Right. Who’s had enough of this?
Who’s fully intending to just blow this all off and see if we can’t try this herd immunity theory for ourselves? Or shall we stick with our Prime Minister’s strategy of Not Seen and Not Heard Immunity?
Some say this lockdown is bringing out the best in people. Me, I’d say it’s bringing out the truest spirit in people, and not always for the better. If, for example, you achieved a lot of success through craven mendacity then it’s very unlikely that that will change when you’re put under pressure. Every time a government minister potters out in front of those flaccid Union Jacks I feel that the nation has turned into an overly tolerant headmaster who’s giving them all one last chance to ‘fess up before we expel them from our collective rears like the foetid balls of gas they really are.
While Johnson recuperates in his elegant sty, and his expectant fiancée wonders how this perennially late responder was so premature on that one occasion, we have been led by one Dominic Raab. D-Raab, as the legend on the cardboard packaging read when he first arrived at the Foreign Office. There’s been a reasonable amount of sympathy for a man who looks (and occasionally talks) like central casting’s go-to-Nazi Uber-Lieutenant. How can you possibly fill in for the Blonde Bullsh*tter? Well, turns out you can massage figures and creatively lie in less flagrant a way.
Boris is back now so God knows how Allison Pearson’s going to cope without slipping off to rub one out every five minutes. In fact I envisage Andrew Neil leading the Daily Telegraph in a sponsored Spaff For The NHS to greet the Second Cummings.
Sadly that won’t mean less of Matt Hancock. Matt, it seems to me, possibly cowed by the situation, talks utter bullocks, gives us more and more bum steers and gets less bullish by the day, the dozy ‘effer. Dreadful cattle puns aside, therewas a time when he smoulders as if he imagined he was Aidan Turner playing Matt Hancock in the movie adaptation of his autobiography HANCOCK: THE MAN THAT SAVED A NATION. Time and the terminal decline of far too many human beings seems to have restored a wretched back-catalogue of platitudes that you can boil down into three pithy soundbites:
‘This is unprecedented’
‘Our amazing NHS staff’
‘We’re ramping up the PPE/Ventilators/level of deceit*’
*delete as applicable
Of the others only Michael Gove seems ready to poke his puckered package of processed piss over the parapet. Gove has been practising social distancing from the Truth for his whole adult life and so is a safe if slippery pair of hands right now.
Meanwhile Priti Patel tells us shoplifting is down on last year. That’s probably because shop-opening, and indeed shop-owning, is down on last year, but you know, some people will make any stat look bad won’t they?
Liz Truss has said very little, so no change there. Even her longest orations contain as much substance as a cheesy wotsit. As for the rest of ‘em, well I’m not saying this cabinet is thick, but there are actual cabinets, fully functioning and made from finest English beechwood, that have higher IQs than the lot of them put together.
Meanwhile people die in their hundreds every day and Premier League footballers invite their mates round. Latest Numpty is Moise Kean, the best teenager playing in Europe (after Mbappe) this time last year, and until recently struggling to ease the agoraphobic Theo Walcott out of the first eleven.
Kean, who has spent his entire time at Goodison socially distancing himself from the first team, took it upon himself to host a party in his apartment. Now don’t get me wrong, he’s on top dollar every week so chances are his apartment is like a flaming national museum compared to the eight people two rooms horror some families are going through. But I fancy that the old two metres apart is hard to sustain in an environment like that.
But once again we are hoping that footballers like Kean, Grealish and a collection of Arsenal halfwits are going to lead by example and well, they’re not. Not if the PM is shaking hands with Covid-19 patients, not if toffs left, right and centre are blithering on about the impositions on their personal liberty and how appalled they are by it. I’d love them to try other ways to limit their freedoms once this is all over. Things like poverty, zero hours contracts, reliance on food banks, see how they seriously hinder your ability to have fun. I mean I’d love to be gallivanting about infecting the relatives of vulnerable old people too, but I’m just not that much of a self-centred c**t.
Of course, sport would be a wonderful distraction from all this. And I fear that this season is going to be written off, which only the most shite-minded fan would find acceptable given Liverpool’s majestic form. If they have to finish it behind closed doors I wouldn’t much mind. If they can’t, we could just say Liverpool won it anyway. Cos they did.
