Blog 7 - Nostradamus Head

A while ago (Feb 2009) I posted the following on the Pink Un Message Board. It got a good reaction at the time but looking back, I think a lot of our recent England World Cup shambles have vindicated the points I made here.

Plus it's an easy way to post a quick blog and I'm a lazy bastard...



The downfall of our game - a rant


The FA and the Premier League need to take a lot of criticism for the part they have played in creating situations like Saturday, where you have a team in dire need of points to fight relegation, and the majority couldn't summon up the fire and the fight to take the game to the opposition when the game was there for the taking. Obviously Norwich's woes aren't solely due to the players who couldn't produce on Saturday, but I'm talking in a wider context, as the same lack of fight can be seen at so many clubs up and down the country and even with the national team, and it's a growing problem that undermines football in this country.

One problem is that players no longer think of their being part of a club or area because their careers are so transitory. Even if you sign for a club permanently (e.g. Jason Jarrett for us), if you don't gel into the side immediately chances are you'll be lobbed out on loan to get gametime within six to eighteen months, at which point you'll have to move into a hotel for probably three to six months, leaving whatever family you have behind in a place they haven't lived for very long. Then when you do return, is it for first team football, or another loan spell away, in a hotel, while your Missus and kids cry on the phone about you never being there again? Eventually, you'll grow to resent the club that's loaning you out, and the clubs you're being loaned to.

Or if you are lucky enough to get into the team as a regular (e.g. Sammy Clingan) you're then at the mercy of the teams fortunes. If you find yourself doing well (and if you're a regular pick you can't be doing too bad with the size of most squads these days) then a bigger, richer team will be looking to sign you in which case you're moving again. Or at best, your team may be in line for promotion, in which case your stay is likely to be extended, but then you have the worry of whether the club will try and buy someone with experience of the league above who plays in your position. If your team does badly and gets relegated then you'll be looking to move to stay in the league and salary bracket you fought to get to in the first place. And if you do get to said new, bigger club, see paragraph above. And worst of all is when you're playing for a club who should be doing better but continually find themselves at the wrong end of the table, whose fans moan and are constantly negative, and who apparantly have no money and a paper-thin squad of loanees...

Players however have themselves to blame for this state of affairs by appointing agents who have routinely created monsters from young talented boys who go on to holding clubs to ransom, threatening Bosman escapes, sulky strikes or whatever it takes to get what they want. The more arseholes clubs see, the less they fancy committing to a contract for another potential nightmare ego, and they take the soft option, as City tend to do, of trying before you buy. Nine times out of ten it doesn't pan out because either the player is every bit as much of an arsehole as the rest, or is disillusioned even before he walks in the door, hating the lifestyle of a short-term traveller, and will probably consider he's doing the club a favour by being there and will only put in the effort he deems neccesary, which won't usually tally with the supporters, and the loan fails.

Add in the factor that thanks to the travelling rule for youth academies, small clubs who made the most of their youth systems like Norwich and Crewe have been completely shafted at the expense of Premiership clubs who now swallow up all the promising youth in the country (and in increasing numbers) and most youngsters are drawn into the role of traveller at young ages anyway. Live in Cambridge? Don't worry, that's only a short flight to Manchester airport. Based in Macclesfield? Don't worry, you won't have to play for Macc, because you're in range of Manchester and Birmingham and Villa and Man U are both taking on 100 youngsters this year. And whereas a few years ago it would have been ridiculous to travel these distances twice a week for training and then again for the game at the weekend, don't worry, because the potential pay rewards are so great that Dad's willing to risk his job and take time off to drive you. Or if you're really talented, the big clubs might even send a car for you.

Because of the vast numbers that now go through the big clubs nets, most of the players at Championship level and even a large proportion of those at L1 and 2 will have learnt their trade in a big clubs academy. This means that they will have been brought up to see how to carry themselves as a pro and as a man, by the current crop of Premiership footballers. So what we all end up with are over-privilaged young men who look upon their livelihood as more of a lifestyle choice than a profession. The look is as important as the job itself. Making friends with celebrities, appearing on Footballers Cribs and queing up for your crack at Danielle Lloyd is the day job, and in between that you try and fit in training and the odd game. And when the fans criticise your lack of effort, you sulk and move to another club, and another location where there are a whole new bunch of nightclubs and wannabe Danielle Lloyds desperate to look at the ceiling of a footballers crib for a night. Repeat ad nauseum.

Look back 20 years at someone like Gary Mabbutt, a one-club man, model professional and someone who had to cope with regularly injecting himself with Insulin before matches and training just to get onto the pitch. Could the modern footballer summon up the willpower to conquer such a problem? An everyday life situation for the hundreds of thousands of diabetics out there, but what would happen to Ashley Cole tomorrow if it happened to him? I imagine a barrage of "coping seminars" and three months off on full pay (funded by the fans) to get his head around it followed by a heartwarming hour-long special on Sky where he weeps comforted by Cheryl whilst we all discuss how brave the little soldier is to be even thinking of playing football again. Frank Lampard's mum dies (not pleasant, but not a totally unusual occurrence for a man in his thirties to have to live through) and shirts with "Pat Lampard RIP" are paraded around Stamford Bridge by his teammates on the day he missed the game due to her death. Admirable team spirit, and I have no complaint about his missing the match but for Gods sake!!! Would it have happened twenty years ago? An outpouring of emotion in a football ground for the passing of someone's mum who contributed nothing to the game of football except for the fact that thirty years ago she pushed out a boy who is now on the fringes of the England team and who can't take a penalty in a pressure situation? Of course not. Unthinkable.

Unfortunately, the players, the agents and the clubs have created the modern footballer and we, the fans, have to suffer through him. We have treated our young like little boys and we can't then expect them to become men. All the young talent is chauffeured into the big clubs, pampered and promised the world, the majority then get kicked out or sent on loan to places that don't pamper as well, and they look on it as an unwanted setback, an ordeal to get through rather than relish. Bitter and resentful, the lower clubs sieve through them by virtue of loans, prospecting for the odd nugget that contains both a measure of talent and residual integrity from before they got involved with the professional game.

Where have all the good men gone? We've let the growing wealth of the game, and in particular the big clubs, emasculate a generation. In the words of the England vice-captain and leader of the Champions of England and Europe, "You've been Merked".