Meltdown?

Half of the fun of Twitter is the exposure to opinions alien to your usual circle.  Some have estimated that as many as 85% of the people you follow should be those you dislike. I don't have the stomach for that much masochism, but the point still stands. I already know what people I like will probably think, and I probably think the same. One of the reasons I like them is that we share opinions and tastes. For this reason, there is more value in following those that you don't agree with, as they will often be presenting a different side of the argument.

All of this precursor was by way of avoiding the obvious response ( "if you don't like what he says then why don't you just unfollow?") to what is to follow this very colon: Andrew Benbow is a bit of a prat.

 

Benbow is a West Brom fan, apparently, and also "blogger for hire" (aren't we all?). He writes for one of the many (many, many) ugly and unmemorable football blog sites that rope in team specific writers to try and drive some traffic. No doubt Benbow does bring a bit of traffic, because the persona he presents - and that is being charitable because I suspect it is not a persona at all - is of the typically incendiary, knee-jerk, pessimistic, never-satisfied, football fan.

Benbow seems to have a few hobby-horses he likes to ride from time to time. "Our fullbacks are useless", "our chairman is useless", you get the idea. His latest, though, appears to be an attempt to drum up support for an anti-Anelka campaign. 

You might well ask what Benbow has against Anelka. I'd certainly like to know. I'm pretty sure though that whatever his reasons I would not be convinced. I like football to be fun, and to my mind there can be little more entertaining than a languid, musilm, moody Frenchman, with a penchant for fallings-out and fights, a genuine star of world football, one of the most gifted players of the last decade, strutting about in a West Brom shirt.

I would have thought this view would be shared by most fans, but not according to Benbow.  His view on Saturday was that:

When the team was announced with Anelka in the starting role, Benbow claimed: 

Lepkowski's response made me laugh. You can take it as you like, but I know which way I prefer to read it.

Someone definitely has lost the plot. These kind of reactions are crazy. I can handle Benbow's usual nonsense about Jeremy Peace and the fullbacks, because those are the kind of opinions you get in football. Some people like to be negative about their own team. There is, for example, a guy who sits along the row from me in the Birmingham Road End who has been known to spend the entire half-time break with his middle finger raised in the direction of the Directors' box, assuming that he hasn't already stormed out in disgust before that point.  But I can't understand a single West Brom fan not enjoying having Anelka here. If you don't want to see troubled but supremely talented athletes playing for your team, I don't think football is for you.

Anelka of course played superbly on Saturday, particularly in the first half, and was very unlucky not to score. No mention of his performance from Benbow, though... 

Tikki-takka, Tito to Tata

Barcelona have announced that their new manager is Gerardo 'Tata' Martino, a relative unknown in European football. Not that this has bothered Barca before. Jonathan Wilson writes:

So Martino has a decent, if not spectacular record. He has never coached in Europe and many great South American managers have struggled, at least initially, in trying to make the transition.
Past record, though, has rarely been central to Barcelona's appointments. Frank Rijkaard's only club experience had been to relegate Sparta Rotterdam for the only time in their history. Pep Guardiola had had one year in charge of the reserve side. Tito Vilanova had taken Palafrugell to relegation out of the Tercera Division in his only stint as a head coach. Far more important is the philosophy.

It's hard not to admire that in one of the biggest (the biggest?) clubs in the world, and it certainly explains why the Barcelona board passed on Mourinho when his name was in the frame. It is an extension of the idea of having a 'Director of Football' in charge of transfers and player contracts rather than the manager. It ensures a greater degree of continuity following managerial changes. This structure makes sense at a lower level club (West Brom, for example) where their managers are likely to either be sacked when relegation looks likely (Di Matteo), or leave once offered higher profile jobs (Hodgson). It is more controversial at the top level where profile and pizzazz are everything in the chase for shirt sales and sponsorships.

Anelka

Andy Brassell wrote a great piece on Anelka last week, and this stood out especially: 

In Istanbul, he found not only inner peace but a more altruistic side to his game, playing a supporting role to the prolific Marcio Nobre as the Yellow Canaries retained the Super Lig title.

It has been suggested that Anelka "doesn't score enough" and so cannot fill Lukaku's substantial boots. This is true, but perhaps he is not expected to. Instead it is his support role where he can be most effective, and hopefully he can help Shane Long find the goals we'll surely need. 

Glass, Home and solipsism →

Great insight from Benedict Evans: 

I do indeed shop at one of their shops - or at least I think I do. I'm actually not 100% sure if it's a Tesco or a Sainsbury. I buy food there every week, but I don't consider myself their customer - at least not in the sense they meant it. Rather, it's one of 10 shops I go to in a week, and one of 20 errands I might run. 
In other words, your customers' relationships with you are the only relationships you have as a business and you think a lot about them. But you're one of a thousand things your customer thinks about in a week, and one of dozens of businesses.

