Football

Priest in the Tempest.

~ bowlingatvincent ~ Leave a comment

It had everything, including the tempest. Apparently the seas – well, Humber – got so wild that codling were being hurled into the stadium. The roof of the ancient Main Stand almost collapsed, not just because of the massed excitement but because of the weight of the krill. The lad Mbeumo had to fiddle a flattie from under his shirt before taking *that pen*: hence the miss.

Ah yess, the Grimbo-jokes. The howling gale of back-handed compliments and faintly feeble headlines, from media owned by Southern Softies and/or far-flung moguls. ‘Town batter United!’ ‘Shoal of the Century! The analytical consensus that ‘Amorim is drowning not waving!’ Marvellous.

The truth is that Grimsby Town outplayed Manchester United, in the first half. They had a strong case for a third goal, before United gathered at all – ruled out: no VAR. Yes, absolutely true that in the monsoon, the Mariners did lose their composure. Have no doubt that the apparently unfeasibly calm David Artell would have been inwardly raging at the way in which possession was repeatedly thrown away, in the second period. But perhaps it’s forgivable that messrs Fernandes and Mbeumo – amongst other key introductions – *did* turn the thing around. They do, despite the awful mess United are in, have some quality.

Vernam’s outstanding team goal lit the proverbial fuse on a night when many of my favourite people were in the stands, belting out the home anthems. (Yess. Am Grimsby – despite now being not unfairly described by those in the borough as Plastic Taff. And yess, grandfather played for both teams. So this is all rather huge. I know those streets and those stands).

The ground is wonderfully (largely) from another age; as seen on TV. The staff *really are* all about embedding this club in the community, in a way that the majority of club-owning scheisters and stockbrokers simply don’t understand. They can ‘project their visions’ all they want. Blundell Park ain’t perfect (and neither are the Team Leaders) but something very real has always lurked there. Jason Stockwood does appear to know that corporatism is the death of sport and of truth itself. Grimsby are Grimsby: they do deserve this kind of night.

So forty-five minutes in dreamland, with McEachran – who has quality – strolling around, and Artell’s side looking shapely and intelligent. Control of the game. A goal that might have been disallowed for handball (possibly?) and then Gardner’s borderline effort ruled-out. United all over the place – not just being ‘out-battled,’ that wouldn’t do justice to Town.

Half-time comes and Amorim implements the necessary cull. Fredericson patently had to go but half the team must’ve been a-wondering. Including Onana. The rain turns biblical and we Town fans think this might be just what we need – an absolute lottery! But in truth, both because of the influx of talent and intent and Grimsby’s understandable wastefulness with the limited possession they have, Manchester get back in it. Maguire is always on that figure-of-fun/Major Leader interface but notably he brought it – commendable spirit, I mean – and the reds fans had something to shout about. Then those pens.

I generally turn penalties off; no matter what the occasion. I watched these. We could throw descriptors like biblical and epic and humbling and heart-warming in there. Even neutrals might be doing some of that. I’m not neutral. I, erm, kinda follow both teams.

My socials went mad. The coverage has gone mad; because it’s Town, because it’s United. If there’s a consensus it’s that despite being a man of intelligence, integrity and purpose, Amorim is closer to the brink than he was pre the Trial At Blundell Park. Even those with active brain cells are saying that despite the carnage the man inherited, he is unable to make anything work and has to be accountable for that. Plainly, he is. The rest just want rid, being unable to see any complexity in this.

I think there is complexity. Take the case of Artell. When he came in (and on multiple occasions since then) he has felt like fella who can talk a good game. But not necessarily one you would follow or utterly believe in. He’s currently turning that perception around – with the players and support. Town have a pattern of play and a level of confidence. United, despite the talk of tactical drive, have neither.

We might talk dangerously in the abstract about character. We might be critical of the Premier League side on that, both last night and in general: everyone from Mainoo to Diallo to Cunha, perhaps? Would you want them in the trenches; never mind on a wet Wednesday at Blundell Park? Town’s players, from the outstanding Pym to the hearty Green and Rodgers, knew they had to bring some grit and determination (as a certain Mr Hansen might have said) to the proceedings. Because MU have better footballers. Therefore (we) work like hell.

Coaching is surely blending? Finding deeply and fabulously different qualities in different individuals and blending them together, whilst (in the modern era) feeding in bucketloads of stats and tactical info and beliefs. Ideally you want players with inviolable spirit and confidence but life ain’t like that. So blend and build. Amorim has work to do. We can no longer be clear that he has the time or the oomph to do it.

But those pens. Ridiculous and also pret-ty maarvellous that a whole cluster of League Two players held their nerve and slotted… almost endlessly. When the universe was screaming for it to end. Their composure in that moment is not all down to Artell, of course. But let’s give the man some credit for patrolling it with such evenness. Like a priest in the tempest. Fish all around him.

Fernandes finds it.

~ bowlingatvincent ~ Leave a comment

We expected a biblical thrashing and got a biblical lashing. Liverpool was drenched, and so were we, in the usual psychotic drama of the fixture. Exbloodyzausting.

Trent made all the arguments for his transfer to Real. Hojlund powerfully reasserted his cruel, honest capacity to be ordinary. Fernandes finally found almost everything he’s lost for what – two seasons? Zirkzee came on and right at The Death overhit a wee pass to Maguire that got clumped over the bar with the net not so much yawning as black-holing. It was all soaked in sleet and glory and misery and yes, exhaustion. The players looked knackered, too.

Generality and gravity and meaning itself get swallowed-up in this most bile-full of games but let’s have a thrash at some streaky factoids. United deserved at least a point, after a performance of real grit and some quality – or at least organisation and heart. Liverpool had only occasional lung-bursting thrusts: markedly less control and, astonishingly given *all the trends,* practically zilch in the way of dominance. MacAllister should have scored, and maybe Gravenberg, in the first twenty, but United played with commendable composure around the inevitable surges. When Martinez thumped the visitors ahead, it felt kinda logical, in this sopping madness.

