Tag: blinkered

This made me chuckle:

“Many times in the last few years, the boss has talked up his youth project by saying that, by bringing in players from a young age and educating them at Arsenal, they develop an identity with the club and are less likely to want to leave.

Like so many of Wenger’s bright ideas in the last few years, this has FAILED..”

Pretty much the ONLY way these days to have some kind of institutional loyalty for footballers is for a cadre of youth academy players to rise up to the first team together (or at least within a constrained period of time like say…3-5 years), and even that is a long shot at best now. I don’t need to really emphasize how difficult for just ONE academy product in the PL to break into the first team, having to compete with tons of foreign intakes that their cash-rich clubs keep bringing in. Even in an anomalous environment like Arsenal, buying young players wholesale from a foreign one doesn’t cut it in the slightest. They’re not old footballers comfortable in their last mile surroundings nor out-of-fashion mid-career players grateful for a second chance. Young footballers uproot themselves only either for trophies or to use the club as a stepping stone. It’s amazing Wenger is still so blinkered in 2011.

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I also see FIFA, now that it’s put that pesky charade of an election to rest, is back to business as usual, leeching money out of the game. Predictably all the big clubs are not amused. It’ll be interesting how far a drunk-on-hubris Blatter is going to keep pushing FIFA down this headbutting road with regards to the other footballing powers.

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And now for the bomber:

I’m sorry, this just reinforces my (already) low, low opinion of football fans in general. It’s just so ridiculously infantile that you think it’s from the Onion, but it isn’t. This all just reminds me of some Newcastle fans claiming that the bare-bellied, fat Toon fans screaming for such figures such as King Kev and Shearer to come and reclaim their club in the past aren’t representative of the fanbase and it’s only the distorted coverage of media outlets such as Skysports that makes it appears to be, but it doesn’t really matter when the supposedly “sane” fans don’t really find call out those in their ranks who are utter nitwits.

As a general rule football fans tend to close ranks when threatened, and the most extreme example in football sports has to be the Pool fanbase, which is incredibly homogeneous in thought. All you need to wander into places such as RAWK to see the circle-jerking and echo chamber effect in its full glory. The league title issue is a massive stick in the craw for them, and the incredible bitterness and toys-out-of-pram behaviour is really a sight to behold. You might think the shirt is a parody or a troll item, but Poe’s Law applies as always.