Friday 14 August 2015

Pfft..




I always thought I would take something special to happen (Arsene Wenger leaving) for me to return to these pages, quite simply these days there are more Arsenal blogs than ever before. Some of these are truly wondrous pieces of writing to levels I can only dream of, others are so horrendously bad that it makes me fear for the future of mankind. Simply put being in the middle or bottom-middle wasn't that appealing to me on a regular basis anymore.

But here I am, and today's biannual post focusing on something I find myself thinking about on a day-to-day basis whenever I think about football and the circus that revolves it. 

It's lazy.

The Internet is truly one of the greatest inventions there has ever been, I can order a pizza, record something to my Sky Box from another county and countless other majestical tasks that would be impossible 30 years ago. In Football senses I'm not so sure though.

Before you carry on reading, I understand the massive irony of writing to you about how football is portrayed on the Internet...by writing about how football is portrayed on the Internet, but we've reached a level now where no stone is un-turned, it's bred "The Superfan" who signs autographs and makes a career out of simply being a fan, it's turned fans who once would have no outlet to write letters to football manager instructing them how to do their job and accusing club employees of sabotaging players by food poisioning, now if that doesn't want you to stop the world and get off then I shudder to what will.

The 24-news cycle is great for people like me, I've always been a serial geek that would get off on knowing things going on in the world before everyone but it reaches a saturation point where people writing the news have to say things all the time to remain relevant. My case is point is the Eva Carneiro vs Jose Mourinho thing. I'm writing to you on Friday, a whole 6 days after the event and we're still talking about it. Very few journalists are interested these days in finding new stories and are happy to make a living off prolonging stories such as this. And let's not even mention the "clickbait" stories (Actually let's)

"Wenger wades in on Mourinho row"

This headline should read "Wenger confirms he doesn't give a toss but reminds people of rules that are there"

But that's not as exciting and to some degree why Harry Redknapp, Jose Mourinho and Louis van Gaal are revered in the press, because 90% of the time they do the job for the press - they are perennial "rent-a-quotes" and will say enough to fuel a week's worth of stories.

I guess what I'm saying is that it just gets tiring after a while, social media and the Internet play a wonderful part in what they do for football most of the time, they bring together fans all over the world, provide a passage to read pieces by people you never knew existed and provide a steeping stone for these people to get paid for doing the job they love, but there's just a danger it's going to become a agenda-filled, hatred filled playground.