A FOMO shared is a FOMO halved

 The ill-fated upcoming half-term trip to Norfolk has now ignited spectacularly embittered emotion. Last week the car’s dashboard was repeatedly kicked, and there were cries of injustice and resentment. “Why are we going away that day? I don’t even want to go on holiday! It’s not fair!”

Thankfully, this heartfelt outpouring of anger isn’t coming from me, but from my 10 year old daughter, whose two closest school friends are going to a trampoline park on Wednesday (the same day that Arsenal play Manchester City live on my telly, which I won’t be watching as I’m on the same holiday.)

Unlike daughter, I’d kept my bug-bear zipped up, or at least until I used it to try and temper my daughter’s temper as we drove home from collecting her brother from school. A pain shared is a pain halved, or something. 

“But you can still watch it afterwards”, came the dismissal of my own application of woe.

“But it won’t be live”, I counter-pressed.

“But it’s (the trampoline park play date) all they’re talking about.”

And I get that. After the Manchester United win, I couldn't resist going on Twitter and hearing what a great time everyone had without me. So, do we hope Arsenal don’t win and that the friends have another fall-out at the trampoline park? What I can say for certain is that I’d much rather the girls don’t have a good time at the trampoline park, and therefore don’t go on and on about it, than Arsenal lose. As much as I have FOMO, I don’t want to live the pain of defeat, and I’m worried that the 115 charges brought against City for cooking the books will have a resurgent effect on their form. 

I would be very bitter about the probable wrongdoing of a Nation State somehow helping them in the title race thanks to  a siege mentality formed by that wrongdoing being challenged - but I have surprisingly not held on to the initial irritation at missing the big match. I’ll treat myself perhaps to the Etihad return in April, assuming it will be covered by Sky, which I can pay for via Now TV. Though there’s a chance, of course, that on the day I’ll decide that Match of the Day will actually be fine or that something else will be going on.

If I could just get to one game this season, it would be a success (and hopefully now that the touting websites have been drastically hit, the chances won’t be so remote) starting with the Palace sale on 14th - Valentine’s Day of course, obliging me to postpone romance for 30-45 minutes between 10am onwards: I’m more than up to it, having taken my missus to a fancy restaurant in Bushey the night Arsenal played at Bolton in the FA Cup in 2006-07.

I guess if I was happy to watch delayed coverage of an Arsenal match back then, then the same should apply for the City game, even if the stakes, as they say on Strictly Come Dancing, are higher. Meredith and I need to get through this together. Meredith’s dramatic articulation of her dismay may have helped her deal with her issue, unburdening herself, while the missus remains blissfully ignorant of mine. This may be working out ok now, but on the evening she may sense something is amiss while we’re having dinner, or playing cards, or intervening between the warring kids. Then you can bet I won’t be praised for keeping it all in and riding it out, stiff upper lip and so on. But if I say about the match in advance, then I’ll feel like a child. 

Just one who hasn’t vandalised the car yet. 

Adulthood

It’s March 1991, and the week leading up to the biggest game of the Barclays Division One season, Arsenal three points ahead of champions Liverpool and looking to stretch the lead at Anfield on the Sunday in a veritable ‘six-pointer’. That same Sunday afternoon, Mum has arranged to visit her best friend, Lesley, in hospital. With Dad. I can only speculate as to the response he gave her when told of the time and date, but he certainly released his disdain to me: “You know what’s happening that day, don’t you?”

But this season, this present day, the joke is on me. The game: Arsenal versus Manchester City, February 15th: Current Position of Competing Sides; 1st vs 2nd: Coverage: Amazon Prime Video. Streaming Service Access Available in My household: Amazon Prime Video (thanks to borrowed password from a family account). So What's the Problem, Then? It’s the first night of our half-term holiday away. Ah…

I knew all about the holiday of course, had agreed it was a great idea for a great price, and was looking forward to something that normal people did when school was out. I didn’t think to check the date before we booked, as I’m not in that sphere anymore, which in itself perhaps questions my disappointment; moreover, I’d only checked the date of the match on Sunday, when feeling that I’d missed out on the high of Arsenal’s 3-2 win over Manchester United with last minute winner. The chance to sell my soul to Sky Sports would have been there if I’d thought of it earlier. With two of the household horizontal with the virus going round the family, and me functioning the best, the 4:30pm kick off could have been purchased via Now TV, though by the time the opportunity presented itself, the match was imminent and I’d committed to picking up an urgent dose of peptol bismol for the missus (out of stock everywhere, it turned out.) The voice in the head played it down: you spent a tenner on Spurs away last April and look how that turned out. I agreed and headed for the chemists, switching the radio on, hearing the noise in the stadium and the thrill of the game and feeling a little irrelevant. 

