Here is a link to my piece for The Boar, Warwick University's student newspaper, on the damage that the economic and political fiasco that has ripped football out of Coventry has caused to the city.
http://theboar.org/2013/08/22/coventry-is-lost-without-its-football-club/#.UhcQYfmsiSo
Friday, August 23, 2013
Tuesday, August 20, 2013
'Red or Dead' left in the shade by 'The Damned United'.
Ed Higgs sat down at his laptop. His laptop, his life's work. His life's work in his laptop. Ed Higgs opened up his laptop. Ed Higgs logged onto The Bread Roll Blog. The Bread Roll Blog of secrets, of lies. Of lies and of secrets. Ed Higgs waited. Waited. Always waiting. Waiting for more lies, for more secrets. And Ed Higgs began to write about the new book by David Peace.
When I heard about the novel, my first feeling was one of immense excitement. Peace's first football novel, The Damned United is easily the best of its kind, albeit in that fallow area of literature, the sports book. The story of Brian Clough's ill-fated period as manager of Leeds United has been made into a moderately good film, but it does not contain the poisonous moodiness of the novel. This is somewhat unsurprising, as Peace's unique selling point as a writer is his wonderful capacity to create an authorial voice, something impossible to replicate on screen.
When I heard it was to be about Bill Shankly, I felt some disappointment. I pride myself on knowing an awful lot about football, but when it came to Shankly, my knowledge was relatively sparse. I knew he was incredibly successful, I knew he was the first to declare that football is 'more important than life and death', but beyond that, I was fairly ambivalent towards him.
I should have taken that as an invitation to leave the book well alone. Football loves to lampoon, to criticise and to bait. Plenty of people have mimicked Brian Clough, snarled 'yous a bunch of fucking idiots' in the style of Sir Alex Ferguson, and punned upon Jose Mourinho's 'The Special One'.
But Shankly?
Therein lies the problem. Bill Shankly is too nice. Don't get me wrong, I wasn't sat there urging the novel to take a twist whereby Shankly reveals a desire to brutally murder Bob Paisley and burn down the Kop. Alright, maybe a little bit. And the book does contain historical appeal, even literary appeal. The style, mimicked in my italicised opening paragraph, isn't even that grating. Alright, alright, it's fairly grating, but like I say, as a literature student, who am I to argue if a writer wants to experiment? A bit of post-modern never hurt anyone.
The problem with any novel roughly based on historical events is there's only so much tinkering with the plot that a writer can do. We all vaguely know the story: Shankly takes a struggling Liverpool and turns them into a power-house, via a love-affair with the city and the supporters. We are, like it or not, reading about the rise and rise of Liverpool Football Club.
Meanwhile, Clough takes a brilliant Leeds side, is despised from the start, and is sacked after 42 days of non-acceptance and bitterness from both parties. Clough hates Leeds, and the only reason he took the job is to prove his arch-rival Don Revie wrong. Yet in that story, David Peace ensures that everyone (aside from Johnny Giles who later sued him) is a winner. Neutrals understand that Clough is not the problem at Elland Road, and this is why he will go on to have a very successful spell with Nottingham Forest. Readers recognise that Leeds are the pantomime villains, a role which their supporters still relish. And, despite the bitterness seeping through the pages, Clough retains his popularity with the reader through his family ties, biting wit, and 'bromance' with assistant manager Peter Taylor.
I'm happy to love Shankly. It's impossible not to, he's bloody annoyingly perfect. I'm happy to love the book, despite Peace's style. But I can't, as much as I try, enjoy reading a success story of Liverpool Football Club. Shankly forever has Bob Paisley at his side, another demi-god of football, and another reminder of how this is only going one way- you are reading the rise and rise of Liverpool Football Club. It's by no means stomach churning, and Peace, as a gritty Yorkshireman himself, does not do schmaltzy sentiment (strange for a man who immerses himself in the past as a method-writer). Nonetheless, this is the house that Bill built, and I can't help but feel, in my paranoid Birmingham City state, that I'm reading about how Bill Shankly somehow contributed to our 7-0 FA Cup defeat by Liverpool in 2006.
The Damned United had light and shade, even beyond the pages. Light in Clough's meteoric rise as Derby manager (on the page), light in his back-to-back European Cup victories (off the page). Dark in his damned spell as Leeds manager (on the page), dark in his battle against alcoholism that eventually killed him (off the page, but hinted at in the book).
Red or Dead is a book perhaps better suited to the Anfield club shop than Waterstones. Shankly is all light. And, in the twenty-first century, if you're all light in the world of football, then frankly, nobody really cares.