Having said that, I wouldn’t mind everything just starting from scratch. We could even have the Brexit vote again, given that the unintended consequence of the Government’s hopeless handling of this whole crisis is the death of the age group most likely to have voted Leave.
Mind you, they were right though, eh? Imagine being part of an organisation that cooperates over testing and ventilators and PPE provision? We’d be in a right state now wouldn’t we? We’d be losing as many citizens as Spain or Italy and we’d be relying on foreigners to pick our fruit.
Thank God we’re doing it our way.
Monday, 27 April 2020
Monday, 21 November 2016
Give It To Gareth, FFS.
Gareth Southgate's being interviewed as I write. For the England job, not for next year's I'm A Celebrity although it's not hard to imagine that as his next career move after he gets the job. He will get the job and that's because he is so well-qualified for it.
I would lay out Gareth's assets for the role as the following:
1. Availability.
2. Willingness.
3. Niceness.
4. Englishness*
5. A bit of success with the under 21's.
Of these, availability is the major factor. Pundits can bleat on about how he might fare in the crucible of tournament football. He might lack the strong mindset of people like oo, I dunno, Fabio Capello. They might even fret that being a decent fella never seemed to matter to Mourinho or Ferguson - they were both utter shits and it worked for them. Woy, Stevey Mac and Sven were gentle souls and look at their international records. Then again Sam Allardyce is a bit of a twat and yet his England win ratio is 100%.
But the main point is that Gareth Southgate is the only bloke who fancies having a go at the job at present. And therefore he should get the job. It's no point giving an important role to someone who doesn't really want it. I mean look at Boris Johnson. (Then look away quickly before you break all the crockery in your house.)
Of course Southgate's interim stewardship has been as okay as any other manager's might have been. England still struggle to look good going forward without looking as disorientated as a gathering of American liberals at the back. But that's simply a matter of personnel. If there was ever a Golden Generation then this one is made of lead. The Leaden Generation.
It'd be lovely to imagine Gareth is some sort of Gok Wan of international football. In six months' time we'll know the make-over is complete when Gary Cahill plays a 60-yard Rabona onto the chest of Jordan Henderson whose clever-back heel puts Theo Walcott in acres of space, at which point the wannabe-Henry loses his life-long agoraphobia and calmly slides the ball into the path of a purposeful Raheem Sterling who calmly side-foots home without the use of his shin.
But that ain't gonna happen.
I hope Southgate's cause is not undermined by England squad members behaving like young men on a night off. It's just another example of how removed from reality these England superstars are when they get caught doing things that other people their age might do.
Wayne Rooney was drunk, I tell you, drunk. And on a Saturday night. Worse than that it was at a wedding party to which he had been invited and the arrogant out-of-touch Scouser said 'Thanks I'd love to.' So full of himself was Wazza that he then proceeded to drink red wine. We can safely assume that beer just isn't good enough for the up-himself tosser these days.
[Incidentally I am employing the use of irony in the above paragraph - I realise since the advent of Trump as President-Elect, irony has little place in the world but I will try my best to maintain a cherished place for it here.]
Meanwhile, Adam Lallana and Jordan Henderson apparently went to a strip club. I hear it's not cos there were lasses there getting their kits off, but cos they'd got vouchers for a 2 for 1 offer on spirits until midnight. Strip clubs are shit. And, in the case of Sunderland away kits, club strips are shit too.
None of this, it seems to me, is any reason to go off the deep end and condemn these lads any more than a slick five-pass move by England deserves the strange sound of Glenn Hoddle cooing and saying 'that could be Spain playing there'. It's not great behaviour, no, but nothing untoward happened and unless Rooney's having to leave the pitch to vomit Merlot into a bucket then I'm just not bothered frankly.
Wayne apologised for the 'inappropriate' images but jeez he was a bit tiddly and sat on a sofa - he wasn't waggling his cock about in a primary school playground. That is genuinely not appropriate. I can vouch for that. I was seven at the time but even so...
I've never been one of these twerps who think that because they wear an England shirt ten times a year and get paid vast amounts of money by their clubs they should bear in mind that they are role models. It's horse dung frankly. I am bothered when they play like a bunch of bleeding fuckwits because as professional people they should at least be able to get that bit of their lives to function more frequently.