Liverpool’s response was more scattergun than Slot would have wanted. Sure they found themselves ahead but for longish periods there were no meaningful or threatening phases of play and Alexander-Arnold’s flank was a disaster area. The Outrageously Gifted One had a mare, almost from start to finish, leaving most of us nodding sagely at the thought of his upcoming role as unmolested God-Quarterback at Real.

Dalot was skinning him at will, on one occasion delivering a fabulous teasing cross that Amad either simply misread or could not, in the downpour, adjust himself for. Either way it looked like the striker – who was almost entirely absent from the fixture, despite being United’s most dangerous outlet for weeks – falls into the Can’t Head it for the Life of Him category. Alongside most contemporary forwards, you might say.

Fernandes has been an infuriatingly infuriated individual most of his life. After starting like a world-beater at United he has been playing well below capacity for aeons. The poor love looks infuriated by that… and referees… and by the inadequacies of his team-mates. His discipline has been ragged, as has his ability to thread passes that he knows Bruno F should be making in his sleep. Today he found most of the stuff that’s been missing. He was almost towering.

Amorim will be genuinely disappointed his lads couldn’t quite engineer a startling win but he will be reassured, somewhat. This performance – for it was A Performance, finally – settles the doubts about a possible relegation battle. United are poor but not that poor. They can and will probably find the shape they need – Amorim’s shape – and scuff their way to about 12th, come the end of the campaign.

Talking of scuffs, Amad’s goal for two-all (before the truly excruciating extra-time) was no thing of beauty but sent the away fans into predictable, performative paroxysms of pent-up relief and medium-foul tribal delight. The lad had barely been involved but the same could have been said for Gakpo, who delivered a worldie-from-nowhere to send the home fans wild, after that uncharacteristically solid start, and opening goal, from United.

Salah’s penalty was yet another one of those where the defender – in this case De Ligt – has no intention of making contact with the ball with his instinctively (but yeh, ok, slightly weirdly) flailing hand. In Proper Football there is no way this is a pen. Here it always felt likely as soon as referred: (rule change, please).

So where does this leave us – apart from breathless? It’s a Big Point for Manchester United… but doesn’t mean progress will be swift or smooth. For Liverpool it points up the edginess of their thrilling urgency. Can they stay patient, as well as destroy people, with their post-Klopp rampage? MacAllister can.

Mega.

~ bowlingatvincent ~ Leave a comment

So the Make M U Great Again campaign can finally re-boot. Ar Erik is down the road.

Be honest, he should have gone more than a year ago – yes, a year! – because despite our civilising instinct towards giving a Good Man time, he has looked weak and woeful for an age.

Not his fault, entirely, that half of his players have let this once-mighty club down, or that Old Trafford itself is a whole lot less appetising, as a prospect, than it was ten years ago, but Ten Hag is complicit in that. The team has been a million miles off being competitive for United-level competitions for several seasons. Great players – some known, some not – must surely have turned down the (ahem) opportunity to go red, throughout that sorry period. At no stage has Ten Hag made a sustained case for meaningful improvement.

I have had sympathy for the fella. Bright, decent individual, or so it would seem, with an appropriate level of knowledge. Would interview well in the corporate environment- like so many. (And of course this is The or A Problem).

Making the right noises before a panel of impressionable, largely non-football people accounts for many of the new breed of sophisticates and tactical wizards now ensconced in the Prem. (And no, this is not at all a xenophobic argument). Us Footie Peeps know (because we feel it in our guts) who has the wherewithal to *actually manage* the #legends at Top Club A or B – particularly where languor or confidence-deficiency has set in.

It was clear within about twelve milliseconds that a) United needed a strongman – because of the existential and historical/emotional drift – and b) Ten Hag was not that guy. He could not capture or successfully cull. He could not meaningfully inspire, because he is not a man to follow. He could not ‘get top side’. In another environment, it might work. At Utd, no.

Sancho. Antony, Garnacho, Amad. Zirkzee, Hojlund, Rashford. Every one of them a notch down; either too weak or too wasteful or too needy to contribute consistently to the required standard. All of them in their admittedly different ways crying out for good management. (Meaning they either need a relentless, life-changing bollocking or sustained, committed, authentic support). Ten Hag could execute neither. He chose badly, failed to lead and/or failed to find the blend. From early in his tenure all this was obvious (to Football People).

Sancho is A Talent- quite probably of the classically arrogant and delusional about his own importance sub-type. His habits may have been bad. It took a lifetime for his soap opera to be concluded. Ditto the intermittently fabulous Rashford. An uneasy non-peaceful fug settled over that relationship, too – it goes on, when it should have been managed: resolved. Ten Hag sorted virtually nothing, when United needed either a big-hearted (Klopp-like?) force of nature or a fekking dictator. In consequence there has been no spirit – let alone Spirit of United. There has been no team pattern. There has been no grit.

Players are significantly culpable. Too many look and play like seventeen year-olds. Some – like Bruno – bring the required effort but cannot find a pass. Others are one-paced or far too lazy to close down sharply or track back with commitment. United are a pale shadow; have been for years. In virtually every way you can name, in every area of the park, they have been embarrassingly short and shockingly easy to play against.

Players culpable yes, but it’s up to the gaffer to build a resilient squad and demand or drive for elite quality and performance. Ten Hag may have found it impossible to attract (or drag) the very best players to Old Trafford since his appointment in April 2022 but he’s had enough moolah and still I think enough clout to assemble a strongish posse. Instead he has a pretty sorry mix. Maguire and Evans *playing together* in key matches? Zirkzee or Hojlund as your Main Striker? Van Nistelrooy they ain’t.

Manchester United have looked and played like a mid-table team for far too long. Accepted, some of that precipitous decline pre-dates the Dutchman’s arrival but he has patently lacked the authority or heft as a human animal to even begin to turn things around. Most onlookers feel most United players are waaay down on the quality and intensity that even their rivals understand as authentically M U.