So I was looking forward to the Man City game even more eagerly, only to find, 32 years after I was denied the highlights of this fixture’s 1991-92 incarnation by a mandatory family lunch (I sulked the whole way through it, determined that Mum, who’d engineered the outside occasion, saw how much she’d hurt me. For the record, I’d been to the actual game in question the previous afternoon), the family dynamic had struck again to thwart me. 

Unlike that 91-92 season of terrace-filled electricity, I cannot get in to the ground these days, no matter how early I get on the phone lines or web page when it’s ticket sales day, so have to rely on the telly to get closer to the players, to get to know them more. It’s what I’m left with. So missing the Man City home match is understandably a gripe. 

The other thing to say is that this fixture would already have been played had the Queen not died just before the weekend of the originally scheduled meeting. That decision to postpone matches still seems stupid, and is part of an ongoing conspiracy by the monarchy to ruin my football life. For instance, just 26 years ago no one cared about my hat trick in a pre-season friendly for Highground against Cotterells Club when it fell on the same day as Princess Diana being killed. It was completely overshadowed when the news came through. 

Friends, family and royalty, who needs them?

  

  

A Christmas philosophy

One of the stand-out Christmas successes this year was the redeployment of the recycling area in our kitchen. The bottom drawer, as mooted some time ago, is now host to a tub for recycling and a tub for rubbish. The visual effect is pleasing on the eye, in so much as the eye can’t see it, while the wooden shelf by the window is no longer filled with tins, cans and bottles while there is also no need for a bin-bag hanging off the fridge door anymore. It really is the gift that keeps on giving! 

Our 15 year old was moved to submit his approval of the new system, which though requires probably the same amount of visits to the outside bins, is literally contained and offloaded in one tip rather than, as previously, requiring several trips back and forth from the open window, where the missus would hand out the dispiriting collection of loose items as if we were operating through a piss-take hatch. 

The revolutionary system has hopefully exceeded the trial basis, which was basically proposed by the missus as a way of making sure I complied properly with the process and didn’t re-employ the window shelf as an overflow option. I believe that I have passed the probation period with flying colours, while still aware that any complacency could result in a written warning, or worse, a return to the previous recycling approach.

My mantra is the one espoused by Mikel Arteta, and also the one plagiarised by me on a recent Talking Additional Needs parental course: that mantra being ‘Trust The Process’. I must ignore the temptation to pop a couple of stray items on the side as much as the Arsenal player in possession should avoid hoofing the ball up the pitch when harassed by opponents near the goal. Arteta will back Granit Xhaka for knocking the ball in-off Chris Wood and past Bernd Leno as happened at Burnley last season, but you’ll be out in your ear if you take the easy option. Sniffing doesn’t stem the runny nose. Don’t be afraid of bumps in the road. The long game is the short game. 

Once upon a time  in this country, playing the ball across your own goal was one of the first no no’s you learned, the football equivalent of running with scissors, or taking sweets from a stranger. All part of the English DNA. Abroad of course, there has never been a wrong part of the pitch in which to ‘play’. I think it was during Italia 90’, when a pundit, possibly Ian St John, highlighted Roberto Donadoni showing a natural instinct to play the ball short and retain possession when presented with the ball in his own penalty area under pressure from attackers. Yet even in 2012-13, during the early stages of Brendan Rodgers’ managerial spell at Liverpool, he was hammered on telly by Alan Hansen because his defenders, unused as yet to building from the back, conceded terrible looking goals at West Brom. “Play percentages”, Hansen intoned with his usual arrogance. The following season, Rodgers’ team came within two games of winning the league ahead of Manchester City and Mourinho’s Chelsea. 

Yes, there have been some high-profile howlers, when footballers have been exposed by the instruction to play football, and its true, like Man U at Brentford this season, it does look so bad when it goes wrong. Gary Neville did his office bloke bit after that game, lamenting “just when you think they couldn’t sink any lower” but Ten Haag’s new team were never not going to win a game of football again that season. Indeed, they beat Liverpool in the next one and go into the derby with City on Sunday in something of a resurgence, Ronaldo-free and looking a good bet to get something from the game, adding to their booked League Cup semi-final appearance with Nottm Forest last week. 

