Rethinking Football / SoccerShout.com

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!

I’ve been meaning to write this post for a couple of days, so forgive me if I sound like I’m trying to be smart after the event.  I had a thought at the weekend that makes this whole mess even odder, and I also got an email back from the Premier League.

Quick recap: Thanks to Setanta, Chelsea find themselves playing on both Monday and Thursday night this week.  The Monday game is pushed back from the past weekend, and the Thursday game has been brought forward from next week (with less than 20 days notice).  It’s patently unfair on Chelsea to make them play two games so close together at this late stage of the season - sacrificing sporting balance at the behest of the TV monster.

I noticed a couple of things at the weekend.  First of all, there was no lunchtime kick-off on Saturday.  This is the Setanta timeslot.  Presumably the Chelsea v Wigan game could have been played then and the furore about the Thursday game would have been pretty much non-existent.

The second thing: who the hell actually wants to watch Chelsea v Wigan?  I was genuinely going to predict this was going to be a thoroughly dull 1-0 or 2-0 to Chelsea.  Yes, there was a twist at the end of the game that might have been a fatal wound to Chelsea’s title ambitions, but I don’t think that made up for the preceding 92-minute monotony.  Personally, I would have preferred a relegation-related fixture like Reading v Fulham or Bolton v West Ham.  If this would have drawn a lower audience than the Chelsea game, then shame on us football fans.

I actually wrote to the Premier League to ask them why the Everton v Chelsea fixture had been re-arranged.  I felt like I was being pretty explicit with the question:

My main point of interest is: why re-arrange the fixture at all?

The Premier League statement quoted in the press cited “enormous pressure from international match and European competition dates, as well as the need to balance the important requirements of the police and our broadcasters”.

But there was no pressure on the original weekend date for the fixture.  There are dozens of midweek games that go untelevised throughout the season, so if there’s a quota to be filled there are surely plenty of other candidates.

So why re-arrange a fixture that, as far as I can tell, didn’t need to be re-arranged?

The reply came back after six days:

Thank you for your email concerning the Everton v Chelsea fixture. We appreciate the inconvenience caused when fixtures change at late notice, and we apologise for any problems this has caused for you.

Fixture planning is a complex process and we always try to give at least 4 weeks notice when fixtures move. Premier League fixtures can only be fixed once dates for other competitions have been set, e.g. the UEFA Cup, FA Cup and Champions League, and this can make it difficult to find slots for some games. In addition to this, as you may be aware, the European Commission determined that we must provide 138 matches for live TV coverage; this further limits our ability to schedule fixtures as and when we would want during the season. Also we are committed to ensuring that the ‘closed window’ is preserved - that is, that games are not shown live on television at 3pm on a Saturday - to protect attendances and participation at all levels of the game. Another reason fixtures cannot always be scheduled is to do with the willingness or ability of the police service to cover a certain time. Unfortunately this means some matches have to be moved at late notice through a combination of the factors outlined above and in order for us to meet the requirements of our TV contracts.

Attached is our fixture fact list for your information.

So nice of them to reply, but just one problem - which I put to them in a reply:

I don’t feel it addressed my main question though: Why re-arrange this specific fixture?

No reply in the past 11 days, so I suppose we’ll just have to go with the “what’s more likely” method.  The Police insisted on the change to a prime-time slot?  The European Commission insisted on the change to a prime-time slot?  Or Setanta?

Tricky…tricky…

–

TV company got you down too?  Thumb your nose at them by subscribing to this blog in order to get regular updates. Together we can make football better.  It starts here.  You can receive updates by email or RSS. Both are free and spam-free, and you can back-out at any time.

I’ve long been a critic of the Premier League’s hair-brained approach to dealing with modern technology and media distribution. But wait until you read this article about a revamped website. All of this will be available for the upcoming season.

The highlights:

• Almost every game available live (the exceptions being the nationally televised games)
• All games available as 25-minute highlight packages, available anytime.
• It will be possible to watch up to six live games at once, picture-in-picture style.
• All this for an annual fee of $90 (£45).
• Additional option to receive video of key incidents to mobile phones less than 90 seconds after they happen (for $4 per month)
• Expected revenues for this website are $500 million.

If that has got you whipped up into a frenzy of excitement, I have one more piece of news for you: the website belongs to Major League Baseball.

Yes, the sport most associated with white-haired grandpa’s in rocking chairs has the most progressive and fan-friendly online media offering in sports. Other American sports leagues are not far behind though: The NFL, NBA and NHL all offer live streaming of all games to subscribers.

What does the Premier League offer us? If you click on the “TV” tab on their website, you’ll be able to see…a listing of what games are on TV (as long as you live in the UK, because it only lists British TV channels).

As a fan, this kills me because I only get to see around one game in three of the team I support.

As a spectator of the business of football, this kills me because they’re leaving so much money on the table it hurts. The MLB can snag $500 million a year from its website, yet the Premier League can only get $400 million a year for its overseas television deal!

Meanwhile, fans are watching live streaming video on the websites of pirates who are lining their pockets. And they’re packing the British pubs that show satellite TV feeds from Scandinavia and the Middle East.

I’ve long been a critic of the Premier League’s hair-brained approach to dealing with modern technology and media distribution. But wait until you read this article about a revamped website. It’ll make you weep.

—

If this kind of thing burns your ass as much as as it does mine, please subscribe to this blog in order to get regular updates. Together we can make football better.  It starts here.  You can receive updates by email or RSS. Both are free and spam-free, and you can back-out at any time.

Some telling comments on a Boro message board thread, titled “Are We Stagnating?” on FMTTM.

Benboro kicks the thread off:

This season has been really poor. 15th position in the league, we will do well to reach 40 points and will just stay up as there are many equally poor sides ( many of whom have not spent the money we have )

So once again we re group and go into a new season full of hope and expectations. The season ticket renewal arrives on the door mat promising top players, attacking football and relative success.

