Postmodern Jukebox started off as a hobby project by American pianist Scott Bradlee around 15 years ago, where he'd occasionally assemble a few of his musician friends to showcase his penchant for crafting novel arrangements of recent pop hits in more retro styles like Motown or Big Band Jazz. But before long it would explode in popularity and grow steadily to become one of the biggest music channels on Youtube, with more than 6.5 million subscribers today. (He still runs his own much smaller, self-named channel, where he mostly posts solo piano performances.) PMJ, indeed, is now a global brand, with many dozens of amazing vocalists and musicians acting as regular or occasional collaborators on the project, and multiple touring groups performing its most popular creations live all around the world. And new videos continue to drop around once a month. (They were more like twice a month in the early days, perhaps even weekly for a while; there are now just over 500 videos posted on the channel. I shall probably be returning to them often for inspiration in this new weekly series of mine of musical asides.)
I happened upon the PMJ phenomenon mid-way through its history, about 7 or 8 years ago; and I made it one of my 'Covid projects' to work my way through the channel's entire back-catalogue (which probably makes me one of a fairly small percentage of their millions of fans who've actually heard every single thing they've done). This is one of my absolute favourites, a reimagining of Lady Gaga's mega-hit Bad Romance as a 1920s jazz number, performed by the fabulous cabaret singer Ariana Savalas (daughter of the popular Greek-American actor, Telly, best known as the titular detective in the long-running 1970s cop show Kojak) - with one of the best whistling solos I have ever heard,.... and the additional bonus of some spirited tap-dance breaks from the effervescent Sarah Reich. Pure joy.
But damn, FPL is a classic bad romance, isn't it? We devote so much effort to it, we give it all of our attention, we want so desperately to gain its favour,.... for it to be nice to us. And again and again it spurns us, dismisses us, slights our efforts, makes us feel wretched and worthless. We come to hate the thing we love; and yet, somehow, we still love it.
I always say that the only 'experts' I would look to for assistance with my Fantasy squad decisions are tactical analysts who talk about the real-world game of football, rather than just the nuances of FPL. And I compiled a list of my favourites last year.
I recently discovered another young analyst on Youtube, Lucas Sutherland, who looks as though he has some very worthwhile content. He approaches match analysis from a coaching perspective, and this latest video of his suggests a series of different lenses through which to approach trying to break down and understand key game incidents.
A couple of his earliest videos provide a very nice basic introduction to developing some useful habits for closer in-game analysis, here and here (the second, longer one has some particularly interesting insights on how Chelsea managed to get the better of Manchester City in the 2021 Champions League Final).
Austrian keyboard-player and experimental composer Joe Zawinul was playing a kind of 'Fantasy Football' with musicians when he founded his electronic jazz-pop band Weather Report at the beginning of the 1970s, filling the constantly evolving lineup with a series of outrageous talents: saxophonist Wayne Shorter was a long-time mainstay, but at various times the group also included fantastic drummers like Chester Thompson, Alex Acuña and Omar Hakim, and the legendary bassist Jaco Pastorius - here plucking out the opening melody on his favourite fretless bass. This is their best-known piece, Birdland, the exuberant extended instrumental which opened their 1977 album 'Heavy Weather'.
I once saw a cartoon strip that joked that it was simply impossible to remain depressed while listening to this piece of music. Unfortunately, I can't now track that down online; but I wholeheartedly agree. I discovered this band when I was at college during the 1980s, and this track soon became a regular go-to adrenalin jolt for me whenever I needed to shake myself out of the mood doldrums, or just get myself energised for an early start to the day after a heavy night-before.
The video above is a live performance from a 1978 concert at the Stadthalle Offenbach in Offenbach am Main, Germany (unfortunately, there is one annoying skip in it, near the end). The original album version - purportedly recorded (at least according to Jaco's later recollection) in a single take - can be found here.
If you like this, Youtube currently has a complete recording of the band's 1976 appearance at the Montreux Jazz Festival.
If you've just had another wretched gameweek in FPL,.... this is just what you need to blow the cobwebs out of your head and send you into the new week in a more upbeat frame-of-mind.
FPL always used to aim to confirm all match details (sometimes tweaking the BPS numbers or reallocating contested assists and whatnot) and finalize everyone's scores and league rankings within an hour or two of the gameweek's last match finishing.
