Flog - I hate you, Sue Barker.

I’ve spent the last week or so doing the following: worrying I have swine flu, scavenging through my favourite newspaper, the Guardian- make no mistake, the greatest newspaper in the world- for any sort of football news that does not involve Manchester City or David Villa, suffering from hay fever and watching Wimbledon.
As it happens, these activities do not make for a life that slots neatly into the fun-filled category. It makes for absolute fear over a disease that has now officially been classed as a pandemic, dismay at how my favourite newspaper can so quickly forget football even existed and move onto other sports that dress nicer and don’t swear and even your mother likes, horror at the amount of tissues that can fill your bin and the guilty look you cannot escape because of it, and Wimbledon (see second point of this paragraph).
I don’t hate Wimbledon. It’s more the way people use it as a way of mocking football fans. These may sound like the words of a lunatic but if you have been anything like me these last few weeks since the Premiership finished you may have some idea of what I’m talking about. People who go to Wimbledon in their thousands are the sort of people that think football is on ALL the time, and like to reiterate this point to you every time they see the big green pitch fill their screen- or anyone else’s screen for that matter. It’s not that it’s always on. Not at all. It’s just whenever it is actually on, we watch it. No matter the game, no matter the importance (except the Confederations Cup. Sorry, but, just…no) we will have to tune in so we can have more memories to feast on while you eat your strawberries and cream while cooing over Sue Barker’s new haircut.
The irony is that for 2 weeks Wimbledon literally is on ALL the time. And these people know it. But they can always come back and say that Wimbledon is only for 2 weeks of the year, whereas football takes to our airwaves 9 months per annum. Correct- but it’s not every day. In fact, look at the maths. 2 weeks of solid tennis, minus the Sunday of the first week, is 13 days. If you stick with one court (red button, oooohh) you get to watch 3 matches a day, most of which will last over 90 minutes. I think you see where I am going with this, and apart from the fact that I can’t be bothered to, I don’t actually NEED to do the maths for you. Tennis is officially on more than football over the course of the year. Probably. Just because it’s only over 2 weeks doesn’t mean you can argue with maths, and that’s exactly what we are doing here. It’s maths that doesn’t actually need doing, the answer is so obvious.
But hasn’t Murray been ever so good?
Transfer news seems to be thin on the ground lately, with the major issues being played out early to leave us all wallowing in rumours and super gluing our ears to grapevines. It will be interesting to see what Manchester United do with £80m, seeing as you can buy four top class Premiership players with that sort of money and maybe push for a fifth. What needs addressing, though, is the fear some United supporters may have that they could see a repeat of the ‘new look’ team they had to contend with when Beckham left in 2003. Djemba-Djemba cannot happen again. And I mean to anyone. Aston Villa had to deal with him after United and I felt a hell of a lot of sympathy for them, too.
If United spend big, it could mean a major reshuffle of squads this summer. Players may go for hefty fees, and who knows, United may pick up five of the Premiership’s best outside the ‘big four’ and streak even further ahead of the pack. But if the money is thrown around it means everyone else has it to play with, too. Everyone is just hoping that Fergie’s eye for talent has relented somewhat, and that he doesn’t just nab your team’s best player, otherwise we could see football’s equivalent of Federer taking to the field for the next few seasons.

New balls please!