When I heard about the novel, my first feeling was one of immense excitement. Peace's first football novel, The Damned United is easily the best of its kind, albeit in that fallow area of literature, the sports book. The story of Brian Clough's ill-fated period as manager of Leeds United has been made into a moderately good film, but it does not contain the poisonous moodiness of the novel. This is somewhat unsurprising, as Peace's unique selling point as a writer is his wonderful capacity to create an authorial voice, something impossible to replicate on screen.
 |
| Read this. |
When I heard it was to be about Bill Shankly, I felt some disappointment. I pride myself on knowing an awful lot about football, but when it came to Shankly, my knowledge was relatively sparse. I knew he was incredibly successful, I knew he was the first to declare that football is 'more important than life and death', but beyond that, I was fairly ambivalent towards him.
I should have taken that as an invitation to leave the book well alone. Football loves to lampoon, to criticise and to bait. Plenty of people have mimicked Brian Clough, snarled 'yous a bunch of fucking idiots' in the style of Sir Alex Ferguson, and punned upon Jose Mourinho's 'The Special One'.
But Shankly?
Therein lies the problem. Bill Shankly is too nice. Don't get me wrong, I wasn't sat there urging the novel to take a twist whereby Shankly reveals a desire to brutally murder Bob Paisley and burn down the Kop. Alright, maybe a little bit. And the book does contain historical appeal, even literary appeal. The style, mimicked in my italicised opening paragraph, isn't even that grating. Alright, alright, it's fairly grating, but like I say, as a literature student, who am I to argue if a writer wants to experiment? A bit of post-modern never hurt anyone.
The problem with any novel roughly based on historical events is there's only so much tinkering with the plot that a writer can do. We all vaguely know the story: Shankly takes a struggling Liverpool and turns them into a power-house, via a love-affair with the city and the supporters. We are, like it or not, reading about the rise and rise of Liverpool Football Club.
Meanwhile, Clough takes a brilliant Leeds side, is despised from the start, and is sacked after 42 days of non-acceptance and bitterness from both parties. Clough hates Leeds, and the only reason he took the job is to prove his arch-rival Don Revie wrong. Yet in that story, David Peace ensures that everyone (aside from Johnny Giles who later sued him) is a winner. Neutrals understand that Clough is not the problem at Elland Road, and this is why he will go on to have a very successful spell with Nottingham Forest. Readers recognise that Leeds are the pantomime villains, a role which their supporters still relish. And, despite the bitterness seeping through the pages, Clough retains his popularity with the reader through his family ties, biting wit, and 'bromance' with assistant manager Peter Taylor.
I'm happy to love Shankly. It's impossible not to, he's bloody annoyingly perfect. I'm happy to love the book, despite Peace's style. But I can't, as much as I try, enjoy reading a success story of Liverpool Football Club. Shankly forever has Bob Paisley at his side, another demi-god of football, and another reminder of how this is only going one way- you are reading the rise and rise of Liverpool Football Club. It's by no means stomach churning, and Peace, as a gritty Yorkshireman himself, does not do schmaltzy sentiment (strange for a man who immerses himself in the past as a method-writer). Nonetheless, this is the house that Bill built, and I can't help but feel, in my paranoid Birmingham City state, that I'm reading about how Bill Shankly somehow contributed to our 7-0 FA Cup defeat by Liverpool in 2006.
 |
| Only hardcore Liverpool fans need apply. |
Red or Dead is a book perhaps better suited to the Anfield club shop than Waterstones. Shankly is all light. And, in the twenty-first century, if you're all light in the world of football, then frankly, nobody really cares.
Friday, August 9, 2013
Football and the Faustian Pact
There have been several events in the world of football this week that have increasingly worried me. I have come to the realisation that I am a human being first, probably a Birmingham City supporter second, and that being a 'football fan' comes somewhere between 'one-time fruit picker' and 'Year 8 B-Team leg-spinner' in my personal identity.
Before you reach for the 'New Tab' button, let me offer a disclaimer: this will not be an #AgainstModernFootball rant. For a start, 'Modern Football' is the only thing I've ever known, being born in 1993. Secondly, most people who go under that banner do so whilst tweeting in front of Sky Sports' Super Sunday.
I'm still enthralled by the game itself. The ninety minutes of football still holds me in my armchair in a way that a film or TV show rarely can. Forget the moans about diving and play-acting; that's just 1970s leg-breaking tackles in a different guise, branded by the same motif of a natural urge to cheat. It was ever thus.
