Wichita Lineman Was A Song I Once Heard

There are three reasons why I’m doing this column a few weeks earlier this year.

First, if you’re going to consistently make terrible predictions, as I do, you might as well be first and avoid accusations of imitation.

Second, waiting an extra three weeks until mid-August to publish on the eve of the first round of games, just to see what additional transfer business sides do, has, in my case, proven to be theoretically beneficial, not actually.

Third, it’s been just over a week since the World Cup ended, and I have thoughts. So why not throw said musings in the preverbal dustbin that is this annual prediction piece monstrosity?

The World Cup final was a predictably grotesque event. We were treated to endless shots of celebrities in the crowd and a bizarre, cobbled together at random, half-time show that had the aura of an end times mashup.

It started pre-kick off with the closing ceremony, which involved Robbie Williams and a ridiculous barnet that only a celebrity going through a mid-life crisis would have the audacity to sport. Quite why or how Robbie got the gig in the first place remains a mystery. Has he done anything relevant in the last twenty years? One theory is that the inexecrable “Rock DJ” is one of Trump’s favourite songs.

Speaking of has-beens, there was a preposterous preponderance of them at half time. Madonna was paired with Ronaldinho and Ronaldo and they made an entrance together in a beach buggy type thingy. Madge’s shaky gait suggested she should’ve used her walker for safety. A broken femur at her age is no joke. It was unclear if Ronaldinho and Ronaldo (the OG one) knew who Madonna was and if she knew who they were. The picture of Madonna standing next to a now portly Ronnie gave us a visual comparison with Katie Price and Harvey, so that was something, at least.

You could feel the collective eyeroll at the Ted Lasso bit from those in the crowd and anyone watching anywhere on the planet. Justin Bieber looked every inch the drab reformed fentanyl addict – Charlie Sheen at least battled addiction with a degree of panache and flamboyance. Shakira and the lads in BTS must’ve wondered how they came to be involved in this load of bollocks.

I watched the match on the BBC. It was Hobson’s choice, either put up with ITV’s gauche coverage and Gary Neville (I’ve had enough of him now), or go with the BBC and suffer through Micah Richards. Watching the BBC coverage did reveal that we live in a timeline where Wayne Rooney’s hair transplant is better than another human’s – in this case Joe Hart’s.

On the subject of humans with follicle foibles, I had a bet with someone that, during the trophy presentation, Trump would hold on to the World Cup trophy for an uncomfortably long time. Turns out I was half right, it was actually Infantino that did (because of course it was). Trump actually behaved fairly normally (for him). Did the obvious booing chide him? Infantino’s behaviour was no surprise. This guy is a stranger to shame and humility. He’s obsessed with attention, material opulence and we already know how brazenly he flaunts his corrupt and obsequious nature. This fucking guy is worse than Sepp Blatter.

Other than the final being a drab match, thanks to Argentina being so utterly outclassed that they started to self-harm, I enjoyed the whole six weeks. Spain were worthy champions and reminded us that teamwork and technique are a hard combination to best. Most of the knockout matches were competitive and most sides tried to attack. Those that didn’t often didn’t last long.

VAR use was a mixed bag. From accusations of white supremacist hand gestures, to the rough but just sending off the Swiss lad for diving via the misuse of the mistaken identity rule (I had no clue this was even a thing either), to some ludicrous decisions to disallow goals – the phantom touch on the head of the Croatian attacker denying them a late equalizer against Portugal (snicko technology my arse) and disallowing Germany’s goal in extra time against Paraguay for someone barely resting their arm on the goalkeeper and him falling down. The latter was especially egregious as it meant we all had to suffer watching a negative, nasty and cynical Paraguay side play another football match as they snuck through on penalties. Germany versus France would’ve been a better match. Mostly VAR proved to be great fodder for conspiracy theories and suspicions of corruption. All it revealed to me is that the refereeing profession seems to have a tendency to attract incompetent people who cannot comprehend the sport they’re officiating.

The typical calls from the politicians to unify and get behind England were especially galling, hypocritical and yes, in this economic climate, tone deaf, when their support for people working multiple gig economy/zero-hour jobs or those having to use food banks to feed themselves is scant. Many of them are also happy to lick the arse of the trillionaire wanker who can’t resist meddling in UK politics and offer diplomatic support to Israel. There’s a reason why most people loathe and reject the technocratic Oxbridge class who constantly (and dismissively) tell us this form of economic and political orthodoxy is the best we can hope for.

As per usual England fell short due to a lack of ambition and quality in possession when they needed it most, an impulsive error prone goalkeeper with T-Rex arms and Tuchel eschewing guile for too much graft and defenders. England have a decent collection of players, Harry Kane is a first-rate centre forward, and have depth of quality at full back and in the attacking midfield positions, so it’s justifiable to not start with Cole Palmer and Trent Alexander-Arnold. But given some who made the squad were so lacking in creativity or quality, to not have them in the squad as options isn’t.

