Wow, can you feel the magic? It’s like magic, everywhere. It’s so magic. The FA Cup. Magic. Just magic. The magic of the FA Cup. Magic. M-A-G-I-C. Magic.
Sorry, am I saying magic too much? Only it’s my understanding that ‘magic’ has now replaced every other descriptive word in the universe. ‘Shock’ is no longer in the dictionary, nor is ‘glamour’. ‘Captivating’ had it’s day long ago, so that’s out too. And as for ‘exciting’ and ‘wonderful’, well, they just don’t hold a candle to ‘magic’.
Yes, ITV, Flog is ranting at you once more. You may think you are continuously picked on by me, but maybe that’s because you are so relentlessly rubbish. I’ve spent a weekend watching your coverage of the FA Cup and am now fairly sure four out of my five senses are gone, never to return.
Obviously, my hearing (and with it my sanity) has gone with the intense overuse of the ‘M’ word, along with being beaten over the head by The Enemy’s ‘Be Somebody’ every time the programme starts, ends and cuts to a break. Considering the FA Cup on ITV has had around 12 hours of airtime (not including the repeats of the highlights package Sunday morning) this weekend, and they have an advert break every 3 minutes, the audience has been subjected to that ‘solid gooooooooooold’ ident a total of 4,911,024,586 times. Add all this to Robbie Earle’s suicide-inducing murmurs between highlights and I just can‘t take it any…more...sorry…I’m writing this during the Scunthorpe vs. Man City game and they’ve come back from a break… ‘SOLID GOOOO-OOOOH-OOOOOOLD!!!!!!!’
Next: my eyes. Their opening titles take on a mock comic book template, presumably trying to inject a Roy of the Rovers feel. Instead it’s like a war between every shade of hew ever known to man over which one gets to blind you first. It reminds me of that episode of Byker Grove, when PJ gets blinded by a paintball bullet, only that was partly his fault for taking his goggles off in the middle of the battle. What exactly did we do to deserve this vomit of colour from our screens, ITV? Just what? Because whatever I did, I’m so sorry. Now stop it.
I didn’t so much lose my ‘taste’, rather get the feeling that ‘taste’ in the ‘tactful’ sense has been disregarded altogether. I refer to John Hartson in the pundit’s chair for the Stoke vs. Arsenal game Sunday lunchtime. Hartson’s return to something like full health after a serious fight against testicular, lung and brain cancer is obviously excellent to see, and his television work looks to be merited by spirited insight and genuine experience rather than a turn of sympathy. So it’s nice to know ITV can be sensitive towards the issue when asking him if the match was a case of ‘brains over battering rams’. Brilliant. I suppose I should be celebrating the fact that they didn’t substitute ‘battering rams’ with ‘balls of steel’. Maybe I’m being a little pedantic, but I certainly felt for Hartson, who must feel a little under the spotlight for his past ill health rather than his fine punditry, and while we’re on the subject I’d like to point out how I enjoyed Paul Robinson’s input into the Spurs vs. Leeds game too. Quite why Robbie Earle is still turned to for his views, God only knows.
All that and I’m sure I lost my sense of smell somewhere along the line.
Just a quick note on one of my least favourite players on this Earth, Jermaine Jenas. After the Leeds game, I went through everything a footballer should have in my mind and tallied up what ‘JJ’ offers a side. Ready? Ok: Pass? No. Tackle? No. Shoot? No. Head? No. Corners? No. Dribble? No. Cross? No. Penalties? No. Free kicks? No. Defend? No. Skill? No. Mark? No.
Anything, and I mean anything, you think of and add onto that list, I assure you he cannot do. This is a player supposedly on the fringe of England’s World Cup squad; I can only imagine for moral support or to iron the kit. As a (realistic) Spurs fan, I was devastated to learn they had rejected a £10million approach from Aston Villa for him in the summer. I’d have sold him for Nectar Points. No doubt he will stay at Spurs forever, even after he has finished playing, as a God-awful manager or club patriot or something, just to emphasise the mediocrity us Tottenham fans will most likely be eternally subjected to.
Magic.
24 January 2010
7 January 2010
Flog - Snowman Pavlyuchensnow!
