These are bleak football-free times ahead. Sure we’ve got the Under 21 European Championships and the Copa America but they amount to diet cola after a few pints of lovely, lovely lager. Beyond that was is there? A ghost town in our soul that’s what.
With the season now officially concluded our main sporting morphine this summer will consist of feigning a fleeting kinship with a scowling Scotsman doing quite well at Wimbledon and laughing at the daftly-dressed Henriettas at Royal Ascot.
After two years of dramas, rumours, scandals, upsets, fixtures, fixtures, fixtures; a gloriously constant sensory bombardment from the media, terraces and opinionated mates alike… suddenly there is nothing. We must endure an involuntary abstinence from what we love the most and dolefully stare at Sky Sports as if it was a tear-stained photograph of a departed ex.
Don’t panic however because help is at hand with our survival guide to ensure that this disorientating spell in the football wilderness is as short and pain-free as possible.
Start believing the transfer nonsense
During the season you are a rational man who knows full well that such an illustrious talent is far beyond your club’s reach. Besides, didn’t the player recently sign a new six-year contract and declare he is definitely staying put due to his family being settled in the area? And how the hell is your club – who were forced to offload your only decent asset back in January to appease the taxman – going to find the money to attempt such an audacious swoop? Pawning the cutlery from the canteen? The story is clearly nonsense and the ‘reporter’ responsible is almost mocking you.
During the summer months however the rules must change because it’s now in your best interests to believe – or at least pretend to believe – these fantastical rumours.
Not only that but to then regurgitate them down the pub, embellished a little for your own amusement, to mates who will similarly abandon all reason and go along with the whole sorry charade.
Such delusions are a tried and trusted coping mechanism and no-one will judge you in August when your club instead signs an unknown rookie from Stevenage.
Invest excessive interest in the Under 21s
Normally it’s a tournament that would only garner a passing intrigue; an opportunity to see your club’s most promising youngster represent his country and feel the vague swelling of proud when he beats his Spanish marker and whips in a decent delivery.
Now though, starved as you are of quality footy, necessity becomes the mother of an invented passion. These are England’s Young Lions dammit going into battle. Failing to bedeck your entire living space with St George paraphernalia while intensely cheering on the likes of Nathan Redmond and Jesse Lingard, until they go out to some pimply-faced Swedes, would be as unpatriotic as befouling the Churchill statue or siding with the yanks over Piers Morgan.
Form your own Premier League
Your weekly alcohol consumption has been described as ‘dangerous, going on suicidal’ and the fifteen Marlboro Lights a day make your chest wheeze when you do anything more strenuous than make a sandwich. Yet needs must. To paraphrase Ivan Drago, if you die, you die.
Getting together two hundred and twenty fellow wastrels won’t be easy but rest assured they are out there, presently zombified by boredom with a pair of shorts balled up somewhere in a wardrobe. If you build it they will come, manfully shrugging off the hammy tweak they got from recently reaching for the remote.
Better yet, forming your own Premier League offers you the chance to personally right your heroes’ wrongs. It’s an opportunity to be Balotelli and actually run around a bit. Or Ashley Young and not cut in every single time.
Who knows, things may escalate and your play-pretend on your local playing field might merge with reality? You might find yourself chatting up your best friend’s fiancée. Or start leaving your blinged-up car in disabled bays. Or even calling your local brothel and asking if the geriatric who used to work there is still alive.
Buy a Match of the Day box-set
One of the worst aspects of the off-season is that your missus inevitably senses weakness as you sit and sulk on a Saturday night. She pounces, taking sole possession of the remote control and suddenly the natural balance is disturbed; the compromise that was amicably struck some time ago – that you silently endure life’s flotsam warbling in a glorified talent contest until she leaves you in peace for the football – is broken. You feel emasculated and worse yet now she is threatening to make you watch a late night film with subtitles about some girl who meets some guy but then the girl gets sick and dies.
Steps need to be taken and reassuringly they do not need to be drastic. All you require is a little imagination.
The best of the 60s, 70s, and 80s are widely available on DVD although, for authenticities sake, they should be rationed out hourly on Saturday evenings only.
This coping strategy is particularly beneficial to Coventry City fans who will be delighted to see their club back in the top flight once more. They will scream the place down at Ernie Hunt’s donkey kick.
It’s not so good for young Man United supporters however who’ll be perplexed as to why the team in red who win every week keep being referred to as ‘Liverpool’.
Develop a new-found love of cricket
It would in truth solve everything but be warned. Cricket is a gateway drug that can lead to enjoying ITV period dramas, voting Tory, and purchasing the solo albums from each member of Pink Floyd.
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