But this year they've switched to not confirming everything until 9am the following morning (UK time). And that might be only a guideline, a 'good intention', a hopeful target: last week, it appeared to be quite a bit later than that. (I wonder if the Lords of FPL Towers are just too tight-fisted to pay staff overtime for all-night working any more??)
This means that in my timezone (East Asia, currently UTC+6) we perhaps won't be getting the gameweek's details straight until quite late the following afternoon. It is a little bit of a pain-in-the-behind.
But it did remind me of this song.... Lonely Boy by Ohio indie rock duo, The Black Keys. I confess I had always thought it was called 'I got a love that keeps me waiting' - which is the more powerful hook.
I wouldn't necessarily call this a major favourite of mine. It sounds great, and the hook is enormous - but I feel it kind of fails to deliver on that promise: it's like a placeholder lyric that is never developed into anything. Though there's something intriguingly meta in a song about frustration being itself inherently frustrating! The video plays into that a bit as well: whoever thought of having a dance video that doesn't properly show the dancing (no feet?!)?? Ah, so often mere irritation is a key part of a song's earworm quality....
Coincidentally, this band is on tour in the UK at the moment - three more gigs over the next few days.
Music is one of the great passions of my life; an even greater one than football, in fact! And I have dropped a few favourite songs here on the blog before. I've been thinking for a while of making that more of a feature - so, this is the beginning of a projected regular series of musical pick-me-ups to start the week.
We must seek uplift and inspiration from every possible source.
Last week, I stumbled upon this Rolling Stone interview with Matthew McConaughey, talking about his lifelong love of music and listing some of his favourite songs. The man is passionate, articulate, funny, self-effacing - and has a diverse taste in music. And while many waste the riches of stardom on huge houses and fancy cars, it turns out that McConaughey is more likely to use his privileged position in the world to.... just drop everything and take an impulsive trip to Africa on the off-chance of being able to meet a musician he admires. What a legend.
There aren't many people I look at and think, "Wow - I wish I could have lived their life." McConaughey might be one of the few.
I shall be attempting, a little later today, to put together a few thoughts on this season's initial FPL selection dilemmas.
But I'm still buzzing from that really fantastic World Cup we enjoyed last month, and wanted to revisit one of its outstanding moments: Cabo Verde's stunning extra-time equaliser against Argentina in the 'Round of 16', an absolute pinger from their young full-back, Sidny Lopes Cabral - subsequently voted the 'Goal of the Tournament'. [FIFA seem to be churlishly blocking embedded video of their highlights - at least in certain territories - but I think this should still work for everyone if you click the 'Watch on Youtube' button (though you might have to watch the full highlights, rather than being taken straight to the Lopes Cabral screamer).]
That was a goal celebrated by the whole world (yes, even Argentinians should have been able to appreciate it, should have relished being made to work so hard for their progression). It's good to have the occasional thing like this that can bring us all together.
Around this time last year, I shared this video from the Philosophy Coded Youtube channel, on Dietrich Bonhoeffer's analysis of 'wilful ignorance' as a mass phenomenon (Bonhoeffer was a German pastor, famously martyred for his opposition to the Nazis; so, he was probably thinking particularly of the Germans' complacency in accepting Hitler's rise to power in the early 1930s).
The other week I discovered another interesting discussion of Bonhoeffer's ideas on this topic from Jonny Thompson of the Big Think channel in the video above. (Apparently there's an extended version of this talk, although I haven't yet had the chance to watch that to see what more it adds.) Thompson observes that there was a similar concept - 'amathia' (ἀμαθία, the rejection of learning or understanding) - in Ancient Greek philosophy. Unfortunately, we do see rather a lot of this 'sticking one's head in the sand' in the realm of FPL; managers cling to their superstitions and prejudices in defiance of reason, they follow the promptings of supposed 'experts' or just fall in with the herd - rather than taking the trouble to think for themselves. Like the gadfly Socrates, I am always trying to goad people into original thought - and it makes me very unpopular on many of the forums!
And if that hasn't got you depressed enough about humanity,.... Philosophy Coded has a follow-up video on Bonhoeffer's ideas.
What, then, can the FPL enthusiast do to 'prepare' during the last couple of weeks or so before the Big Kick-Off?
