With the new season well and truly upon us, it’s about time we all shared our new season’s resolutions.
Every football fan has one, whether it’s to go to more away games, watch more Spanish football, watch less international friendlies or spend less time in front of Sky Sports News.
My first resolution for this season is to watch more Championship football, something that will be aided by the BBC’s ‘The Football League Show’. While the show’s debut a few days ago lacked character, largely thanks to the blander than bland Manish Bhasin, at least it was packed full of goals and dedicated less time to comatose punditry than Match of the Day.
My other resolution is to abstain from all fantasy football or score prediction games.
Looking over the rules for The Times’ ‘Play the Game’ I was frankly both bemused and bored. Why would anyone want to spend several hours a week rotating a squad of 20 players, selling and buying players from other teams, and generally adopting the mindset of a slightly deranged Warhammer player?
Because I tell you, this is what it would take to perform respectably in this game, which asks more of you than 50% of full-time jobs. It’s enough to make you think there are 2.38 million people unemployed with nothing better to do but sit on their arses pretending to be other people who spend a lot of their time sitting on their arses.
The next step is to turn it into a TV show. They could call it ‘Britains got 2.38 million Gary Megson wannabes: who is the greatest?’ Tasks would involve answering questions posed by Manish Bhasin (why not him again?) in the most anodyne way possible, and ironing your initials onto a sweatshirt.
As for score prediction games, in my two seasons of playing The Guardian’s ‘Pick the Score’ I have never made it to Christmas without reverting to selecting 1-0 victories for the team that comes first alphabetically.
Why? Because my predictions were hopeless, I couldn’t be bothered wasting time thinking about something essentially meaningless, and my alphabetical 1-0s actually yielded more points than any genuine predictions I made.
So what about you? What are your new season’s resolutions?