25-Man Metaphysical Roster: LUTON TOWN FC

{Luton Town securing promotion off a missed penalty by Coventry City at Wembley}

[25-Man Metaphysical Rosters are divined using a football metaphysics methodology where minutes played over the past 100 competitive club matches determines which 25 players constitute the strongest psychic influence over a club’s current psychic trajectory. Intuitive analysis is then added, done in English by an American, but with a decidedly anti-English un-American foundation. Football metaphysics believes in the beautiful game, not the modern corporate spectacle. We have more of a love for Maradona in Mexico than Messi in Miami. One Premier League club is done each month, as it’s the top domestic league in an English-speaking nation (the language we were born with). This is now a solo project again by Raven Mack, but used to be a small group effort, so it bears saying, Rest In Peace Neil.]

Returning to our once a month Premier League metaphysical coverage, after beginning the relaunch with arguably the most prominent current club in Manchester City, it only makes sense to balance that out with the least prominent club currently, in last season’s playoff promotion winner Luton Town FC. They’re run at the end of the Championship season last one was not expected, and them gaining promotion to the Premier League finally was a major piece of metaphysical recovery, as they had been in the First Division of English football throughout the ‘80s, and then were relegated in the final season before the First Division was re-branded as the Premier League in 1992. Their plummet saw them drop all the way to the Conference Premier (5th tier) before beginning their claw back up the footballing pyramid in 2013-14 season. It’s been a constant progression two, with four seasons in League Two, then a single one in League One, before a four season journey back up the Championship standings. That being said, it’s kind of like the football club version of a dude who begins a workout regimen, and becomes obsessive about it, so keeps getting bigger and bigger. In fact, Luton Town quite literally outgrew their clothes, as Kenilworth Road lacked the media facilities required by Premier League bylaws or whatever the fuck, so upon gaining promotion, they had to undergo a massive renovation. Their first home match was postponed because this construction was not done, and pics circulated of Kenilworth Road online, showing how one back wall of the stadium butts up against regular folks junky-looking back yards. But that’s a big part of the beauty of the English football system (and most football leagues worldwide) in that any club can get infused with a money mark who hires the right minds to run things, and have an epic run over the course of a decade that will be remembered for generations.
Unfortunately, another aspect of outgrowing yourself through the tiers is personnel has to be constantly upgraded as well. And in that “ambitious Championship club” phase Luton Town was in, their squad was full of Premier League players on loan, tweeners who might be excellent in Championship but struggle in the Premier League, as well as whatever else they might get their hands on. That has meant that, as Luton Town hopes this isn’t a one-and-done season. The club that wins the playoff route towards promotion has had difficulty remaining in the Premier League historically, although Brentford and Nottingham Forest (the previous two) have both done a good job of surviving that first season, then attempting to establish themselves better that second season. So for Luton Town, this off-season has been a matter of scrabbling together parts enough to try and do just that… survive this first Premier League season in the club’s history. Heading into their home opener at Kenilworth Road though, they’d not gotten a point yet, and been outscored 7 to 1. But you don’t have to be amazing to survive that first season in the Premier League, as Forest showed so clearly last season. All you have to do is not be as bad as three other clubs. The Manchester Cities of the world can shoot for winning the league and going onto continental glory, but for a club like Nottingham Forest last season or Luton Town this one, you’re shooting for a mid-table finish, to get the boys motivated to not finish in the bottom three. That’s all you’re going for. I mean, you don’t say that publicly, because you have to maintain kayfabe and pretend you’re gonna win the Club World Cup in two years time. But realistically, Luton Town is gonna be ecstatic with a 16th place finish this season, and ensure a second one at the top level of English football.
So with all that personnel turnover in mind, here’s the 25 men who have occupied the most minutes on-pitch over the course of their past 100 competitive matches, thus comprising Luton Town’s metaphysical squad hovering over their hopes for this 2023-24 season like both active presences and ghosts that have dissipated off to elsewhere (through August 29, 2023)…

#1: AMARI’I BELL – Bell is Luton’s Jamaican national left back, who has been a Championship/League One tweener of sorts himself through most of his career, initially as a youth product of Birmingham City, and he spent time at Blackburn Rovers in rotation before landing at Luton Town the summer of 2021 and becoming key part of their back line. After over 150 matches in the Championship, Bell finally got a taste of Premier League life this season. He remains part of their survival squad, which is always nice to see, when a few players who scrapped it out with the club over the past few years also get to enjoy a little of that global spotlight. Bell has also become regular player for the Jamaican national team, despite having been born and raised in England, through his grandparents. That’s always gotta be neat to be able to reconnect to where your family is from by going back for matches a few times a year, getting a taste of the Caribbean proper.

#2: TOM LOCKYER – Welsh center back who wears the captain’s armband, and has been with Luton Town now since 2020. His appearances with the squad has grown over each of the past three seasons, until he was a mainstay last season, with 46 appearances across all competitions, and a solid 5 goals too (not bad from a center back). Despite still only being 28, has that classic dirt dog Welsh look of an eternal 40-year-old. Also famously got stretchered off in the early stages of their playoff final against Coventry City at Wembley Stadium a few months ago, to where nobody knew if he was okay or what. When Luton Town won the penalty shootout, fellow players paraded around with Lockyer’s jersey. The club didn’t even know if dude was okay, so manager Rob Edwards was low-key in post-match interviews, happy they won but not wanting to be too happy because they didn’t know Lockyer’s health status. He had a fibrillation of the heart, and was cleared to return to football, renewed his contract with Luton Town, and is the heart (no pun intended) of their defense.

#3: ELIJAH ADEBAYO – English-born striker of Nigerian descent, who had been contracted to Fulham for many years, but never catching on there. He played for Walsall and dominated League Two for two seasons, which led to Luton Town bringing him on board at the very end of the winter transfer window in 2021. He’s been a solid contributor for The Hatters throughout his time, with 28 goals at the Championship level the past two-and-a-half seasons.

#4: ETHAN HORVATH – Horvath continues America’s one solid tradition in English football… being a GK. He was born and raised in the US, but has made his professional career in Europe, in Norway and Belgium, and actually has a Hungarian passport through his father. He’s been the secondary GK for Nottingham Forest the past few years, occupying a double US GK set-up this season behind Matt Turner. But last season, he got a season-long loan spell with Luton Town, and was instrumental in their run, playing in 51 matches and getting 20 clean sheets. At 28, at this point he’s sort of settled into that role of secondary GK (which itself is a very certain mindset and metaphysical squad necessity). Luton Town had the option to sign Horvath after the loan, and chose not to, I guess agreeing with Nottingham Forest that Horvath wasn’t quite ready to play in the Premier League. And yet, all they did otherwise was poach Thomas Kaminshi from Blackburn Rovers, who has never had any Premier League experience before this season himself.

#5: ALLAN CAMPBELL – Campbell was a midfielder and Scottish international who played regularly for The Hatters the past two seasons, but was deemed perhaps not Premier League ready, and has been loaned to Millwall for the entirety of this season, which is a tight “hedge your bets” move for a lowly Premier League newbie, who might want ol’ boy back next season if they get immediately knocked back down to the second tier.

#6: CARLTON MORRIS – Another Championship/League One tweener caliber player, who was on Norwich City’s squad for two Premier League seasons previously, but never got a minute at that level. He has, however, scored Luton’s only goal in their first two matches upon returning to the Premier League. He’s been a workhorse for them this past season, and is expected to continue to carry a load, at a higher level than he’s ever done in his career thus far.

#7: JORDAN CLARK – English midfielder that has three eras to his career thus far. The first was contracted to Barnsley but not good enough for the Championship, so loaned out every year. Then he had a League Two/League One period of kicking people’s asses, both for Shrewsbury Town and Accrington Stanley. That landed him a transfer to Luton Town in the summer of 2020, and he’s been a steady contributor in those second tier years, despite never being the same dominant force he was at lower levels (understandably). The jump to the Premier League is likely to be a tough one for him, but he’ll get his minutes, and his shot at proving himself worthy at the age of 29.

#8: PELLY RUDDOCK MPANZU – Being fascinated with African football in general has led me to a particular fascination with DR Congolese players, because that country is so chaotically large, along a giant river, and features a continental powerhouse in TP Mazembe. Like DR Congo itself has the eastern affluent part towards the end of the Congo River at Kinshasa, which has pretty incredible musical history as well. But DR Congo is HUGE, and TP Mazembe is actually in Lubumbashi, pretty much right in the middle of Africa’s dangling appendage half, in the southeastern part of DR Congo, near Zambia. Mineral money there has created wealthy oligarchs, and one of them has channeled that money into creating a continentally dominant club. Pelly Ruddock Mpanzu has nothing to do with that, and in fact like most DR Congolese players seen in Europe, was born and raised far away from Africa, the result of so much displacement due to the political instability of the behemoth nation. Many of these guys flow through Belgium, which had been the colonial master of DR Congo historically, but Mpanzu was born in the Greater London area, and spent some time in his early adult years signed with West Ham. He only got one appearance in three seasons, thus was sold off to Luton Town when they were in the 5th tier of English football, back in November of 2013, on loan at first, but with the move being made permanent. And Mpanzu has remained with the club ever since, part and parcel of their climb from the Conference Premier, up through Leagues Two and One, and featuring prominently for them throughout their four-season stint in the Championship. Thus his appearances in the Premier League already for The Hatters are personal triumph as well, almost a decade after West Ham deemed him not good enough to play at that level. A bit injury-prone at times, but when he’s fit, he’s got that high-energy style from end-to-end that helps a lowly club over achieve, because that type of energy is infectious. Definite catalyst and good piece of Luton Town’s soul at this point, even if he’s too non-English (despite having lived his entire life in England) to wear the captain’s armband.

