This week Luke, Shaun and Ewan met to chip in on a collective rant inspired by the announcement of the European Super League and the state of modern football. What happened to jumpers for goal posts and oranges at half-time? Well, not quite. But what has led to large parts of this sport becoming so fat-bellied, insatiable, disfigured and despicable? What role do they, the suits punting product, play in this? And what role do we, the punters, play?
Author: ThePatterPod
This space is dedicated to the wide and varied interests and ignorances of our podcast collective, @ThePatterPod.
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The ESL – Empty Terraces
Find our latest Football Patter Pod below or on all major platforms – @ThePatterPod
By Shaun Forrest
Football is a business, the overall fundamental running of a football club is like any other company that is trying to yield worth and produce a better, more exhilarating product. Football clubs have to advertise their brand and sell merchandise to customers. Where they have a slight advantage is that most of their consumers don’t actually choose to be consumers. It might be due to their family, where they were born or the community that put an arm around them but often fans didn’t explicitly choose the company they keep.
Football clubs have the unique and constantly under-appreciated leverage in business that they are breeding consumers who don’t just buy season tickets and strips because they choose to, it’s because they feel they need to. When someone is born into a footballing family or into a community where a single football club is the affiliation holding them together, people support and spend money on that club because they have a passion and an emotional attachment, not because they always enjoy the product or like the brand.
This is why the announcement or even the idea of a European Super League is so disconnected and disrespectful from what fans actually want. And, the real kicker, it comes from the clubs that they have devoted so much to.
The ESL had been whispered about around football communities for a few years, but it was always just scoffed at. Not even the fans of the super-wealthy clubs with billionaire owners could fathom such an empty capitalist proposal and blatant slap in the face to the fans who built these clubs.
The owners of these twelve “super” clubs took the leap of faith to cut away from UEFA and create their own European competition where the clubs would play each other mid-week throughout the season. Knowing the possible expulsion from their domestic leagues was a possibility, this still didn’t deter them -this possibly even encouraged them.
Anyone who has purchased a season ticket for a football club instantly understands how fundamentally wrong the ESL is. Following a club is not simply about the ninety minutes on the pitch, and the actual result isn’t always the most important part of going to watch them. It’s the entire community experience, travelling to the games with friends, family, or the random people you only meet on match days, or going for a pint beforehand. Standing or sitting with your pack and being able to switch off from the daily grind with people who all desire the same thing: a little bit of victory if you are lucky. But if that success doesn’t fall for you this week it’s ok, because we are still going to be here for the next week.
When the ESL news broke the Sky Sports coverage was absolutely immaculate, breaking news and continuing coverage of the constantly developing story. Heartfelt opinion from former players and supporters who spoke so passionately about their clubs. It was breath-taking media. Gary Neville, in particular, demonstrated a real understanding while articulating perfectly how fans genuinely feel. This was being broadcasted live by Sky Sports who ultimately loved and drove the narrative that the billionaire owners are to blame for this financially motivated break away. Hypocrisy at its finest.
If you ask some people football began in 1992 when the English Premier League was rebranded but, in actual fact, this is when football bought into the slow rise of a capitalist work-ethic and disconnection from its supporters. In 1992, Sky Sports bought the rights to start showing live football and paid upwards of £300 million to the EPL, a substantially huge increase from what the BBC or ITV had been previously paying. This handed money to football clubs which they had never seen before and ultimately became the catalyst for bringing the businessmen and football agents into our game.
The alien idea of a football club accepting such large sums of money to make it a better experience for people to watch their club from home instead of them trying to go to a game live absolutely cripples my ideology of supporting a team. Obviously not everyone can get into a football stadium but that is surely the business model you want for these born consumers. Having a mass waiting list of supporters for a match day ticket should be more important than taking a bung from Sky Sports meaning these supporters pay them a subscription and can now watch their team from the comfort of the couch.
So, what do these new owners do with all this money that has been so generously given to them? Do they reduce the ticket prices, or offer supporters discounts on club products? Do they update the stadium facilities while asking the supporters what they would like? Do they use the money to strike a deal with local transport companies so fans with a match day ticket get a discount on travel to the game? Do the football clubs do anything to make their dedicated supporters’ lives even slightly better and encourage more people through the door? Did they at the very least not let Sky Sports dictate when their games would be played, lobbying for 3pm on a Saturday so that fans can keep a consistent routine?
Absolutely fucking not!
What did every owner do with this newfound cash flow? They lined their own pockets and started paying footballers, managers and agents obscene amounts of money to play a sport that would be played with or without this new money because of the supporters.
This unsustainable growth of overpaying only means prices for fans increased, and eventually that will come to an end. Clubs will look elsewhere into a more ”super” wealthy market to make money from the soulless subscribers and trading with money men at the expense of the fan.
The protests are hopefully just the beginning of fans not taking the constant abuse and exploitation anymore, but I call on everyone who cares about the future of football to go back to what it used to be about.
UEFA, players, managers, agents and especially owners need to take a look at why their football clubs even exist. What do they give back to the people who have devoted everything? Football has become a ticking financial time bomb, and when it eventually goes off with every club destroyed and on their knees, who do you think will pick up the pieces?
