The future of Football...Maybe.

Long gone are the days when a game of football was just a matter of twenty two stout yeomen pitting their wits & skill against each other for the glory of simply winning.The beautiful game has changed in all recognition since those halcyon  days of heavily laced balls toe poked towards goal by equally heavily bylcreemed Inside Forwards,as they were quaintly known back in the day.

These days it's all about the money money money---As ABBA would have it, but not Jessie J----The glory of actually winning games and trophies has taken a back seat in the pursuit of the new goal of muscling into the heaving pigs to join the trough of avarice...

Clubs now regard us fans as "Customers" and the simple pleasure of going to the game with your pals as a "Matchday Experience".We are now regarded as consumers rather than supporters.Which is ironic considering that if any retail outlet treated it's customers as clubs in England treat their fans they'd be closed within six months...The Disneyfication of our football is well under way and Micky,Minny and Pluto have their hands firmly on the tiller...

With that in mind it's time to crank it up and make the game more interactive for the TV watching viewer---The fans the clubs really care about after all,the ones that actually bother to turn up for games can go swivel----If the football authorities want the game to become just another arm of the entertainment industry rather than an intensely tribalistic phenomenon---A sort of X Factor/Jeux sans Frontieres with balls---then that's what they'll get...

Goal Line Technology: Don't worry boys and girls it's coming courtesy of the Blatterman himself but is it enough? Yes it will conclusively prove that the ball was either a)Way over the line b)Nowhere near the bloody line or c) Maybe,maybe not,hard to tell really.Come on, how long is this going to take? the pub's open.....It's still pretty boring in all fairness.My idea is to have a Judge Judy impressionist behind every Premiership goal,complete with gown,gavel and Mahogany desk to be Judge,Jury & Executioner.Her decision will be final and any player disagreeing will be shackled in leg irons and paraded round the pitch dressed in Guantanamo Bay orange...

Twitter:  (anti)Social Media is becoming more and more intrusive into our everyday lives.Every football club has a twitter account along with many popular footballers,and Joey Barton.Yes it's highly entertaining to witness a Diva like player clearly losing his marbles as he watches his career disintegrate due to an ill judged Tweet at 4am but imagine how much more fun it will be to actually witness it live during a game? A sort of cross between Rollerball and You've Got Mail...Every ground has at least one large screen,many have more.Every players twitter account will be posted on the screens at the game and on TV so they will get live feeds during the match(Incidentally all players will have to have a twitter account or get paid minimum wage, tops) This will be interactive Football at it's rawest...Nobody will be spared,only those with the thickest of skins will survive, and the illiterate...Piers Morgan will of course be blocked.

Silverware: Be honest now,there just are'nt enough trophies to go round for all those  mega rich clubs who surely deserve something shiny at the end of the season.They should'nt be expected to toil for nine months(Ten if you count that lucrative far East tour culminating in an exciting 0-0 draw against Stoke in a steamy Kuala Lumpur) for nothing should they? of course not.Every Premiership club will now receive a trophy at the end of the season.However the Silverware they win will diminish in size the lower they finish in the table, from the gargantuan Premiership trophy to the title winners down to an inch high aluminium cup to the lucky 17th place winners.The proviso is that all clubs must celebrate their winning of silverware in time honoured fashion of fireworks,crappy jumping up and down to Tina Turner's "Simply the Best" and open top bus tour of their city.If not they lose all their TV money from that season...The relegated clubs will receive an oversized cheque for their parachute payments presented by a reality TV star...

Discipline: Naturally any dangerous play will be dealt with by the proper authorities,after all we're not turning the game into a circus ---Yet---However any good show deserve's a pantomime villain and football is no exception.What the paying public and the soporific armchair audience demand is humiliation of those miscreants who bring the game into disrepute on the pitch,a mere yellow card is not sufficient in these days of instant justice.For instance player's caught diving will be subjected to a giant hook pulling them off the pitch where they will spend five minutes in the stocks being pelted by rotten fruit.Any player waving an imaginary card at the referee will have a custard pie thrust into their face by the opponents mascot...Whenever Liverpool play Luis Suarez will sit in the stocks for the whole game to save time..