Whilst having a wee dollop of sympathy for a man who has been serially let down by his charges, it’s surely widely recognised that Ten Hag had to go? (My regular reader will know I’ve been saying that for aeons). There was some almost inevitable prevarication post the arrival of the New Upstairs Regime but now we’re done. Out. Van Nistelrooy may have a chance: rather him than Southgate, for me. Let’s see.

#Books and #writing and all.

~ bowlingatvincent ~ 2 Comments

I know this is kindof niche and I may not be in a position to entirely deny the Cooo, Sales Opportunity factor, but I re-read this (below) and found it mildly diverting. So revisiting.

It’s the transcript of a talk I gave, coupla years back, to Writing Room (writingroom.org.uk) on the ins and outs of self-publishing. Hoping it may be of interest and if not, there are a couple of laughs and the occasional philosophical insight-attempt. With Beautiful Games now unleashed into the wilderverse, and having grabbed a further bundle of knowledge about The Process of Getting Books Out There, it feels okay to piggyback the original event.

To the underslung, I would add, then:

I still really like the whole notion of self-publishing; the freedoms; the Independent Record Labelness; the relative speed of delivering your missive. In terms of practical minutiae, I *now know* that it’s the online behemoths that push for a pre-order period of a month, to allow time for the book files/cover/metadata/whatever to fully load onto their systems. Seems a bit daft in 2024, but this is just how it is. Amazon (e.g.) can put your book up there on Day One but the info about said book, online, may not be correct, or fully described for some weeks. So they call that faff-abart-time a Pre-Order Period and scramble to get things looking right – whilst obviously improving the groovy-‘early’ sales factor.

I have used Grosvenor House Publishing for Beautiful Games, because the people I dealt with were/are tidy and The Dots Will Not Be Joined felt and looked like a kosher book. (In short, happy to recommend). Costs are pretty much unchanged from those included below, other than the increase in prices for copies *to me*, for my book launch and personal supply. This I expected, given the general hike in printing costs, et al, to the producers themselves. Happy to field enquiries on anything around writing or publishing – particularly, obviously, the self-publishing route.

Here’s the new book – https://www.amazon.co.uk/Beautiful-Games-Rick-Walton/dp/1803817763

The rest I think is here…

ON SELF-PUBLISHING.

Hi & welcome to everybody, wherever you’re ‘at’, geographically or writing-wise. I feel like I should start with a patently, refreshingly un-focus-grouped soundbite so here it is: I’m here to ENCOURAGE. I really am.

Am I an expert? Nope, almost certainly not… but I have gone thru this self-publishing thing. So I will and CAN give you some PRACTICAL INFO as well as waffle or spout opinion extravagantly. Ignore all diversions – there will be nonsense and mischief en route – just hold on and I will prove to you I am kosher in the sense of having self-published a book. Recently. You may, should the thing fall into your hands, powerfully dislike THE DOTS WILL NOT BE JOINED and therefore think I’m an utter fraud as a writer but the process would be the same for your fabulous, authentic equivalent.

Brief WHO AM I?

I’m Rick and I’m a writer and a sports coach/P.E. Teacher – mainly the latter, in fact. I’ve always ‘written stuff’ – whether that be songs/poems or bigger lumps of words. Always. For me. For me this is personal, so if you do take away one message from the following kaleido-rant(s) let it be this: I think we write because we can’t stop. The Rest is superfluous (for me, anyway): whether we’re famous and brilliant or mischievous and obscure and daft. (Guess which end of the spectrum I’m waving, madly, from?) The Doing is the thing. Your contribution is the thing. Please create this stuff. You need it/I need you to do it. You make the world better. Get your writing done.

I love Nearly Man/Nearly Person stories. I’ve got some byooots and if we have time I’d love to hear some of yours. Wozzat all abart? I think We Writing Peeps may need to be kinda durable or ‘philosophical’ but we may also need a sense of humour about the madness and anti-meritocracy of all this, yes? Maybe more of that later…

My story is… in god-knows-when my first play was workshopped at the Nat Theatre Studio, in London. It was entirely possible that I was gonna make it: I do actually remember a director saying “Christ, Rick, you’re gonna be SO-O BIG!!” LOLS! Been getting smaller ever since.

I shook hands with the top man there – Nick Wright – over the fact of an upcoming production of one of my plays, then got on with my life. They had ‘wanted me in the building’ so I wrote something else on a second visit. IT NEVER HAPPENED. Not because they realized I was the mischievous impostor/rebellious jukebox I may have been but because the funding was cut for new writing festivals etc. I imagine half of you have experienced something similar – the new stuff, the risky stuff being cut or excluded. I didn’t care. I just kept writing – kept living my life.

Apologies, know this is indulgent but let me stick with this momentarily on the off-chance that this feel somehow relatable and mildly diverting. I’ll mention in passing that a reader at Hampstead Theatre dubbed me a ‘free-wheeling absurdist’ (always wanted to stick that on my passport) and an equivalent at the Royal Court called me ‘the diamond in the dung-heap’ and I think that gave me enough belief… but know what? All that belief/confidence/vindication malarkey… that could be an endless discussion in itself… mainly I was happy, living in Pembrokeshire, with NO EXPECTATION or AMBITION to be somebody – be that kind of writer or public figure.

Have no regrets about this. Never, I swear sought to push open that metaphorical door: never bought directors coffee. Always knew I was a longshot and an outsider because of who I am, how I write. I wasn’t going to change that; they weren’t going to change that. We’re all wonderfully different (and I know this can sound incredibly arrogant but) for me there was and is no conciliation around this.

Know it’s going to sound weirdly against the grain of what follows here, if I say I’ve never considered the public aspect of publishing important. But I really haven’t. This is personal and I fear it will sound insufferably pompous or something… but I don’t, essentially seek or need vindication. I just write. So yeh – uncompromisingly.

