Bexlee

A colleague of mine found this somewhere, coincidentally it seems to have been written by another Boro fan- though The Riverside was far from boring last Saturday

"This just about sums it all up!!

I’m bored

I’m the Chairman of the Bored.

This has been the most boring season I have seen since I started watching football in 1969 and almost everyone I talk to feels the same. The game increasingly looks like a best mate who has gone off with some rich, middle-class bird and is now embarrassed to go drinking with you in your spit ‘n’ sawdust local rather than some no smoking 3 D Wetherspoons.

He’s embarrassed he used to admit liking heavy metal rather than Simply Red and now wears Dolce and Gabbana rather than Army and Navy. The posh bird doesn’t like you because you swear too much, wear Black Sabbath T shirts, and talk about your bowel movements in public. She won’t let you visit because she seriously believes your presence will lower the house prices. He tries to tell you spending Saturdays shopping in Ikea is better than the football but you know he’s lying to himself and to you.

This is modern football - our best mate has been stolen from us by the people we hate most. Is it any wonder I’m bored?


I’m bored because all the teams from Everton down to Leeds are as good or bad as each other. If they all swapped shirts you wouldn’t be able to tell the difference between them. A bland uniformity rules.

I’m bored because the transfer window has robbed us of transfer speculation - about only thing that gets us through these extended periods of tedium. Wondering whether your club’s going to sign someone on loan from the German Second Division in July is all we’re left with.

I’m bored because the game is so unphysical. No one can tackle without getting sent off or being branded a violent lunatic. Players fall to the floor and roll around like hysterical pre-menstrual schoolgirls if someone breathes on them. Robbie Savage is almost the only player worthy of our passion. Someone forgot to tell Robbie it’s not the 1970’s anymore.

I’m bored because virtually 100% of the players are bland. The few that do have anything about them like Roy Keane, get so exposed we get sick to death of hearing about them. Where is this generation’s Stan Bowles or Eric Cantona? The Premiership is littered with Nowhere Men. Worse still, teams are loaded with truly useless players like Repka, Biscan and Lee Hughes and all of them earn more in a week than most of us earn in three years.

I’m bored because we’re six months into the Champions League and still not at the knock out stage. European football is mindless marathon. Half the matches are worthless exercises. Man United can field a team of monopod Dalmatians in red, lose 45-0 and it still doesn’t matter for the next two games and we’re supposed to be interested? I’d rather wash my eyes in bleach.

Do you remember when European nights were “big”. They made your skin prickle. Not any more. The UEFA cup is chock full of losers who cant make the grade in the easy-peasy Champions League - which has hardly any Champions in at all anyway.

I’m bored ****less with Internationals because they are virtually meaningless now that club football is so much more important than playing for your country. However, if you’re English, you can get a cap simply by turning up at an England game with two legs and by staying awake long enough. Gavin McCann has an England cap remember, so does Seth Johnson.

I’m bored because managers are now like middle management bank executives. While Keegan remains at the pinnacle of surrealist expressionism that Strachan still aspires to, teeth-clenchingly dull people like Hoddle, Roeder, Wilko, Taylor, Wenger, Houllier, Megson and Bruce just blurt out bland boring rubbish after every game and because there’s nothing else to report on, it’s covered in excruciating detail.

Have you ever heard Glenn Hoddle say anything insightful about the game this season? No. The most interesting thing about Hoddle is he’s bought more players with the letter V in their names than anyone else. That’s all.

I’m bored because a team as utterly tedious to watch as Liverpool have won a trophy. I have watched Liverpool a lot this season and it has always, on every occasion felt like I was having my brain sucked out through my eyes. It’s like going to a gig and paying 30 to watch a band tune up. -

I’m bored because the BBC still employs Davies and Motson who were commentating before my ***** had dropped and, my friends, that was a very, very long time ago.

I’m bored because even Big Ron has developed a post modern ironic sense of self, so that you know if he says good like “he’s gone a bit lemon jelly on that one” that he’s thought it up and written it down beforehand.

ITV’s coverage is still embarrassing and Sky Sports News is psychotically pitiful in its desperation to find something interesting to say about football 24 hours a day. When not talking about an “Italian Job” or ‘Double Dutch”, they spend a lot of time asking Kenny Sansom about the merits of sandwich spread or getting recipes for soup from Ronnie Whelan.

I’m very, very bored of the FA telling us players are role models and so shouldn’t be caught getting pissed and dipping their dicks in gold digger women. However, being an incoherent cretin is ok. Dumb, half-wit players do much more to bring the game into disrepute than any two footed tackle.

Wouldn’t it be good if the FA said, “sorry lad you’re too stupid to do interviews, you’re giving our nation’s youth the impression that being mentally sub-normal is excusable. Come back when you know that Franz Kafka is not a fashion designer and Sancho Panza isn’t a Mexican striker”

Here’s the truth: we the fans know more about the game than the players do. They can’t tell us anything we haven’t known for years. So why don’t they shut the f*** up?

I’m not alone in this boredom. A lot of grounds are half-full ‘cos fans are bored and, worse, still have been fleeced by their clubs for the haif-assed tedious entertainment. I support Boro so I should know and they’re far from the guiltiest. Villa is half-deserted most of the time, 15,000 of Sunderland’s so-called loyal fans have legged it. Fans at Highbury and Old Trafford are silent witnesses much of the time. Only WBA and Birmingham have the full-blooded roar of mad fans alive.

This is how its gonna be from now until the big, obscene money finally drops out of the game and clubs have to stop buying players from the Cameroon or Slovakia and grow their own instead. It can’t happen soon enough.

This is how its going to be until the game starts being about guts and glory and pride and not about paying one-footed players 30 grand a week, until it’s not about pleasing corporate sponsors, TV executive, middle class social commentators, businessmen or corpulent, overpaid right-wing journalists.

I’ve loved the game all my life because it was exciting, unpredictable, aggressive, passionate and because it was a great place to learn new obscenities, but you tell me where I can watch brilliant, exciting passionate football now?

Oh, and my mate recently got thrown out of a ground by Stewards for swearing at the Referee!"

Toonman1

"Do you remember when European nights were “big”"

Can't have been written by a Boro fan. Europe to them means the likes of Ibiza, Benidorm and Eurodisney, not the Nou Camp and San Sero...

As for half empty grounds and fans lacking passion; guess he's never been to watch Newcastle Utd at St James' Park then. There's no lack of passion in the 52000+ that attend every home game!

Cheers