LOCKERROOM:No more daydreaming, I'm ending my interest in Fantasy Football for the sake of my sanity
ONE MORNING, as Gregor Samsa was waking up from anxious dreams, he discovered that in bed he had been changed into a monstrous, verminous bug.Franz Kafka.
There aren’t many opening sentences in English literature which cut to the chase quite like the opening line of Metamorphosis by Kafka. I mean you read those words and straight off you just know that you aren’t getting a light romantic comedy which might later become a cinematic vehicle suitable for furthering the career of, say, Hugh Grant.
It’s all there. A man. He goes asleep. He wakes up. He is an insect. Bang. Bang. Bang. Just like our case. There was a country. They all woke up. They were broke. Yep. It’s that startling. And something similar has happened to me.
Kakfa had little belief in his own literary worth and in his will he asked his good friend Max Brod to burn all his work. We can only deduce that Kafka was a little half hearted about all this as, while still alive, he had asked Brod straight out if he would burn all the papers in the event of his death or metamorphosis into a common insect, whichever came first. Brod, not a great man for the plamás, had said that he wouldn’t.
Kafka retained him as executor of his will anyway, a gesture which Brod interpreted to mean: “Hey Maxi baby why not publish every word of mine you can lay your hands on when I pop my clogs or get crushed by a rolled up newspaper.”
Had Brod tended to the wishes of his friend I would perhaps have been able to begin this column as I had originally intended: One morning as Lockerroom was waking from anxious dreams, he discovered that in bed he was still a monstrous, verminous journalist but one who had acquired the ability to influence Premier football league results.
The realisation has really been that startling. Yesterday, the butler on his last morning before being laid off and extradited brought me my breakfast roll as usual from the garage yesterday morning. Like the good fellow that my letter of commendation claims him to be he had presented the bulging breakfast roll garnished only with the Sunday sports supplements and two alker seltzer. Who needs all that grim real word stuff in this day and age.
Anyway the congealed white pudding jumped from the roll out onto the duvet when I noticed with a bitter start that Nicolas Anelka had scored a hat-trick in the FA Bloody Cup. This treachery represented his first competitive goals since he scored against Southend in the FA Bloody Cup last month. In fact Anelka has dutifully ceased and desisted from scoring goals in the Premier League since I signed him to be one half of my Fantasy Football League strike force, some time ago.
This non-aggression pact was taken along (as an illegal act of collusion in breach of the fair trade act) with Liverpool’s Dirk Kuyt, the shameless little Dutch tease who decided that scoring was a bad thing a week or two earlier when I signed him. How I regret throwing myself at that blond hussey, making a fool of myself like that time I thought the strippagram really liked me . . .
I have the reputation as being a trigger happy, nay, ruthless manager, when it comes to the transfer market and you might think that the insolence of Anelka and Kuyt might see them go the way of Messrs Keane, Smith (A) , Torres, Ashton, Van Persie, Pavlyuchenko, Defoe, Agbonlahor or Robinho all of whom have been shown the door this season. Each in turn seduced me with the frivolous yet throatily whispered promise that they liked to score goals for fun. To a man they let me down and hurt me.
So with Athletico Marino lying in what frankly looks like an unpromising 39,811th place in the overall Fantasy Football League I am giving up chasing every bit of transfer market tail that gets wiggled my way. If at first you don’t succeed, act like you were never that interested anyway.
The stats make depressing reading. The number of strikers bought and sold is on a par with the number of players in every other position who have come and gone in the Athletico Marino colours. This season 32 pros have been asked to move on having mysteriously hit dry patches or become injured as soon as they signed juicy contracts with me. I am the Manchester City of Fantasy Football.
It was never my intention to be so. The whole point of entering a fantasy football league is to win it without appearing remotely interested or concerned. I never meant to get involved in all this feverish buying and selling.
We have a sub-league within the office, a sort of super-league within the league itself. Athletico lie in a humiliating fifth position in that league. Just outside of Europe you say? Well no. Fifth of eight. Fifth and hopelessly out of touch with the leaders. One would say that Athletico are involved in a relegation dogfight were it not for the apparent truth that I am the only one actually doing the fighting, buying and selling like a demented, coke-addled wall street trader, moving funds around more frantically and more pointlessly than a senior Irish bank executive, checking the stats religiously week in and week out. Meanwhile all the others have forgotten that they are even in a league.
The whole point of being in an office Fantasy League is to be able to affect surprise and modest self-effacement when somebody comes along in May and tells you that you have won. “Oh that old thing,” you say “The Fantasy League yoke? You know I’d completely forgotten about it.”
Instead I have charts, computer programmes, form guides, holy books, football magazines, spread betting statistics, contributions from astrologers and mystics, inside dope from other hacks, all drip feeding my drive to be fifth. It makes a mockery of the game Bill.
So I am giving up. Next time I hear Martin O’Neill call somebody (especially Ashley Young) a genius I won’t be rushing to the computer to secure his services to replace, lets just say, Theo Where-Are-You-Now Walcott, whose little streak of form immediately had prompted another rush to the computer a few weeks earlier.
I mean I know at times I have been a fool. I can’t look anybody in the eye and explain what I saw in either Tom Huddlestone or Jamie O’Hara but was I the only one to swoon over Sylvain Distin? How was I to know that as soon as I signed him William Gallas would fall out with Arsene Wenger or that Andy Reid would celebrate making the Athletico first 11 by gaining two stone and becoming heavier than the other 10. Men like Plessis of Liverpool and Khizanishvili of god knows where? Ships in the night. Dredgers mainly. I thought we had something. I was wrong. I was a fool.
A serial fool. Hilario? Olofinjana? I know, I know. If signing them was a crime then I’m guilty. You want to know when Cristiano Ronaldo really got found out. When I signed him? At least he did the decent thing. He played on.
Steve Finnan moved to Spain right after I bought him. No note. No goodbye.
Joey O’Brien got injured. Thanks Joey.
Sometimes I have been too clever. I signed Steed Malbranque when he returned to Spurs (I’m a sucker for Spurs midfielders, I know) thinking that the return to his old stomping ground would, well, release the Steed in him. He’s brought me in a whopping THREE fantasy league points the French scoundrel. I have to say that hurts. I have suffered at the hands of men like Steed who have cost me in other relationships too. As Manchester United have gone game after game without conceding a league goal I have prudishly stayed out of the market for Man U defender. Merely because, well Oprah, I find it hard to trust anymore. I know that signing John O’Shea will be the signal for United’s run of parsimony to end with a surprise six-goal thumping. Most likely five of those six goals will be scored by Nicolas Anelka “rejuventated” after his unhappy spell at Athletico Marino.
It’s all over now. No more crazy signings. No more punts. No more fond foolishness. I am placing my ability to influence the outcome of the Premiership at the disposal of the nation.
As soon as the Fantasy Football transfer window opens again I propose to sign as many Manchester United defenders as is permissible (three). Before the floodgates open I recommend that the seven billion being flung at the banks be used instead betting on adverse scorelines for United.
Unorthodox yes, but unlike others with their greasy hands on the national tiller, I have a proven record. Trust me.
