Its all in the gallant heroes of tungsten doing battle like knights of yore…

…the eye-popping razzmatazz …

…and of course the very British audiences

Here is Robert Peston’s commentary on the refinancing of Liverpool FC, a situation on which I have had my beady eye for a while.

But Peston does not get to the nub of the problem. Liverpool and Manchester United have been borrowing to sustain performance. They will both find themselves having to pay back the money they have borrowed in aggregating their costly squads. And when they cut back on the spending their teams’ performances will most likely slip as well. But with less success, their revenue will decrease, limiting the clubs ability to repay debts further. With the danger of this de-leveraging spiral of decline looming, the future looks a bit bleak for the reds.

Arsenal is looking good, and will benefit if Man U and Liverpool go down the pan. They have virtually no debt, and are still in the top four simply because of Arsene Wenger’s sheer managing ability and resistance to media pressure to spend money on overpriced [English] players, seeking out undiscovered value from farther afield.

Chelsea are all right too. Abramovich is still flush, despite his massive losses due to the recession. He bought the club without masses of debt, unlike the Glazers and Gillett/Hicks who were more or less acting as agents for international banks and debt salesmen.

I hope that Liverpool is not an economic model for anything more widespread. Otherwise we really could all be in the brown stuff a few years down the line…

Some time ago I wrote a post about the spiralling debt at the top of the Premiership. In order to feed their gluttonous spending spree, top football teams, most notably Manchester United and Liverpool have been running up enormous debts, or at least their parent companies have.

Despite their great successes in recent years, these teams’ debts are mounting. Now the chickens are coming home to roost.

Can you imagine a Premiership without Liverpool and Man U? If they don’t sort their debts out before long, they could be going the way of Lehman…

“Oh crap”, you may be thinking, “more unhealthy sports“. Don’t be like that. You love it, slag.

And Snooker is not so unhealthy any more. Gone are the days when super-heavyweight players heaved their guts over the baize, chugging superkings and tankards of lager like a latter day Jim Morrison. You still have laterally impressive  gentleman such as:

Stephen Lee

and Shaun “fatty no-face” Murphy

But today, most of the players generally aren’t salad-dodgers, there is no more-smoking and boozing (at the table), and some players are even physically fit, (though I admit this claim is unverified, just in case anyone is considering suing me for libel).

Snooker is both intense and epic. A single frame can be over in minutes with fast and impressive potting, or it could take an hour as each player tries to grind down his opponent in an intriguing positional battle. A great snooker player needs the strategic nous of Napoleon and the disciplined ferocity of Bruce Lee, not just the food-lust of Harold Bishop.

Sport is enthralling not because of the talent and skill on display, but because of the fundamental human interest of adversarial competition. Face-to-face struggles are a timelessly fascinating. Team sports are good because the different players contribute different facets to the struggle.  One-on-ones, however, are more revealing of the inner struggle which each player undergoes. Whether at Wimbledon or the Crucible, the ebb and flow of courage, fortune, determination, and self-belief unfolds before the delighted audience’s eyes over the course of hours.

I can think of no other sport which is is more intense on the individual player than Snooker. Technically, it is an incredibly difficult game, and players have to make crucial shots under intense pressure, sometimes after having been kept away from the table for hours. You can see a player fluff vital shots he would miss once in a thousand in practice. The suffering and humiliation is cruelly exposed under the tv lights. The player groans and returns to his seats, red-faced as though a perverse pornographic magazine had fallen out of his pocket to the disgust of the silent onlookers. It is not pretty.

The May bank holiday traditionally sees the conclusion of the Snooker World Championship. It is always hosted in The Crucible theatre in Sheffield, and if I were to try to convince any dubious reader of the merits of this bizarre billards game, I would direct them here. As its name suggests, the venue is intense. It feels much smaller than it looks on telly, and really amplifies ferocious pressure on the players.

Of course, you cannot mention Snooker without alluding to Ronnie  ”The Rocket” O’Sullivan.

He is my hero, so much so that I named my car after him (I know, I really should not admit that). He is one of those sportsmen whose abilities make you doubt the reality of what you are seeing.  He scored a maximum break of 147 points at the Crucible in just over five minutes. It was one of those rare moments in history where you can see breathtaking perfection.

However, it should be mentioned that Ronnie is totally bonkers and comes out with some howlers sometimes. Career highlight must be him making jokes with a mate about oral sex when a microphone was stuck in his face at a Chinese press conference. I think he reckoned that because he could not understand anyone there, no-one would be able to understand him. Daft. But that’s why we love him.