But that magic is leaving us romantics behind. Football is a sport increasingly played behind closed doors, in the boardrooms and corridors of power.Last week, I went to a Sports Journalism course down in Wimbledon. First up, there was a sports quiz. It was telling of the modern media that most of the questions revolved around chief executives, directors and chairmen. It was perhaps even more telling that I knew almost all the answers.
Which brings me neatly onto the events of the week. I consider myself to be very knowledgeable about the sport, and yet, there have been two players signed this summer, for a combined fee of £60m, that I have never heard of. One is Fernandinho, the other is Soldado. Irrelevant to an extent, but just to give you some sort of context.
Meanwhile, Coventry City are going to the wall. The football club has been put into liquidation, and the future looks extremely bleak. A club that has won the FA Cup more recently than West Ham, Newcastle, and Aston Villa, a proper, one-team footballing city, bang-smack in the middle of the country. I really wonder how many people knew, or even cared. To discover the ins and outs, I had to watch the local news. Not Sky Sports News. The top story, if Sky was even capable of introspection, should have been how anyone can justify paying such money for the above players, when a club such as Coventry, part of the fabric of English football, have been left to rot? For Sky, and their assorted minions of supporters, it barely registers on their radar.
We used to say it would take a club- any club- to go to the wall to make the clubs and owners sit up and take notice. You think that will happen now? No chance. Now it seems it will take, naturally, one of the Sky Power Elite, to go bust. Perhaps, in 2050, we can have Liquidation Sunday, presented by Jim White's grandson, whereby Ray Winstone offers us odds on which of Manchester United, Chelsea and Manchester City will be wound up first?
It was symptomatic of the media that when I found out the news about Coventry at the course, on a corner of the BBC Sport website, I announced it to the rest of the room. The man taking the class, not much older than us, and a fan of one of the Power Elite, exclaimed 'Oh my god really?! Oh no, wait, actually I don't care'. And so the talk turned back to the Premier League.
Up in Doncaster, a member of One Direction now has a contract. I'm not joking. So what, you might say? If it brings in extra revenue, then maybe Coventry should have wised-up earlier and signed Gary Barlow back in the early 2000s? This move surely signifies the final nail in the coffin of football's meritocracy, the spit-and-sawdust, flat caps and whippets of football's School of Hard Knocks. Think of the young Doncaster trainee, who, following the announcement of the mandatory 25-man-squads, turns on Sky Sports News and sees that Louis Tomlinson has been selected ahead of him. The trainee is forced to move on and disappears into non-league obscurity, whilst everyone laughs at how silly Tomlinson looks trying to play professional football, and the gimmick is over. Unfortunately, so is the young trainee's career. Such is the knife-edge for young players.
Across Yorkshire, Hull City have hammered the final nail into any sort of identity coffin with their re-branding as 'Hull City Tigers'. Their Egyptian owner deemed the suffix 'City' as 'too common'. Imagine! Formed in 1904, but forget it, some bloke passing through in 2013 doesn't like that, so you're Tigers lads, or we're going to the wall. Don't make me sell you to Coventry.
As supporters, if we choose to buy into anything other than the team and the ninety minute experience, are just play-things, or, at the very least, waiting to become play-things. We're kidding ourselves otherwise. And don't worry, there's nothing wrong with a bit of self-delusion. Football is built on such glorious imagination. I'm deceiving myself every day as a Blues fan that we'll retain our identity forever more. And there definitely are teams who still keep their dignity, for now, anyway. But who's to say what's next? Blues will likely have new owners within the next year, and who knows what crackpot scheme will evolve? Merger with Coventry? Don't forget lads, before our rich owner arrived, we were going to the wall. So you'll play as West Mercia FC or I'll sell you to Hull City Raccoons.
It is, of course, easier to whinge from the outside looking in. I can moan about the MCC being an old-fashioned, archaic Old Boys' Club, but that doesn't mean I wouldn't jump at the chance to have steak and chips in the Long Room. I think of the Premier League as a glass prism. Once inside, everything is distorted, phantasmagorical, the light is colourful and magical, and you forget there's a whole world outside. It takes a few years outside the glass prism to really appreciate the ninety minutes for what they are.
I would take being in the Premier League in an instant and all it entails, on the pitch at least. And that, I guess, is why Sky Sports and its riches is such a powerful, Faustian drug, and why, for as far as I can see into the future, clubs will sell their souls to eat at the top table.
There's a little bit of the Devil in all of us.
