Equating stability with ability: The Fergie Complex (Part 2)

Continuation. Part one here.

But at this point we must find out whether Chelsea are the norm or the exception in the footballing climate in general. We will start small, looking at Chelsea's new 'competition', Tottenham Hotspur and Manchester City. In the Abramovich era, as Chelsea history circa 2003 onward has been called, Spurs have employed 7 managers and Man City 5 including the incumbents. Chelsea have had 10 in the same period. Looking at continental opposition during the Abramovich Era, the 10 most recent winners of the Champions League (going backwards from 2011 and not counting them more than once), have employed: 6 (Barcelona), 10 (Internazionale), 1 (Manchester United), 3 (AC Milan), 5 (Liverpool), 8 (FC Porto), 10 (Real Madrid), 7 (FC Bayern Munich), 5 (Borussia Dortmund), 9 (Juventus). Chelsea then are clearly NOT the anomaly. Chelsea are definitely not the first 'super sackers'. A look at the number of managers elite Italian and German clubs have had would put to rest all ideas of a Chelsea-centric sacking culture. Perhaps it is the financial clout, the obscene amounts of money Abramovich has put into and sometimes thrown out of the club (in terms of managerial compensation), combined with media scrutiny bordering on the ridiculous that has influenced several opinions. And this claim of scrutiny is neither paranoid nor Chelsea-centric, but rather, a problem (yes, a problem) in football as a whole.

Internazionale most notably have had the same number of managers as Chelsea in the 'Abramovich Years'

A dynamic example of the increasing intensity of the same would be the Wikipedia pages of 21st century footballers. One notices in their club career segments, a Miroslav Klose or a Wayne Rooney get increasingly detailed descriptions for effective non-achievements as opposed to the abstraction of only the most important facts in their earlier careers. Can we also then abstract the pressure to perform onto this same scrutiny? Perhaps, but a detailed study would be inconclusive at best. But that is beyond the purview of this current stream of thought. Returning to the issue at hand, if the culture is one of quick managerial changes, we must then first ask why it is so before we ask why Chelsea are the pantomime villains, the Guy Fawkes to burn whenever there is a managerial casualty somewhere in the big leagues of Europe.
Football in general has become more and more dependent on its financial side, and with Financial Fair Play, which primarily posits that a club cannot spend more money (on transfers and the like) than it earns (and hence ideally negating the possibility of a 'sugar-daddy' owner investing heavily to create another footballing superpower), on the European horizon it will be even more so. Then for the daily-management aspect, the manager-owner relationship becomes strictly one of employer-employee and now more than ever has this aspect of the football club mirrored the face of businesses worldwide. Where is the problem then? It would be with the consumers, or in this case, the fans. The essential problem with football ever having a complete and democratically discernible business aspect to it (from a lay-fan's point of view) would be in the fans themselves. The product they see week-in, week-out is one they believe (correctly, to an extent) is produced under the stewardship of the suited man they see week-in, week-out. Perhaps the simplest analogy to bring in here would be that of a recognizable company. Say we take Apple. If they relieved chief industrial designer Sir Jonathan Ive of his duties to replace him with, say, (wishful thinking here) Dieter Rams, there would be a discernible change in product aesthetics that would have some wondering and several complaining with the ain't-broke-don't-fix argument.

A crucial advantage Sir Alex Ferguson has over most current managers is that few (fans and media alike) can judge him in terms of his predecessor. Heard the lines, "Oh, Ron Atkinson would have done a better job!" lately?

