Someone else of a restless nature

I read about Juanma Lillo, assistant manager at Manchester City, who has apparently managed 17 football clubs in his career. Googling "which manager has managed the most clubs?" gives you Roy Hodgson, who has managed 16. I if were Juanma I'd be a bit cheesed off about that.

In 1981 Lillo, a Spaniard, took his first managerial position at Amaroz KE, a small club in a small town called Tolosa in northern Spain. I could find no mention of this club in any of my usual reference material so it's possible it doesn't exist any more. Probably not Lillo's fault. His most recent managerial dalliance was in China at Qingdao Huanghai, who play in the Chinese Super League.

Hodgson's managerial career began in 1976 in Norway and subsequently encompassed clubs in England, Sweden, Switzerland, Denmark and Italy as well as coaching the national teams of Switzerland, United Arab Emirates and Finland.

In comparison with these two giants of peripatetic football, Alex Ferguson was manager of Manchester United for 26 consecutive years. Not quite a one club manager - he managed three Scottish clubs before United. Arsene Wenger managed Arsenal for 22 consecutive years and these two stand side by side as the longest successful managerial reigns in modern football.

But they pale in comparison with the records of Fred Everiss, who managed West Bromwich Albion from 1902 to 1948, and Guy Roux, who managed Auxerre in three separate reigns totalling more than 40 years.

What is it about these two distinct types - Lillo and Hodgson restlessly seeking new challenges and Ferguson and Wenger (in the same era) challenging themselves to drive their clubs to new heights? If you Google career restlessness, you get items characterising it as a negative, requiring remedial coaching:

"Agitation and restlessness: what causes it?"

"Feeling unhappy and restless at work?"

According to that, Lillo and Hodgson are suffering from some kind of illness, or least a syndrome that needs remedies but it seems to me more likely that's a misunderstanding of lifestyle choices: I've taken this team as far as I can, now I (and they) need a new challenge. A search for improvement rather than a Ferguson/Wenger search for perfection. Indeed a recognition that there is no perfection and that the pursuit of it is doomed to failure.

Of course, it could be that Lillo and Hodgson were not very good at their jobs and kept getting sacked; you'd have to be prepared to do more research to establish that. You might also have to be of an uncharitable nature.

I'm glad there are different kinds of people in the world and we should appreciate difference as a positive. Hooray for them all.

Fronted adverbials

Earlier today, I discovered fronted adverbials. "Earlier today" is one.

Sadly (another, I think), fronted adverbials is a term I had never heard of in my long life. Suddenly (enough now, I think), I came across it in a comment column by Alice Thomson in the Times. Obviously better educated than me, one of Alice's claims to fame is that the city of Alice Springs in the Northern Territory of Australia - an almost unbearably hot desert city, I can attest to that - was named after the wife of her ancestor Sir Charles Todd. So better connected than me too.

According to learningstreet.co.uk "Teachers will introduce children to fronted adverbials from Year 4 onwards". What? I'm first hearing this in Year 78! Maybe they hadn't been invented when I was at school.

Charles Todd was Superintendent of Telegraphs of South Australia when it was decided to build a telegraph line from Port Augusta to Darwin independent of the other colonies, and work began in September 1870. The Overland Telegraph Line was one of the greatest civil engineering feats in the history of Australia. There's a monument to it, and him:

It stands 50 miles south of Daly Waters, at the point where the northerly and southerly sections of the Line were joined in 1872. In 2007 I traversed this route on a wonderful train called the Ghan

stopping at Alice Springs for a few hours on the way. Here's one of the Alice locals I met:

The indigenous people who have native title to Daly Waters and its surrounds are the Jingili. They traditionally spoke a language called Jinguli, although a survey in 1997 found that only between 10 and 15 people still understood it.

Jinguli typically uses verbless clauses. So they probably haven't heard of frontal adverbials either. That makes me feel better.

=INT(RAND()*10+1)

Along with a group of family and friends, I play a game called Footy Naps. Every week of the football season - which for some reason isn't 12 months of the year - we each select a match result, with the bookmakers' odds. It it loses, you lose one point; win and you get the odds. Last week I selected Sheffield United to beat Crystal Palace at odds of 2/1. If United had won, I'd have gained 2 points; they lost and so did I: -1 point.

