A right jumble of thoughts today and no real ‘theme’, so bear with me. Some theme might emerge. What do they call it? Stream of Consciousness? “A literary method which aims to convey the multitudinous thoughts of the narrator.“ OK, I Googled it! This post could be a mess, thinks I.
Anyway, first in the stream, a raging torrent in a fairly tumultuous week. Farewell to Chris Hughton, a seemingly very decent man, but not winning any friends with the dire football served up. No win since April, which was also the last time we scored more than one goal. All things considered, we’re a pretty loyal fan base and we’ve stuck by plenty of managers in bad situations as long as there has been some entertainment to be had. But it had become unwatchable and unpleasant to experience. I don’t buy into the old “If you want entertaining, go to the circus,” thing as once suggested by Juve coach Massimiliano Allegri and perhaps more famously here, by the joyless Alan Durban, then at Stoke: “Who are we running soccer for?” he enquired, not expecting an answer, one suspects. “If you want entertainment, you could go out and get a bunch of clowns. If obtaining pleasure from matches is the only concern, then you could get rid of all the coaches and let the players go out and get on with it.”
Forest have tried pretty much every option in the past 20 years: wizened old-stagers; promising young coaches; British; Continental; and Billy Davies, a man in his own category of precisely one… All to no avail. It seems safe to assume the problems run deeper.
Hughton’s last match on Wednesday saw, for me, the best and worst of football fandom. You had well over 22,000 hardy souls turning out on a work night, willing a terrible team, no likelihood of entertainment, to get some points on the board. Plenty of gallows humour and no real getting on the players backs.
Boro: Going down, going down, going down.
Forest: So are we, so are we , so are we
Boro: Can we play you every week?
Forest: It’s only one nil, how shit must you be? It’s only one nil…
Boro: General celebrations
Forest: We lose every week, You’re nothing special, we lose every week…
Less nice was the joining in with “Sacked in the morning”, but understandable perhaps as a defence mechanism.
Also less funny, in my humble opinion, the current ‘trend’ for humourless, mindless abuse such as just repeatedly chanting “wanker” towards an opponent. It’s not clever or funny. The lads sat in front of us do it endlessly, always picking a target and sticking with him. So far this season, every target has been a black player. I hope this is a coincidence. Monitoring!
I swear like a fucking trooper. I believe in football as a place to healthily let off steam. Frank Skinner, not a favourite character of mine (see next bit), does a good spiel about the beauty of swearing in the right context. In fact, he even did a Panorama on it. He’s right. Swearing can add humour, emphasis and sometimes it just feels good to get it out there. Skinner again once told the story of a miserable night at West Brom, someone turning to berate the bloke behind who was swearing profusely. The poor feller, half broken by life, replied something like (I’m paraphrasing):
”Fucking hell, I’ve got a fucking shit job, a fucking horrible wife, fucking annoying kids… This is the only fucking fun I get and it’s fucking shit”
Skinner and those around him, just shrugged and went “Yep, can‘t argue with that. Carry on mate.”
Of course, Cloughie put up his famous ”No swearing, Gentlemen” sign directed at the Trent End, the irony here being that he was a prodigious swearer himself, though presumably with a self-censoring function which enabled him to pick his moments and audience. I can’t imagine him dropping the ‘c’ bomb in front of women and children as seems to happen routinely of late. Actually, not sure that’s one is appropriate at any time, though I’ve been known to myself amongst mates. Note to self to sort that out.
Back to Skinner, coincidentally. @Mr joey on Twitter mentioned Jason Lee this week, in the context of how we could use a player to hold the ball up. Also noting that JL scored more goals than Pierre van Hooijdonk for Forest. This reminded me of one of my pet annoyances, that Skinner and (supposedly particularly right-on) Baddiel seemed to totally get away with their vile ribbing of Lee back in the 90s. It was horrible at the time and, with the recent enlightenment about the inappropriateness of doing ‘black-face’, even more horrible now. They mocked his skin colour by blacking up; his hair-style (“He’s got a pineapple on his head”) which was a culturally appropriate and meaningful one for a black man; his ability - in truth far greater than theirs as comedians. Different times, yes, but as far as I can tell, no apology was ever given.
Finally, before getting to today’s football, Derby have gone into Administration, which seems to be the cause for much celebration at this end of Brian Clough Way. They face a possible 12 point deduction, which could yet be added to the 9 they’re facing for financial irregularities. Currently on 7 points, worst case scenario for them there is minus 14. Fifteen behind us. They’d have to fancy their chances of overhauling us! I’m no Derby fan, but take no pleasure in seeing anyone’s football club in this state. We need rivals, local ones, especially now that any ‘real’ success is unlikely. We can enjoy the pantomime of a Derby, hate them for 90 minutes, enjoy winning, despair (briefly) at defeat to them. All gone if they’re not there to play. Sad really, and indicative of the way things are going finance-wise in a week when social media is reviving the possibility of a multi-billion Qatari take-over of Arsenal, which has their fans salivating.
Me, I’m keeping it real with yet another trip up to Maltby, fast becoming my very favourite place to watch football… Up The Miners!
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