General Modern Football: Is It Just Boring?

m said:
I think the day you stop listening to new music a little bit of you dies.

Obviously this has to be carefully balanced against trying to appear down wiv da kidz once you hit a certain age.
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Yeah I really like 6 Music and quite a few new bands, as an 'ageing hipster'. But I've got no time for Britpop and the like.
 
m said:
I think the day you stop listening to new music a little bit of you dies.

Obviously this has to be carefully balanced against trying to appear down wiv da kidz once you hit a certain age.
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You questioning my Grime obsession and the need to call everybody 'bruv'?
 
Big Ron said:
You questioning my Grime obsession and the need to call everybody 'bruv'?
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I wouldn't dream of it.

Not considering the ruffians you're likely to be hanging around with. Hell in a handcart and all that.
 
m said:
I think the day you stop listening to new music a little bit of you dies.

Obviously this has to be carefully balanced against trying to appear down wiv da kidz once you hit a certain age.
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Bloody right. Although the amount of times recently that Mrs M and myself have been amongst the oldest people in the crowd is becoming depressingly regular.
 
As I have said before, if you want a reality check, watch one of the reruns of 'The Big Match' currently airing.

The pitches were shocking by modern standards, leading to some very agricultural challenges - the worst of which are awful and largely unpunished. The flair players have to try to negotiate their way through a rutted (and sometimes boggy) field while hurdling flying boots. I'm not sure any of that makes the game more exciting than now. Many of the stands are uncovered (obviously not at some of the bigger grounds), which can not only be a soggy or sunstroke experience but also means the crowd noise floats away. I'm not sure any of that is better either. The standard of player abilities is of a much higher average nowadays.

However, the lack of standing terraces nowadays does make for less atmosphere IMO, and I can't help thinking that what constitutes a foul has gone too far the other way. And don't get me started on VAR!

I am also not really a fan of the sideways passing at the back. Arguably, the best exponents of this are Man City - mostly because they have incredibly talented players. Try to apply the same style of play down in L1 and you can end up with some pretty dull stuff, which also causes more danger to your own side than the opposition. On one occasion at Peterborough, we took a goal kick. Thorniley took it, passed it to Beadle, who passed it back again, who returned it to the keeper yet again. They were then being very much closed down so it was passed to the right to Moore who was also being marked but not quite so closely. He ended up on the goal line, trying to shield the ball. I am really not sure what that achieves. Utterly predicable, never going to create anything. A goal kick used to have to go out of the area, kicking it around inside the area should be an exception not a rule. (Sorry, rant over!).

There is good and bad in every era. In football, as in every other field, it's human nature to remember the extremes - the great games, the huge disappointments, the elation. We don't remember the dull bits. Same in music. For every Sex Pistols there is a Brotherhood of Man in the record racks next door!
 
For me I dont think it's become more boring, I just think it's a different game to what it used to be. I started watching Oxford in 2003, so my first few managers in the first 2/3 years were Atkins, Rix, Patterson and Oldfield as caretakers, Diaz and Talbot. Diaz aside, not only was the football mind-numbing, but the standard was absolutely woeful. And apart from the first half of 03/04, we were generally an awful team too. There's no way that football has become more boring since watching a 0-0 at home against Keith Alexander's Lincoln Rugby team in the depths of Winter with Paul Wanless and James Hunt running through treacle for 90 minutes. I'm not quite sure why 15 year-old me kept coming back for more after that, but I did.

The standard in the lower leagues has become way better as more and more people across the world try to forge a career in English football. What has been lost is some of the blood and thunder physicality combined with a level of honesty, so now it feels like there is more onus on a technically good game of football for actual entertainment. There's less throwing it in the mixer to compensate for more limited abilities and terrible pitches, so if teams cancel each other out in playing a more possession based style the game can feel slower. But that increased technical level also has a huge upside for when it's played well, and we've scored so many goals in recent seasons and had matches I could have never dreamed of witnessing back in 2003.
 
Big Ron said:
Sometimes I feel I've stepped into some sort of space-time continuum on this forum - posters in their 20s who have barely lived bemoaning the fact that things were better in their day and others yearning to have lived in another era.

At least my nostalgia is based on having lived a few years!
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IMG_6250.jpeg
 
Big Ron said:
Sometimes I feel I've stepped into some sort of space-time continuum on this forum - posters in their 20s who have barely lived bemoaning the fact that things were better in their day and others yearning to have lived in another era.

At least my nostalgia is based on having lived a few years!
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Honestly.. I find it as depressing as you do!

I think objectively, things simply were just better 10 years ago.

So much has gone to s**t the last 10 years, not just the football!
 
I decided the watch the 96/97 season review last night on YouTube to see what had changed.

