on the BBC, he revealed that the 'solution' under discussion was to bar attacking players in the six-yard box at set-pieces next season.

I fear that entirely misses the point. Well, it would eliminate crowding of the keeper, at least initially; although with the wall of grappling players now moved to the edge of the six-yard box, that might still be difficult/impossible for the keeper to barge his way through. And with the likelihood that more attacking players will be attempting to enter the six-yard box from deeper positions, at speed, I fear there would be an increased risk of collisions and serious injuries. Plus, you know, that's now a whole extra layer of fine-margin decision-making for the officials to deal with, determining if an attacking player has entered the six-yard box prematurely or not. It seems to me that this would just be a horrible mess.

The key problem we've created for ourselves is the amount of wrestling going on in the penalty area - every time the ball comes in from a corner or a free-kick or a long throw-in. The frequent mobbing of the goalkeeper is only one facet of that. And Cann's suggested rule revision wouldn't address that problem at all; it would just shift the ugly ruck slightly further back from the goal-line - probably, in fact, making the melee around the edge of the six-yard box even denser and more difficult to police.

I'm quite happy for the Laws of the Game to remain as they are in relation to access to the six-yard box. We just need to see the Laws we have being more stringently enforced.

But one small change that I think would help enormously with that would be to abolish the absurd notion that you can't commit a foul when the ball is out of play. There are already exceptions to this: obviously, serious violent conduct can't be tolerated at any time, on or off the pitch, whether the ball is dead or not: if you tug an opponent's hair, or stomp on their instep, or throw a punch at them - you're going to get a red card. (At least, that's how I assume things stand. It surely can't be otherwise??)  And I see no reason why it should be any different for other categories of offence. Holding offences at a set-piece, as the ball is about to come into play, can obviously impede a player from reaching the ball when it is in play - the consequences of the improper action continue into the period when the ball has become live. And, in commonsense terms, that kind of thing clearly ought to be a foul.

So, I propose that referees should be able to immediately issue yellow cards for any such infractions they notice - rather than being restricted, as at present, to merely issuing ineffectual 'warnings';... and then things getting too messy for them to sort out once the ball finally enters play.

Further, I'd like to see the definitions of this type of offence tightened up - so that simply putting hands on an opponent in this situation (without the need for any additional shirt-tugging or shoving or grappling) should earn a yellow card.

I would even suggest that we can extend the 'denial of a goalscoring opportunity' rule to make red cards an option, if an attacking player is brought to ground by such an interaction (at least in a 'danger zone' in front of the goal - perhaps a 20-yd x 12-yd area defined by the edges of the six-yard box and the line of the penalty spot). The ball coming into the penalty area from a corner - or a free-kick or a throw-in - is a highly chaotic and unpredictable situation, but one which usually presents a very high chance of a goalscoring opportunity resulting for someone. One can't predict exactly how a ball might break in front of the goal, or how an attacking player might have been able to move towards the ball if not wrestled to the ground. So, it seems to me perfectly reasonable to be somewhat generous in defining a 'goalscoring opportunity' in this circumstance, and to send a defending player off for a major foul of this type.

Yes, I know, this is a 'nuclear option' - it could produce major carnage in the opening weeks of the season. 

Hopefully, most teams and players would be able to take note of the new rules implementation and - mostly - restrain themselves from indulging in the kind of grappling which has so marred the current season. But probably, some of them wouldn't. And we might see 6 or 8 or 10 yellow cards at the first corner of the new season. And perhaps in the first corner of every game of the opening weekend. And perhaps even a handful of red cards too (for second yellow-card offences, if not straight reds).

So be it. After that, everyone would quickly adapt, and cards for these offences would soon become a rarity - because the offence had been effectively stamped out.

Ah, a man can dream....

It shouldn't take rule changes or a major revision in implementation policy to address an issue like this. If PGMOL had acted more promptly and decisively, within the framework of the existing rules, early in the season, we could have stifled this phenomenon already. But now.... it's got completely out of hand; and it needs a more drastic intervention to remedy it. (And it's already ruined the title race...)

The games we choose to play

 

Over the past few years I've become a big fan of Robert Pantano's thoughtful Youtube channel on philosophy and psychology, Pursuit of Wonder.

