Serves them bloody right!

It shows that sneaky tactics like theirs are not welcome in football, and means that the teams who really deserve automatic promotion from League One can battle it out this weekend.

I haven’t posted anything on here for aaaaages and to be quite honest I feel ashamed, as well as annoyed.  I was sitting here in the newsroom telling my friend Katie McPhillimy that she needs to set up a blog for her forthcoming trip to America, when I’ve been completely ignoring my own.

I could sit here and make excuses – and I will.  It’s been a hectic couple of months for me and the rest of the Journalism third years at the University of Lincoln.  Dissertation all-nighters, radio programmes, essays and job hunting have all taken over and it means that my blog – and ultimately you – have suffered in the absence of my interesting and ‘intelligent’ contributions.

A lot of stuff’s been going on since my last blog.  Heather Mills worked tirelessly to swindle a large chunk of Sir Paul McCartney’s fortune, the Olympic torch enjoyed a thoroughly successful tour through Europe and the price of petrol shot up to about a million pounds a litre.  You need a placing on the UK rich list to take your car for a spin these days.

But where was I to give my worthless opinion on these matters?  Probably in my pants drinking tea, possibly playing my N64.  Ah yes, the Nintendo 64!  I am now living the life of a 90′s child, fighting the Russians on Goldeneye and guiding Nottingham Forest to the Premier League title on FIFA ’99.  While everyone else stocks up on all the lastest console stuff, I’ve been taking full advantage of the cheap prices of the consoles I could never afford as a kid.

But I have been doing some journalistic things also.  Knuckling down with more shifts at the BBC, sending copious amounts of emails asking for work experience to editors who never reply, and reporting on big stories for Siren FM.

I did have some luck on the work experience front, with a placement at Q103 in Cambridge and then another later this month.  As for big stories, does hijacking The Linc’s drug busting count?  I’ll let you decide when I’ve worked out how to upload audio.

That’s all I’ve got to say for now (I’ve got work to do!) but whoever it is that reads this – if anyone does – keep a look out because I will be writing more!

Under the new proposals, each club will play 39 matches per season, with cities around the World being invited to bid for the extra 10 games. The idea is apparently to promote the league around the globe.

What a stupid idea it is.

This is the English Premier League. Yes, Manchester United do have a lot of followers in Asia. Why? Because the Asian leagues are crap, so perhaps a better idea would be to try and promote those leagues within Asia and give everyone a local club to be proud of. This would also make international football more competetive.

Ever since football and Sky TV came together, the sport has become more obsessed with money and ‘creating a brand’ than winning trophies. It won’t be long before the title is decided by a play-off and we have to sit and endure a four-hour farce just like the Super Bowl. There’ll be commercial breaks every five minutes so that McDonalds can advertise their latest McArtery-Clogger and a half-time show so long that everyone forgets what they tuned in to watch.

The growing number of clubs being bought out by foreign businessmen is something that’s been worrying me for some time. These people have no interest in football matters, and no emotional attachment to the game. Their aim is to turn the Premier League into a shiny big pantomime competition to fund their new fleet of Bentleys and their private jet.

And what about the lower league clubs? They get to carry on clinging to survival.

I’m talking about a complete lack of manners that some people display, mainly failing to shut the hell up and allow the lecturer to begin. It’s something that’s wound me up throughout my degree, when you sit down in the lecture theatre and all you can hear is a hundred-or-so people chatting amongst themselves while the lecturer desperately attempts to achieve some order so that he or she can tell us some important things that we need to know.

Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not claiming that I am the perfect student. Sometimes I can’t help but nod off in a lecture, and sometimes if I feel that I might nod off, I don’t go at all. I always feel bad, but being a student can be tiring and I can always chase up any vitally important information that I’ve missed.

While it may be a bit naughty of me to miss the odd lecture, I have never through utter ignorance or rudeness, prevented a lecturer from doing their job and making them stand at the front of a lecture theatre looking stupid and helpless. I was brought up to be quiet and listen when someone in a position of authority is talking, and to do my yapping in my own time.

Apart from the fact that new owner Mike “I’m just like you!” Ashley has sacked Sam Allerdyce before he had a chance to warm the seat in his office, we’ve also been bombarded with the annoying vanity of the Geordie population.

