Should Harry Redknapp be the next England Manager?

When Fabio Capello resigned as England manager there was much surprise and relief. I was surprised that he did not want to try and right the record and do better than last time. (Perhaps an ignominious quarter-final defeat on penalties anyone?) There was relief because Capello's reign had become tainted with what happened in South Africa, and because we knew he was leaving anyway. No doubt he was relieved to be out of the media firing line, and happy to be avoiding the poisoned chalice that is leading England in a major tournament. There are only so many media missiles and miserable defeats a reputation can absorb before it dissolves under the relentlessness of it all. 

     Can you remember what happened the last time a foreign manager of England left the job? Unable to get the 'Golden Generation' past the quarter-finals, we were glad to see the back of Sven 'Play Scholes on the Left?' Eriksson. What was the outcry? We want an Englishman! Then what? Steve 'Umbrella' McClaren presides over the embarrasing failure to qualify for the Euros. Happy that the experiment with an English manager had failed the FA decided to try and buy a trophy by throwing money at the eminent Capello. Now he's gone are we seriously going to let the jingoistic howls for an Anglo-Saxon hustle another hapless Englishmen into the job?

     I imagine the idea with 'Sex Scandal' Sven and 'Hardballs' Fabio was to hope their club records would pervade their England record. That precedent of hiring success hardly fits the Redknapp silhouette. What are his achievements? Promotion with Bournemouth? Promotion with Portsmouth? An FA Cup with an expensive Portsmouth team so weighed down with astronomic wages that they are currently suffering their second administration? Leading an excellent Tottenham team (put together by Jol) into the Champions League? Gareth Bale's hat-trick against Milan? Avoiding a conviction for tax-evasion?

      But he's English you cry! Well, so what. The FA has already hired a Swede and an Italian. There is little point in limiting the options now. Because let us not forget, the English options are thin on the ground. Not only are there very few English managers in the PL, but they aren't possessed of many accolades. Harry Redknapp is the only prospect. Why? Because he's English and is the most prominent amongst a handful. He is being touted in many quarters as the man who can do a job for England; the man who will give the boost England need. To do what? Get past a penalty shoot-out? If we could only win a penalty shoot-out we would win a cup. England needs more than quick-impact man management. England needs some kind of football-dictator who can invade the system and rectify the manifold issues in the English game. The top PL teams don't have enough English players, and those that do exist need to be more like Wilshere and less like Henderson. How is England to compete with the big footballing nations, when the top of our game hasn't got any Englishmen?

      There's no point in bringing in Redknapp unless he is the man for the very long-term. Is he the man to revamp the English game from the grassroots up? Has he got an agenda for the lack of English managers at the top level? Will he be brave enough to take the media criticism and make the touch choices? The next incumbent has to be more than just a manager. If Harry is that man, then so be it. But please, let us abandon the 'Englishman' hype and let the FA make a well considered and intelligent choice for the long-term.

Musical Honesty

When I first started engaging in music sometime in the early part of secondary school, I leaned decisively towards what can loosely be called the 'Alternative' part of the then musical spectrum. Bands like Korn, Limp Bizkit, Slipknot, Deftones etc... were foremost in my tastes. Why was this? Part of the reason was my nauseous aversion to 'Pop' music. Very much wearied by prancing boy/girl bands, bored senseless by ballads and inane lyrics about relationship troubles, I would rather give myself a nasty Chinese Burn than listen to Five, or Blue, or Steps, or S Club bloody 7. Keep your dancing troupes and expensive videos and give me a power chord!

     However justified this loathing may have been, it engendered a prejudice towards all musical genres other than my own - which I suppose was 'Metal'. Prejudice is a frankly stupid thing to perpetuate, but it did do one thing for many in my generation - it saved us time. Instead of investigating each band on its merits, most of them could be rejected out of hand because they belonged to a category you had decided to dislike. Being so young we had no time for anything other what we had chosen to adore.

     But time is exactly what we do have. As you get older you start confessing that there are many songs that you like, but which don't fall into your 'usual' category. What you find is that you don't have time to be prejudiced. It's a total waste. If you like something, so be it, and who cares what your youthful arrogance thought? The nirvana you are closing in on is 'Musical Honesty' - a place where it matters not what others think or what you thought. It's a place where you aren't afraid to make a musical u-turn and like something you had previously hated. So go forth, and let the only filter be this: enjoyment, or not.

