Ross County played St Johnstone last Friday on the BBC; the two relegated sides from last season are promotion favourites. Leanne Crichton has gone to manage Rangers, so ex-County manager and St Johnstone forward Billy Dodds is punditing. Chelsea v Bayer Leverkusen was on 5 and DAZN but who needs that flatulence? Normally I’d have watched Birmingham City v Ipswich Town as I think both will have a tilt at promotion, but Scottish football always takes precedence.
Dingwall is a modest wee ground. The Global Energy Stadium holds 6,541 and a good crowd had turned out at the country’s most northerly league ground. At half time Michael Stewart talked about how Scotland is very central belt focused but how important Ross Country are to the highlands and what a great place it is to play football.
It is important to remember such things as the big brands flex their financial muscles while pretending they care about anything other than money.
It was a tightly contested game with rubbish finishing and few good chances until the County goalkeeper came to punch and didn’t get there for a back pedalling back-post header. St Johnstone won 1-0 but both sides needed effective strikers. Faddy has backed them for the title but they’ll need to make and take more chances.
The weekend revealed the enormity of choice now available to us. Not just all the EFL games (most of which would have had tiny audiences) but all the National League too if you’ve paid DAZN, which I imagine few have. Is this what people want? There’s only so much football anyone can have time to see. It’s starting to look desperate as Sky in particular has become utterly dependent on live sport as they lose eyes to a thousand different streaming options. The assumption is that there’s always an audience for football. Well we’ll see if that’s true as they show ever more games to justify the rights fees they’ve been forced to pay to keep the asset which they are praying keeps people subscribing.
There’s nowhere left to go now; they can’t show more games unless they get rid of the 3pm blackout, which they obviously will. Strikes me they’re selling the family silver to pay the next bill without a thought for the future. They can’t back out now, even if no one watches all their games. They’ve become slaves to the thing they invented and can’t sell it to anyone else anymore. This is a last throw of a dice that was loaded in their favour for decades, though I’m sure – knowing the blinkered arrogance of media directors – the irony is lost on them.
Meanwhile, Amazon has quietly exited the Premier League stage and just has a bit of Champions League left. Their worthless dalliance with football was so unoriginal and thoughtless. What happened to all that positive talk they tried to con us with? It was always a project no one believed in or cared about and it deserves to fail.
TNT announced Gareth Bale to replace Rio as a pundit with such great acclaim, apparently impressed with his work last season, though I think we’re entitled to be cynical about TNT execs ability to spot talent, given their track record.
The Brugge derby was on DAZN but I’m not paying; do they really think anyone will pay to watch the Jupiler Pro League? But first there was Southampton v Wrexham to be negotiated which came with a 90-minute intro. I think they’re more keen than we are. Comms Gary Weaver and Andy Hinchcliffe were full of new season excitement. The pundits included the Brexit Bulldog who, as ever, looked like he’d lost his legs and found some shoes. Ben Tozer, a journeyman who played for Wrexham, made up a low energy, flat-vowelled sofa with Jobi McAnuff.
Southampton didn’t look any better than last year. They played a better second half but Wrexham had the confidence of a thrice consecutively promoted side only for Southampton to throw on all their attackers, go for broke and score a brilliant last-minute free-kick to get out of jail. They even nicked it at the death. Undeserved really because until the last 10 minutes they were fairly unthreatening and Wrexham should have scored more. But they tired. Southampton manager Will Still’s head looks like a side of breaded ham.
Soccer Saturday was back and was a preferable destination than any of the live games. Merse says Middlesbrough are a big club, which will be news to Teessiders. The reports from games are odd because the reporter starts describing what has happened, then they show it, making the reporter’s efforts redundant.
Later, Bristol City monstered a poor Sheffield United side with some sharp finishing and only around 30% of the ball. Not sure if one side was good or the other was particularly bad but United were certainly sloppy and wasteful in possession as well as poorly organised defensively. Bristol City won 4-1 and it could have been much more. The habit of interviewing players on the pitch after the game is daft; it’s always likely to catch them at their ‘yeah, no, obviously I‘m delighted’ witless cliched best. Doesn’t seem fair and adds nothing.
And with that, I went to the Fringe and forgot about football and became a normal person for three days.
I returned refreshed by bouncing my wheelchair over cobbles for three days and marvelling at how stupid some people are when confronted by disability. Do you really think I’d put it on to jump a queue for which I not only have a ticket but there is no reserved seating, mate? The staff have to first accommodate us cripples (and do a marvellous job I may say). It’s not all about what’s in your head, pr*ck. The c*nt never thinks they’re the c*nt, this much I’ve learned.
But that’s all behind me now, it’s time for Spurs v PSG on TNT. Will they have changed their brilliant but sh*te nature under that nice Mr Frank, who still looks like the keyboard man in a prog-metal outfit from the early 90s. But this gig ain’t no dream theatre for Spurs as they lost a two-goal lead and a penalty shootout, of course they did, but they played really well for 85 minutes and PSG had to change their shape to draw level. Djed Spence was superb. He must have learned how to defend like that at Middlesbrough. But ultimately it was reliably Spursy, proving the DNA deep phenomenon is not even personnel-related.
We were back in Europe with Hibs on Thursday playing Partizan Belgrade, which was on BBC Scotland. Hibs were the first British club to compete in Europe and got to the semi-final of the European Cup in 1955/56 and also in the Fairs Cup in 1960/61. Partizan were European Cup runners up in 1966. Sadly, those glory days of achievement are long gone.
Hibs started this second leg of the Europa Conference League third qualifying round 2-0 up. Jonathan Sutherland was on duty at the kitchen island with Lewis Stevenson and Scott Allan. There’s no pretence of neutrality on the comms’ I suppose no one would believe it if they pretended.
Two massive and quite pathetically hopeless goalkeeping errors from Jordan Smith, who later played well, drew them level. Michael Stewart was disgusted and called it unacceptable and seemed shocked at how Hibs had handed them two goals. But Keiron Bowie scored a sensational goal. I doubt we’ll see a better one all season anywhere. But Partizan levelled it with the last kick. Extra time beckoned with commentator Al Lamont sounding weary from the tension and was almost surprised when Hibs scored and won without a penalty shoot-out. They made hard work of that. Great game though.
And with that the close season ended and the Premier League lumbered back into view like a bull in a bathroom, pretending nothing else matters or even exists except as a resource for them to plunder. From now to May it will be wall-to-wall football as they test our capacity to watch football like never before.
