Robbo's Predictive Text

The new  football season has rather snuck up on me this year – although not as suddenly as it has on Mark Hughes and Chris Hughton. I’ve seen Jodie Marsh have more cover at the back. Still it was remiss of me not to give you a sound unbiased foretelling of the season to come, so here it is.

ARSENAL

If Wenger makes you club captain, it means you’ve got one season left. Gooners might say that Arsenal can be good without Van Persie, but then some people will tell you that they buy Nuts magazine for the articles. At least Arsene’s not been arsin’ about with regard to purchases: Cazorla is very good, Podolski’s erratic but talented and as for Giroud – well, he could be Chamakh Mark Two. 5^th.

ASTON VILLA

Their decline has been as inexorable as the slow fattening of a Tory politician’s cheeks. Lambert worked wonders at Norwich but it’s hard not to see Villa’s downward velocity as terminal. No new boys of note means that a lot of young, eager, average players will be toiling away in the hope that Darren Bent can make summat out of nowt. But that only happens to one in 14 million lottery entrants. 18^th.

CHELSEA

The European champions. Abramovich scattered his roubles across the earth and finally a mean-spirited and charmless eleven, spearheaded by a centre-forward whose greatness was directly proportional to time spent in the upright position, won the Champs League. Hell we were even a little bit chuffed for ‘em. Drogba’s gone now, Oscar and Hazard are in. (Josh McEachran will be sent away again to some orphanage for Lost English Talent.) I’m guessing they’ll be prettier, and leakier, but they’ll hold on for 3^rd.

EVERTON

No Rodwell or Cahill, and once again the squad looks no deeper than a pool of cuckoo spit. If Everton could start a season a little quicker than a pensioner emptying a purse, then maybe they could challenge for 5^th or 6^th. But it’ll be 8^th.

FULHAM

Petric looks a cracking player and Jol has bagged Rodallega who, like a beautiful virgin, looks good but isn’t worth bothering with. Still can’t see Fulham struggling too much if they can keep hold of Dembele. 10^th.

LIVERPOOL

Well who the fuck knows? Rodgers knows only one way, and I’m not sure adding Joe Allen will make them all play the Rodgers way. I think Carroll’s treatment has been a bit shonky. The lad’s not got too bad a touch, he could benefit from playing in a good passing team, and the fact that he has the neck muscles of super-vitamined giraffe might mean simple headers from inside the six-yard box aren’t left to the goofy Uruguayan racist to nod into the crowd. 7^th.

MANCHESTER CITY

Mancini says they’re not favourites. Listen, you won last season when half your frontline were either playing golf or sticking fireworks up their nostrils. You’re MASSIVE favourites. Winning by less than 9 points would be a SHIT season. You’ve got more money than the continent of Europe, and half its strikers in your squad. Shut your tiresome face, Roberto. Please. 1^st, damn you.

MANCHESTER UNITED

Fergie must still be hurting from that Aguero dagger a couple of months ago. You’ve got to hope so any road. Van Persie is seen as a real statement of intent. Vidic is back. Fergie’ll be intent on pulling Scholesy and Giggsy out of the post office queues for one more year. But the noisy neighbours have become sitting tenants. I can’t see it. 2^nd.

NEWCASTLE UNITED

There’s no reason why they can’t do just as well this season. They’ve kept hold, so far, of Cisse, Ba, Cabaye, and Ben Arfa. Job done. Same as last season, only slightly better. I might be jinxing ‘em but, if Pardew can get his hands on a domineering centre-half then… 4^th.

NORWICH CITY

No one can argue with the appointment of Chris Hughton, eh? One 5-0 drubbing later and the reaction of Canary fans was more knee-jerk than a Kevin Pietersen tweet. I think Hughton is the right man, but I also think they’ll struggle. 17^th.

QPR

There’s summat about a blustery blingy chairman that makes me wish his club ill and as Tony Fernandes oversaw a massacre at Loftus Road, I couldn’t resist a snigger. The off-season purchases somewhat reek of ‘get in who the hell we can’. Only Hoillet is real coup. Sparky should be able to cobble together summat half-decent from the ragtag squad. 14^th.

