Cod Almighty | Diary

They are eating all the pies

24 August 2021

The Bromley game has been rescheduled for 28 September, kick off 7:45pm. Not too long to wait, I suppose.

Waiting. Fingers drumming, nails not yet bitten clacking against the cheap veneer of desks and tables across the town. The football calendar is the watched kettle, Town not even warm yet and we wait for the final weekend of August to see if there are any chances of a season in which we might boil. Eight teams kicked off with a win and we're left home alone, forgotten, forlorn, a Frappuccino without caffeine, a frittata without eggs, a fish without fingers.

A fish finger sandwich is best served on white bread with brown sauce. Four fingers are perfect. Plenty of butter. Don't overdo the HP. Mrs A46 Diary prefers salad cream. Eldest and youngest will thank you for tomato sauce, and middle once cried at the sight of a fish finger sandwich while on a day trip in London.

Traumatic foods would have to include the burgers sold at Blundell Park. We've heard much about the new and improved standards at the food kiosks. Fingers (fish or otherwise) crossed for some truth to that.

Standards. We're waiting for those too, and not just from Town, but from football.
Waiting isn't a game. If it was it would be a poor one. Football is a game and much of it is played in a poor state. The money in football is grossly unequal and only set to be more so.

Real Madrid have distanced themselves from reports that they had considered the viability of joining the English Premier League where games are no longer games but eggless frittatas as the study of evidence becomes more important than the play. They are live court cases rather than competitions.

Madrid’s denial only highlights their dissatisfaction with the division of money in Europe. They must make it "fairer" for themselves, thereby ensuring that a European super league will eventually emerge. Barcelona's recent struggles only increase the inevitable; there's little chance that these clubs will not be allowed to compete and they certainly will not be allowed to fail. Their need, real or otherwise, for superstars will see the rules bent for them. Spanish champions, Athletico Madrid, begin this season on the closest they've ever been to a level playing field. They are able to keep their team together and strengthen as the money outside the Premier League falls into the Covid drain. Their own debts of £500m+ are serviceable and small compared with Barcelona's. That they are acceptable and simply seen as part of the cost of running clubs like those in the Premier League, Barcelona (FCB’s wage bill is 103 per cent of its income) and Madrid indicates the inevitability of a super league of some kind.

For clubs like GTFC such behaviour would not be acceptable. Credit always favours those who need it least. The big super leaguers, whoever they would have been, have needs way beyond our comprehension, similar in principle but so outrageously selfish, so obscenely privileged, that we are no longer connected. Even the fluke of the domestic cup draws do not bring us together, not in any real sense. Mo Salah and the rest would not play at Blundell Park in an imagined fourth round FA Cup tie. We are not for the likes of them, and we shouldn't pretend it's about players being "rested". Not risked would be closer to the truth. Or maybe it's the need to play the surplus from bloated academies.

Your A46 Diary has a quotation for all occasions. This one is from Dickens A Christmas Carol: "Oh God! to hear the Insect on the leaf pronouncing on the too much life among his hungry brothers in the dust." This is from the ghost of Christmas Present to Scrooge after the old miser had complained of surplus and how it is somehow the fault of those who suffer rather than those who create the excess and simply sit on it like dragons on their hoards. In that imaginary fourth round tie, we must doff our caps and pray for a replay. Of course, we wait for those to be scrapped as well.

We're still waiting for capitalism to eat itself and the same goes for the mighty in football. We're waiting for them to go, and once they do, once they've got their split and they no longer need look over their shoulders at Leicester City, then perhaps the rest of us can get on with football as entertainment, not an argument over money dragged through a court of law posing as a football ground.

We will wait, fish finger sandwiches on hand, and hope to get a game to watch on a Saturday.