Anyway, the plastic furniture in Atlanta took a hell of beating, middle-aged men dressed in crusader chainmail were sobbing in the stands and we were all relieved not to endure another fucking shitty rendition of Wonderwall. In a moment of weakness and pettiness, that a man in his mid-forties should be beyond, I took to Twitter to revel in English schadenfreude, mainly through memes and banter, after their late collapse to Argentina. Unfortunately, and in a sign of the times, the algorithm did not meet me with piffy memes and one-liners, but the snarling jingoism and xenophobia that characterizes self-loathing Reform gammon and it aggressively promoted tweets from Winston Marshall’s account – at least that dark ten-minute detour forced me off that rotten platform again, for good this time.

Yes, it’s that Winston Marshall, previously of the contrived tweed clad faux folk outfit Mumford & Sons, who has reinvented himself as a portentous podcaster sympathetic to guests with neo-conservative, pro-oligarchy, colonialist and segregationist perspectives, because the format doesn’t have enough of these viewpoints already represented in its ecosystem. Why is he a thing? The obvious, and seemingly only, explanation – his old man is a hedge-fund manager worth several hundreds of millions of pounds and owns GB News and The Spectator. His views are as you’d expect from a nepo baby of such privilege and ideological grooming – bitter jibes about Argentinians being cheats and cowards with smug slop about winning the war in the Falkland Islands (you weren’t even born you fucking cunt). A further examination revealed little that I didn’t already suspect; Muslims are scum and need to leave, poor people are all lazy, deregulated capitalism and privatization worked for my Dad – so fuck you, cut taxes for the rich as they create wealth, hints at believing in the great replacement theory, immigration is bad (but wealthy people from Hong Kong are fine!), retweeting stuff by Graham Linehan and Matt Goodwin, the woke left are deranged and a threat to democracy – but uncle Nige isn’t, the unquestioning support of Israel destroying towns and cities in other countries and killing tens of thousands in the process. Mark E. Smith is a legend for many reasons – he once threw a glass bottle at Mumford & Sons at Glastonbury. Sadly though, he missed.

Speaking of missing, here’s my predictions for the upcoming Premier League season. Is this the season where we finally hear the chant of “Our autocratic petrostate or consortium of oligarchs is richer than yours”? Will I finally be able to predict anything correctly? A quick look at last year’s column makes for grim reading, or a laugh, depending on your perspective. I fell into the trap, groupthink in all honesty, that the three promoted sides would all drop straight back down for the third year in a row, and that this was now a concrete trend. Never forget – a trend is only a trend until it ends, and they all do. I also picked Brentford to struggle, and they didn’t. Liverpool would’ve repeated had I not picked them, so of course they had a shambolic season and sacked their title winning manager for being boring. United sacked their incompetent manager and had a competent second half of the season with an interim manager. I had Spurs finishing eighth! I give up. At least I called Viktor Gyökeres being a flop. He is shite. Fortunately for Arsenal, it didn’t matter.

Relegation:

Coventry to stay up. It should be noted that Sunderland and Leeds United survived by playing football last season, especially at home, while Burnley, who were defensive, got emphatically relegated. Coventry scored ninety-seven goals last season. They won’t in the Premier League, but the intent will be there. I expect Hull City, who won the playoffs, to go straight back down, they lack quality, only had a goal difference of plus four in last season’s Championship, and haven’t added any Premier League calibre players. Ipswich have a new manager despite getting promoted, so who knows. But I’ll pick them to finish in the bottom three due to ignorance.

So, one more to go down. Mid-table clubs who have new managers are always candidates. Fulham and Palace are two. Fulham look vulnerable to me. Alvaro Arbeloa is the G-Tech Xabi Alonso, they’ve lost Harry Wilson and the only worthwhile striker they had in Raul Jimenez. But I just have a hunch that Forest will really struggle. They’ve sold Elliott Anderson, and they struggled to score goals last season without Chris Wood impersonating Marco Van Basten. And just how will Oliver Glasner’s tendencies for fastidiousness and to meddle where he shouldn’t coexist with the tempestuousness of owner Evangelos Marinakis? Not for long, given Marinakis is a disgusting fatbody weirdo control freak who sees managers as more disposable than his skid marked undies. Also, surely there has to be some form of karmic recompense or consequence for coldly sacking Vitor Pereira right before his contract became binding for another season in late June – this after he saved Marinakis from his imbecilic, and likely cataclysmic, firing of three managers in the space of eight months. The way Marinakis runs Forest reminds me of QPR a decade or so ago, eventually all the calamity and instability will doom them.