READING

McDermott’s a very sound manager and, unlike some desperate wheeler-dealers, he hasn’t gone mental in the marketplace. But not even a double-dose of Viagra will keep Reading up by the end of the season. 20^th.

SOUTHAMPTON

Difficult start for the Saints at the Etihad – Football’s Who’s Who versus Football’s Who..? Expectations are lower than a banker’s morals but they looked good. Lambert will score goals.They will survive.  16^th.

STOKE CITY

A mate gave me tickets for a Stoke game last season and I couldn’t give ‘em away. Pulis won’t be distracted by ‘the European adventure’ this season – otherwise known as The Rough Guide to the Arse-Ends of Europe. They are solid, reliable, the cottage pie of football teams. 9^th.

 SUNDERLAND

Steve Bruce’s Black Cats were pretty predictable: decent start, bit of flair, horrible run beginning just before Christmas and ending just in time to avoid the drop. O’Neill’s not likely to let that happen. Dull to watch. Hard to beat. 11^th.

SWANSEA CITY

Dunno much about Laudrup’s coaching skills but by God he was a wonderful footballer and his team have made a helluva start and it looks like the Great Dane can spot a player. Can’t see all Rodgers groundwork being undone by as smart a bloke as the new gaffer so… 13^th.

TOTTENHAM HOTSPUR

Much like Liverpool, your guess is as good as mine. AVB at WHL? With RVDV? WTF? Replacing Arry with the Portuguese is like replacing Arthur Daley with Socrates. Sometimes Villas-Boas comes across as too bookish for his own good. Arry knew that players need an arm around the shoulder or a kick up the backside, but not a pamphlet on zonal marking. I think it’ll be tricky. 6^th.  

WEST BROM

Steve Clarke landed in the Hawthorns when the music stopped and it’s hard to know what he’ll be like. Saying he’s been a permanent number two make shim sound shit, but he’s been well-respected, even at Chelsea where respect is as scarce as Saudi cider. 15^th

WEST HAM

It’s a delight to see Big Sam back in the Big Time. So much has changed. The new nippy frontline, the interchanging midfield, the strolling libero at the back. Rumours that the Allardyce training session begins with a picture of some grass captioned with the slogan ‘Keep Away From This – It Is The Enemy!’ are untrue. ‘Course, I may not like it, but it works. 12^th.

WIGAN

Martinez’s reign has been like King Canute’s, but the tide has to come in eventually. There’s only so long Wile E Coyote can stare at the empty space beneath him before gravity takes over. And without Moses, how can there be a miracle again this year? 19^th.

London Pride

Anyone out there still think that London shouldn’t have got the Olympics for 2012. Well, bollocks to the lot of you. The only thing this country’s had taken from it during the past two weeks is its cynicism, but thankfully a bewilderingly naff closing ceremony restored sarcasm to the national consciousness.

Of course, the Games weren’t about that. I had one day there, watched some springboard diving semi-final, and loved it. I felt that true sense of Britishness as we cheered plucky Chris Meares as he sneaked into the final, and we sympathised with a fresh-faced yank as he hit the pool like crumbling gargoyle falling a high wall.

We were escorted and encouraged as we trudged from West Ham tube station by a cross-section of selfless Londoners (sadly for the odd right-wing numpty, all cheerful and multicultural). And you have to pray to God that Cameron doesn’t keep banging on about this supposed aspect of the Big Society cos the rash of political opportunism in the last five days is politics at its most cynical.

It was a brilliant day but mostly I watched it on the telly, like the rest of you. And I have never before been bothered about how well some geezer does a pommel horse routine. Or how well a lass waved a foot in the face of another lass; or punched another lass in the ribs; or made a horse walk in time to ‘I Vow To Thee My Country’…

I expected to be thrilled by Jessica Ennis and Gawd help me that’s a beautiful woman; I hoped to be shrieking as Mo Farah held off the Horn of Africa down the home straight; I trusted that Bolt would delight me with the apparent afterthought of his utter genius; but I never expected to find that the moments I’ll remember would be so varied and wondrous.

