Buzzin Grumpy

We have decided to stop updating Buzzin Grumpy to concentrate on our Business, Entertainment & Sports blog titles.

There is a list of all our current blog titles on the left hand menu of www.BuzzinMedia.co.uk.

This season’s FA Cup final is to be held at Wembley Stadium on Saturday 14th May, and for the first time in its history the oldest football cup final in the world will share the stage with Premier League football matches.  This only highlights the pathetic ongoing battle for supremacy between the English FA and the Premier League.

Seven Premier League games were actually scheduled at the start of the season for Saturday 14th May to kick-off at 3pm with the possibility of two games being rescheduled if those teams are in the FA Cup final.  There are a further three games scheduled for the following day.  So why can’t all 10 games be played on the Sunday with any postponed games being rescheduled for the following Wednesday?

Throughout my childhood I would be really excited about watching not only the FA Cup final itself but also the build-up to kick-off, watching the teams coaches making their way to Wembley, being introduced to each player and reliving each round and all the goals; and at 3pm the whole family would sit down to watch the whole match live.  The only other match report that day would be the Scottish FA Cup which, in most cases would include more goals, but not be of much interest to a boy from the Garden of England.

I’m aware that football has changed and it is no more a working class only pastime.

Furthermore the Premier League is a successful brand and as such is run like a business; and if it wasn’t for the profits that are made, English football would not have some of the best players and possibly the best league in the world.  But that is no excuse for the Premier League to act like a spoilt schoolboy who will only let you play with his football at playtime if you agree to play by his rules.

Premier League Football Matches originally scheduled for
Saturday, 14 May 2011

Arsenal v Aston Villa, 15:00
Blackburn v Man Utd, 15:00
Blackpool v Bolton, 15:00
Chelsea v Newcastle, 15:00
Man City v Stoke, 15:00
Sunderland v Wolverhampton, 15:00
West Brom v Everton, 15:00

Premier League Football Matches originally scheduled for
Sunday, 15 May 2011

Birmingham v Fulham, 15:00
Liverpool v Tottenham, 15:00
Wigan v West Ham, 15:00

FA Cup Semi-final Draw
Stoke v Bolton
Manchester United v Manchester City

There are no scheduled nPower Championship games!

After watching a shocking display of thuggish aggression to a fellow professional footballer on Saturday night’s Match Of The Day TV programme I was stunned to hear Adrian Durham defend Wayne Rooney’s elbow assault on Wigan’s James McCarthy as some kind of self defence!

The video below clearly shows what happened.  As Wayne Rooney was running for the ball James McCarthy attempted to block his run by leaning into him and in the process gets a very nasty and intentional elbow in the face which could have left him with a broken nose or worse.  You can see both players are aware of their actions.

James McCarthy’s attempt to play the player and not the football is clear obstruction and would have led to a free-kick to Manchester United if the referee had actually seen the incident and Wayne Rooney not intentionally raised his elbow into the face of the oncoming player.

I am not interested in the ridiculous cries that Wayne Rooney and other footballers should behave themselves on and off the football pitch because they are role models for our children.  I simply believe Wayne Rooney acted with aggression and with intent to injury another person and this should be addressed.

If this incident had happened in the crowd or outside a football stadium and was witnessed by a policeman, the least that would have happened is the person involved would be questioned for his aggressive behaviour.  As it is, because the referee, Stuart Clattenburg,  apparently ‘dealt’ with the situation by awarding Wigan a free-kick, no further action will be taken by the English FA against Wayne Rooney.

Football is a highly charged and somewhat aggressive contact sport.  That is the reason I stopped playing even for fun.  Don’t get me wrong, I love to see a full-bloodied encounter where players get ‘stuck in’ and give 110% (or is the current going rate 120% now?) but what I don’t want to see is unchannelled aggression and daylight thuggery on or off a football pitch.

If they are honest about it, everyone dreams of being loaded, and we admire (even if we are floored by jealousy) those who have managed to achieve this goal, through whatever means.