#9: ALFIE DOUGHTY – I’m a big fan of all dudes named Alfie to be honest. That’s perhaps a common nickname in the UK, but you don’t see no Alfies in America, thus it conjures up certain stereotypes of fun-loving shitheads. Doughty is a midfielder, and metaphysically speaking, you’d much rather have your fun-loving shitheads be on defense, or a defensive midfielder. Doughty is only 23, and he’s gotten smatterings of Championship experience the past few seasons, but has yet to become an every match player, much less somebody who looks Premier League-ready. Nonetheless, always good to have an Alfie male on the squad.

#10: JAMES BREE – Right back who’d been key member of their defense for nearly three seasons, but Southampton came and scooped him up last winter transfer window, as part of their hopes of surviving relegation. The Saints and Bree got the drop, and The Hatters were promoted, so Bree remains in the Championship, where he’ll likely cross 200 appearances in that second tier this season.

#11: GABRIEL OSHO – Young defender who gets regular time but isn’t an every match starter, by any means. Will likely be fighting even more for playing time, although at only 25, there’s still time for a potential breakout.

#12: REECE BURKE – As a youngster, Reece Burke was a West Ham youth academy hopeful, who actually got 5 appearances in the Premier League for the Hammers way back in 2014-15. Then began his wander through League One and Championship, where he firmly established himself as too good for League One, but rotational in the Championship. He started their match at Chelsea, thus getting his sixth Premier League appearance, with over 8 years between numbers 5 and 6. Also a plus that one of Luton Town’s big acquisitions for this season (and who won’t make this list because he’s only been there for a couple matches) is Ross Barkley, and Reece Burke/Ross Barkley have a nice phonetic combo to make things difficult for drunken supporters to explain what exactly had happened to cost Luton Town a match as the season goes on.

#13: MARVELOUS NAKAMBA – I’m a big fan of African names like Marvelous. I’m also a big fan of players who are African-born and make their way to the Premier League in a roundabout journey that takes them through their home continent, not European-born African heritage players who are put in major club academies early on. African football is beautifully chaotic, both at club and national team levels, and it’s one of my great joys to watch. Nakamba made the jump to France at 18, so he didn’t have long as a professional in Zimbabwe, but he spent time on Bantu Rovers before going to Europe. He’d already been in the Premier League, having been on Aston Villa’s squad beginning in 2019, and with 68 appearances for them across all competitions. Last season, he had become expendable, and was loaned to Luton Town, who did sign him on a permanent deal this past July.

#14: DAN POTTS – Dan Potts is the son of former West Ham captain Steve Potts, and thus was a West Ham youth product, and spent the first part of his professional career with The Hammers, but never could catch on. In 2015, he was sold to Luton Town, when they were still in League Two, and he’s been part of their squad ever since, also being along for the ride through the English football pyramid. It’s hard not to be happy for dudes like that, especially a guy like Potts, who probably had all this outsized pressure on him to be as great as his father. You have to assume this home opener at Kenilworth Road hosting The Hammers is gonna mean more to him than most everybody else out there.

#15: CODY DRAMEH – Young fullback owned by Leeds United who didn’t get much playing time on the senior squad, so has been getting loaned out to Championship squads, to Cardiff City two seasons ago and then to Luton Town this season. Somehow, even with Leeds United getting relegated, he’s still not good enough, because they loaned him out this season to Birmingham City rather than have him be part of their effort to regain promotion.

#16: SONNY BRADLEY – Grizzled old vet of the lower professional tiers, who fell out of starting favor as Luton Town’s trajectory got higher, though he came onto the squad in their League One days. Deemed expendable after promotion, he signed on with Derby County as part of their hopes of escaping League One wilderness and getting back to the second tier. Wayne Rooney did a real good job there. Luckily for me, he’s doing just as bad as manager for DC United here in America, where his name value will allow him to suck for a long time before getting sacked. Kinda telling he’s already managing in the US instead of toughing it out in League One with his childhood love Derby County. God I hate a Wayne Rooney.

#17: HARRY CORNICK – Not the famous light jazz musician, and in fact, not even with Luton Town anymore. After a long stint with the club, with 235 appearances across all competitions (and three tiers of English football), Cornick moved to Bristol City this past January, thus remains firmly entrenched in that English Championship existence. Also strange personal link, as I played Havant & Waterlooville in my FM2015 game a lot over the years, and Cornick was actually on that squad. He was only on loan, and would get really mad that I’d brought in all these other high profile players to replace him, so stupid ass AFC Bournemouth would recall him.

#18: FRED ONYEDINMA – High-speed Nigerian winger/forward whose toiled amongst various Championship clubs over the years, with both Millwall and Wycombe Wanderers at that level before joining Luton Town in 2021. Luton Town was a harder squad for him to find playing time on than Wycombe, and that became even more apparent last season, where he struggled to find minutes. Thus, with promotion to the Premier League, he too has been loaned back to the Championship, playing for Rotherham United this season, but with the open-ended possibility of coming back to Luton Town should they suffer the immediate drop back down.

#19: CAULEY WOODROW – Having football culturally really changes the opportunities of people. If you’d been born “Cauley Woodrow” in America, he’d have to be a lacrosse player at a private school, and if he’s lucky, get a Division III lacrosse scholarship somewhere where he’d rush a frat, live it up for four years in some small town college, then move into working in his dad’s insurance agency. But with the presence of footballing culture in England, this particular IRL Cauley Woodrow likely barely even had to pretend at school. He’s another one with previous Premier League experience, having been a squad member of Fulham from 2011-19, as they bounced up and down (as Fulham does), getting 6 appearances in 2013-14, including a singular goal in their match against Crystal Palace in May of 2014.

#20: LUKE BERRY – Berry has been a sporadic sub off the bench for Luton Town for a number of years, and has navigated four tiers of English football with the club. Thus, you kinda gotta love a dude like this finally getting Premier League minutes, as Berry has this season already. One of The Hatters longest-tenured players as well.

#21: KAL NAISMITH – Naismith had been a utility defender for The Hatters, who could play on either side of the defense, and in 18 months, accumulated 69 appearances across all competitions. He moved to Bristol City before last season, but the immensity of his minutes before that means he still shows up on this list, even after having been gone an entire year. That’s how the metaphysical list works. You put in an incredible amount of time on a club, and it takes a while for all that work to be cleansed from the club’s psyche.

#22: HENRI LANSBURY – Lansbury spent the past two seasons as a Luton Town midfielder who previously had 13 Premier League appearances under his belt (3 with Arsenal in his younger days, then 10 while with Aston Villa in 2019-20). He played sporadically last season, and officially retired a few weeks ago.

#23: LUKE FREEMAN – A former wonderkid who, while with Gillingham, became the youngest player to ever play in an FA Cup tie, subbing on at 15 years and 233 days. Got scooped up by Arsenal after that notable moment, but never once got an appearance for the Gunners, and has wandered the top three tiers of English football, mostly in the Championship, for the past 12 seasons. He did get 11 Premier League appearances while with Sheffield United in 2019-20. After being released by the Blades in summer of 2022, he spent last season pitching in for Luton Town, mostly as substitute on attack.

#24: CAMERON JEROME – You talk about grizzled vets of English football? Jerome is now 37, and outside of a stint in the Turkish Super Lig with Goztepe, has spent all of it England, on a multitude of clubs. In fact, age contributed to his time at Luton Town ending, as in January of this year, he felt all the traveling from his home in the north-west of England tiring, so they ended his contract on mutual consent, and he signed with League One’s Bolton Wanderers. He had appearances on the England U21 team from 2005 through 2008, but agreed to represent Grenada in October of last year (which probably added to his travel fatigue). Still with Bolton in League One this season, he’s got well over 300 Championship appearances, and over 200 Premier League appearances. One of those old ass strikers who just can’t quite give it up, and has seen it all in English football.

#25: JAMES SHEA – Shea seems to be Luton Town’s eternal back-up GK, whose been with them since their League Two days. He played a prominent role in their single League One season, and has sporadically had spells as their number one in the Championship years. He’s still holding down a spot on the squad, and wears their #1 jersey still.

25-Man Metaphysical Roster: MANCHESTER CITY

{Manchester City achieves immortality, sadly}

[25-Man Metaphysical Rosters are divined using a football metaphysics methodology where minutes played over the past 100 competitive club matches determines which 25 players constitute the strongest psychic influence over a club’s current psychic trajectory. Intuitive analysis is then added, done in English by an American, but with a decidedly anti-English un-American foundation. Football metaphysics believes in the beautiful game, not the modern corporate spectacle. We have more of a love for Maradona in Mexico than Messi in Miami. One Premier League club is done each month, as it’s the top domestic league in an English-speaking nation (the language we were born with). This is now a solo project again by Raven Mack, but used to be a small group effort, so it bears saying, Rest In Peace Neil.]