Thursday Night Wankers

Yes, I’m picking Spurs to end their humiliating two year run of seventeenth placed finishes by earning the humiliation of qualifying for the Conference League. They also own the most shocking transfer of the summer to date, paying £85m for Matheus Fernandes. There’s a month left of the transfer window, and Chelsea football club are operating, so this may prove a foolishly presumptuous statement, but, given he played for a relegated club and nobody else seemed interested in paying over £50m for him, I can’t see a more preposterous transfer fee occuring in this window.

I could spend quite a bit of time lamenting how transfer fees have escalated. Suffice to say it’s a clear symptom, not that another example was required, of the super-rich getting richer, and that the proceeds of our labour is being squandered by them, albeit, in this case, we’re handing over our cash voluntarily for an entertainment product.

Villa to struggle. They’ve sold their best player to Chelsea, lost Tielemans to United and Onana to injury. I admire Emery, he’s wily and not to be underestimated, but getting the underwhelming Garnacho on loan and gazumping Newcastle for a midfielder from the Bundesliga doesn’t feel as though it’s giving him enough to cope with the demands of maintaining a top four place and competing in the Champions League.

Champions

The boring choice here would be Arsenal. They’re finally champions, they have a boring, functional (but effective) style of play, and they have a degree of continuity that most of the other top sides do not. Mikel Arteta has been in charge at Arsenal longer than Chelsea, Liverpool, Manchester City, Manchester United and Tottenham’s managers combined, which, is something.

Manchester City would also be fairly predictable. They’ve won seven of the last ten Premier League titles after all. Yes, Enzo Maresca isn’t Pep Guardiola, but I reckon you could put the lettuce that outlasted Liz Truss in charge and they’d still finish no worse than third. I too have given up that a verdict on their charges of financial impropriety will ever escape legal purgatory. Maresca isn’t concerned about it – because of course he isn’t.

Despite being somewhat provocative with this pick, I’m also being chickenshit as fuck. If I really didn’t care about being a laughing stock I would’ve picked Spurs. Seventeenth to first! It would make Leicester City’s miracle rise a decade ago seem mundane. But I just couldn’t do it, it’s Spurs for God sake.

I couldn’t plump for Manchester United either. Michael Carrick as a title winning manager, it just doesn’t seem conceivable. That and this United squad isn’t to be trusted. It strikes me as the kind of group that performs when the pressure is off and folds when expectations are raised (think Liverpool in the nineties, United before Alex Ferguson arrived or Spurs since forever), and it’s fitting that Bruno Fernandes is their captain, as he perfectly embodies this flaw. United, invariably, court hype – even when it’s unwarranted. Now they’re expected to contend for the league having not done so in nearly fifteen years and having achieved Champions League qualification for the first time in two years by default – they benefitted from a number of other clubs being in disarray for longer than they were last season. How will they handle a) playing every three days and b) if things are more competitive for the top four? Not comfortably.

So that leaves Chelsea or Liverpool, both have new managers, but only one of these managers has ever won anything and only one of these clubs seems interested in buying players to help their new manager. Quick note – it’s Chelsea, not City, that conclusively proves that the Premier League is Laissez-faire and in hoc to financial might equaling right. Chelsea have spent £300m so far this summer with no European football, no front of shirt sponsor, a suspended ban from signing first team players and are currently serving a nine-month academy transfer ban due to financial irregularities. What a piss take.

I’ll concede my rationale for picking Chelsea to win the league has the whiff of the shit-for-brains analysis that characterizes the sad bastard transfer obsessives on Twitter. It also wouldn’t surprise me in the slightest, given my deadly track record, if it all goes tits up for Alonso at Chelsea and that he lasts barely longer than Liam Rosenior’s cringeworthy one hundred and seven day tenure. Let’s not forget that the people who hired Rosenior are still running the club, and they’ve gone through five managers in four years. I’m not sure Roman Abramovich managed that.

I’m picking them with the aid of an analogy that has a suitably arbitrary logic. If you throw enough darts at the dartboard, you’ll hit the bullseye eventually. Chelsea do certainly throw enough darts, both in cycling through managers and buying players. Maybe they run out of darts – meaning achieve financial ruin – first. Or maybe this is the one time it all works out? Who needs judgement or nous when hope in randomness and a proclivity for idiotic repetitiveness might work.

I’ll say this much, applying logic when picking who will win the league has never worked. It would be quite something if this Chelsea omnishambles dis-proved Einstein’s definition of insanity while aligning with my decision to eschew any semblance of methodology. Well, it’s worth a try, at least.

Predicted Table:

1. Chelsea

2. Arsenal

3. Manchester City

4. Liverpool

5. Manchester United

6. Aston Villa

7. Tottenham Hotspur

8. Brighton & Hove Albion

9. Bournemouth

10. Brentford

11. Crystal Palace

12. Everton

13. Newcastle United

14. Fulham

15. Sunderland

16. Leeds United

17. Coventry City

18. Nottingham Forest

19. Ipswich Town

20. Hull City