Written by Oscar Pye-Jeary
Anyone who found themselves surprisingly less than enthralled by the sight of Manchester City blocking their way to a point at the Emirates may have caught avid Gooner Dara O’Briain and Red Devil Rock-Physicist Professor Brian Cox trading football quips on Scientastic astronomy fest Stargazing Live over on BBC2.
During one particularly fascinating sequence of an Astronaut garbed in full space gear gravity training in a pool, Prof Cox casually declared that he’d “done that…to an extent.” to which my first thought was, “well yes, so have I…to an extent.” I’ve been in a pool, so to an extent, I’ve done that too.
With this in mind I’ve realised during the course of writing these blogs that I moan quite a lot. I’m not sure whether this is simply an inevitable product of aging, something deeply disturbed and curmudgeonly about myself, or the unshakable truth that everything actually is slightly worse than it was when I was twelve, but I definitely moan quite a lot more these days.
In this regard I think I’d make a good manager, to an extent. I’d be rubbish at all the managerial things. I hate telling people what to do for a start and I get bored and give up very easily. Neither are really things preferably desirable in potential managers I feel but neither would be things the extent of my managerial goodness would extend to. Tactical astuteness might be a problem as well, but I’d be very good at telling my team how rubbish they’d been in colourful and inventive language. I’d also be brilliant at telling the press how awful modern football – and life for that matter – is, and how unfair, unbalanced and against me everything seemed so surely to be. So to an extent, I’d make a great manager. But almost exclusively to the extent of moaning about it.
The difference is that I have little genuine reason for my moaning beyond a vague sense of entitlement and a constant feeling of lethargy. Managers on the other hand have a torrid time of it. In fact as far as I’m concerned they can all quite legitimately moan to their heart’s content considering the constant barrage of abuse and buck stopping judgmental condemnation they endure on an almost weekly basis. They put their reputations in the hands of the players, and if the players balls it up, it’s the manager who gets it in the neck.
Wayne Rooney wasn’t sacked for not scoring from open play in 9 months. Peter Crouch wasn’t fired for not being able to head a ball despite being 9ft 8. Even the bafflingly perma-tanned Alan Hansen (honestly, where does he think we think he’s going?) used the latest Match of the Day to claim he “didn’t have the bottle” to go into management, and quite rightly so. It seems only the masochistic would want to and as we enter a new year and a new transfer window, the sack race is well and truly on for four prominent Premier League figures.
As I write this, glued to the groundhog-day-like monotony of 24 hour sports news, not quite sure if I’ve drifted into another day or not, Gerard Houllier has earned a reprieve and Carlo Ancelotti seems certain to keep his job until the next time Roman Abramovich steps on a pin and decides he needs to punish one of his underlings. Greater worry though will be felt in Liverpool and London where Roy Hodgson and Avram Grant will both count themselves lucky to still be in work by the close of play this evening…
Very enjoyable read. As if the pressure on Hodgson, Grant, Ancelotti and Houllier wasn’t enough, now Brian Laws is looking for work too.