Points: The current system is outdated.Three points for a win and one point for a draw? I mean come on.We have lost sight of what football is really about, which is how much money each club makes in total from any given home game.So in future the points will remain for the tiresome spectacle of actually playing the game but extra points will be awarded for TV audience,shirts sold and prawn sandwiches consumed.The accusation that this will widen the gap between rich and poor is clearly nonsensical.But if some clubs go to the wall so be it...After all we all know there are only four clubs that really matter anyway.To that end we will be reorganising the league structure thus; 1)The Super Duper Pan European Champions League Premiership 2)The Premiership Lite 3) The Lower Premiership 4)The Under Premiership.This we feel will give all clubs a sexier identity and stop the bellyaching when they go bust...Also the big four clubs in The SDPECLP will join the FA Cup at the quarter final stage to free up weekends to play exhibition games in the far east and USA.This proves we value the traditions of this great competition.They will not enter the league cup at all.Those places will be taken by teams in the SPL...

Managers/Coaches: The final part of the revolution concerns these outdated behemoths of the game.Are'nt you just sick of seeing the same tired old faces year in year out running our great football clubs? We are going to have bosses on a monthly contract then at the end of each month a phone vote(Premium rate) will install a new manager at each club.This will keep things fresh and more importantly make a shed load of money for the FA(Twitter & Facebook voting will be invalid as it's free) *In the event of a tied vote our panel of experts will decide who takes the appointment.The panel will be made up of  footballing luminaries  Richard Branson,Al-Waleed bin Talal and Cilla Black.

Mark my words.The football revolution will be televised...

Bad decisions,arrogance & stupidity.Welcome to Wolves...

In my opinion this goal in May 2011 by Stephen Hunt which saved Wolves from relegation from  the Premiership is indirectly responsible for the state of the club we find today. After two successive demotions we find ourselves in the third tier of English football for the first time since 1990.

Now i'm not saying Stephen Hunt is responsible for our plight obviously but what happened after this goal,or more accurately,what did'nt happen,is...

This was the chance to restructure the club but nothing changed.Effectively we had been given a last minute reprieve and we blew it,although that was'nt apparent at the time among the self congratulatory celebrations of avoiding relegation.

That season we had been buoyed by fantastic wins against many of the top six sides in the division,it was these that kept us up as our results against those other teams battling to stay in the premiership were appalling.The wonderful results we had garnered against Man Utd,Man City,Chelsea,Spurs,Everton & Liverpool had given us the falsest of false dawns and probably given many in the club--and the fans---the impression that we were better than we were.

The reality is that those wins & draws against the top teams only happen occasionally,it just so happens we got them all in the same season...

To compound this self regarding folly that percolated through the club it was believed that the season after would be easier due to our players having more experience and potential lambs to the slaughter Norwich & Swansea surely taking the bottom two places leaving only one space to avoid...

It's rumoured that the then manager Mick McCarthy tried to strengthen the squad considerably in the close season---He's a football man and they all want to improve,knowing that if you stand still you get caught pretty damn quick---but owner Steve Morgan not being a natural football man refused him funds thinking we were good enough.Bad decision coupled with arrogance...

The only major signing we made was to buy Roger Johnson from Birmingham.We we all happy with this i have no doubt.But then McCarthy made him captain instantly causing splits within a tight knit dressing room.Bad decision...

That season started well,two wins and a draw from the first three games,even going top for a short time.Another false dawn.It's safe to say that since that 0-0 draw at Villa Park in early September 2011, which saw us top the premiership briefly,it's been downhill all the way...

The next bad decision coupled with arrogance was from the owner Morgan when he went storming into the dressing room to confront the players after yet another abject display against Liverpool thereby undermining the managers authority.Not long later McCarthy was gone...

The sacking happened after Wolves had lost to our fierce rivals West Brom 5-1.This was a time for clear heads and well thought out decisions.What we got was knee jerk reactions and muddled thinking from those that run the club...What happened next turned into farce solely of the Board's making...

Potential managers were interviewed.Contradictory press releases were flying out of Molineux almost daily about the suitability,or not,of each candidate.Finally we were assured we would have a manager in charge with experience of turning moribund clubs around,this was no job for a novice.What did we get? Terry Conner.Bad decision,arrogance and a great deal of stupidity...

It's not normally the done thing to feel sorry for footballing folk but you'd have to have a heart of stone not to feel for Conner.He'd been a loyal Wolves coach for over a decade but had never managed a team,least of all a team marooned at the bottom of the pile with no confidence and a dressing room rift as big as the Mariana Trench.By all accounts Conner is a good man,so answered the call to manage Wolves after Morgan had failed to find a replacement.

It's hard not to feel that Morgan was prepared to take the hit of relegation thinking he would get in the manager he wanted in the Summer then maybe spend no more than two years in the Championship before a triumphant return to the Premiership.Whether true or not we'll never know but he hung Conner out to dry.Conner was Morgan's Patsy...Bad decision and arrogance.