The fans.
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Social Patter #7 – Sleep (Ep23)
Sleep is something we all need, or do we? This week Luke, Ewan, Jamie and Shaun talk all things sleep. We discuss our own personal experiences with sleep, from bedtime rituals to unusual dreams before comparing different species sleep patterns. You can find our latest Social Patter Pod below or on all major Podcast platforms. – @ ThePatterPod
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Sleep
By Ewan Maguire
Sleep is a mystery. We are unsure why it is necessary, but it is essential. Without it, each of our organs deteriorates in its levels of function and our minds cloud.
Edgar Allen Poe said of sleep, “those little slices of death, how I loathe them”. R.D Laing, on treating an insomniac patient, asked her to reframe her nocturnal struggle, “most of us sleep through a third of our lifetime, think of the extra life you have to lead”. Life-embracing thoughts. However, for those of us who find ourselves awake while others sleep, savouring these extra moments of consciousness is not the natural reaction. The natural reaction is to turn, toss, clench, writhe, and yearn for that gradually sudden drop off.
Sleep Hygiene is the area of study and practice that looks to promote the best in sleeping techniques. Have a comfortable, calming bedroom and a bed in which you do nothing but sleep and have sex (if you are so lucky); avoid screens for at least an hour before getting down to it; stay away from caffeine, cigarettes and alcohol; make time for relaxation before getting between the sheets; do not exercise within two hours of your bedtime; and, go to bed and wake up at the same hour, every day.
I like sleeping, I seem to need it, and I don’t get enough of it. But I do still lose a significant portion of my conscious life to it, and it seems the way to improve my quality of slumber is to let considerations of it creep into the way I live my day. One conclusion seems to hold up: most modern lives are lived in a way that is not very amenable to a good sleeping habit, and often that is not the fault of the individual but the circumstances erected around them.
And, of course, there is a hierarchy of needs going on here: if we were starving and unsheltered, we would not have the inclination to stress or devote as much thought to sleep. Still, for those of us with roofs, full bellies, and beds that are lain in more than slept in, we can start to loathe those little slices of death. Not for their imposition but for their absence.
On this week’s Pod we scratch the surface of our new Gaming Patter category with Luke reminiscing to Shaun and Ewan about his Halo Reach days and the community aspect of being in an online team with people all round the world. You can listen to our latest Gaming Patter Pod below or on all major podcast platforms. – @ThePatterPod
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Hello Gaming!
By Luke Quigley
HALO: Reach was, in it’s prime the textbook example of a thriving, varied and endlessly entertaining online community.
From the online matchmaking playlists where you could go it alone in close-combat orientated Rumble Pit to the vehicle centred Big Team Battle where Rockets and the Spartan Laser were invaluable counters to Banshee bomb spammers and Scorpion spawn killers. Reach, certainly offered the chance for different play styles whereas the Custom Games Lobby delivered that organic, creative space to make your own game within the game, staged on unique and inspiring maps moulded in Reach’s very own expansive Forgeworld editor. With solid gameplay and options to explore at the foundation, throw in a minimalist lobby design and a consistent framework for finding other players easily and you had, in Reach, the setting for an involved and eccentric online community.
Repent! This week on the patter pod we cast our leery eyes over the Seven Deadly Sins and decide gluttony is best. Luke, Ewan, Jamie and Shaun discuss the seven deadly sins that are believed to be the seven vices that spur other sins and further immoral behaviours. We cover each sin individually while thinking about how these ancient guidelines look in our modern day world and how some sins have developed over time. Listen to our latest Social Patter podcast below or on all major podcast platforms. – @ThePatterPod
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The Seven Deadly Sins
With our increasing dependency on connecting through our advancing devices, are they bringing us together – or ripping us apart.
When the seven deadly sins were first constructed by the ancient Greco-Romans to give guidance on how people should live I can’t imagine they would ever have foreseen the relevance they still hold in a modern world, or worryingly how we now have an app for every sin.
Envy = Facebook
Sloth = Netflix
Pride = Instagram
Wrath = Twitter
Gluttony = Just Eat
Lust = Tinder
Greed = LinkedIn
What do we all have in common? Well for most of us it’s the Human Body. Coming in all shapes and sizes but internally we are mostly the same, some of us have stronger constitutions than others mind you. Luke, Shaun, Ewan and Jamie vouch for their favourite organs and discuss all the incredible wonders within us.
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The Human Body
Once the life-sustaining properties of flatulence were widely known, there were many social consequences. People who openly farted around others were no longer treated with disdain but with grudging respect. But contrastingly, farting lost a lot of its humorous associations, as people came to view a fart being made for comedic effect as a fart that could now not be used to save a life, as if the dispenser had just poured a litre of blood down the drain for a joke. Such things were deemed unacceptable. When the Red Cross adopted the phrase “Pull my finger” as the slogan for its campaign to increase donations of flatulence for disaster victims, a classic joke was essentially lost forever. – Dean Burnett
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