I cannot remember a time in which I have been less interested in football than I am today. For some peculiar reason, possibly because it usually means the end of the summer is nigh, the new season has never been something I looked forward to. Even when I was travelling absurd distances to watch Bristol Rovers in pre season friendlies in the old days, part of me was thinking, “Why am I wasting the final days of summer watching football when I could be doing something more appropriate in the warm sunshine, like lying in it?” Post active supporter life, that quandary is no longer there.
The fact that there is ‘MORE FOOTBALL LIVE ON SKY THAN EVER BEFORE’ ™ don’t impress me much. There’s loads more on TNT and various other pay channels, too, and if I decided I wanted to watch every single game, I wouldn’t have time to do anything else, including sleep. With at least 215 Premier League games live on Sky Sports this year and over 1000 from the EFL, Carabao Cup and Vertu Trophies, not to mention a glut of European games, you might think this represented some kind of overkill. It certainly does to me.
To date, I have watched a grand total of one and a half live Premier League games, both involving Liverpool, my armchair fan team of choice, and various high and low lights from other games. But this week my viewing habits have changed dramatically.
In search of cheap laughs, on Tuesday evening I tuned into the penalty shoot-out between Celtic and Kazakhstan’s finest FC Kairat in a UEFA Champions League (UCL) qualifying match. Both legs ended 0-0 and neither team managed a goal in extra time either. As luck would have it, I was channel-hopping and happened upon Amazon Prime’s coverage. Cheap laughs were in abundance as Celtic preceded to miss three of their penalties and before September has even started found themselves already relegated to the Europa League. Unarguably, last night’s TV offerings were even better and funnier.
Glasgow’s second finest, Rangers, flew to Bruges in Belgium to play Club Brugge, seeking to overturn a 3-1 defeat in the home leg and they came tantalisingly close in a six goal thriller. Sadly for Rangers, all six goals were scored by Club Brugge, which saw ex manager to be Russell Martin’s men exit the UCL by an aggregate score of 9-1. The good news is that as well as stepping down into the Europa League, Rangers can now focus all their energies on coming second in this season’s Scottish Premiership. Given they have drawn all three of their games so far and currently stand seventh, just behind SPL giants Kilmarnock, Motherwell and Livingston, this may prove harder than I first imagined. The BBC was kind enough to show the high and lowlights. This was Comedy Central. But the best was saved until last.
Manchester United were away to Grimsby Town in the League Cup, or whatever sugar-packed fizzy drink it is sponsored by this week, and somewhat heroically they had come back from a 2-0 deficit to take the Mariners* to penalties. United, starting with nine full internationals, with five more coming on at various points of the game, would surely cruise to an effortless victory and assist Stretford’s finest as they attempted to reach next season’s Europa League, but they didn’t. Hopeless net minder Andre Onana made his customary howler to gift a goal to Grimsby and penalties it was. And with the score at 12-11 to Grimsby, up stepped £71 million striker Brian Mbeumo to casually strike the ball into the back of the net onto the cross bar. Pathetic, I know, but I laughed until I stopped.
I have tried my best to eliminate schadenfreude from my life but over the last two nights it has proved impossible to avoid it. The two big fish of the small pond that is the Scottish Premiership were, it turned out minnows in the UCL when put up against the best Belgium and Kazakhstan could offer.The Old Firm? The Infirm, more like.
‘Sir’ Jim Ratcliffe’s tenure in charge of the fading Red Devils just gets worse and, of course, funnier. Billionaire tax dodger Big Jim isn’t really Misstra Know-It-All at all. He’s Misstra-Know-Fuck-All. Having sacked hundreds of staff to save money, the club then splashed that cash on some big money signings and to date, it does not appear that the rot that set in after Sir Alex Ferguson retired has stopped. Far from it, it appears that supremo Ruben Amorim is every bit as out of his depth as his recent predecessors. The sheer amount of money in the game means that eventually The Biggest Club In The World ™ will get its shit together and resume its place at the top table of football avarice but let’s enjoy it while we can.
Despite all the joy I have been getting from the failure of others, I will not be resuming my role as an armchair viewer in the foreseeable, or even unforeseeable, future. There’s simply too much football on the telly and the only way to deal with it is watch almost none of it. Unless, of course, the Rangers, Celtic and Manchester United comedy clubs have other ideas. In which case, more schadenfreude it is.
* The original blogpost referred to Grimsby Town, WHO BEAT MANCHESTER UNITED LAST NIGHT as The Shrimpers which of course was totally wrong. The Shrimpers are Southend United. Many thanks to the millions of you (Rex) who pointed it out. Grimsby are The Mariners. Did I mention that THEY BEAT MANCHESTER UNITED LAST NIGHT?
