All articles by John Clark
It’s revving up, and we know all too well how this works. You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, you’ll be on the edge of your seat. You’ll see some transfers coming on like a very, very slow train in the distance. Others will just pop up out of bushes. But while every window is important, this one is every bit as crucial as last summer’s.
Well, that was fun, wasn’t it? Villa ultimately snatched ‘victory’ from the jaws of defeat, God might have had a hand in it, and Dean Smith was ultimately to squash talk that he didn’t know what he was doing.
Football’s been just about the last thing on my mind, and it feels very strange to be coming back to the keyboard to write about a resumption of sporting hostilities when so much else has been going on. But here we are, and Villa will start fighting for their Premier League lives again in a week. God only knows what’ll we get. Regardless, it’s time to shake off the rust and get our game faces on.
I get the money. I get the legal issues. And at least some are finally copping to those being the primary considerations for finishing rather than “integrity.” There is no sporting integrity to the season if it’s played out in bizarre, forced circumstances that affect clubs disproportionately. It’s a very small fig leaf.
The world’s finally, belatedly going on lockdown. It’s the only sensible thing to do—slow the spread by isolating ourselves. The response has been badly bungled all over the place, but some recognition of reality has finally started to take hold. And while Villa’s fate hangs in the balance, the only thing I care about in regard to sport is the workaday people whose lives and livelihoods will be affected. People who don’t have guarantees. And of course, the clearest priority is doing anything and everything we can to minimize the number of deaths and follow-on consequences from overwhelmed health systems.