I heard Peter Shilton suggesting that Southgate hasn't got enough experience for the job. Who the hell has? All this hubbub around waiting for Wenger strikes me as misguided. Look at the Englishmen who have flourished under his tutelage - Walcott, Oxlade-Chamberlain, Wilshere, Chambers... not really, eh? The best he's managed is a training routine that repeatedly twangs hamstrings.
Nah, it may be with a touch of resignation, but give it to Gareth. Everyone likes him. He's got the gumption to take it on, much like he had the nuts to take that sixth penalty in Euro '96. Okay that didn't work out but...
LOOK THERE IS NO ONE ELSE!
*Not really a qualification
I would lay out Gareth's assets for the role as the following:
1. Availability.
2. Willingness.
3. Niceness.
4. Englishness*
5. A bit of success with the under 21's.
Of these, availability is the major factor. Pundits can bleat on about how he might fare in the crucible of tournament football. He might lack the strong mindset of people like oo, I dunno, Fabio Capello. They might even fret that being a decent fella never seemed to matter to Mourinho or Ferguson - they were both utter shits and it worked for them. Woy, Stevey Mac and Sven were gentle souls and look at their international records. Then again Sam Allardyce is a bit of a twat and yet his England win ratio is 100%.
But the main point is that Gareth Southgate is the only bloke who fancies having a go at the job at present. And therefore he should get the job. It's no point giving an important role to someone who doesn't really want it. I mean look at Boris Johnson. (Then look away quickly before you break all the crockery in your house.)
Of course Southgate's interim stewardship has been as okay as any other manager's might have been. England still struggle to look good going forward without looking as disorientated as a gathering of American liberals at the back. But that's simply a matter of personnel. If there was ever a Golden Generation then this one is made of lead. The Leaden Generation.
It'd be lovely to imagine Gareth is some sort of Gok Wan of international football. In six months' time we'll know the make-over is complete when Gary Cahill plays a 60-yard Rabona onto the chest of Jordan Henderson whose clever-back heel puts Theo Walcott in acres of space, at which point the wannabe-Henry loses his life-long agoraphobia and calmly slides the ball into the path of a purposeful Raheem Sterling who calmly side-foots home without the use of his shin.
But that ain't gonna happen.
I hope Southgate's cause is not undermined by England squad members behaving like young men on a night off. It's just another example of how removed from reality these England superstars are when they get caught doing things that other people their age might do.
Wayne Rooney was drunk, I tell you, drunk. And on a Saturday night. Worse than that it was at a wedding party to which he had been invited and the arrogant out-of-touch Scouser said 'Thanks I'd love to.' So full of himself was Wazza that he then proceeded to drink red wine. We can safely assume that beer just isn't good enough for the up-himself tosser these days.
[Incidentally I am employing the use of irony in the above paragraph - I realise since the advent of Trump as President-Elect, irony has little place in the world but I will try my best to maintain a cherished place for it here.]
Meanwhile, Adam Lallana and Jordan Henderson apparently went to a strip club. I hear it's not cos there were lasses there getting their kits off, but cos they'd got vouchers for a 2 for 1 offer on spirits until midnight. Strip clubs are shit. And, in the case of Sunderland away kits, club strips are shit too.
None of this, it seems to me, is any reason to go off the deep end and condemn these lads any more than a slick five-pass move by England deserves the strange sound of Glenn Hoddle cooing and saying 'that could be Spain playing there'. It's not great behaviour, no, but nothing untoward happened and unless Rooney's having to leave the pitch to vomit Merlot into a bucket then I'm just not bothered frankly.
Wayne apologised for the 'inappropriate' images but jeez he was a bit tiddly and sat on a sofa - he wasn't waggling his cock about in a primary school playground. That is genuinely not appropriate. I can vouch for that. I was seven at the time but even so...
I've never been one of these twerps who think that because they wear an England shirt ten times a year and get paid vast amounts of money by their clubs they should bear in mind that they are role models. It's horse dung frankly. I am bothered when they play like a bunch of bleeding fuckwits because as professional people they should at least be able to get that bit of their lives to function more frequently.
I heard Peter Shilton suggesting that Southgate hasn't got enough experience for the job. Who the hell has? All this hubbub around waiting for Wenger strikes me as misguided. Look at the Englishmen who have flourished under his tutelage - Walcott, Oxlade-Chamberlain, Wilshere, Chambers... not really, eh? The best he's managed is a training routine that repeatedly twangs hamstrings.
