‘Put Down The Flag, Sugartits’*

The offside rule, it seems, is a hard concept to grasp. Many a condiment has spent more table top time being moved about in exasperated attempts to explain this fundamental rule to women who stubbornly refuse to comprehend it than it has seasoning food. Angela Merkel has been spotted wandering the streets of Berlin clutching her head and wailing at an 8 year old boy ‘please, I understand the intricacies of the free market economy and quantitive easing, but for the love of god can someone please explain the offside rule…’ and Louise Redknapp has gone on record claiming that she just goes to games because of the ‘short shorts’.

Woman are stupid. Too stupid, Andy Gray and Richard Keys would argue, to run up and down the touchline of a football pitch while trying to decide which phase of play the game is in, in relation to a ball passed past the last defender. Anyone who has had chance to hear Gray externalising the commentary that is usually trapped inside his leathery dome will know that he is a man of enormous integrity and never one to let pre-conceived biases impact his capacity to make rational judgements. If Gray believes that women ‘probably don't know the offside rule’ then who are we to doubt? It would seem the Y chromosome is the key component in understanding the rules of football. Someone should have told Sian Massey that New Look were offering a 40% reduction in harem pants at their Birmingham superstore and then this whole mess would have been avoided.

To hear the audio clip that had men chortling as their wives roasted their joints of beef and starched their collars please click the following link; a Gray day for equality.

*unconfirmed reports have been filed of a middle-aged IC1 male fitting the description of Mel Gibson shouting this from the Steve Bull Stand at Molineux. Claims have been made that Jack Warner supplied the ticket at the behest of Sepp Blatter.


~ Ed

Money: Can't Buy You Love; Can Buy You Darren Bent

 

Those of us who don't have it, want it. Those of us who have it... well, I wouldn't really know how to finish that sentence, but suffice it to say there aren't many of us who, hand on heart, don't desire its presence. I am talking of course about money. Bunce. Greenbacks. Doubloons. Whatever ludicrous moniker you care to employ, it still makes the world go round and, despite the Con-Dem's best efforts, it ain't going anywhere fast. As a man of relatively simple means, raised to appreciate the value of things, I'd like to believe that I understand both the necessity of its existence and the respect it should be shown. Having said all that, if my numbers were to come up tomorrow I'm fairly sure I'd consider buying a yacht.

When we embark on our daily thumb through the back pages and catch sight of the next in the never-ending line of obscenely large pay-packets dished out to our favourite Premier League bladder-hoofers, we inevitably feel something begin to boil up in the grimy pits of our stomachs. You'd think it might be that three day-old pan au chocolat we found at the back of the cupboard before we dashed off for the tube. But you'd be wrong. It's something altogether more acrid and unifying. It's rage – simple, dumb, gurgling rage.

Why do we inevitably encounter this reaction? Do we feel that these individuals haven't worked for their keep, that turning up to training four times a week and performing tricks in front of an adoring, slavering public isn't really work? Maybe it isn't. It's genuinely tough to describe as 'work' something which we, to a woman or man, would give a limb to spend our lives doing (although this would admittedly hinder our chances of success). But then in so many walks of life, glory and greed seem to invariably go hand-in-hand, and as much as we idolise their on-field triumphs, we still pull faces of horror when a man of fame and fortune looks to make the most of his boodle, be it via tax avoiding wage-spreading or through sheer material gluttony. Considering we have never been (and almost certainly never will be) in possession of even a fraction of such riches, jealousy seems like a decent conclusion to reach. But this isn't quite satisfying enough. It comes down to something more intrinsic: the idea of the value of money itself. But value can mean different things to different people. Just look at Aston Villa.

The biggest gust to billow the curtains of the transfer window thus far has been Randy Lerner’s bankrolling of the midlanders' shock purchase of Darren Bent from Sunderland (for £18m, rising, potentially, to £24m). For a club which lost the services of Martin O'Neill thanks to disagreements over a lack of investment capital, it speaks volumes about the fluid and fluctuating nature of monetary value. Staring a relegation dog-fight squarely in the eye, Villa have clearly decided that good value, at this moment in time, is whatever it costs to stay in the Premier League. With a man boasting a top-flight goalscoring record like Bent's safely on board, the investment could prove to be rather sound.

