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    #51
    On Being Tired of Football

    I'm 29 and regularly attend two matches a weekend here in Bilbao, where such weekends are possible due to the staggered kick off times.

    I'm not sure whether it is Grimsby Town's descent into to non-league causing me to watch more non-league than beofre (I previously went to Boston United games when we were away), whether I have become a bit disenchanted with the top level of the game or it is a mixture of the two.

    What I do know is, is that my main gripe is 4 or 5 clubs at the top changing the game in a way that effects everyone else but only for their interests. This is driving me to more games where I am on the terrace as a neutral rather than a partisan supporter. Simply for the pleasure of travelling around, meeting new people but at the same time being able to get my football fix. I suppose it is also dictated by the fact I haven't permanently lived in Lincolnshire for a long time now.

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      #52
      On Being Tired of Football

      I think there's been a niche-ification of how football is consumed, as there has been with the commodification and commercialism of so many other aspects of life. I mean, the idea that people are into certain types of football, but not other types, would have seemed a bit absurd 20 or 30 years ago. If you liked football, you went to games if you could, and as many as you could.

      I used to consume football as Dalliance once did - though not quite to the same extremes (my record number of games per season is, I think, 55), and wouldn't really differentiate on the type of games. Sure I watched my own team home and away but I'd be up for a game at BRC ground at the drop of a hat too.

      Now there seems more to be a splintering of followers into people who consume it in very different ways, notably those whose results-digesting would constitute all the top leagues in Europe; and those of us who still scour down all the domestic divisions first; and then you get the conscious-choice non-leaguers such as those - at the risk of generalising - you might find at, say, Clapton or FC United.

      None of which suggests people are getting so tired of football as to sack it all off, but they are getting angry and finding different ways of watching it. But football is a remarkable blank canvass for people really, and they use it as it suits. Which is why it survives, and the main reason it deserves to.

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        #53
        On Being Tired of Football

        This is a really interesting thread. The same things that get most people down about the modern game get me down too. Was it better in the old days? Were clubs and the game's administrators less obsessed with profit, marketing and buffing all the corners off the imperfect, muddy, unpredictable experience to create a perfect, consumable "product"? Were players less absurd pampered prima donnas? Were the very best ones less exhaustively (and exhaustingly) lionised, nay deified, at the expense of the concept of a team sport? Were the big teams and their supporters – and their cheerleaders in the media – any less self-regardingly self-entitled about their "right" to trophies, flowing attacking football and unmitigated success? It definitely all feels this way, and it's simultaneously draining, deadening and exasperating.

        But I experience the majority of it at one remove because I don't go to watch matches, and I never have done. I fear that very admission is tantamount to volunteering for pariah status, given how odd and possibly objectionable it must sound around here. After all, despite the perception that the Sky era has reduced the actual fans present to so much colourful wallpaper to lend Atmosphere™ and Passion™ to their product, the fact (probably) remains that without people physically going to the matches the entire charade would go up in smoke. There's a fear that my situation, stance, call it what you like, somehow invalidates any opinion I might have on the sport. And I do love the game as a visceral thrill, and I'd hate to think of a world in which it wasn't around. But the fact is I gave my own allegiance aged 9 to the club of my birth city, which I've always lived hundreds if not thousands of miles away from, and so I've only been to see them play on a rare handful of occasions when I've been near there at the right time. Such occasions have become vanishingly rarer over the years, such that I honestly couldn't even say when the last time I set foot in Carrow Road was, but I know it's not this side of the millennium.

        And I've simply never had the yen to go to see other teams live: it's too expensive an activity to seem worth it when I have no real vested interest in the outcome, the social side of things falls down when I have zero interest in drinking culture or several of the other traditionally 'blokier' aspects that go with it – and most of the friends I've made over the years don't give a monkey's about sport in general, so it's not as if there's ever been a ready-made peer group handy.