25-Man Metaphysics makes a return because I feel compelled to pretend to know about English football again. I’ve always loved this project, and in the heyday when myself, Paul, and Neil were writing together, it had a strange charm where even though the three of us were in entirely separate spaces, we somehow came together perfectly, not quite like Voltron but like if Voltron were a demo derby car made of used books. But I jump back into this solo, because I love nothing more than ambitious and perhaps impossible projects to dump on myself as an excuse to jabber about the metaphysical foundations beneath the consumer culture we obsess over in our declining American Empire (and in fact, the iron lung decades of unchecked capitalism’s last gasps globally).
One club a month means it’ll take well over a year to cycle through the entire Premier League, and I’m fine with that. Nobody needs to be revisiting these clubs on an annual basis in metaphysical terms like are written about here. The feel of a club has eras which cover multiple years, and this slower schedule will work just fine. But I did want to come out the gate on the restart with Manchester City, as this is currently, without a doubt, their era. In the 7 seasons since Pep Guardiola arrived from Bayern Munich, they’ve won the PL title 5 of those seasons, including the past three seasons, where they became only the second club to three-peat in the Premier League era (also done by Manchester United from 1999-2001 and 2007-2009). But this past season was an extra dominant one, with them pulling off a treble by winning the FA Cup (for the second time under Pep) and finally winning a Champions League title. They made it to the final three seasons back, losing to domestic rival Chelsea (somewhat shockingly at the time, to be honest), but finally made it back this past June, and sealed the deal against an outclassed Inter Milan squad. (Even more impressively, they played a major match in Istanbul as an English club without any prominent stabbings.)
I am no fan of Pep Guardiola, despite his obvious successes throughout his career. To me, he is the corporate football wonder manager, who is able to navigate the oversized egos of a top club and somehow make it work. Sure, that’s a talent, and not everybody has it, but I tend to appreciate the ragged philosopher who motivate a pack of football misfits into a collective shape. Pep’s methods are not that, and though it may seem like the same type of managerial acumen, just at a higher level of money invested in squad, there’s something that feels hollow about a club that can purchase every player it desires, move them around like puzzle pieces (with three pieces to a normal club’s one), and create the desired picture of a team. I love playing Football Manager on cheat mode where I can sign anybody I want, but it’s not quite as satisfying to see in real life. So of course Pep eventually won a treble with this squad… I did the same thing with Wrexham for four years in a row, from 2047 through 2050. If you got the financial cheat code in life, few things stand in your way (including UEFA’s Financial Fair Play rules, which seem to have enough loopholes and workarounds that they’re fairly impotent).
Nonetheless, with pep at the helm, the secondary Manchester club powered by fossil fuel money has ascended to the highest heights in club history, and established themselves as the pre-eminent club in the Premier League. And though I say that with the warning that all eras come to an end, we don’t know how long this run will last before egos clash and destroy the fluidity of what’s there now, or better yet, Yaya Touré’s curse is reactivated and snuffs the momentum of wealth masquerading as physical superiority. Nonetheless, here are the top 25 men according to our football metaphysics minutes played methodology over the past 100 competitive matches (through June 10, 2023)…

#1: RODRI – The Spanish midfielder has quietly become the fulcrum to Man City’s successes. Key tenet of football metaphysics as we think of things around here is the presence of a quality defensive midfielder who has the ability as a presence to shift entire club from defense to offense, often with a single pass. Rodri joined Man City four seasons back, and it’s no coincidence that they had their first three-in-a-row title run with him after he settled in. It’s also very telling that in a scrappy Champions League final this past June, it was Rodri’s wily missile from a loose ball midway through the second half that gave Man City their first ever Champions League final goal, and ultimately they’re first ever Champions League title. He is not as globally famous as the club’s more superstar names, but he is the backbone of the team as it currently stands.

#2: EDERSON – The reverse colonialism pipeline for great Brazilian players is they rule their native country, get bought up by one of the big three Portuguese clubs (Benfica, Sporting CP, and Porto), make a strong highlight film package in continental competition, then get sold off for big Euros to one of Europe’s behemoth clubs. Ederson was great enough he was shipped off to Portugal at the age of 16, and was signed by Man City at the age of 23, for a transfer fee that was the second-largest ever at the time. And in that reverse colonialism pipeline, Ederson’s fee was the largest Benfica ever got for a player (thus far). Ederson is an elite GK, but not really because of amazing shot stopping (though he’s good enough at that). What he excels at is confidence with the ball, even at his feet, and being able to switch his side from defense to counter-attack fairly adeptly. That foundation at the back end can’t be overlooked in helping a guy like Erling Haaland just pile up goals like he does. It’s not so much that Ederson stacks up clean sheets like a classic brick wall of a shot-stopping GK, as it is he handles his business and gets the ball moving, so that Man City can stack up multiple goals on the other side, which just makes his job even easier at that point.

#3: İLKAY GÜNDOĞAN – Gündoğan spent seven seasons in the midfield for Man City, and was a constant and productive presence. He accumulated a lot of playing time on a squad with enough talent that rotating folks was necessary. Gündoğan had 51 appearances last season across all competitions, and most importantly was a mainstay on Champions Leagues squads. But you can’t maintain a Champions League-winning squad, and Gündoğan was one of Manchester City’s highest profile exits in recent memory, joining Robert Lewandowski at Barcelona, with their hopes of creating a new chapter post-Messi now heavily invested into. How Man City adjusts to him being gone is really one of the biggest question marks going into this upcoming season, where they’re expected to continue fucking everybody up.

#4: KEVIN DE BRUYNE – Gonna be honest here and say I hate Kevin De Bruyne. I hate his goofy face, hate the way he plays, hate how you pronounce his stupid last name. Thus, he is the perfect guy to be a prominent face on Manchester City’s club, standing alongside Pep Guardiola, just unleashing the hatred of the wretched of the football Earth masses at City’s manufactured dominance. He also complicated me pulling for the Belgian national team in European competitions, because I’d be all excited for Romelu Lukaku and the Hazard brothers, but then De Bruyne would show his stupid face and ruin it for me.

#5: BERNARDO SILVA – Silva is, at this point, the elder presence for Man City in the midfield in terms of time with the club, but certainly plays a more support role behind Rodri. Silva’s quietly a great player though, and it’s painful how many top talents a club like Man City can accumulate, and just keep restocking over and over. But it’s also a testament to Silva’s quality that despite being on a club like that, going into his seventh season, he’s still a prominent figure. He’s actually already had over 300 appearances for the club across all competitions, which is second only to Kevin De Bruyne amongst active players on the squad.

#6: ERLING HAALAND – The young Norwegian freak joined the club last season on a ridiculous transfer fee from Borussia Dortmund (whose striped bumblebee kits matched Haaland’s bizarre face aesthetically). Even after joining the Bundesliga midway through the 2019-20 season, he maintained a blistering pace of averaging one goal per appearance. Even though he’d be a freak, nobody thought he’d maintain that level of scoring in the Premier League. But he did. Haaland is a true striker, who thinks of nothing but goals, and not just basic goals but the soul crushing type that break a defender’s spirit. As a fan of football metaphysics, it’s a bit frustrating to see such an immense talent tied down to a soulless club like Man City, but it’s also how things work in the age of modern football. Haaland at Man City lacks the spiritual feel goodness of Mo Salah at Liverpool, in fact it’s like the opposite. But we’re all going to have to suffer through it for the foreseeable future, and Haaland’s likely to only become more dominant. Gonna be a long few seasons for us Man City haters.

#7: JACK GREALISH – It took a season for Grealish to get settled into a new role at Man City and become a regular part of their starting XI. Grealish’s tale is one paralleled by many players acquired by the largest clubs after becoming dominant legends at other English clubs. Grealish’s last season with Aston Villa made him a club legend, wearing some ratty ass cleats and helping Villa survive relegation with a final match goal against West Ham at the end of the Covid-complicated 2019-20 season. He signed a big contract, and maintained that club legend status for another season, but it was obvious he had outgrown Villa. Man City came calling, and the small club legend was absorbed into a club behemoth’s oversized roster, the big fish in a small pond suddenly scrapping for minutes amidst even bigger fish. Not everybody can adjust (my beloved Swansea City’s PL hero Wilfried Bony comes to mind, who shrunk until he disappeared after joining Man City), but Grealish eventually did, and had a fairly productive season this past one. The hilarious thing about Grealish and his style of existing is the exact same characteristics that make him seem like a legend when in some godforsaken club existence like at Aston Villa also make him look like a complete and total douche in the unblemished limelight of a club like Manchester City. He just looks like an asshole now, with that fuckin’ hair and smug ass face. But send him back to Villa in 8 years, and it’s gonna be, “Haha, what a regular bloke; I’d love to get drunk with that guy!”

#8: MANUEL AKANJI – Honestly, Akanji’s addition last summer is a highly underrated piece of their successes last season. He’s solid at either right or left back, and that helped cover all the fluctuations they sometimes have at center back. Akanji had also been teammates with Haaland the previous two seasons at Dortmund, so the two coming in together helped assimilate them both into starting XI. In fact, during last season’s PL campaign, Akanji played more minutes than any other defender. He’s sort of the reverse image contrast to Haaland up top, on the defensive side. And again, he’s going to make it perhaps an unbearable next couple seasons for Man City haters like myself.

#9: RÚBEN DIAS – Portuguese defender who helped solidify defense three seasons back, and has been key to Man City’s run of three straight PL titles. Good with both feet, so much like Ederson, helps establish a solid defense that can also get the ball confidently back the other way. And even though he’s only 26, Dias has been an on-the-pitch leader for the defense, something they hadn’t really had very clearly since Guardiola came in. Even if you have all the money in the world (as Manchester City do), you can’t just keep mixing and matching folks… somebody’s got to become the leader, especially on defense.