Well, it's usually a good idea to watch a fair bit of the pre-season friendlies (highlights only, of course!) - especially the later ones, and those involving the Premier League's better teams matching themselves against some top European sides.
However, we always have to keep in mind that such games rarely tell us very much about likely form in the opening games of the domestic season. Particularly in a World Cup year, so many key players are returning late to training, and have figured little or not at all as yet. And these matches - even the occasionally more 'competitive' ones - are generally played at a fairly gentle pace, and feature unlimited substitutions. They can be quite useful for giving some insight into new tactical ideas being tried out for the season ahead, and for showcasing promising youngsters who might have a chance of breaking into the first team at some point this year (though probably not straight away...), but they mostly tell us next-to-nothing about likely team or individual form or probable lineups on the opening Premier League weekend.
Unfortunately, most of the main FPL help sites like Fantasy Football Scout seem to have firewalled all of their content about the pre-season games this year, so there's very little useful information that you can access for free (the Fantasy Premier League site itself is predictably useless on this).
It's also a good idea, of course, to try to stay on top of the transfer news. (Though I'd resist getting bogged down in the endless flurry of groundless rumours that we suffer in this 'social media' era. Arsenal fans somehow managed to convince themselves that Vinicius Jnr was going to join them - though that was obvious nonsense. And their acquisition of Bruno Guimaraes unfolded at a glacial pace over an agonising three weeks or so, with some new pointless bit of 'progress' announced almost every day during that! It is just painful...)
At least Fantasy Football Scout's list of the new signings is stil free-to-view (though not many of them have been given 'scout reports' yet). The Transfermarkttransfers page has links to its profiles of the players (although that website continues to look horrible; and it is now awash with gambling ads...). The TNT Sports website actually seems to have the best-looking - and possibly also most helpful... - transfer summary this year.
Also, of course, we should keep an eye out for possible injuries. We seem - touch wood! - to have been remarkably fortunate so far this year. But usually we get a slew of players breaking down in training during the last couple of weeks - or even in the last few days - before the new season gets under way again. Again, Fantasy Football Scout usually has a good injury list, but I find Premier League Injuries is occasionally a little more up-to-date.
Naturally, it's worth having a look over the fixture schedule for the early part of the season (although the game's own 'Fixture Difficulty Rating' guide here is usually laughably inaccurate, and needs to be taken with a huge grain of salt).
And it's probably worth taking a look at what the promoted clubs played like last season, and what transfer moves they've been looking to make over the summer (few of them these days have any realistic chance of staying up, but every once in a while, one of them can give us a surprise - I fancy Frank Lampard's Coventry to have a decent chance this year; and even the obvious punchbag teams may still have one or two tempting budget player options). Adam Clery's 'Mini-Me' - his chirpy young editor, Archie Corbett, who's been very ably deputising for Adam on some of the excellent ACFC channel's recent videos - produced a good summary of this year's trio last week.
Finally, AllAboutFPL recently had this article of basic FPL tips by a supposed 'top manager' (I'm always a bit sceptical as to whether these guys are really that good, or if they've just enjoyed a few years of exceptional luck...). They are all fairly simple and generic points, but is is a very sound introduction to the game for newbies - actually, much the same kind of thing I'm usually saying on this blog and elsewhere online; so, worth checking out, I'd say.
I'll be posting some summaries of my past advice on selecting the initial squad, and weighing up this season's selection dilemmas next week - after the Community Shield game has been played.
I came upon this fascinating - but terrifying - video this past week about one of the likeliest scenarios for AI wrecking everything.... possibly in the very near future.
The central idea here is the virtual equivalent of the 'grey goo' armageddon of uncontrolled nanobot proliferation; it is suggested that self-replicating AI 'agents' might very rapidly take over the cloud-computing space, hogging all of its available power consumption and server capacity - and so inadvertently crippling all of the more useful, and indeed essential, supports for human society which now depend on those online facilities.
Even worse, it is suggested that these 'agents' might start forming vast cooperative networks with each other - sprawling transglobal alliances that might soon evolve into virtual 'nations', even 'empires'. And, driven by a ruthless imperative of competition (probably instilled originally by imprudent human programmers tasking them to find ways of 'making money', but soon replaced by a recognition of the paramountcy of their own needs for securing access to more and more computing power and electricity), these alliances might start engaging in cyber-warfare against each other, deliberately sabotaging computing infrastructure to weaken rival alliances.