        At the same time, the trajectory of the sport – at the elite levels most noticeably – over the past 20 years has only served to distance it from my everyday perspective more and more, which explains why this disconnection has only grown. This is both in terms of the physical prowess of the participants (I was in contrast an enthusiastic playground footballer growing up, but scrawny, not very fast and largely unskilled) and their lifestyles, and of course the transmogrification of the sport from a rough and tumble ball game into a shiny, globally-marketed entertainment product.

        To pick up on Snake's analogy on the previous page, it increasingly has as little in common with anything I could ever do or aspire to as does WWE wrestling, so I too treat it in much the same way: a continuous shouty soap-opera with occasional violent outbursts of athletic endeavour... half of which consists of rolling around pretending to be hurt. And to extend the analogy further, since I don't support one of the handful of 'main-event' level clubs whose every doing is of furious importance and the subject of hours of angst-laden camera time, my particular interest lies most closely only with the undercard, who aren't supposed to steal the show, get looked down upon by those in charge, and who tend to ultimately get squashed.

        E10's description of football as a "remarkable blank canvas" that people use – socially, psychologically, emotionally – in their own peculiar ways really appeals to me. What I describe above certainly all seems to have played into my apparently innate tendency to enjoy the game more as a semi-abstract statistical construct than as a living, breathing, physical contest. I don't need to actually watch Norwich in action in order to give a shit about how they've done, because I've always lived my football experience vicariously through the classified results, poring over the league tables on Ceefax, the buzz and chatter of the newspaper back pages – and, unlike any other publication since I stopped getting Shoot! aged about 17, of course there was the always intelligent, thoughtful and catholic assortment of coverage within the pages of WSC.

        The increasingly unreal nature of the sport today only reinforces this abstraction, if anything. The main difference nowadays is that I'm living it through the medium of the OTF forums' debates instead, where the pantomime of the BRC threads' entrenched antagonists is every bit as surreally enjoyable as the wrestlers'. I get all the visual representation I need through BDG's cartoons. And, sorry it makes Calx's "heart sink" when the Xpert 11 thread keeps bobbing up on the front page, but for those of us who've got into that game it's honestly something of an antidote to ennui with real-world football. We've discovered a curious common tendency, that we come to care about the imaginary doings of our imaginary players in our made-up teams in our online league just as much, in a strange way, as we do about our real clubs. There's more of an sense of ownership, for one thing. It's actually easier to empathise with our digital bunches of useless cloggers than it is with, say, the Premier League elite who to all intents and purposes are no less virtual. And we've got a damn sight better chance of winning a trophy than most of our poor old real-life clubs have got.

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          #54
          On Being Tired of Football

          As an eponymous armchair big redder, I don't feel any particular need to justify my reasons. It's the price. Four years ago I paid £50 a ticket to watch Usain Bolt win the 100m gold medal at the Olympics. I'm fucked if I'm going to pay more than that to watch Kolo Toure failing to mark Diafra Sakho adequately in a mid-table Premier League game. I feel the same way about Preston charging £30 a ticket, and even Fleetwood Town £20. I don't mind paying a tenner to go down to Bamber Bridge, but never having formed any particular emotional attachment to them they're only really fun when it's the early rounds of the Cup and I can convince a couple of mates to go along too.

          I still apply for World Cup and Euro Finals tickets, and would pay good money for those, and if FA Cup final tickets weren't all either taken by corporate goons or massively inflated by touts, I'd like to go a Cup final again one day,too (I went to three in the 80s, and I've been to five League Cup Finals and a European Cup Final).

          The other bit that put me off the big matchday experience, and this is going to sound perverse coming from a Liverpool fan, is the all-seater bit. I used to like the terraces. I used to like being able to move away from the idiot next to you, as he hurled racist abuse at a linesman. You're trapped, now.

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            #55
            On Being Tired of Football

            I think even in the BRC threads there's an element of knowing pantomime about them anyway - the points may be repeated over and over but the delivery can come with a flourish which, sometimes at least, provides some entertainment.
            Yeah I think that's admirably self-aware, really. I read a lot of the BRC threads without any interest in commenting, or feel I have any great authority to do so, but they can be worth opening a packet of biscuits and kicking back to enjoy. Because in more than 10 years of jibbing at each other, I don't think at any point any of their main protagonists has ever admitted being even vaguely wrong. It's great viewing.