In short, let’s not be afraid to try things as they may turn out to revolutionise your daily existence. The blog post you’re reading, for instance, appeared to be stuck and going nowhere, but then I found a way out, calmly and progressively, rather than just lobbing it in the bin, or leaving it on the side! 

Live and Let Hope

 Half-time and 1-0 down at home to West Ham yesterday, I was preparing myself to turn my back on it all. I wasn’t burning with anger, no, I was philosophical, perhaps even with an eye on relief and a burden being removed. 

Carrying on with hope after a defeat to a team we hadn’t lost to since 2006 (I believe) would have been too much to bear. Not because of the seasoned dismay, but through an already established bitterness over that World Cup. Before that appalling tournament’s regrettable existence, Arsenal were top of the League, just one unfortunate defeat to Man U away and a draw at Southampton the only games they hadn’t won. Manchester City, sponsored by Abu Dhabi, were five points behind, even with the addition of robot Haaland and his 100 goals in 20 games, or whatever it is. Smart money, as always, is with the best squad coming through in the end, but Arteta has got us hoping, dreaming, deluding. The team has improved drastically, the self-belief and style is convincing, the boys are young but mature. Gabriel Jesus has added a vital mix of ability, experience and winning mentality, filling that void up front and taking the team to a higher level. 

The disruption to momentum was always a worry, and then last week, when I told my mate Charles that I couldn’t get tickets to Brentford at home in February, I learned that Jesus picked up an injury at that World Cup, meaning he’ll miss, at best, 3 months of the season. 

So at half-time of West Ham, I would see how the second half would go, find out if the possession of the first half could be turned into something tangible, ie, goals. If they didn’t, well, I would be more than happy to turn to the books I got at Christmas and carry on reading through the season and all the seasons after, perhaps occasionally looking up when something exciting happened. How fitting would it be, in this season of a World Cup in Qatar, that the tournament helps Man City win another league title. What a fairy story! They already had Messi and Mbappe in the Final from Paris St Germain, sponsored by Abu Dhabi. 

As it was, The Arsenal swept West Ham aside in the second half, as if the East End boys were an irrelevance. Saka, Martinelli and then Eddie Nketiah, in for Jesus, scored the goals, two that came from making your own luck, the other, Nketiah’s, one that the watching Arsenal Wenger, in his first return since leaving in 2018, would have been proud of. 

And so it’s Arsenal’s best ever start to a league season, seven ahead of Newcastle United, sponsored by Saudi Arabia, and eight over City, who play at Leeds on whatever day it is on 28th, and I live to hope another day. 

Jingle Ball Rock

Step into Christmas, eh, Elton?

Curiously, I don't remember this uplifting song, written in the seventies, forming part of my festive season soundtrack as a child, and have only really been aware of it over the last ten years or so (which probably means fifteen), as if there was some dispute over rights, or something, but it's there all the December time now, like Alex Ferguson or Harry Redknapp suddenly talking to the BBC again. It's the one song that makes me still want to be out and about as a young person, dancing forlornly on nights out, the unfathomable hope propping up the underlying despair.    

The seasonal (Christmas, to clarify) despair is of a different kind now, far away from pubs and clubs, and less about loneliness and the paucity of Arsenal's midfield options (a distinctly troubling concern in either 1989 or 1992, I think). The only girl I'm worrying about is my daughter, innocently responsible for a large portion of the ever-evolving to-do-list that features a fierce battle for Priority No.1, while trying not to crack up on the school run or the children's bedtime. The squeezing of time and money fade away at these times, only to move back in later, but their daily occupation is almost numbing, at least. Christmas always goes well but the getting there is an impossible journey, until somehow it isn't,  

But still, Elton, is there a chance of Stepping Out of Christmas? Or at least taking a year off, like Glastonbury?

I can see why 1970's Elton embraced the Most Wonderful Time of the Year, for the same reasons as I tried to as outlined above, essentially the enduring scam of hope, except that EJ had loads of money and contacts and an awareness of his own brilliant gifts...not to say that he didn't have his own troubles of course: the mother, and, doubtless, the prejudice. Now that he has kids of his own, perhaps the magic is curtailed slightly, though it's a debatable point given children can bring Christmas joy back to you, and that he probably has a few quid for toys and cars. At least, as Elton points out, the admission’s free. 

