Through Gritted Teeth #44: Alan Pardew
November 16, 2011 § 3 Comments
by Scott Oliver
I’ve often wondered whether ‘irrational hatred’ wasn’t a tautology. Isn’t loathing always ‘irrational’? If not irrational, then unconscious, at least, conscious justifications merely giving our more base, primordial sentiments the ex post facto sheen of legitimacy? Or are there genuinely rational grounds for hatred — the implementation of systematic genocide, say, or the so-called ‘ideological’ call to destroy a supposedly morally degenerate civilization — perfectly sound reasons that can be objectively agreed upon, and consciously assented to by all of ‘right mind’? I have a feeling that to seek to justify hatred in this way makes you, inescapably, as demented as Hitler or Osama bin Laden, and to ‘hate’ them in turn would be an undeniable waste of psychic resources, pity seeming more appropriate. « Read the rest of this entry »
Through Gritted Teeth #9: Paolo di Canio
May 13, 2011 § 1 Comment
by Daniel Williams
I think the first time that I truly despised a football player was during a cold night at Hillsborough, home of Sheffield Wednesday. Despite the weather, a hotly-contested South Yorkshire derby between Wednesday and Barnsley was in full swing, and I was one of the thousands of Reds fans to make the journey. I vividly remember standing next to a grown man dressed as Snow White for most of the night, but I have no recollection of what happened to his dwarves. « Read the rest of this entry »
The seventh seal (part 2)
October 6, 2010 § 3 Comments
In part 1, Twisted Blood looked at how reasonable it was to make conjectures about the title race based on the table after seven games. And we discovered: increasingly so. Here, in Part 2, we focus on the other end of the table.
So, Liverpool, eh?
From a historical perspective, their start this season – 18th in the table, P7 W1 D3 L3 – is their worst start since 1953/54, a season which saw the club relegated to the old Second Division. The general consensus is, of course, that they are too good to go down*; a quick glance at the markets sees them 13th favourites for the drop, available at a nevertheless-mirth-inducing 18/1. Besides, they’ve been bought, sort of, lawyers allowing, so everything will be fine. You never know, they might even scrape top half.
But can you draw a correlation between being in the bottom three after seven games and ending up there after 38? Acknowledging that being in the bottom three is never good, and keeping with the same sample group as in part 1 (the 29 seasons since 3-points-for-a-win was introduced in 1981/82): of the 88 teams that occupied the relegation zone after most teams in the division had played seven games, only 38 went on to subsequent relegation; that’s 43.18%, slightly closer to half than a third. Which should be comforting to Liverpool, Wolverhampton, and West Ham United; if the trend holds, one or two of them might expect to end the season still in the Premier League. « Read the rest of this entry »
