The Humongous Aston Villa Conspiracy Theory

I get pretty boring writing about the same topics don’t I? Football, music, books, etcetera. Well, I continue with my passions and will try to enthuse you with a post on football. Being a pessimistic and negative person, I find faults and conspiracies easily where other people would be hard done by.

I am going to base this post on a certain club in the English Premier League  whose fortunes have improved since the arrival of their not-so-new manager in 2006. Of course, the takeover of the club by an American businessman hasn’t hindered their progress either.

Disclaimer : This so-called conspiracy is only fanciful thinking on my behalf and is not, in any way, possible or feasible. Completely fictional, I assure you.

Now then, I’m talking about Aston Villa Football Club, based in Aston in Birmingham. Aston Villa have had a very eventful half-decade. A change in ownership has seen a takeover which has resulted in a change in the manager. The year was 2006 when Celtic managerial legend Martin O’Neill took over. Of course, Villa were in bad shape then, suffering from poor transfers and a habitual anchorage in the bottom half of the table.

Manager O’Neill took the bull by the horns and made widespread changes in the squad, leading to a hugely successful team high on confidence and talent, and having youth on their side. You might think, where IS the conspiracy in all this?

The conspiracy lies in the squad itself. Now isn’t it pretty suspicious that a Irish manager will go about looking for talented English players, paying highly inflated transfer fees to secure their services? Look at the squad and you will find an abundance of the best English talent. An Irish manager is inclined to buy players he knows better, a la Roy Keane, whose squad requirements either included being an ex-Manchester United player or of Irish origin. The current Aston Villa Squad contains ONLY 9 players of foreign origins out of a total of 29. Of course, I’m counting Scottish, Welsh or Irish as foreign. That, in itself, is not extremely suspicious.

Luke Young

Steve Sidwell

Gabriel Agbonlahor

Ashley Young

James Milner

Marlon Harewood

Curtis Davies

Zat Knight

Wayne Routledge

Nigel Reo-Coker

Nickey Shorey

All these players were bought during O’Neill’s reign. Just before O’Neill signed for Aston Villa, Michel Platini became the President of the UEFA. Soon after becoming President, he had declared that the English game was being destroyed by the surplus foreign talent setting the Premiership alight. He resolved to fix it by introducing limits on the number of foreign players in the starting line-up.

Though the idea hasn’t worked out as yet, there is still a lingering suspicion that, some day, Platini might have his way. This is where O’Neill’s surplus English talent comes in. The EPL has many clubs buying and rearing a lot of foreign talent, notably the Big Four. Arsenal, particularly, has only a few Englishmen in its entire squad, being a French team essentially. 😛 If and when this rule comes into execution, it will mean grossly inflated prices for English footballers. Though Aston Villa are in no way poor, extra cash ne’er harmed anyone, did it? British players will then find pride of place in the transfer market, having being ignored in recent times. If all this does happen, it will lead to a lot of acrimony between clubs, a lot of tapping-up of players (remember the incident involving Cashley?) and a lot of other negative points. The only club revelling in all this will be Aston Villa, holding some of the best English talent on the planet.

Decidedly, if all this buying of English players is unintentional, kudos to Aston Villa for encouraging the country’s best footballers.

And I repeat, all this is only a figment of my imagination.

Electric Ladyland

Now, even though I am an anti-social being, I do occasion to have a few friends. “Few” is an understatement. I have a humongous number of friends. Of course, my teensy-weensy little brain doesn’t have much cache, so I do the most sensible thing anyone can do to remember birth-dates. Store them in my cell phone. One little beep for man, one giant leap for human-kind. 😀

Now, the season of retreating monsoons has been a kind of mini-birth-year for most of my friends. Turn around the corner, and there you have a birthday being celebrated, Now, surprise parties are the in-thing for my group of friends. Having been inspired by a certain recent Bollywood rom-com, a surprise birthday treat is the call of the day. Enter, the whispered phone calls, the secrecy in buying cakes, the elaborate hoaxes to get the victim out of his/her house.

Of course, the festive season (and birth season) continues, and today is no different. The modus operandi of today was to get the victim out of the house by asking his mom to tell him to get a loaf of bread. And having played football, victim refused point-blank to move out of the house. Cue for us to curse his laziness. So, we gambled on just rushing to his house and catching him off-guard.

Having done that, we gave him a pleasant (hopefully) surprise. Of course, the cake was added incentive for him to invite us in. 😛 Completing the formality of singing a ear-splitting, and out-of-tune version of “Happy Birthday”, we plonked on previously-mentioned victim’s terrace.

Then ensued usual party fare, though the Samosa Chaat was something to talk about, being one of the best I’ve eaten recently. Cake-cutting was not without the cream-smearing, which ultimately ended in all of us smelling like a dairy factory. I was at my witty best, *applause* and most of us were meeting each other after a long time.

We played our favourite party game, Dumb Charade, and invented some extremely stupid Bhojpuri movies. The standard “Nadee-mein-behti-laash” stuff notwithstanding, the game was bearable. After a couple of hours, satisfied and less hungry, we left victim’s house. Having woken up all neighbours and brought the building down, we proceeded home. Dawdled long enough to make me feel sleepy. Of course, I’m just hurrying up with the blog now due to a similarly-sleepy friend’s request. Now, off to relieve myself.

Till then, remain safe and sound!

End Of An Era?

I had promised (myself) that I would not write any more articles on music. Music is a personal choice and my views, as always, cause a lot of bad blood between me and my friends. But I have returned with this post on the aforementioned subject, and in a particularly vengeful mood. I will deal with guitarists, or a lack of them, in the coming few sentences. Mayhap, people will agree with me on this point, though I am sure that one person will hate the criticism of my pet peeve, alternative music, here.

Now, when I said “lack” of guitarists, I didn’t mean it in the actual sense. What I meant was, there is a serious dearth of good guitarists. Virtuoso guitarists. The world has seen the Hendrixes, the Pages, the Claptons and so many other brilliant musicians. There are countless such guitarists I can name, who have changed the face of music. They’ve come and gone. Some are still alive, still lighting up crowds all over the world with their nimble, yet marvelous fingers and enterprise. They represent an era gone by, resplendent in all its glory. They have delighted many-a-man, whether in The New World or in the Far East. Whatever genre they have dominated, they have enhanced their own field and set an example for future musicians.

But has this example really been followed by these recent generations? The 80s and the 90s were the decades when pop music pretty much ruled the roost. The beginning of the 21^st century has seen the sad advent of anti-music, in the form of hip-hop and rap. So why has there been a lack of true guitarists in recent times?

I’m sorry to say, but this is mostly because of alternative music. Alternative music has really destroyed the niche that virtuoso guitarists enjoyed. Alternative blends simple acoustic strumming, keyboards, a boy-band-ish voice, and occasionally, a few chords on the good old electric guitar. Alternative, being the easiest way to create any sort of music, appeals to most people who are willing to sacrifice mastering the art of playing the guitar for a quick buck. The 21^st century has seen the mass production of such pseudo-alternative bands, almost to an obnoxious limit. I say pseudo, because true alternative music was first created by good bands like REM and Duran Duran.

Such bands, which graced the 80s and 90s, had good guitarists like Peter Buck of REM, and brilliant singers like Simon Le Bon of Duran Duran. It is sad to see no such talent in the alternative bands of recent times. Of course, playing the keyboard requires talent too, but keyboardists can never rival the brilliance of a true lead guitarist. Well, whatever happens, I seriously hope there is a resurrection of the 60s and the 70s. And true rock fans, keep the faith. Good times might yet be on their way. 🙂