There is the option of stepping out of Christmas, I guess, but not so much if you are a parent with a conscience or a heart. It's easy to swerve the Qatar World Cup if you have those things, but the brutality of the festive season is one that must be obeyed. Sometimes it feels like a trap, a trick to empty your pockets to the beneficiaries of consumerism, all the while being whipped with brightly smiling notifications of blissful gatherings around tables that are free of political conflict or an uncle or aunt going off on one about the ‘woke’ people ramming transgender rights down their throats.    

Zoe Ball of Radio 2 nearly made me well up on the drive back from the school run this week (the school run is now nearly always a drive, given the toil involved in getting to the place) when she asked us listeners how we were getting on, and that even though we might still be mired in the chaos, we were so nearly there. I know she’s paid well to be kind to us, but it was touching and helpful to hear anyway. 

And we will get there - if we’re lucky - to finally enjoy it, and do it better than Last Christmas.  

                

A proper legacy

If we tolerate this, then what we will tolerate next.

Not quite a Manic Street Preachers song, but a similar theme. I trust MSP aren't watching the Qatar World Cup, but if they are, Wales in it or Wales not in it, then shucks to them; forget sell-out shows, you're the sell-out! Your scuffed principles leave me with Motorcycle Emptiness.

I await their reply.

Is John Cleese watching it? Probably, now that he's of an age where he's desperate to show his distaste for anything 'woke'-related, but Basil Fawlty was at his finest when declaring to his hotel guests that "This is exactly how Nazi Germany started!" So maligned, Basil, and to be fair what a bully, but would it be similarly extreme to blame Putin's war on Ukraine on Putin being given the World Cup in 2018? Yes, you might say; after all, giving a gun to a child who has been brought up to be considerate and respectful may not result in a massacre, but of course Putin is neither considerate or respectful (despite what the Qatari's said in the build up to their tournament), and to be awarded an international global event of magnitude only rivalled by the Olympic Games can only have added an extra layer of acceptance to his methods. How we laughed when an umbrella was held over him during the winners ceremony in Moscow while everyone else got soaked in the rain. What a guy! Steve McClaren must have looked on in envy, knowing the vitriol he received for doing the same at Wembley in 2008.  

No doubt the inevitably reported record-breaking viewing figures at this World Cup will similarly embolden FIFA to give Saudi Arabia the tournament in 2030 (following a break from oppressive-regime domination with USA-Canada in 2026). Mohammed Bin Salman will be that year's Putin, making sure somebody takes great care of his own head, breaking with tradition in that country.. 

What a missed opportunity this has been. The squandered chance to think and act beyond football, and show such a country that their bullshit won’t be accepted, tolerated…or any other words people link to conduct towards minority groups. 

I’m sure independent boycotts would have been complicated, and that in England for instance, where the hardcore Brexit champions hold disingenuous sway with authorities, the backlash would have been substantial, but wouldn’t it have made such a protest all the more courageous. Something to have been proud of. 

Wrecked Ralph bows out

 So Ralph Hassenhuttl, played by David Morrissey, becomes the third Premier League manager to be sacked by November. Different season, same old shit. 

There will have been other sackings in other leagues - one at Watford obviously and probably another in the post - but I’m too ignorant to know the numbers, seeing as ITV’s highlights coverage of The Championship and beyond has interminable advert breaks that require a clear week to get to the end of. 

There have been several dismissals abroad too, notably a flurry of them in Ligue 1, but as far as the official greatest comp in the world is concerned, Hassenhuttl/Morrissey (H&M) joins Bruno Lage (Wolves) and Tommy Tuchel (Chelsea) as those not surprisingly dismissed, with that lack of surprise based on history and director-panic, rather than untenable situations. 

Yes, admittedly, the Wolves players under Lage seemed to be hit with a deadly drunk potion whenever they entered the penalty area, and Tommy T’s volcanic eruptions clearly lost their magic on his fancy-Dan millionaires, but the Midlands club were hovering about the top six for a lage part of last season (boom!) and it’s still only two years since TT won the CL after just six months in the job. That said, even Roberto Di Matteo did that. 