SNOW! Look! White, fluffy snow! Wow! There’s Fernando Torres throwing a snowball! Guffaw! Gareth Bale is chucking a lump of snow at David Bentley! Zoinks! Scott Carson has just found the huge snowman his team mates have hid in his car! Ha ha ha! Ha ha bloody ha!
I hate snow. Well actually I don’t. I love it. It’s just the leftovers I hate. The inch deep rink that I have to negotiate while getting to the station each morning is becoming ever more tiresome and I think the fear of slipping down one of the two (two!) hills and into a main road on the way will send me to an early stress induced grave.
So quite what all these footballers are enjoying about it, I don’t know. They’re forced out into the abyss, go to training where any form of mild slide tackle will result in shards of ice becoming part of their anatomy, then their game gets called off and they go home. To eat chocolate and stuff.
I’m not sure if we’re supposed to feel more endeared towards the modern footballer after being exposed to these ‘behind the scenes’ pictures of them or not. It certainly depicts them in a more human and overall normal light, something that Joey Barton tried to do recently, but instead of using snow he simply called them all ‘knobs’. Erm, did you not see how hilarious it was when Scott Carson’s car got ruined by 10kg of solid, filthy snow? A-ha, a-ha, a-ha.
Carson’s reaction, however, was truly something to behold. Before realising the cameras were on I swear I saw his top lip quiver in anger. ‘I should be England’s number 1, but instead I’m being mocked. Mocked by Scottish defenders.’ Then he saw the camera. ‘Oh… erm… ha ha ha’.
And I’m sure Torres loved the snow too, for all of about seven seconds, while the cameras were there. I’m sure they failed to capture the moment when a huge lump of the white stuff found it’s way under his collar and down his training top, at which point he attacks the perpetrator, Ryan Babel, and bludgeons him into a pulp on the field out of utter freezing shock.
It would be interesting to see what Nemanja Vidic makes of it all as well, seeing as he and his family already claim to be struggling to fully adapt to the English weather, and that was when it was just grey. That’s a good 85% of the time, mate. Still, you could always move to London and make your way to the match on a Saturday by train like the United fans, Nemanja. You could lead them; for many it‘s their first and only visit.
I felt for the Bolton supporters on Wednesday too, who were effectively in their seats at the Emirates before the game was called off. Typically, they couldn’t just accept that they wouldn’t be seeing the game, they had to have a pop at the Southerners as well. ‘They think the ice is bad here, they should see me’ mam’s house in Bolton’, declared the 6th Peter Kay look-a-like to step off the bus. Still, to cancel a game so late with an away set of supporters already on route to the stadium is completely unacceptable on Arsenal’s part. If there’s a good chance of it being off, call it early and stop the coach before it hits the M1, not when they’re outside the ground you tits.
In other news Portsmouth continue to excite on every level except a footballing one, with the club now facing a winding up order from the Inland Revenue, along with unpaid debts to other Premier League and Championship clubs for past transfers and of course relegation. Reports today suggest that their entire squad is up for sale, but let’s be brutal here, even if every single player goes it wouldn’t settle their debt. It wouldn’t settle my overdraft. Later in the day Portsmouth claimed that they have ‘no need’ to offload any players. Really? But they’re so shit, aren’t they?
Hindsight is a wonderfully horrible thing in football, and if Portsmouth fans excercise it then they’ll soon be throwing themselves under a bus. Let’s face it, only 2 good things would come from the club going into administration, or even closing up altogether, and that is 1) that bloody bell will stop ringing, and 2) (and seriously) perhaps the Premiership’s ‘fit and proper persons’ test will actually fucking mean something. Club loyalties aside, I don’t think any of us want to see Portsmouth FC go under, but maybe it will make people think twice before hailing a new exotic owner as any sort of messiah at their own club.
Hang in there, Pompey.
PUNS!: To finish off this edition of Flog, here are some weather related football puns: Alessandro Frostacurta, Sam Allard-ice, Sled Evans, Snow Hansen, Snowman Pavlyuchensnow, Ian Slush, Evander Sno-w, Mark Snowball (personal favourite) and Sleeter Schmeichel. Thanks to Tom Page for Ben Froster and Jen Slayman, and Joey Page for Pedsnow Mendes. Joey also had Les Fur-dinand, but by this point we realised we had things to do.