One of the things that most disturbs me about a game like Fantasy Premier League is its fiercely addictive qualities, the fact that it is in essence a form of gambling - where we stake our self-esteem on our ability to predict the outcome of unpredictable events better than our fellow FPL managers.

So, I was particularly struck by this latest video of Robert's, in which he starts off from considering the parable of The Gambler from Pascal's Pensées (a man who finds he cannot renounce his vice, even when offered a huge amount of money to do so), and goes on to consider why such obsessive distractions are proliferating in the modern world. The only consolation he can offer at the end of his brief audio-essay is this, a suggestion that these activities may not invariably be all bad, and that we can still maintain some measure of self-awareness and control over our engagement with them:  "It is not winning, it is not losing; it is the hope and uncertainty we experience in the games we choose to play. And so, what seems to matter is this: wisely choosing what games we play, and how we play them. Each of us have a choice in whether we keep playing games or not, and each of us have a choice in what kind of games we play, and the bets we place."

For me, the 'answer' in engaging with FPL is to not care about the results. You can strive for better results (which is mentally improving and spiritually ennobling) without actually letting yourself be bothered whether you achieve them (which is something outside of your control, ever at the mercy of random factors in the external world). 

For me, it must be all about the process, not the outcome; and about measuring my 'success' or 'progress' against my own internal yardstick, not against the greater or lesser 'success' of anyone else.

These thoughts on gambling suddenly reminded me of this excellent Al Pacino speech in D.J. Caruso's 2005 sports gambling picture Two For The Money (a severely underrated film; unfortunately, Pacino's co-star, Matthew McConnaughey was still in his 'career slump', more box-office poison than box-office catnip at this point), in which he dismays a Gamblers Anonymous meeting by confronting the attendees with the uncomfortable fact that most 'problem gamblers' have a more serious underlying issue, a masochistic, self-destructive impulse: they are addicted to losing, not winning - because that intense misery and despair is an insidiously heightened state of being, a rush that's come to dominate their lives.

It does bother me, often, that the almost inevitable, relentless 'failure' involved in FPL might be the dangerous key to its irresisible appeal... It is something I continually try to address, and to skirt away from.

If you like Mr Pantano's style in this video, you should check out his recently published book, The Terrible Paradox of Self-Awareness.

No time to gather one's thoughts....

 

As if having Gameweeks spill over into the midweek isn't bad enough, this week we have another bloody Friday evening game (god, I hate those: impossible to watch in my timezone...!) to kick-off the next one.

No sooner have City and Bournemouth (and Leeds and Burnley) completed the second instalment of their Double Gameweek 33 on Wednesday night than we're faced with an early start to Gameweek 34 with the Friday match between Sunderland and Nottingham Forest, less than 48 hours later.

A lot of FPL managers will no doubt be tripped up by the quick turnaround, and miss out on making team tweaks for the new gameweek. TRY NOT TO BE ONE OF THEM!!

BEST OF LUCK!!!!!!

An awkward glitch

It seems to have been happening rather often this season that individual player stats will disappear for a while, become inaccessible on the FPL website (usually with the bizarre message appearing that information "will become available after the season starts" - as if the system has somehow reset to last August?!). And it's a maddeningly arbitrary, inconsistent error: sometimes it will only affect certain routes of access - perhaps you are denied player info off your Team page or the Transfers page, but not off the Stats page....

However, for the last few days, all player information, whichever page you try to click through to it from, has been inaccessible on the site.

And this is a particularly bad time for something like this to happen... when we're approaching the season's biggest Double Gameweek, and many people are thus contemplating multiple team changes,... and a possible chip play.

I hope the FPL Gnomes can get this sorted out soon. But, really, it shouldn't be happening at all. The FPL website is a nightmare - clunky as all hell, and dangerously unreliable.

 

An inspiration

 

In my meanderings around Youtube the other day, I stumbled upon this - an engaging profile of self-taught wood-carver Ray Kinman, who became one of the leading practitioners in his field and landed a prestigious job sculpting many of the signs for attractions at the Disney theme parks. Still active at 70, he is now a beloved teacher of his craft.

A little nugget of peace and beauty in a turbulent world...

And he has a few inspiring lessons we all might seek to use:

Be passionate about everything you do.

Your greatest asset is persistence.

Cultivate mastery through repetition.

Mistakes are where the great learning and growth comes.

Always try to push yourself a little bit harder.

Lose yourself in the process.

