Summer greetings fantasians!
Amidst the tomatoes, cucumber, spring onions, and lettuce blooming well in the garden, Fantasy League admin is open to re-register and pick your team, a chance to look ahead to ten months of wasted time and effort trying to wrangle a starting XI and squad to get you anywhere above mid-table.
We are midway in football’s silly season, the hinterland between the end of last season and the beginning of the next. With nothing to do but peruse the growing tomatoes, cucumber, spring onions, and lettuce, and tap into the chatterati rumours around Declan Rice, Harry Kane, the great Saudi Shopping Spree and learn that Phil Foden’s four-year-old kid has 3m followers on Insta. Those spine-tingling days of watching actual football or even Jack Grealish’s partying exploits seem light years away. But log on, re-register and share with friends to join our jamboree.
‘Interested in’, ‘keen on’, ‘considering a move for’, ‘keeping an eye on’. These are the phrases reserved for the glamorous world of elite football transfers. The hot-gossip rumour mill on social media is hot, full of potential deals that will see hundreds of millions of pounds exchanged between clubs. Players’ Mr 15% will trouser their wads and their clients will be well remunerated. Most of the headline claims at the moment involve Saudi Arabia sweeping through Europe’s top leagues to hoover up players deemed surplus to requirements for eye-watering filthy lucre.
A few big moves have been completed, including Dominik Szboboszlai to Liverpool for £70m. He said he counts Steven Gerrard among his inspirations and claims to have a tattoo inspired by his words. It reads: Talent is a blessing from God, but without incredible will and humility, it is worthless. Hmm, I think Dominik might want to double-check that quote did originate from the Huyton Bard.
Hannah Dingley says she hopes becoming the first woman to manage a professional men’s team in English football will inspire young girls to break through barriers. Dingley has taken over as caretaker boss of League Two’s Forest Green Rovers after Duncan Ferguson’s sacking. Her first match was a 1-1 pre-season draw at Melksham Town on Wednesday. Last month, Brentford appointed Lydia Bedford as head coach of their under-18s side. Dingley has been at Forest Green since 2019 when she took charge of the academy and remains the only woman to manage a men’s English Football League academy. Good luck to her.
Ever since Gary Neville pioneered the ground-breaking concept of a mini-retirement, the leading lights of business have flocked to his man cave to learn the secrets of innovation and success. It was only a matter of time before Our Gaz got a call from Dragon’s Den. The shy pundit will join the next series and dish out his nuggets of wisdom to fame hungry entrepreneurs alongside Deborah Meaden and Steve Bartlett. A man not lacking in self-belief, self-confidence or self-publicity, to celebrate his status as a dragon, Our Gaz unveiled a sleek new website choc-a-bloc with David Brent-style motivational slogans such as no excuses, no shortcuts, no regrets, and failure is a bruise, not a tattoo. Check out the ‘Businessman’ section, where Our Gaz explains Relentless is my favourite word and sums up my approach to life, business, everything really. Looking forward to him reminding the contestants to live, laugh, love.
So, a final look over the shoulder at 2022/23, who was your manager of the season? Arteta took Arsenal from nowhere right into the heart of battle with City. If it was so easy, why is nobody else doing it? Roberto De Zerbi did amazing things at Brighton’s to gain sixth placed finish, with a super style of football too. Eddie Howe took Newcastle into the Champions League with players who were written off. He has improved every player – look at the top points defenders in fantasy league. Unai Emery took Aston Villa into seventh place, Thomas Frankl at Brentford. Then Pep, you can’t overlook the man who has clinched a hat-trick of titles on the way to a treble.
We’ve got the rugby union world cup on the horizon in September which is feeding me, but until the second weekend in August, its Summer sports. Summer sports are rubbish. Tennis is boring. It’s played by boring people and watched at Wimbledon by the worst kind of middle-class bores. The place seems full of middle-aged women from Princes Risborough in frumpy flowery skirts and men called Sebastian from minor public schools in Hampshire. Oh, and of course Becks is there, making the ladies swoon.
And what about cricket? The fact that Rishi enjoys cricket should tell you all you need to know. Cricket is so tedious and unpopular that they’ve now reduced it to 20 overs of slogging in order to finish the game as quickly as they can so people can go home. Prior to this, they thought players wearing coloured clothing would make it thrilling. It goes on for five bloody days. That’s if it happens at all. The slightest spot of rain or dark cloud can stop them. But do you get your money back if they walk off? Of course not.
I’m ignoring athletics, which is so boring I am bored thinking of what to write about it, that leaves us with golf. Why do hordes of people gasp at a tee shot when they have no idea where it will land? Four-day extravaganzas of umbrellas and knitwear tell me that golf is actually played by and run by a right-wing cabal with too much time and money on their hands. And the lambs’ wool sweaters in mauve and lemon and the trousers unashamedly called ‘slacks’. Hang on, BBC Sport are reporting ‘Rory McIlroy is ripping up the course on day two of the Hemel Hempstead Open’. What, is he in a sulk and this is an alternative to chucking your clubs about, or simply vandalizing the course?
Other sporting diversions we are offered in the summer include rowing where they go in a straight line for a couple of minutes and then stop. If they were dressed as vikings, drinking fermented Yaks’ blood and fighting each other with antler helmets I could see the point. How about a flutter on the Gee Gees? I don’t get horse-racing. Every race is an exact copy of the previous one. The only variant is how many horses are running. You can tell it’s really boring because aficionados think it’s really exciting if a brown one doesn’t win. And finally, there’s F1 – which is the same as horse racing only with cars. Now put horses in cars and you’d have a sport worth watching. There’s something very odd about F1, let’s face it, it’s for nerdy people who like watching traffic and the sound of car engines. Snooze.
There, I told you sport enables you to engage in a lively exchange of opinions and passions! The Women’s World Cup can’t come quickly enough, a welcome tonic of first-class action to cleanse us of this particularly putrid form of boredom. Yes please. Lauren James whipping one into the top bins? Here’s hoping. In the meantime, it’s time to go outside. The tomatoes, cucumber, spring onions, and lettuce are blooming well in the garden, I’ll sit down and watch them grow.
