Daytime Television

Daytime Television 2 - 5th January 2008

2008-01-18T03:41:00.000-08:00

Paying the penalty
Daytime Television looks at penalty decisions (and apologises for not having a better headline)

Here’s another thing I forgot to mention in the little rant I had about referees in DT1. There are too many penalties these days, and a lot of them, in my opinion, shouldn’t be penalties.
Just think about this for a second: how many times have you seen a forward break into the penalty area, flick the ball too fast past the goalkeeper, trail his leg behind him so he DELIBERATELY hits the goalkeeper’s arms, and fall over when the ball has pretty much left the field of play?
You see it all the time, and often the forward will get a penalty out of it, even when, if he had just stepped over the goalie’s arms, he wouldn’t have been able to score.
To my mind, you shouldn’t get a penalty (which is pretty much a guaranteed goal if you’re not crap) out of a situation when you didn’t even try to score, and you probably couldn’t have if you had tried. This is why I’m making the radical suggestion that a foul in the penalty area should NOT be an automatic penalty. Instead, a penalty should only be awarded for a foul in the six yard box, or for a foul in the 18 yard box which the ref judges to be a clear goal scoring opportunity. Other fouls in the 18 yard box would be an indirect free kick.
This rule change would probably also mean that attackers stay on their feet more instead of fannying around dragging their little legs behind them like fucking Tiny Tim without his crutches. “God bless us one and all” – my arse.

Sweet FA

The topic of the Burton-on-Trent national football centre has come back onto the agenda since the defeat against Croatia. The centre has been given the provisional go ahead as the current “preferred location” (you’d hope so since they’ve already spent £25m on it), but there are rumblings from some board members that they’d like a site closer to London.
Of course, it’s nothing new for ‘national’ facilities to be situated in or near London, but this time, in particular, I’m somewhat surprised. Why does the football centre need to be near London? The average England squad includes players who play for clubs all over the country (or at least, as much from the north as from London) so surely in terms of accessibility the midlands is ideal.

Tottenham Hotspur vs Manchester City, 9^th December 2007, White Hart Lane

Match report by The Fall
(“what really went on there? – we only have this excerpt”)

Upstart ruffians!
(nah-nah-nah)
Upstart ruffians!
(nah-nah-nah-nah)
Fourth place!
Must be fucking joking!
Sven!
Frank!
You must be fucking joking!

Enter stadium,
stifling cauldron,
a hot, bubbling,
Tottenham hotpot
of singing chanting and bile.
City!
City!

No good striker starting,
bloke next to me farting,
wounds from this ground last year
smarting.

Upstart ruffians!
(nah-nah-nah)
Upstart ruffians!
(nah-nah-nah-nah)
Fourth place!
Must be fucking joking!
Sven!
Frank!
You must be fucking joking!

Bulgarian protégé of the massed
ranks of Tottenham wankstains
diving more than world champion diver
wins free kick opportunely
near end of first half

(Mark E. Smith’s weird talking interlude)
“Bastard Tottenham player in offside position handles ball with alacrity and barefaced cheek, cheating cheek. Referee oblivious, part of conspiracy, I watch silenty but will wreak my vengeance on your homes and your wives.”

Bianchi bullet. Header.
Parity restored,
city pour forward.
Superman Ireland epic jump at Jenas,
2 feet forward.
Pouting bastard goes down as though shot
and Ireland marches,
given marching orders.

Upstart ruffians!
(nah-nah-nah)
Upstart ruffians!
(nah-nah-nah-nah)
Fourth place!
Must be fucking joking!
Sven!
Frank!
You must be fucking joking!

Defoe.
It is all over.
Now.

Fabio Capello: England Manager

So Fabio Capello has been appointed as England’s new manager. Lots of people, especially down here in London, were pushing Jose Mourinho, but the guy’s an arsehole. Also, it turned out he didn’t even want the job, which I could have told Brian Barwick for nothing, merely by judging his schoolboy flirtation with the FA. It was ridiculous, like ‘JOSE FANCIES ENGLAND, SAYS BEST FRIEND’ and ‘JOSE PASSES NOTE TO BARWICK DURING DOUBLE MATHS LESSON VIA MUTUAL FRIEND’ and finally, the stage we never saw, ‘BARWICK INVITES JOSE TO END OF TERM SCHOOL DISCO.’
Speaking of Barwick, lots of people have said that he looks like a butcher, or some kind of Dickensian Alderman-type character, but actually he looks like Harry Potter’s uncle in those films.
I don’t really mind that this bunch of overpaid (mostly) arseholes didn’t qualify for Euro 2008. That’s why I think an English manager is still a nice idea. But if you want the team to actually do well then you’ve got to give up on having an English manager. Where are the world class English managers who will improve the team? Alan Shearer? Stuart Pearce? Gareth Southgate? Harry Redknapp? Aidy Boothroyd?
The best British managers are David Moyes, Sir Browntrousersonthemotorway, Mark Hughes and Martin O’Neill, and none of them is English.
Speaking of Harry Redknapp, he is as bent as a nine bob note. And I’m not even going to say ‘allegedly’ because let’s face it, this isn’t a particularly influential arm of the media and he probably doesn’t care. And even if he did, I don’t. Corrupt corrupt corrupt.

