Day 55 - Predict Guardian Football Weekly

International tournaments aside, it's been three years since I've listened to Guardian Football Weekly, after it leaving me increasingly annoyed. In their defence I tend to get sick of everything I listen to regularly, with the exception of Richard Herring, Karl Pilkington, Romesh Ranganathan and to an extent Conan O'Brien. So from the off I am willing to accept that this definitely my problem and not theirs (as if they care). Also in their defence my general interest in football has lessened over the past few years, although my irritation of Football Weekly began whilst I still listened to it twice a week, therefore during a time when I was more invested. Also in their defence I generally get annoyed at a lot of things all the time every day. But regardless of caveats I need to write something and this is what happens to have sprung to mind.

Putting it bluntly, it feels like they, largely unknowingly, love the smell of their own shit. There is a general air of unintentional smug elitism exhibited throughout the righteous assertions and mastubatory ponderings of this subtly mocking, superior and condescending podcast, which paired with the fact that I believe their opinions are often quite predictable, is too much to offset what I agree generally contains better analysis than a lot of the alternative options. I don't believe they are intentionally haughty boys; they are well intentioned nice boys! (And girls, but boys works better for the 'haughty boys' gag). I would argue that being unintentionally patronising is more annoying than being purposefully patronising. At least being purposeful is self-aware and can be funny. So far uppity in the lofty clouds, Football Weekly thinks it is grounded when in fact it is too high to face their own behavioral reality. They manage all of these traits whilst not being immediately obvious; it takes a while to fully realise these irritating idiosyncrasies.

Hidden in the stew of scathing criticisms in the last paragraph was the compliment that Football Weekly has generally better anaysis than other footballing media outlets. Whilst I do believe this is true, I still don't think they are as clever and insightful as they think they are. Just like with any other football content, they have clear biases and conveniently seldom address when they have been wrong. This trait doesn't annoy me on it's own, hence why I have less gripes with other podcasts which do the same. In fact I might even go so far to say I like emotional bias and it's accompanying flaws. I also don't mind smugness sometimes, especially when you can't take it seriously; Garth Crookes for example, is hilarious. But all this being disguised as intelletualism and combined with superiority is a particularly infuriating concoction.

I've claimed predictability so I guess I should put my money where my mouth is. So, after three years of not listening, off the top of my head, here are my guesses of the predominant Football Weekly concensusses... (I will look like a right bellend if I'm completely off)

- Man City's dominance is predictable and depressing. Pep isn't very likeable and also more mad than he initially seemed. Mentions of rule breaches and dodgy ownership followed by some sort of moral dilemma, "but can we still enjoy their brilliance?" semi-convincigly posed by Max Rushden, to which the answer will be a verbose series of quite ordinary points where the conclusion is a waffly "yes but also no"

- Arsenal have gone about things the proper way, building a team under the great management of Mikel Arteta. We were always right about him. They are young, still have promise and have done fantastically well. Oh poor Arsenal. Poor poor helpless Arsenal. Its not as if they aren't massively elite and steeped in advantageous history. Can they retain their best players? Will they ever have enough to beat City or is this the ceiling? It is likely the ceiling for now but there is no way of knowing for sure so we will convincingly sound like we are giving an answer without actually giving one

- It's a shame Eddie Howe has gone from Bournemouth to what he has become. He has done a good job but the level of how good has been generally overstated and undermined by selling his soul 

- We don't like Man Utd apart from Rashford. Are they improving under Ten Haag or is it another patch up job? We haven't fully committed to either yet because this is the sort of appointment we should like but it still isn't that clear how this will pan out long term. They need to give him time and also did we mention we don't like Man Utd?

- Are Liverpool good? We haven't been able to decide all season. We probably said at some point, after a long time defending them, some time around mid-season, that maybe there was no way back. But since they have made a late resurgence we now ponder whether they are actually good again and vaguely elude to how we started to doubt Klopp (Some mention of Klopp's shelf-life. Has he taken them as far as he can? etc etc). Unlike other instances, this one is probably too high profile to not admit to our wobbly opinions, people will remember. So we will use this as a way of parading ourselves as an honest podcast which has the integrity to hold its hands up and admit our potential flaws, gaslighting the listeners into thinking it is always honest about its imperfections 

- Everybody agrees that Brighton have been great. Excellent recruitment year after year. Fair enough. Football Weekly would probably try to be different by focussing on someone seemingly lesser spoken about like Levi Colwill. "People are focussing on Mac Allister and Mitoma but I actually think that potentially missing Colwill next season will impact them equally as much", spoken as if it is amazingly insightful even though normal pundits do also say this

- Spurs I think is fairly unanimous across the board but maybe they would use this as a chance to bring up and criticise Mourinho every now and then (same possibility with Man Utd). Potentially some financial analysis of their stadium? Not as confident on that though

- Again not entirelly confident but I'm going to take a 80/1 audacious roll of the dice. I have a sneaky feeling they may use Aston Villa's success under Emery to slightly undermine a never actually mentioned but an unspoken implicit quiet dislike for Jack Grealish. I have a feeling the podcast will speak highly of Grealish, often defending him against negative headlines and even praising aspects of his game, but there's a hidden frosty undercurrent 

- "Do we ignore Brentford? Should we talk about them more than we should?" says Max Rushden as Barry Glendenning mutters "Well, er, no. To be perfectly honest with you."

- Lampard is terrible! We hate Lampard! We told you Lampard was bad! Lampard! Lampard! Lampard! Frank Lampard. Lampard! We are all orgasming in unison at our passionate hatred of Frank Lampard!

- We previously thought that Vieira was a great manager but we conveniently don't mention that anymore