However, the crucial deviation here is that it would not be a change with limitless public exposure as is the case for a manager of a football club. Every week, he is a living reminder of the owner's making the choice over his predecessor. For a team like Chelsea, with repeated managerial changes, it would be similar to every generation of iPod having different aesthetic roots as opposed to a unified, understandable, familiar sentiment and aesthetic it has found under Ive. The problem then is not (completely) one of the personnel as much as that of Identity. The ability to have a unique (if gradually developing) signature to anchor in the security of a system that still works. And this is a crucial point, to be addressed later especially in context of the English game. What we should question now is the necessity of identity (and perhaps, crucially, the new aesthetic of dissimilarity) for what is essentially a product. Let is break up the word itself to ask whether an 'entity' (which I posit here to be non-living) requires a unique 'id' for its successful and competitive functionality in its sphere of action. The obvious answer here is that it doesn't. The need to go against pain and unpleasure (seeing as I did bring in Freud, might as well extend the analogy) is, in fact, the footballing unconscious and it is at the heart of every player and manager.
In answer to why Chelsea have become representative of this quick-hire-quick-fire culture, it would essentially be a price of their instant success with the coming of the Abramovich era. Becoming too famous for their own good, one might say. But the fact here remains that Chelsea are just one in a pantheon of impatient clubs who will see perceptible success at the cost of replacing the man hired to engineer the same. This is not something new to football or business. But this is a side gaining more and more indecent exposure at the cost of Chelsea's image in particular. Why not other clubs so much? The reason is simple.

To be continued..

(note that all managerial statistics include caretaker managers)

Image credit:
UEFA.com: http://www.uefa.com/MultimediaFiles/Photo/competitions/Comp_Matches/01/49/15/73/1491573_w2.jpg

Austin Osuide: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/14/Alex_Ferguson.jpg

Equating stability with ability: The Fergie Complex (Part 1)

A questioning of the protest against Chelsea's culture of managerial sackings in six not-so-easy pieces


It is an interesting disintegration of the power structure of the Premier League that has brought us to where we are today. From Manchester United's domination 1992 onward, to the United-Arsenal dichotomy of the late nineties and early 2000s, to Chelsea's challenging of their supremacy in the middle of the decade, and now the Manchester City-Tottenham Hotspur addition to the mix. Liverpool have never been a classical power in the Premier League, but are perennially one of the toughest challenges all of these team and are always on the fringes of being in a serious trophy challenge. Historical rivals of Manchester United, the Merseysiders' diminished abilities have not made the derby games any less bitter and the Reds of Liverpool have had a smattering of cup successes to their name (notably the UEFA Champions League in 2005). There was a point where the quadrangle of Manchester United, Chelsea, Arsenal and Liverpool were called English football's 'Big Four' as a testament to both their footballing and their financial ability. It is generally accepted that the 'breaking' of this Big Four came about in the 2009-10 season when Tottenham Hotspur finally pipped Liverpool to fourth place in the league table. Ever since, the power structure has been unstable to say the least. The top four slots allow entry into Europe's elite (and more importantly in the current footballing climate, lucrative) competition, the UEFA Champions League. With six 'powers' battling it out among each other and with a few surprise packages every now and then, there is very little margin for error at these six clubs.

The broken monopoly of the perceived Big Four has made the stewardship of Chelsea and Liverpool, at least, extremely tenuous

Chelsea have long been vilified as the problematizing factor in a nice steeped brew of historically successful clubs who had stability as their watchword in the beginning, or at the very least, in the early days of the Premier League. In the first decade of the Premier League, it was Arsenal of all clubs who were the most 'unstable' of the United-Arsenal-Liverpool triad. With five managers in the decade spanning 1992 to 2002, the Gunners of North London outstripped Liverpool's three and United's emblematic Sir Alex Ferguson. In contrast, Chelsea were a minor irritant in cup competitions and a near-competitor in the league and they had seven managers in the first decade itself. Hardly the paragon of stability. But then again, historically speaking, they never have been. To Chelsea's total of thirty two managers throughout their history, Arsenal answer with 23, Liverpool with 20 and United with a miserly 17. And note that they have all been around for at least six years longer than Chelsea. Is there anything to say as a Chelsea apologist? Though Facebook pages like Troll Football (sparkling humour most of the time, by the by) don't know it in historical context, they've labelled the club right. They ARE the 'super sackers'. But as a corollary, one also needs to understand that it is not Roman Abramovich, Chelsea owner and opinion-divider, who has newly introduced a hire-and-fire culture into the club. Rather, he has just added a chapter to it. It is the problem of media exposure and by extension, their unintentional pressure, that does not blow out of proportion as much as give infinitesimal and contextually, largely unnecessary details about the internal running of a club. Of course one can argue about the right to information and the need to know, and that is not being questioned at all. Instead, the purview of this particular examination is to question the necessity of the same information. This is not a request for censorship and should not be viewed as such. Instead it is a call for abstraction along the lines of, do you need to know how your smartphone app works?