Sounds easy, I hear you say. Not so. I laboured for many years thinking - as do most of the players - that I knew better than the odds setters - the bookies - and, with a bit of work each week, I could find a value 'bet'. You have no idea how dispiriting this can be; week after week, the bookies prove they know what they are talking about. Not every time obviously - otherwise they would go out of business - but more than me.

For the 2017/2018 season, I decided to change tack. I had to find a strategy which met three criteria: (1) it had to involve the absolute minimum of effort and time (2) the chosen match is ideally on TV (usually a given since by definition the away side will be one of the big hitters) (3) it had to be fun, meaning a general expectation of losing punctuated by the occasional big win and the resulting accolade from my fellow players of "wow Nigel, how did you do that?" I decided to choose the longest odds home selection in the Premier League each week. As there are only 20 teams in the Premier League and therefore only 10 matches, the selection takes about 30 seconds; check one. Isolating just one league and just home matches simply furnishes a minimalistic algorithm for my efforts. Outcome: I got my maiden win in the competition. And this match gave me the biggest win @ 18/1:

I watched the match on TV. Check two. It was stressful but hilarious and fun. Check three. For accuracy I should state that this was a FA Cup match; I have to adapt in weeks where there are no Premier League games (I'm still waiting for Gibraltar to get a 150/1 win in the dreaded international weeks).

Next season I adopted the same strategy and it was a disaster but in 2019/2020 I made a comeback with an even bigger win, once again courtesy of Manchester City:

A 22/1 win contributing to my clean sweep of season title, first half of season win and second half of season win.

Once again reverting to the mean, season 2020/2021 has been a disaster. Miles behind with only three match days to go, I thought I'd have a bit of a change and decided to use a randomisation process. I considered using the I Ching but that proved as far removed from my "minimum effort" principle as it is possible to be. So I just used some random number stuff in a spreadsheet.

=INT(RAND()*10+1) selects the match (values 1 through 10).

=INT(RAND()*3+1) selects the bet: home win, draw, away win (values 1 through 3).

Simples.

Hence the afore mentioned Sheffield United selection. That fact that I didn't win that particular nap doesn't invalidate the method. It hasn't been the best of seasons for me ...

... although I had the pleasure of playing alongside my sons. They can comment on their own best wins of the season; looking forward to that, boys.

I did have one spectacular win:

Aston Villa beat the Champions 7-2. Seven! Remarkable. And a 17/2 winning nap for me.

Process before outcome; sloth before vigour. Works for me.

53 degrees North

We're going on a a trip. A round the world adventure. Following the 53° N line of latitude. We begin in ...

Wigan. The new centre of the world. In a circumnavigational sense. The Romans had it wrong: all roads lead to Wigan, the birthplace of George Formby.

Shall we go westwards (Ho!) or eastwards? I think in the initial stages of our journey there is more land to the east, so that's it.

Crossing the North Sea (I wonder if Icelanders call it the South Sea) we arrive on the Dutch island of Texel, famous for giving its name to a breed of sheep.

Moving on, we arrive in Germany, Lower Saxony to be precise. The capital is Hanover, the 19th century Kingdom of which fell out with the English because we had the temerity to optate a female monarch (Victoria). Thence to the West Pomeranian province of Poland. In that country a province is called a Voivodeship and I believe many people arrive there looking to buy a sturdy, ultra reliable car.

I hope you're keeping up with this whistle stop sheep/car chase. Leaving Volvoland we meet the people of Belarus. According to nationsonline.org Belarus is famous for "potatoes, tractors, and being one of the poorest countries in Europe by total wealth." They need to do something about that reputation; maybe hire a PR firm?

Next it's Russia. There's a lot of Russia to cross and we dip in and out of Kazakhstan, following our 53rd parallel. The Baikonur Cosmodrome, home to Russia's manned space flight launches, is in Kazakhstan. We leave Russia temporarily as we pass the world's largest by volume freshwater lake, Baikal, and cross the tip of the Chinese province of Heilongjiang, which takes its name from the Heilong River, which marks the border between China and Russia.

More Russia: Sakhalin Island and the Kamchatka peninsula, then we cross the Bering Sea to the US outpost of Alaska (Sarah Palin will unfollow me for 'outpost'). Alaska is possibly the most faunal and scenic stopover on this trip so we'll do a bit of sightseeing: salmon, moose, caribou, bears, whales, bison, puffins, jellyfish, glaciers, fjords, mountains, lakes, rivers; what's not to like?

