phenorbitalBlog of a graduate working in banking IT in London.

English FootballFiled Under: Rants

So, this week saw the end of the first transfer window in the English football season, and therefore lots of high profile movings for large amounts of money (especially with Manchester City getting a cash injection from their new owners). This got me thinking about the state of English league football, and I don’t like it.

It’s been going on for a while really, with the domination of Manchester United and Arsenal of the Premiership (between them winning all but one of the first 12 seasons of the league’s existence) and the presence of Chelsea and Liverpool within the group that have become known as “the big four” - a name not given to them for the average weight of their players, but their bank balance.

With the exception of Blackburn Rovers (who were the one exception to Manchester United/Arsenal’s rule of the first dozen seasons) the only team to have won the premiership is Chelsea, who first lifted the trophy at the end of the 2004-05 season and retained it the following year. Of course, it comes as no surprise that they managed this after a large cash injection from their newfound Russian owner, Roman Abramovic. Many accused them of buying the title, which is a fair comment, but also a fair tactic.

These days it seems that the league is more and more about how money you can invest in buying players at the inflated premiums they seem to have at the moment. Manchester City, as mentioned above, have recently acquired a large cash injection and used this to break the English transfer record with their shock purchase of Robhino. Reports are also around that they’re willing to offer local rivals Manchester United up to £133million for Christiano Ronaldo when the January window opens. This is just ludicrous, but the owners want to get some silverware, and this is the way they’ve chosen to go about it.

All of this, to me, makes the league far less entertaining. You can predict, with almost certainty, that one of the big four will win the league, and it probably won’t be Liverpool. You can guess that the smaller teams, probably those recently promoted such as Hull and Stoke, will get relegated - and you know that the rest will fall somewhere in the mediocraty between. It’s not that fun.

Contrast this, however, to different leagues in other sports such as American football’s NFL. In this league there are salary caps, stricter rules on transfers between teams (with free agents and restricted free agents etc), sharing of revenue from television and ticket sales between teams regardless of size and, by no means least, the draft. In this each year the worst team from the previous season gets to select the player they most want from those coming into the league from college football, giving them the opportunity to get the best new player before the other clubs (who pick in order of success with the Superbowl winners going last). All in all this leads to a league where, as the phrase goes, on any given sunday any team can beat another - regardless of form, as was shown with the Superbowl upset this year where the Giants beating the Patriots (who had been unbeaten and had beaten the Giants at the end of the regular season).

Of course, there’s no way FIFA could introduce something similar into football now, the leagues are far too established and there’d be uproar from fans of the currently successful clubs. It’s also worth remembering that the premiership has penalties for finishing low down (relegation), where the NFL has anything but. With this in mind I guess we’re going to be stuck watching the big four continue their dominance, and perhaps we’ll see Man City make something of the millions of pounds of investment, but for entertainment - I’ll be glad happily watching the NFL now that the season has started again.

Tags: entertainment, football, nfl, premiership, sports

Dilbert.comFiled Under: Rants

Congratulations to the guys responsible for the redesign of Dilbert.com, not only does it now take forever to load with the mass of flash and other nonsense that has been dumped on it, but the comic doesn’t display (using either Firefox or Opera on Linux with the latest flashplayer). It somewhat defeats the point of a comic site and this whole thing looks like the idea of some sort of PHB, so I wonder if the irony will be apparent to them.

Tags: broken, dilbert.com, fail, flash, web2.0

BusesFiled Under: Rants

Buses are the worst form of public transport in existence. This is a fact that I had grown to accept and understand during my time living in Leeds, I knew that they weren’t going to show up on time (if they showed up at all) and I accepted it. Unfortunately I’ve since moved to London where the public transport system (tube and DLR anyway) works more often than not.

So, when I come to head back to Leeds this weekend, I have no problem navigating from my flat to King’s Cross, nor from there over the hundreds of miles back to Leeds; even going so far as to arrive early! Happy with the progress public transport had allowed me to make thus far I wandered out of the train station and to the bus stop. This is where the problems arose.

At the bus stop is a sign with the next three buses, none of which were the one I wanted. I consulted the timetable, and it said “at least every 10 minutes” so I figured that’d be fine. So ten minutes pass. Then twenty. Eventually the sign now displays three of the bus I want, with the ETA of “due”… great. Finally, after about thirty minutes they all show up at once.

Ah well, I did eventually make it here, but I bet it’ll only be worse on Thursday when I come to make the return journey.

Tags: argh, braindump, public transport