Of course the days of being shocked by the enormity of transfer fees are long gone, but even so, the prevailing reaction to Bent's move was, to say the least, one of mid-range surprise. Yet while folk may raise their eyebrows skyward when mentioning the perceived absurdity of the fee in these (cliché alert) tough economic times, there is another financial hot potato that has once again caused verbal rumblings of late. This past Monday the PFA's Gordon Taylor was moved to defend footballers who seek to minimise their, shall we say, 'tax-themed outgoings' by diverting wages to their own independent image rights companies. Such a practice can result in the skilful, yet entirely legal, avoidance of the current 50% tax on annual earnings of £150,000 or above. Brace yourself, here comes that boiling sensation again.

The point regularly subject to 4am kebab-and-nightcap debate across the land is that footballers have short careers compared to those of the average man on the street, and they should therefore feel free to manage their money however they see fit. Let's try to suppress that rage for a moment and suppose that a highly talented, international quality player receives (at least) a five figure weekly income for the period between their first and last professional contracts – say from the age of 20 to the age of 35. That's fifteen years of highest level earning in today's footballing economy. According to a 2009 study by The Office for National Statistics' Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings (ASHE), the average annual income for a full-time employee in Britain was a smidgen over £31,000, a figure that would, based on forty-five years of gruelling, uninterrupted employment, result in a lifetime's gross earnings of roughly £1.3m. Or to put it another way, what Emmanuel Adebayor earns between Halloween and Hootenanny.

There are two fairly distinct ways of looking at this. Both hint at an ethical standpoint, but really can be stripped down to a clash of detached world-views and individual ideals; a question of blunt economics versus feverishly personal politics. On one bejewelled hand, a man (or any commodity, for that matter) is worth roughly somewhere between what a buyer is willing to pay and what a seller is willing to accept. The sticker price is quite simply a statement of value based on output potential and perhaps a little sell-on capacity. If a club wishes to dish out big bucks for a transaction and provide sizable fiscal reimbursement for the subsequent service provided, they are quite entitled to, and the commodity in question (the player) has every right to accept the riches thrust his way. “But I'd happily live on one hundred quid a week and the love of a good woman” we bawl into our cider, but how many of us would honestly stare a mammoth pay cheque for doing something we live and breathe in the face and turn it away with nothing more than a knowing grin and a nonchalant adjustment of our Guevara beret?

In short, what we're looking at is the emotional response of the common man versus the plain face of the market. But then that's us. We're human beings with skin, bones, worries and appetites – and still we have the legal right to earn however much we can based on our worth to someone, or something, else. Unfortunately, whatever your reaction, the continued increase in wages, if not fees, leaves us with a footballing future based on massive numbers and small, shoddily-woven safety nets. Some suggest that a wage cap is the way toward financial competence within the game, but to my mind this treats the symptom of unsustainable spending rather than the cause. Our ire is directed at the players because they, like us, have breathing, punchable faces towards which we can aim delight and scorn in equal measure. But their duty to shoulder football's monetary situation only goes so far.

When it comes to the issue of obligation, it's the clubs which need to suit up. The forthcoming introduction of UEFA’s new financial fair play rules is certainly a strong and welcome move but ultimately the buck, if you excuse the pun, stops with the clubs. Now I'm no economist (that much should be fairly obvious by now) but just as a business can stretch the parameters governing its actions to breaking point without doing anything legally wrong, so too a footballing institution can quite legitimately toss money, however desperately, at players and opponents to further their own ends. But with great power comes great responsibility. Any larger questions of moral etiquette or long-termism can surely not be effectively governed by a higher authority and must rest with those making the decisions at boardroom level. The moral compass must be set not by the gods of the sea, but by those steering the ship.

~ Matt

North Of The River, East Of The Sun

During the summer there were gloating reports of how well the Olympic Stadium in Stratford was coming along. There was a marked absence of spliff-toking construction workers that have plague previous publicly funded builds such as the new Wembley Stadium. But that was all in the summer. Winter has brought the crushing mismanagement of this stadium to the public’s attention. Furrowed brows have replaced smug grins.

