With football’s return imminent one of the few questions raised is; are the FA, ( the governing body of the Premier League), about to do a better job of protecting their charges than the Conservative Party, (the governing body of the UK)?
Well, in truth, it would be very difficult for them to do a worse job and, in fairness, there is quite a difference in the scale of the two tasks.
Right from the outset of the pandemic rich footballers were in the sights of those rich obnoxious MPs because the feeling was that, because they’re rich, they should do more to help society, particularly in times of need. No mention of the rich MPs, nor indeed the government, doing anything to help society. They have managed to do as little as possible with rather predictable consequences.
Marcus Rashford has mounted an almost single-handed campaign to make sure that schoolchildren have been able to get meals. Obviously this was secretly delegated to him by the government who had better things to do such as try to help Dominic Cummings come up with a decent excuse for completely ignoring lockdown regulations and treating the British public like idiots, (nothing really new there as far as the tories go).
Jordan Henderson set about helping to buy essential gear for nurses, a task which should probably have been carried out by those MPs whose idea of essential gear for nurses is what they themselves wear at their private gentlemen’s clubs.
So, as we said, it is going to be very difficult for the FA to do a worse job of stewardship than the clowns tasked with the more serious mission of running the country, (into the ground?)
It’s back (almost)…..
Anyway, football will return to English shores very soon and we can start to get used to no fans, just a few staff members and the TV cameras. Oh, and a few thousand computer generated supporters depending upon your channel of choice. That’s got to make the subscription to Sky and BT all the more worthwhile!
A muddy pitch! Something which would immediately be outlawed in the Premier League in case the poor little dears slipped and fell and hurt their knee!
For the players it will surely be like a return to schooldays. That was when the crowd didn’t really matter because, depending on the weather, only a few parents would show up to watch. Motivation wasn’t money and climate wasn’t an issue because games were ALWAYS played.
However, having spent a few years playing in front of large crowds you can bet that some footballers will roll out the old clichés. “We missed the crowd, they are the 12th man” and other such tosh.
This period should also prove that home advantage is, (or should be), a myth. We have long agreed with Arsène Wenger on this subject and that is that a football pitch is a football pitch irrespective of where it is and, unless it is made of plastic, treacle or feathers, then it is the same surface that both teams are used to playing on. If this theory is borne out during this period of non-attendance football then the crowd theory definitely comes back into play and would be the only reason a team could be considered to have “home” advantage.
There will, of course, be one unwanted outcome now that this season is actually going to end with all games having been played and that is that Liverpool will probably be crowned champions. The silver lining is that the season will forever be remembered as the one that was almost lost to a virus rather than the one where Jürgen Klopp’s team ended their 30 years wait for the title.
And finally…..
We read somewhere that there was concern that, if next season is to start in August, the players will have little time to rest given that this season will run into July. We would just like to point out to whichever dimwit it was who raised that concern that the players HAVE JUST HAD 3 MONTHS OFF!!!
WHY SAY ANYTHING? 