#10: RIYAD MAHREZ – One of my all-time favorite offensive juggernauts was when Mahrez combined with Jamie Vardy at Leicester City for that improbable Premier League title in 2015-16. The two of them together was deadly, as Vardy was an unrelenting striker (like Haaland) and Mahrez is classic poacher picking up any and all scraps or openings to add to the tally. That sort of secondary mentality served Mahrez well once he finally threw enough of a fit at Leicester to get his desired transfer to Man City, because that’s all the role he was gonna get there. And despite not ever being an every match player for Man City, he was a constant offensive threat for them (including 24 goals across all competitions in 2021-22). His raw numbers were down last season, as would be expected with a guy like Haaland added to the mix, but Mahrez still got 15 goals across all competitions. However, the French-born Algerian was part of the mad money being thrown about by the Saudi League this summer, and joins a wild collection of players at Al-Ahli, that includes himself, Roberto Firmino, Allan Saint-Maximim, and Édouard Mendy in goal. Despite the influx of expensive players, I do not plan on watching a single minute of Saudi Pro League action (with the possible exception of Asian Champions League matches). I still enjoy Mahrez a lot though, and look forward to him having another run at the African Cup of Nations with Algeria in January. The Fennec Foxes have been perfect in qualification thus far, so should be a contender (again) when AFCON rolls back around.

#11: KYLE WALKER – Look man, Kyle Walker is 33, and despite his most basic name, he can be a brutish presence on defense. But their defense has become crowded, and Akanji excelling, Walker can be sold off, with Bayern Munich reportedly working up a deal. Man, what a fuckin’ weird situation that would be for Bayern to have both Harry Kane and Kyle Walker suddenly. But mostly I look forward to three seasons from now, when Sheffield United has somehow survived getting relegated (inshallah), and Walker returns to Sheffield, for a glorious final run with the Blades. He never got to shine at the senior level for them as he should have. Let that man follow his heart and go home.

#12: JOHN STONES – Ah yes, unlovable doofus John Stones. It looked like he was gonna get lost in the Man City squad shuffle a few seasons back, but he somehow has settled into key defender… at least until they find somebody shinier they can blow big money on. But even with an increased role last season, he still only played in less than two-thirds of their matches. Nonetheless, he’s been able to extend his English football peak in standard trajectory, having gone from Barnsley to Everton to Manchester City. He’s successfully fought off the descent back down thus far, but also turns 30 next May, so the John Stones to whichever middling northern English Premier League club has big aspirations rumors aren’t too far away on the horizon.

#13: PHIL FODEN – In American football, a great tradition of subliminal racism is the deep affectionate love a team’s fans have for a white guy who plays Tight End or Fullback (very different type of fullback than in the world’s football). Of course, it’s never outright racism, but the way they crazily embrace some doofus freak is almost certainly built around the fact he’s a successful athlete and still a white dude. English football has that as well, in the basic-looking good ol’ English player who quietly just plays along at a highly competent level for a supporter’s favorite club. At one like Man City, there’s so much coming and going of high-priced global superstars, it’s harder to find such a character to channel your internalized xenophobia. Thankfully for Manchester City, Foden gives supporters that chance… just a boy from Stockport who joined the club at the age of 4. He’s a rare homegrown player for them, and native Englishman (which in this case means white, as that “native Englishman” doubles as exclusionary language, but in a way that’s easily deniable). Normally, you’d think this type of player would play their role in support and then be sold off to a second-tier Premier League club to cover the cost of importing global superstars on an annual basis. But Foden’s flirted with being too good to get rid of, contributing more and more. His big breakout moment was probably last October during the Manchester derby’s home match for City, where he got his first career hat trick, at the tender age of 22, in City’s 6-3 stomping of United. The racialists loved him even more after that day.

#14: NATHAN AKÉ – I like Aké simply because of him and Virgil van Dijk being such a fun and threatening combo on the Dutch national team defensive line. Because of this I mostly try to overlook the fact Aké plays for Manchester City, even though he in fact does. He got a contract extension after the Champions League win, and seems to work well with Akanji and plug and playable along multiple positions on defense. Aesthetically speaking though, his dreadlocked appearance likely reached its pinnacle (thus far) during a loan period at Watford years ago. Such a handsome figure’s natural shine is dulled by that Man City crypto blue color.

#15: AYMERIC LAPORTE – Laporte has been a center back at Man City since the winter transfer window in 2018, and one thing has become clear about Aymeric Laporte since then… he’s gonna get injured. In fact, his existence seems to be intertwined with John Stones at this point, where Stones doesn’t seem quite perfect enough, so Laporte starts clawing his way back into starting role, but then Laporte gets injured, and Stones regains control. It’s been this multi-season ebb and flow with them. Thus far, Laporte hasn’t gone away, but with Rúben Dias and now the pending signing of Joško Gvardiol from RB Leipzig, Laporte will be expendable, and likely elsewhere. Going back to La Liga and his old club Athletic Bilbao seems likely.

#16: JULIÁN ÁLVAREZ – An Argentine forward who, though he technically signed with Man City in January of 2022, joined the club at the same time as Erling Haaland, so despite being a big deal himself, was buried behind the far bigger deal. Álvarez came over from River Plate, and was left there on loan to finish out the first half of the year with River. He also was a young member of the Argentine national team that finally won the World Cup with Messi. Álvarez contributed 17 goals last season across all competitions, and that was usually as a sub. He’s got Copa Libertadores titles with River Plate, plus the World Cup, and last season’s treble at Man City, so it’s hard not to assume that even though he’s a supporting cast member in some of those situations, there’s a stroke of universal benevolence that comes with Julián Álvarez being on the squad. He’s only 23, so it’ll be interesting to see how his career progresses. He’s exactly the type of player I’d like to be seeing running wild at like AC Milan or Napoli (the classical young Argentine goal, although to be fair to the spirit of Maradona, young Álvarez comes from a bastard River Plate lineage, not the wild and wonderful realm of Boca Juniors).

#17: JOÃO CANCELO – Cancelo became expendable by Pep Guardiola’s standards, and was loaned to Bayern Munich the second half of last season, so missed out on all the big treble run. There’s been a lot of speculation and talk around Cancelo though, with some big clubs rumored to be interested (Barcelona, Arsenal), and Cancelo looking good during the preseason. But the fact of the matter is if you’ve fallen out of favor with that egotistical little shit Pep Guardiola, you’re not coming back. Look at how he treated Yaya Touré. Cancelo will be better off elsewhere, and somewhere else will be better off with him.

#18: RICO LEWIS – Rico Lewis got 14 appearances in Premier League matches last season, despite still only being 18. Still way down the depth chart, wearing the extraordinarily high number 82, but having joined the club at the age of 8, they’ll keep developing him, seemingly with a loan to a high profile Championship club this season, with both the recently relegated Southampton and Leeds United high on the youngster to help them claw their way back into the Premier League from the 46-match long (and even longer if you go the playoff route) Championship scrum.

#19: STEFAN ORTEGA – Ortega fills the complicated role of a high-caliber second GK, which is always a weird puzzle to figure out, because nobody at the highest level wants to know they’re gonna get like 5 starts a season, with 3 of them being the Carabao Cup. Ortega had quietly excelled for his youth club, Arminia Bielefeld, in the Bundesliga for a couple seasons, doing well enough against top competition that Man City brought him in last season on a free transfer as cover for Ederson. He’s already 30, so not a young back-up, but Ortega excelled in his limited playing time, including appearing in every match of City’s FA Cup run, and only allowing a single goal in six FA Cup matches. Throw in a handful of PL matches to give Ederson a rest, and being able to handle lesser competition during Champions League group stage matches, and Ortega’s about as perfect a second GK as a club like Man City could hope for. He’s a natural beta but with alpha performance capabilities, and will likely help the club make a profit off him when they sell him back to like RB Leipzig next summer.

#20: SERGIO GÓMEZ – Gómez spent 8 years in Barcelona’s incomparable youth academy, before moving to Germany and joining Borussia Dortmund as a teenager. Even with Dortmund, he was sold off to Anderlecht in Belgium, rather than held onto, and after a strong season there, was part of Man City’s influx of players last summer, in fact making his club debut as sub for Erling Haaland last August. Gómez doesn’t have the massive presence Haaland does, but can hold his own. Somehow though, it feels like this is a bigger stage than he needs to be on, and he’d be better served on personal level getting regular playing time somewhere, with La Liga seemingly making perfect sense. But Manchester City can afford to stockpile players, not only for themselves, but to deny others, and I often think about multiverse string theory, and what might have been if a guy like Gómez never left Barca’s youth academy back in the day, and remained there instead of getting lost wandering the Earth looking for a metaphysical home that never does ultimately arrive.

#21: COLE PALMER – Perhaps Cole Palmer is the next Phil Foden, being another young English dude who was a childhood fan of the club, and joined their youth system before the age of 8, progressing up through the ranks, and having a bit of a breakout last season with 25 appearances across all competitions, including 14 PL appearances. He’s also the rare occurrence of an English footballer with a name that sounds like he could be a third-generation Nascar driver.