 

Pomodoro for writing →

I've been using this recently too, to try and keep me focused when writing my dissertation. 

The basic gist of The Pomodoro Technique is ludicrously simple, but also extremely effective.  There's apparently more to it, but I haven't felt the need to explore beyond this brilliantly basic routine:
- Write for 25 minutes without any other distractions.
- Stop for five minutes, during      which time you check email, Twitter, Facebook, make tea, get up and      stretch, etc.
- You have achieved one Pomodoro.       Repeat until you can repeat no more.

I've found 25 minutes to be the perfect length of time. It is quick enough that I don't get bored, but also long enough to get enough done. It also encourages me to do 'just one more Pomodoro' even when I'm fed up and had enough. 

If you're having trouble staying focused, I highly recommend giving it a go.

(You can use any timer, obviously, but I find using this app helpful) 

Who do you want us to be?

A further part of Chirs Lepkowski's interview with Jeremy Peace was published this morning, and seems to have kicked up the usual storm about his apparent lack of ambition for the club. The 'should-we-spend-more-money?' debate has to be one of the most tiresome amongst Albion fans, and brings out depressingly boorish opinions:

Essentially my view is this: Spending more money would not get us anywhere. In the short-term it doesn't seem to much help, and in the longer-term is certainly hinders.

What I find confusing is, who are we aiming to be? Which teams out there do we hope to replicate by spending more and more? As far as I can see, there are no comparable clubs that are spending the kind of money that the fans that moan want us to spend, and having  consequent success. Looking at last season's final league table, the 7 clubs above us aren't in a comparable financial position. As for the teams below, if you consider clubs like Sunderland, Aston Villa and Newcastle, all of which have spent significantly in recent years, it has quite clearly not helped them at all.

Some seem to have taken Peace's comments that Albion are a "mid-table Championship club that is massively over-performing" as a personal insult. Quite aside from the fact that being offended by what someone says about your football team is completely absurd, he is actually not far from the mark. We are over-achieving, about that there can be no doubt, and I am sure he is sending a message to fans who are expecting us to break the bank that it is simply not feasible.

Ultimately, we had too good a season last year, and Peace is just trying to deflate expectations. People are talking about having to "kick on". Of course I want to improve, but I only want us to make an effort that is proportional to our means.

 

Print-only book, pirated online →

Completely unsurprised. Why would you make your product unavailable to a certain portion of your customers? Ultimately, if people want some particular content  (I'm so, so sorry) in a particular format, they're going to go out and get it. The only choice left to you, the content  owner, is whether they get it from you or from somebody else. I'm not saying that that's ok, but it's reality. Don't be King Canute.

Mexico: Where a doctor sleeps with a loaded gun, bulletproof vest →

Speaking of crazy stories: 

At about 2:30 that afternoon, they kicked in the front door of the clinic's crowded waiting room, where women and children sat on 11 tightly packed chairs watched over by Gomez's personal heroes: a painting of the Virgin of Guadalupe, photos of his father, a retired Colombian naval officer, and of Argentine revolutionary Ernesto “Che” Guevara.
As his terrified patients threw themselves to the floor, Gomez rushed from his office to meet the shabbily dressed and bleary-eyed assailants, each wielding a pistol.
“They were calling my name, screaming all sorts of foul things,” says Gomez, a fit and wiry man who looks far younger than his age. “A moment arrives when a few uneducated idiots want to take away everything we have, everything we've built. You say to yourself, this is it.
“This is it,” he repeats.
One of the men grabbed Gomez by the arm, pulling him toward the door. Gomez pushed back, grabbing the man's gun and opening fire on all three.

Incredibly brave, but even more incredibly foolhardy. 

On the trail of Michael Mastro: how to flee the law when you are 87 →

This whole story is great fun, but this caught my eye particularly:

Capper immediately visited the chief of police in Annecy, only to receive an incredibly cool reception. With reason. The small station was already investigating the shooting of the 50-year-old Surrey-based engineerSaad al-Hilli, his dentist wife Iqbal, 47, and her mother, Suhaila al-Allaf,which had horrified the region weeks earlier. What's more, the police were still wrestling with exactly what had been happening in their quiet little town after a surprise drowning in the picturesque Lake Annecy a year earlier dredged up more than they'd bargained for: several bodies.
"The police had had in those past few months: two American fugitives; a massacre of Brits, which creates a media storm, and a guy who falls out of boat," Capper recalls. "And they find his body but then have to ask: who are these other three bodies we have found at the bottom of the lake? This police office has got about eight staff. It's like Midsomer."

