“I grew up in this league. It’s a lot of games, travelling to a lot of places.”

Right… The first bit, fair enough: he spent five seasons at Norwich then a season at Coventry before shipping off to Newcastle. He’s also slipped in a spell in a Championship-style league with time at Celtic haha, but whatever…

My main issue that “it’s a lot of games”. Granted, it’s 8 more games in the Championship than the Premier League, but considering City have got Europa League interests and will almost definitely go deeper in the cups than Cardiff, he’ll probably ending up playing less games here than he’s used to in the Premiership – not that he’s in favour at City anyway…

However, the bit that piqued my interest was his claim that he’d be travelling more. So I decided to find out the details, more out of curiosity than any real desire to prove him wrong… This is what I found:

Craig Bellamy, whilst at Man City, would have travelled this far to each club this season:

Each distance is from the City of Manchester Stadium to the away stadium, by the shortest road route (not necessarily the quickest). Disregard the fact Man City have already played Spurs at White Hart Lane this season.

Arsenal – 200 miles

Aston Villa – 95.5 miles

Birmingham City – 97.1 miles

Blackburn Rovers – 26.5 miles

Blackpool – 54.2 miles

Bolton Wanderers – 21.3 miles

Chelsea – 211 miles

Fulham – 213 miles

Liverpool – 35.7 miles

Manchester United – 4.8 miles

Newcastle United – 143 miles

Stoke City – 43.1 miles

Sunderland – 141 miles

Tottenham Hotspur – 205 miles

West Bromwich Albion – 87.9 miles

West Ham United – 218 miles

Wigan Athletic – 26.9 miles

Wolverhampton Wanderers – 77.9 miles

Total: 1901.9 miles

Or, a convenient average of 100.1 miles per away game

—

Now, whilst at Cardiff this season, he will travel these distances:

Each distance is from Cardiff City Stadium to the away stadium, by the shortest road route (not necessarily the quickest). Disregard the fact that the Bluebirds have already travelled to Derby County this season.

Barnsley – 216 miles

Bristol City – 43.9 miles

Burnley – 228 miles

Coventry City – 129 miles

Crystal Palace – 158 miles

Derby County – 167 miles

Doncaster Rovers – 210 miles

Hull City – 254 miles

Ipswich Town – 240 miles

Leeds United – 235 miles

Leicester City – 149 miles

Middlesbrough – 292 miles

Millwall – 156 miles

Norwich City – 248 miles

Nottingham Forest – 167 miles

Portsmouth – 157 miles

Preston North End – 233 miles

Queens Park Rangers – 148 miles

Reading – 113 miles

Scunthorpe United – 232 miles

Sheffield United – 200 miles

Swansea City – 40.5 miles

Watford – 152 miles

Total: 4168.4 miles

Or, an average of 181.235 miles per away game.

Turns out that Craig Bellamy the meathead might have a bit more than meat in his head! On average, Craig will be travelling an extra 81.1 miles to every away game with Cardiff, and will be travelling an extra 2200 miles over the course of the season.

Alright Craig, you win on this one. Except you’ll be travelling thousands of miles to away games in the Europa League! … Oh wait, no… No you won’t.

One amusing sidenote to all this is that Google Maps gets confused. If you try to direct it from a place in Cardiff to – for example – Sheffield United FC (an entry on the system), it’ll occasionally forget the fact the football club you want is halfway up the country, and will try to direct you back to your starting point (a football club in the area of where you’re searching). Something for them to look into.

So, we’ve discovered Bellamy’s done his homework and I’m now wise as to distances travelled by Cardiff – I can imagine they’ll be one of the most travelled clubs – Swansea, Pompey and Middlesbrough are probably the only ones that need to travel further, but I wouldn’t like to work all of them out!

Interesting way to waste an hour.

“Football Manager” (and thus “FM” in this context) and “Sports Interactive” are both trade marks of Sports Interactive Limited and their appearances here do not represent the endorsement by SI of anything that I’ve said. I do hope they’ll let me leave it up, I would hope that anyone reading it from the SI organisation finds it accurate; I will of course make any amendments as necessary.

How Football Manager has changed the way football is consumed.

