Like A Broken Record

God I wish I had written this before I tried to order Stoke tickets! I had it all planned in my head, and, after humiliating SkyTVisf**kings**t’s Salford FC – incidentally one of the best songs ever – SkyTV are three nil down – and four points from the first 2 games, it was all going swimmingly well. We had a right laugh at the entertainment in Prestwich, not just the result but when one of the Salford fans ran on the pitch at Kiko’s end, got the ball and then tried to shoot but missed horribly, it just topped it all off. That is as much as you can top off a Beradi goal.

But, once again, my nemesis Stoke reared it’s ugly head, and like a broken record, I was dragged down to the depths of oblivion that is otherwise known as ticket ordering day.

So the chipper, cheeky observations of the closed season and our brilliant start against Bristol have now been dampened with the double dose wet blankets of “sorry the number of requested tickets exceeds the quantity available” and “please select a quantity”. Those of you who are reading this and don’t know what I am on about – count yourselves lucky!

If anyone wants to be refreshed on my opinions of away ticket selling procedures and people who will be here on in be referred to as “the people who returned their Ipswich tickets as soon as we didn’t look like we were going to get promoted”, please look back to whatever blog I did last season and the facebook posts from there. I can’t bear repeating myself as I do sound like a broken record.

So, summer summary then. We kept hold of Bielsa – THE END. Smiley emoticon.

 

Ok, we got rid of Pontus for a (miserly) amount of pennies, but hey – no one else came in for him and by all accounts Bielsa was never going to pick him again. There were shouts of derision all over unsocial media about the paltry fee, but if he was that good – why didn’t any other teams want him? Surely the Norwich/Burnley/Southampton/Brighton/Bournemouth mid table mediocrity / clinging-on-to-stay-in-the-Premiership clubs would be able to afford him, especially with the oodles that they get from just being in the Premiership.  But no, not even one tiny snifter from a Premier League club. The silence speaks volumes.

Roofe – Adios amigo! Shame about how often you got injured, you tried your best being played out of position for so long and when you did get your scoring boots you were on fire. I bet you were massively disappointed that the only song you really got was Rooooofe. It took a while for you to realise we were singing your name rather awkwardly, rather than throwing a load of abuse at you. Even better it put the backs up of every perpetually offended apologist, who thought they could jump on the “Leeds United are a bunch of racists” bandwagon because they couldn’t! On a positive note, you aren’t going to miss all those Leeds fans who constantly slagged you off (you know who you are!!!). I hope the Anderlecht fans reward you with a better song but realistically a few more clinical finishes may have got us promoted and you may have signed another contract for us, had we gone up. But then we wouldn’t have got Eddie Nketiah who was class last night. 7 million is not so bad a deal. At least the Anderlecht fans will never be able to slate you as much as Leeds fans did, as Flemish is hardly recognisable as a proper language. (Oh no, the apologists are going to have a pop at me now for being Flemish intolerant.)

Clarke – as about unexpected as a conclusion in an episode of Roald Dahl’s Tales of The Unexpected 1970’s television series, – he got sold. After those fantastic runs in from the wing last season, being paraded on SkyTVisf**kings**t and the EFL show on Quest (how do I go about getting money for promoting them) and probably helped on by a load of chelping from his agent, he went to a bigger club for bigger bucks. As the phrase goes – no s**t Sherlock. Great that Spurs have let us have him back ( seeing as he was never going to play for their first team anyway this season) but with Costa and Harrison here now, and young Jamie Shackleton on the up – how many starts are you going to get with us this season?

FFP and balancing the books. I’m not going to bore you all by pretending I know the ins and outs of it – because like 95% of football fans in this country, I haven’t got a clue. It was made up by a group of people who’s only goal is to keep the “bigger” teams where they were and to make sure none of the “smaller” teams would never get the chance to usurp the “bigger” ones. It’s another example of changing the goalposts, just so it keeps everyone in their rightful place. It’s a bit like after Watford got promoted with almost an entire team of Italian loan players and then the season after they bought in a new regulation about the maximum number of loan players you can have in a team… But FFP is much more about money. How much you have, how much you can “lie” about what you have, how creative your “accountant” is, how good the lawyers are when it comes to finding loopholes, how many times you can sell your ground and then buy it back for pittance, how good you are at getting a “sponsor” to pay the wages of your coach… the list is endless. But like most things it boils down to money.

The long and short of all of this, is that what happened in the summer happened. We still have Bielsa and that is good enough for me. We have lost players but judging by our massive (7) changes to the team – unlike the 11 changes we and other clubs have made previously in the Cup early rounds, we play really well still. There is so much that happens behind closed doors, and short of bugging the offices at ER, we will NEVER know what has truly gone on. We, as fans , are just left with what we have, and it’s still looking good. As for what has really happened, the truth…? I’m not too fussed – I can’t take the rumours, let alone the facts! The only thing that matters is – we go again!