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if the much-missed Nick London were still in situ, and like the kid with the nude emperor, I'd like to think he WOULD have said something (though would presumably have been summarily dismissed for a second time for doing so).
Telling the (whole) truth and not treating your paying punters like imbeciles is obviously such a novel concept in the football industry the game would implode if it were implemented. I suppose as long as enough fans go along with it, nothing will change.
It's sometimes a good show, but often a shitshow, folks.
When Manny (from the magnificent Black Books) accidentally swallowed 'The Little Book of Calm', he became calm for a while to the point of f*cking beatific!
I find your post quite confusing to make sense of.
1. Are you're seriously suggesting thst the club would drop one of its key players to mnaipulate/maximise the prestige of a contract extension announcement? Even for the most rabid of Nourry haters, that would be stretching credulity to breaking point, surely (as well as sullying Marti, the management team and Dunne himself in colluding with it)?
2. How do you know Sheff Utd have had a second bid turned down, or who they might be 'turning' to - or are you just mouthing what we can all read for ourselves in the WLS bulletin? They 'could be turning' to anyone, so here you seem to be segueing into clickbait territory - without the click (or the bait).
3. What do you know of JD's 'character' - are you some kind of friend or close confidante?
4. What stands out is how you seem to conclude by inferring he's mainly money-motivated, which reads as a bit of a slur to say the least! What's your basis for this?
As for the fooballing side, and since none of us have crystal balls (unless there are any rather traditional clairvoyants in the ethers on LfW), if he moves there, and unless he's a complete mercenary, it would presumably be only because he and the club think he could make a step up with them - which he may or may not.
The road to hell is paved with 'em, as the saying goes, as I rediscovered this week (and had my nose rubbed in it for good measure).
Which set me thinking about the likes of, say, Alan Mullery, Richard Thompson, Chris Wright, Tony Fernandes, and Gareth Ainsworth. All of them had (I believe) good intentions - they surely didn't rock up at the Rangers thinking 'how are were going to f*ck this club over?' - but all of them created, in a remarkable variety of ways, QPR hell on earth!
Passion makes you lonely - or worse! By contrast, a former partner once told me the reason she'd been so successful in her job (as a librarian at a national library) was because 'I don't care too much about it'.
What's the answer if you're on the passionate/misunderstood side of life (like all the best people imo) and can't/don't want to change?
1. Examine one's Motivations (for ego/power drives)? All well and good, but sometimes the problem is as much the manipulations of others.
2. Consider the 'Law of Unintended Consequences'? I.e. Realise that you will also feel/be misunderstood by people who are arrogant enough to think they've got your number.
3. Listen More, Prescribe Less? Imposing 'help' without understanding people's limitations/blind spots can make things worse. People know (or think they know) their own needs best. The problem, here, is that, equally, sometimes we see people better than they see themselves. In which case, we should prescribe more, and listen less.
4. Embrace Nuance Over Self-Righteousness? The world, and people, are not black and white, unless you're a fundamentalist, cult leader, or self-divided idiot. Acting from a position of moral absolutism can lead to rigid, harmful decisions.
5. Adapt and Course-Correct ? If something isn’t working, admit it and change direction rather than doubling down. (But bear in mind, some people won't allow you to evolve whatever you do (see 4).)
6. Recognise Others' Limits? You can't 'fix 'everything/everyone, nor should you try. Allow some things to unfold without your passion/intervention. In other words, give yourself a break!
7. Act With, Not For? Empower rather than impose. Outcomes should arise collaboratively, not paternalistically. (This depends on people's capacity for self-honesty, however.)
He's probably wildly exaggerating, but if his line about not showing up at the club for two years while still picking up his wedge is even halfway true, that's a disgrace and embarrassment for both player and club. Who does he/do they think pays the club to pay him? The f*cking fans, that's who!
Mind you, as we all know, we have plenty of form here when it comes to paying non-playing/hostile players, what with tosspots like Bosingwa, Cesar, SWP, Barton, and now the mysterious case of Mr Richards. It's what we do!
It's getting to the point that the BBC is itself sending up this kind of woke absurdism/real life. For my money, it's the traumatised 'victim' of these flatulent videos who needs treatment.
How do you/we know, though? Surely Marti will at least want to see what he can do at ours? And presumably the player himself will want to give it a go.
Apart from that, we still need all the strikers we can get.
Surely the goal return from our four strikers (12 goals in 79 when I last checked) is the more relevant/concerning stat in this domain? (Kolli has been good, no beef with him.)
