The five most tiresome Twitter debates
Imagine for a moment what Twitter could be: a global community of intelligent discourse; the best online pub conversation in the world.
Instead, look at your timeline right now. Someone has put up that photo of Mourinho peering through the curtains again haven’t they.
While a Twitter utopia remains a distant dream we can at least improve our lot in the meantime, starting with five football debates that are so long in the tooth they were once accompanied by “…and that Shay Given looks a prospect”.
If you continue to indulge in any of the below please be aware of an indisputable truth – people are yawning at you. They are yawning at their phones at what you have tweeted and by extension they are yawning at you.
It’s just a little bit of history repeating
Claiming that a rival club has no history is as self-defeating as smearing your genitals in mayonnaise and dangling them over an anthill. For one thing it exposes you immediately as an ignoramus and furthermore someone who believes that English football began in 1992. For another it heavily implies that you only equate relevancy to glory, an unedifying mind-set that marks you down as a colossal tool.
If a club won very little before you were born – and most times you are very, very wrong about that anyway. Why not try googling? You’ll be blown away – they still possess a rich history that involves an esteemed roll-call of legends on the pitch and in the dug-out, world wars, incredible tales of stoicism and wonderment, and generation after generation of loyal support.
Compared to that you are an insignificant speck of dust floating close-by to its imposing tapestry. You are a grain of sand to its ocean of gravitas.
You are simply not worthy to deride a club’s heritage. None of us are. Unless it’s MK Dons of course. Then it’s fine.
Attendance one-upmanship
In spare bedrooms across the land they screenshot sparse sections of stands believing this matters a lot, believing this is pertinent proof that the club in question is ‘tinpot’. The irony is utterly lost on them
They could be out, maybe in a bar, but that would likely mean talking to girls. And girls are scary.
In a grave economic climate, where many struggle to get by Friday to Friday, mocking those unable to afford criminally high ticket prices at least once a fortnight is more Tory than Louise Mensch pretending to give a fiver to a beggar but it’s really a scrunched up piece of paper that reads ‘Get a job you loser scum’.
It’s not big, it’s not clever, and in many cases it’s extremely doubtful that the seat-counters are season-card holders themselves. It’s a pitiful state of affairs all round really.
Ozil v A.N.Other
Dear Arsenal fans,
We get that you really, really rate Mesut Ozil. Honestly, we do. We read between the lines and somehow picked up on the subtle clues. And we don’t quite know why you’re under the impression that we – the rest of the Twitter population – don’t rate the German maestro. Maybe it was that time when one of us said he wasn’t ‘all that’ following a poor performance. In which case we are truly sorry.
Can you please stop now with all the comparing of your attacking midfielder with every other attacking midfielder in the Premier League, including graphs, stats, and nonsensical hyperbole. Because it ceased being strange some time ago. Now we’re in unchartered territory.
Talking about net spend is gross
Though he was roundly mocked for it, the Arsenal fan who wanted to talk about net spend should have a pint bought for him in every pub he enters. Because he unintentionally took a subject that is utterly reductive and placed it forever into the realms of parody where it will hopefully one day die a slow and lonely death, its last breath probably whispering something about add-ons.
https://vine.co/v/ew0ad9iQKIU
Reducing football to fictional balance sheets – fictional because unless you work in the inner sanctum of your club the figures you quote are derived largely from tabloid guesswork – is as weird as asking a supermodel standing before you in her bra and pants where her underwear was manufactured and how much the hourly rate is for the factory workers.
My multi-gazzionaire club spent three million less in the last financial year than your multi-gazzionaire club. Ouch, does anyone have a squirt of Savlon for the burn?
Ref bias
Howard Webb was a red. Mark Clattenburg is also a red but of the other persuasion. Mike Dean hates this club. Oliver hates that club.
Yet United supporters are adamant that Webb hated them while Clattenburg is loathed by every club he reportedly favours. The disagreements on this subject meanwhile are scheduled to end on the fourth of never.
If you believe that the standard of officiating in this country is sub-par then there is credence to your argument.
If you insist there is corruption within the refereeing fraternity then I would be sceptical but willing to listen.
If you genuinely think that a ref – with an assessor marking his performance and his career on the line – will show bias to one side because he had a poster of them on his childhood wall then please seek immediate help.
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