The media would have you believe this is a battle between Tottenham Hotspur and West Ham United, but ultimately neither of these clubs is a snug fit for the stadium and in either case huge concessions will need to be made.

Spurs’ application would see the kit-assembled OS dismantled, as the design made provisions for, and a new football-specific stadium erected in its place. Spurs would benefit from the fantastic transport links to the south-east of London and the ability to expand the capacity of the stadium at their will – and with a 35,000 strong waiting list for season tickets they would have no trouble filling the 60,000 stadium they propose. This would however be a source of embarrassment for the Olympic committee, as an athletics legacy was bundled into the Olympic bid. Overall, Spurs represent the financially risk free option, but should they be handed the keys it could lead to a clusterfuck of political ramifications for the bodies associated with the matter.

West Ham offer a legacy-friendly option but it all appears too idealistic, and even a layman can see that the figures don’t hold up. West Ham would be borrowing a further £40 million from Newham council, a council that have been tasked with 25% efficiency savings, and it could cost the public even more than the £450 million splurged already should this money not be repaid (West Ham are not currently looking like the best run club in the country from any perspective.)

All of this leads to a mess where there is no clearly defined correct path to follow. Is the reason why London lacks a huge athletics arena a symptom of the lack of interest in the sport? Is investing half a billion in a flagship stadium the way to encourage the youth to take up the sport? Surely this notion is quashed by the Con-Dem coalition’s eagerness to scrap funding for school sports. Put frankly, this stadium needs to make money and the only way it seems it could turn a profit would be to rip it down and start again, and there are myriad reasons why this would be unappealing: David Lammy MP and Ken Livingstone voice two such opinions.

After all this has been contested, won and lost, it will be the true little man that loses out: Leyton Orient. 

~ Ed 

Shop 'til You (Avoid The) Drop

A new year, a new beginning. That’s what they say isn’t it? Obviously the correct time for anyone to make a fresh start is a fairly arbitrary decision: one’s life may have taken many unexpected and not necessarily successful twists over the span of a year, so waiting until you hang the new calendar on the fridge to sort out your woes is probably a bad idea. I blame Pope Gregory XIII, the know-it-all fusspot.

Nonetheless, January seems to be widely accepted as presenting ample opportunity for renewal and redesign, and no more so than in that barmy old world of professional football. Across the country, managers, chairmen, chief executives and those loveable, cuddly agent-types are once more becoming one with their smartphones; ears soldered to the plastic, gradually resembling some hideous flesh-n-plastic art installation. The transfer window means that clubs large and small will be spending the next 19 days rummaging through football's bargain bins in search of a player not just with something special to offer, but with a “reduced to clear” sticker plastered across their face.

English clubs’ histories of sniffing out a quality deal or two at these times is a particularly chequered one. Back in the misty winter of 2003, Steve Bruce cobbled together his gift vouchers and Christmas money in a gallant attempt to save newly-promoted Birmingham City from the ignominy of instant relegation. Bruce stumbled across Christophe Dugarry and he, amongst others, lifted Brum to a comfortable finish of 13th place. Meanwhile, the cannier folk out there have put the window to good use when it comes to long-term planning. In 2005, Sir Alex Ferguson invested a total of £12.5m in Nemanja Vidic and Patrice Evra who for the first few months of their Manchester United careers were, with little deviation, shocking. Half a decade on, a shrewder pair of deals you be hard-pressed to pinpoint. But not every bout of spring shopping reaps rewards. In the summer of 2008 Rafa Benitez decided (wisely or not) to keep the receipt for Robbie Keane, returning him barely five months later to the Tottenham club shop for a discount price and quite possibly store credit (although this has never been confirmed by either party). In January 2008 Middlesbrough splashed out £12m on Heerenveen's Afonso Alves. Should I go on? I didn't think so.

Yet exciting as this scramble for misplaced talent surely is, does the mid-season transfer window actually help or hinder clubs? It's arguable that the impact of the window can be felt heaviest further down the professional leagues, where agents can push prices and wage demands upwards, leaving clubs to subside in desperation as they plug holes in already thread-bare squads, such are the financial extremes of success or failure. And yet in certain respects the creation of the window has meant an important synchronisation of the English leagues with their European counterparts. In England, compulsory transfer windows were brought into practice during the 2002-03 season at the behest of UEFA in order to fall into line with other European federations. Major leagues such as Serie A and La Liga already had tight transfer window restrictions in place, as any late nineties, sexually frustrated Championship Manager devotee will testify to. Before this, permanent transfers were permitted at any point between the close of the previous season and the end of March, lessening the pressure to spend hastily, but arguably creating an unequal marketplace between the financial haves and have-nots.