I think a large part of the problem is people who are unable or unwilling to separate the writer from what's written. If you write/put up anything in public space, self-consciously controversial or not, you need to expect it may be enjoyed, challenged, or criticised - or all three! That's because it's not your property any more - it's become public property. All true writers, artists and makers understand this.
Conversely, as we saw with the utter outrages perpetrated against J K Rowling's person following her piece on transgender, people instead leapt to 'cancelling' her without even, in many cases, paying her the respect of properly reading her, since dealing with a cultivated person's ideas and intelligence might shut them up for a bit. Where people start playing the man rather than the ball and, rather than dealing in opinion and argument, engage in ad hominem/abusive attacks on their self-serving images/caricatures of others, is where it quickly turns to merds.
Essentially, the currency of intelligent/cultural exchange is diminishing as society's narcissistic preoccupation with people's online images (and images of themselves) goes unchecked. It's great days for Instagram and the Twitterarti, and dark days for depth and debate. As W B Yeats put it, 'The best lack all conviction, while the worst / Are full of passionate intensity'.
I disagree and have always seen Chair as a roaming 10. As someone else pointed out, he's not quick enough for a winger, and he has more to his game than that anyway.
While you're right that we've had a run of very decent results playing things one way, I don't think the 'system' we have is definitive (e.g. I'm not convinced of Varane, despite this, and Marti will have to adjust things again when Dembele is back in all likelihood), especially as Wednesday also exposed its limitations.
Going forward, literally and metaphorically, E17 is on the money, I think. We should play with two authentic wingers (Saito and Smyth) serving Frey or Kolli, depending, with Chair at 10 in the hole. That might mean going three at the back or not.
Who'd want to live in a culture where no one ever argues with anyone! That certainly wouldn't be my idea of something as ultimately trivial and vital as a football message board, let alone a country. What I like about LfW, its handful of reactionaries/virtue-signallers/moralists/cultists aside, is its feistiness, fractiousness, and fanaticism. Just about all the people here who are worth reading clearly love language, love themselves, and love (or lovehate) QPR.
I agree with this, and think the necessity of Field/Varane/Morgan running themselves into the ground for the team to 'work' is a false premise we shouldn't be over-investing in. Bannon is basically a 10, and Chair should be doing the same thing for us.
The parallel with Cantona is a stirring one, of which incident the great, one-of-a-kind Eric wrote (I'm overlooking that goal at LR): 'My best moment? I have a lot of good moments but the one I prefer is when I kicked the hooligan'. (80s kids like me are also put in mind of the 'Sweet and Tender Hooligan' from The Smiths' back catalogue ('in the midst of life we are in death etcetera'.))
As Rob Smyth memorably put it in 2020 in The Guardian,
'Twenty-five years later, the footage and images of his kung-fu kick retain an exhilarating power. It was the definitive example of what Alex Ferguson called Cantona’s “defiant charisma". [...] Cantona has also spoken of wanting to give others – in this case, United fans – a vicarious thrill. It was an instinctive demonstration of a desire to do things that others did not have the opportunity or balls to do. His greatest virtue was that he had no edit function between instinct and action.'
According to Matthew Simmons, whom, as Smyth wrote, Cantona always referred to 'with a delightful, absent-minded contempt as "the hooligan"', what he actually said was 'off! off! off! It's an early bath for you, Mr Cantona' - because obviously an oik like him from Croydon with a history of violent assault and a penchant for BNP/NF rallies spoke in real life like Julian from the Famous Five. (His actually reported words, lest we forget, were 'f*ck off back to France you French motherf*cker'.)
What I love about the 'fallout' is it really helps sort out whose side one is on in football, and in life. Ferguson and the United board reportedly initially intended to sack him, but changed their minds, and Ferguson, to his massive credit, went to Paris to sit in a restaurant for hours and woo him back to United. Brian Clough said he would have cut his balls off - no surprise there. Ian Wright confessed he was jealous.
As Smyth stirringly concludes,
'Back then, if you wanted, it was easy to avoid the nonsense. Faux outrage was a minority sport, mainly because, with the information superhighway in its infancy, most people did not have the chance to partake in a public place. You had the papers, teletext, radio and the news bulletins. That was about it. And although there were still plenty of cranks and trolls and toxic liberals about, there was less narcissism and brains were not washed quite as easily. There were no #PrayForSimmons hashtags, or online petitions for Cantona to be deported. Social networking meant going to the game.'
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