#22: KALVIN PHILLIPS – In some sense, Kalvin Phillips is a similar story to Grealish’s, as Phillips was adored at Leeds United, where he came up as a youth player, and was a key presence on Marcelo Bielsa’s squad that rose from the Championship back to the Premier League for the first time in nearly two decades. But as Leeds navigated the Premier League and wages, his shine was bound to be cashed out for a big transfer fee while they could. He hasn’t really settled into his role as sub, and the sporadic appearances have to make it hard to find a rhythm as a player. I don’t see him following Grealish’s growth into regular player, and Phillips instead seems like the classic player who can thrive at a smaller PL club (or in that weird tweener state of those half-dozen clubs that bounce between Championship and PL all the time, like Norwich City, Burnley, and Fulham), but just gets lost somewhere like the Etihad. And sadly, with him having left last season, Leeds struggled and dropped back to the Championship again themselves (so don’t be surprised if Phillips doesn’t rejoin them on some sort of loan mid-season if he continues to struggle, and Leeds is chasing getting re-promoted).

#23: RAHEEM STERLING – Yes, due to the nature of our football metaphysics methodology, players who are gone still show up on the 25-man list. The minutes accumulated still count for something, and I’m not really into that “let’s do an annual look at the current roster” because there’s no doubt the old faces that took up a lot of space still carry weight. And despite being a fairly prolific goal-scorer in this time at Man City, he somehow still wasn’t the dominant figure the club desired, which made way for the transfer of Haaland, which gave them exactly what they wanted. Sterling could score goals, but he never broke anybody’s spirit, and there’s actually a big difference there. Goal scorers can aid successful clubs, but you need a spirit breaker to win trebles. It sort of makes perfect sense that the by all means good but not quite great Raheem Sterling is now settled in at Chelsea, where club stature matches individual perfectly.

#24: GABRIEL JESUS – Jesus (along with next name Oleksandr Zinchenko) made the move to Arsenal last season, as the final piece of Mikel Arteta’s Operation Gabriel, accumulating as many Brazilian dudes named Gabriel as possible. The magic worked briefly, but failed to deliver the PL title that was teased early in the season. Jesus had a great first season with the Gunners, despite being injured for three months towards the end of the season. In fact, Jesus’s injury, along with William Saliba on defense, can’t be overlooked as to why Arsenal crumbled in the end.

#25: OLEKSANDR ZINCHENKO – Our last name on the list spent a half decade toiling amongst Man City’s always crowded roster. Shockingly, Zinchenko is still only 26, so plenty of tread left on them tires, especially considering he was never a full-time starter at the Etihad. In fact, after his move to Arsenal last season, he got more PL appearances in a single season than he ever had with Man City. Of course, Arsenal had that fabulous collapse last season, letting Man City surpass them in the spring stretch, so Zinchenko’s failure demons may be speaking more loudly now. A Ukrainian, and despite Russian being his first language, when the invasion of Ukraine took place, he posted on social media that he wished for Vladimir Putin to suffer a most painful death. He, of course, deleted the post after handlers were like “what the fuck bro?” But a sort of ugly dirt dog Ukrainian fuck is kinda perfect for Arsenal, and never really meshed with the Man City aesthetic entirely.

25-Man Metaphysical Roster: SHEFFIELD UNITED FC

 {Billy Sharp's spirit goal a couple days after his 2-day old son died years ago}

[25-Man Metaphysical Roster is a football metaphysics methodology based off the foundation of minutes played over the past 100 competitive matches for a club, determining which 25 players constitute the strongest psychic force on a club’s current path. Intuitive analysis, performed mostly from an un-American “soccer” fan’s perspective is added. Ideally, we do this twice a month, cycling through English Premier League clubs, because it’s the top domestic English-speaking league on Earth, and as un-American miscreants and mongrels, our staff of writers were born saddled with this limited, segmented tongue of the global colonizer, oppressor, and capitalizer. To some extent, we hate the English, but also America, and likely ourselves. Core staff is Raven Mack (chairman), Paul Robertson (director tecnico), and Neil Bulson (director rudo) from America, with additional input from Dan Brookes and Jude Riley as English consultants. Venmo @ravenmack23.]

Writing about Sheffield United right now is a bit sad, like performing a eulogy while the person is still on a ventilator, technically alive but nonetheless doomed by all appearances. The Blades sit a good 14 points out of surviving relegation, in a season that they’ve thus far only seen around a dozen points, with the bulk of that happening since Boxing Day. They just got off to a terribly shitty start this season, and no amount of recovery might be enough to keep them in the top flight. I find this sad on multiple levels. Firstly, because as a supporter of the previously doomed Swansea City club, I’d taken a shine to Sheffield United while my Swans floundered through the Championship. There were some connections on the pitch between the clubs, and as a doomed individual myself, it’s hard not to love an old industrial revolution city situated in the foothills at multiple rivers slapping together that’s been bombed and abandoned and somehow still survives. Plus, the Blades crest is as close to machete representation as a man can get in modern football. Machetes are a common symbol among football metaphysics, and dirtgod metaphysics in general, as post-industrial capitalist society manufactures all these intangible “needs” which blossom in our minds due to how we’re conditioned to view the world (through these digital filters currently); and the machete is the best thing to hack at all that shit with. It grows like hawthorn or blackberries, so you can’t get at easily, as it’s become so psychically prevalent in how we live our lives, so the machete becomes the tool of choice for hacking away at this shit.
Thus, perhaps all that is why Sheffield United – despite a 9th place finish their first season back to the Premier League since a plummet earlier this century that went all the way down to League One – this club was always doomed. They are a survivalist machete club in an era where international ownership consortiums laundering oligarch and/or fossil fuel monies dominates the tables. Seemingly, the Blades should be able to navigate into that realm, as they are quite literally half-owned by Saudi prince money since 2013. But why hasn’t it taken?
For one, the existing English ownership and Prince Abdullah the Saudi prince half-owner got caught up in legal disputes about ownership the past couple seasons, with Kevin McCabe – a Sheffield businessman – having sought out the foreign investment, and stepping down as chairman when the club slid into the third tier. It became a case of just wanting the money without the loss of authority though, as McCabe tried to squeeze Abdullah out after Sheffield United’s trajectory seemed to have been righted. This ended in McCabe having to sell his half to the prince. McCabe grew up a Blades supporter, but also has gone global with his business interests, and even after being forced by court verdict to sell off his half of his hometown club, still owns clubs in Australia, Hungary, China, and Dubai. Similarly, Prince Abdullah also owns clubs in Belgium, India, and also Dubai. Makes you wonder how heated that Al Hilal United/Dubai Blades rivalry is going to be. In fact, that’s sort of the problem, as all these clubs go from being a singular occupation of a wealthy man’s obsession, as McCabe’s original ownership of Sheffield United was, where a rich man squanders his money trying to give his hometown some sporting glory, to this new global era of ownership. These men (always men) accumulate pieces of clubs like Monopoly board game properties, with no real deep obsession for the club itself. Prince Abdullah wanted Sheffield United to get back to the Premier League as quickly as possible. Once it got there, his oligarchical hard-on was gone, and he was lusting after other accomplishments. This is the difference between accumulating pieces on a life-sized board game, and being an actual supporter as owner. An actual supporter would want Sheffield United to remain in the Premier League, to beat Sheffield Wednesday on any occasion they play by at least 3 goals, and for good measure come to dominate Manchester United so badly they finally concede they are not the true “United” in English football.
All of this is impossible in modern football though for a club like Sheffield United. So a 9th place finish when tapped for relegation last season may be a high watermark. But you never know what happens when a Saudi prince feeds a football club money. Maybe they get lucky and strike a couple spirit warriors that allow them to navigate a higher metaphysical plane. As it stands, maybe the Premier League was too much for them as they’re currently built, and that’s why the club has stuck with Chris Wilder as manager despite the bad start to the season. They know they’re current psychic place is slogging to back towards the top of the Championship table, and their peak existence is brief spells in the Premier League trying to claw out a mid-table finish. Damn, no wonder me as a Swans man loves the Blades – it’s essentially the same club in that sense.
Well, here are the 25 men who have metaphysically composed this current direction of the Blades. And the Football Metaphysics team also went out and acquired a couple of English voices to add to our mix. We are all anti-empire, and embrace a love-hate relationship with modern football, driven by distracting ourselves from the necessary but sometimes painful decline of the false greatness of western civilization. So welcome Dan and Jude to the mix, with myself and Neil, as Paul continues to nurse a lingering psychic hamstring injury. [RAVEN]

#1: CHRIS BASHAM (up 3 from #4 last time Sheffield United were metaphysically ranked on 15-Apr-2020, thus his first METAPHYSICAL STAR) – Sometimes in life, people have to know who they are and then just be that person rather than chasing some crazy notion of being a yachter or whatever the fuck the European sporting elite do when they are not sporting. You know, the fancy playboy players who hold yacht parties with titties and beer everywhere. Well, Chris Basham isn’t invited to those parties. That’s because Chris Basham is the guy who does all the dirty work, keeps the pitch clean, occasionally using English Catch as Catch Can wrestling holds to keep the enemy from scoring them goals. Red cards flying in his wake, Basham has accepted a life of brutality and hard times. He once was bounced from Newcastle United’s youth team and spent the next two years working at McDonalds. This is not a dude who is going to be a fashion icon, he is just a dude who worked at McDonalds and he’s still working at McDonalds in his heart because he remembers each fancy lad eating their fucking burgers and the simmering resentment of class consciousness the whole time, and so he cracks their heads on the pitch in the naked fervor of sport. Chris Basham knows who he is, and it is a McDonald’s worker shoving the rich kids faces into the fryer which is how you get those chicken nuggets. [NEIL]