In fairness to Southampton, H&M was at least their longest serving manager for 30 years, since Chris Nicholls in 1991, even before Geoff Shreeves was invented. A mammoth four years he lasted, a lifetime by today’s standards, the equivalent of Guy Roux at Auxerre, a relationship that spanned two decades. Dario Grady-esque.

Have to say my initial reaction to H&M’s plight was of the eye-rolling nature. I then read that there had only been one win in nine, and of course the number nine plays a menacing role in the now ex Soton manager’s history, worthy of anything conjured up by Pemberton and Shearsmith (apologies to Shearsmith if I’ve got that in the wrong order). 

And yet it is a positive of H&M’s tenure that he was able to supervise impressive mental recoveries from those two red-card inflicted 9-0 record-equalling humiliations at home to Leicester City and at Manchester United - his players even beating their original torturers at the King Power that same season. 

The fact H&M kept the team up is probably an achievement too, as well as guiding them to the FA Cup semi-finals in 2021, their first since Laurie McMenemy lead the Shilton’s and the Wright’s and the Wallace’s and the Armstrong’s to get there in 1984-85. There was also a 1-0 win over Manchester City, televised live on BBC during the pandemic, breaking the channel’s viewing figures. So stuff you going on about your 9-0 bollocks!

H&M brought both a hard-pressing game and that bowing to the crowd thing they do in the Bundersliga. Or at least he did at first. Perhaps, like the accusations that followed his team, it ran out of steam before the end. There were, of course, other issues along the way in addition to the duo of heavy disasters and the dips in energy during the latter stages of games; there was, for example, a backlash from the fanbase when he’d expressed annoyance at having to play an FA Cup game - though the 2020-21 semi-final went some way to appeasing supporters whose like hadn’t been to Wembley since 1976. 

Nathan Jones of Luton Town is replacing H&M, which you’d think I’d be pleased about, given how annoyed I was when Southampton replaced Good old Englishman Nigel Adkins in 2013 for some fly-by-night Argentinian from La Liga played by Danny Dyer.  

Adkins’ team were holding their own in their first season back in the Prem, 12th or something, and had just rescued a draw at good-then Chelsea after being 2-0 down (anyone can win at Stamford Bridge now, indeed H&M’s side won there against TT’s iteration this season) when Poch/Dyer swanned in with no trophies to his names. 

Of course Poch/Dyer turned out to be a coup, so much so that within six years he was leading Tottenham Hotspur to a Champions League Final (though to be fair, even Tommy T has done that), while Adkins has never returned to the Prem, not even for Watford, unless I blinked and missed that one. 

Southampton dusted themselves down from being a club not good enough for the manager to speak without an interpreter, and went after Euro 88 and European Cup ‘92 hero Ronald Koeman of Holland and Barcelona. When he too impressed and fucked off (to Everton - what-a-mistake-a-to-make-a), the former Dell Boys put Mauricio Pellegrino in charge, on the admirable but flawed grounds that his name sounded just like Mauricio Pochettino and might be as good. His failed term led Soton back to the thespian route, appointing Claude Puel, played by Ben Stiller, but despite the new man’s extensive research of the role and a mid-table finish, audiences were numbed by the stilted creative process. 

The return of former player Mark Hughes as Puel/Stiller’s replacement heralded renewed faith in British beef but Jesus didn’t he moan on? So in came Ralph, immediately inspiring a 3-2 home win over Unai Emery’s Arsenal, who’d been unbeaten in 22 games over four months. Four years on, he leaves following a home 4-1 defeat to Newcastoil United but with reputation in tact, if not enhanced and definitely on Watford’s radar. 

But what awaits Ralph now? Well, short-term, he sought solace in an evening at The Southampton Civic Centre watching a performance by the Blue tribute act, Untrue Blue, as he set his stall out to no longer feeling Guilty about a Premier League football team being in a rut. My sources say that a nevertheless fatigued Ralph/David discreetly left before the end of the gig, choosing his moment to go just as the impopstars were encouraging the 1500-strong crowd to get to their feet as the opening tease of All Rise geared up. His detractors might say that this was yet another example of his failure to see the job through to the end, but you really are only as good as the artists on stage. 

Exit stage left, Ralph/David. The Doctor Who job went again during your St Mary’s tenure, but there will always be another team to rescue before the inevitable regeneration.