Why I love local radio

I was listening to BBC Radio Manchester the other day when Jimmy Wagg cut to the Oldham correspondent – the Latics had just scored at Elland Road.
Cue crowd background noise and an over-excited Oldhamite who was keen to stress how good Oldham’s goal was. “I’ve been accused of over-spectacularising Oldham goals in the past” he gushed, “but not on this occasion!” He then went on to describe Reuben Hazell’s goal in the kind of detail only a fan could manage. Beats Five Live where all the wankers are just rags.

Daytime Television 1 - 9th December 2007

2007-12-20T18:00:00.000-08:00

What is this rubbish?

Welcome to the first edition of a new City (and other things) fanzine, released today 9^th December 2007 at White Hart Lane. Hold on to it, it might be worth something in a few years. Or at least read it before you throw it away. Alternatively keep it until you leave the ground; after spending £16.5m on Darren Bent Spurs need to impose budget cuts and I’m guessing there’ll be no bog roll in the away fans’ shitter.
It’s being sold for the bargain price of 10p
yes just 10p
which is what it cost me to photocopy, so I’m not making any money. I’m just doing this for fun, I hope you like it.
Daytime Television was written, folded and photocopied entirely by me, Harry Stopes. If you have any comments, preferably of the constructive variety, or you want to collaborate on any possible future releases, please email me at harry.stopes@gmail.com or write to Harry Stopes, 112 Wager Street, London, E3 4JF

Rules are rules

So anyway, as I was saying, I don’t hate referees per se, I just find them, and the rules mystifying. Here are a few things about Premiership Football rule enforcement that make me ask “How come…?”

Harry’s ‘How comezit?’

1) Regarding offside positions, how comezit strikers can be and often are deemed “inactive”, even when their presence is likely to have helped their team mates? An “inactive” striker can give a centre back a dilemma about whether to close someone else down and thus delay any decision for the split second it takes the other attacker to score. To me this doesn’t seem to be fair when defenders are effectively deemed to always be “active.” For example, a full back on his arse near the corner flag is enough to play every attacking player onside – but a striker can be loitering with intent near the six yard box and still be regarded as “inactive” and thus not offside.
The only fair thing to do would be to allow defenders as well as strikers to be “inactive”, meaning that linesmen, sorry, referees’ assistants, would have to work out if the defenders playing the strikers onside were ‘active’ or not. I can’t think why they don’t do that.
Oh yes I know, it’s because it’s a fucking stupid idea. The simplest thing would be to do away with the active/inactive idea altogether.

2) Right so I’ve set the world to rights on that one. Moving on, how comezit the “expert” analysts on Match of the Day (Alan Shearer, next England manager? spare me) will always say things like “there’s contact there, so he’s entitled to go down for a penalty.”
Er, what? Let’s break down this “shearer” analysis from Alan Expert; I think it goes something like this.

a) Defender made contact with Striker.
b) Contact is forbidden – it is a form of footballing naughtiness.
c) Therefore it is not necessary for the contact to actually force Striker to fall over by the laws of physics etc, it is sufficient that the contact took place at all, and Striker is therefore entitled to throw himself on the ground.

Clearly a) is true, but b) is not, and therefore neither is c). It’s a cliché, but football is a contact sport, so “there’s contact there” is completely irrelevent. I’m not saying it is easy for referees to tell whether Striker ‘really’ fell over because of the challenge or whether he has been studying at the Christiano Ronaldo Performing Arts College (opening soon in Eccles I believe), but we should at least stop pretending that the existence or otherwise of contact is the be all and end all.

3) Following on from that a little bit, how comezit players can’t be disciplined retrospectively for diving when they can be for fouls? It doesn’t happen a lot, but players have been booked for diving (Corradi at Old Trafford last season springs to mind) so it’s clearly regarded as a form of cheating by the referees. Since this is the case, why can’t they use TV footage to dish out yellow and red cards for blatant dives? I know there’s often a difficult grey area, but cracking down on the worst dives will probably make it rarer across the board.