Then after another season of ups and mainly downs I will most likely be sat here typing exactly the same stuff in a years time.

Then Parmogus:

i have had 31 years of that mate and thats why i have given it all up i just cannot be arsed with it all .Years ago i used to stand on the holgate with about 22 mates week in and week out the same as when the riverside opened as well there are now 5 left and only 1 is defo renewing next year

Then Diasboro_Dan:

Someone has got to be mid-table and mid-table is the worst place to be nowadays. There’s nothing to compete for but no opportunity to experiment for next season because safety is so much more important now. For example, Adam Johnson can’t be given games but he can’t be loaned out, so they can’t make the most of him. Also, it’s the worst position financially. It costs millions to park the side in mid-table, whereas demoted Watford actually made a profit from last season after selling just one player and still having a team. They are more financially secure than Boro.

I think this could have come from fans of any of about 8 or 9 clubs in the Prem, whose highest aspiration is UEFA Cup qualification or a good run in one of the cups.

It’s that last comment that really resonated with me: “Mid-table is the worst place to be”. It costs millions to maintain that position, but the fans are deserting because it’s so boring.

Ouch.

All too often, football fans get treated like they are brain dead morons who lack any ability for critical thought. Managers think you’ll be content to listen to the deserved-a-result and ref-done-us-wrong spiel in the post-match interview. Television companies think you’re motivated by terms like Super-Grandslam Sunday, as if you couldn’t figure out on your own that the top-4 playing each other on the same day wouldn’t be worth watching.

I also find the level of analysis and tactical insight to be sorely lacking in television and newspapers. The co-commentator is too often limited to say-what-you-see analysis during the replays: “Well, the winger crossed the ball in…and the striker jumps above everyone else…gets his head to the ball…and it’s in the back of the net”. Yeah, thanks for that.

I want to like the Telegraph’s new Champions League 3D feature that turned up on their website for this week’s Champions League games involving Man Utd, Arsenal, Liverpool and Chelsea. It’s really nice technology: Graphics like you’ll find in the FIFA-style games that accurately represent the players actions during the goals; the play is marked-up to highlight the runs of players; virtual camera angles that would physically impossible to capture on the pitch.

But the commentary that goes with it reverts to the state-the-bloody-obvious style that we find on TV. The Arsenal highlights start out well by highlighting Adebeyor’s neat run from the goal line to the edge of the six-yard box - I didn’t spot that on ESPN. It’s all downhill from there though - just have a listen and you’ll probably feel that a child could have come up with something more original.

Well done to the Telegraph for trying something new. They’ve done the hard part in putting the 3D replays together - they just need to find an intelligent footballer to narrate it.

Alright, so maybe they haven’t done the hard part.

Arsene Wenger’s blind spot has become legion in footballing circles. “Doing a Wenger” has become synonymous with pretending not to see something that implicates one of your players.

That’s all well and good to a degree - it’s the footballing equivalent of pleading the fifth - but there comes a point you’d have to assume that your audience are imbeciles if they’re going to buy it. And as Wenger’s audience are also the people who pour their money into the sport - and therefore his club - he’s insulting his customers. And that’s just not cool.

Wenger on Martin Taylor’s tackle on Eduardo:

“The tackle was horrendous and unforgivable.”

He did retract the statement that contained that comment, but presumably he would still stand by that part of it. “On reflection, I feel that my comments about Martin Taylor were excessive”, he later said, but nothing along the lines of “the tackle wasn’t that bad after all”.

So after Abou Diaby’s red card against Bolton (video), which to my mind was right up there with Martin Taylor’s leg-breaker, we get

“I was not upset with the sending off but I felt it was more of a protective tackle. But he was too high so I don’t complain. Just before that I thought it was a foul on him.”

You’re probably familiar with the concept of parallel universes. The theory says that there are an infinite number of them, but for the sake of time and bandwidth, there’s only two of them that I want you to try and imagine.

In another universe, Eduardo is still skipping about on the football pitch and no-one has spent any more time thinking about Martin Taylor than they did last season, which is not very much. However, Bolton’s Gretar Steinsson is in hospital with a compound fracture of his shin, thanks to Abou Diaby’s lunge. It could easily have happened.

What would Wenger have said then?

“I was not upset with the sending off but I felt it was more of a protective tackle. But he was too high so I don’t complain. Just before that I thought it was a foul on him.”

Let’s dance on to another parallel universe. This one is even more uncomfortable for Mr Wenger. In this universe, there have been two broken legs in the Premier League this season - one a piece for Eduardo and Steinsson.

What would Wenger have said then?

“I was not upset with the sending off but I felt it was more of a protective tackle. But he was too high so I don’t complain. Just before that I thought it was a foul on him.”

I don’t think Wenger’s blind spot is his inability to notice things that happen on a football pitch - his job title will tell you that cannot be true. His blind spot is that he can’t tell when he’s sounding ridiculous and treating those that pay his wages like morons.

The Caught Offside blog had a post about Premier League re-arranging the Everton v Chelsea match in three week’s time, or Chelsea Throw Toys Out of Pram, as they put it (I took a slightly more sympathetic view).

Here’s one of the comments to that post.

“As a Chelsea supporter who had got my tickets for the Everton match and had booked my flights from Ireland for myself and my son, I find it difficult to understand how Sky can just step in at the last minute and upset the plans of the loyal fans who have spent a lot of money over the years following their team. Do the FA really care about the ordinary fan? I don’t think so! It looks as if Sky calls the shots not the FA. I’d rather watch my team live than on TV but it looks as though I’ll not be able to plan for away matched in the future. Is this the way we realy want football to go? “

‘Nuff said, really.