The GPS Test and Selling The Idea of Fabregas

The World Cup is over. Good. Well done Spain. It was fun.

Now, the question on everyone’s lips when Eduardo’s leg was snapped in half by Martin Taylor, was “is he tired?”

When Aaron Ramsey was lanced through the shin by the hyper-extended, muscle-locked battle ram that is Ryan Shawcross, we all wondered if Ramsey has clocked up enough rest.

When, oh for God’s sake you get my point. Arsenal has introduced a GPS system to monitor their players ‘load’. It can calculate where all the players are, how much they have run, the speeds, shuttles, twists, walks, jumps and rolls. It can also tell just how much time their foot has been on the ground in mid-run. This is called ‘the load’ and can be affected by every type of physical exertion you can think of.

This leads me to ask several questions within and without the confines of logic, to guide me to answers that will dance their merry dance in the minds of the mad or stupid. I am both I guess for even asking and attempting to answer the following:

1. Does ‘the load’ suggest the likes of Ramsey and Eduardo could have jumped out of the way?
2. When a player is tired and close to an injury, is that solely down to heavy feet and this can be eliminated by telling how much a player has done during a game? Sub question, can Wenger pull the plug on players like a weak Duracell rival and ferry them off the pitch like some fucking dish at Yo Sushi?
3. If a cock of a player decides to get sent off for momentary madness, (thus increasing the ‘load’ of at least 70% of the players), can the player who inevitably has his leg broken sue the offending team-mate for assisting the enforced hiatus in approximately 8% of his normal and naturally fulfilled career? Stick with me, these get better….
4. When Emmanuel Eboue went mad two seasons back and tried to kill Kolo Toure, after playing a succession of ‘hospital balls’, would his emotional ‘load’ depend on his Psycho-Satellite transmitting unfavourable information? Would that nowadays prompt Wenger to substitute his substitute owing to the fact that he lost his head thus leaving a non metaphoric heavy footprint on the Emirates bowling green?
5. Does a player who is upping his game to take the slack of a weaker performer get subbed because he has run too much and this forfeit the outcome of the game to avoid injury?
6. Does GPS pick up instances such as John Terry’s quite obvious quest for injury against Algeria, when he fired himself in the direction of the ball like a pencil from an elastic band across the classroom? Does this have a Unix based algorithm?
7. If Manuel Almunia positions himself correctly to receive shots and crosses, but his fucking extraordinary nano-second paranoia weakens him at the wrists, thus virtually throwing the ball in his own net on several occasions – are we to believe Wenger that he has a virus and that the medical staff are running every Norton concoction available to improve his condition? How does fuck off grab you?
8. If Gael Clichy falls over defending our box at 85 mins into every game, do we need a computer to tell us his ‘load’ is up a notch?
9. When Nigel De Jong attacked Xavi Alonso like an axe-wielding Jack Nicholson did the bathroom door in The Shining, could Wenger have saved him from this X-rated moment? How does fuck off grab you?
10. If Robin van Persie and Theo Walcott are the football equivalent of Tsar Nicholas II’s haemophiliac son, would Wenger not be better served finding a Rasputin-esque cure, rather than quickly firing off the following:
5. Goto Walcott
10. Goto Van Persie
15. Massage until better
20. Run
Error unknown command
Cock

The questions keep coming and I am sure they would get better. To create a profile on a player will take up to a season and owing to their pathetic and exhausting international commitments, the players are unlikely to be wearing their sexy GPS sports bras while turning out in God knows where?

Furthermore, when the player is overnight in Greece on Champions League duty, and on the phone to their over pumped, silicon and botox mannequin, who they suspect of having an affair with her midget surgeon with a God-complex – will this emotional defect pick up on GPS and filter through as they run around, ashen faced, ignoring the ball as they muse over the potential shape of a reconstructed labia?

What makes a player better than our existing ones? Usually it comes down to skill, confidence, technique and character. Then one has to deploy them in a system that is effective - based on the sum total of the parts of the machine. Simples. So rid us of the crap players, replace them with good ones using the well-earned money that has been counted by effective computer programmes that do make sense. All Love Peanut Butter and Jelly Sandwiches!!! You have a winning team.

A few months back I wrote a transcript of a conversation I imagined taking place between Wenger and Fabregas. I am now utterly convinced that I got the conversation directly from the GPS transmitter of God (who was the only other entity present at the time). This is because the perfect simulacrum created by them and aided by the media, renders them invisible and actually unimportant as the area they are supposedly experts in becomes nebulous. Barcelona have been sold the idea of Fabregas. Wenger is now managing the reality of the situation while Cesc waits in a Spanish cupboard counting “98, 99, 100 coming ready or not!” Only to find that he is wearing a long black coat and chatting to a small Indian girl on the platform of a parallel universe train station. Along comes a train and out of the window leans a bloody composite of four spherical masses. The train we discover, is being driven by the balls of Rupert Murdoch and the eyes of Sepp Blatter.

Today FIFA.com ran a story about Xavi of Barcelona stating that Fabregas is only on loan as his return is inevitable. When some Arsenal fans emailed FIFA to highlight that they were actually acting like agents in the ‘tapping up’ of Cesc, the story came down within ten minutes.

Football is unmanageable.

I’m going to insert a SIM card in my arse and try to hook it up to my Sky dish (if the cats aren’t sleeping on it today), and see if I can get a text telling me it would be prudent to stop being a dickhead right NOW! Fortunately, I have a few friends left who will spare me the telephony self-sodomizing. So has Arsene Wenger if he would just listen to them.

It is going to be a long and draining season.

I've a big un

I have a big posting coming in the next few days.

This much I promise.

The Long and Winding Road

More people in Congo died. The news is making more of it as it looks like 250 at least. However, the shocking and vivid imagery is in the detail. Not horror story detail but the tales of the brave and foolish. Many people died as their villages burned down which is tragic and terrifying. Others died trying to collect spilled fuel for personal use or sale. I find my mind haunted by this kind of surprise immolation. Collecting fuel with danger all around and the wind turns fanning the flames your way. It sickens me that humans are allowed to live in conditions where that kind of quest is even an option. What kind of national protectionism and foreign policy invites this mentality?

This blog is usually about football and I shall bring it back. But I don't feel like chatting football now.