These, at any rate, are principles that I have tried to follow in my life, and which I try to promote in my online writings. They can even have some useful application in our FPL endeavours, I believe.

More 'new beginnings'

 

Today is the eve of the Buddhist New Year across the countries of South-East Asia, where I have been enjoying an idyllic 'semi-retirement' for the most of the last dozen years.

A few years ago, the Lao Brewery Company produced commemorative cans for its flagship Beer Lao brand reminding us all of the number of the new year in the Buddhist chronology; but they haven't repeated that useful notice again since. If Google is to be believed (which it generally isn't these days, on almost anything; just a few days ago, it was trying to persuade me that Arsenal were knocked out of the FA Cup in the 4th Round this year [by Wigan??!!] - and that was just the good old fashioned regular search function, not the demented new 'AI' version....), we are about to enter the year 2,570.

I'm in the Lao capital of Vientiane at the moment. I'm hoping it will be the quietest place to ride out the festivities. The water-fighting in the streets, a custom, I gather, only fairly recently exported from Thailand to neighbouring Lao and Cambodia, gets more protracted and boisterous each year, and quickly gets a bit tiresome if you're any older than 25; but the major hazard of this period - especially in this country - is the maudlin all-night drinking parties, usually with interludes of caterwauling karaoke at ear-shredding volumes, that break out everywhere over the next few days, and can make sleep (at least at regular hours) all but impossible. The good thing about the bigger cities in this part of the world is that almost no-one's really from there, they've just migrated from other parts of the country for work or study; and for big holidays like this, they all return to their original home for a few days or a week Thus, the big cities empty out, and can often be relatively tranquil at such times - at least, compared to most of the rest of the country during this frenzy of batshit-crazy celebration. I'm hoping that will be the case again. (Although the last time I spent the holiday here, we were still under the shadow of Covid, so that may not have been fully representative. The festival does seem to have become hugely more raucous across the region in the last two or three years!)

Anyhow, Sabaidee Pi Mai - as they say around here.

Or, in the local script,....  ສະບາຍດີປີໃໝ່

Or in Thai,  Sawasdee Pi Him  -  สวัสดีปีใหม่

And in Khmer,  Rikreay Chhnam Thmei  -  រីករាយឆ្នាំថ្មី

Now,.... I must sort out my earplugs and my rain poncho before braving the 150-metre dash to the nearest convenience store to pick up a couple of beers... It might be the last time I dare to go outside for the next three or four days.

What's up with ANYONE??

 

I reflected yesterday on the great uncertainty surrounding Erling Haaland's prospects for the remainder of the season.

But in fact, as we go into this fraught final stretch - with a Double Gameweek coming up next week, and a big Blank Gameweek the week after that (and the chance of a further small Blank/Double as well, due to the FA Cup Final now being held before the end of the league programme) - we really have bugger-all idea what anyone's prospects are,.... because it's now very nearly three full weeks since we last saw anyone playing league football (four weeks since City and Arsenal saw league action!).

Such a long hiatus in the league programme is unprecedented - and highly undesirable. It is a uniquely weird time of year to be starting over like this.

Some teams may have reaped huge benefits from the unaccustomed bit of rest, and perhaps even more from some intensive tactical training over the last week or so. Others may have gone to seed, lost their fluency and focus as a result of the long lay-off (especially if they weren't even involved in this past week's FA Cup or European ties...).

Thus, this gameweek is, alas, just about the worst possible time to play a Wildcard.

Unfortunately, it also, this season, the more-or-less inescapable time to play the Wildcard: the final run-in getting under way, only 7 gameweeks left (and, for most people, all the bonus chips still to play in that cramped period!), and relatively big Double and Blank Gameweeks coming up in the weeks immediately after this one. Unless you hang on to it to 'smart-bomb' a late round of one of your mini-league cup competitions, there really is nothing useful you can use the Wildcard for after this week - there is no alternative.

But that's hard to do when we really don't know what we're going to get from any team this weekend: 'form' is pretty much out of the window. At the very least, we're almost sure to see a few big surprises...

And hence all of those Wildcard selections we make this week are even riskier than usual, a huge shot in the dark!

GOOD LUCK, EVERYONE!!!

The EMPTINESS goes on

 

Still nothing happening in the English Premier League till Friday. Damn, this has been a long break in the schedule!

