The thing about bugs bunny is that he lives and dies by his bits. He’s fully capable of killing you if he wanted, but the thing is, not only is he a nice guy, he’s a funny guy. To beat bugs bunny, many people assume that you just have to not fall for the jokes. If he hits you with a pie, you don’t flinch, and eventually you’ll ware him down. The issue is, misery will only last you so long. There’s only so much bits to endure before it becomes funny. And whoever is getting laughed at is losing. Instead, to kill bugs bunny, you have to beat him at his own game. When he throws a pie, don’t try to sidestep or be a sourpuss, that’s playing into his hands. Instead, you comically open your mouth and swallow it whole. This is how you kill a god.
Picture José Mourinho. Now let me guess what’s in your head.
I think the José in your mind is raising his fists, celebrating another crushing of a weaker opponent. He is wearing a luxurious winter coat over a suit so finely tailored it would be impossible for any other man to wear it. Yes, his ego shines through – but it is backed up by the imperious display of towering athletes so devoted to his guidance that they perform unbelievable feats in roles they would otherwise consider beneath their skill. You love him, you hate him, he is indifferent. The José in your mind is in total control of a team and a club that expresses his personality completely.
Now look at the Stamford Bridge touchline. You see that man in the crumpled sportswear, peripheral to the game in front of him? The man with all of the rage, but none of the fire?
This is not José Mourinho.
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You can read the rest of this article at A Football Report, where football, culture and design get together and snuggle.
Europe is enjoying a heat wave, the Confederations Cup was the greatest summer tournament since records began, and every club is spending money like Kanye in Mothercare. So why is the major theme of this transfer window one of crushing disappointment?
All winter long, football fans yearn for the irritating formality of men kicking balls around pitches to get itself over with so the real business of paper talk, In The Know intrigue and opinion pieces on the inevitable economic collapse of football if something isn’t done about these bloated transfer fees can begin. All those boring Saturday afternoons spent wistfully staring past your inept right back’s attempts to play a pass and remember which colour his teammates are wearing at the same time are just counting down to the moment when the June-August bonanza drops a steaming dose of moneyed potential into your life.
And this summer, it’s been all for naught. Every major club made their careful plans, only to see them dashed.
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You can read the rest of this article, as well as many other better written ones, at A Football Report, where football, culture and design get together and snuggle.
Episode Eight - Zombies Ate My Neighbors (SNES/MD) and Mystical Ninja starring Goemon (N64)
One More Go features two Scottish men talking about videogames that meant a lot to them in the past, and how it feels to play them now.
Let the Konami love flow as Nicol tingles his spine and Barry jumps in a dungeon.
Please enjoy our gifs of Zombies and Goemon by clicking those links!
UPDATE - WE ARE A PAIR OF FANNIES
It turns out the article we get very worked up about in this episode isn’t real. So… sorry about that?
We’re idiots. But at least we’re entertaining idiots.
Andy Murray won a match and a lot of Scottish people are very happy. If you think that’s absurd, you’re probably right – Murray’s just one guy who got where he is by working incredibly hard to maximise his natural gifts and being born in Scotland has about as much impact on his success as him being born right-handed. Twitter is not awash with people jabbing their thumbs at screen in a desperate attempt to clumsily communicate their pride that right-handed people finally got their spot on the world stage though.
Scotland is a nation that is pretty into sport. Not playing it so much as drinking heavily in its vicinity, but we like it. And not a huge variety of sports either – the Scottish Sporting interest top ten pretty much runs as: 1) Football, 2) Football, 3) Football, 4) Rugby sometimes 5) Football, 6) Golf, 7) Football, 8) Tennis for two weeks a year, 9) Cycling if Chris Hoy flexes a thigh at us, 10) Football.
Our fervour for sport is completely out of whack with our general success at it, but completely in whack with our dwindling population and famously shitty public health record. Our golden years as a footballing nation were defined by glorious failure and dismal choking on the biggest stages – now we spend our days enjoying miserable failure and planning late-July trips to the small-to-medium sized stages.
