Schadenfreude Cubed #

When the mundaneness of a derivative language fails to provide a suitable word for an occasion, one may always rely on the French, Italian, Irish, Jewish or Germans to save the day.

Whether it is jouissance, dietrologia, shenanigans, chutzpah or schadenfreude, our European (strictly in the UEFA sense of the word) family add reason to our blunt linguistics.

And schadenfreude is one of my favourites.
It suits my psychology.
And one of the better bases of establishing a blog is that one may bad-mouth those who deserve bad-mouthing at a time to suit oneself.
Which is generally not a time of the victims' choosing.

So who are our troika of tricksters?
Well, regular readers will not be too surprised to learn that Messrs Harry Redknapp, John Colquhoun and Tony Bloom are about to be extraordinarily renditioned in the nicest possible way.

Redknapp is worried.
The Pompey Nine has become the Pompey Three and, unlike the Guildford Four, ##################################################################################
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Redknapp's biggest mistake (apart from the hair dye) was taking out a private action against the police following a dawn raid on his palatial mansion on the south coast.
This is not the done thing and Redknapp was both out of his depth and poorly advised.
His confusion over what constituted an arrest merely exacerbated the sense of him being above the law.

Now, when the police explore hyperrealities outside of the law, this should be regarded as a bargaining tool, and not as a reason to lash out.

You do a deal.
We thought that this was Mr Redknapp's forte, after all.
So, the police drop part of the charge in return for the victim not pressing charges over police violence or irregularities of procedure.

Simple.

Now, as the web tightens around Redknapp, Portsmouth chief executive Peter Storrie and former owner Milan Mandaric, their united front is fracturing.
Redknapp left both Southampton and Portsmouth in non-sustainable messes (Southampton are bottom of League One) while Pompey are leaking squad members, points and cash with equal efficiency.
Being #######################################, Redknapp returns to exploit those who once were colleagues and partners and the sale of Peter Crouch from Portsmouth to Tottenham Hotspur, following the shenanigans behind the Jermain Defoe deal, proved the final straws for Storrie.

Redknapp tapped up Crouch according to Storrie.
Both Sunderland and Bolton Wanderers were offering £3 million more for Crouch than Spurs. But the man went to north London anyway.
Storrie understands that his £4,000 per day salary is threatened by police action so, at the weekend, he announced that illegal approaches to transfer targets are rife in football and that "all managers tap up" in direct contravention of Premier League legislation.
In that any such meaningful legislation exists - third party transfers, betting by players and management, ownership of operators by bookmaking organisations etc etc etc.

Rattled, Redknapp has responded that it is "agents that do the tapping up".
He continued: "Every club lets a player know that they're interested and anyone who says they don't is telling lies, it's absolute rubbish. It's not a case of tapping a player up, it's a case of the agent ringing up and asking if you're interested."

Ah yes, but dietrologia suggests that one should question the flow of information and, more importantly, money in such arrangements.
Especially now that the said Premier League rules allow an agent to represent one (or both) clubs as well as the player in a particular transfer deal.

There may be trouble ahead.

And, talking of agents peripheralising the rule of law brings us neatly to Fulham and Glasgow Celtic club agent, John Colquhoun.
West Bromwich Albion should have finished last season 12 points adrift at the bottom of the table. They were also the second least fit team in the league.

Over the summer, Colquhoun engineered the appointment of Tony Mowbray as the new Celtic boss.
A good earner but a dire strategy.

Mowbray is simply not up to the task.
Two consecutive European home defeats after only Barcelona had been victorious at Parkhead since time immemorial is the result.

And fitness was the key again.
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So there goes another £10 million but, at least, Mowbray and Colquhoun may focus now on St Johnstone and finishing second to Rangers again.
The fact that one of the few decent players at Celtic, Scott Brown, is about to join Redknapp at Tottenham neatly circles the round.

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If Southampton hadn't entered administration last season, Brighton and Hove Albion would be occupying bottom spot in League One this morning following their 7-1 reversal at Huddersfield last night.
Since failed bookmaker, failed poker player and failed human being, Tony Bloom, 'bought out' the club, the outfit have managed one point and one pointless goal in four matches, while conceding 11 and departing the League Cup to boot.

The takeover of the club which, in the main, is a property development project and Bloom's short-sightedness in instigating such a nonsense when the bottom has fallen out of the commercial property market and when the only house purchases are made by people converting their cash into more solid assets as an inflation hedge, is typical of the man.

