The scourge of the modern player

WITHOUT a game to watch on Saturday (thanks, Jerzy) I’m reduced to making the insignificant substantial.

Which is hardly uncharted territory for the average football fan. We spend our lives scaling mountains that were once molehills.

Take Lucas Neill for example. Are we really meant to get all cantankerous over the refusal of a distinctly average performer to take our money while picking splinters out of his arse? Well, yes. That’s what we do. We’ll choose to ignore the fact that he’d only be fourth-choice centre half and wax lyrically, even tearfully, about the medals he’s turned his back on.

We’ll call him greedy and seethe, because no other footballer in the history of the game ever joined a club for the money, did he? We’ll conveniently forget that the running down of his Blackburn contract was the only reason we got interested in the first place.

With everyone furiously aiming to plant a flag on the moral high ground the player retaliated by overstating his desire for regular first-team football. He had that at Blackburn anyway but on a third of the salary, yet that wasn’t relevant in the slightest and you would be a liar and a communist to suggest otherwise.

Then Rafa and Parry have to get their little dig in. Back and forth, over what? A player whose impact on the squad would have been minimal at best. “Much ado about nothing” doesn’t come close.

Oh well, it turned a tedious transfer window into something vaguely newsworthy and that ultimately is all that seems to matter.

The modern footballer makes me sick, to be honest. They don’t have to turn Liverpool down to make me choke on my own bile. Watching Keith Gillespie get himself sent off and probably double his punishment by taking another swipe at his victim, one was hardly shocked to discover afterwards he’s in the middle of a contract dispute.

Sure enough he blithely walks off the pitch for what amounts to six weeks’ paid leave. And you just know that when players like Neill and Gillespie become available again other clubs will be bidding for their loyalty. Nice work if you can get it eh? As we are informed the Premiership honey pot is about to become stickier still there’s more idle talk about passing the benefit onto the ‘customer’.

Comedy’s all about timing, clearly.

Maybe that can work at clubs struggling to fill their grounds, but we’ll have to keep paying through the nose. Thousands of Reds are left outside, frozen faces pressed to the window looking in. They’d be only too happy to snatch our tickets off us if we should ever get sick of this shameless charade.

Fewer and fewer clubs can count on devotion beyond the call of duty. Goodison and St James Park were both half empty for their FA Cup matches.

Whilst one sniggers smugly at their deluded fans and the inflated estimation of their own allegiance (which they never tire of sharing with you) there’s also an admiration for their refusal to be exploited and a touch of sadness that such great clubs are rapidly approaching underdog status.

Platini’s rumoured plans to dilute G14 influence and take away precious Champions League places will probably end in failure. It never pays to underestimate a Frenchman’s obstinacy of course, but too much money and power has been stashed away in the last 15 years for him to make that much difference.

There is a media perception that this will hit Liverpool the hardest. Since we finish in the top three half the time and actually won the damn thing in 2005 (not that I like to brag, you understand) outsiders can be as spiteful as they wish. By 2009 it may well be academic anyway.

It’s also an essential part of a supporter’s psyche to turn an innocent decision into proof of a conniving plot to deny us our greatness, and Platini’s views on Heysel and Liverpool are a matter of record.

If he wanted to bring back the European Cup for champions only he’d get my vote since the UEFA Cup would be overflowing with great teams again, but this smacks of putting ointment on a broken back.

Football’s soul is as black as tar, and sprinkling sugar on top isn’t going to help. All this politics and money talk bores me to tears anyway. There’s some actual football this week, thank God.