We are supposed to talk about movies and stuff on here, but it's a blog, so you can't sue me for having a rant. Yes, it's all about football and yes, it's very long. But hell, this is a blog! "The rules are, there ain't no rules!"
What has changed, I have recently pondered, over the last few months and years, for a once unwavering love of football to waver so.
There was a time when I was an unquestioning fan of football. I could recall all the FA Cup finals I had seen, remember each Charlton fixture and scoreline, I would dress up in the full kit in order to play football down the park.
But not any longer. Sure, some of my eagerness was inevitably going to subside. I only wear the shirt now, knowing that the red and white shorts and socks make me look a bit silly. But that doesn't explain this hollow feeling in my belly. Something that says all is not well. Something is rotting in Denmark.
It all began with the Charlton crowd. Too used to mid table mediocrity, they forgot to encourage a team that was punching above it's weight. I had stood for 3 seasons without considering the use of my seat, a hoarse voice awaited me each Saturday evening.
But now silence and seats are all we have in the 'covered end choir'. The money had gotten to us, just as it does any team that survives for 3 years in the top flight. Now, faced with relegation, we remember what it is to be passionate about something. Only it's perhaps too late. What else could we have cheered for? The top four are reaffirming their grip on their respective positions, while 16 other teams fight to avoid failure, rather than achieve any sort of success.
It has long been so in the Premier league. Survival is now the only measure of success for any club not regarded as either a giant, or a sleeping one. We are to count ourselves lucky to be allowed a shot in the big time. As Curbishley's team reached its peak with a 4-2 hammering of Chelsea to go 4th, the richer of the two sides bought the other's captain and plopped him on the bench, making sure that any delusions of grandeur at The Valley would remain exactly that.
Not that anyone outside of Charlton cares. Times writer Bill Edgar, who once commanded my respect, said he would enjoy watching us go down with the hammers, because we had swapped managers. In fact, many of the columnists and so-called experts have little to gain from putting any level of depth into their insight on CAFC. It doesn't sell papers, so sound bites that can be shared amongst the burgeoning group of ex-pros desperate to squeeze a buck or two out of 'the game', are invented for their ease.
Hoping a team will get relegated because their manager decided to leave, after 15 years of stability, is not an opinion of an expert, but one of someone with little else to say on the subject.
And, of course, I find it deeply ironic that those columnists and commentators so quick to judge the selfish and questionable motives of the agents, are themselves sucking money out of the sport by airing these very views.
How could Mark Bright, a man with a minimal grasp of the English language, and of questionable playing pedigree, possibly be paid thousands of pounds to discuss football live on air?
"It nearly came back into his path," explained Jonathon Pearce.
"It was," responded 'the expert' Bright.
While this goes some way to explaining a nagging feeling in me, it doesn't fully cover it.
As a midtable (or soon to be relegated) team fan, you become accustomed to putting some interest in one of the big teams. but this year, particularly at the Carling Cup final, I realised the futility of finding an allegiance in one of these sides.
Take Arsenal for example. Not a single Englishman started in their European exit. A French manager at a stadium funded by the national ariline of an Arab country played 11 foreigners in his first team, and a friend questioned my decision not to 'support all english clubs in europe', as he put it.
Meanwhile, a Russian billionaire's plaything is going a tad awry because of his ongoing feud with a Portuguese manager. Apparently, being incredibly rich and part of a successful team packed with millionaire internationals is something worth fighting about. Then of course, there's Liverpool and Manchester United, both bought out by Americans a year or two before the massive new pay deal hits the bottom line.
But more than this, this lack of a connection between me and the clubs, is the way all these people conduct themselves.
Mourinho, whose words led to Anders Frisk receiving death threats, felt it was acceptable to call Riley 'a son of a whore', while Lino David Babski is described as a cheat by Arsene Wenger. But when their teams, packed with grown men, take to fighting each other in front of children, they claim to be victimised by the authorities.
On the one hand, they will allow, nay, encourage their players to cheat at every opportunity (appealing for a throw in you know wasn't yours, could just as easily lead to a goal as any dive), hoping subversive tactics will break the back of the opponent, but on the other, they berate referees for making innocent mistakes.
Arsene Wenger is the ultimate football hypocrite. He tactically nullified an FA Cup Final because he knew an open game would lead to defeat. Yet when a side dares to attempt this approach against one of his teams, the Frenchman will be all to eager to tell whoever will listen that the beautiful game was destroyed by a team not worthy as an opponents to his great footballing wisdom.
There are simply too few positives to take from the game I once loved. Simply put, too many people being nasty to each other. Remember that old story about football leading to peace in the trenches? Juxtapose that against the current climate at the top of the premier league and tell me I'm wrong.
Too few in it for the sake of playing. If a manager can forge a team of players with the will and, most importantly, naiveté of Jamie Carragher, then Football, for me, might be saved. Until that day, I think I might have to find something else to watch. The 14-year-old me would have sooner died than stop watching football. But then I grew up. I wish some of those involved would too.
Rich Phippen
Is there anything funnier than a fat man dancing?
So what do we make of the fact that the latest disaster movie from across the pond saddles the British city of Southampton with Poseidon.
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