In the Summer we drafted in Stale Solbakken with a promise of not only a fresh approach but a complete overhaul of the club's ethos from top to bottom.Things did'nt start too badly but the football we were watching was labourious at best.Unfortunately Solbakken was still working with most of the squad that had been there for a number of years who were unable or unwilling to change their style.Things started going downhill fast...

The trouble is though that Morgan had vowed to give Solbakken time.What Morgan should have done is ignored the fans clamouring for Solbakken's head and backed his manager.Once he'd got all of his own players in he may well have been the right man.We'll never know as Morgan panicked in the face of fan pressure and gave in.Bad decision...

Next on the Molineux managerial carousel is current boss Dean Saunders.The feeling is that Morgan is now so desperate he's using the club as some sort of Liverpool jobs- for- the- boys.Saunders came into the job in January with a lot of promises of not only staying up but gaining promotion next season---From the Championship i may add,not div 1---Sadly talk is all he seems to have.As yet he's been more than tactically inept.Sometimes employing three different formations during a game,none of them working.I have no confidence in him whatsoever.Bad decision? Probably...

So what's needed? Well a wholesale change in the squad for one...There are now too many players at the club who're neither good enough or care enough for our club,these have to be got rid of straight away.I don't care if we make a big loss on them i just want them gone asap.A week before our final game when we were 2nd from bottom and needing a miracle to stay up some players were still saying we were "Too good to go down" Arrogance and stupidity of a monumental scale...

If Morgan is determined to stay he needs to get proper advisors around him,footballing people who know the game and the club,people who will guide him in the right direction,somebody like Jody Craddock or Mel Eves.Or both.He needs to drop the arrogance that has helped to get my club relegated yet again...

End of Season awards...

This may seem premature,especially if you're the type of football fan who thinks the game begins and ends with the Premiership in England...However Division 1 & 2 finished last week,The Championship ends tomorrow and who the hell knows when the top division draws to it's conclusion...

There was a time in the not so distance past when all football in England finished the season on the same day to be followed by the FA Cup final the Saturday after(3-00 pm KO) but over the last few years this has altered radically as those more interested in income than the well being of the game squeeze-every-last-drop out of players and fans alike...One day there won't be any life left to drip out of football but while the cash cow keeps on topping up the coffers these vampiric parasites will continue their insidious ruination of our national sport...

Anyhoo,on to the awards;

The Jimmy Saville spectacular fall from grace wooden spoon goes to Wolves.My team will probably drop to Division 1 tomorrow barely twelve months after being a premiership club...

The Little Chef All-you-can-eat running buffet silver ladle  jointly goes to Northampton's Ade Akinfenwe,who gives hope to all overweight fans in the country and Luis Suarez for making Cannibalism fashionable again...

The David Cameron We're-all-in-this-together Offshore trust fund gold credit card goes to Barnet council who refused  Barnet FC permission to improve their ground thereby forcing the club to relocate five miles out of the borough in Edgware...

 The Don't-mention-the-war-i-did-once-but-think-i-got-away-with-it award goes to Germany for showing the world how football should be run both on and off the pitch...

The Nigel Farage We're all Europeans now one Euro gold ring goes to Man Utd,Man City,Chelsea and Arsenal for doing the decent thing and making the Champions League enjoyable again...

The Annual Jurassic Park tethered goat award goes to Dean Saunders at Wolves for not really having a clue...Bless him.

The Annual Lord Lucan disappeared without trace ankle tag goes to Scott Sinclair who gave up an almost guaranteed first team place at Swansea for two meaningless League Cup games a season at Man City...

The Annual Where-the-hell-are-we Sat Nav goes to Wolves fans to use next season...Probably.

The Joe Hart What's-my-motivation luvee Fedora & Cravat award to Rio Ferdinand for his Diva like refusal to join the England squad.

The George Osborne gold plated Monopoly set for judicial financial soundness in the face of overwhelming odds to Harry Redknapp.

The Stan Collymore embossed NCP pass to Peter Odemwinge.

The Ed Milliband credible opposition mounted Mace to Man City for barely troubling the scorers...

The Audley Harrison going down without a fight flying towel to,who else? Wolves.

The  Dale Winton who knew? earplugs goes to the PFA who were shocked & stunned by the content of the comedian booked to entertain them.the act,Reginald D Hunter, is a black American from Georgia.The PFA were surprised his act contained some jokes about race...

That concludes this evening's awards...Oh and if Wolves do somehow succeed in staying up tomorrow these results stand...