So yes we cling to Andy Murray, because he is the most Scottish person he can be. He has talent and potential far beyond what his nation expects of him, but he is riddled with flaws. That wandering attention, that chippy self-criticism. The way he surfs to success on a crest of mild disbelief then screams at himself for failing to meet this new exulted standard when he screws a passing shot three millimetres wide of the tramline. He displays that naked, unmaskable mental process that swings violently between “Yes we can” and “nonononowefuckincannae” that distils Scottish uncertainty so beautifully it should be our national anthem.
We’re delighted because he’s us, and we don’t find ourselves in a place where other folk can hear us very often. I’m not sure how to explain that feeling to someone who lives in a culture that everyone hears all the time – I’m not even sure I can. It’s not like we’re a terribly oppressed people after all, we’re not a minority fighting for our rights in a society that is actively geared towards denying them – we’re just a bit insignificant in the grand scheme of things, so hearing a Scottish accent telling the world how it feels to be the best at something becomes a big deal for us. It reminds everybody that we’re here.
Any success would be enough for us, but the fact that Murray’s doing this in an era when you have to be one of the greatest players of all-time just to get the fourth-seed in a Grand Slam? This is excellence beyond our wildest dreams. And you know what, England can call it British success and join in if they like. We don’t actually mind England, it’s just that they have this terrible recurrent viral disease that breaks out in voting in Tory governments every so often and that can makes relations a little strained. Doesn’t matter though, we know where Murray’s from, and he’ll make sure everyone else knows too.
Yes Andy Murray’s success is mostly his, a little bit Catalonian training’s and a little bit English funding’s – but the fact that pictures of Dunblane (a place that might as well be called Anytown, Scotland) are transmitted across the world when he wins matters to us, even if it’s only as a wee irrational boost to our national self-esteem. Murray’s success means everything to us, and it means nothing at all.
Football fans have a curious love for certainties – knowing that this player was definitely better than that one, that one club is clearly bigger than the other – that seems to be a product of the untidy nature of the game itself. Just about every other sport divides up into discreet bursts of action, regular points where the rulebook catches its breath and says ‘this part of the game is over, now this one can begin’. Not so football.
While even something as free flowing as basketball, for example, comes with a 24-second shot clock that turns a match into a series of incredibly detailed set pieces, football lends itself to a constant state of semi-anarchy where anything could happen at any time. Has your team just spent a relentless ten minutes dominating possession and pounding the opponent’s defence? Well, don’t let yourself blink too long, because three passes and awkward deflection off a shin-pad later you might find yourself a goal down without the cruel universe having the decency to let you know the paradigm was shifting while your eyelids were touching.
We’re forever trying to throw boundaries around this sport, little pieces of territory that easier to understand the more bite-sized we can make them. There’s a reason why that hateful phrase ‘in the Premier League era’ has such currency, and it’s not just because Sky dominate the game’s coverage and desperately hope that you’ll never remember a time when paying £500 a year to watch some games on TV was something only a crazy person would do.
So when something as monumental as the undisputed Best Club Side Ever get completely outclassed in a 4-0 drubbing, it’s understandable that people start preparing a new section in their mental History of Football Wikipedia article. Throw in a similarly epochal drubbing for Real Madrid in Dortmund the following evening and the transfer of power narratives are everywhere you look, begging to be written up then carved onto the tombstones of the First Great La Masia team, of Spain’s dominance of European football, of Revista de la Liga being a ratings-grabber on UK TV.
Except the era hasn’t ended...
You can read this article in full at The Football Ramble, an excellent website for an even excellenter podcast.
Barcelona were teetering, with only 30 minutes remaining to save their Champions League campaign after a lively Paris St Germain performance had left the Catalans looking shaky and bereft of ideas. In the end, it only took them 10 minutes to turn the tie around. 10 minutes and Lionel Messi.
Messi, as you may be aware, is a rather talented football player. So talented in fact, that despite having a hamstring as tight as James Brown’s rhythm section, he was still able to display enough pace and trickery to draw three PSG players in his jinky wake, before playing a ball that eventually found its way to an unmarked Pedro to score.