To be continued.. Part 2 here.

Image credit:
epltalk.com : http://epltalk.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/12/the-big-four.jpg

Did you sail across the sun?

It's fun and stupid and nostalgic when you realize what an angsty and immature poet you once were. Rummaging through old text files before an exam. Never a good idea. This is one of the relatively better ones. I'm too embarrassed to put up the others. Written in the winter of 2009, if I recall correctly.


Dreams of Mexico, dreams of Spain
Dreams of drought, dreams of rain
Dreams beyond dream's mortal sight
Dreams beyond dream's chartered flight
Dream that take forever too
Dreams that can't be dreamed anew
Dreams of fantasy, dreams of fable
Dreams of wire, dreams of cable
Dreams of mortar, brick and stone
Dreams not meant to be dreamed alone
Dreams of Freud, of Jung, of all
Dreams of derelicts and Marc Chagall
Dreams of beakers, crystals, glass
Dreams of science, of speed, of mass
Dreams of life and blood and bone
Dreams of my grandmother on the telephone
Dreams of graphs, curves, equations
Dreams of pleasure and titillations
Dreams of football, dreams of tennis
Dreams of London, Brest and Venice
Dreams of foggy, steaming streets
Dreams of spaghetti you cannot eat
Dreams of whiskey, wine and song
Dreams that cannot be held for long
Dreams of children, playful, merry
Dreams of one fresh blood-red cherry
Dreams of linen, cotton, nylon
Dreams of swinging from a rubber pylon
Dreams that don't stop and wait for you
Dreams that make you cabin crew
Dreams of warm, lost sunny days
Dreams of grass, of time and space
Dreams of Rutherford and Hawking
Dreams of romance and of stalking
Dreams of anger, wet ones too
Dreams of flushes in Waterloo
Dreams of spiders, worms and gnats
Dreams of Herge and bowler hats
Dreams of pigs and Aristotle
Dreams of skin, grey-green and mottled
Dreams of Kubrick, of Alex DeLarge
Dreams of Dufresne and Madame Defarge
Dreams of Jesus and Mary Magdalen
Dreams where Chelsea sign Paul Allen
Dreams of 9GAG and StumbleUpon
Dreams of Coke and Elton John
Dreams of knighthood and the Nobel Prize
Dreams of blue and green, mismatched eyes
Dreams of Benedict and toad-in-the-hole
Dreams of awful-smelling filet of sole
Dreams of hyphenated horoscopes
Dreams of acrid azeotropes
Dreams that rhyme and dreams that don't
Dreams that will and dreams that won't
These dreams are mine in whatever way
And in mine head only, I hope they stay.

Can you see the real me?

And here is a list of eleven thing I would recommend nerdbois (and girls) to do when wasting time on the internet (it's never an 'if'). Try it sometime. Don't forget to thank me.

Put in the names of two places, preferably on different continents on Google Maps and click on Get Directions. Zoom out completely and try to guess which countries you're passing through by the names of the roads.

Sinthi to Stonehenge: We can safely assume this part to be Eastern Europe...

Use utrace.de and enter random IP addresses to find where they originate from.

Order something on Flipkart and then cancel as close to it getting shipped as possible. YOLO.

Spend all day on Slideshare.net looking at the oddities some people upload.

Use ghost browsers in workplaces. To read comics. Badass.

Make memes. All the fragging time.

Mr. Ramsay is not amused

And copypastas.

Trawl through 9GAG. Because it exists.

And Oglaf. Because Dungeons and Dragons porn is what we all want, right?

