Not 100% Accurate

He's got cool knitwear too

It’s rare I feel the need to intervene in managerial tittle tattle. But recent speculation about whether Roberto Martinez is good enough for the Liverpool job or whether it’s too difficult for him has compelled me to pick up the keyboard (not literally, just type on it more like).

The inference is that Martinez has succeeded previously because his jobs have been easier than the current Liverpool job. This is ludicrous. Roberto Martinez has had two managerial jobs to date:

1. Swansea City – when Martinez took over at Swansea the Swans had been stuck in the bottom two divisions for 24 years. They had bankrupted themselves trying to get out, they had a brand of football that was more Hackney Marshes than Nou Camp. They had one glimmer of hope in Lee Trundle but the entire side was dedicated to winning the ball and giving it to Magic Daps hoping he would do something.  The dressing room and terraces were dominated by Trunds and his mate Andy Robinson. Martinez let Trundle leave almost immediately (and Andy Robinson not much later). This was incredibly brave but ultimately successful. Within a year the Swans were in the Championship and playing the most exciting brand of football this country has ever seen from a club with no money. Martinez proved he could hustle in the transfer market and get the best out of the players that remained;
2. Wigan Athletic – Martinez is suited to sides that pass and move the ball. They must have great technique to fit in. When he arrived at Wigan Roberto Martinez inherited Steve Bruce’s team. The balance of style of the team was not ideal for Martinez. At roughly the same time he was instructed that he could only spend in the transfer market what he made in the transfer market, there was no availability of funds. Keeping a side like Wigan in the Premier League without spending more than you receive in the transfer market and simultaneously turning them into probably the second best possession side (after Swansea) in the division is an incredible achievement in incredibly difficult circumstances.

If you gave an average manager the scenarios above, far fewer could make a success of them than could the current Liverpool job. Give Roberto the job and he will take care of the rest.

Photo by Mister Oy

There’s been a lot of hooha these past few days over Cardiff City’s announcement that they will be changing their colours from blue to red and their badge from a bluebird to a dragon. The reasons given for the change are that the club’s Malaysian owners believe that red is a lucky colour (citing Man Utd, Liverpool and Arsenal) and that it’s more popular in Malaysia and the far east. The reaction of the twitterati has centred around:

1. are Cardiff fans happy about it? If it means more money and success, are the changes worthwhile?
2. are red teams better than blue teams?
3. how would *you* (where you are a supporter of an English football league club) feel if this happened to *you*?
4. it’s like when Wimbledon got sold down the river and became MK Dons.

Having grown up in the Welsh football scene, I don’t think any of these questions or comparisons are accurate or relevant.  I believe this is a uniquely Welsh issue that has never and could never happen in England.

Wales is a polarised country. The North and the South are very separate with no fast roads in the middle meaning that not many North Walians and South Walians mix. The majority of the population (approx 2/3) live on the south coast. South Walians are sports mad. Rugby and football dominate but generally people in South Wales love all sports. However not all sports mad South Walians support either Swansea or Cardiff – the only two professional football teams in the area. The two South Wales clubs spent so long in the doldrums that football lovers sought their entertainment elsewhere. Notably Man Utd and Liverpool (the usual suspects) but also in my experience pockets of support for clubs like Villa and Forest – clubs that played better more entertaining stuff and at a higher level that was being offered up locally. I supported the Swans throughout the 80s, 90s and 00s and I do not begrudge anyone from South Wales who would choose not to watch the fare that was served up for three decades.

But all of that has changed. The Swans are £ for £ the most attractive team in the UK, Cardiff are knocking at the premier league door, in a great new stadium and with an ambitious young manager. As a result of this there is a land grab for neutral South Wales football fans to be tempted back to their local clubs or in the event of youngsters attracted in the first place. I estimate there are as many as 100,000 active match going fans to be won and probably 5x that number armchair fans – enough to change the fortunes and finances of a club.

Swansea getting to the premier league before Cardiff was not in the Cardiff City script; Cardiff is the capital, Cardiff is a substantially bigger City, Cardiff have the rich overseas owner, Cardiff had the big name players – it should have been Cardiff. But now that Swansea got there first, what can Cardiff do to appeal to football fans across South Wales without a strong preference of club?

Well they could rebrand into the national colours and use a badge akin to the national flag – that way they appear to be “the” team that represents Wales. They already have this to an extent, I know many West Walians that support Cardiff because they perceive it to represent Wales more than Swansea (despite having to travel via Swansea to get to Cardiff).

Such a move to appeal to local patriotism would probably work but my sympathy lies with the tens of thousands of Cardiff City supporters for whom simply being Cardiff has always been more than enough.

Photo by joncandy

We’re giving away a guaranteed £1,000 on our Final day of the Premier League tournament. For your chance to win simply pick 11 players from the final round of Premier League fixtures, sit back and watch the points roll in.

Pick 11 players, enter your team, win £1,000

It costs £10 to enter and the £1,000 will be paid out in the ratio:

1. £700 for first place;
2. £200 for second place;
3. £100 for third place

Photo by Images of Money

Photo deliberately chosen so as not to attract a law suit

It’s strange when people say they don’t care about the Olympics. It’s understandable not to care about the Olympics but in life there is no need to tell anyone about the things you don’t care about. This is because life is complex and it’s not possible to care about everything so if you don’t mention something the default is that you don’t care about it. For example I don’t care about golf, but (apart from in this blog post sentence) I don’t believe I have ever mentioned it to anyone, there is no need. So please no tweets boasting about how you don’t care about the Olympics – don’t spoil it for the people that do. But there is a but.

Yesterday Techcrunch reported that the London Olympics prohibited spectators from photo sharing on websites such as instagram.

Worse than photographs though is that the Olympic data is not available for free in real-time. Technologically there is nothing preventing this from happening and there’d be an explosion in apps if it were to happen. Worse is that it’s inevitably going to happen some day, might not be this Olympics, or the next but like a tide there is no way that this type of data is not going to be freely available to everyone one day and this is a chance for the London organisers to make history: the first Olympics where the data was made available to developers for free. Sadly someone else will do this and take the glory; a chance missed.

What does a fantasy football website have to do to get on the Paypal bus?

Yesterday we were asked on Twitter whether customers could deposit using Paypal on Picklive.

Unfortunately this is not possible. We tried to make it possible but Paypal told us that they will only work with Gambling companies with revenues in excess of £20m.

This is a great shame since:

1. we’d love to work with Paypal;
2. Not being able to work with Paypal reduces our chances of reaching the £20m revenue threshold required to work with Paypal;
3. US sites that operate without gambling licenses offering similar gaming to UK customers offer Paypal as a payment option. By following the rules (having a gambling license when offering cash fantasy football) we are being penalised.