But by far the most galling breed of millionaire are those in their teens and twenties who have managed to somehow tap into a seam of wealth that continues to elude those of us with more experience and who, most likely, have spent the majority of our lives putting in a lot more effort.

So how do these millionaire young guns get their hand on all that money? What do they do with it? And why can’t it be us?

Bankers

Much in the news in recent years that we all love to hate are the bankers. Like professional gamblers in suits, those in high finance get paid to play. Signed up straight out of university, with the arrogance of youth still cloaking their shoulders and allowing them to accept the offer of big bucks and bonuses with barely a thought for those whose money has been squandered in the disastrous hedge fund hedonism that immediately precipitated the credit crunch, these slick young things inhabit London’s square mile, wearing pinstripes in a pseudo ironic homage to their eighties yuppie predecessors whom at heart they much admire.

Their millions are spent on extravagant breaks, which they document on their smartphones and upload to social networking sites under the guise of “sharing” so that former friends and casual acquaintances can marvel at their misfortune knowing they will never have that much money in their lives.

Heir Heads

Of course, there are others who have come into money with even less effort, with a new generation of bright young things from the moneyed families of the world thrust daily into our faces. The “heir heads” as they have come to be known make money simply through having money. With their rich parents having been able to pull enough strings to get them the initial exposure required to gain a place in the public consciousness, this talentless tribe is clogging our TV channels with their own reality show, for which they get paid money that they are never likely to need, considering their families’ existing assets.

Poker Players

Now these guys, these guys we can muster a healthy amount of respect for. Yes, they are loaded, but we know how they got that way and, deep down, all of us hope that we might just possibly be capable of following their example. Ok, so it is far too late to become the child of an international magnate, a little past the point where we could train for a career in finance but poker? Well poker we can play on our computers at sites like Party Poker Bonus Codes that we find online even allow us to get some free play in while we are practicing and one day, maybe one day, we will be the minted millionaire that everyone else envies.

With the British transfer fee being broken twice in one day on 31st January as top English football clubs swap top trump strikers in the same way as we used to swap Panini football cards in school playgrounds why do football fans, journalists and media pundits continue in a most boring fashion to moan that footballers are overpaid and discuss so pathetically how today’s players are only interested in the money and show no loyalty to a single club. Grow up and get a life!

I have been mad about football for forty years and have never felt the urge to cut myself to see if my blood is a certain colour, get upset with a football player who moves from one club to another or get annoyed with anyone, let alone a football player who agrees to change employer for an increased salary.

Whether its retired footballers sulking they are not retired millionaires or ardent fans who think it’s disgraceful when a footballer, who already earns more in a week than they earn in one year, to move from one club to another so as to get even more money, I have never understood or felt this level of jealousy.

Sure, it would be refreshing to hear a football player be honest and say “Of course I moved for the money.  Why else would I want to come to this club?” But to hear people spitting venom over players disloyalty and money-grabbing transfers I can only say that whenever I have got bored of my job I look for another one; and if a new company decides to offer me more money than I already receive, then I bite their arm off.; and furthermore don’t and never have thought footballers are any different to the rest of us.

There are of course many companies and jobs I will not undertake, but that aside, when looking for a new job I have always looked to increase my wages.  Nothing wrong in that is there?

As for whether footballers are overpaid, well that is a loaded question that has several answers.  But surely the ones to blame are not the footballers themselves but their employers; and if clubs or owners are over-stretching their finances or decide to increase ticket prices to pay for inflated wages then vent anger at the club or owner and boycott the accused.

Football players live the same type of lives as other ‘famous’ people in this celebrity-mad culture and get paid according to their star status as much as their footballing skills.  For example, David Beckham is most definitely past his prime but if Tottenham Hotspur could agree a permanent move with his current club they are fully aware they are buying into ‘Beckham the brand’ and in the process like Manchester United, Real Madrid & LA Galaxy will make a profit on the sale of replica shirts alone, however much they pay him in over-inflated wages.

I’m not at all jealous or in any way bothered by the ludicrous amount of money footballers earn these days.  I am only concerned with the way some of them believe their star status makes them untouchable and above the law, but that’s another rant!