At least we've got the first leg matches of the Champions League Quarter-Finals to distract us tomorrow. But I am missing my regular dose of domestic football.

A VOID in our lives

 

Warm-up friendlies for the World Cup are all very well, but - damn, I am already starting to miss my regular fix of proper competitive football. And we're barely half-way through this insane three-week intermission in the Premier League schedule....

So, here's another little bit of fun to distract ourselves with for a moment: Bored, a song that first achieved popularity during the opening year of the Covid pandemic, when it resonated with many people who felt their spirits worn down by being stuck indoors during the extended lockdowns.

[Yes, I am a fan of Tessa Violet! And I'm not even Russian. But I am a middle-aged heterosexual man with a fondness for smart pop music - so, I am easy prey. Although I defy anyone - of any age, gender, or sexual orientation - not to be beguiled by her in this video.]

Evil genius??

The estimable Adam Clery quickly produced a video explaining exactly how Pep Guardiola managed to control Arsenal so thoroughly in Sunday's League Cup Final, and win the game so comfortably.

Watching that, it occurred to me that, if the great man had indeed figured out such an insuperable masterplan for thwarting his closest English rivals,.... had he not perhaps revealed it too early??  The League Cup is a nothing trophy; this kind of tactical dominance would have been far more valuable if deployed as a deadly surpriise in the crucial Premier League clash between the two clubs looming on the 19th of April. These tactics aren't likely to work so well - or at all - a second time, particularly as Arsenal have four weeks to work out a response.

But then I thought.... perhaps the wily old fox also knows how Arteta is likely to respond, and he already has a second, even more cunning masterplan worked out for that crunch game at The Etihad??

I wouldn't put it past him.

But then again, perhaps the great advantage of deploying this masterstroke now was showing everyone else how to beat Arsenal? If Arteta can't work out good solutions quickly, a lot of the games he faces in the league run-in period could suddenly be a lot more challenging than he'd anticipated.

Or perhaps...., well, perhaps Pep's major concern was not with any of this, but purely with the potential psychological impact of achieving such a dominant win over his arch-rival two months from the end of the season. Even if the manner of this victory is probably going to be unrepeatable, for City or anyone else, it will have spooked the shit out of Arsenal - and maybe that's enough. They had been starting to look dauntingly self-confident; that self-belief has now been dented.

We've always known that Pep is on a higher plane than most in his perception of the game, and his ability to mould revisions in tactics for particular games, particular opponents. But does that mental acuity also extend to the longer term, to being able to plan out a succession of matches, the course of an entire league campaign??  We may be about to find out.

Most people these days use the terms 'tactics' and 'strategy' completely interchangeably; but in the military context, there is a clear and important distinction. I recall an old college buddy of mine, who rose to quite a senior rank in the British Army, once summed it up like this: "Tactics is how you lose a battle. Strategy is how you lose a war."

Has our Pep just revealed himself to be not merely a tactical genius but a strategic one also?? And if this grand ploy truly is strategic - will it end in failure or success? Time will tell. There's still a fair bit of life in this title race.

A LONG 'vacation'

 

Good gracious, what is this??

Thanks to the odd scheduling quirk that we have an international break this week, followed by the Quarter-Finals of the FA Cup on the first weekend of April, we're now faced with nearly three weeks without any Premier League football!

Since the quarter-finals of the European competitions don't kick off until 7th/9th April (and only 5 of our 9 participating clubs are still involved there, after a disastrous 'Round of 16' in the Champions League), I imagine the 14 Premier League sides no longer in the FA Cup will be taking a nice warm weather break somewhere around the Mediterranean as soon as everyone's back from the internationals. (Spurs and Newcastle, out of Europe and the Cup, can take a proper holiday....)

I can't recall such a long interruption to the League schedule ever happening before. It's really a bit too long of a break, I fear - too disruptive of regular fitness and tactical preparation routines, likely to lead to some odd hiccups in form when the League resumes. But... time enough to worry about all of that next month!

After the relentless FPL onslaught of the last few months - often two games a week since early December, and endless injury problems as a result - it will be NICE to have a little bit of a rest from it all.

I feel like a song to celebrate this welcome 'time off'. Here's an old favourite from my childhood, Bing Crosby and the cast performing 'Busy Doing Nothing' from the charming 1949 film adaptation of 'A Connecticut Yankee At King Arthur's Court'. This upload to Youtube has combined the song with a montage of clips from classic comedy duo Laurel & Hardy.