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              #56
              On Being Tired of Football

              E10 Rifle wrote:
              I think even in the BRC threads there's an element of knowing pantomime about them anyway - the points may be repeated over and over but the delivery can come with a flourish which, sometimes at least, provides some entertainment.
              Yeah I think that's admirably self-aware, really. I read a lot of the BRC threads without any interest in commenting, or feel I have any great authority to do so, but they can be worth opening a packet of biscuits and kicking back to enjoy. Because in more than 10 years of jibbing at each other, I don't think at any point any of their main protagonists has ever admitted being even vaguely wrong. It's great viewing.
              It's the OTF equivalent of Rock 'Em Sock 'Em Robots or The Long Big Punch-Up. My heart used to sink when I saw threads descend into it until I realised appreciating it as performance art is the way to go.

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                #57
                On Being Tired of Football

                He's still wrong, completely and utterly wrong. Obviously. But there is no value anymore in pointing that out, and probably hasn't been for, well, about 15 pages. But then he says something that people get goaded into calling him on, and the cycle perpetuates

                I had a look again at that, and the reason it seems so repetitive and cyclical is because I thought I had already dealt with your point before you had made it, and responded by making that point again.

                But As far as I can see the problem is actually one that is pretty much unique to message boards as they are the only forum without non-verbal, or spoken cues where you can write something long enough to get in trouble.

                There's a bunch of these problems that essentially lead to people arguing at cross purposes. The structure of this particular issue is one that I encounter quite often, but I also see it happening quite a lot on the world board.

                The structure of the disagreement essentially is person A makes a statement, and then a series of inter connected points to build towards a particular conclusion. Person B doesn't necessarily see the links, and breaks the statement and points into at least two separate arguments. and the conversation begins to diverge.

                If one person is trying to treat the various points as an interconnected whole, in which each point has a context, and the other person doesn't see the whole and for them the points have less context and seem broader.

                Person A then tries to Say that they've kind of already explained your objections and tries to emphasize the interconnected nature of the points, person B gets annoyed that their precise points aren't addressed, and this is where it starts to get repetitive, with people repeating themselves.

                Looking back at that argument It would seem that your essential point is that Van Gaal is too hide bound to adapt to his available resources and should find an alternative way of playing.

                And I thought that I had dealt with that by pointing out that It's very difficult to implement any coherent style of play at all when you are losing players at such a rate, and that covers the difficulty of coming up with alternatives. Under the circumstances you may as well have been saying "Let them eat cake"

                (And he does change the way he plays to fit his resources. He completely changed holland's formation to 3-5-2 on the eve of the world cup because he lost kevin strootman. He does it all the time with man utd. It just doesn't work very well)

                Anyway at some point frustration sets in and people start to become more entrenched in their position as the other person tries to explain a point that you are becoming increasingly resistant to, even if it has been made clear to you, and people get cranky.

                The thing is that if you were to have that discussion with a person in the pub it would be very clear that the three points were connected, and then you could have a different kind of discussion on the merits of that broader point.

                Because in more than 10 years of jibbing at each other, I don't think at any point any of their main protagonists has ever admitted being even vaguely wrong. It's great viewing.

                That's because there's almost no direct engagment. They all follow the same structure. I say X. Dalliance says "I can't believe you said Y. Y is obviously wrong because of Z." I say "I didn't fucking Say Y, I said X, and Z is hilarious because of a,b and c."

                And he does it with style. Dalliance is able to paste a quote, and then underneath it completely misrepresent that quote beyond all recognition. It's a really unique skill. I mean he has to doing it deliberately. The alternatives are too horrible to consider. The bit I don't is all the ad hominem bullshit. If you catch dalliance out, he will insult you or one of the people involved in the point you are making.

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                  #58
                  On Being Tired of Football

                  Go take your insane gibberish elsewhere. That's two threads in succession I've read where someone has taken issue with your idiocy and you respond with ad homimen attacks on me.

