Despite His White Boots

Football, football, football and, if the mood takes me, more football.

Saturday, April 04, 2009

QPR 0 Crystal Palace 0

Where to start. Well let's start with Rangers. For the umpteenth time this season, we didn't pass the ball well enough and had no cutting edge up front whatsoever. In a way I feel sorry for Di Carmine, he's a trier and it's not his fault better strikers are being loaned out to other clubs for no apparent reason. On the other hand, I'm sure he's paid a handsome wedge and he just isn't good enough. Not even close. The crowd's frustration with him kind of boiled over today but you can see why ; (relative) fortunes have been spent on players and wages but we scored more goals when Marc Nygaard was up front.

As for Palace, this is a dilemma. I think I have a responsibility not to be too critical of other clubs who don't have the same financial backing, but I also have a responsibility to report things as I see them, and the truth is that Palace hoofed, hacked and spoiled their way to a point. Now, it is absolutely their fundamental right to play any style they like within the rules and spirit of the game. But it is also my fundamental right to say nuts to this, I'm playing golf next season instead. There are far too many games in Championship and Premiership where one team is basically going out to stop the other from playing and nick a point if they can, and I'm perfectly aware that Rangers have done it when it suited them as well. This is how it's going to be until measures like salary caps and redistribution of TV income come in, which is to say in the real world, never.

Perhaps it was ever thus, and it's only now I'm realising that life's too short to do things you don't enjoy out of a sense of "duty" to an identity (with a football club) that ultimately has nothing to do with who you really are. Which is maybe a topic for another day, but I have a feeling that football isn't going to realise that they charge way too much for the sporadic entertainment on offer until it's far too late, and at that point there will be a lot of clubs packing up and going out of business. I've said it before, but it's now closer than ever. It won't be long before creditors effectively fight back against the kind of financial Three Card Monte that enabled Leeds, as the most prominent example, to stick two fingers up at everyone they owed money to. Once one club goes, many more will follow. House of Cards.

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