People were designed poorly...

Human nature is truly stupid. It is human nature to become annoyed at, and be wound up by things as you go about your day. It is also human nature to want someone to back you up or share in your annoyance because we don’t like to feel alone in our endeavours. So this all makes sense so far, but why then is it also human nature to be less annoyed at things that other people are really wound up by. I have repeatedly found myself in situations where something is annoying me and I begin a rant that simply goes over the head of people I’m talking to, and yet I also find myself in the other position where I feel there is no point getting myself worked up about the same thing as somebody else, as one of us has to stay calm. The end result is one person is left moaning to themselves and feeling pretty hard done by that nobody is joining in and the other one just wants them to shut up so they can have a bit of peace. Life’s a sod really.

Internet Shouting and 'The games gone mad'...

Someone said on Thursday, in the most derogatory way he could manage, that bloggers are ‘Internet Shouters’. Now having considered this I don’t actually think he’s wrong, but he’s certainly wrong to assume this is a bad thing and that the people aren’t shouting valid things. I for one am proud to be a shouter, and I happen to do as much of my shouting on the Internet as I do in person to those unfortunate to have to listen to me. I have seen the chance to put my views and opinions on a worldwide scale and allow anyone with the time and inclination to read them and make their own judgement. To anyone who thinks this is a bad thing, I would suggest you are out of touch with modernity or simply too stubborn to accept anyone is entitled to an opinion, and that a lot of different opinions, whatever the source, are equally as valid as the one you hold yourself. But each to their own I suppose.

Over the past few years I have heard one phrase over and over again as a football fan. Between incidents on the field, club ownership crises and transfers, all that many can say is, “The games gone mad”. Even Richard “Smash it!” Keys said it when discussing the role of women in football, and for the first time recently I’ve changed my view, that football is a great sport in which madness often lives to believing that maybe now the game really has gone mad. Whilst I have never subscribed to the view that money is ruining the game I am forced to admit it messes with the minds and attitudes of the people involved and as stupid fees are flying around for sub standard players, those at the top are losing perspective and it really is a different game being played by the Arab/Russian/Yank-funded gerzillionaire teams to the one being played by other clubs in the same league.
The deal that saw Fernando Torres leaving Liverpool for Chelsea for a British record £50 million in itself was a deal that summed up the state of the world game, the power of money and the influence that the clubs with super-rich owners could exert over the rest, but what followed made that deal look sensible to me. Liverpool responded to the loss of their talisman by spending 35 of the 50 million on Andy Carroll from Newcastle. This to me smacks of total panic and lack of thought as well as proof that real life is becoming more and more like a cross between fantasy football and a game of Football Manager with my friend Nathan. Nath probably won’t forgive me for bringing this up but he once sold Xabi Alonso for £20 million and replaced him with Jean Makoun for nearly £22 million. He saw the £20 million and his eyes lit up, not considering that he wouldn’t be able to replace Alonso with an equal or better player with that money and the result was a negative one. I think this will prove similar for Liverpool back in real life as Carroll is a young and far from proven forward who looks a threat in the air; he is not a World and European cup winning International footballer with an exceptional goal scoring record at the highest level. But I of course have sympathy for Liverpool because Torres wanted to go and in the modern game in the modern world this kind of situation only has one outcome. A club is too scored to keep an unhappy player because they will either be forced to sell at a lower rate in the future or risk losing a great asset for nothing at the end of the contract, and in the mean time they are left with a player showing very little commitment to the cause. It’s a sad world really.

To be honest I hope I’m wrong, if Andy Carroll does prove to be worth £35 million then England will have one hell of a player in the years to come and Rooney may well be able to play with someone with more talent than Emile Heskey. If the worst possible reality is realised though and he turns out not to prove his worth of such a price tag, he can simply point to all of the other huge waste of money deals that have gone through over the last few years, including some of the interesting signings by Abramovich’s Chelsea and Sheikh Mansour’s Manchester City.

A cheerful Thought

As I sit in McDonalds, eating a breakfast that is probably in the process of knocking 5 years off my life expectancy, killing time before an 11 o'clock seminar and typing my first blog in around 7 weeks I have been struck by the conclusion that I have a hatred and loathing of positivity. I was talking to a guy in a lecture yesterday and he was happily telling me what he already knew about most of the people we would be studying and I found myself getting more annoyed by the minute for reasons unknown. This morning I spoke to him again and he was commenting about the reading he was preparing next week in an equally positive light, I was annoyed some more. Initially I thought I was annoyed by his arrogance, but only when I thought about it again just now did 2 things come to my attention. 1) He wasn't being particularly arrogant at all, and 2) I like arrogance as a rule, you have to have a bit of it to be brilliant at whatever you do, look qt the best players in most sports, they have a swagger and arrogance as they do what they do. Messi, Ronaldo, Federer, Kevin Pietersen etc. It was then that I realised what was annoying me. His positivity! He was looking at his degree and the units in it with unswerving positivity and I hated this. Maybe it's the mindset I've got into, maybe it's too much of Jeremy Clarkson's influence, or maybe I just take great pleasure in finding the negative side of things and focussing on them... Whatever it is it's not a cheerful outlook is it?