Actually we're island-hopping through Alaska: Attu, Kagamil and Umnak, then Canadian islands - Hibben, Moresby and Louise - in British Columbia. Like Russia, there's a lot of Canada - we travel through Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Winnipeg, Ontario, Quebec and Newfoundland/Labrador. What to say about the lovely Canadian people? They speak English👍 They rank "the world’s most reputable nation" 👍 They are all nice 👍 They are great at developing video games 👍👍

Across the Atlantic to Ireland. Home to Guinness, U2, James Joyce, George Best and the Giant's Causeway. I hope the DUP aren't going to get picky about whether Northern Ireland is in Ireland; it's on my route; get out of the way! Lovely accent - although I imagine they think of my diction as the accent. Crossing the - often very rough - Irish Sea to Mount Snowdon in Wales, the most beautiful of British mountains and finally home to ...

Butter pie, courting cake, scouse, aughton pudding and pea wet; yes it's ...lovely Wigan. It's raining cats and dogs but Wigan, we love you.

Truth is redundant

VAR (the Video Assistant Referee) distorts truth. The truth that the striker has scored a legitimate goal, by any measure except one: exactitude. His big toe, with which he is not attempting to score, is a millimetre beyond the bum of the defender, which with the latter is not going to intercept the shot. The striker kicks the ball into the net with the foot other than the one of the big toe, past the head of the defender, whose bum is now pointing away from the goal, who attempts to intercept. Graphical truth takes over: lines are drawn on a computer screen and the 'goal' is disallowed. Incorrectly, in every possible way except one: exactitude.

Football wasn't designed to be a game of exact, static images. It's a fast moving, fluid sport which encourages the taking of attacking risk whereas VAR persuades forwards to hold their runs that little bit too late and, when involved, takes a minute or more out of the game to make a marginal decision and interrupts the players' momentum - and, who knows, their wills to live.

We were all brought up to believe that truth exists and that it is unimpeachable. Now we know better; to paraphrase Descartes: I score, therefore I don't.

I've never heard a footballer quote Descartes but I've begun to think I am frequently unfair to them. I complain vociferously - to the TV - about retired footballers, employed to assist the match commentator by deploying pithy comments about the play, butchering the English language. Despite the fact that I understand perfectly what they are trying to say. Their truth undermined by my exactitude.

News Chronicle

I woke on Saturday morning to the news that "The eldest son of South Africa's late Zulu King Goodwill Zwelithini has been chosen as successor to the throne, amid a bitter family feud." [BBC]. It felt as though as though I had been transported to a real life version of my favourite historical strategy game Civilization VI. In that case though it would have been Shaka leading the Zulus. He was their King for 12 years, during which he built a strong and well organised military. This map shows the rise of the Zulu Empire under Shaka (1816–1828) in present-day South Africa:

This took me back to my youth - I have a dim recollection of knowledge of Zulu and Mau Mau in the news, which must have been in the 1950s. I guess I must have been an avid newspaper reader even then [yes television had been invented; don't be cheeky]. Which in turn led me to think which newspaper would have been in my house. I'm pretty sure it was the News Chronicle, which would have fitted my father's Liberal politics. I don't remember my mother ever expressing a political view and am pretty certain I recall her refusing to tell me which party she voted for.

Obviously my reminiscence of the time was about the Mau Mau rebellion rather than anything about the Zulu but I feel that the latter appear somewhere in my memory. Perhaps media reports referenced earlier Zulu uprisings against the British Empire as colour; maybe there was just a sense of ... Africa. I was disappointed to discover that the British Newspaper Archive didn't give me any News Chronicle articles but it could easily be that I'm not familiar enough with it to search appropriately. The paper was subsumed into the Daily Mail empire in 1960 in what was undoubtedly a trend towards fewer, larger titles but unfortunately also a trend towards political polarisation of the print media with middle-ground views unrepresented.

Today the Zulu nation is part of South Africa's KwaZulu-Natal province. Amazingly - to me in my ignorance - there remain 11 million who identify as Zulu living there. According to the BBC report "The throne does not have formal political power and the monarch's role within broader South African society is largely ceremonial. But the Zulu monarchy remains hugely influential, and has a yearly taxpayer-funded budget of more than $4.9m (£3.5m)."

I hope Prince Misizulu avoids Shaka's fate - assassinated by his half brothers.

I dedicate this post to my good friend Trevor, who knows far more about the history of Britain's newspaper industry than I ever will. Maybe he'll honour us with a comment!