Vardinio'sCat Posted 9 March 2017 Posted 9 March 2017 I saw this article last week. Seeing as the 'downed tools' meme is still on peoples minds, I thought I would post it because it is a lot quicker to post it than to explain why I think that is too simplistic. We are obsessed, as humans, with simple narratives. And right now, they are everywhere. At a time when the most powerful man in the world thinks 140 characters is enough, I suggest that in the same way that last season cannot really be explained in one sentence, or attributed to one factor, this season is a complicated, multi-factoral soup! I went a bit Gary when CR was sacked, and when we sang for him in the Liverpool game, and another time as well. I still love the man unconditionally and It broke my heart that he had to go. Anyways, here is the article. I don't agree with it all, but she has a point... https://www.theguardian.com/football/blog/2017/mar/01/footballers-not-trying-premier-league-leicester-city Idon’t know if you’ve ever been stopped in the street by Scientologists – I tend merely to get legal letters from them – but they are often wielding a distinctive piece of kit. This thing is an e-meter, and they would very much like to hook you up to it. What is an e-meter? An e-meter is a Hubbard electro-psychometer, popularised (though not invented) by Scientology’s founder, L Ron Hubbard. But what REALLY is an e-meter? Under the bonnet, the device is a ridiculously crude lie detector. Certainly it has needles and dials and whatnot. But compared with the thing you see on Jeremy Kyle, this might as well be made from Lego and horse hair. Even so, it is able to detect basic electrodermal activity if you hold on to its two tin cans. Scientology harvesters of secrets – or “auditors”, as the Church prefers it – use it to monitor a subject’s responses when they ask a series of questions. When you are audited, they can see your thoughts or something, and the cure for your problems is often to spend more, expensive time hooked up to an e-meter. According to published Scientology catalogues, the 2013 e-meter model was priced at $5,000 – and beyond even that there is a Limited-Edition Mark Ultra VIII Golden Age of Tech III E-meter, which is marked with my three least favourite words in a retail setting: price on application. Still, as someone always on the lookout for the post-journalism get-rich-quick scheme, I am highly taken with creating a similar device – and what better hunting ground than top-flight football? I believe I have identified perhaps the last gap in the modern game’s almost comically technicalised market. How about a try-meter – a totally scientific device that could be marketed to football clubs as a means of measuring that most emotive of issues, that last elusive variable: how much players are “trying”. Listen to talk radio or social media or even Alan Shearer, and it’s clear that for all your heatmaps and your player run comparisons and your marginal gains, when the chips are down there is an awful lot of falling back on the old “not trying” explanation. In the year 2017, it seems unbelievable that this metric has not yet been targeted by some charlatan or other. Still, if it falls to me. Advertisement In the great scheme of pseudoscientific devices, my try-meter would err towards the victimless. I’d definitely find it far easier to sleep at night than the chap who repackaged £13 novelty golf ball finders and sold them as bomb detectors in Iraq and elsewhere for up to £27,000 each. No, the try-meter would be a gentler form of pseudoscience – certainly no more cobblers-driven than Sam Allardyce’s Crystal Palace programme notes, which last weekend claimed: “The increase in performance doesn’t have to be that big. If you put two per cent on every player, that’s an overall 22% increase in how you play.” Never mind marginal gains – think of Big Sam’s theory as marginal brains. Is it bollocks? Course it is. But nobody died. My first sales target for the try-meter would be Leicester City Football Club. Leicester are the latest footballing entity to be accused of not trying. The whole of last season’s spellbinding run, they tried their noble hearts out, and now they’re not trying any more. Or rather, they weren’t till Monday. It’s that simple. You can tell, innit, because when Claudio Ranieri got the chop and everyone criticised them instead of him for it, they came out and beat Liverpool. Ha! Hoist by their own trying. Tricked into trying by people who knew they weren’t trying before – people who are now even more outraged than they were when Leicester weren’t trying last week. (What’s that you say? Liverpool just didn’t turn up to the game? Well in that case, I have a product I would like