The Video Game industry is one of the most lucrative new media industries and the major football games released are cornerstones in the consumable element of football culture in Britain. Over the years there have been hundreds of football titles ranging from 2D titles on the early gaming machines through the official FIFA licensed game produced by EA Sports to the football management game, a genre led for many years by development company Sports Interactive Games. The latter of these will be the focus of this essay, which will draw on examples in the media of the genre’s social effects and the ways in which football has changed in consumption due to it. For this purpose I will refer to SI Games latest offering: Football Manager 2010, although I will also refer to other games both from this genre and across the spectrum.

Football Manager is a series of football management games that dates back from the early 1990s. Originally called Championship Manager, it gave PC gamers their first taste of pitting their wits against the football world as a manager as opposed to controlling players. SI Games split from publisher EIDOS in 2004 and thus the name was changed to the current title. The game is now in its eighteenth incarnation under the same developer and is one of the quickest selling titles of any given year upon its traditional release date in mid-October, as shown as it soared to number one in the sales charts for the week after its release last year (British Information 2009).

The impact the game has on the lives of football fans ranges from a light distraction from other matters to full on addiction. A number of users have reported broken relationships and even divorce with Football Manager cited as the primary reason (Pettigrew 2008), whilst one user reported losing his job (Busari 2009) over holiday taken to play the game. This is something that is mostly unheard of in other genres, except for the massively multiplayer online game World of Warcraft (Blizzard Entertainment) and the hugely popular Call of Duty series (Electronic Arts). These two games differ from Football Manager as they mainly gain their appeal from interaction with others using the internet (FM does have a network multiplayer system but is not necessarily renowned for it), although all are similar in that they create worlds in which the player can achieve things as time goes on.

Football Manager offers an example of postmodernism in that the management simulation has been used by figures in the “real life” game to enhance their own performance. Giovanni Trapattoni, then manager of Italy, used the game to “scout” little known English players before a friendly in 2002 (Pettigrew 2008); Everton signed an exclusive deal with SI Games in 2008 that gave them sole access to the full database in the hope of finding the next star (Busari 2009), whilst at least one England international has admitted to playing the game in his spare time (Pettigrew 2008).

An interesting parallel that Football Manager tapped into involved the sponsorship of AFC Wimbledon, which SI Games established from the beginning of the club’s life in 2002. This showed the support of grassroots football, something seen as integral to the genre as once the stars of the present had passed into the latter stages of their career, players of the game would be forced to look to the up and coming players in game to continue their winning run. Since this sponsorship, two things have meant that SI Games and AFC Wimbledon are very well matched in their partnership – firstly, SI split from publisher EIDOS (which led to the name change from Championship Manager to Football Manager) which left the former – a much smaller company – requiring to start again by finding a different publisher, which they did in the form of Sega. This is very much like AFC Wimbledon’s situation, which involved a start from scratch when the original Wimbledon FC were taken north to Milton Keynes. Both organisations’ fame was borne out of disagreement with hostile higher powers.

The second is the way in which AFC Wimbledon have completed their meteoric rise up the non-league pyramid into the current Football League Conference. This is a representation of the romantic rise through the league masterminded by the average player of their local team in the game. Although many fans support Premier League clubs, many often choose a lower league local team to manage to glory. This representation is surely coincidental but offers an example of real-life occurrences of events more commonly associated with the game, which maintain some reality for the game’s players.

Further to the various divorces and sackings, Football Manager is also well played by those in the media, including comedian Jason Manford who regularly mentions the game on his Twitter account (Manford 2010) and also does a small sketch about the game and its effects on his marriage in one of his stand-up routines.

Finally, the game’s mystique is only increased by the eerie accuracy that previous versions have had in predicting the rise of future footballing stars. Rooney and Messi both became world stars in their early careers (Rooney would first appear on Championship Manager Season 03/04 and almost invariably rise to England level by the Euro 2004 Championship at the end of the first season of gameplay), whilst the meteoric rise of Ashley Young was also noted as being foreshadowed by the game. Pettigrew’s article noted:

“Such is the general accuracy of its predictions that on occasion, youth players have been approached by Football Manager fans and confidently told something along the lines of: “You’ll get your England debut aged 24 and will get 112 caps.” In which vein, I am advised that Everton’s Jose Baxter is a potential future star.”