                  I tell you what makes me tired of football: you and your infantile obsession with seeing the entire football world through a Man united filter. You are a footballing Comical Ali, standing in the foreground telling the world one thing while everyone can see something entirely different going on right behind you.

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                    #59
                    On Being Tired of Football

                    The Awesome Berbaslug!!! wrote: The structure of the disagreement essentially is person A makes a statement, and then a series of inter connected points to build towards a particular conclusion. Person B doesn't necessarily see the links, and breaks the statement and points into at least two separate arguments. and the conversation begins to diverge.
                    I'm not going to deal with the specifics, because we have an entire 23 page for that. However on this particular point, the counter is that if Statement A can be shown as false, then there is zero need to address the interconnected points that build from it. The edifice has been erected on sand and is collapsed. Some of the rubble might be quite pretty, but that irrelevant as it's still rubble.

                    This works as a commentary on the arguments on the other thread, and also a specific rebuttal of the whole drowned by a thousand words post upthread.

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                      #60
                      On Being Tired of Football

                      This is like the ending of 'Blazing Saddles' where the big fight spills over in to other films being made at the studio.

                      Which I think makes me Dom DeLuise directing 'The French Mistake' - spot on.

                      .

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                        #61
                        On Being Tired of Football

                        I like how TAB responds to a post saying he never admits being wrong by emphatically reinforcing the point

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                          #62
                          On Being Tired of Football

                          E10 Rifle wrote: I like how TAB responds to a post saying he never admits being wrong by emphatically reinforcing the point
                          Oh I do admit i'm wrong, but it doesn't arise in those situations, because usually I'm trying to correct dalliance's straw man version of what I've said. The straw man version of what I've said is frequently wrong and mad. These are not discussions where there's a place for right and wrong. they rarely get that far.

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                            #63
                            On Being Tired of Football

                            Yeah but, no but, yeah but, no but, yeah but, no but.....

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                              #64
                              On Being Tired of Football

                              I'm actually trying to remember Berbaslug owning up to being wrong about anything. I love how he'll write something like 'Memphis Depay is a foot taller and 5 years younger' in a discussion about Alexis Sanchez and then when I quote it back verbatim at him as evidence that he thinks Man United have the better player, he denies it completely and complains he's being misrepresented!

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                                #65
                                On Being Tired of Football

                                However on this particular point, the counter is that if Statement A can be shown as false, then there is zero need to address the interconnected points that build from it. The edifice has been erected on sand and is collapsed. Some of the rubble might be quite pretty, but that irrelevant as it's still rubble.

                                hmm, I think this is another instance of people talking at cross purposes, because the statement simply was that LVG has a coherent plan of how play football, and a track record of being able to get it across. I think we can broadly agree that that is true.

                                Then based on that I went to make the point that having so many injuries made it difficult to get across that, or any other conceivable plan, which is why it was taking so long to get things right. (the bit in italics is very important, and I think the kernel of your point)

                                So what was the statement that you thought was proven to be false? again I'm not interested in the original argument, but more where it went astray.

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                                  #66
                                  On Being Tired of Football

                                  I'm actually trying to remember Berbaslug owning up to being wrong about anything. I love how he'll write something like 'Memphis Depay is a foot taller and 5 years younger' in a discussion about Alexis Sanchez and then when I quote it back verbatim at him as evidence that he thinks Man United have the better player, he denies it completely and complains he's being misrepresented!

                                  Saying how two players differ doesn't mean that you are saying that one is better than the other dalliance. That is the bit that you put in. You do this all the time.

                                  If I had been claiming that memphis was better than sanchez, it would have made nonsense of my original point which was that I would accept getting Memphis depay instead of alexis sanchez, if it stopped Ed woodward from thinking that he could pick players.

                                  I have no idea how you made "Memphis Depay is better than Alexis Sanchez out of it".

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                                    #67
                                    On Being Tired of Football

                                    I'd love you to find the Ed Woodward bit of that quote.
                                    Van Gaal would have been the one who pressed for Depay's signing anyway.

