The Premiership title will be heading down to The Emirates if Wenger's team can defeat already relegated Derby in Setanta's Monday night mismatch.
Three points clear of Manchester United with a game in hand and only two more matches remaining, one of which is an "internally controlled but systemically neutral" event in the Gunners favour, Wenger's team deserve their triumph after a season of Total Football showed the benefits of remaining a team of integrity in a very murky Premier League World.
Parallel realities, multiple equilibria, phases of the image, quantum states, multiverses - when different levels of "existence" are the focus, choice of reality is not always an option. Just as the dichotomous heroine in Marge Piercy's "Woman On The Edge Of Time" oscillates between the 'illusory' inner world and the harsh 'reality' of a neoreality, we are able to do the equivalent when we choose to view the Hyperreality of the English Premiership.
Over the last few weeks, there has been a concerted effort by the Powers-That-Be to ensure that the Premiership Illusion has The Perfect Climax. Everything must go down to the wire. The title, fifth place, relegation - "Who holds all the aces? Its time for Chelsea to gamble" screamed the Sky mosiac before the Farce Football at Stamford Bridge yesterday. We initially misjudged the degree to which the Powers-That-Be were willing to go to ensure a fabricated and illusory white knuckle rollercoaster ride to a reality. If the season had ground to a halt tomorrow night at Pride Park, there would have been a negatively charged Treble Whammy awaiting the Powers-That-Be.
Firstly, the Premiership title would have been deservedly won by one of the few leading English teams not internally corrupted by association with the global betting markets. Secondly, the turnover on betting would have plummeted as ever in late season non-events whereas the bookies have now built themselves a bonanza. Which is just as well really as betting turnover will also be thin on the ground for the British and Gibraltar firms due to the Engerlandless Euro 2008 - the third part of the whammy.
It is a matter of some annoyance to the layers that the xenophobia which serves their interests so well when they exert a negative impact on England international games, turns against their interests when, as a result of such deliberate underperformances, the Three Lions fail to qualify for the Finals. Nationalists don't bet on Switzerland versus Turkey.
So lets get this in some perspective. The bookmakers, not content with destroying the dreams of the supporters of the national team, then have the temerity to destroy the Reality, or what limited amount of Reality still remained, of the Premiership. They developed both these "strategies" to maximise their profits. Being collectively buffoonish, they fucked up big style on the first play when they rubbed up against Roman's fat wallet but the second hand is turning out rather more to their liking. The table is winning, as Sky would no doubt say.
Of course, in the meantime, the British bookmakers have also entirely demolished the efficacy of a great sport.
Apart from taking on the position of an interested observer, looking for traces of The Perfect Crime, what is the point in taking any of these nonsenses seriously? There is no campaign. There is nothing to save. To try and decelerate the process will merely create the momentum for further corrupt machinations.
The English game, at its highest levels, is lost.
The Reality looks much more interesting, however! How should our title and relegation issues really appear this Sunday morning? Check it out...
TOP
1. Arsenal 35-82
2. Man Utd 36-79
3. Liverpool 36-64
4. Chelsea 36-63
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5. Everton 35-61
BOTTOM
17. Reading 36-36
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18. Bolton 36-35
19. Birmingham 36-34
20. Derby 35- 9
Why does Reality matter if the Hyped-Up-Hyperreality provides spectacle? Chelsea versus Manchester United was certainly a spectacle. It held the attention. Presumably hangings and guillotinings used to be similarly marketed - "Come And See A Travesty Of Justice" - but we would always opt for integrity and justice rather than a scammed up societal spectacular. It might have flashing lights and knobs on but it ain't Reality. It ain't footie. In fact, its nearer the FTSE than to footie...
So, having robbed our game from us while we were otherwise engaged coming to terms with the ravages of a free market economy, the culmination of a decade and a half of antisocial behaviour by the Powers-That-Be have provided us with a title race where the Real Winner is not even in the frame. Not at the races. Arsenal will lose players as well as the title because of this massive corruption.
The Hyperreality is self-sustaining in its Psychopathy.
If Fulham stay up, Roy Hodgson should be made Manager of the Year. Fulham should be 11 points clear of Bolton, challenging for a Top Ten finish but, most importantly, safe. Instead, they MUST win their last two games just to have a chance of survival. Certainty or 7% probability - thats the cost of the Diana Inquest in the Hyperreality.
Chelsea are the equivalent of Everton if one removes the impacts of corruption from the game. 18 points. Thats how many extra points the Russian/Israeli outfit have been provided courtesy of the PGMOB match officials in the current season. The Hyperreality offers Chelsea the Illusory Possibility of The Title rather than the Certain Reality of a battle for the fourth Champions League spot.