- Pettigrew, N. Football Manager: In a League of his Own – Telegraph Online (2008)

As an aside, the brief irony here is that Jose Baxter, despite being labelled as a more complete player than Rooney and excelling in most Football Manager games, has actually struggled to break through in the same way as Rooney and was rather controversially arrested in October 2009 on suspicion of possessing cannabis. (Hunter 2009)  For once, it seems, the game might have been wrong.

In his interview with Pettigrew, SI Games Managing Director Miles Jacobson suggested that the reason that fans dedicated so much time to their game is because they are creating their own universe. This is a hyper-reality, something which Jean Baudrillard proposed in his chapter Simulacra and Simulation as “The simulation of something, which never really existed.” (Baudrillard 1995). The dictionary definition offers a little more:

‘an image or simulation, or an aggregate of images and simulations, that either distorts the reality it purports to depict or does not in fact depict anything with a real existence at all, but which nonetheless comes to constitute reality.’

- Collins Unabridged English Dictionary p.803 (2003)

This definition is split into two parts; we are interested in the hyper-reality that distorts the reality it depicts. Football Manager offers an encompassing discourse is rare in most other computer games, as they are detached from hyper-reality because they depict things the average human being knows very little about. The opposite applies in football. Therefore the hyper-reality is in itself distorted, forming an almost semi-hyper-reality, where most elements are tailored to the knowledgeable football fan. It is actually an almost complete reality with only one part removed, and that is the role of the game player.

Thus the universe within which the game is conducted IS a hyper-reality, but only because of the player’s input which is fairly limited when considering the game handles a database of over 400,000 people. Other ways in which one might assume the game takes place in a hyper-reality might be the interaction with the various people in the game; these people really exist but the chances of communication with, for example, Sir Alex Ferguson or Roberto Mancini is limited.

Further hyper-realities might be created by the diversion from actual events that the game takes. Because most if not all of the game is set in the near-future, things may occur that would not normally have done so. The best way of describing this example is assuming that a new game is started now. The selected team is Newcastle United and you then play through the 2009/10 season. This has already occurred so a direct comparison might be made. With two games to go Newcastle are level on points with West Brom in the Championship – this is a far cry from real life (sadly). However, in the last game (which Newcastle lose and West Brom sweep to a deserved title), Alan Smith suffers a leg break in the game. Following complications in pre-season, he is forced to retire prematurely from the game. Meanwhile the REAL Alan Smith takes his place in Newcastle’s strike-force in their return to the Premier League and scores fifteen goals. Whilst the game then deviates from actual events, it can still be considered a hyper-reality as it is a distorted view of what actually occurs within real life, independent of the game’s effects.

Video games break down further barriers between publisher and audience, as it causes the gulf in knowledge of the “educated” journalist and “uneducated” audience member to be reduced. This is especially the case in realistic strategy games that involve learning knowledge about the subject. In terms of Football Manager, this concept has changed the way in which football is reported. This is also partly due to the internet. No longer is a player from foreign climes referred to merely as “a striker from Nigeria”, for example. Now a player’s most recent clubs, international history and particular skills will be reported. This might be considered a minor example of the Global Village theory (McLuhan 1962) which suggests as technology increases, the world will become smaller in size in terms of communication. In this sense, more is known about the player (due to Football Manager and articles or videos on the internet) by the fan before the journalist has even reported the story, and now the pressure is on the journalist to supply more detailed information. So if anything Football Manager has revolutionised the way football is reported. This is also seen in Live Text reporting of games (BBC 2010) – something which came about because of the way in which management games like Football Manager offered a written visual aid of how the game was progressing before it offered an actual visual representation of the football game on screen.

Finally in this point is the education the game has given to the fan about the workings of any particular football club or relationship. Fans may be interested to know that John Terry considers Paul Terry, his rather less talented brother at Yeovil, as favoured colleague, but then you would also be surprised to know that Luke Moore does not consider his rather less talented brother Stefan (not that he could really comment) as a favoured colleague either.