“We’re not like you lot from down south, you don’t understand us.”

No, you’re not like us. Most of you who attend St James’s Park on a saturday afternoon are dangerously obese men in desperate need of a t-shirt to cover up your hideous breasts.

Christmas is now out of the way and I am now back in Lincoln, preparing for the final few months of my degree and facing up to the reality that in the very near future I’m going to have to get a real job. I’m looking forward to it, but at the same time it scares the absolute crap out of me and the same questions keep going round and round in my head:

Will I get a job?

What if it takes ages?

Do editors want deafies on their team?

What if I go completely bald before I’m thirty?

Important questions, as I’m sure you’ll agree. The main problem I have is that as I said before, I’m a lazy bones and have to really enjoy a job if I’m actually going to do it properly, and well.

One thing that worries me is my lack of work experience. Lots of other people on my course have done no end of work experience with local newspapers, magazines, radio stations and student publications. My experience so far is:

Siren FM Co-editor of sport from September 2007 to present, working on the ‘Listen Up Lincoln’ news programme, the odd shift answering phones on the BBC Radio Lincolnshire Breakfast Show switchboard and two articles in Bullet, the main student magazine at the University of Lincoln.

Another worry that I’ve had is the lack of jobs being advertised in radio. I scanned a few websites including the Guardian jobs page and found that there is very little available except in executive positions, and I’m realistic enough to accept that I’m not yet worth £50,000 a year.

I think it’s probably going to be a case of sending samples of my work to as many stations as possible and hoping for the best, rather than trawling though lists of jobs and hoping that the right one crops up.

On a completely different subject, everyone seems to be going a bit mental recently, and by everyone I mean Britney Spears. Britney is unfortunately heading for an early grave if her current behaviour continues, and the media are loving it. The stories of concern for her welfare aren’t fooling anyone; trouble for Britney = £££’s for ‘papers.

Even more crazy than Britney is her obsessive fan Chris Crocker, who’s video diaries have become a hit on Youtube. I’d put one of his videos on here for you to see, only I find him deeply upsetting and repulsive, so you’ll have to find them yourself.

Another crazy person making the news today is vile midget and (alleged) placenta-eating freak Tom Cruise, who is suiing British journalist Andrew Morton for claims made about him and his laughable religion Scientology. Frankly, I don’t know what is and isn’t true about the cult (and it is a cult), because the whole thing ridiculous, and all those who’ve fallen for it are fools.

Personally, I don’t buy into religion. There is virtually no evidence to back any of them up and overwhelming evidence to support the theory of evolution, and that we evolved from apes. I also don’t believe that the first man and woman on earth would have bothered with names.

Anyway I’m off, and on the day of the FA Cup fourth round draw, and potentially the end of Luton Town FC, I’ve decided it’s only fitting that I leave you with the highlights of their 1959 Final appearence, when they were beaten 2-1 by the mighty Nottingham Forest!

I’ve been full of festive cheer the last week or so, as I imagine many people have, however I’ve been even more cheery than usual. I don’t know exactly why this is, perhaps it has something to do with Coca-Cola reverting back to the traditional Christmas adverts (the ones with all the lorries), and everyone knows that when those adverts come on then Christmas has really started. Or maybe it’s because this is the last Christmas of my degree, and I am excited about the fact that (hopefully) this time next year I’ll have a proper job in journalism and for once will be able to afford to buy presents.

This evening I’ve been to the Lincoln Christmas Market, the biggest in Britain (it might not be but I can’t be bothered to Google it so lets just say it is), and I’ve had a lovely time. It rained a lot, and despite the fact that I had an umbrella-ella-ella for protection, I got completely soaked through.

While normally I would get extremely annoyed by this, tonight I remained in good spirits. What really wound me up was that for the second year running myself and my housemate Hannah got stuck on the big wheel, or ‘Circle of Certain Death’ as it has now been named. Last year we braved the rain and the gusty wind to go on the wheel because I needed to take and aerial photograph of the market for an assignment, and the gypsy folk running it decided to send us round for three laps despite our pleas for freedom. On top of feeling like prisoners in a rotating Guantanamo Bay, the wind was pounding our carriage and rocking it all over the place.