One of the biggest problems for today's clubs lies with players who become unhappy with their lot between windows and sulk their way towards perceived salvation, dragging their heals and creating disharmony within the squad and amongst supporters. You'd probably have to admit, though, that this very much reflects larger issues of wage demands, player power and agent influence, as any rule can frustrate those trying to stick to it if single-minded dissenters attempt to force their will.

In a couple of weeks’ time the metaphorical window slams shut, causing a wind tunnel to blow open all the outlying doors at football clubs across the country, resulting in tracksuited managers swearing, shouting and rushing across the room to close them before their post gets swept into the car park. Or at least that’s what happens in my mind. The rather more prosaic reality is that clubs desperate for silverware or merely survival will throw about cash and contracts in a bid to correct the mistakes of summer past, or maybe because they, like the rest of us, just really love a bargain.

With this in mind, and especially in these tough economic times, we perhaps shouldn't look too harshly on those forlorn and feverish managers out there hunting for a good deal. In that spirit, Look Away Now has scoured the land to bring you a handy cut-out-and-bin list of some of the best bargains to be had this spring, fresh from the press releases of the retailers themselves. Chairmen of the league, take note:

David Bentley (Tottenham Hotspur)

Sale Price: £6m

Take a trip to the Lane this January for massive discounts! Now available: your own replica David Beckham doll to see you through the spring. Comes with treble-winning era haircut, free-kick function and questionable on-field discipline – just like the real thing! A snip at only £6m. Worried about VAT? Just ask in store for “Harry” and we'll take care of the rest!

Michael Owen (Manchester United)

Sale Price: circa 2001, about £20-30m; now, whatever you can find down the back of the sofa.

Find a huge in-store saving when you visit Old Trafford this weekend! We've got one well-rested thoroughbred for sale: he’s looking for a caring stable offering regular track time. Huge experience at the highest level. Yours for just £6.50 or three buckets of feed. Why are we selling a horse in the club shop? Because we're crazy... BUT NOT AS CRAZY AS OUR PRICES!

Emmanuel Adebayor/Wayne Bridge/Roque Santa Cruz/Shay Given (Manchester City)

Sale Price: £3–10m each (not that we really need it).

Savings of up to 70% can be found in the blue half of Manchester this January in our huge spring clearance! Fight those inflated Bosnian imports with top-quality designer names at brick-a-brack prices. Everything must go! We also do a tasteful line in winter scarves (available in light blue & white only).

Scott Parker/Matthew Upson/Carlton Cole (West Ham United)

Sale Price: £5–10m each, plus a free copy of Russell Brand's Booky Wook 2. Seriously, just take one.

It's mid-season clearance time at Upton Park and this year we're slashing prices as well as the wage bill! Save up to 25% on (reasonably) famous household names, as well as our own Gold & Sullivan signature range of just-like-the-real-thing jewellery, available from a three-wheeled van out the back. Must end soon! Isn't that right, Avram?

Ryan Babel (Liverpool)

Sale Price: available for loan/hire-purchase

Don't delay, hurry down to Anfield today! Now you really will never walk alone with this media-savvy winger-cum-forward for company. Pay nothing for the first six months! Not completely satisfied? Tell us about it…

~ Matt

Look Away Now... Live!

Live blog coverage from Look Away Now. All the major incidents… as they happen!

11:21 Good morning everyone. Welcome to the first ever day of live coverage from Look Away Now. We'll be bringing you all the breaking news from your favourite blog as you go about your daily business. Eating a bagel? Too busy to read a whole thousand or so words? Fear not. Look Away Now will be… hang on a second.

11:24 Sorry about that, really needed a wee.

11:25 Where was I? Ah yes... Look Away Now will be bringing you live, unedited progress of its latest blog entry. Lucky you.