Make epic fake Facebook walls from here.

Yes. EXACTLY like that.

Wikipedia disambiguation pages. Best. Thing. Ever.

Additions to this list always welcome. And now off to get some studying Donne.

Need a Little Time to Wake Up

It's a little bit harder to wake up every morning when your best friends just take it upon themselves to fuck off from the city for higher education. Yes. Even two years on. It's dulled a little, but not close to enough. Damn. I should have applied elsewhere too. New city, more people to get to know. And independent living! Well, sort of. Independent within your parents' budget. Yes, I know it doesn't count. So suck on that, you assholes. Ha!

Two of them went deep South on me. Another one's in Hyderabad. And one fucked off to Canada. Wait. Does the first sentence sound wrong? Ohfuckit. I honestly wouldn't mind if it/they did.

CANADA. Would you believe it? It's not even like Cobie Smulders is ACTUALLY Canadian. Now I have nothing against the country. It's beautiful. LOOK. A Caribou!

Yes..?

But I do take issue when one of my best friends decides to leave for that country. I mean alright, Kolkata is hot, humid, inefficient, time-consuming, garishly blue and white these days, technologically backward, dirty, corrupt, ... um, I think I'd best stop here before I start sympathizing with the bugger. Anyhow, Victor Mario Kaisar is living it up these days as a look-at-me-I'm-the-Sports-Director-of-one-oh-six-point-nine-the-ex-radio-station Grade A prick these days.

He can't even make a decent snow angel. You call those arms?!

Well, there we have Bheektor as our class teacher WAY back in 2005 would call him. Just 'Mario' to us. Although in the school canteen his name would change to 'Ehmariokhawa!' He's doing SO well that he forgets about his friends back home. Oh, did I tell you he bought a car? That pretty much seals it for the wanker. He is now a proud expat. The bastard basterd.

Debarpan 'Dixie' Ghosh is a different kettle of fish/handi of biriyani altogether. This man got an All India Rank of *flourish of trumpets* 62 in CLAT without. proper. study. What a piece of work is Dixie, eh? We were science students at one point in time. You'd picked up Joint Entrance forms, you bastard! HOW THE FUCK DID YOU MANAGE IT?! But that's all ancient news now. Now this man is in Delhi, interning in the chambers of some bigwig Supreme Court advocate. Oof, Dixie! Chaliye jaa!

This is his "Hyan, chaliye jachchi. Bhaloi chalachchi" face

I miss his hot, hairy body. And here I sigh with much melancholy (punch me when this freaks you out, Dixie; for old times' sake) and wish that I was holding his hand and much else besides...

But then this man is in law school. His life is pretty much set. When he becomes a big-ass corporate lawyer based in the Santa Clara or summat, he'd better fly back to do petty cases in Alipore Judge's Court for me! But he still has two years of law school to get through. I'm not sure what they do in law school, but he tells me it's pretty gruelling. So why is he there?? He shouldn't wear himself out like that. Unless he doesn't know what he's doing there.

Maybe no law student knows what they're doing there...

But in two years' time, this Dixie will be out and about. I hope he remembers to visit. He actually stood us up this Pujo. Gandu. Come back! We need to do matlamo together!

Speaking of matlamo, CHICKEN! You were such a sad specimen of (in)humanity when we were drinking at your place that day. You actually pretended to get high before we'd drunk anything. Raise your game, Srijan Banerjee. This is what Chennai does to you.Here you were, "EHBARACHICKEN!" There, you're just "Bungalli." That's just... pathetic.

What am I doing here? I wonder what you're doing there too.

Big-ass guitarist buying all the latest shizzle in the musical world, eh? Harami. Get back here and I guarantee you will find a guitar up your skinny ass. I bet you're captain of your college football team, na? Big deal. I bet you don't fall off walls there.

That day was insane, wasn't it? Why'd you climb the wall in the first place again? And everyone was standing in a circle below you. And they just took five steps back when you started falling. I remember you telling me, "Sala someone could have caught me, they just all went back! Bastards." I remember the dull thud when you hit the ground. Ohh. Good times, those.

