Fantasy Football

I loved Mark Steel’s contribution to the current debate over whether Man Utd.’s Premier League success was the biggest anticlimax to date.  He really hit the nail on the head, with his ascerbic critique of the game’s upper echelons and their FTSE-listed fortunes.

I, for one, forecast the death of football as we knew it, when Spurs became the first PLC way back when.  But it wasn’t until the death throes of the division formerly known as Barclay’s Division One, which gave way to the crudely named Premier version, that my predictions started to mirror reality.

From now on, at the start of August, all the club chairmen should declare how much money they’ve got, and the league table should be based on the results. This will save the bother of having to play the games.

Jack Walker’s millions were the first to put a spell on the Premier League, and culminating in the takeover of Man City by that dodgy Thai (Taksin Shinawatatatata…can anybody spell, or even remember his name?), football finally ceased to exist as a living, breathing wholly fan owned entity.  You couldn’t write it.  I predict that within another ten years, not only will you not recognise the first 11s, but you’ll have difficulty naming the chairmen too!

You know things are starting to go awry when someone comes up to you in the middle of downtown Cairo, a place as far-removed from Stamford Bridge and Old Trafford as you could get, asking in a dodgy accent, ‘Who you support? Liverpool.  Chelsea.  I like Terry.  Rooney.  You like camel?’

Football, for the dedicated fan, and I certainly don’t fall into that category anymore, just isn’t football.  Yet, I wholeheartedly agree with them.  The likes of Arsene Wenger and Roman Abramovich have ruined the game as far as I’m concerned.  How can you have an English football team with no English players? It’s a joke!  And as for the supporters who pay to go and watch these overpaid primadonnas…

‘…They’d be just as ecstatic if their club was bought by the Burmese military government, as long as it promised to invest 300 million quid on players. Fans would hail the new board and yell “Fantastic news – the chairman has stolen every penny of the cyclone fund and spent it on a solid central defender.”

The final straw was the selection of yet another foreign manager for England.  I mean, would it not have hurt them just to be a little patriotic for once and have picked an Englishman?  You can bet that none of the other major footballing nations would have gone down that road, but then I guess we don’t fall into that category anymore, do we?

Let’s hope that Sepp Blatter (hate the man! - what’s a bloody Swiss doing running the game we invented? And for so long?), can get that player limit implemented.  Of course, it’s no surprise that the interfering politicians of the EU have given their 5 pence worth, declaring Blatter’s proposed ‘6 plus 5′ rule illegal.

One thing’s for sure, you can bet the foreign army in the Premiership are against it…you can just picture Wenger crying into his frog’s legs and snails at the thought - good!