As the Fundamental Lunacy of Belief precludes any response other than Cynical Realism, the Hyperreal state of football makes up for its Reality Deficit on the pitch by providing us with Illusory spectacles off it. In cumulation, these neorealities offer us a shadow of what the sport used to be. Still, it keeps us amused...
This week, it came to our attention that:
* Berlusconi does want Milan to play provincial teams anymore. The head of the Caste announced this just days after declaring that he was stepping down from his post of Godfather of AC Milan to concentrate, once again, on ruining the country instead. This G14(18)-esque illusory dissolution manoeuvre is becoming a more popular strategem in the Illusion.
* The Financial Times stated that Mike Ashley's Sports Direct have shown an "unwillingness to follow normal corporate governance practices" which makes him the ideal person to run a Premiership football team on behalf of the bookmakers then. The FT did not state whether this "unwillingness" was a good thing or a bad thing - a difficult call for a shareholder capitalist media organ.
* His Excellency The Last King Of Thailand had a very bad week. Firstly, his supposed proxy, Samak Sundaravej, sacked the national police chief, Sereepisut Taemeeyaves, for alleged corruption. This is not a good thing for Shinawatra as his main power base is the police and, furthermore, Mr Samak is cosying up to the military who overthrew God when he was last in power. This, obviously, has all the hallmarks of a power struggle which ain't a great position to be with a couple of legal matters hanging around. The Little Dictator took out his frustrations on Sven as "The Champions League You're Having A Laugh" City gave Fulham their first consecutive away wins since Gladstone was in power.
* Elsewhere, Rio "Pini" Ferdinand kicked a female steward; Drogba and Ballack played out the Chelsea Black v white chasm on the pitch in front of a billion delusionals; the self same Ballack was booked for revealing his shirt to show a message "Pat Lampard RIP" as the Illusion demands that moments of ecstasy must promote shirt sponsors rather than societal emotions; gangland activity erupted on the pitch post-match as some Chelsea muppets got a battering from some United players; David Sullivan turned up for his teams home match with Liverpool still wearing sado-masochistic gear; the Scottish Premier League have insisted the the league season will continue for as long as it takes for Rangers to be ahead after they have played the same number of games as Celtic.
Amartya Sen, an idiot economist, once stated: "Famines do not happen in democracies". Leaving aside the point that there is no such thing as a democracy, the Imperialist New World Order manages to ghettoise, and hence make invisible, the famine at home while busily exporting the remainder of the famine inherent in the capitalist system far and wide to The Poor.
When there are currently food riots in virtually all of the forty poorest Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPCs), and when such riots are even hitting the likes of Egypt and Mexico, to take even the remotest interest in the Hyperreality of the Premiership might seem somewhat Misdirected Action rather than Direct Action. Not so.
An identical psychopathic template perfectly fits all hyperrealities - Fixed Football = Food Famine.
Just because the First World insists on driving cars, the whole planet now exists within the first of a whole chain of Neoreal Bubbles that will be seen to represent our systemic future. The Illusion of Davos has effectively declared, by allowing food crops to be replaced by biofuel ones, that The Vehicle is mightier than The Poor. Of course, The Poor should not have expected any different as they have been disposable slave labour with a built-in obsolescence since it was decreed that we should all live in a lawless environment governed by capital.
The Hyperreality ignores the Reality.
Barclays Spaces For Sport sponsors all weather football pitches in South Africa while Barclays ZW exploit the most exploited in Zimbabwe, Uganda, Kenya, Botswana, Ghana and Zambia. But strangely enough, not South Africa where they were formerly so closely linked to the apartheid government.
Still. A nice touch - "we understand that we financially enabled a vicious racist autocracy on behalf of the British government for many years, but have a five-a-side pitch and a BBC Match Of The Day photo opportunity in return".
Forget History! Brand the Hyperreality instead!
"Everybody wants clarity. We haven't got it" - Alan Hansen.
Everybody wants Reality. We haven't got it.
Watergate, Enron, Calciopoli, the Hoyzer Affair, the Bungs Inquiry, the Mandaric money laundering trial - these are not scandals.
These are the norm.
There is no Bad Apple Template.
The shareholder capitalist system is the Bad Apple.
The system in its entirety is a scandal.
And, within this system, the English Premiership is a scandalous Hyperreality.
Don't buy it. It only encourages them.
© Football Is Fixed/Dietrological