11:27 Don't forget, you too can get involved with our coverage today. Drop us text at the usual number, or get in touch via Twitter. This is all for you, remember.

11:32 Now then, down to business. Most of you reading this will be fans of what we lovingly term 'the beautiful game', following its highs and lows with anything from casual interest to rabid fetishism. But whatever your level of indulgence, the internet is here at your fingertips to drip feed you the knowledge you crave.

11:39 Now while the internet isn't exactly an exciting new dawn, I've been pondering one phenomena in particular, that of live text-based coverage – rolling, minute-by-minute, bite-sized accounts of various aspects of the game, be it a particular match, an impending transfer deadline or, as we witnessed recently, the voting procedure for a major event.

11:46 As a symbol of the footballing world getting smaller, you'd be hard pressed to find a better example. In many ways, 'as-it-happens' coverage has become the 21^st century equivalent of staring through the window of Curry's on a Saturday afternoon trying to catch a glimpse of 'Final Score'. But what is the essence of this thing that makes us crave the interaction it provides?

@anfield_face_ache via Twitter: “The thing about live updates are that they bring me closer to what is really happening out there. It makes us deadhead plebeians feel accepted and wanted by the wider world, like our opinions actually matter or something. Which, of course, they don’t. Hodgson out!”

11: 53 BREAKING NEWS: Introduction Finished

Some solid work there after a shaky start (see 11:24). Let’s hope things heat up a little as the day progresses...

12:01 Feeling a bit peckish to be honest. Off to see what’s in the fridge… back soon.

12:04 Bacon! Result. Looks like sandwich time…

12:15 In one sense, providing interactive accounts of footballing matters as they occur is just an extension of good old-fashioned football journalism. Things happen and they're reported on – simple as that. What we're witnessing is an example of the narrowing of time and space as we perceive it, a notion synonymous with so may facets of our experience of the modern world, what social theorist David Harvey termed “time-space compression”. The sandwich was excellent, by the way.

@Redknapp’s Pocket Money via Twitter: “You know what I would have gone for on that bacon sandwich? Ketchup. Ketchup is clearly the only sauce up to the job.”

Sorry RPM, no dice. Brown sauce on bacon, ketchup on chips. That’s the rule. Always. Thanks for reading!

12:20 As mentioned a couple of months ago in this blog, the court case surrounding Liverpool's ultimately successful buyout by the NESV Group was given the live treatment, showing that this type of account has moved beyond the purely sporting. In recent weeks, the Guardian website has been offering an up-to-the-minute account of reaction to the Wikileaks scandal, in which thousands of diplomatic memos were unleashed online, with potentially grave/liberating consequences (depending on your political persuasion). This is as good an example as any of the rapidly altering nature of news reporting, with breaking details handed over in something scarily approaching real time.

12:25 The major problem is that once the template has been set, what happens when relevant information is suddenly at a premium? During a match itself there will always be a talking point: some minute tactical adjustment, say, which will add to the mental picture which the coverage is attempting to sketch in the reader's mind. But it's tougher to apply the same measure of intricate detail when events are reported third or even fourth-hand: a player heading for a medical or a vote being counted, for example; occurrences passed from reporter to reporter, then eventually to us. It's here that, for me, live coverage begins to lose some of its charm.

12:32 Suddenly found myself with a touch of writer's block. I'm not worried though.

12:40 I’m bored. Dangerously bored. Nothing much on the TV today. Whatever happened to 'Working Lunch'? Remember the goldfish in the title sequence? Wonder what happened to that little guy.

12:48 OK, starting to get a little worried now...

From JohnnyCroptop via text: “'Working Lunch' was cancelled in July 2010, replaced on BBC2 by 'GMT with George Alagiah'. Status of goldfish: unknown.”

This is the kind of feedback I’m looking for, people. Keep it up!

13:03 With the chance of actual action drying up, one of the key ingredients when it comes to knocking up some top-quality live coverage soup is a generous helping of reader interaction. Whilst admittedly occasionally responsible for some interesting remarks or thoughts, what this essentially amounts to is several hours of 140 character-based pub banter. Not that I’m anti-banter. On the contrary, I’ve engaged in it several times and I will openly admit that I’m a fan. But when it comes down to it, perhaps what I’m looking for from this type of interactive sports coverage is something approaching informed debate. Maybe I'm looking for too much, especially when most of the feedback is coming from people using such suspect monikers as “Rooney’s Fat Wallet”, “Captain Gooner” or “Henry Winter”.

