Flog - Coming Soon: Wayne Rooney (in 3D)

Anyone see the England game? I’d certainly hope not.
For one, the game itself seemed to be as entertaining as being read old scripts of Emmerdale by Bob Wilson.
Secondly, what moron would pay anything between £5 and £20 to watch a meaningless (to England, anyway) qualifier?
Well, as it turns out, nearly half a million of you. Half a million? It was a Saturday night! Go out! Socialise! Don’t sit in front a tiny, furious and pixelated Fabio Capello barking at match officials!
Due to the high numbers of consumers for the game, people have been singing the praises of this ‘exercise’ as it is now called, seeing as nobody is admitting a channel called Setanta ever existed, let alone had the rights to England away fixtures.
What really troubled me though was the number of people who chose to go to the cinema to watch it. A select number of Odeon screens were used- at £12 a head, let it be known- to show the game and although many were reported to be half empty, it was still regarded as being a precedent for future games like this.
Now if you are a football fan, you should be very scared by this. Very scared indeed.
Football has very much been wrestled out of the hands of the working classes. It’s a sport where money rules all. We all know this and it’s been relayed a thousand times. The ‘best view in the house’ is reserved those who can pay for it. The windows on the box are double glazed (for your comfort). This, dear reader, is exactly what a football match on a cinema screen will enhance. The whole idea of being one voice, of fans being altogether in support of their team, could be over. If you can pay to watch football in comfort, with an overpriced hot dog and all the customary trimmings of somebody who can afford it, then you do it. And nobody will skip on any chance to do the slightest little thing for you to make it a more ‘enjoyable’ experience.
Whether it be at the ground or at the pub, watching your team with your supporters invokes passion, and an atmosphere. How can you create an atmosphere with people grazing popcorn asking you to ‘shhh’? But it will draw the money in. And sadly, that’s the end credits.

In other news, it has emerged that Harry Redknapp has been assigned ex-SAS soldiers by way of protection on his return to Portsmouth for the first time. I really want one to be Ross Kemp. Really, really, really want. However, no matter how many of the Queen’s finest you put in their way, I can imagine it’s pretty difficult to hold back 18,000 people if they really wanted to have a go. Redknapp will probably take it all in his stride, give a wink to an old lady in a Pompey shirt and everyone will realise why they all loved him in the first place. Paul Hart, the Premiership’s resident deadbeat dad, has a lot to live up to in Harry, even if he has won a lot of affection for his efforts so far. I’d just like to mention the arrival of Spurs’ Jamie O’Hara on the south coast and how much more bite they now have in their depleted midfield. O’Hara has a fantastic air about him, and I think he has a great future, something I thought a friend of mine agreed with, only to be rebuffed quickly, with; ‘he has all the attributes to be a top class Premiership footballer. Except ability’.

Oh, Haha.

Fact of the Week: The first live coverage of a football match shown on television was in the year 1937. It was a practice match of Arsenal and was played at Highbury stadium. Fiction: There may or may not have been sound, as it was reported that some people had to turn up their television full blast to hear anything. For all Arsenal home games, that same tradition stands to this day.

Flog - Adrian and Gary and Me, sitting in a tree, laughing at all the predictability

During the summer I wrote an edition of Flog devoted to how much I was missing football. It flittered between rambling about my failed attempts at finding enough football compilation videos on YouTube and my unyielding hatred of everyone’s favourite leather faced, nicer than pie, mediocre sports presenter Sue bloody Barker.
Which, on reflection, might be considered harsh. She wasn’t to know she was unsuccessfully using a tennis ball to fill a large, football shaped void in my life. (By the way, metaphors: not my strong point.)
This assessment on stupid grandma Sue now seems even more harsh though as it becomes ever more apparent that I am utterly bored of the Premiership already.
Season after season I bemoan the fact that the top 4 is always the top 4 regardless of what Everton, Spurs and Aston Villa have had to say about matters in the very recent history of the league. But their appeal was that if they broke the mini league up, they would have been eaten alive in what that status meant: Champions League football. Everton, the only team to have penetrated that elite of late, found this out in the earliest of the qualification rounds. They couldn’t even continue their smug glances over at Liverpool finishing in 5th because they went and won the bloody thing the season before and were allowed in on this merit.
Ultimately, though, it was comforting to know that in the end the status quo would be restored and these club’s flirtations with the big boys would eventually die out. Each time a club came and went out of the reckoning, the gap got bigger too.
But now we have Manchester City making a break for the top 4, but this time with a sustainable challenge not just for this year but for many to come. I cant deal with that! I like it when Gary Linekar makes a mundane joke about it being all boring and tedious at the end of the season as we look at the same four teams sitting proudly in some sort of order at the top. I like how Adrian Chiles tuts and rolls his eyes on Match of the Day 2 whenever the big four clubs get a dodgy penalty decision or a last minute winner which went in off their right back’s left bollock (try saying that with half a sandwich in your mouth). I like how Sky pinpoint every meeting between the top 4 and build it up for at least 4 months beforehand and it usually turns out to be a cagey, tight affair, but still gets Jamie Redknapp near enough erect with excitement JUST BECAUSE football is on!
City have ruined everything. Now I don’t know what to think. Add to this the fact that Arsenal are doing the opposite of what everyone though they would and, well, doing pretty well actually, and have the most prolific centre back in history in Thomas Vermaelen. And the fact that Manchester United look a little shit at the moment, which quickly and neatly leads me to ask a question I have been asking for a long time; Can everyone stop rating Ben Foster now please? He’s ever so shite and believes his own hype. I even made a little rhyme for you, now sing it and piss off to spread the word.
Liverpool are still playing with a squad that consists of 2 players, (seeing as everybody is starting to see that Jamie Carragher is not good enough to be a championship winning centre back, it’s now down to Gerrard and Torres) and even Spurs are sitting on the high fliers table for now, you know, before the inevitable Christmas downfall. Happy holidays, Harry. (I may not be good at metaphors but give me little rhymes and alliteration and I’m there, no danger).
So overall, please just go back to normal. I can’t bear tuning into football without knowing what’s going to happen in the end. I like stability, comfort, continuity. I like Gary and Adrian and their stupid smiles. So please, football, don’t take that away from me. Sometimes I think it’s all I have.

Fact of the Week: according to Wikipedia: ‘David Ginola was renowned for his "magical" touch on the ball and his ability to get past players from any type of position and then manage to score a goal’. Not necessarily a fact, but maybe the most hilariously banal summation of a footballing genius’ career ever.