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.
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