THE PROCESS

Started with having the headspace and time to write a book, instead of blogs. (Am an accredited cricket writer and bloggist – have two websites. Have also had articles published in various papers and magazines; sports-stuff mainly. Wisden). COVID made the first tome possible.

Conversations (with folk I trust), who might know, about agents/publishing/stuff I’d need to aware of.

Some publishers INSIST on agents forwarding work: think that’s bollocks but it’s how it is. Didn’t expect to get an agent but googled them and chose a few. Did the same with publishers, at the same time, because a) impatient b) knew my work too ‘left-field/’unstructured’ to land with most mainstream publishers.

Looked hard at publishers, on t’internet and chose about ten, to forward manuscripts. Most want the opening 30 pages, with a chapter breakdown and/or similar highlights package. Took this seriously but opted to present in my own inimitable style, in the expectation of ‘failure’, but the hope of maybe just hitting a like-minded spirit in their camp. Didn’t!

Most publishers take months to get back to you – if they do so. They then pre-warn that any subsequent publication will take a year or more after that. This was intolerable for me, given my book feels contemporary to that 2019/20 moment – was about that moment. Feels urgent.

IN SHORT I THINK IT’S RIDICULOUS (in any case) that it takes 2 years to publish a book. In 2021/2/3? Madness. Simply don’t believe it’s necessary, in the digital age and it was a major driver in pointing me towards self-publishing.

Wrote the book between winter 2020/21 and early Summer 2021 with a view to publishing that autumn. Timing-wise, felt daft not to try to collar some of the Xmas Market. Lols!

 (It had become apparent, from more conversations and possibly email exchanges with publishers, that even with lockdowns meaning half the universe was writing books, self-publishing could happen start-finish in a matter of weeks/a few months. That was the clincher, for me).

So, basically, I didn’t wait for many agents and publishers to respond. I saw an ad on-line, probably under The Guardian banner, probably on the Twitters, for self-publishing via Grosvenor House. I remember asking my good friend Paul Mason if he had any experience or knowledge around this and he said he was aware of other options, but no. Didn’t recommend his agent, neither did the other guy I spoke to. No easy ‘in’: I emailed Grosvenor House Publishing Ltd.

DETAILS AND COSTS.

Abstract: I wanted complete control of my book. I’m a Stiff Records kindofaguy rather an EMI geezer. I didn’t want proofreading or copy-editing services: I was always going to do as much editing and re-writing as anyone but I wanted to make all the choices. Independent Record Label equivalent. Self-publishing makes that possible. It can be thrillingly punky in a way I like.

In July 2021 it cost me £795 to sign up with Grosvenor House. We had inevitably exchanged some emails – you get an individual assigned to you – which prepared the ground in terms of what the writer gets and what the publisher expects. Then you get a Publishing Agreement, (show it!) with just a few pages of contractual stuff – none of which was too intimidating to a newbie like myself.

What the writer has to do – probably not an exhaustive list!

  • Write the manuscript.
  • Produce some publicity/back of the book blurb.
  •  List the book correctly for web searching (metadata – had no idea myself but not over-taxing). Not *actually sure* how vital that is, but they want you in the right box and some people will probably search.
  • Choose or design a cover and internal pics – at £5 per image, from memory. Best part of my adventure: Kevin Little. Somebody I trust, who GETS ME. We talked, I gave him some keys and a picture and away he went. Magic. IT WAS FREE – he understood. He enjoyed it. He brought His Thing. I needed some of his technical knowledge as well as his understanding of me and the book. Find a soulmate in this!
  • Take responsibility for slander/liable/originality etc.
  • Provide ‘an electronic file in Microsoft Word of the book text plus digitally scanned photographs/artwork in the correct format’.
  • Choose fonts and formatting (you’ll get some advice, in my experience). Also matt or gloss, etc.
  • Choose what price you want the book to be.
  • Allow the publisher to distribute sample copies free of charge. (Not sure if this happened, in my case).
  • IMPORTANTLY, THE AUTHOR MUST DO ALL THE MARKETING & ADVERTISING.

What the publisher agrees to do:

  • Arrange and provide an ISBN number – essential, people tell me.
  • To typeset sample pages and send them out to the author for approval.
  • To provide an electronic full proof within 30 days.
  • To assemble a cover – either from material the author provides or from a royalty-free website. (Grosvenor House can, for a fee, design your cover).
  • MANUFACTURE BOOKS ON DEMAND as orders are received.
  • ‘Supply our distributors with your book’s metadata/synopsis’ to ‘all major retailers/wholesalers in the UK and to Amazon.com’. Will list the book with Nielsen Book Data.
  • Make royalty payments twice a year – got £640 for my first!
  • Provide the author with 5 bound and printed copies free of charge. Supply the six national libraries of the UK with a copy of your book.

IMPORTANT NOTES.

Grosvenor House offer services such as editing/proofreading/design. The base rate for that is about £35 an hour but they will offer you specific quotations for particular tasks. They will professionally check-over your manuscript for about £200, in short. I didn’t want that and couldn’t really afford it, given my confident expectation to lose money at this venture. However, I inevitably missed a couple of typo’s and restoring those cost me about £100, post-publication.

The marketing thing is key. You, the author are doing all the marketing. They effectively produce the book and put it on Amazon. You sell it. I absolutely hated the idea that my only realistic option was to sell via Amazon BUT IS THIS IS PROBABLY HOW IT WILL BE.*

EVERYTHING IS DOWN TO ALGORITHMS AND CLICKS (apparently).

Grosvenor House did advise me that pre-publication sales can be major: if a certain number are sold, early doors, that triggers algorithms (or something) that may release your book into actual shops – or get it noticed by actual shops, who then order copies in. THIS DID NOT HAPPEN WITH MY BOOK -I’m a nobody, why would it? But FIND OUT ABOUT THIS STUFF. Lean on the publisher?