 Incredible. 

Coffee, by The Guardian →

Clive Martin (who's great):​

News broke on Twitter this morning that the Guardian, the leftist iPhone application and newspaper, had opened a “data-driven” coffee shop in Shoreditch, East London. Initially, this sounded like a bad joke perpetuated by Rod Liddle or some other centre-right hack still bitterly grinding it out in the print game. The whole thing just sounds too Guardian. Playing into their love of new media, ethically sourced produce and all of London east of Moorgate, the idea seems to have been ripped from the minds of some dreadful Oxbridge satire troupe.
However, it soon became clear that it wasn’t a hoax. The Guardian really have opened up a coffee shop, it really does purport to be “data-driven”, and yeah, it's in Shoreditch (it's in Boxpark).

​Bizarre.

How to hire good people instead of nice people →

"Nice people care if you like them; good people care about you. Nice people stretch the truth; good people don’t. If you tell a nice person to do something evil, they might do it because they do not want to upset you; a good person will refuse to do it.

You might think you are a good person, but you are fallible, so if you want to avoid inadvertently doing something evil you must surround yourself with good people, not nice people."

Not sure I agree with the premise (that there's a difference between being 'nice' and being 'good'), but certainly makes for an interesting employee selection process.​

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Reload, magazine →

​Marco Arment has sold yet another of his projects. The man who created Instapaper and co-founded Tumblr has just announced the sale of his (originally) iOS only magazine The Magazine to the editor of said magazine. Magazine.

​For those that have not heard of The Magazine, you should check it out. I was very excited when Arment announced the project, and subscribed on the first day. But I realised a while ago that what I was excited about was the project itself rather than actually reading the thing.

Arment's plan was to make a native magazine on iOS. Unlike the bloated digital versions of real physical world periodicals, The Magazine was conceived as an app - the focus was on simplicity.  He envisioned a clean interface that would download quickly, using little of your device's precious memory. It would be cheap (£1.49 per month) and regular (an issue every two-weeks). The reader would not be overloaded with content (I'm looking at you, The Economist), with each issue containing only around 5 medium-length articles. Each writer would be paid real money, and would be paid in advance.

​This, I think, is an exciting prospect. This is what I want from digital publishing. It was a genuine re-imagining of what it means to produce written work and make that work available in a sustainable and cost-effective way. And people seemed to like it. He quickly had 10,000 subscribers - his "this is worth-while" number - and was a popular enough product that it has already spawned some (uncomfortably similar) clones.

​That all said, I think I'm going to unsubscribe.

It is a great idea, and has been fantastically implemented. But it doesn't 'solve' the problem that really faces magazines and newspapers. And that problem is that most people simply aren't interested in 100% of the content of a magazine, and in the day and age of writing on the web they are unwilling to pay for something they may only read 50%, 20%, 10% of (still looking at you, The Economist) when they can get individual articles by writers they know they like for free online.

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A problem with snakes and lizards →

​Monaco signing three (James Rodriguez, Moutinho and Falcao) of the most exciting players in Europe is being treated as a cause for excitement. The first comment below Doyle's piece:

"Good on them. European Football is dominated by a select group of teams, PSG, Monaco etc add some new blood to the CL elite."

But do we really want these super deep-pocketed owners injecting "new blood"? The reason people are pleased is because they feel that the current "elite" is too deeply entrenched. But if that's the case, what do they expect to happen with the introduction of oligarch supported teams that have no need to play by the same fiscal rules as everyone else? If you've got a lizard problem, you don't deal with it by releasing a load of snakes. They may get rid of the lizards, but then you're left with a load of snakes. And when you're fed up with your load of snakes, how do you deal with that problem?

European super league, probably.

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​Rather short-sighted indeed.

There's also the apparent legal challenge:

Then Monaco launched legal proceedings with France's supreme court, declaring that the LFP's decision in March "violates several fundamental principles of French and European law, notably the principle of free movement, free competition, free access to sporting competitions, and also the Franco-Monégasque tax convention signed on the 18 February 1963". 
Monaco are convinced they will win the case but it could take several months to reach a verdict, during which time they say they will hold no further negotiations unless the LFP suspends the threat to exclude them.

Seems like a classic salesman's trick to me. I know nothing about the Franco-Monganésque tax convention, but I am certain that there is no "free access to sporting competition"​ in EU law. Whilst under free movement principles Monaco cannot be forced to pay more tax, there is nothing to stop the Ligue Professionnel de Football from simply refusing Monaco access to the top divisions. Market access restrictions (for example only allowing 20 teams in a league, or only 22 players on the pitch) are inherent in sport and would not be unlawful.

Monaco are bluffing.

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