Finally, Jacobson refers to the “Can-Do-Better” fan (Pettigrew 2008). That bitter, twisted, angry man that stands at the back of the stand every Saturday telling his team’s goalkeeper, central defender, right winger and striker in turn that, in the grand scheme of things, he could probably do a better job. And when it all ends and his team have lost 3-1, he turns this beautifully simple diatribe, towards the manager – “What are you doing Megson? I can do better than that”, etc, etc. Since all sensible fans generally revert to ignorance when this sort of fan loses his temper, he has to get his point across somewhere. And alas, here it is, in the form of Football Manager. An unadulterated, perfect, black-and-white, brilliant on-paper squad for him to plunder and spoil as he wishes. Not that Jacobson was referring to this seemingly dying breed of fan (since most fans now have better information about their club, thanks to Football Manager, amongst others!). Essentially, Jacobson was referring to the type of fan who believes – sometimes fairly – that the wrong use of money was being made. An example might be the brilliant summer signings of Shelton Martis and Abdoulaye Meite by West Brom in a (yet another) futile attempt to remain in the Premiership. Many West Brom fans played Football Manager 2009 and showed that the team could be kept in the top flight. My own allegiances aside, the can-do-better fan is a large reason that the game is popular – through various methods (both fair and foul) it is possible to take any team to glory from any level. And quite like real football, this will enter the player’s personal set of myths as whenever Football Manager is raised in conversation they can lovingly recall the moment that regular-reject Rob Earnshaw fires their now-beloved Vauxhall Motors to a 1-0 playoff victory at Wembley against Ipswich. Again this could be seen as a concept of hyper-reality as the myths of reality are distorted to fit the myths of the game. As an aside, there also exists a set of players that play from the game’s lowest league to try and achieve management glory the hard way. This could be seen as trying to straighten the hyper-reality by acting as much as a real manager as possible. Jacobson went on to say: “Other players have admitted to conducting mock press conferences in front of their mirrors, and one person who managed to get his team to the Cup Final donned a suit for the occasion.” (Pettigrew 2008)

The wide range of ways in which to play the game is also a factor in its consistent entrance into British culture. Walking down any intercity train, there will be at least one passenger playing Football Manager, convulsing wildly trying not to jump on the businessman next to him when United score a 94^th minute winner, and sometimes failing. Added to that is the new release – FM Handheld for the iPhone. Many friends are referring to this with some dread, and most have genuinely banned themselves from purchasing it until they have finished their dissertation or their exams. This now offers virtually round-the-clock access to the game and promises hours of sleep lost as, whilst the laptop is too bulky to carry to bed, the iPhone most certainly isn’t.

It is easy to dismiss Video Games out of hand as mindless entertainment, but most football games go beyond that. With football being such a huge part of British culture, any game released will have a huge bearing, and this is definitely the case with Football Manager. This is identifiable by the way in which serious social effects have been noted, including sackings and divorce. In other ways, Football Manager and others of its genre have been at least partly responsible for the slow revolution in the way football has been reported, especially in terms of global football in British outlets. This is both due to FM sparking increased interest in worldwide football (a component of the Global Village theory) and the large amounts of information available about any given player.

Football Manager is one of those rare things in Video Gaming that transcends the tag of nerdy and becomes relevant to not only a specific culture (in this case football) but to British culture as a whole. It is slightly different because we are not invited to be our heroes (although to some managers are heroes!) but are invited to control our heroes. It is this that interests so many – a chance to control their heroes is a more realistic prospect than being their heroes in FIFA or Pro Evolution Soccer, for example. This allows people to connect more with the game and as already mentioned in the hyper-reality theory, create their own universe as they try to achieve managerial glory and change the world of football. The beauty of the football management genre is that where thirty years ago this concept was merely a dream had by young boys and fanatic adults alike, today it is very much a reality, no matter how hyper that reality maybe.

You know the score – it’s a Thursday night, nothing’s going down in any part of your life because you’ve no money for Promo, and your interest’s mildly piqued by the friend of a friend’s Facebook status which reveals she’s going to Birmingham at the weekend to see her friends at university, so you ask her “where it is they live?”, pretending that living in Dudley means a sound knowledge of Birmingham areas so you feel qualified enough to go “oh yeahhh fair play” before realising you don’t really know the poor lass that well so you leave the conversation as it is.