*Or by-pass Amazon, maybe… by buying lots of your own books and touting them around bookshops, yourself. (I am going to seriously consider this for my next book). Grosvenor House told me they would sell me any number of my first book at about £4 each – I bought 50, for the book launch.

 Next book I may contemplate buying many more and going on a road trip: let’s do the math.

Haven’t really thought this through but it may be possible to buy at £4 and sell at £10, having persuaded the booksellers to split that remaining money. If you take £7 & the bookshop gets £3, I make that £3 profit per book, for both of you. You may only need to sell 3 or 400, to break even. Could you face that initial expenditure, that risk, that work – that selling? Could that be part of your adventure?

We’re racing ahead. You need to be cute. You also need to be realistic – or not. I simply accepted the near-certainty that I would lose money on this adventure and daren’t buy 400 of my own books – didn’t really want to charge round the country with a car full of books.

My chosen route may have been something of a cop-out, then. I bought just enough books for the book launch, and to place a few in a local hotel and a couple of local shops.

Re-wind. WHAT I DID cost me around £1,000, trying to keep costs down a bit. The Killer Truth is that if you SELL YOUR BOOK FOR around £10 Grosvenor House will pinch £4-plus of that, and so will Amazon or equivalent. MEANING YOU WILL GET A ROYALTY OF (ONLY) £1.40 for every book sold. Outrageous but true.

I bit that bullet and tried from the outset to a) live with the loss but b) push to sell as many as possible.

MARKETING.

Nobody knows who the f*** Rick Walton is. He has no clout, no real ‘presence in the market’. But he knows a man or two that do(es).

I’m a Twitter fiend and have one or two celebrity Twittermates. Or Twitter Big-hitters. Critically for my ego (maybe) and certainly for any sales, both these guys think I’m a decent bloke and an interesting writer. They have many thousands of twitter followers and they both were kind enough to pump the book just a little, on that sagacious platform. The result was I sold about 5-600 books and gathered about £700 back from my outlay.

CONCLUSION.

I loved the whole process of self-publishing. It suited me. Never for one moment did I think it would make me a profit: I was doing it for other reasons. Primarily, rightly or wrongly, I feel there’s something I have to say. It felt like a next step. If the reality is nobody’s going to take me on – no agents, no publishers – so what? I can do it anyway.

It was a brilliant, gratifying adventure; I strongly recommend it. But think about how you might sell a lot of books. You’ll probably need to sell best part of a thousand to get yourself close to parity, dollars-wise, if you do it the way I did.

So who do you know with 300,000 Twitter followers? That’s, in my experience, the way to go. Or what’s your equivalent to that going to be?

Moral Authorities.

~ bowlingatvincent ~ Leave a comment

Aaaargh! Keane, ‘analysing’, actually uses the c-word – clever – to describe Paquetà’s hideous thirty-foot, spine-distorting dive to claim the pen, for West Ham. Half-challenged by the host, he then adjusts to include the possibility that the player may have cheated, by saying that he’s ‘not saying that he cheated… but’. The hilariously execrable Hasselbaink goes along with him. It’s another depressing moment for this game, football, the playground of #PremierLeagueLegends, and for sport.

We are all Keano, these days. Entrapped by the laws, by VAR, but mainly by a universe where players routinely ‘seek to draw contact’. It may just be an extension of the whole truth-void phenomenon. Trump lost, Truss was let down and Dido Harding was all over everything in a good way. It’s both obscene and o-kaaay.

Paquetà has no other thought than to adjust his feet & body so as to maximise the chance of drawing *any contact whatsoever*, at which point the centrifugal whirligig-thing kicks in, and propels him into the next county. Even live you could see that the defender, fearing his own potential misjudgement, withdraws everything withdrawable, to try to prevent the slightest of touches. He probably or possibly fails. VAR and Keane think it’s a penalty and perhaps it is. But it’s also an obvious travesty.

Can anything be done/should anything be done, about this? Does it matter?
It would seem my appallingly pro-decency view of this is an outlier. But what the hell. I still think that there could and maybe should be some accounting for cheating or deception or cynicism; ideally calibrated to work against its most offensive forms. I do not accept, friends, that it’s okay to set out to (for example) get a penalty. However laughably out-of-touch it may seem, in the face of relentless acquiescence around behaviours that may be lawful but patently awful, I advocate a fightback. Note the cheating – log it and/or tot it up. Significantly publicise the results: in short, call out these Clever Clever People.

Fans know who the cheats are, or what cheating is – even if their tribalism excuses the naughtiness from their players in the moment. Keane knows exactly what Paquetta has done but thinks that the defender was clumsy in the miliseconds before and probably made contact, despite trying not to. Therefore he goes along with the decision. Simultaneously, he think it reeks… and I can live that… because these things are complex.

There’s an acceptance by some that strikers are entitled to seek contact even if they move arms/feet/legs ‘un-naturally’ to achieve it. Others – like me – think both the idea of that entitlement and the practise of engineering contact are shit. A player’s intention can of course be open to interpretation: it’s therefore ver-ry tough to prove that Kane or Zaha faked or dived, but this can be accounted for by intelligent witness and by noting or scoring the transgressions skilfully. So for example Paquetà gets a debit mark for ‘seeking and adjusting to attract contact and obvious exaggeration, with dive’. Or similar. The heaviest and most heinous examples of whatever kind of crap get the strongest response… from our unashamedly Moral Authorities.

In my happier daydreams stuff like this really happens. Weekly reports are drafted and a league table of scheissters produced. There are even penalties – I mean real ones! Not financial, obvs, they mean nothing. Games missed and a certain level of public humiliation. A calling-out.

You with me? 🤨

*Wonders aloud*: would the Premier League pay me & a couple of others to grade matches for Sporting Behaviour (or whatever they wanted to call it?) A wee panel, covering every game; noting miscreants.
Thirty grand seem reasonable? 🤓

London Calling. Or Falling? Or Stormed?