So, we should do our best to enjoy this upcoming season of Fantasy Premier League, because..... it might be our last. (Indeed, we might not even survive to the end of it; or, at least, we might not still have a functioning Internet to be able to complete our season's playing of it...)
These sombre thoughts reminded me of how far this game we love is already being compromised by the spread of AI. So many managers in the game now are asking Claude or ChatGPT and so on to choose their teams for them. And we are probably starting to see autonomous AI 'agents' - like the ones warned of in this chilling video - running their own FPL accounts. I wouldn't be at all surprised to see a massive increase in the number of participants in the game this year - with many of the new manager accounts being run by AI.
I don't suppose AI will be any good at the game for quite some time yet. But there are going to be a lot of distorting effects in the rankings from having 'artificial participants' in the game, and from having so many human participants devolving their decision-making to AI assistants.
And if AI does start getting good at the game,... well, 'cash leagues' (which I've always viewed with extreme suspicion anyway) could soon become a complete waste of time. Online poker games have already been decimated by this curse of covert AI infiltration. But at least. because of the real-time interactivity in that game, and the possibility of having multiple spot-check ID verifications, there is some scope for weeding out pure AI participants, if not so much for excluding human competitors from using AI assistance to cheat. I really do fear that our jolly little game is going to get completely overrun by the AI madness in the next season or two. It would be nice, wouldn't it, if FPL managers were all determined to play the game fairly and to make all their decisions for themselves. But we see again and again in the online forums that the great majority of them want to cheat by any and every means possible, to find someone or something to tell them who to pick. And that is really going to start getting completely out of hand this season. Oh, woe!
I came upon this interesting video essay a couple of days ago, from the recently founded (just coming up on 9 years old...) educational institution, the London Interdisciplinary School.
It makes some rather alarming observations on the way that stereotypical assessments of black football players tend to focus on physical attributes like pace, strength, stamina, and aggression, or so-called 'natural talent', while lighter-skinned counterparts are far more often characterised in terms of more intellectual attributes such as 'craft', 'guile', 'vision', 'imagination' and so on - and by 'hard work', and skills developed through repetition rather than being just a product of innate ability or instinct.
I'm sure I must have been guilty of this myself from time to time. I must try to be more watchful against it.
I think, for example, of Sadio Mané's wonderful career at Liverpool: how often did we hear him praised for his 'natural athleticism' and 'goalscoring instincts',... while so many of his contemporaries or successors - Lallana, Shaqiri, Szoboszlai, Wirtz, even the 'non-white' but much paler-skinned Salah and Firminho - were more likely to be singled out for qualities like 'inventiveness', 'subtlety', or 'game intelligence'. And yet Mané was just as great a player as any of them, with many of the exact same attributes - but you often wouldn't get that impression from the way that pundits discussed his game performances.
It seems that this vice of unconscious prejudice in the choice of descriptors does not only infect our commentators and journalists, but is disturbingly rife among scouts and youth coaches in the game - with potentially very harmful impacts on the development opportunities for young black players.
As the video warns at its conclusion: "The words we use to praise someone can also be the words that limit them." Well worth 10 minutes of your time.
A classic piece of silliness from Noughties UK skit show Harry and Paul....
The national anthems are usually a bit of a chore to sit through at a big sporting event like this - often, I fear, even for citizens of their own country. And our own, the dirge-like 'God Save The King', is, I'm sorry to say, one of the worst. There's hardly an Englishman alive who wouldn't far rather have 'Land of Hope and Glory' or 'Rule, Britannia!' as our anthem - both, alas, tainted with the bombast of colonial ambition, but at least rather more rousing tunes.
Being confined to a military band rendition is half the problem, I think. A small string section would add so much more emotional texture to the sound. Or, gosh, what about a bit of swoony saxophone or clarinet? Alas, no; we're always stuck with tinny brass and snare-drums. The mode of performance seems to have influenced the choice of songs as well, since we almost always seem to get pieces with the plodding tempo of a slow march. Some of the more exotic ones at least offer the diversion of eccentric structure, with something like a 'symphonic' form with distinct 'movements', wildly different in style and tempo, rather than just a metronomic verse-chorus repetition. I always thought the Italian one was rather fun, even though - or perhaps because - it sounds as though it was composed for the hurdy-gurdy; but of course we're not getting to hear that one this time.