#2: JOHN EGAN (up 3 from #5 last time) – Egan, along with Enda Stevens, forms the stubborn Irish backbone of the Blades defense. Much like the Blades, Egan has come from the lower levels. He actually was signed to a Premier League club – Sunderland at the time – when he first became a senior level player, though he never appeared for Sunderland at the time. Actually got loaned to Bradford City in 2014, and suffered a broken leg early on, which put him on the shelf for a year, and ultimately got him relegated to League One status with a Gillingham transfer, where he played at the same time that Sheffield United hit their lowest point in that most recent series of relegations. Like them, he clawed his way up, first to perennial Championship club Brentford, then joining the Blades to be part of their promotion year. He appeared in every league match last season and all but a few this season so far, and lack of defense hasn’t necessarily been their Achilles heel, as they’ve lost eight matches 1-0, including to Manchester City twice – a club known for being more than able to pile on some goals. Should they get relegated, Egan is just as likely to be the type to stay with the club as an elevated Championship club rather than get sold off to a lower-level Premier League club, though he’ll likely be on the short list for newly promoted clubs to pilfer talent from. [RAVEN]

#3: GEORGE BALDOCK (up 5 from #8 last time) – Younger brother of Reading striker Sam Baldock, who – about four years his sibling’s junior – had always played in the shadow of his brother, up until the past two seasons, when he’s been one tier above him. Both of them began with MK Dons, and combined have played a bazillion seasons between the top five tiers of English football. But Sam’s one stint at the top level, in 2018-19 with Brighton & Hove Albion, only got him two appearances in the league. Last season, after Sheffield United was promoted, George played in every Premier League match for the Blades, earning himself a reputation as key member of the squad’s defense. He’s missed a number of starts this season, suffering from a few dents and dings, and it looks like that means he’s going to join his brother back down in the Championship next season, where at least one of them has been all but one season of the past decade. [RAVEN]

#4: ENDA STEVENS (down 1 from #3 last time; also one previous metaphysical star with the club on 15-Jun-2019) – Another Irish cog in the Blades defense, natural born Irish too, from Dublin, where he played as a youth and professional first. I love how magic clubs sound in some places. His youth club was “Cherry Orchard” which sounds like the most wonderful club to fuck around, learning football metaphysics. And he peaked out in the Irish leagues with Irish heavyweight Shamrock Rovers, which also sounds pretty magical. Why do we get dumb derivative shit in America like Inter Miami or Houston Dynamo? Then again, when I think of magical sounding places in America, some of the most wondrous sounding spots are and were the notoriously wretched concentrations of urban poverty that are American housing projects. Places like Chicago’s Cabrini Greens or LA’s Nickerson Gardens. Maybe that’s the key to improving American soccer – having a league of large housing project clubs where kids learn the sport and realize they can get paid worldwide for a sport that’s probably not as consuming as major American sports. Of course, the NBA has as well-established groupie culture though, so basketball will always retain prominence. Has anybody ever done any deep data studies on the conventional attractiveness scale of football groupies in various domestic leagues? Because that might be important information to relate to my fake magical soccer league based in American housing projects. [RAVEN]

#5: OLIVER NORWOOD (up 1 from #6 last time) – The depth of football culture in England versus America is just so shocking, despite it making perfect sense. Norwood was a Burnley kid who got spotted by Manchester United scouts at the age of 6, joining the club’s youth system at age 7. Having “coached” kids that age in my small town American existence, I mostly tried to get them pointed in the right direction. I had one kid one time who never went after the ball, preferred skateboarding, and just wanted to do cartwheels. I told him he could do a cartwheel every time he stole the ball from the other team. He became a defensive threat at that point. Had another kid who never wanted to do shit, coming from a rough-looking family, so I asked him, “You ever see an old refrigerator just sitting out in the yard, in the way?” He laughed and said yeah. “I want you to be an old refrigerator. You don’t even have to kick the ball. Just any time the other team has the ball, go run in front of whoever has the ball, and get in their way like an old refrigerator.” The kid actually started doing it too, and laughing every time he clogged up the other team’s hopes. I guess there’s a trend there for me, in teaching hopeless kids to find a glimmer of hope in being a defensive obstruction for the progress of larger society. Thus Norwood being a fucking 7-year-old, whisked off to the Manchester United youth school is mind-boggling to me. And yet, for Norwood, even though this high-profile youthdom meant he played for their u-18 side, and he he did well enough to appear with the reserves and get a professional contract once he was old enough, he never once appeared for the senior club, not quite being good enough. Those youth academies suck up all the good English boys (well, Norwood is Northern Irish by his national team fealty, but has lived and played in England his entire life), the senior club is populated with international human resources imported from other locations. So the likes of Oliver Norwood drop a metaphysical level below the global elite, to places like Brighton, where Norwood was for a few seasons, which included getting loaned down to the Championship to Sheffield United on their 2018-19 season where they earned promotion. He was rewarded with a contract with the Blades, and has been a prominent fixture on the club’s starting XI sheet ever since, and is currently vice-captain for the squad. And while the club has been to slow to adapt to the psychic power of their salmon-colored kits this season, Norwood is one of the men who has had a resurgent form that’s helped them at least escape being an all-time worst Premier League club. So even if they don’t escape relegation, they have at least escaped being worse than 2007-08 Derby County, who only got 11 points, and had the horribly ominous -69 in goal differential that season. There is no worse goal differential in football metaphysics than a negative-69. [RAVEN]

#6: JOHN FLECK (up 1 from #7 last time) – Scotsman who came up with and played for Rangers for a number of years, so I imagine him and “Burn Dog” Oli McBurnie have knocked back a number of drinks together. It’s impossible for me to hear the name John Fleck though and not assume he’s a well-learned “free jazz” aficionado whose academic mastery of the subject matter never has translated into an easy and innate rhythm in his trumpet playing. But he’s trying hard, and seems like a nice guy, so you just let it go. We have easily overlooked how many well-meaning but shitty white-appearing jazz musicians have lost their side dinner crowd music hustles to this coronavirus pandemic. How are these guys to feel self-important without a captive audience to listen to their hyper-intelligent between-song banter? [RAVEN]

#7: DAVID MCGOLDRICK (up 2 from #9 last time) – Black Irish striker is such a strange and unique vibe, you always want it to succeed tremendously, but the forces of western civilization are against it. After a long career mired mostly in the Championship (has well over 300 appearances, and 75 goals at that level), the past two were McGoldrick finally getting to enjoy making it to the Premier League, being promoted on individual level along with his club. Sadly, that last Championship season, he netted 15 goals for the Blades, which might have led to lofty notions of exactly who McGoldrick is metaphysically, as he’s not equaled that prolific nature, though he’s does lead the particularly impotent club in goals this season. Between McGoldrick and Billy Sharp (who we will get to shortly), this is truthfully more of a club built to excel in the Championship. And despite that 9th place finish last season, I guess that doesn’t always translate to being good enough to survive in the Premier League. That being said, the club’s in good shape to be next season’s Norwich City in the Championship. It’s just sad they had to be this season’s replication of last season’s Norwich City in the Premier League. [RAVEN]

#8: JOHN LUNDSTRAM (up 3 from #11 last time) – Lundstram is one of the Blades’ English dudes with a more high profile history that’s supposed to be leading them into the next era. He played for the English national team at all youth levels up through u-20, but hasn’t ever cracked the main squad (and likely won’t, barring an injury-depleted friendly in the future). Lundstram was Sheffield United’s big signing when they were promoted to the Championship, looking to grow with the club, which happened fairly well up until this season. Interesting fact about Lundstram – as a youth, he came up through Everton’s system, having grown up in Liverpool, and has always remained a LFC supporter despite those Everton days. [RAVEN]

#9: DEAN HENDERSON (down 8 from #1 last time, thus one previous metaphysical star with the club on 15-Apr-2020) – Idea for a movie: Harry Redknapp eyes a return to management, proposing to hmm…let’s say Daniel Levy…that he base his squad around signing the Liverpool captain, the Man United sub goalie and a Sasquatch. Name of movie? Harry and the Hendersons. Remember that movie? Huh? No? Ah well, those with equally dodgy memories might also have forgotten that last season a bright, young goalkeeper impressed Premier League watchers with weekly high-level performances for Sheffield United who rode high in the table, declaring themselves the Kings of Yorkshire and mocking the likes of Barnsley, York City, Huddersfield and of course the clowns at Wednesday. Was it, like Bigfoot, all a myth? A team in cryptozoological form, believed to exist but merely something made up by a bunch of weirdos? It seems hard to countenance now that Sheffield United were ever really that good and Leeds’s Bielsa-driven revival has even ended their proud reign in Yorkshire. As for the goalkeeper, well he has all but disappeared, become something between a legend and a hoax. Some say he will replace David De Gea at Manchester United, some say he will rise again to overcome the force of malignant evil that is Pickford in goal for England, some even say he has gathered hitherto untold riches for a lad that we grab only slight glimpses of near fellow fantasy figure the elfin Ole Gunnar Solskjaer. I say Dean Henderson has mastered the brutish career of goalkeeping where renown can be won over a decade and lost in a couple of bad games. Play one incredible season on loan for Sheffield United, get a huge pay rise from parent club Manchester United and then hardly ever play. The pressure of being goalkeeper for England and/or Manchester United is ridiculous so why bother? Instead, let De Gea and Pickford look like the schmucks, let your reputation burgeon, get paid and chill, maybe have a few kids, take up gardening, phone up Baldock to reminisce about the good old times. Perhaps occasionally you will be required to get the gloves on and save a few things, maybe Nick Pope or some other loser will do it, who cares? Stay free of this terrible goalkeeping business young Henderson, you have done enough. [JUDE] 