Is Abramovich Doing More Damage Than Good?

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What is it to be a Football Fan?

There is a double magic to being a Football Fan. Firstly, a fan has a love for the game. How many of you played football during break-time whilst the girls skipped; or played heads and volleys down the park or alley? How many of you would play a game right now if you had the chance and the company to do so? I would.

     This passion is transferred seamlessly into the watching of the game. We who have kicked a ball know how fantastic are the skills and talent of the professionals on display in the upper echelons of Europe's leagues. Good play entertains whilst bad play frustrates. You don't need to be Alex Ferguson to tell the difference between the dire and the divine.

     Yet as satisfying as appreciating the game may be, the real drug of football lies in supporting a team. We do so through thick and thin, until the very end of our lives. Supporting a team represents a massive emotional investment. Every weekend we place our hopes in eleven men over whom we have no influence whatsoever.  If your team wins you are elated, if they lose, then you are miserable. Perhaps you follow a team that tends to win, but when they lose it's all the worse. Or you could support a team that tends to lose, so when they win it's all the more ecstatic. It's a weekly and unconditional gamble. Hardened football veterans take this in their stride, but let me make this point so that it can spread to those who do not follow football: You who do not support a team - you may avoid the catastrophic lows, but you'll never have the chance of the dizzying highs that make the tens of thousands jump to their feet and scream pure joy. 

     When my team wins the Champions League, you'll never get me down.

Writing Music and Lizards

Once upon a time I would pick up my acoustic guitar and jib along, stringing notes and chords together until voila! - I had discovered something to my liking. Then I would install the riff into a music program and go from there, adding drums, bass, piano, trumpet, etc... There was no theory involved whatsoever. The only thing that mattered was this: DOES IT SOUND GOOD? Yet behind this innocent maxim lay a real contempt for musical theory. Is it in C Major? Psssh! Is that a D Minor even? Whatever! As long as it was music to my ears then so be it. Scales were just cages in which a blooming musician might wilt; where creativity might never escape its scaly confines. However, there are two conditions closely related to the supposed freedom offered by scale-disdain:

1. Because you're thrashing around in a limitless musical landscape, I found that each and every song I settled on was different. Maybe this in itself isn't a bad thing, but if you grouped your songs together they would make for an appalingly disjointed album. One track would sound like Deftones, another like Nirvana or even Greenday. This bridges well into my next point...
2. Because you haven't a structure to guide your efforts, you would tend to write things that sounded like music you liked. If you're constantly listening to Megadeth and Metallica (who's better btw?), the odds are you would reproduce a particular phrase of their's. This is really frustrating because you don't want to commit to something that has already been done, so all that creativity which you had quite naturally enjoyed was wasted.

The latter point needs a little qualification because it is also true that by sharing a scale with a favourite band, you might also trap yourself in a never ending circle of unconscious reproduction. Let me assure you, having to continuously disgard riffs because they sound like something else is a demoralising place to be.

      So what are the advantages of using specific scales? Well, alternative to the above, you can employ a scale divergent from your beloved band to create tunes totally different from your regular listening. This is probably a step too far because most people want to be inside the same genre as their adored bands, but not exactly like them. This is where scales come in handy because you can employ the same style as (insert_band), but in a different scale, which can often give a complementary, rather than slavish sound. 

     The next boon offered by scales are there anti-desiccation properties. Unlike amphibians, who have to remain in watery environments, scales offer reptiles protection against dehydration. (HA!) Anyway, the next boon offered by scales is related to the first point up above. If you want to have a thematic continuity in your music, a good way of achieving this is through using the same scale(s) consistently. For a long time I have employed G and sometimes C Major. G Major is definitely my most abused scale and I can jam inside that indefinitely. But using G does chain you to happier sounding music - which was fine for a while. Recently I switched to an E Minor Harmonic. This scale gives you a much darker, more ominous sound. Humourously, I discovered that in reality it differs from G Major in only one note, so perhaps I am not as adaptable as I think I am:) 

     To finish then: once you have stopped hacking at your instrument and have figured out some creations of your own, do not be prejudiced against structure. Do not be prejudiced against the unstructured either, because you will probably find that those freebooting tracks fit inside a scale you were not aware of! And remember - DOES IT SOUND GOOD!