So if effectively removing one of Messi’s legs isn’t enough to stop him being a rampant footballing force – if he can single-handedly bamboozle a team put together at the cost of more than 20 contentious ex-Prime Minister’s funerals while nursing an injury that would cause most mortals to forego standing up, much less participation in elite athletic activity – then how can he ever be stopped?
That is the question we posed to a panel of the finest tactical minds in the land. These are their responses:
André Villas-Boas, Tottenham Hotspur coach
“First of all, Messi prefers to operate in the vacant territory created by the latency in recovery between the secondary and tertiary midfield stations. His lateral transference creates spatial dissonance in the personnel cycles that are such a basic part of pre-reactive defensive schemes in the high-block strategic configuration.
“Clearly then, the primary option is to have a rotational defensive responsibility assigned on a situational basis, with satellite programs designed to eliminate as many pass-selection recourses as possible. By working to channel Messi’s ludic circumstances into a pre-designated optimum alternative, you can maximise your opportunities to contextualise his influence, allowing the team’s functional side-outs to retrieve position and initiate a retro-incursive response.
“Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to explain that to Michael Dawson in terms that he will understand.”
(Villas-Boas leaves, carrying a glove puppet, a colouring book and the air of a man resigned to failure)
You can read this article in full at The Football Ramble, an excellent website for an even excellenter podcast.
In December 2010, Craig ‘Safe Hands’ Brown rolled into an Aberdeen FC that found itself relegation-threatened and floundering, and he turned that malfunctioning unit into a steadfast lower-mid-table outfit. Craig Brown was never the guy you called for a tilt at glory – no silver-hungry oligarch would ever dial his number ahead of Mourinho’s when looking for someone to throw around a few hundred million petrodollars for his football plaything – but he was always dependable.
As a player, Derek McInnes was the midfield equivalent of a Craig Brown managerial tenure – not a superstar, but a reliable presence to be brought in when calmness and continuity was needed. The concrete, bland sense of security that Brown has embedded all around the Pittodrie foundation will be music to new boss McInnes’ ears.
McInnes’ short managerial career has seen two distinct eras at St Johnstone and Bristol City. At the former, he made a seamless transition from senior pro to gaffer when Owen Coyle was lured away by the bright lights of Burnley. Coyle had been carefully building a promotion-capable side for two years, providing an excellent platform that McInnes developed beautifully, completing the club’s return to the top flight and fashioning a staunch mid-table side, capable of pleasant football and the odd eye-catching result on a budget so tiny – even by SPL standards – that Peter Jackson could cast it as the lead in an epic fantasy trilogy.
So impressive was the gradual and sustainable improvement that McInnes husbanded at McDiarmid Park that he, like Coyle before him, was eventually lured away to a club in the English Championship looking for some of that cheap magic. However, what he found at Bristol City was not the solid platform of continuity and careful nurturing he was used to – rather a club adrift at the bottom of the table, desperately rolling the dice on their fourth manager in 19 months.
Despite being as far out of his comfort zone as a moray eel in a pottery class at Ashton Gate, McInnes managed to rally his troops into a creditable-under-the-circumstances 20th place finish. The real trouble didn’t kick in until this season, where a misguided summer transfer window spent gambling on youth and the ability of Jody Morris’ creaking knees to make the step up in competitive intensity between the SPL and the Championship resulted in an unbalanced squad, which has delivered a team comfortably in the top half of the division in goals scored, but rock bottom in goals conceded. After a 4-0 defeat at home to Leicester in January left Bristol City eight points adrift at the foot of the table, McInnes’ fate was sealed.
Aberdeen fans will be hoping that McInnes’ Bristol City debacle was merely the result of throwing a relatively inexperienced manager into a chaotic situation with no support, rather than a brutal exposure of his true abilities. The situation at Aberdeen is undoubtedly better for him, with that trademark Craig Brown solidity being compounded by the continuity of Brown’s own impending move upstairs.