Will the Anthony Grant Bloom Stand ever be built?

This isn't chutzpah.
This is bluff.
And if Mr Bloom is anything at all, he is one bum bluffer.

These three individuals, in their own little ways, represent a solid cross-section of the ills of the sport today.
Without the likes of Redknapp, Colquhoun and Bloom, the black and grey markets would not dominate football.

And there is a further interesting aspect to their combined chicanery - the nepotistic link.
In football, one frequently comes across familial power bases - entities where, over generations, an inappropriate template of operation is established.
The Redknapp/Lampard Family is an obvious one but both Colquhoun and Bloom also have football in the blood, in a manner of speaking - Colquhoun's father was also a professional player while Bloom's uncle and father have been active on the Brighton board for decades.

Football should be jouissance.
These types of people have made it something hyperreal instead.

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© Football Is Fixed/Dietrological

Butcher And Burley - A Footballing Bradford And Bingley #

"Whatever could have gone wrong tonight went wrong" - Craig Burley, the Scotland manager.

What?
Like having Burley as a manager?
Appointing Butcher as his assistant?
Being the representative of the entirely dysfunctional Scottish FA?
Leaving out players when the squad is wafer-thin anyway?
Failing to plan strategically once the match started to go pear-shaped?

What?
Those sort of things, Mr Burley?

Like Bradford And Bingley Building Society, the Scottish football team represents a rotten entity in a rotten framework.

Scottish football is a collective mess.

The Scottish Premier League (SPL) mimics the lack of strategy which is the fundamental feature of ScudamoreWorld south of the border.
The debacle relating to Setanta and the reselling of rights to BSkyB at just 60% of the price that the Murdochracy had offered just 12 months earlier sets the scene.
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The impacts and the trickle-down effect are evident with Aberdeen securing a 5-1 home reverse to a very moderate Czech outfit while Falkirk actually managed to lose to a team from Leichtenstein in the Europa Cup.
Liechtenstein???
Livingstone are refusing to play and Rangers are refusing to pay, as their transfer fund is entirely frozen in the fossilised Reality that is Sir Murray's property empire.
Meanwhile at the club that used to be worthy of support, aside from all the other shenanigans outlined in recent posts, Celtic have ended up with a sub-standard manager and, through the idiocy of John Colquhoun, overpaid in the process.
Colquhoun 'leaked' the news of Mowbray's appointment to his chums on the Guardian staff with the result that the newspaper, in the words of the rapidly deteriorating Daily Telegraph, "jumped the gun overnight and declared that Mowbray would be unveiled as the new manager... the leak revealed Celtic's hand and ensured that Peace [the West Brom chairperson] could up the ante."

But, and this is the crucial point, Mr Colquhoun gained #####################
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The SFA failed a nations' fans on several levels last night.
The timing of such a critical qualifying match while the majority of Scottish players were still out of season was bizarre, to say the least.
With the banning of your best player and your only stable goalkeeper, the SFA further undermined chances of qualification and undermined team spirit to boot.

As for the match, what planet do Burley and Butcher reside on?
Their reaction to the sending off of Gary Caldwell and falling behind to the resultant free kick was extremely self-harming.
An incorrect substitution.
An unbalanced formation.
A second goal on the interval.

The lack of strategic thinking relating to the bigger picture was also evident.
Group 9 is very tight.
Goal difference/goals scored are likely to be called into action at the conclusion of the group - now Scotland must beat both Macedonia and the Netherlands to qualify whereas, for example, if they had lost by 2-1 last night, it would have been very likely that the Scots could have reached the Play-Offs with a win and a draw.
Those four goals may come back to haunt Scotland.

The appalling officiating from Alain Hamer was merely the icing on a pretty ropey cake.

Our hierarchies enforce one very firm judicial hyperreality - that the buck stops as near to the bottom of the pyramid as feasible.
So, much the better to discipline a woman soldier for torture at Abu Ghraib than indicting Rumsfeld, for example.

If Scotland fail to reach November's Play-Offs, no doubt B&B will be jettisoned.

And Gordon Smith, the SFA's chief executive, who is ultimately responsible for the state of the national team and the national game, will retain his place in the Adhocracy that limps along in the shadow of the Murdochracy.

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© Football Is Fixed/Dietrological