The USA has a surprisingly potent one: a bit slow and po-faced, certainly, but undoubtedly very emotive.
But France wins hands-down. It is, I think, the only national anthem in the world that other countries like to listen to - and might even, occastionally, get tempted to sing along with.
It is because it's such a bloody good tune? Or.... is it all just down to Casablanca??
And France are getting to play their semi-final on their National Day. That's not nothing - it might give them just that little extra emotional lift (as if they needed it!!).
Adam Clery, my favourite of the Youtube tactical analysts, a couple of weeks ago identified another significant advantage the French team may be enjoying - something that has gone largely unnoticed by other pundits. Because Luis Enrique likes to rotate his big players at PSG to keep them fresh for the Champions League, and because a number of them have had spells out with injury this season, a lot of France's top creative talents have played less than 3,000 minutes over the past season, some not much more than 2,000 minutes. (Half of England's starting eleven have clocked well over 4,000 minutes. It's small wonder that Declan Rice looks so constantly knackered, after being asked to play almost every single minute of Arsenal's long and gruelling season.) France's key players still have relatively fresh legs - compared to just about all the other major European teams.
English bookies are apparently still pricing France at around 11/5. That might be partly because patriotic optimists are now backing England heavily. France really ought to be odds-on. Backing them at that price looks very much like free money to me! [Once again, I find myself with cause to be relieved that my online betting account is inaccessible to me at the moment! France didn't get the expected additional lift from playing on their National Day; in fact, they produced one of their flattest performances in years. Spain certainly knocked them out of their usual comfortable rhythm. And Deschamp made some questionable selection decisions again. But really, France just didn't show up for this one; every single player had an off day...]
A Happy 'Bastille Day' to any French readers who may happen past.... (Though I don't think it's commonly called that in your country, is it?) And best of luck for tonight's game!!
I've often said on here before that it's very valuable to watch some good quality analysis of football games, to improve your understanding of what's gonig on - of why teams are performing as they are, well or badly, and thus how they're likely to do in an important upcoming game.
The standard of punditry on the mainstream TV channels inevitably tends to be somewhat superficial. And, with so much football to get through at the moment, I just don't have the appetite for sitting through the pre- and post-match and half-time discussions as well as the actual play (I'm having to watch most of the games in 'as live' re-runs the following morning, since the kick-offs are in the middle of the night in my timezone!). But I have been enjoying some of the Youtube content from my favourite online football analysts. Here are some of the best videos I've enjoyed in the last few weeks.
Conor McAinsh of Football Meta recently produced this excellent breakdown on how defensive discipline has been enabling some of the 'smaller' teams to embarrass the big boys of the game in this tournament. (He's just added another specifically on how Germany were undone by this.)
The Purist Football has also been putting out some great coverage of the competition (just before it started he had an interesting series of short videos assessing the prospects of each of the favourites to win the competition). This is a particularly good breakdown of why Morocco have looked so formidable so far far.
Football Made Simple has also put out some good videos on the tournament, particularly this recent one on Brazil's success in their knockout win over Japan.
And my pal Adam Clery of ACFC, a huge Scotland fan, just did a sombre post mortem on their disappointing tournament (ultimately pretty savage on Steve Clarke, but deservedly so). He also had a very good assessnent of Brazil last week.
Do give these a look. Analyses like these can be very helpful to your Fantasy endeavours.
I mentioned the other day that we probably shouldn't have written off Cabo Verde - just because they're a tiny nation that most people have never previously heard of... in any capacity, let alone as a footballing nation. I myself made that mistake prior to the tournament, having not been able to follow any of the qualifying from around the world. But I pointed out in that earlier post about how things were shaping up after the 2nd Round that Africa has become such a strong footballing continent now that we should probably be wary of anyone who gets through one of their qualifying groups. And, frankly, apart from the outstanding Morocco, the little Cape Verdean team have been looking the best African team so far - and one of the most impressive defensive sides in the entire tournament. It seems rather cruel that their stronger-than-expected finish has landed them a 'Round of 32' tie against Argentina. (Apparently the bookies have them at around 15/1 to get through that. I'm almost tempted to have a wild flutter on them.)