Before you reach for the 'New Tab' button, let me offer a disclaimer: this will not be an #AgainstModernFootball rant. For a start, 'Modern Football' is the only thing I've ever known, being born in 1993. Secondly, most people who go under that banner do so whilst tweeting in front of Sky Sports' Super Sunday.
I'm still enthralled by the game itself. The ninety minutes of football still holds me in my armchair in a way that a film or TV show rarely can. Forget the moans about diving and play-acting; that's just 1970s leg-breaking tackles in a different guise, branded by the same motif of a natural urge to cheat. It was ever thus.
But that magic is leaving us romantics behind. Football is a sport increasingly played behind closed doors, in the boardrooms and corridors of power.Last week, I went to a Sports Journalism course down in Wimbledon. First up, there was a sports quiz. It was telling of the modern media that most of the questions revolved around chief executives, directors and chairmen. It was perhaps even more telling that I knew almost all the answers.
Which brings me neatly onto the events of the week. I consider myself to be very knowledgeable about the sport, and yet, there have been two players signed this summer, for a combined fee of £60m, that I have never heard of. One is Fernandinho, the other is Soldado. Irrelevant to an extent, but just to give you some sort of context.
 |
| Recognise this man? He cost £34m. http://www.independent.co.uk/incoming/article8648505.ece/ALTERNATES/w460/62-Fernandinho-mcpa.jpg |
We used to say it would take a club- any club- to go to the wall to make the clubs and owners sit up and take notice. You think that will happen now? No chance. Now it seems it will take, naturally, one of the Sky Power Elite, to go bust. Perhaps, in 2050, we can have Liquidation Sunday, presented by Jim White's grandson, whereby Ray Winstone offers us odds on which of Manchester United, Chelsea and Manchester City will be wound up first?
It was symptomatic of the media that when I found out the news about Coventry at the course, on a corner of the BBC Sport website, I announced it to the rest of the room. The man taking the class, not much older than us, and a fan of one of the Power Elite, exclaimed 'Oh my god really?! Oh no, wait, actually I don't care'. And so the talk turned back to the Premier League.
Up in Doncaster, a member of One Direction now has a contract. I'm not joking. So what, you might say? If it brings in extra revenue, then maybe Coventry should have wised-up earlier and signed Gary Barlow back in the early 2000s? This move surely signifies the final nail in the coffin of football's meritocracy, the spit-and-sawdust, flat caps and whippets of football's School of Hard Knocks. Think of the young Doncaster trainee, who, following the announcement of the mandatory 25-man-squads, turns on Sky Sports News and sees that Louis Tomlinson has been selected ahead of him. The trainee is forced to move on and disappears into non-league obscurity, whilst everyone laughs at how silly Tomlinson looks trying to play professional football, and the gimmick is over. Unfortunately, so is the young trainee's career. Such is the knife-edge for young players.
 |
| Doncaster Rovers' new gimmick- er, signing. Pic: http://www.calcioweb.eu/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/tomlinson.jpg |
As supporters, if we choose to buy into anything other than the team and the ninety minute experience, are just play-things, or, at the very least, waiting to become play-things. We're kidding ourselves otherwise. And don't worry, there's nothing wrong with a bit of self-delusion. Football is built on such glorious imagination. I'm deceiving myself every day as a Blues fan that we'll retain our identity forever more. And there definitely are teams who still keep their dignity, for now, anyway. But who's to say what's next? Blues will likely have new owners within the next year, and who knows what crackpot scheme will evolve? Merger with Coventry? Don't forget lads, before our rich owner arrived, we were going to the wall. So you'll play as West Mercia FC or I'll sell you to Hull City Raccoons.
It is, of course, easier to whinge from the outside looking in. I can moan about the MCC being an old-fashioned, archaic Old Boys' Club, but that doesn't mean I wouldn't jump at the chance to have steak and chips in the Long Room. I think of the Premier League as a glass prism. Once inside, everything is distorted, phantasmagorical, the light is colourful and magical, and you forget there's a whole world outside. It takes a few years outside the glass prism to really appreciate the ninety minutes for what they are.
 |
| Every football fan. http://www.empowernetwork.com/empowerednetworker/files/2012/08/Devil-and-Angel-Homer-New-300x205.jpg |
I would take being in the Premier League in an instant and all it entails, on the pitch at least. And that, I guess, is why Sky Sports and its riches is such a powerful, Faustian drug, and why, for as far as I can see into the future, clubs will sell their souls to eat at the top table.
There's a little bit of the Devil in all of us.
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