From Brendan :
Hi Myles,
Merry Christmas to you too.
I’ve been watching the Mourinho farce unfold in the last week.
Stupid Sky are desperate for him to manage Man United because he always, always delivers controversy, and football isn’t a sport to them, it’s a ‘battering ram’ to generate cash.
Football is still a sport.
I’m going to try and get my first FA coaching badges for coaching kids next year. I love going to the games and watching my nine-year-old son play, he and his team mates do enjoy it for its own sake, and they take pride also in doing a good job. I am absolutely convinced that team sports are very, very good for children’s development.
What has happened at Chelsea this season is very predictable. Mourinho couldn’t deal with things not going his way any more, as they did the previous season.
How many times did Costa foul or act in a way which should have been reacted to with a sending off, and the ref did nothing? Eventually, it started to go the other way, but he brought it on himself.
Laurent Koscielny is my man of the season, JUST for not responding to Costa at all in that game.
Mourinho is what the Sky ghouls and their millions of hyptnotised, brainwashed consumers want. He plays to their conviction that success is something that is measured and that the ones who don’t have the outward displays of success are losers.
Chelsea’s owner wants his team to win trophies but also wants them to play a certain way, to invest in youth, blah blah blah.
But he lacks the class or the brains to develop a club that would rival Barcelona, Bayern, or even Manchester United in terms of achievements or stature.
It doesn’t matter who manages Chelsea, they will never really be able to do anything there long term.
We at Arsenal are at the other end of the spectrum, which has its issues and problems but it is a much better place in many ways too.
And I may be totally wrong here but do I detect that Wenger is seeing the virtue of that old footballing cliché of ‘mixing it up’?
On the strength of the home win against Manchester City, it looks like he might be. I was more pleased about the brilliant defending in that game than I was about the goals.
Please, God, give me a solid Arsenal defence like that all through the season for Christmas.
Have a good one!!
Myles says:
Thanks, Brendan.
It’s been quite a good Christmas so far – it’s 2.45 pm .
A party last night with some friends, people we got to know when our kids were growing up 20 years ago.
Today our presents took, it seemed, an hour and a half to open. How is that possible? It’s never taken that long before. Far too much girly larking about by Caroline.
I got a book about Nabokov and a book by Elvis Costello.
The Nabokov is one I asked Jan to get me, the Costello a surprise she took a punt on.
I first looked at the Acknowledgements on p261 :
Great authors intimidate even as they attract, and Nabokov is immense: all of Western literature is in play with him, finds a conduit through him. He is the great python of art, having made bulging repasts of Russian Literature, French literature, and English literature from Shakespeare forward….
Since I always look backwards at this time of year, I asked myself a question.
Describe the course of your life in one word.
Gravitational.
I was strongly attracted to sports and books as a teenager, as a sixth former, and I’ve been gravitating towards them ever since. That’s what I’m interested in. I can’t help it.