MM = BBC
Do you feel helpless? Do you feel ignored? Feeling
worthless and unloved? Well that's probably because you eat pickled
eggs in your underpants while your mates are round your flat - but
putting aside your personal idiosyncrasies - as a football fan, do
you think your views matter?
In today's game, dominated as it is by big money, big media and big
bulls**t, it's easy to think we, the people for whom the game is
played lest it is forgotten, are pretty low down the list of people
who have influence.
However, the good news is that we not only matter, but our
collective will and attitudes do enact change.
Think back a couple of seasons. It seemed that every week that
passed there was another incident in which players were said to be
'inciting' the crowd. Whether it was Gary Neville's sex actions or
Diouf spitting at people, the phone-ins and papers would be full of
fans who claimed they were being 'incited' to...well...to do what
was never very clear. But for a time 'incitement' was the buzz word
for all fans with a victim complex.
Full of pompous indignation they would try and get players arrested
by reporting them to the coppers for the great crime of cupping a
hand to an ear.
Naturally enough, the rest of us laughed at this, poured scorn and
mockery onto those people. Get a perspective, grow up and take some
responsibility for your own actions, we all said. And this season,
I don't recall a single 'incitement' outrage or incident. The
vituperative response from the majority towards the minority who
wanted to make this an issue seems to have exercised a kind of
unspoken censorship.
Y'see, things do change for the better.
And it's not just in fans' behaviour. For at least a year we have
been lampooning Jamie Redknapp's attempts at punditry, largely
focusing the criticism around the fact that he prefixed every
sentence with the words top, top, quality, Richard. Yet, I watched
him on Sunday and those words no longer passed his lips. It's hard
not to think our collective jibbing has not had some effect there
and in doing so made him better at his job. Admittedly he does
still look like he's sitting on a disabled toilet. But it's a top,
top toilet, Richard.
But you see, things do change for the better.
Remember when Sven was out of favour as England manager and the
media and many fans were so jingoistic. Any English manager could
do as well if not better than Sven they said time and again.
That's changed totally. We don't hear that anymore because all of
us who said that was plainly rubbish - and there were many of us -
were vindicated by McClaren's rule of mediocrity. That view no
longer has any purchase in the football media or even at the FA -
who are slavish in toadying to the loudest voices.
Even little Englanders like Jeff Powell and Ian Wright have given
in and accepted they were wrong and that Capello is a good
appointment.
Indeed, after years of delusion about England, a more sensible
attitude is starting to prevail. The white van man's bull-headed
ignorance is diminished and voices of greater sanity are starting
to prevail. England players, as many people always knew, are good
but far from great.
The quiet voices that always said this used to be drowned out by
the Achtung Fritz jingoism of the mass media and the fog-horn beer
monsters in the pubs, but it has won out in the end. Even tabloid
journos like Brian Woolnough now refuse to call England players
great because great players win things and England have won
nothing. That's a victory for us.
Y'see times move on. Our beliefs do exert influence.
Even diving seems to have been reduced this season, largely due to
the opprobrium heaped upon players who do it. Even a dedicated and
very, very rubbish diver like Joe Cole seems to have eventually
begun to realise he's making an arse out of himself every time he
does one of those belly flops which not even the most blind England
or Chelsea fan can excuse.
In the court of the people, he has been found guilty. It still
happens, not least because referees get conned but players are
realising that they will look foolish in slow motion and from four
different camera angles if they do a swan dive in the box. If we
didn't laugh at them, mock them or call them cheats, it would only
happen more. The public court of justice takes effect.
Sky are about to broadcast another Grand Slam Sunday this weekend.
The whole Grand Slam concept has been so vilified, so mocked, so
despised, that it may be the last ever Grand Slam Sunday. It's
noticeable that they're not pumping it up in advance quite as much
as in previous years. Not least because fans have sussed that the
fixture list is fixed to create a TV media event and as such it
automatically loses any credibility. The matches still matter, but
the 'event' as it is sold to us, is laughable and bears no
scrutiny. The only grand slam is the sound of the door shutting on
an inappropriate piece of puffery.
Again, the court of public scrutiny is taking effect.
The much-vaunted notion that the Premier League is the best league
in the world - a notion put about by those with most to gain from
it becoming established i.e. those who profit from the high wages
paid to all concerned in the game and the media - is the next
sacred cow to be challenged and slaughtered. Not because Serie A or
La Liga or wherever is better or worse but because fans know that
this 'best league' moniker masks the fact that many games, the
majority of games in fact, are pretty boring and that a league
which can only be won by three out of 20 is at the very least
dysfunctional as a competition.
And it's happening. Even the guests on Sky are beginning to go
against the party line and tell the truth. Graeme Souness speaking
on the midweek European show said below the top four most of the
games you see are not that good. That surely chimes with most of
our own experiences.
Over coming seasons, if this continues to be true, it will be said
more and more and the idea that it's the bestest ever ever league
anywhere will be recognised as a by-word for the worst kind of
hype.
This is how attitudes change and how marketing can be nullified,
and sense and truth established.
But not everywhere.
At the BBC, things simply don't change. Despite
the torrent of criticism their coverage of football has received
for years - it's not just us on F365 that dislike it - some in the
mainstream media have also mocked their blandness and sloppy,
thoughtless work - it continues unchanged and unreformed. Without
going into another critique of MOTD (I've done that often enough),
it is not a controversial view to say it is a dull, smug and
over-staffed output with as many of four pundits present for
sometimes as little as 15 minutes of live work.
When so many other aspects of football on and off the pitch can
eventually be changed and modified to be better by public scrutiny
and judgement, why is the BBC so immune to that process of
change?
Simple.
They don't have to be. As long as the public is mandated by law to
pay them over £3billion a year - yes £3billion, they have no
incentive or reason to respond.
The market (us football fans in this case) cannot exert an
influence on the BBC because the BBC is immune from market forces
while simultaneously grossly distorting the market for those who
are not.
So keep voicing your opinions. Keep saying what needs to be said,
here and elsewhere, because change can happen and we don't have to
put up with the rubbish we're fed by those in the game or its
slavish media forever.
But if it's the BBC who is the subject of your ire, forget
it. You don't matter to them and if you withhold their income, they
will insist on putting you in jail. Being put in jail for
not paying the state broadcaster for owning a TV sounds like the
stuff of banana republics doesn't it?
I only raise it just so the point gets heard again. So it doesn't
get taken for granted. So that change can happen at some point in
the future, just has it's happened elsewhere.
But this time, the revolution will be televised.
http://www.football365.com/john_nicholson/0,17033,8746_3316191,00.html