                                    The conversation went that It was mooted that he would have been an ideal United type of signing being strong, quick, direct, talented and full of energy.

                                    You were simply dismissing him because he was going through a scoring drought and made it clear that you were happy with Depay - this back at a time when hopes were a lot higher for him than they are now.

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                                      #68
                                      On Being Tired of Football

                                      I'd love you to find the Ed Woodward bit of that quote.

                                      it's in the same post.

                                      The Awesome Berbaslug!!! wrote:
                                      Originally posted by Green Calx
                                      Originally posted by dalliance
                                      He's way too good for them and is the best bit of business Wenger has done in years. - as good a deal as the Ozil one the year before was bad.
                                      He is the player that Man Utd should have broken the bank for instead of Di Maria.

                                      Christ, imagine Di Maria at Arsenal. It's almost too perfect.
                                      nah, having di maria and falcao for a season cost man utd the guts of £70 million and while that's a lot of money, it's cheap when you consider that it encouraged Ed Woodward to let the manager pick all the transfer targets.

                                      anyway arsenal signed sanchez three days before the world cup third place playoff.

                                      If they'd bought alexis sanchez, and it had kind of worked, he would have been encouraged to try it again. Instead they bought Di Maria, got rid of him, and replaced him with memphis, who looks like he could become a fabulous player, but is five years younger than sanchez, four inches taller and a stone heavier, and probably a bit more likely to do exactly what van gaal asks him.

                                      I can guarantee you one thing though. If Sanchez was a man utd player and he scored once in 14 games, it probably wouldn't have passed unnoticed.
                                      That post is clearly about ed woodward choosing transfer targets. And if it's about anything else, it's about it being preferable for the club to follow a strategy of signing players for the long term rather than the finished product.

                                      You may agree or disagree with the actual point I made, but you're clearly talking about something else entirely. This just another illustration of me saying X, you claiming I said Y and arguing with it on the basis of Z.

                                      It's a real problem. You're always misrepresenting my views, in a completely cavalier fashion. It's becoming very draining.

                                      Comment


                                        #69
                                        On Being Tired of Football

                                        I didn't know what "ad hominem" meant before I started using these boards. Now though I discover it three or four times in every long thread. You chaps are an education.
                                        Genuinely, though, it's very enjoyable as the arguments are always so well-written.

                                        Meanwhile, unfortunately however, a passing reference amid the shenanigans immediately above perfectly reinforces ian.64's excellent point from the previous page:
                                        ian.64 wrote: my heart sinks just a bit when football writers and commentators seem to think that a special privilege seems to belong to the fans of the top five clubs when the discussion veers towards them. Examples such as 'Manchester United/City/Liverpool/Chelsea/Arsenal fans like good, swift, attacking football', yep, because fans of every club can live very well without all that gubbins. Or newspaper articles that worry about what the top five clubs's supporters will do without European football, another trophy, etc.
                                        Really, this mindset - that only a special set of club support is worth being anxious about and that everyone else can go hang - pisses me off just a tad.
                                        i.e.
                                        dalliance possibly quoting Berba wrote: It was mooted that he would have been an ideal United type of signing being strong, quick, direct, talented and full of energy
                                        Surely that's just an ideal type of signing for any club? Those are, manifestly, just about all the qualities anyone would reasonably look for in a footballer. Or, maybe this is again the sort of gubbins that lesser clubs can't aspire to, and they actively prefer to seek out weak, slow, directionless, untalented and lethargic players instead.

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                                          #70
                                          On Being Tired of Football

                                          Various Aliases wrote: they actively prefer to seek out weak, slow, directionless, untalented and lethargic players
                                          I see that you've been reading The Millers' shopping list for the last year...

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                                            #71
                                            On Being Tired of Football

                                            It's all very well criticising TAB and dalliance for ad hominem attacks on thread after thread after thread but I don't remember anyone loudly condemning Zidane for starring in a movie all about himself.

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                                              #72
                                              On Being Tired of Football

                                              I think I'm definitely tired of football forums.

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