Cod Almighty | Diary
Haven't you got something more important to worry about?
1 February 2017
To liken the departure of a beloved player to the break-up of a relationship is an exhausted and empty old trope, the fall-back position of football writers short on time, imagination or both. And whaddayaknow, a few short hours after watching Omar Bogle's departure live on Twitter, that's exactly how your original/regular Diary is presenting today. Short on time and imagination, exhausted, and empty. Just leave me alone.
So it's not just like being dumped. It's not just like being dumped by a partner we knew all along was too good for us, and who we were pleasantly surprised had shacked up with us in the first place. It's like those things and then some. It's like those things, and then watching said partner, instead of moving properly upmarket, settling for second best all over again. And then being surprised to find that this makes the pain somehow worse. Please stop saying Omar "deserves" his move to Wigan. It sounds like you hate him. He deserves better than that.
This is, I know, entirely unfair to the genuine, honest, well-intentioned and loyal supporters of Wigan Athletic. Dave Whelan wasn't their fault. None of it is their fault. I'm sorry. At the same time I don't care. I'm sorry.
But please stop asking, also, whether this transfer represents "good business" for the club, or expressing any opinion at all on this issue, either negative or affirmative. For one thing, no-one outside the club has the remotest idea, because we don't know the transfer fee. For another, far more important thing, I don't care. I have looked everywhere for a fuck to give about how much money Town have been paid for the transfer of Omar Bogle, and I have failed to find one. In my coat pockets, behind the fridge, in the depths of my soul. Zero fucks.
Why is this? It is because the finances of football clubs – like transfer speculation and "refusing to rule out a move", like who says what about which referee, like workplace "banter", like half-arsed pundits' twopenn'orth on who should manage England, as if it makes any bastard difference – are not the same thing as football. I like watching football. I want my club to be well run and well thought of. I want the game to be well run. Beyond that, I am not interested in any of this other stuff. I am not a meta-football supporter. I'm a football supporter. I'm interested in the actual football.
Most of all, don't urge me to "get over it" or "move on", or any of the other increasingly offensive and clichéd terms for suppressing one's emotions that are fashionable this year. No player is bigger than any club, and I will get over it, of course, in time. But we wouldn't watch the football at all if it didn't connect with us emotionally, and this means we form emotional attachments to particular players, especially if their performances make us very happy indeed. I'm not professing to speak for other supporters, but on many occasions, most of all a certain day last May, Omar Bogle made me very happy indeed.
You might have a point about some of it. Maybe Town's 34-strong playing squad will immediately gel, and won't require an entire new pre-season to adapt to each other. I don't know. Perhaps the club is being run on a sensible footing and there is a rational basis for acquiring so many central midfielders. Maybe. Right now I don't want to hear it. Today isn't the time. Just leave me alone.
Speaking of bad timing, GTFC decided to release a new video on YouTube at almost half past ten last night – a minute or two before the signing of Sam Jones was announced, and while fans were still on tenterhooks about the destiny of Bogle. If you haven't seen it – and why would you have? – then I'll save you the bother.
It's four minutes of the great and the good telling you Blundell Park is shit, and no minutes at all of it occurring to anyone that Blundell Park has been deliberately run down by the club for years in anticipation of a move to a replacement stadium/leisure complex for which the regime is still yet to offer any foundation-level market research, still less any detail on underpinning finance and ownership beyond a cheesy image with Photoshopped fireworks and development company with little more in the way of relevant experience than building a penguin enclosure. Good job we're all stupid enough to just swallow the PR and propaganda and not ask any difficult questions, really.
I know what'll happen. I'll publish this diary, we'll push it out on Twitter, you'll come back about how "negative" it all sounds, how I haven't even talked about Jones and that kid from Everton, I can't remember his name now, somebody Dyson. I don't care. I'm feeling exhausted and empty. If you're not, I'm glad for you. Enjoy your day. Enjoy the rest of the season. Obviously I'll see you Saturday at the back of the Pontoon.