~ bowlingatvincent ~ Leave a comment

So waay too late, I went to an Olympics. Or an Olympic stadium. Aeons after the world loved London, Ingerland – ten excruciating years, in fact, by my reckoning – I’m there.

Now, somewhere between dystopian weirdness and jarringly-immediate come-uppance – and shit, at the moment of writing! – the fat, privileged, idle, laughing-stock who has robbed us of our very authenticity, preened the very worst of our national prejudices and creamed-off much of our silver for his pals in Stockbrokerville has been presented with a significant hurdle. Come the end of the day he may be spent. And this may be a turning-point back towards a kind of general decency and respect: a kind of England most of us could sign up to *at some level*.

(Yes, friends, I live in Wales so yes there are a million sub-clauses and qualifications inferred here. Don’t be insulted if I fail to itemise them?)

Meanwhile, *switching*, West Ham – the football team – smacked of a kind of earthy loveliness long before the London Olympics changed their geography as well as their profile. They were Bonds and Hurst and Peters and Brooking and Clyde Best. Their whole spirit was somehow characterised by the rolled-down socks (but metaphorically rolled-up sleeves) of that first-named club icon. So they were liked.

It’s absurd in 2022 to use phrases like ‘attractive football’; worse still to associate that with abstracted, rose-tinted community goodness but as I look around the acres of ‘park’ now home to the Happy Hammers, the clash of values, vistas and jazzed-up-verbals is somewhat mind-blowing. The mind drifts. The New Universe is built of gravel and murals. A metallic bowl, in cream and concrete and claret; opened-out spaces to accommodate a world of visitors; the greyish hinterland of planned policing.

I get there early so as to find stuff: Stratford, the stadium and a pub in Hackney Wick. It’s quietly thrilling to see so many Town milling about, more than two hours before kick-off. Already clear Solihull Moors gonna be swamped, on the terraces – or, ahem, in the seats.

Yes. I’m Grimsby and I’m there because I’m Grimsby. Despite being in West Wales for the whole of my considerable adult life. (Hands up, schizophrenic don’t cover it: proud of family and mates but substantially estranged from Ingerland. Particularly now). A National League Play-off Final has drawn me to The Smoke, not the prospect of a Boris be-heading, or the Plat Joob – which I have openly unsubscribed from.

Don’t blame me if the kaleidscopic madness of everything is conspiring towards another action painting. Blame them murals.

22,000 in the ground and towards 15k of them are GTFC. (No kidding. This may merely mark the size and history of the respective clubs but it feels incontrovertibly good, as a Town fan, in the building). Solihull – fair play – make a nonsense of this by quietly massacring a limp Mariners side for twenty-five minutes. They do all the ‘playing out’. They do all the ‘ball possession’. All the stuff we’ve been demanding, over beer and fodder in the local hostelry, they do.

Town have a fella called Fox in central midfield. He gets his head up. He gathers and looks – more than almost anybody in the National League. He should be playing alongside Clifton and he/they should be getting the ball. Hurst, the Grimsby manager, lacks the game intelligence to see this. Solihull boss the game faaaar too easily and Fox falls back on the easy role of dogged interceptor and header of midfield bombs. Clifton has a mare throughout. He’s not the only one undermined by nerves, tiredness and/or poor strategy but it’s a particular shame in his case.

Moors nearly murder us (see what I did there?) in the opening half-hour. Instead the lead at the interval is a manageable 1-0 – the eight foot twelve striker Kyle Hudlin inevitably nodding home just as folks were beginning to slide off for pies and pees. It’s been mixed fayre – and it remains that way – with Town’s dominance off the park barely reflected in the relatively uninspired action on the pitch.

It’s the National League; I get that. Guys are nervous and in the Mariners’ case, entitled to be drained. (Already two EPIC knock-out games ticked off. Remarkable, exhausting games). But there is a lot of poor, wasteful play and percentage-wise, a fair lump of that comes from Sousa, who, despite being gifted, seems to specialise in infuriating profligacy and Smith, who cannot pass. Others under-achieve but if I were to brutally dissect… those two guys seem the obvious candidates for release*, before the deeep breath and go again thing, in League Two, next season.

*Fully understand that some Town fans will powerfully disagree with this. Sousa’s dancing and Smith’s resilience have made a contribution. But for me they aren’t players for the next step.

The Town Faithful, perhaps blithely confident that somehow the Mariners will find a way, make their presence felt, periodically. And periodically, McAtee, the Boy Most Likely to, looks likely. Then he scores.

Seventy minutes gone, with Town threatening in bursts. McAtee beginning to look a tad laboured – been playing hurt, I’m guessing. A threaded pass offers a yard. He nails it, calmly threading the angle across the keeper. A million agents make another note. The lad may be in the Championship promptly; cruel for Town but plainly on merit.

We get our third consecutive bout of extra-time. Their right-winger gets his eighty-fourth cross in, unopposed by Amos. There is space and Town have thrown on the alternative, pacy strike-force to snatch this before pens. Abrahams is racing lustily around, Dieseruvwe showing the occasional good touch. Hurst’s late positivity feels like a healthy gamble.

The trauma of pens is avoided in probably the most predictable of fashions. Even though National League defenders spend most of their professional life defending aerial threats, (my) recent experience has been that they ain’t that proficient at doing it. (Witness Wrexham, here… and everything). A long throw is piled in to the six-yard box, from somewhere east of Lowestoft. A yellow-shirted neck cranes cruelly but the ball glances dangerously on. Maguire-Drew launches and gets a nudge. 2-1 Town.

Us part-time supporters (and Englishmen) go ballistic. It’s a ver-ry special eruption of pride, defiance, community. THIS TEAM have really triumphed. THIS TEAM really did refuse to lie down – serially. McAtee, soon after, is talking about 11 months of non-stop graft. The lad’s exhausted but wonderfully free of the arrogance that might come once somebody gets in his ear ‘about his worth’. He’s loved this club and loved this moment. He’s seen what it means to ‘these fans’. This is legitimate joy.