That's better. I feel quite jolly now!

And, darn it, that chorus punchline might be the most Zen thing I've ever posted on here:

We'd like to be unhappy,

But we simply don't have the time.

Keeping oneself occupied is the secret to a contented and fulfilled life. That might be just that little bit harder for the next two-and-a-half weeks...

TOO MUCH of a bad thing?

 

My favourite Geordie football analyst, Adam Clery, dropped a new video last week, examining whether and why the Premier League is proving a very dull watch this year. (Yes, it is, but....)

Although he highlights a number of problems - injuries, fatigue, and the increased use of rotations and substitutions to try to deal with this; and widespread stalemate in the tactical landscape at the moment - he also offers the useful corrective observation that... this is not completely new. Our football has always had a lot of shit elements: 'dark arts' in running down the clock, stifling defensive tactics, dour tactical struggles resulting in sterile, low-scoring games - these have always been with us. Adam reminds us that Arsenal's last title-winning side. the celebrated 'Invincibles' of 22 years ago, while they pulled off a few thrilling wins, sometimes against their biggest rivals, well, they also ground out an awful lot of bore-draws in that long unbeaten run.

This video suggests that, although this is indeed a rather disappointing season in many ways, there's also a major issue of perspective at play - making it seem much worse than it is. These days, it's possible to see every Premier League game in full - if you have the time and the financial resources available to you. It's certainly become quite accessible for big fans to watch every minute of every one of their club's matches - an experience that in the not-too-distant past was available only to the relatively small numbers of supporters who were able to attend every single match, home and away, in person. There's also a lot more discussion and punditry available now, not only on the initial satellite and terrestrial TV coverage, but on the many analytical Youtube shows like Adam's. And then, of course, there's our modern digital environment, where reactions to matches are instantly - and endlessly - shared through social media platforms; and, alas, it is very much the essence of this media environment to fixate upon the negative more than the positive.

So,.... maybe modern football wouldn't seem so bad if we watched a bit less of it??

I'm not convinced about that. But we'll have a little chance to put that proposition to the test during the three-week hiatus in the Premier League schedule that now yawns before us.

This time, IT MATTERS

 

My scorn for the League Cup knows no bounds. 

I have always - always; ever since I was a child - felt that a second domestic cup competition is otiose, and ridiculous. I am rarely even aware of the earlier rounds being played, and I seldom bother to watch the Final (except in that one glorious year, back in the 1980s, when second-tier Oxford United managed to win it - one of the great small-club triumphs in English football history; just a pity it wasn't in the proper cup...). 

The tournament's flimsy credibility hasn't been helped by having a succession of unlikely sponsors insist on splashing their name on the trophy - a somewhat contemptible one in the gambling company Littlewoods, along with simply ludicrous ones like its current backer - the energy drink that isn't Red Bull; and, back in the day, the Milk Marketing Board supported it for a long while: calling it the 'Milk Cup' made it sound like some sort of confectionary...). 

My feeling is that the competition could become more useful and relevant - and less of a strain on an already dangerously overstuffed top-flight schedule - if it were restricted to clubs outside the Premier League.

However, we do have an unusually significant match-up in this Sunday's Final: Arsenal and Manchester City, the two teams vying for this year's Premier League title. And the game happens to come at a particularly crucial moment in that title race, as City's challenge seems to be evaporating after they tamely dropped points in their last two games - to allow the leaders to pull out a rather daunting 9-point gap.

I have an inkling, therefore, that this year's League Cup might actually decide the League title as well. City, I think, really, really, really need to win this game - to lay down a marker that they're not giving up the challenge yet, to try to put a bit of a dent in Arsenal's growing self-confidence. They still have a game in hand over their rivals, and they are slated to play them at home in Gameweek 33. If they could win both of those, Arsenal would be facing a very nervy run-in.

But if Arsenal can beat them on Sunday, they'll go to The Etihad in a month's time with no fear - and they'll probably win again there. City NEED to win this game - not for the worthless 'consolation prize' trophy, but to keep the title-chase alive.

So,... I might actually watch the game this year!  [Well, I'll try. Since the UK coverage is on the dreaded ITVX, I very much doubt if I'll be able to get a viable stream.]