Quoting from the BBC website:

“Liverpool’s net spending over five years on players is £82.5m and United’s has been £85.5m. Meanwhile, Chelsea spent £154.8m net on players during that time and Arsenal just £3.4m.”

Net spending, of course, is how much more they have spent than total revenue. Ferguson, probably still smarting from the shame of his 1-4 thrashing by Liverpool, refutes claims they have out-spent Liverpool recently with these figures. This is clearly a load of crap because Man U’s revenue is £40m greater than Liverpool’s to start with.

But you can’t really blame Sir Alex for writhing in the shame of defeat. He likes to be a winner, and, as McLaren’s Ron Dennis once said: “Show me a good loser, I’ll show you a loser.” It doesn’t mean we can’t enjoy it a bit though…

These figures also show that Arsenal is the only team to live within its means. They have had no choice, lacking the big external cash injections of the other of the big four. They have  had to make do and subsist, with the funding gap plugged by Arsene Wenger’s wiliness and his talent in spotting greatly undervalued talent in foreign, cheaper players (English players are way too expensive – they need to be kept in emerald crack pipes, and rare albino prostitutes, I imagine).

Hang on, did I just say ‘cash injection’? I should have said ‘debt’ injection of course… Abramovich was the grandee football investor who was least highly leveraged apparently, and even he has lost half his wealth in the recession. It is not beyond the realms of possibility that the finances of Man U and Liverpool could come crashing down around their ears. They have strong brands, yes, but the financial situations of their respective owners are far more important than the disciplinary problems of Vidic, or Torres’s hamstring niggles. We all thought our banks were untouchably strong but look what was happening there behind closed doors, in those incomprehensibly complex ledgers.

Malcolm Glazer’s takeover bid was built on debt, not oil cash, and it looked shaky even back in 2005. As the figures show above, Manchester is taking on more debt, not reducing it.

But this is a big conundrum of sport finance: money is crucial to success (unless you have a Wenger of course).

Back in the nineties, Italian teams were in the ascendancy with their investment and beautiful big new stadia from the 1990 World Cup. In 2009, English teams have just dumped Juventus, Inter Milan, and Roma from the Champions League. You don’t have to be Sepp Blatter to see the relationship between this success and the extra cash in the Premiership. Oops, did it again, I should have written ‘debt in the Premiership’.

But if the major English clubs keep on obtaining growing success with growing debt, when on Earth will they ever pay it back? Not in a recession at any rate. Despite being Champions of England and Europe, Manchester United are still borrowing more than they can pay back.

When greedy investors believe that a particular investment is rock solid, a ‘bubble’ will form. Will there be a point when this bubble bursts ravaging the Premiership as badly as the global financial institutions in the last year? Will the government have to step in and save our sport? Who will be left standing? Apart from Arsenal of course.

Sir Alex bitterly mumbles: ”There’s talk about a recession but I don’t think there will be one at Liverpool this year.” It could be closer to the Premiership than he thinks.

Yesterday’s spectacular BDO Darts final at the Lakeside was won in thrilling fashion by Ted ‘The Count’ Hankey. I imagine that hundreds of young lads watching the coverage will have decided to take up darts professionally and I wish them good luck. To help them start off their new careers in style, I thought I would suggest a few possible nickname/walk-on music  combinations.

INSTRUCTIONS: Simply replace your Christian and  family names around the moniker of choice and acquire a cassette of the appropriate song from your local market.

Bill ‘The Sea-Beast’ Sykes – I am the Walrus

Terry ‘Full English’ Shitt – Breakfast at Tiffany’s

Pete ‘The Pinpoint Pervert’ Prickler – Relax

Isiah ‘Lagerdrinker’ Thwath – Tubthumping

Jebb ‘The Bastard’ Weaselcleft – Town Called Malice

Shane ‘Fatman’ Slaughter – Theme from Batman

Bingo ‘Tam O’Shanter’ McGullet – Hoots Mon

So it is the end of that first working week of the year. And, as usual, it was a load of shit, wasn’t it?

No particular reason for it, as far as I am concerned. I deftly managed to avoid getting involved in anything too strenuous so far, touch wood. The Facecrack status updates of many of my friends confirm that this time just gets us all down. It is a conspiracy of villainous circumstances:the gloomy cold of January; the reluctant return to work after the universal Christmas holiday; the prospect of another whole year until, well, Christmas; a whole load of new year’s resolutions to feel guilty about breaking; and this year we have the special kicker of a recession to look forward to. It’s the New Year Blues and it hurts.