Anybody casting an eye over the decent sports press will have seen the columns that Jason Stockwood has been filing. They’re a kind of Decent Capitalism-Plus. The chairman gets it: people; value; patience; belief. I can’t argue with his support for Hurst – though in strategic terms I think he gets things wrong. But what the hell? There is something profoundly right – though indescribable – about Grimsby Town battling/earning/enabling an immediate (but endless, agonising) return to full-time, professional football.

Let’s draw no daft equivalence between that wonderful storming and the one the bloody nation(s) need. Travelling back to Wales, the issues, the anger, the surrealities will only garishly multiply. My ears have popped, bursting out of some West Of Ingerland tunnel. Deep breath and I’ll be all over the news channels.

The Campaign for Gentlemanly Conduct. Sound familiar?

~ bowlingatvincent ~ Leave a comment

And so it goes on, dispiritingly. The interminable flopping and falling and ‘drawing’ of precious contact. The denial of the *actual* aim of the sport – which is to stick the ball in the net – through the cynical, life-blood-sucking phoney faint; because percentage-wise, penno’s pay.

Plus, (part XIV to-the-power-of-b-over-z-squared; The Case Against) there’s all this holding in the box. Not just a sly gathering of a corner of nylon but an absolute wrestle, as though there are no cameras, no ref and no reason moral or otherwise why you can’t try to bully the striker to a standstill or hoik him away from the arc of the ball; bizarre as well as appalling.

As if it wasn’t enough to poison the allegedly beautiful game on the park, reaction to this stuff brings out the worst in us all. (By the way, the thought does strike that we’ve gotten away lightly so far in terms of violence erupting either in the stands, between players or even against the referee but surely the time will come when a particularly enraging example of diving or holding will dangerously or tragically combust a cup-tie/relegation decider? Meaning we really do need to start dealing with this. By the way.)

There’s an unholy and delusional matrix around this that points us towards low expectation or worse; I find myself counting down the paragraphs before the dreary conclusion that ‘we get what we deserve’. I say this because following any incident fans as well as managers tend to divide so crudely, illogically and indeed pathetically on party or club lines. It’s embarrassing in a bad (unreasonable) way and it’s anti-sport.

In the case of Shawcross yesterday – that same Shawcross who molested his opponent relentlessly, pre the penalty, presumably not just to prevent him from attacking the ball but also in the hope (the hope!) that he may eventually strike out and be banished from the field – the incident was clearly and correctly dealt with by the officials. And yet on phone-ins and elsewhere the Stoke Faithful were bawling their grievances against that decision. We know that Mark Hughes (great footballer, depressingly flawed human) traditionally sets the bar shockingly low post-incident, but Sparky led the way on this, excelling himself whilst shamelessly ‘protecting his player’.
Hughes effectively said both Shawcross and more ludicrously Moses had been sinless. Whilst we can all appreciate the urge to support your tribe this went right past scandalous economy with the truth. For Hughes to try to make an intelligent argument against the unanswerable realities that Shawcross tugged and held absurdly long and that Moses shamelessly dived was, as an Australian cricket captain might have said, distinctly average.

If we choose to look for them there are always pro and contra-complexities. Moses was touched by the hand of the defender; Shawcross was by no means alone in his transgression across the boundaries of hugging. Therefore Hughes could formulate his apology, his simulation of a theory. But more broadly and more subtly, is the art of defending not about big clunky guys baulking shifty and spry opponents and should the spirit of things then not enable a kind of levelling of the playing field? How else could Shawcross (say) compete against Di Maria (say?)

This is of course cobblers. For any single offence, a single judgement is being made, not a philosophically inviolable summing up of the nature of things football. Do something outside the laws – get punished. Complexity comes (and ideally goes) through the official’s instinctive reading of the motivation of players at the moment in question and cross-reference of the rules. Referee: was that defender in making minor contact doing everything to avoid contact? So choose. Was that attacker only ever interested in drawing a penalty? So blow and reach for the yellow. These are a couple of the areas of difficulty, questions which launch a zillion unseemly appeals each weekend.

The fact that time and again the same few offences stir the nation to a Neanderthal fury should be a clue to something but if the cause is generally evident the path to resolution is fraught. In fact there is no path. Refs good and bad are left floundering under abuse.

Why? Essentially because honesty has gone walkabout. These players, these coaches are sporting superstars we cannot trust. They will neither accept the truth nor respect the authority charged with judging what is true. Set aside for the moment the fact that mistakes are bound to be made by those who make the calls; players and managers have made the game ungovernable and they should be deeply, deeply ashamed of the fact. They forget that they are role models; they forget that they are amongst the most fortunate; they forget that the real glory of sport centres upon competitiveness with honour. Or does it?

Does cheating matter? Does backing your side at all costs, even if reality and Alan Shearer contradict you matter? Or is it merely the inevitable result of awesomely high profiles and awesome TV revenues… and anyways, the next game’s here, so get real and get over it, right?

Are these merely the contemporary facts? That the game is simply framed differently, so that the respect of your opponent is an utter irrelevance to the current player? Is that right, is that how it is – or just some weird code nudging us towards giving up on sportsmanship?

I know how much of this sounds, how uncool and unsustainable it seems to invoke traditional virtues but still I consider myself more of a contemporary geezer than some dreamer of halcyon dreams. As such I call for modern solutions as well as a common return to a sense of what’s fair and right. Fat chance of the latter but no excuses now for not establishing immediate assistance to the referee from video review; retrospective guidance and where necessary punishment for acts of cheating under a beefed-up Ungentlemanly Conduct law, overseen by a small, expert panel.*

However viscerally any of us feel the drift to amorality it’s no good merely mithering on that. That language may no longer be intelligible so let’s characterise the state we’re in as a challenge. One where the chief protagonists are chiefly bent, either on some short-cut to victory, or just bent. No option then but to dictate; impose short sharp shocking doodahs – meaning bans for weeks rather than meaningless fines – and hope that in their inaction they might stop to think.