The amount of crosses we used to get into the box was unreal compared to now. We still knocked it about but it had a purpose, it would be played into a number 10, bounced back to Bobby Ford who would pass it out wide and then a cross would go in.
Midfielders would get the ball and run at players before passing it off.
Just from the amount of crosses we got into the area made games more exciting to watch.

There is also the obvious one with tackles which is back then, you were allowed to tackle firmly, now if you breath on a player and they go down it is a foul.
 
As well as the stats driven boring style today in the Prem the commentators and fecking pundits kill it with the sheer amount of useless twaddle facts they come out with. Oh for the days of Brian Moore.
And no I can’t switch the volume off as the only 2 players I recognise are the funny haircut boys, Haaland and Grealish!
 
JayOx88 said:
For me I dont think it's become more boring, I just think it's a different game to what it used to be. I started watching Oxford in 2003, so my first few managers in the first 2/3 years were Atkins, Rix, Patterson and Oldfield as caretakers, Diaz and Talbot. Diaz aside, not only was the football mind-numbing, but the standard was absolutely woeful. And apart from the first half of 03/04, we were generally an awful team too. There's no way that football has become more boring since watching a 0-0 at home against Keith Alexander's Lincoln Rugby team in the depths of Winter with Paul Wanless and James Hunt running through treacle for 90 minutes. I'm not quite sure why 15 year-old me kept coming back for more after that, but I did.

The standard in the lower leagues has become way better as more and more people across the world try to forge a career in English football. What has been lost is some of the blood and thunder physicality combined with a level of honesty, so now it feels like there is more onus on a technically good game of football for actual entertainment. There's less throwing it in the mixer to compensate for more limited abilities and terrible pitches, so if teams cancel each other out in playing a more possession based style the game can feel slower. But that increased technical level also has a huge upside for when it's played well, and we've scored so many goals in recent seasons and had matches I could have never dreamed of witnessing back in 2003.
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Definitely some truth to this, particularly as regards the lower divisions. Ahead of games we often have posters saying that the opposition will get in our faces and be physically aggressive and indeed some are. However, this is based on years old preconceptions and no actual knowledge - Grimsby being a prime example. To their ultimate detriment, they turned up and tried to play football, as did Maidenhead, but lacked a cutting edge.

TV commentators are the same, largely because of the Premier League obsession- they always assume it will be blood and thunder when a lower division team meet a Premier League team. They then seem surprised and patronising when they realise lower league teams are often set up to play, not just make things difficult.

If anything, the Wrexham documentary shows that Parkinson is a throw back - half-time team talks are just a barrage of unintelligible swearing and hand waving, but seemingly little in the way of tactics or reorganisation.
 
JayOx88 said:
For me I dont think it's become more boring, I just think it's a different game to what it used to be. I started watching Oxford in 2003, so my first few managers in the first 2/3 years were Atkins, Rix, Patterson and Oldfield as caretakers, Diaz and Talbot. Diaz aside, not only was the football mind-numbing, but the standard was absolutely woeful. And apart from the first half of 03/04, we were generally an awful team too. There's no way that football has become more boring since watching a 0-0 at home against Keith Alexander's Lincoln Rugby team in the depths of Winter with Paul Wanless and James Hunt running through treacle for 90 minutes. I'm not quite sure why 15 year-old me kept coming back for more after that, but I did.

The standard in the lower leagues has become way better as more and more people across the world try to forge a career in English football. What has been lost is some of the blood and thunder physicality combined with a level of honesty, so now it feels like there is more onus on a technically good game of football for actual entertainment. There's less throwing it in the mixer to compensate for more limited abilities and terrible pitches, so if teams cancel each other out in playing a more possession based style the game can feel slower. But that increased technical level also has a huge upside for when it's played well, and we've scored so many goals in recent seasons and had matches I could have never dreamed of witnessing back in 2003.
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What probably kept you coming back was the overall experience.

Now, not only do we have regularly dull football, the whole experience seems to have become worse.

We're paying more for it but getting less of an experience back.
 
Big Ron said:
Sometimes I feel I've stepped into some sort of space-time continuum on this forum - posters in their 20s who have barely lived bemoaning the fact that things were better in their day and others yearning to have lived in another era.

At least my nostalgia is based on having lived a few years!
Click to expand...
When I read this the other day I did wonder if the lad ever took his ARP rattle to the terraces.

www.bbc.com

The teenager who lives like it's the 1940s

Callum John Grubb is only 19 but he is obsessed with everything from the 1940s, including his car.
www.bbc.com www.bbc.com
 
SteMerritt said:
Bloody right. Although the amount of times recently that Mrs M and myself have been amongst the oldest people in the crowd is becoming depressingly regular.
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I find that even for quite young bands there are a lot of intense-looking 'Six Music dads' in the audience - guys well into their fifties or even sixties.

Edit: they may include me
 
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