Fortunately, there is a remedy for this most mirthless of weeks. It is dished up yearly by the BBC and represents the acme of British sporting excellence (and absurdity). Yep, you know it, you love it, you live it: it’s the BDO world darts championship from the Lakeside.

Right. Now that the vast majority of readers have clicked off to their preferred social networking / pornographic entertainment site at the mere mention of darts, I can be sure the only people still reading are the faithful few, the cultural cognoscenti, or at least those open-minded enough to give me a chance to justify this bizarrest of British gifts to the world.

Yes, the competitors are the least physically healthy of any sport, I imagine in the world. Sumo wrestlers may be fatter, but they don’t pack away the pies and fags like our boys of the board. Sumo wrestlers don’t have cheesy 1980’s pop walk on music like “You got the Power”, “Hungry Like the Wolf”,  ”Jump”, or any thing by Queen. I don’t speak Japanese, but I seriously doubt that those serious warriors have official nicknames like “Wolfie”, “The Dazzler”, or “Robbo”. And I have never once seen any sportsman of any description come on stage with a crown, cloak, and candelabra as is the wont of Bobby George. What can I say, the man has class. 

Darts is the only seriously contended sport I can think of where drinking alcohol is actually an integral part of the training and pre-match conditioning.* You can’t blame them really. These guys have to stand up in front of hundreds of people, all of whom are pissed-up like Geordie cab-drivers and twice as violent. They have to throw delicate arrows at tiny targets whilst making tricky mathematical computations. No wonder the average darts player limbers up for a match with a good three or four pints of old peculiar. It is not unknown for players to come out to the oche (throwing position) too bladdered to even throw straight. I love how the commentators always discuss it as some sort of tactical miscalculation.

The rowdiness of the crowd is spectacular. In football, the fans may be mental, but there is a clear separation from the players. In darts, the competitors are crammed in a crowded room with the rampant revellers, who holler and bray like churls at a mediaeval hanging. But this all adds to the atmosphere, which is good-natured really. The punters come in all manner of garb in the hope of getting a good 2 seconds of fame on the telly. They dress up as pantomime horses, Vikings, storm-troopers, vampires, robots, farm animals, and even Scots.

The boozing and the crowd-nonsense reveal the true beauty of darts: it is a high-spirited evening down the pub translated to the Olympian stage.

But more to the point, it is the man from the pub’s chance to be a hero for a week. Yes, there are dedicated ‘professional’ players, but because of the relatively small prizes (the BDO world champion wins only £95,000, a fortnight’s pay for a premiership footballer) darts is played for love, not to earn a crust. I found out this year that the women’s prize money is a paltry £6000! Not much for the crowning achievement in your sport.

More so than any other sport, darts is the sport of the common man. Football and boxing may be seen as a way for people from humbler backgrounds to make it big, but when you watch league footballers you know they turned up to the match in Ferraris. When you watch darts, the players are still ordinary people like you or me, unless this blog has started to attract premiership footballers, of course.

Darts players are real people, a rare breed amongst the groomed and coddled of tv-sports entertainment. They don’t all have Emporio Armani tattoos and pretensions of releasing a pop single. Take 2004 BDO World Champion Andy “The Viking” Fordham for example. Publican by trade, he weighed  31 stone (197kg) at his at his zenith. His walk-on music was “I’m Too Sexy” by Right Said Fred. He used to drink a crate of beer a day and once drank 25 bottles before a match. Alcohol almost killed him, so it is a good thing he gave it up, and has lost 15 stone! Bless him.

It is a greatly entertaining sport too, I can confirm. The psychological ebb and flow, which is the only trully interesting bit of sport anyway, is ruthlessly  and sometimes cruelly exposed. You can join in at home too. I find it difficult not to echo the stirring roars of “a-waahnnn-hunndreed-nd-AHHHHHIGHTYY” whilst strutting round my lounge like a Cockney chicken.

So why not lift those January blues and get involved in the darts. It’s the semi-finals today, the grand final tomorrow, and the BBC iPlayer is good for it. It is not linked on the main page of the BBC Sports webpage, but relegated to the ‘other sports’ page. 

Incidentally, I decided years ago that if I were a darts player (there is still time – Bobby Dazzler only started playing at 30), I would be called Tom “The Rat” Rowland, and my walk-on music would be either “Theme tune from Grange Hill” or “We’re Having a Gang-Bang” by Black Lace. What would yours be?