*Those who haven’t read me on this before may not be aware I’ve been promoting this notion that an expanded Ungentlemanly Conduct law could be used to penalise divers/cheats/fellahs who just did something that ain’t good for the game. I think it could work.

What it is with The Gooners.

~ bowlingatvincent ~ Leave a comment

Okay, so here’s the context and the central beef. Arsenal have been criminally non-durable for years; which is why we all doubt them. Wenger’s beautiful but psychotic purism has left them vulnerable to the memory of boggy pitches, the assumption of intimidation, or real-world Bigger Blokes or teams playing with simply more passion. In an ideal scenario perhaps a Gooner title triumph might elevate the lot of us… but the bulk of us still suspect this is contingent on the absence of (say) Tony Pulis and Cheik Tiote from the Prem landscape. Because if the level of inspiration dips at all, that seductive, metronomic not to say metrosexual heartlessness of Arsenal is just not enough; we know that. Like we knew The Arsenal came up to the Etihad early in crunch-month, with games against principal rivals rammed together. This is tough – like life.

But Arsenal’s perennial weediness kindof gets on our nerves, right? How can it be that they remain, so endlessly, a side unprepared for inevitable, sinewy, earthbound onslaughthood? How can that flaw persist so? Through year after year of more or less successful butterfly meadows later sprayed out. Wenger, to his credit and to his detriment and ‘midst the gnashing of our teeth, produces teams that will not set their sights so low as to block or to crunch or to stifle with physical oomph when they need to –that’s all we ask! They look to outplay the opposition only.

Look he knows – we’ve been telling him for years – that in this bitterly anti-meritocratic universe that ‘quality’ alone ain’t enough; sadly. He may even know (but not accept) that the result of the Arsenal Concept’s near-perfect one-dimensionalism is there will be a slide into capitulation (to generally lesser talents) and that it’s looming now. Six weeks, maybe, in which that lead at the top is swallowed up and the likes of Ramsey return to planet ordinary. And we watch as the mood music changes, as Arsene turns from the pitch again, exasperated, cut further by the sheer unfairness of everything, the anti-perfectness, the No Santa-ness, his Arsenal shot down by a sequence of either worthy and slightly unfortunate defeats and/or that dispiriting leakage of points to opponents that might a month ago have been imperiously (or should that be impishly?) dismissed.

Naturally then, after an emphatic win for City, in a pret-ty fabulous game that Arsenal, as always, contributed to generously, the odds have shortened on this Wenger trauma revisiting. For me their chief real-life weakness today concerned the failure to press the ball around the 35 yard mark. (Mind you, City weren’t much better at this.) Despite the presence of Flamini, Ramsey and Wilshere, City had abundant time to play heads up football – to pick their runs, their passes – as they faced the Gooner defence. Toure and Nasri and Silva are all half-decent; you don’t need to be giving them time and space to consider things. And if Zabaleta ends up with acres to race into… lookout. This stuff happened, infuriatingly commonly for the Arsenal bench.

From early in the game City were allowed some comfort where for me it should have been denied. Without the ball, Arsenal dropped into two banks – midfield at about thirty yards out and Mertesacker’s posse on the eighteen yard line; give or take. It might have been nerves but for me they looked worryingly slightly like England in World Cup mode – faux resistant, unconvincingly solid – deep. Like England, they let the opposition play. Whilst this undeniably led to a hugely entertaining game – and some well-constructed goals – the policy of late (or non-)intervention demonstrably failed. Maybe the predictability of the concessions brought out the miserablist in me; I found myself forever tweeting about dreadful defending rather than glorious attacking. (Shit! Did I just sound like Alan Hansen and Morrissey in the same paragraph?!? HANG ME. Irrespective of whether I have a point on this…)

But lest I inadvertently take too much away from City a sentence or two about them – and their incontrovertible topness. Firstly – hey – they put six past Arsenal.  Secondly, they are surely the best-equipped side in the league – by some distance, perhaps – though this may not necessarily be reflected in the stats come the end of the season. They have that sureness, in particular going into the final third, where an intimidating mixture of power and movement is often irresistible and proved so again today. Thirty-five goals in eight home games is absurdly good going.

Aguero is close to sublime every week, Toure is often unplayable, Silva (even at 70% capacity) just class. And with Zabaleta unzipping defences on his own – nominally, from right back – no wonder they are pulverising anybody foolish enough to turn up at the Etihad. I expect this dominance to convert soon enough into stronger away form and for City to go on and win the Premiership –chased home, I imagine by Chelsea rather than Liverpool… with the Arsenal somewhere behind… (inevitably.)

Perhaps fair (to the other home keeper) to mention that the home keeper was Pants today and also that City like Arsenal were hardly error-free in their own half. But Pellegrini’s boys are candidates alright – not just for the Prem but at European level. So tangible was their superiority that it’s truly hard to imagine that they could finish behind Arsenal come May.

Further notes from the Arsenal angle might include reflections on Walcott and Wilshere. The former was often ineffectual or absent then scored his second with a fabulous curled stroke for the far corner; the latter is buzzing less productively currently and was I think guilty of an offensive sign to the opposition support. Up front Giroud – who, for me has received lashings of praise more for being present in the line-up than being brilliant in it – was mixed again and Ramsey has understandably returned to mortal levels. Ozil jogged round.

On the plus side Arsenal rallied bravely after the catastrophic third goal had been conceded but the necessary withdrawal of Flamini left them increasingly open to counter… not ideal against the free-running Nasri and a Toure with licence. The Southern Softies had little luck with borderline calls from the officials but City simply had bigger and better gears with which to travel and they travelled with ominous purpose.

So, after a Match of The Season So Far which really probably was match of the season so far… this. Just as we feared or imagined. A Christmas unravelling and a statement of intent. The Wenger stocking still needs filling (as it were) with urgent physicality, whilst the Pellegrini equivalent looks short of very little. Unlucky, unlucky Arsenal.