Furthermore, McInnes doesn’t actually take there reigns until after the league split, at which point his budget for next season will be more or less set and his immediate objectives all the more clear. Aberdeen have an outside chance of making the top six, but another season embracing the mediocre certainty of the lower half of the division seems far more likely – with the added safety net of Dundee’s paltry points total making relegation as likely a threat as Craig Brown forgoing his place on the board for a stint as first-choice goalkeeper.
The squad itself is fairly stable to boot, with Isaac Osbourne, Gavin Rae and Josh Magennis the only regular first-eleveners out of contract in the summer. The most pressing concern for McInnes will be whether top-scorer Niall McGinn can be persuaded to see out his remaining year at Pittodrie, or whether the temptation to convert his goals and nippiness into a large bag of cash will prove overwhelming for both club and player.
In the meantime, McInnes will have plenty of games left this season to run the rule over his squad in a competitive environment (or as competitive an environment that a practically relegation-proof bottom six can provide), as well as the having the option to pick the brains of the incredibly experienced manager who assembled that squad. It’s a stable platform, in a league he knows, with scope for realistic growth in the short and long terms.
Derek McInnes could not ask for a better opportunity to prove that the St Johnstone version of himself was the real representation of his managerial prowess. If he can take this ideal foundation and use the lessons learned in the Bristol asylum, then Aberdeen could be looking forward to a bright and reassuringly stable future.
Manchester United will win the league this season.
This may be the least flashy newsflash to ever blink across your eyes, but it doesn’t make the news part any less true. A 15-point cushion and a cluster of rivals who are either lacklustre, limited or waging a cold war against their own coach mean that club captain Nemanja Vidić has been incorporating trophy-lifting and crowd-saluting routines into his own detailed pre-planned training and medical programme for some months now.
This fait is now so accompli that Alex Ferguson this week stated that his target for this season is now to break the record Premier League points total, set at 95 by the muscular vintage of José Mourinho’s 2004-05 Chelsea team. At time of writing, United require 22 points from the 27 that remain available to them – a tricky proposition, but by no means impossible when you cast an eye over their remain fixtures, and factor in a lack of European competition to stretch their resources.
But this United team? Record breakers? Really?
When you think back over the great United sides of recent history, they had at least one department of transcendent, pantheon-level quality. The 2008 team boasted a fluid front three of Cristiano Ronaldo, Wayne Rooney and a pre-tantrum era Carlos Tévez that flitted and interchanged and scored and scored and scored with a joyous, purposeful abandon. The chemistry of those three players at that exact point of their respective careers was glorious, lightning-in-a-bottle stuff, and no team has been able to truly replicate it since.
The 1999 side possessed a four-man unit that will be brought up in misty-eyed pub conversations about the all-time great midfields for generations to come. If more squads today were able to blend the steel and artistry of that Giggs-Scholes-Keane-Beckham axis, reports of the death of 4-4-2 might have been slightly less exaggerated.
Comparing those past team-sheets to today’s must be a harrowing exercise for United fans. When you consider the mediocrity of a Young-Anderson-Carrick-Valencia midfield, whose only function is to play with bare minimum competence for long enough to allow Robin van Persie’s brilliance to secure a win, you have to wonder if that fabled Ferguson wine cellar didn’t start out life in the Glaswegian’s home as a collection of bottled water...
You can read this article in full at The Football Ramble, an excellent website for an even excellenter podcast.
Premier League Predictions (March 30th – April 1st 2013)
Sunderland vs. Man Utd
Man Utd to win
Sunderland just lost their best player for the rest of the season when Steven Fletcher’s ankle ligaments took one look at the writing on the Hampden Park wall and decided enough was enough. In related news, Sunderland’s best player is Steven Fletcher. Meanwhile, Alex Ferguson has stated that this season’s target is to break the Premier League points record.
If you can find anyone silly enough to bet against a United victory, take all their pennies and don’t look back.