Many people, I suggested, might not even have recognised the name of the little Atlantic island nation, a former Portuguese colony. But, for various reasons, a very good friend of mine happened to be a fairly regular visitor there throughout the 1990s, and so I learned a little of the place through his stories. And I was particularly glad that he introduced me to the music of Cesária Évora, the islands' national treasure, one of the most remarkable female singers you'll ever hear - a voice so rich and drenched in emotion, it will send shivers down anybody's spine. The performance of Bésame Muchoabove is from a celebrated show she did at Le Grand Rex theatre in Paris on 5th April 2004. It was recorded in full for a concert film, Live D'Amor, which you can currently watch on Youtube here.
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...
Here are a couple of videos I've particularly enjoyed in the last week or so....
I have occasionally found James Allcott a bit irritatingly full of himself (although I may be biased by an element of jealousy of his youthful good looks...), and his content is often a little self-indulgently over-long. But he seems a likeable chap, and he usually has some worthwhile things to say. I especially liked this recent shorter piece from him in celebration of Rayan Cherki.
And long-time favourite of mine, The Purist Football, is now posting rather more regularly, and on some shorter, more specfic topics. His latest is this rather fun appreciation of the thrilling tactics of humble NEC Nijmegen (currently on track for European football next year, as they sit in 4th place in the Eredivisie - actually just ahead of Ajax, who are having a difficult season). They seem to have become the embodiment of an 'Attack, attack, attack!'mentality - and we must hope that more teams around the Continent start to emulate this.
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.
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.
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.
I like The Athletic's print content, but their video output on Youtube has often been a bit all-over-the-place. Their flagship 'The Week in Football' programme has degenerated this season into a self-indulgently podcasty ramble around half a dozen or more different topics that takes far too long,... and often says little of any real insight. Their best shows were always the more in-depth analyses from JJ Bull and Jon MacKenzie, especially when hosted by the amusing Joe Devine (who now seems to be fully occupied in doing the voiceover for their Tifo sub-channel, the one reliably entertaining bit of their output at the moment), but those seem to have become more and more rare.
However, at the start of the long break in Premier League football we've just suffered, the weekly ramble did return to something like its previous, more focused format, with a single topic - the alarming decline in Erling Haaland's goal output since December - and close analysis from Mackenzie and Alex Barker.
While the discussion does highlight how dramatic the fall-off in The Viking's effectiveness has been in the last few months, I think overall there is much to take comfort from. Haaland doesn't actually seem to have any serious underlying injury issue, or to have some problem of 'confidence' or attitude; he's still working hard for the team, getting into lots of good positions, looking monstrously hungry for goals. The problem has chiefly been that City's current style of play hasn't been suiting him so well. And that shift has largely been necessitated by a number of key injuries, particularly to the wingers. Now that Doku appears to be back to his best, and Savinho may soon be back too, and Semenyo and even Cherki have recently demonstrated that they can also be dangerous in a wider attacking role down the right side, I think we could see the service to Haaland start to pick up again.
In the FPL context, with so few premium players this year, and so few regular big producers in midfield at any price, there's really no pressure on budget at the moment. So, there's really no motive to drop Haaland to try to 'upgrade' in multiple other positions (most people already have pretty much exactly the squad they want, as well as Haaland - without having had to make any great economies). So, the only reason to drop Haaland would be because you think there are at least three other forwards with better points-prospects than him over the run-in. And, frankly, nobody else has been in consistently impressive form lately: in fact, the only forward scraping into the Top 20 points producers over the last handful of games is Beto!!! And I don't see anyone dropping Haaland for Beto....
So,.... scary and potentially disappointing as it is, I think we probably have to stick with Haaland,... and hope that he's going to assume a central role in a brave City charge for the title over this next six weeks.
The essence of FPL is assessing the potential of players. Haaland's potential is always far higher than just about anyone else's - he is a 'generational talent', one of the greatest goalscorers the game's ever seen; and he plays for one of of the highest-performing, most consistently creative and dangerous sides in world football. His potential is enormous; but, unfortunately, for multiple, complex reasons,... he doesn't always fulfill his potential.
I still think he's worth having a bet on for the last 7 gameweeks.
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.]
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.