13:04. Actually, that’s probably just Henry Winter.

13:09 But my point remains and, in stating as much, maybe I’ve accidentally stumbled across a wider angle of discourse. The internet, as a forum for discussion and debate, is clearly unparalleled and as such can easily be seen to have, if not replaced, then provided an attractive alternative to, more traditional methods of footballing discourse.

@Captain_Gooner via Twitter: “You got a problem with me, mate?”

Nope, no problem at all. Sorry C_G.

13:21 When ready-to-go material runs out, users are encouraged to create their own – be it via opinions, quips or rumours (see 13:03) – making live coverage a furthering of the do-it-yourself, user-generated content area of online culture. From Facebook and YouTube to blogs such as the one you're reading right now, content becomes inclusive by the very fact that it is created by those using it. However, the inevitable side effect of such a modus operandi is that the quality will fluctuate. Yet it occurs to me that what drives this forward isn't a desire for high quality product, but rather a want to be part of the process, to further incubate the notion that football is the property of the consumer – the fan – and should be theirs to celebrate and object to whenever and however they see fit. They say that football is a game of opinions, and this rings truer today than ever before.

@fickle_online_content_generator via Twitter: “Some interesting thoughts there, but how about a pop-culture reference or two to go with them?”

13:34 The Jam famously sang that the public gets what the public wants, a comment on the nature of workaday existence, and the easily-consumable product required for people to get on and get through, the sustenance needed to tame the ennui. With football more popular today than at any point in history, it could be argued that this sort of blow-by-blow coverage is simply satiating a prevailing need – to know and to be involved, perhaps to an almost voyeuristic level. The difference now is that we have the means to make it happen – a means that, once employed, will self-perpetuate its own importance.

13:38 Of course Weller and co also sang that the public wants what the public gets. If we didn't have this kind of coverage, would we miss it? Probably not, but you could justifiably say the same of any particular form, genre or item of popular entertainment out there.

From SusieTheHammer via text: “Hi Look Away Now, was gr8 meeting you at The Horse & Spatula last nite. We shud hook up, give me a call sumtime xx”

Er, hi Susie. Kinda busy right now... I'll be in touch x.

13:41 I probably won't be in touch.

13:43 Maybe what it does provide that cannot be knocked is the interaction it allows with the providers themselves. Twitter, as well as blogs of varying authorship, readership and standing, allow us unprecedented access to the minds of those giving us our information, but the as-it-happens phenomenon neatly formats this into something approaching actual conversation – a live chat, if you will, not with friends and family, but rather with those upon whom we rely for our football news and views. You could surely argue that this, on some level, keeps things healthy and honest, a move towards cleaning the filter through which all news, footballing or otherwise, is presented.

@stop_taking_things_so_seriously via Twitter: “But 'Cheesey', 'Stevo' and their ilk don't really have an agenda to push, do they? Surely they're just enjoying a bit of a chat whilst providing a much-loved service?”

13:48 That's a fair point. Football, like all good, (mostly) progressive things in life, has done its best to keep up with the needs of its clientèle. In terms of the fan experience we've seen the continued betterment of stadia and TV access (if you can afford them), but we've also witnessed a grassroots rising, the relentless ascent of the website and the forum, the phone-in and the FanZone, the blog and the podcast. In terms of being a further offering for enjoyment of the game on an interactive level, live coverage undoubtedly succeeds. Within the context of a world of increasingly impersonal social interactions, while it feeds off of this need, it at least does its best to feel friendly and inclusive in the process, two characteristics only a fool would attempt to discourage, whatever the subject or setting.

13:53 Time to start wrapping things up...

13:57 Well that's it folks, we're drawing towards the end of our coverage. I do hope you've enjoyed yourselves – thanks to all our tweeters and texters for making this a (hopefully) worthwhile experience. We'll be back sometime after Christmas... in the meantime, take care.

13:59 Forgot to put the wash on. ****.

~ Matt