#10: OLI MCBURNIE (up 2 from #12 last time) – I affectionately called McBurnie “Burn Dog” during his time with Swansea. He showed flashes of greatness as a big fish in a smaller pond at times in the Championship, and is such a hard ass goofball with his tiny shin guard wearing ass. What’s become painfully clear as he’s been with the Blades is that some folks are destined for a certain level of greatness, and globalism does not benefit them. Sure, Burn Dog excelled at the Championship, which with a football pyramid suggests he should also then have a chance to excel in the top flight. But he can’t, and probably never will. He’s just a simple-minded but extremely lovable Scottish boy who is right at that precipice, but ain’t ever gonna be a Premier League superstar. His peak is either going to be excelling at the Championship or being considered a detriment to a floundering bottom of the table Premier League club (like he’s seen now). This is all disappointing that we have to even project this scale of Sisyphean accomplishment myths to all footballers, because Burn Dog’s ideal situation personally would be to just slide back into Scotland, go play for Rangers, score a bazillion goals and be a club hero. And he could probably do that. He’s only 24, so I’m sure the notion he has to be a success in English football will hang over him for at least a few more seasons. But why the fuck not just go to Rangers now, get yourself a decade of service in there, and become a modern day club legend? What the fuck is the point of being mired in PL/Championship purgatory, bouncing between clubs like Swansea City and Sheffield United, and then more of the likes of Burnley or Norwich or god forbid fucking Newcastle, but never really being noteworthy in life? Fuck it man, let ol’ Burn Dog just go to his beloved Gers and be a superstar, at least until some angry Celtic defender slides into those unguarded shins cleat first in an injury time expressions of sectarian violence, down 3-1, on the wrong side of Glasgow. [RAVEN]

#11: AARON RAMSDALE (previously ranked #11 for Bournemouth on 15-Jan-2020) – When it comes to English football talent under the age of 25, there are two distinct classes. The first contains galaxy talents like Trent Alexander-Arnold and Jadon Sancho, but also quite a lot of the mediocrities that get spat out of the uppermost echelons of the football-industrial complex. They chiefly comprise healthy, youthful, marketable, uncontroversial, grab-a-pic-for-the-’gram types who ooze #Hustlementality and a general air of competent banality. They stand out most when asked to step down a level, where they carry the air of a Faberge egg asked to perch on the shelves of a gun shop. The other, rapidly shrinking, group contains Aaron Ramsdale. Wayne Rooney was their figurehead; the golem of natural talent, scoffing crisps and gulping cordial before running back outside to play some more with his mates on the field. Brute force and will are their tools. The remarkable state of English football and its proclivity to some of the wildest gambles outside of r/wallstreetbets is that £18.5m can be spent on the goalkeeper who conceded the third most goals in the 19/20 season and shows little end to leaking. Fair enough, he’s just a pup in goalkeeping terms, and in consecutive years he’s been marshalling Championship defenders out of their depth. Part of the transfer was an emotional decision to restore Ramsdale to his patrimonial course: a product of the Blades Academy who set out into the world to defy those who would have him selected behind veteran sticksman Mark Howard (currently at Scunthorpe) via endless loans and the meaningless trundle of England youth internationals. To use a phrase much used by Neil and others: Ramsdale was bought to be a spirit warrior in an era where there’s no spirit available to capture. [DAN]

#12: JACK O’CONNELL (down 10 from #2 last time) – This dude has the same name and face of the actor Jack O’Connell so I can only assume they are the same person with spread out energy levels and shit. The actor Jack is infamous for playing shit of the earth characters like his turn in This Is England in which he played a skinhead named Pukey, or his sensational turn in the dirty English teen show Skins, where he played a fucking maniac named James Cook who was a self-destructive but beaten to the bone lovable, all drugs and car crashes and fucking until you die antihero in what was probably the darkest arc of that fucked up but vital show. He’s since made a name for himself as movie starish kind of dude, playing a stoic cowboy sort in the Netflix series Godless which was pretty good, but now he’s got himself on the defense for Sheffield United, playing next to Chris Basham who keeps telling him how much he hates the shitheads who eat at McDonald’s and, well, shit, he’s only played twice this season so maybe he was just doing some field work for a new role? That’s some raw dedication to his craft, and if he can commit to it a bit more, maybe Sheffield United won’t have to be flushed down the relegation toilet this year. This is just how Hollywood and sports work. [NEIL]

#13: SANDER BERGE – Every good football team has to have a Viking sort, someone to mind the middle and maybe stab a few weak Christians in the process, and Sander Berge is a literal Norse Viking, although he probably doesn’t make a show of the Viking thing both because raping and pillaging isn’t in good graces these days, and because the whole Viking mystique is so easily coopted by white hate groups both in Europe and over here in America.  But Sander Berge is a legit Norse Viking and those are nice to have for when shit gets real. His family also has people who have played basketball at an international level, so you know he is probably a rangy fucker, yes I just checked he’s 6’5” and I don’t know what else to tell you. This gentleman is a fucking Viking. [NEIL]

#14: BILLY SHARP (down 4 from #10 last time) – We use the term “spirit warrior” for a certain breed of footballer who transcends normal footballing and becomes a psychic entity for club, or sport, or self, or a combination of those three. Probably the most famous (and thus also infamous) spirit warrior football has seen is Diego Maradona, the man who personified the number 10, and also was a hated heel in England due to his hand of god goal in the World Cup. Diego ended up the epitome of himself, of a striker, and the pinnacle human example for multiple clubs, including the Argentine national team, Boca Juniors in Argentina, and Napoli in Italy. It’s pretty amazing he was so powerful a force he could become the face of so many different clubs like that. I say all this because in the past few months I’ve done some extensive #10 research, and if you list off the men in the Premier League who have scored the most goals for their club who are currently wearing that #10 kit, Billy Sharp is near the top of the list. He did not score those goals in the Champions League, or even the Premier League mostly, like the far more famous #10s like Harry Kane or Sergio Aguero. He didn’t even do it in a giant four or five season smorgasbord like a Sadio Mane. But I’m not sure any of those other three have crossed that indefinable threshold of being a spirit warrior either. Certainly, they are all much higher caliber players than Billy Sharp, but more so than them, Sharp is truly a spirit warrior force for this Sheffield United football club. And that, unfortunately, ties them to him as much as it does him to them. Sharp is 35 now, but he’s been a key part of the club’s ability to snatch a few actual points the past month or so. He also was a Sheffield boy, literally as a boy, born there, and a youth player there. And despite a few stints elsewhere as a professional, he’s always ended up back with his hometown club. When he came back in 2015, he left behind a Leeds United club at the Championship level, to go back to the Blades, who were then at their lowest point in decades. But ol’ Billy Sharp played in all but two matches over the next two league seasons, and poached, picked, and dazzled for 51 goals over the course of those two years, and they were back in the Championship. In the two years they spent there, he remained a workhorse, and was key to their promotion back to the Premier League, which he’d never played at with the club, despite multiple stints there. He spent two seasons with Southampton previously in the Premier League, but only had a pair of appearances in 2012-13 season to show for it. Billy Sharp got promoted as well. The club itself had notions of grandeur though, and Sharp saw a somewhat reduced role at times, both last season and the beginning of this one. Eventually, with the club’s spirit warrior being sidelined too long, the effects of that began to show up in that long stretch of frustrating results that anchored them to the bottom of the table this season. But Sharp has been key to their more hopeful form, even if they might be too far gone. He’s gotten five goals between Premier League and FA Cup play, where they find themselves perhaps to the outsider as a shock quarterfinalist, although the club has had a recent history of being known as giant-killers in the competition. And perhaps that’s where they – and Billy Sharp – flex still this season, as they look to be too far back in the riptide of points to remain a Premier League squad after this season. They travel to Chelsea next month, with a trip to Wembley Stadium for the semifinals there for the taking – a feat they’ve achieved four times already in the Premier League era. But never with Billy Sharp. I don’t know, maybe I’m out of line here, and thinking with my heart not my brain, but I’ve got a feeling that despite all that’s happened to the Blades this season, we’re gonna see Billy Sharp force his way into Wembley Stadium. I’m all for it, too. [RAVEN]

#15: ETHAN AMPADU – “Ethan Ampadu” is one of the most magical names in English football right now. Factor in the fact he’s Welsh (by way of Exeter city), and it’s even more magical. Sadly, he cut off his trademark dreadlocks that he wore for a while, which made him seem like a ridiculous little defensive midfielding wizard. He’s contractually obligated to Chelsea though, and has been loaned out to the high-level likes of RB Leipzig and now Sheffield United, so you can’t be having dreadlocks, not even a magical Welshman named Ethan Ampadu. Cut ‘em off and assimilate son; maximize the value of your human resource, which we will extract to our fullest, until you are useless to us. [RAVEN]

#16: BEN OSBORN (up 3 from #19 last time) – Osborn is just your most basically smiling Englishman with the most “has logical debates online” name one could hope for, thus I have to kinda hate on him even though I have no valid reason. Football metaphysics often times has nothing to do with you personally and is just the general accumulation of aesthetic and historic clutter around what you appear to be. [RAVEN]