Arsenal vs. Reading
Arsenal to win
Reading may be fighting for their survival, and may have just replaced their pleasant-but-ultimately-doomed English manager with an entirely different pleasant-but-ultimately-doomed English manager, but Arsenal are fighting for something much more important in the modern game – credibility. The entire Arsène Wenger jalopy depends on overachievement to keep the pervading sense of Arsenal superiority good and justified, and anything less than Champions League qualification would be average, dull, and utterly useless. Besides, Reading are not very good.
Man City vs. Newcastle
Newcastle to win or draw
The fire has gone out at Man City. Maybe it was the realisation that almost nothing they do for the rest of the season will prevent them from finishing second, no matter how they might strive or skive – or maybe it was just Mario taking his bathroom hobbies with him when he left in January that extinguished the flame. Either way, Eastlands currently hosts none of the zest that Papiss Cissé is carting around now that the entire Newcastle team is focused on providing him balls to kick into nets – and zest will out.
Southampton vs. Chelsea
Southampton to win
Do yourself a favour – just close your eyes for a moment and say the name ‘Morgan Schneiderlin’. Let the smooth confidence of those Teutonic syllables roll over your tongue. Allow yourself to hear the clipped satisfaction in a foreign commentator’s voice as he describes the calm precision of a Morgan Schneiderlin interception. Permit your mind to wander, safe in the knowledge that Morgan Schneiderlin will provide serenity, security and steel on the pitch and in your dreams.
Whisper it now: Morgan Schneiderlin. Morgan Schneiderlin. Morgan Schneiderlin.
....
You can read the rest of this article and gamble your heart out at buddybet.com.
It’s been quite a journey for Swansea City. Just a decade ago, it was all crumbling terracing, a last-day reprieve from relegation to Non-League purgatory and Leon Britton at the heart of midfield for the Welsh club. Nowadays, they enjoy Michael Laudrup, Michael Laudrup’s impeccable hair, Premier League football in a shiny new stadium, a Michu to call their very own and Leon Britton at the heart of midfield.
The Swansea story has been a triumph with many parents. Forward planning and sensible financial husbandry laid the foundations for Roberto Martínez, Paulo Sousa, Brendan Rodgers and finally Laudrup to build a very cosy house on top. Such clear continuity of coaching philosophy has allowed Swansea to evolve naturally through divisions and personnel, arriving at their current exalted plane a well-oiled machine – and with plenty of scope to improve in years to come.
But not this season. Improvement is done for this year.
There was a general skepticism last summer that Swansea could possibly top the achievements of their debut Premier League season this time around. A comfortable mid-table finish on the back of some delightfully intricate, neutral-wooing football represented success beyond the wildest dreams of such a modest-spending club, and the Premier League had in the past bestowed a brutal sophomore slump on similarly precocious upstarts. Laudrup’s previous managerial career was also cause for arched eyebrows, with solid boom periods of triumph interspersed with harrowing busts of poor form and off-field calamity, in a karmic CV that suggests Laudrup conducts training on a desecrated pet cemetery or something...
You can read this article in full at The Football Ramble, an excellent website for an even excellenter podcast.
The Ramble has come into the possession of this draft document from the highest levels of the Chelsea executive, leaked by a disgruntled employee. We’re not a liberty to divulge our sources, but we must acknowledge our gratitude to the circle of honour that exists between fellow bloggers.
Dear Loyal Chelsea FC Fan,
We’ve listened.
How could we not? The pride and the passion of the true Chelsea FC supporter is difficult to ignore at any time, but when 41,000 voices sing as one during a fantastic Stamford Bridge matchday, no one could be deaf to their desires.
You want your Chelsea FC back. We want you to have it.
Chelsea FC are therefore delighted to announce that the next permanent First Team Manager will be you, the fans.
Who else could measure up to the high standards of our Club? What traditional manager working in the game today would not be found wanting, or indeed has not had the job for three to five months at some point in the recent past and already been found wanting? We’ve had it with managers, Roman’s had it with managers, and we believe that you’ve had it with managers too.
Managers will always let you down, in the end. They might win a trophy or two, but then they’ll do something unforgivable like oversee an inadequate number of goals scored at home to Everton...
You can read this article in full at The Football Ramble, an excellent website for an even excellenter podcast.