Peter Wilson, collapsing after his final two shots won him something called a Double Trap Thingammy. Gemma Gibbons hacking out sobs as she flipped some French judoka lass and made it into the final. Kat Copeland screeching naïvely at her mate after they won the rowing “We won the Olympics! They’re going to put us on a stamp!”  (you can take a lass out of Teesside…)  And the subversive grandeur of Danny Boyle’s NHS sequence, mounted before those leaders whose lives may never need to resort to its necessity.

The Beeb’s coverage was really rather brilliant – mind-blowing, compared to the utter shambles of the Diamond Jubilee blathering – and as with the sport, the women were by and large more impressive than the blokes. Balding’s the best sports presenter out there, if you ask me.

Yes, the coverage was shamelessly partisan but the rooting for our guys never spilled into enmity for their guys (but fear not, ye buckets of hate, for the football season has already begun) and hellfire if we can’t get up for our fellow citizens performing on the greatest sporting stage in our own back yard then what’s the flaming point, eh?

I can’t say I loved every minute. Synchronised swimming still comes across as a nightmare sequence from a Baz Luhrmann horror film – is it really necessary to look like a snooty ten-dollar whore in order to compete in a sporting competition? The rhythmic gymnastics is pretty and pointless, the One Direction of the Games. I wouldn’t keep the Horse Dancing, or the thinly disguised wankfest of the Beach Volleyball.

There’s no need to keep men’s football, or start with golf, or continue with tennis now that it’s served its purpose and given Andy Murray the self-belief he needed.

But this all feels a tad churlish. Every sport is preposterous if you choose to see it that way – or heroic and ennobling if it’s your passion. What we’ve seen is that a parade of people trying their utmost, straining their sinews, testing their minds, and in the case of two Arabic women crossing a finishing line just after the next race has commenced but proving that there’s really nowt wrong with being a human being in all its aspects, is as inspiring a sight as life has to offer.

And even if not all of us can even begin to imagine swinging on a bar like Mr Zonderland, or pedalling a bike like a man turned machine like the spark-to-the-flame that was old Wiggo, or float across the land at top speed like the supernaturally graceful Allyson Felix, we can adore the fact that others can, and relish the moments in which we give witness to it.

I knew people who thought that the Diamond Jubilee expressed much of what makes Britain great – whereas I thought it expressed much of what makes Britain cross. Privilege, vapid spectacle, ingrained inherited unending barely unearned wealth… The Olympics expressed far more of what makes this country really rather excellent.

This is a welcoming place, a kindly one. This is a place where the striving is as important as the result. This is a place where taking part is a way of belonging. This is a place where we can get the job done without losing our sense of humour. Hell even the Queen likes a laugh. This is a place where women can do what men can do, because there’s no reason on earth why they shouldn’t.

London 2012, unless the shiftless muppets that populate the political fraternity of that great city manage to turn a legacy into just one more leg-up, will go down as one of the grandest two weeks of my life as a British person.

Of course, there’ll be plenty of fuck-witted economists keen to tell us how much these Games were worth, but theirs is a yardstick that tyrannises every activity in this country. If worth is to be measured exclusively in terms of pennies made then we may as well turn into street trollops tomorrow and take our chances.

I leave it to others to put a price on Mo Farah’s glorious finishing straight. To me, it, and the whole experience (give or take Russell Brand, some banal catwalking coathangers, and the John Lennon face jigsaw puzzle) was pure and golden bliss. 

Boyling Up Nicely

Danny Boyle, take a bow.

Personally I really enjoyed the multicultural rubbish. I know it’s difficult for a rabid Tory to embrace the fact that there is more than one shade of skin, belief, hairstyle, but the rest of us are pretty content with it.

It was great to see the slowly bloating power-brokers of this democracy of ours have to witness a ceremony peppered with gentle to blatant subversion. To get ‘God Save The Queen’ from the Sex Pistols referenced in the same show in which the Woman herself feigned a skydive was truly fantastic and spoke volumes for the old parasite. If she, and they, carry on like this then hellfire I might even let them carry on when the country is mine (in a limited comical Scandinavian mode of course).