*Perhaps ten-pin bowlers drink to steady the hand too, but my thinking is so addled by ‘The Big Lebowski’ that this might be pure phantasy

I can’t believe Ronnie O’Sullivan has been punished for asking a journalist if they fancied a nosh on his microphone. The man’s a genius, clearly.

On my way out of Ravenscourt Park today, I walked past a gang of little rudeboy whippersnappers on bikes. They were playing a game which involved throwing coins at a wall. One of the scamps crooned to me: “Oi boss! Oi boss! It’s my Birthday today…” I grinned from ear-to-ear and said: “Oh really? Happy Birthday!” In a over-effusive yet genuine voice. To my surprise the little tyke cocked his head over, leaned back on his bicycle, and said “Ta very much!” whilst issuing a thumbs up. I walked off thinking to myself that surely something else was supposed to have happened

Harry Enfield was filming a scene for his new series in my local greasy spoon (called ‘The Ritz’, truthfully enough) on King Street. He stood out like a big burning satsuma in the middle of the crowd of plastic extras.

Extras are a funny lot. They are the sort of people you’d buy from Ikea.

I have an itch to paint more portraits. I want to get some more photos and music up on the website too.

Someone said to me the other day that the reason why the England football team doesn’t win everything is because there are so many foreign players in the premiership. Obviously there must be some sort of conspiracy (led by ‘fucking’ Arsene Wenger according to him) to keep all the good English players down and out of the League by importing lots of inferior and over-priced foreigners to lower the standard of football in this country. There are only 191 English premiership players left now. It’s a wonder they can field a full team. I did pause for a second and suggest, incredible it may be, that perhaps we don’t have very good players in this country. He then reminded me that I must be racist to suggest such a thing. All countries are fundamentally the same, and in this state of affairs, clearly, England would win every match. “If it weren’t for the fucking foreigners” I imagine he forgot to add because it was just so obvious.

Euro 2008 begins.

I love watching sport of all descriptions. The more arcane the sport the better, usually. Football is alright too. A lot of my friends, however, dislike football, more specifically the watching of it, intensely. I think they have more of a problem with the supporters who can be, let’s be honest, a load of fucking toe-rags.

Four years ago on a weekend such as this Euro 2004 was starting. As was the first Venn music festival in Bristol. I was walking with my friend Ray along Stokes Croft when I had one of the most memorable encounters of my life.

I think we were off to get some audio cables or something for Venn. We were almost at Maplin, deep in some conversation or other under the baking sun, when I noticed loads of cheesy wotsits on the pavement under my feet. Then I saw a can of Fanta open and apparently undrunk by the shop-front we were passing. The third thing I saw was horrific. It was an England supporter, reduced to putrid bestiality.

This dude was completely fucked up. He was no aryan pinup to begin with. But by the time a dozen or so lagers and the raging failure of an England match had sunk in he was truly a work of human shit. The thirty year old bastard was bull-necked and barrel-bellied with an insufficient thatch of oily hair. He was covered in grease and sweat, sliming up his cherished England shirt. There was a vile yellow paste of mucus and vomit flowing down his face from his nose into the folds of his double chin. He stank of Lynx spray and bile (although it could have just been the Lynx I suppose). As his body trembled under the crippling paralysis of the booze, his eyes stared into a distant void. At least that is what I thought until I realized he was actually staring at me (or at least trying to).

So, having stumbled from the pub to the corner shop in search of some nutritionally negligible snacks, and having decided to spill his crisps and lose his drink within ten seconds of leaving the shop, this depraved zombie of spunk had sadly turned his attention on me. Presumably he wanted to punch me. Or wretch on me. Whatever his intentions, I am pretty sure he wasn’t going to perform the Japanese tea ceremony.

I was trying to figure out how to break it to him that I had already found love, when he made what appeared to be an attacking movement. I almost vomited myself at the very thought of coming into physical contact with the walking offcut. So Ray and I turned away and walked on to Maplin. When we had reached the shop door, about twenty metres away, I looked back and saw the oaf coming at us like a ball of used nappies rolling along the pavement. He ended up running into a load of bikes chained against a lamp post. I had never felt sorry for a bicycle before.

We left him there to his fate. I dread to think how his family/mother found him when he eventually made it home. Covered in blood, dirt, and tramp semen. Yuck.

Essentially the moral of this is that a. humankind has no boundaries when it comes to self-abasement; and b. supporting England in the European Cup can really turn you into a cunt, if you aren’t one already, so it is probably a good thing they did not qualify.

p.s. I would be disbelieving if anyone could suggest an example of a more disgusting state of filth, depravity, and self-pollution. But I would love to hear it anyway, especially if it is really gratuitous.