Setanta Ranter Part 2

Once again we’re proud to welcome guest scribe Steve B who joins the Spurt for another Setanta rant and to weigh up England’s prospects in Croatia

Missed the England-Andorra game: I was tied up. In a Chelsea dungeon. OK, that’s not strictly true and, indeed, had I been in one of those infamous establishments favoured by Max Mosley, in search of the most esoteric dose of masochism available, then I probably would have seen England’s motley assemblage of multimillionaire chavs, dubious mobile phone-practitioners and lapdancer-shaggers strutting their by all accounts passionless and inept stuff. For what could be more masochistic than watching the England football team on Setanta?

A solid half an hour’s trawling around on Sky Plus confirmed what has since become a minor story: that if you object to subscribing to Setanta, as I do (having discovered last year that cancelling a Setanta subscription is harder than escaping from a set of shackles suspended from a dripping ceiling), you won’t even be able to see the highlights of England’s World Cup qualifiers. Or perhaps “highlights”, given that it’s England is the wrong word. With the Setanta deal, the FA have really outdone themselves (they’ve been putting out some choice “Nothing to do with us” quotes which, translated from FA-speak, mean: “We just took the money and ran. That’s what we do.”) Maybe they took the Irish folding stuff after realising they’d managed to unearth an outfit which was even less popular than themselves.

One good thing did emerge from England’s reputedly dire 2-0 victory, and I’m not talking about the amusing Andorran quotes about losing by a mere two goals being a “Moral victory”. Trying to gauge just how bad England were, I trawled the Sunday papers, many of which (especially the ones owned by Murdoch) reported that at one stage of the match, the England fans in Barcelona had chanted: “We hate Setanta”. Let’s hope this becomes a regular chant. Perhaps Capello could help by doing things like banishing the embarrassment known as Stuart Downing from the squad, selecting the man who has been England’s best player for ages – Joe Cole – from the start and generally decreasing the time it takes for England fans to get bored with booing their own players and to think of more imaginative (but no less valid) targets for their entirely understandable frustration and bile.

I will, however, go to a pub and watch Wednesday’s match against Croatia – not to sup hungrily upon whatever pearls of erudition might drop from Steve McManaman’s lips, but just to get a sense of Capello’s approach. Given that he has excluded Peter Crouch – the one available target-man who has a decent goals per game aggregate for England since Alan Shearer – from his squad (I have no problems with the absence of Michael Owen, the new Daren Anderton), I’m expecting England to do an Andorra and park their bus in front of goal. If England escape with a draw, then Fabio will deserve praise. Although even such a mediocre result is about as likely as the FA suddenly announcing that it has finally learned how to find its arse with both hands.


By Steve B