Or maybe you’re in a well known takeaway establishment, and you find your vodka-redbull fuelled enthusiasm hit a massive crescendo and you find yourself complimenting the less-than-fit girl next to you via the bloke behind the counter. I don’t know why, but “he likes you” in broken English is always so much easier to smile through than “can I have your number?” in your stammering, slurred voice. And because she’s a student, and you’re a student, it’s much easier to break the ice… What course do you do? What year are you in? Where do you live? You can’t ask these to a 25+ year old woman who’s out on a Friday night in Roper Hall, and believe me, I’ve been there and done that, and there’s a photo on Facebook to prove it.

Or maybe the purest form of feeling like you’ve succeeded making friends at uni – the amount of people you see between your flat and lecture, or one lecture and the next, that you know well enough to wave to, and if you’re really, really cool, the amount of people you see between your flat and lecture that you have to avoid the gaze of for reasons of questionable morality. I’ve had the fortune to work on various university projects (including the legendary, heroic Flying Start) which has introduced me, perhaps, to more people than most… The boys are certainly upset when I’m stopping every two minutes between two establishments to say hi and have a chat with people.

Or maybe it’s walking through the Students’ Union at election time and seeing people passionately campaigning to represent a union that gets better and better and better with every year. Maybe it’s the banners and posters and flyers and t-shirts and photo frames and hoardes and hoardes of campaign teams trying to win the vote for their candidate. Maybe it’s the union itself, and feeling like you’re cared about in more than just an academic sense.

Or maybe it’s the tutor that you look forward to every week – the tutor that makes you laugh, smile and evokes the deepest passion for your subject in you. Or the tutor that you never attend the lectures of, for fear of being bored to tears.

Or maybe it’s sitting here at 5:30 on a stupidly cold morning, writing the back end of a 4000 word essay, looking glumly at the clock and wondering when it is exactly that you’ll be able to climb into your bed – a simple, often overlooked piece of furniture that turns into the promised land as dawn passes. Or abandoning the work at 6:30, walking to the shop, buying a big bar of Dairy Milk and a bottle of coke and returning, in the blazing dawn sunshine, wondering where it is you’ve left your life and why it’s resorted to concluding an essay on culture in film eight hours before it’s due in.

Or maybe it’s the incredible friends that stick with you through thick and thin, and the incredible friends that you’ll look back on in 30 years time and think “fuck me, he was an absolute nutcase, but thank god we’re still mates”.

What I’m getting at here is that University is the best three years of your life because it’s the only three years of your life where you take the childishness, the innocence (loosely!) and the camaraderie of school and combine it with the independence, responsibility and reward of adult life. It is the ultimate halfway house. Along the way, you find some of the best and worst people in your life. Some of us even find the people they eventually marry.

I’ve only two regrets about university. One is that I didn’t apply to study abroad in second year (although I think I preferred being here in the end) and the other is that I didn’t stand in the student elections. But these are opportunities that university had presented to me.

It’s work for me now, I’ve done university and will recommend it to anyone unsure. Take the debt on… Seriously, £22,000 taken from you bit by bit is nothing for the wonderful, brilliant experiences you will have being a student.

I’ve got a degree, memories and dozens of beautiful people in my life to show for it.

Today I found out that centre-half Neil Clement has retired from professional football at the age of 31. In most ways, he was one of English Football’s old guard – crunching, dominating, fiercely loyal and horrendously determined. In other ways, he epitomised everything about Albion’s progression from struggling division one side to a Premiership club… and back and forth between the top two tiers.

Clement joined the club on loan from Chelsea on Transfer Deadline Day in 2000, and after being an integral part of Albion’s successful survival bid that year, moved in a permanent deal worth around £100,000. For the next 10 years, he would be a central player in the club’s trials and tribulations, taking Albion to the Premiership and riding the rollercoaster that came with three promotions and three relegations.

But that’s what you’d see in the newspapers. That’s the story you’ll hear from pundits up and down the country, if they choose to write about it.

I’m not a pundit. I don’t write for newspapers. But I am an Albion fan. And I am one of the new Albion fans that have grown up around this new era of success. Once upon a time, finishing in the top twelve of division one was something to shout about. The year I moved into high school was the year Gary Megson took my underachieving football club and delivered a highly unlikely playoff spot. After throwing away a two goal lead at home to Bolton, the result was never in doubt – and they went on to seal promotion and have never looked back.