This time, we decided we’d give the wheel the benefit of the doubt and paid the ridiculous sum of £3 pounds each for the ride. This was a mistake. We were on the dreaded machine for 25 minutes and very slowly completed 4 laps, the rain was pouring in and despite our repeated attempts to get off, they were having none of it. We had little to entertain us other than watching the couple in the next carriage consume each other’s faces, and finding things to drop on the roof of the one below.

Finally we got off and without exaggeration, I can confidently say that I was probably more wet than the sea.

But I’m still happy. It’s Christmas and so I only have one more dreaded semester at uni and then it will be summertime. I’ve come home and had a lovely Chinese takeaway, and now I’m going to introduce Rich and his girlfriend Jen to the magic of Die Hard 4.0.

Ace!

A while ago I wrote a post about Halloween and pumpkins. Nothing special there, except I’ve noticed that the majority of the views I get seem to be from people searching on Google for pumpkin pictures. In fact, I’d say about 90% of the search engine terms used to get to my page contain the word pumpkin, and I think people probably realise they’re not on the page they want and then click ‘back’ without reading on.

I’m not complaining because it does mean there’s more chance of my stuff being read, but it is starting to annoy me when I see that people have viewed that post but not others.

I’ve also noticed that people search for some really weird stuff. For example; ‘Kelly Brook’s boobs’, ‘British boobs’, ‘old man pirate’, and ‘cobbled driveway’. My personal favourite though, which has popped up several times, is ‘www.eat my. boobs. com’.

I want to know who these people are!

In other news, Red Hot Chili Peppers’ bass player ‘Flea’ has unfortunately lost his mega-expensive house to the Malibu wild fires. I would like to offer him my sympathy and to say that he is always welcome to spend Christmas at my house.

Firstly, the good news is that the F.A have called an emergency meeting for Thursday morning, during which they will almost certainly decide to sack Steve McClaren. He is without doubt the worst manager England has ever had, and the fact that he was ever considered for the job means that those who appointed him should go too. Relegation battles year after year, a lucky run in Europe and a Mickey Mouse Cup do not make a good manager. Those kind of stats certainly shouldn’t get anyone the job of replacing a manager of Sven’s pedigree.

With McClaren out of the way and plenty of time to think, the F.A can conduct a proper search for a proper manager, and eventually get the best man for the job. I personally don’t mind what nationality they are, just as long as they are passionate, and with a proven record.

The next course of action – the really big one – is to introduce a player quota to limit the number of overseas players that a club can field in one game. This is an absolute must and should be in place as soon as possible, because the way things are going at the moment, it won’t be long before every Premiership club is owned by foreign businessmen, people who don’t give a monkeys about the state of our national team.

When the foreign invasion began in the Premiership, English players and English football in general was pretty rubbish. Coaching and facilities were poor and we just didn’t have the players coming through. Nowadays, with all the money the Premiership has made since it started in 1992, clubs at the top level have all built or are building state of the art football academies, and can afford to employ the best coaches in the World. Surely they must be nurturing some decent talent?

Don’t get me wrong, we’ve had some fantastic foreign players playing in this country, and they have contributed a long way to raising the profile of our domestic game and improving the standard. But now it’s time we stood on our own two feet, and give young English talent a chance to shine. Arsene Wenger won’t be happy, but if he wants a team full of French players then that’s where he should go and manage.

Another thing the F.A needs to sort out is bonuses for England players, why do they need them? These players are getting paid ridiculous amounts of money already from their clubs, and any player who needs to be paid to play for his country is not fit to play at international level.

Compulsory singing lessons should be introduced, to teach England players to belt out the national anthem with such passion that their face turns purple, the same way our rugby players do. Any player caught not singing the anthem before a game should be subbed and dropped from the next squad.

Finally, the new manager should be paid a sensible salary, with bonuses depending on results and performances in tournaments. And if we qualify for any tournaments, ‘WAGs’ should be left at home (and possibly burned).

I don’t know what the F.A are going to do about the huge farce that the England team has become, but whatever action they take needs to be big and it needs to be drastic.