Nah, it may be with a touch of resignation, but give it to Gareth. Everyone likes him. He's got the gumption to take it on, much like he had the nuts to take that sixth penalty in Euro '96. Okay that didn't work out but...
LOOK THERE IS NO ONE ELSE!
*Not really a qualification
Monday, 7 November 2016
Bloody Lovely Stuff
One of the reasons I stopped blogging a while back was coz even when he was out of a job all people talked about was Jose Mourinho. This is partly coz he manages to draw attention to himself like a pissed aunty at a funeral. Constantly saying inappropriate things, slating the officials, undermining the bride, saying the bridesmaids are just not up to snuff. (Well that was my Aunty Pat, any road.)
There was a time when this tactic was a way of drawing the fire away from his team and creating a bunker mentality to help the players thrive. Nowadays, he seems to take a misfiring first eleven to be a personal slight. That might seem like paranoia but in the case of his last half season at Chelsea, I think it was justifiable paranoia.
You only have to look at Conte's Chelsea, featuring the same players by and large that Jose left behind, to realise that the boys in blue just didn't give a shit for the Special One. Costa's back to his rollicking best, Hazard is twinkling around like a footballing Tinkerbell, and the back three look as unbreakable as the skull of a Trump supporter.
Meanwhile United are still a scatter-brained blend of the overpaid and the barely worthwhile. One League Cup win over Manchester City's B-team and a victory over a Swans team that played like cygnets hasn't changed that. Moyes, Van Gaal and Mourinho have all tried and failed to instil some sort of pattern and belief on a struggling club. And frankly I'm quite pleased. United fans might get snarky, but as it says in the song 'if I hadn't seen such riches I could live with being poor.' In other words, Sit Down next to me (A Boro fan) Stretford Enders.
Having said that, a Boro fan is more likely to witness a point being won at the Etihad. Last Tuesday, Citeh had a night which some people seem to think has changed the world of football for ever. It's as if a late middle-aged woman had finally discovered the female orgasm. The result Citeh have been waiting for. Yes, and... They're still going to finish second in their group and go out to Bayern Munich in the last 16.
Apart from flickers of brilliance up front, Citeh still can't put teams away. They're like me getting home from the boozer and trying to find the wastepaper basket with an empty crisp packet. Even leaning over the bloody thing I can still tweak it wide. Sterling fills me with least confidence in front of goal - I doubt he can find the bowl with his piss even if he were sat down - but his form elsewhere has been terrific and Guardiola deserves much credit for reviving the lad after a desperate summer.
Nevertheless the back four, with Kompany's absence throwing a long shadow over it, has a brittle look about it, Pep likes a ball-playing goalkeeper and I do too so lng as it's cos the bloke's got his hand down his shorts cos he's got bugger-all else to do - come on we've all done it. Citeh's title chances, as has been the case for a few seasons, rather depend on whether Aguero's chunky little legs don't keep falling away like slow-cooked lamb off the bone.
And I haven't mentioned Arsenal. It's not unusual for Wenger's team to have a good start. Arsenal are like delicate summer blooms which flower long into November, only for winter's icy blast to bring them withering to the ground. In other words, they don't like it up 'em, whether that be a sadistic centre-back or a strong north-easterly.
That being said, Mesut Ozil is making kicking a football about into the sort of them fecking rhythmic gymnasts could only dream of. The goal to see off Ludogarets was so sublime that Darcey Bussell is dancing it at Sadlers Wells next week. Ozil is the Federer of footy. When he's on the ball, he looks like he's got more time than the planet itself has. He's left more goggle-eyed this season than he is.
As for Liverpool, well, they're shining as bright as a Klopp grin. I haven't purred so much about a Koppite eleven since the days of Barnes and Beardsley. Really bloody lovely stuff. The way they knock it around between the front four - well, it's just a shame Andy Carroll's not there to finish it off, isn't it? Yep. That's what was happening not very long ago.
But it's been a happily hard to predict beginning to the post-fact Premier League. The current champions are Leicester City. It's worth repeating this as fact every now and then, just to underline that it's not some neutral's blissful dream - a kind of counterbalance to the dark nightmares of Brexit, President Trump or West Ham's stewarding at home games - but an actual fact.