Banter My Arse

Back in August someone called David Mooney wrote on the King of the Kippax blog about homophobic abuse he heard from a City fan at The Emirates. As David quite rightly said, “its wrong – don’t do it.” Racism is now generally regarded as unacceptable in this country, (although I’ve still heard “paki” and “chink” at City matches). Homophobia is no more clever, and no more acceptable. Kick it Out.

Science Report
From the pen of Stephen Hawking

There is growing evidence for the theory of an oscillating universe based on a recurring event in the North of England. Every few years it seems that Football Club experiences a run of poor form and dire results. Initial Fan Disquiet is soothed by the reassurances of Loyal Chairman that Beleagured Manager’s job is safe. However, results remain bad and Fan Disquiet is exacerbated by the news that Talented Youngster is making eyes at Big Club, who may be about to swoop. Furthermore, Wantaway Foreign Striker tells the press in his home country that Beleagured Manager is rubbish and he hates living in Large City, where it rains all the time. Wantaway Foreign Striker and Talented Youngster are joined by Crap Crocked Midfield Has-been, and the pressure on Beleagured Manager increases. Grumpy Fan With Beard is interviewed on local radio and suggests that Football Club’s faith in Beleagured Manager may be misplaced. Loyal Chairman is forced to change his tune when he finally opens Football Club’s bank statements and notices the size of their debt. Suddenly Beleagured Manager is dispensible, and even Loyal Chairman himself may be forced aside by the arrival of Rich Benevolent Foreigner With Questionable Past. Rich Benevolent Foreigner With Questionable Past duly takes over and installs Football Genius as manager. Football Genius goes on a spending spree and acquires Brazilian Dynamo, Wing Wizard and assorted others, although Proper Striker eludes him.
Football Club become a thousand times better than they have been for ages and ages, and Football Genius proves to be an excellent manager. Longsuffering Fans appear to have found the panacea for all their woes, but they have failed to consider Manifest Destiny A.K.A Certain Ultimate Misery And Dissappointment. Just as the pigs in Animal Farm kick out the farmers only to become farmers themselves, surely Football Genius will slowly evolve into Beleagured Manager. There will be Initial Fan Disquiet. Grumpy Fan With Beard will receive a phone call from the BBC…
The Ancient Romans thought that History is a cycle. When it comes to City, our dissapointment is of a more cosmic order I feel. The whole universe conspires to poo on us and I am sure I will be proven right. (Even if the above is a bit silly and sounds like the lyrics to a song by The Fall.)

Munich – 50 years on

It was announced recently that United will wear a special kit for the next Manchester derby, which takes place in February shortly after the 50^th anniversary of the Munich air disaster.
It is hoped, apparently, that rather than taking the piss and singing songs about footballers ‘dying in the snow’, the whole city of Manchester will come together around the anniversary in the same way which I am told it did in the first place all those years ago.
I’m only 21 years old so Munich is something I know very little about, but I’ve never found it something to joke about. The sanctimonious rag insistence that it’s beyond the pale as a topic of humour is pretty irritating, but I don’t really think they’re wrong – for once. Anyway, a joke’s only funny if everyone’s laughing so I’m told, and no one’s laughing at that joke cos it’s shit. So shut up.
I know this will probably be unpopular but I don’t even hate United as much as I used to. Maybe it’s a result of moving away from Manchester (to university), and away from all the shit banter I used to get at school:
“City are shit.”
“Well spotted. Who the fuck are you, Sherlock Holmes?*”
“Why don’t you support United?”
“Cos I support City and I’m not an arsehole.” etc
*This is all made up of course, I was never that witty.

Anyway, the point is that maybe distance has mellowed me, and the differences between the Manchester clubs have become less important compared to what they have in common. I find the team I hate most now is Chelsea, with their arrogant fans, arrogant manager (until recently – now read Vampire Manager), and those jumped up cockney twats Lampard and Terry.Having said all this, I still want to shit all over United come February, and wipe my arse on their stupid strip. Joking. I think…

Space Filler/ Final Thoughts

So, that Morrissey eh? Is he racist? What about that eh? Arsenal eh, are they going to win the league armed with nothing more than a selectively blind school teacher as a manager and an aggressive youth policy? Gordon Brown eh, under pressure somewhat? David Cameron, don’t you just want to punch him in his fat posh face eh? It’s all too much, where’s me fucking canoe?