to show their executive in charge of strategic purchasing.) Read more And yet, and yet … is it time to retire the “not-trying” analysis, as being so obviously rudimentary as to be meaningless? It feels closely related to that other old chestnut – “passion”. England are a case in point. No one is accused of “not trying” more frequently than the England football side (see also: “lacking passion”). This may seem to you a suspiciously simplistic explanation, particularly having watched games in which the England shirt itself appears to function as a kind of psychological straitjacket for players who perform excellently at club level. To anyone who has trailed round after England for the past however many international tournaments, it is perfectly obvious that the problem is slightly more psychiatrically complex than “not trying”. You could have a week-long symposium at one of the better schools of Viennese analysis and still not get to the bottom of it. Advertisement None of which is to blame those who fall back on accusations of “not trying” in the absence of having a better clue. We all have stories we need to tell ourselves, and for all their veneration of method, football clubs themselves ricochet between science and emotion far more than they pretend. Last week it was revealed that the Sunderland squad had been taken on a trip to New York just days before the club announced redundancies at its training ground and stadium. I’m sure the powers that be at Sunderland could do you up a PowerPoint with graphs and pie charts featuring words like “spirit” and “bonding” with actual numbers next to them (and that it would be a lot of consolation to the staff being encouraged to pop their redundancy forms in to HR). But it’s not a whole lot more than a confused stab in the dark – and like “not trying”, should realistically be recognised as such.
Vardinio'sCat Posted 9 March 2017 Author Posted 9 March 2017 Sorry bout the messy inserts, I'm not very good at this stuff..
Vardinio'sCat Posted 9 March 2017 Author Posted 9 March 2017 Bugger, should have checked first I guess. It is all a bit boring now, I guess, so hopefully it will drop like a stone/LCFC! I'll get my coat...
davieG Posted 9 March 2017 Posted 9 March 2017 Not to worry I'm just being pedantic, it's hard to find but I think it is in the Sam Wallace topic besides plenty may not have seen it.
Vardinio'sCat Posted 9 March 2017 Author Posted 9 March 2017 Oh, that makes me feel better, thanks. She doesn't really say that much, but I did laugh a few times. Most of my topics disappear dead quick, which can be a blessing for all concerned!
adejo92 Posted 9 March 2017 Posted 9 March 2017 2 hours ago, Vardinio'sCat said: Sorry bout the messy inserts, I'm not very good at this stuff.. What? Football knowledge?
ZeGuy Posted 10 March 2017 Posted 10 March 2017 9 hours ago, adejo92 said: What? Football knowledge? Cheap shot. Bore off.
GaelicFox Posted 10 March 2017 Posted 10 March 2017 They downed tools can never be trusted again as a group next summer we need to break them up and move on
AmarteyAndChill Posted 10 March 2017 Posted 10 March 2017 3 minutes ago, GaelicFox said: They downed tools can never be trusted again as a group next summer we need to break them up and move on How do you recommend we do that? Get rid of the good ones first?
ARTY_FOX Posted 10 March 2017 Posted 10 March 2017 4 minutes ago, GaelicFox said: They downed tools can never be trusted again as a group next summer we need to break them up and move on You're smarter than believing that nonsense mate.
GaelicFox Posted 10 March 2017 Posted 10 March 2017 1 minute ago, ARTY_FOX said: You're smarter than believing that nonsense mate. Correct , I was being sarcastic that's the subtext in the media they are desperate to have us return to our pidgeon hole feck em all ! Crack on shaky and the boys and make CR proud
GaelicFox Posted 10 March 2017 Posted 10 March 2017 6 minutes ago, AmarteyAndChill said: How do you recommend we do that? Get rid of the good ones first? I was paraphrasing the red top media subtext on our squad we should all stop hitting the click bait and still buying the red tops Make Leicester an oasis of intellectual reading The Dandy, the beano and Viz
ARTY_FOX Posted 10 March 2017 Posted 10 March 2017 1 minute ago, GaelicFox said: Correct , I was being sarcastic that's the subtext in the media they are desperate to have us return to our pidgeon hole feck em all ! Crack on shaky and the boys and make CR proud Good to know my faith was in the right place
HighPeakFox Posted 10 March 2017 Posted 10 March 2017 I find most 'thinking' on such matters VERY trying...
Recommended Posts
Archived
This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.