I was pretty much dreading a return to the grim days of Chelsea/Citeh/United dominance. But no. It's been a pretty bleeding wonderful start to the season. Entertainment galore and in Hazard, Ozil and Coutinho (with Sanchez, Firmino and Costa not far behind) we are getting to see some top players at the peak of their powers.
Mourinho aside, I'm enjoying it again.
There was a time when this tactic was a way of drawing the fire away from his team and creating a bunker mentality to help the players thrive. Nowadays, he seems to take a misfiring first eleven to be a personal slight. That might seem like paranoia but in the case of his last half season at Chelsea, I think it was justifiable paranoia.
You only have to look at Conte's Chelsea, featuring the same players by and large that Jose left behind, to realise that the boys in blue just didn't give a shit for the Special One. Costa's back to his rollicking best, Hazard is twinkling around like a footballing Tinkerbell, and the back three look as unbreakable as the skull of a Trump supporter.
Meanwhile United are still a scatter-brained blend of the overpaid and the barely worthwhile. One League Cup win over Manchester City's B-team and a victory over a Swans team that played like cygnets hasn't changed that. Moyes, Van Gaal and Mourinho have all tried and failed to instil some sort of pattern and belief on a struggling club. And frankly I'm quite pleased. United fans might get snarky, but as it says in the song 'if I hadn't seen such riches I could live with being poor.' In other words, Sit Down next to me (A Boro fan) Stretford Enders.
Having said that, a Boro fan is more likely to witness a point being won at the Etihad. Last Tuesday, Citeh had a night which some people seem to think has changed the world of football for ever. It's as if a late middle-aged woman had finally discovered the female orgasm. The result Citeh have been waiting for. Yes, and... They're still going to finish second in their group and go out to Bayern Munich in the last 16.
Apart from flickers of brilliance up front, Citeh still can't put teams away. They're like me getting home from the boozer and trying to find the wastepaper basket with an empty crisp packet. Even leaning over the bloody thing I can still tweak it wide. Sterling fills me with least confidence in front of goal - I doubt he can find the bowl with his piss even if he were sat down - but his form elsewhere has been terrific and Guardiola deserves much credit for reviving the lad after a desperate summer.
Nevertheless the back four, with Kompany's absence throwing a long shadow over it, has a brittle look about it, Pep likes a ball-playing goalkeeper and I do too so lng as it's cos the bloke's got his hand down his shorts cos he's got bugger-all else to do - come on we've all done it. Citeh's title chances, as has been the case for a few seasons, rather depend on whether Aguero's chunky little legs don't keep falling away like slow-cooked lamb off the bone.
And I haven't mentioned Arsenal. It's not unusual for Wenger's team to have a good start. Arsenal are like delicate summer blooms which flower long into November, only for winter's icy blast to bring them withering to the ground. In other words, they don't like it up 'em, whether that be a sadistic centre-back or a strong north-easterly.
That being said, Mesut Ozil is making kicking a football about into the sort of them fecking rhythmic gymnasts could only dream of. The goal to see off Ludogarets was so sublime that Darcey Bussell is dancing it at Sadlers Wells next week. Ozil is the Federer of footy. When he's on the ball, he looks like he's got more time than the planet itself has. He's left more goggle-eyed this season than he is.
As for Liverpool, well, they're shining as bright as a Klopp grin. I haven't purred so much about a Koppite eleven since the days of Barnes and Beardsley. Really bloody lovely stuff. The way they knock it around between the front four - well, it's just a shame Andy Carroll's not there to finish it off, isn't it? Yep. That's what was happening not very long ago.
But it's been a happily hard to predict beginning to the post-fact Premier League. The current champions are Leicester City. It's worth repeating this as fact every now and then, just to underline that it's not some neutral's blissful dream - a kind of counterbalance to the dark nightmares of Brexit, President Trump or West Ham's stewarding at home games - but an actual fact.
I was pretty much dreading a return to the grim days of Chelsea/Citeh/United dominance. But no. It's been a pretty bleeding wonderful start to the season. Entertainment galore and in Hazard, Ozil and Coutinho (with Sanchez, Firmino and Costa not far behind) we are getting to see some top players at the peak of their powers.
Mourinho aside, I'm enjoying it again.
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)