[Well, what do you know? ITV seems to have upped its game - at last. It has been so notorious for so long for not having sufficient server capacity to maintain a stable stream on popular live events that I've largely given up even bothering to try it over the last few years. But it worked a treat last night! (Maybe only because comparatively few people are interested in watching the League Cup Final, even when it is between the two best teams in the country??)

I confess, I am pleased to see Arsenal 'wobble' a bit, and City re-energise their title challenge. Arsenal fans should probably be a little worried by the manner of the defeat: their team was completely dominated in the second-half, and had no response. It was a performance so lacking that it suggests they might struggle in a number of the remaining games, not just the crunch match at The Etihad. It is uncertain, though, whether the long wait before they play in the league again will amplify or diminish the psychological impact of this result.

Of course, my man Adam Clery has already put out an excellent video examining how City were able to control the game so emphatically.]

Going with the flow

Here's a funny thing: although I have a great fondness for the late Shane MacGowan and his songwriting,.... most of my favourite Pogues songs are in fact written by other members of the band. This one, a rather beautiful love song by banjo-player Jem Finer, is from their later era in the '90s, after the band had finally been worn out by Shane's looney escapades and had to sack him.

The Pogues have a special place in my heart because they rose to prominence - indeed they were, somehow, one of the biggest bands in the world for a while back then! - during the 1980s, the period when I was transitioning from high school to university, and then from university to 'the world of work' (ha!), that age when we tend to listen to music most, and be most affected by it.

Although this song was released on their penultimate album, Waiting For Herb, in the mid-90s, I always associate it with a rather earlier moment in my life (funny how the mind works!). Back at the end of the '80s, I was doing a teacher-training course in the north of England, and was attempting a long-distance relationship for the first time, with a devastatingly beautiful young woman I'd just met who was at art college in London. (I always seem to fall for creative types: actresses, dancers, writers, musicians...) And although she never stood me up at a bus station, as in the scenario of the song, there were a number of  times when hoped-for visits were cancelled, or when we had awkward conversations from a payphone at a bus station (one of the most readily available to me at the time, since I was living in a small village some way outside of my university town, and having to take a bus home almost every evening). Because of these associations, several years later, this became for me, retroactively, 'our song'.

The song is notable musically for being an instance of the use of 'Infinite Guitar' - a feedback effect that allows a note to be sustained indefinitely at constant volume, here producing a melancholy and haunting background. The device was apparently invented by a Canadian guitarist called Michael Brook in the 1980s, but it is most associated with his countryman, Daniel Lanois, who did a lot to develop, or at least 'popularise' the innovation. Also a talented musician and songwriter, Lanois became best-known as a producer, particularly for his work on a number of U2's most successful albums. He introduced the 'infinite guitar' gizmo to The Edge, who was quite besotted with it for a while, and used it most memorably on the hit single With Or Without You - which probably creates some additional resonance with this song. (I'd never been much of a fan of U2 or The Edge, but I got to meet him and hear him perform at a private music biz party in the '90s, and found myself very impressed: he is a rather cool dude, and a much better player than I'd realised.)

I particularly like the opening lines, repeated as chorus:

Listen to me, baby: Once upon a time....

My heart, it was an ocean,

But you swam against the tide.

It's a song about acceptance, about moving on - without enmity or regret. How many of those are there?? It might be unique.

It's a good lesson, for life - and for FPL. Sometimes - often, most of the time - things don't work out the way we want them to. We have to try to understand how these setbacks happen, without apportioning blame - to ourselves or others. And we have to learn to bear these disappointments with good grace - and summon the will to keep moving forward.

And yet, of course, I can't escape the conviction on occasions that the girl was wrong, that life is often wrong; that the tide of my feelings was 'right', and that the girl - and the world - would have done better to have gone along with my flow, rather than opposing it.

Yes, EVERYTHING can become a metaphor for me.  Life is a metaphor for FPL, FPL is a metaphor for life.... Life is FPL....

Forgive these idle musings. I am making rapid progress into a bottle of Tullamore Dew this slow Tuesday evening....

A little bit of Zen (85)

“May you get all your wishes but one, so you always have something to strive for.”

Irish blessing

"And may the head on your Guinness be tight and creamy..."

GW  (Though he probably won't be expressing himself that coherently over the coming few days, what with being a Plastic Paddy and all....)