#17: JACK ROBINSON – This dude is one of the youngest players ever to suit up for Liverpool, which he did when he was only 16 and Brendan Rodgers was on his way in and Luis Suarez had only considered eating people, but the Anfield pitch was too big a stage for Jack Robinson and he was soon loaned out like a prostitute to various shitty clubs who could use some quality meat. And Jack Robinson hasn’t really made a name for himself beyond that, which is troubling because he is threatened to be swallowed by Jackie Robinson, the first Black dude to play major league baseball, and that is a hell of a name to live up to, but also Jack Robinson is apparently a mythical name used to represent quickness, which is a whole hell of another thing to have to live up to. Basically, this guy has a whole lot of work to do to earn the name Jack Robinson, and if he doesn’t work for it, he’ll end up just another white jackass. That’s how they name them. [NEIL]

#18: LYS MOUSSET (down 3 from #15 last time) – A totemic figure of bustling brilliance during the unlikely success of the 19/20 season but now mostly seen sad-eyed in a big coat on the touchline. Rumours spread that in the 20/21 pre-season he’d “dropped his dinner on his big toe”, injuring him for a stretch until late November. Pathetic with desperation, Wilder threw Mousset on at the next possible moment, where he played every game with a steadily increasing apathy, culminating in getting angrily hauled off in an FA Cup game against Bristol Rovers in early January. His replacement, Oliver Burke, scored within a nanosecond of taking the field and Mousset hasn’t been seen in the red and white since. Of course this all reeks of a guy who wanted a better contract, who took a mutual strop with his manager, was thrown a bone in the slough of despond, and then cast back into the shit pit. I might be wrong and it might be that Mousset is the new Michu/Chimbonda of one inexplicably good season and then nada. I hope I am. I am not. [DAN]

#19: JAYDEN BOGLE – Bogle’s a young right back who came to the Blades from Derby County this past September. he made his Premier League debut for the club the week before Christmas, subbing in for Rhian Brewster, and scoring the first goal of the match, against Brighton & Hove Albion. The Gulls of course equalized, but the goal did give the Blades their second point of the season. That was a promising early sign for Bogle’s influence on the club. A second Premier League goal two weeks back equalized in a match with West Brom, and spirit warrior Billy Sharp added a go-ahead goal in the 73rd minute, for only their third win of the season. So Bogle’s already having a solid touch to the club’s stature. [RAVEN]

#20: OLIVER BURKE (previously ranked #23 for West Brom on 15-May-2018) – Some years ago, while Scotland manager, Gordon Strachan suggested that Scottish footballers were sadly lacking genetically in comparison to rival nations. This bizarre pseudo-eugenic intervention caused a moment of hilarity and was all but forgotten. However, Oliver Burke is almost certainly the consequence of a secret Scottish project to breed their own Gareth Bale. Nicola Sturgeon and Strachan with the aid of Sean Connery crossed two borders, sneaked into the Valleys and snatched some Bale DNA to combine with that of trusted Scottish stock (Ally McCoist) and bring raw wideman pace and power to their beloved nation. All seemed well when Burke emerged fully grown at Nottingham Forest and threatened to destroy the Championship with his physical gifts, earning the attention of energy drink behemoths RB Leipzig who doubtless saw in the meaty young Oliver a test subject for their next beverage. Despite an impressive fifteen million pounds transfer fee, things sadly began to flounder there for the lad and talk emerged from then Leipzig coach and future overseer of 9-0 hammerings Ralph Hassenhuttl that Burke lacked something in his ‘hard drive’. This was undoubtedly a Germanic nicety for ‘a bit simple’ which, though a little cruel, probably ended the Scottish Genetic Football Project before it had really begun. Since this ignominy, Burke has been fairly well travelled having short and largely uneventful spells at West Brom, Celtic and Alaves, before joining other footballers of size at Wilder’s Sheffield United. Thus far in his brief stay Burke has found it hard to impress in a Sheffield United that has struggled for confidence and form but a recent winning, albeit deflected, goal against Manchester United may well catalyse both team and player. Still only 23 years old, the opportunity is there for him to put a bit more information on the hard drive and become the player his physical gifts suggested in his Forest years. [JUDE]

#21: RHIAN BREWSTER – When England won the u-17 World Cup in 2017, it was widely known that although other England age groups had progressed well in that period, this group was the one the FA believed had real transformational promise. Some of that promise has begun to be realised – Phil Foden, Callum Hudson-Odoi and Jadon Sancho have all become senior internationals and Emile Smith Rowe looks set to join them. For others of that age group such as Morgan Gibbs White and Ryan Sessegnon, the road has been a little more rocky, though hopes are still high. Brewster is perhaps the most curious and interesting case of the bunch. Top scorer in that World Cup, talk at his then club Liverpool was that he was the most exciting youth product the club had seen in some time. On the brink of breaking into the first team, with occasional appearances on the bench in the Premier League, it appeared all was bright for young Brewster. A brutal knee injury ended these hopes, cost him eighteen months of his career at a key stage and put the player on a less steady path. Even this was not enough to impact general belief in him and Liverpool had to scare off a number of top German sides who tried to get him to join them as part of the fetish for young Brits in the Bundesliga. Following recovery, he was unable to really make an impact at Liverpool, leading to a loan spell at Swansea under Steve Cooper, his England u-17 manager. Brewster thrived, scoring repeatedly in the Championship with a variety of goals from tap ins to absolute thunderbastards. It was this loan that led to a remarkable 23 million pounds transfer to Sheffield United where he has proceeded to do…..nothing. Absolutely nothing. Not a thing, like you would not even notice he was there. At Swansea, Brewster was inclined to drift though games, uninvolved until key moments; at Sheffield United he is simply uninvolved. He looks like a racehorse who, having unseated his jockey, is running amidst the other horses, having a lovely time, wondering what the hell the others are so bothered about. Watching, it feels unthinkable that any club would have spent so much money on him and erstwhile German Brewster-fanciers are probably relieved that Covid and Brexit meant that taking anything across the English Channel into the Europe Union in the summer was problematic. Yet I do not want to dismiss the lad. Being a young centre forward is not easy, especially if your game is not based on pace. Much like previous England age group hope Tammy Abraham (and perhaps it seems Dominic Solanke), he would probably benefit from a more sustained spell in the Championship which, given the sorry plight of Sheffield United, he is quite likely to imminently get. [JUDE]

#22: MAX LOWE – This anonymous spy name sounding fucker is only 23 years old, yet somehow has already plied the sport for seven seasons with Derby County, which included multiple loans to Aberdeen in Scotland. He signed with the Blades this past summer’s delayed transfer season, and Lowe has been partial scapegoat for Sheffield United’s poor start, with manager Chris Wilder even saying to the media that Lowe was probably starting too early, and wasn’t ready for it. He got subbed at halftime against Leicester City early in December, and it took him almost two months to get another minute of time on the pitch during Premier League action, even without injury to justify this. [RAVEN]

#23: PHIL JAGIELKA (up 2 from last time; also previously ranked #24 for Everton on 15-May-2020) – The old warrior returned home. Jagielka came up with Sheffield United and only was pried away from his club when Sheffield United was sent down for being a shit club. The club wasn’t about to drag him down with them so they sent him on to Everton, where he made a name for himself as a stalwart defender for the better part of a decade, captain shit. As captain of Everton, he was a key piece for that squad as they hovered around their usual spot just outside the big boys table. He even managed to get some run with the English national team, and for the most part became an Everton institution. But, the thing with institutions is that they get old and eat up a lot of money and so Phil was bounced from the Everton that he helped make, and then chose to return to his first love at Sheffield United, where he retains an elderly presence, one that is for closure more than anything else. No matter what happens, you can always come home. [NEIL]

#24: KEAN BRYAN – Once the rest of the crew has cherry-picked their preferred blurbs to write, I take what’s left. I’m the clean-up man, putting in work to finish off the rest of the 25. But that means by the time I get to like a Kean Bryan, the whole project, in the moment, has descended into an internal mush of Port Vales and Gigg Lanes and Oldham Athletics and Harry Redknapps until my American brain is tapping out to the absurdity and pointlessness of it all. Why write so many words in an era when people would prefer you just share a couple memes? Why bother adding American input on a sporting entity we’re about 29th best in the world at? Fuck. Is Kean even a real name? How do the Bolton Wanderers field a starting eleven even if everybody is wandering off all the fucking time? I mean, I know Wolverhampton started using trained wolves to keep their wanderlust players on the pitch, but I haven’t heard of any shit like that from Bolton. Is that even legal, the use of wolves to keep men playing football? Is it even playing if they are being paid and the expectation of their labor is attached, whether they want to “play” or not? It’s all too much by the time we get to the end of it, but that’s just how metaphysics works. It wears you out; but after a nice little Andy Capp session on the sofa, preferably late afternoon so it gets dark while you’re turned into the back cushions like a kitten nestling into a warm den, you feel recharged again. [RAVEN]

#25: CALLUM ROBINSON (down 9 from #16 last time; also previously ranked #23 for West Brom on 15-Aug-2020) – Robinson is the rare case of an upgrade via downgrade. Last season, he was struggling for time and form in his first season with Sheffield United, so got loaned down a tier to West Brom, where he played a small part in their automatic promotion. He’s by no means lit it up this season in his return to the Premier League, but he’s done better with West Brom than he did last season with the Blades. Of course, both clubs look fairly solid bets for relegation regardless, so I guess it doesn’t really matter. [RAVEN]