Hell, you're the oldest friend I have in this group of four. Chicken. I just realized. I've known you for sixteen years. Holy Toledo. Just get your stupid, fancy pants SRM engineering crap over with already. It's not like you even like the place. And you told me your food issues. And I know you still have dirt on your skinny hip. And I bet there isn't a hot girl for miles. So leave that damned city and get a job or something! And if you aren't posted in Kolkata...

That.

And I suppose I've saved this man for last. Yes. You know who you are. So cool you think you are no? Going off to MyNipple Institute of Technology and becoming this big stud there? Topping class and going to KFC and watching movies in Mangalore? YOUR PLACE IS CALLED MANIPALA ON FACEBOOK. Ha. Don't forget that. Manipala. Shala. Tshabalala. Banchod. Gandu. Bokachoda. I miss you like fuck. Come back, Ale. Come back.

Just look at that motherfucker? He's like 'Oh I can have all of them anytime.' Bastard.

Such an asshole Alekhya Majumdar is. I don't even know why I love him as much as I do. But fuckitall, he can and does make me laugh like very, very few people could or can. But now he's so hi-fi. He's all "Don't fuck with me, bitch. I don't even know who you are." these days. And I bet he's had sex. Such an asshole. And I bet he does it like ten times a day. Son of a bitch shala. When the cleaning lady does goes into his hostel room every morning while the fuck is acing another test, I'll bet she finds something like...

This.

Sala he's the horniest person I know (barring me, of course) and now his thingummy has the licence to kill. What an ass. When you do your entire class don't forget to TELL THEM, asshole. TELL THEM that I could tell whenever you had an erection in class. TELL THEM I saw your blowjob. TELL THEM that Chicken and I were the first ones to know that it was THIS fat, and THIS long. And just finish your damned biotech course summa cum laude and get the fuck back here.

I miss the whole lot of you.

We should have just stayed here. These are OUR desks. Window-side keoramo.

Assholes. Y u no come back soon?

The Bad Beginning

Because of course, what better time to start your seventeenth attempt at a blog than 6 days before your semester exams? I suppose I wonder why I'm doing this right now instead of studying. Probably post-partum depression now that my term paper is done and dusted. Indeed, now comes the boring bit. Editing the draft. Luckily, I'm getting by with a little help from a friend there.
Very honestly, I don't know what this particular blog is about beyond being a journal after a fashion. I wonder how long I can keep it up, though. I think it has a lot to do with the perceptions of response, seeing how our lives are defined by Facebook these days. If you put something out there, you somehow expect it to be acknowledged, if not appreciated. A dangerous thing. I think I may need to maintain this blog more than I'd like to admit.
On a different note, I MUST settle in Japan for a few years. I absolutely must. I firmly believe that it is one of the most beautiful countries, if not THE most beautiful country in the world. My senior from school and college, Sambit Dattachaudhuri is now in Izumi, Osaka and his pictures do nothing to snap me out of my almost, no, my completely unhealthy Japan obsession. This is the problem of seinen manga. You tend to love the places as much as, if not more than, the characters. And did I mention Japan is beautiful? Oh. Right.
And it has kimonos. And bento. And the loveliest festivals. And okonomiyaki (okonomi- "anything you want", yaki- "grilled"), what they call 'Japanese pizza', which will HAVE to be my first meal in the country. I wouldn't mind some sukiyaki (suki- "spade", yaki- same as previous; don't ask) or shabu-shabu (onomatopoeic sound of cooking meat in a pot; a savoury version of sukiyaki) either, though.

Mount Koya, Wakayama. Photo: Sambit Dattachaudhuri

As is quite evident, Sambit is a bit of a boss at this. He makes Japan seem even more attractive. So now I burn a little more. Whoopee. Ahwell. Back to Hamlet.

Might as well leave with a haiku..

A field of cotton --

as if the moon

had flowered.

- Matsuo Basho, trans. Robert Hass