I wasn’t too excited at the beginning when it all looked a bit Teletubbies and the livestock seemed bound to ruin everything. But the clambering factory towers, the founding of the Olympic ring, Kenneth Branagh proving that he can do more than be a pseudo-Swedish gloom-merchant, and them drummers thumping away throughout took the breath away.

I even liked that contemporary dance bit and that’s usually the moment when the wife stands in front of the telly in a protective manner and says ‘Put the mallet down, Derek, that flat-screen cost £599!’ (And I reply ‘If you’d have let us go to London last August I could’ve got one for free.’)

And of course that bit at the end, where Redgrave handed the torch on to seven young stars of the future to light that gorgeous Olympic pyre was right up there.

But to me the star of the show was Mr. Bean. I jest. The star of the show was the NHS. That’s right, world, we look after the poor and sick in this country – or at least that’s the principle – and most of us, by and large the ones who need it, are proud as punch with that. Rawnsley, Cameron, you tinker with it at your peril.

The only tedium was the athletes parading round, really. I know it’s an important part, but can’t they stick em all on golf-carts and whizz em round quicker? I tried to alleviate the tedium by playing ‘guess the next country’ only to be foiled by foolishly overlooking such great nation states as Kiribati and some ickle group of islets south of Madagascar.

The BBC commentary was full of insights though: New Zealand have won the most medals per capita; Czech athletes have a sense of humour; and Trevor Nelson knows less than fuck-all.

The Beeb’s coverage so far has been nothing short of wall-to-wall but there are cracks around the edges as ever. Why Gary Lineker has to sit there gurning away at us with the carbohydrate-laden crumbs of prawn-cocktail crinkle-cuts falling from his overpaid lips is beyond me. The lasses – Logan, Balding, Irvine, Barker – make Lineker look like some adopted child on a work experience course.

But the thing that really bugs me is that you get Sir Steve Redgrave asking rowers fatuous questions. Why? Surely if you’ve won five bloody gold medals you’ll already know the answer. It’d be like getting Eric Sykes to ask Russell Howard where he gets all his funny ideas from. (Here ‘funny’ is used in the lightest possible sense).

Whereas I watched Gabby Logan chatting to the campest couch in Olympic history last night as Ian Thorpe and Carl Lewis fielded her questions. And very engaging they were. Thorpe is a joy. All raised eyebrows and nudges and winks but a great deal of passion and knowledge too. Carl Lewis wore a check cap, as if to prove his American tourist credentials, but they were both so fired up by being there you couldn’t help but be swept up by it.

Indeed, such was the surge of love and national pride following Boyle’s (and thousands upon thousands of others) magnificent efforts, that we all felt certain that medals would flow like so many chocolate coins from a Christmas stocking. And they didn’t.

The fact that no one helped the British cyclists in the road race should be the source of a kind of back-handed pride. British cyclists are now held in the same sort of loathing as Manchester United, or the New York Yankees. It was an ABGB race.

And of course the Olympics isn’t really about us lot, as the the ludicrous number of empty seats will testify. Those of us who entered the super-expensive Olympic lotto only to find we couldn’t even get a pass for a bit of handball are grinding our teeth down to pulp every time another terrace appears on screen populated by the equivalent of the indigenous penguin population of the Isle of Man.

If you asked Danny Boyle he’d probably get the nursing staff of the NHS to bag the seats and I wouldn’t be opposed to that.

You could dwell too long on the opportunistic no-show corporate liggers that litter the Games (and have done since 1988), but the Olympics is about those people who take a bleeding age to do one lap of the track in the opening ceremony. Like the Korean archery lass who needed a nine to win gold and pinged it in. Or that 16-year-old Chinese lass who appeared to have borrowed an outboard motor for the last 50 metres of the 400 metres individual medley. Or our own Beth Tweddle bouncing around between the asymmetric bars like a graceful but agitated squirrel. Marvellous.

Two days in and it’s just splendid. Anything that makes me cheer Craig Bellamy is bordering on the miraculous.

And there’s one thing I’ve noticed that has made an ordinary mortal like meself feel inadequate it’s this: male gymnasts – you know, the incredibly muscled, superstrong blokes who don’t need two planks of wood and a box of nails to make themselves into a dangling crucifix shape – well, before they do the vault they run like right jessies. You just watch em.