I hate snow. Well actually I don’t. I love it. It’s just the leftovers I hate. The inch deep rink that I have to negotiate while getting to the station each morning is becoming ever more tiresome and I think the fear of slipping down one of the two (two!) hills and into a main road on the way will send me to an early stress induced grave.
So quite what all these footballers are enjoying about it, I don’t know. They’re forced out into the abyss, go to training where any form of mild slide tackle will result in shards of ice becoming part of their anatomy, then their game gets called off and they go home. To eat chocolate and stuff.
I’m not sure if we’re supposed to feel more endeared towards the modern footballer after being exposed to these ‘behind the scenes’ pictures of them or not. It certainly depicts them in a more human and overall normal light, something that Joey Barton tried to do recently, but instead of using snow he simply called them all ‘knobs’. Erm, did you not see how hilarious it was when Scott Carson’s car got ruined by 10kg of solid, filthy snow? A-ha, a-ha, a-ha.
Carson’s reaction, however, was truly something to behold. Before realising the cameras were on I swear I saw his top lip quiver in anger. ‘I should be England’s number 1, but instead I’m being mocked. Mocked by Scottish defenders.’ Then he saw the camera. ‘Oh… erm… ha ha ha’.
And I’m sure Torres loved the snow too, for all of about seven seconds, while the cameras were there. I’m sure they failed to capture the moment when a huge lump of the white stuff found it’s way under his collar and down his training top, at which point he attacks the perpetrator, Ryan Babel, and bludgeons him into a pulp on the field out of utter freezing shock.
It would be interesting to see what Nemanja Vidic makes of it all as well, seeing as he and his family already claim to be struggling to fully adapt to the English weather, and that was when it was just grey. That’s a good 85% of the time, mate. Still, you could always move to London and make your way to the match on a Saturday by train like the United fans, Nemanja. You could lead them; for many it‘s their first and only visit.
I felt for the Bolton supporters on Wednesday too, who were effectively in their seats at the Emirates before the game was called off. Typically, they couldn’t just accept that they wouldn’t be seeing the game, they had to have a pop at the Southerners as well. ‘They think the ice is bad here, they should see me’ mam’s house in Bolton’, declared the 6th Peter Kay look-a-like to step off the bus. Still, to cancel a game so late with an away set of supporters already on route to the stadium is completely unacceptable on Arsenal’s part. If there’s a good chance of it being off, call it early and stop the coach before it hits the M1, not when they’re outside the ground you tits.
In other news Portsmouth continue to excite on every level except a footballing one, with the club now facing a winding up order from the Inland Revenue, along with unpaid debts to other Premier League and Championship clubs for past transfers and of course relegation. Reports today suggest that their entire squad is up for sale, but let’s be brutal here, even if every single player goes it wouldn’t settle their debt. It wouldn’t settle my overdraft. Later in the day Portsmouth claimed that they have ‘no need’ to offload any players. Really? But they’re so shit, aren’t they?
Hindsight is a wonderfully horrible thing in football, and if Portsmouth fans excercise it then they’ll soon be throwing themselves under a bus. Let’s face it, only 2 good things would come from the club going into administration, or even closing up altogether, and that is 1) that bloody bell will stop ringing, and 2) (and seriously) perhaps the Premiership’s ‘fit and proper persons’ test will actually fucking mean something. Club loyalties aside, I don’t think any of us want to see Portsmouth FC go under, but maybe it will make people think twice before hailing a new exotic owner as any sort of messiah at their own club.
Hang in there, Pompey.
PUNS!: To finish off this edition of Flog, here are some weather related football puns: Alessandro Frostacurta, Sam Allard-ice, Sled Evans, Snow Hansen, Snowman Pavlyuchensnow, Ian Slush, Evander Sno-w, Mark Snowball (personal favourite) and Sleeter Schmeichel. Thanks to Tom Page for Ben Froster and Jen Slayman, and Joey Page for Pedsnow Mendes. Joey also had Les Fur-dinand, but by this point we realised we had things to do.
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