Clement was one of the central figures of the miracle that was our promotion season in 2002. He is one of the Albion New Order. He was one of the giants that carried thousands of Albion fans on their shoulders into the promised land. When Michael Appleton retired, it was sad. A great player had his career taken from him. But this is different. It is a player that was moving towards the last years of his career with battles and wars behind him. And he had the medals on his chest to prove it. And this is why it is so heartbreaking – he was denied a final crack at the Premiership through injury. One of Albion’s most loyal, one of Albion’s finest, has had his career cruelly cut short. This was one of Albion’s best. 300 appearances don’t come out of nowhere, and for the best part 0f eight years Clement was one of the first name’s on the teamsheet.

I was gutted to hear Clem has been forced to retire. And no doubt Albion fans everywhere will agree. He knew how to put a shift in and battled and battled. I do hope the club offer him a post in the backroom, and that they give him a well-deserved testimonial… He was only two months away from 10 years service.

And probably most of all, cheers Neil. You were one of the reasons Albion are challenging to establish themselvse in the Premiership, and you were one of the reasons my interest in football didn’t die. All the best.

You’d think I’d have a lot to say since last week was the store’s quarterly sale week (few pointers again, but I’m determined not to directly mention it…), but actually the customers were on-the-whole very understanding and very happy to wait…

However, both week 3 and week 4 brought around the usual obvservations that only odd men like me ever seem to make… So here goes:

People that act like Dave Worley are commended for acting like Dave Worley by Dave Worley

A fine moment in my retail career as I was talking to a woman who was going to find another size of jeans for her husband in the fitting room (see week 2). I was having a laugh and a joke with her and she was looking back chatting when bam. Straight into a permanent fixture of shirts. This would be funny enough in itself to comment on. But as she turned away she gave it “oh my god…” and pulled an horrendous face. The Trinity crew appreciate people who act like them.

Stock Room incidents bring out top brass…

I’m not going to lie – I’d never seen the store manager before in my life. So imagine my shock to see “Store Manager” under her name on her namebadge on Thursday when she was ringing for an ambulance for a member of staff who had been taken out by a large number of falling boxes. Pleasing moments, but not for Mrs Under A. Box. Best wishes to her, though, for sure…

The Dreaded Christmas Party…

… is nearly upon us, and I have to say I’m not dreading it at all – because there are some top quality people in my department which will only add to the merriment. What won’t add to the merriment is me being taken home after 15 pints of lager. Fortunately, I have not been working in the store long enough to have bonded with any of my fellow team enough to tell them that “I love them” (which I will probably do anyway) or make inappropriate passes at (I am frigging determined that this isn’t going to happen, for once – I like my job, and I like my respect. My dignity is another matter, of course, but that’s why I’m going out with a group of people I’ve only known for 5 weeks with the sole intention of getting trollied).

Department Loyalty for the megalolswin!

I took an utter verbal battering from a cosmetics girl who disliked my customer service on Sunday (you might have seen this anger directed at her on my Facebook status). Today I received some pleasant comments from my fellow Menswear-ers (the girls don’t wear mens.. But whatever..) which has cheered my week up no end. So thanks to you, if you get round to reading this.

Homoerotic fantasies should be kept to oneself in the staff canteen

After till training a week last Saturday, I was chilling out with a McDonalds in the canteen (I had the worst hangover under the sun) and a couple of girls from womenswear were chatting about that idiot from Twilight. As much as I think he’s an idiot, I find him an attractive man. So in my usual lol-I’m-not-gay-but-I’m-gonna-sound-it-for-huge-lolz nature, I just, outloud, said “Pretty sure he’s one of the few men on earth I’d utterly… destroy”. I said the last word rather meekly, as all three had leaned in expectedly… It was an amazing scene. They fell about laughing and I blushed wildly. Then asked which other men I’d “destroy” (with air-quotes and everything… bastards), before eventually being convinced of the fact I was actually straight…

I’m mindful of the fact this isn’t as light as the last two I must be losing my edge. But not that much has happened really, except being ridiculously busy, oh and selling my first storecard, which gives a very warm satisfying feeling. Till work has been much easier than I thought and has allowed me to be free to talk to the customer about their day, their purchases, etc – something that I find is absolutely imperative in customer service – you need to be part of the customer’s day, not just a peripheral instrument selling them goods.

Even if they are called Cosmetics Bitch.