25-Man Metaphysical Roster: NORWICH CITY FC

EDIT: I'LL LEAVE THIS RATHER THAN DELETE IT BUT THESE POSTS SHALL NOW LIVE AT A NEW SITE CALLED FOOTBALLMETAPHYSICS.SPACE UPDATE YOUR MIND

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[The graphic above is when club hero, the Scotsman Bryan Gunn, who is perhaps responsible for Norwich City’s large Scottish pipeline, airballed a pass back during a match against bitter club rivals Ipswich Town back in the day. A sad moment which now lives forever in youtube clips of footballing failure.]

[25-Man Metaphysical Roster is a football metaphysics methodology utilizing dork methodology of minutes played over the past 100 club competitive club matches to determine which 25 players constitute the strongest psychic force on a club’s current trajectory. Then intuitive analysis is conducted utilizing football metaphysics, performed from an un-American soccer fan’s perspective. We do this every 1st and 15th of the month, cycling through the 20 clubs currently in the English Premier League, because it is the top domestic league based in an English-speaking country, which as un-American miscreants, we were all born to be saddled with this limited, segmented tongue of the global colonizer, oppressor, and capitalizer. Also, it is what comes on TV here in the USA most prominently, where we live. And yet, it is really important we clarify we hate English, and also America. Maybe we hate ourselves. Our panel consists of chairman Raven Mack, director tecnico Paul Robertson, and director rudo Neil Bulson. Our individual contributions to this 5000 words of gibberish will be noted by our name at the end of the blurb. If you enjoy this absolutely free internet content from an un-American soccer perspective, venmo me tips @ravenmack23. You may also enjoy the Sportsball 69 podcast.]

Let us discuss the football metaphysics of this Norwich City football club, which overtook all others and climbed to the top of the English Football Championship table this past season, to earn re-entry unto the very Premier League they were banished from multiple times over the years. They were one of the original Premier League clubs in 1992, but since a 2005 relegation, have bounced all around, mostly in the Football Championship, but with four other seasons in the Premier League (most recently 2015-16) as well as falling all the way down to League One once (2009-10). A couple years back, they hired their first non-British Isle manager in their long history, bringing in German Daniel Farke, who tbh has the foreboding physical aura of a Cormac McCarthy protagonist, which fits perfectly within the larger aura of Norwich City. You see, football metaphysics is not about pretending to know football, and analyzing pyramids with reverse metrics. It’s about the simple yet powerful tendrils of human existence somehow connecting in ways that make sense. And a foreboding German dude taking over a scrappy bunch of less-than-premier players on a club that – despite the national historical trend of boring blues and reds – sports bright yellow and green, as homage to their Canaries nickname, but such that an actual aura of something different is created, even if by accident. I tend to buy the most garish football tops I can to sport as everyday dirtgod apparel, whatever is on the most clearance priced price, and Norwich City always comes up in these searches. Such beautiful colors, and who the fuck wouldn’t want to be a canary?

This past season, of the three promoted clubs, only Wolverhampton was able to hold onto Premier League status, finishing a strong 7th. The other two (Fulham and Cardiff City) crashed back out. All three clubs promoted the season before held on, but two of them have struggled, and one was dropped this past season. And the season before that, two of the three promoted clubs were immediately relegated again. So Norwich City is attempting to escape this up-and-down status, and repeat the success of the previous Football Championship champion Wolves, and exorcise their own failure demons of bouncing back and forth, being a club not quite Premier League, but too good for the Championship. Are they equipped to do so? Wolves kept their core club intact, adding a few key upgrades. The two paths to success are to do that (if strong enough core), or stand relatively pat with what you have, plus pick up a few dudes from this season’s relegated clubs, and hope to finish outside the bottom 3 next season.

Related in spirit, I – Raven Mack the Dirtgod Imam of Football Metaphysics – have brought on two fellow life scientists of the metaphysical sporting arts, in my pals Neil and Paul, who will here forth assist me in these expositions of English Premier League clubbings. I hope this helps us maintain this schedule, and add to the compendium of Americans by birth writing about the world’s football, in the hopes that Americans who love the world’s football don’t have to keep reading such dumbass commentary that is too American-centric to be good. It is fitting we relaunch this 25-Man Metaphysical Roster according to the already established schedule on this day of Champions League finales, when the world – even in America – is watching the pinnacle of club football, while it features a pair of English clubs. [Raven]

#1: CHRISTOPH ZIMMERMAN (his FIRST METAPHYSICAL STAR, which is some shit we made it up for the dudes who finish first on these lists) – Hailing from Dusseldorf, known for its fashion and arts scene, young Christoph was sent to Borussia to make a name for himself, first with Mönchengladbach, and then with Dortmund, but was stashed away on the reserve teams in his native land. Sold to the English, he ended up in Norwich, which is probably a far cry culturally from Dusseldorf, with its fashion and arts scene, since Norwich is, well, Norwich, and is maybe most famous for producing carnies like that Paige chick in WWE who rose to fame fucking the entire locker room. Young, abandoned by his country, young Christoph nevertheless has been a stalwart for Norwich City the past two years, and even put on the captain’s stripe this past season as Norwich took the English Championship by storm. He is 26, 6’4” of fine Aryan stock, and his entire life is laid out in front of him, which is usually when shit goes bad, but the only way out of Norwich is either fucking the right carnies or proving yourself a leader of men. Maybe both. I don’t know. This probably isn’t the life he expected for himself. I imagine he dreamed of staying in Germany and fucking their carnies, but life isn’t fair, and sometimes you have to find yourself in new worlds, with new carnies to fuck and you speak different languages but the fucking is all the same, and out of that you find yourself the captain of a football team, the center-back serving as the backbone for the whole fucking deal, and maybe that is your way back home, or maybe you find you like it here, settle down with a carnie, as much as one can anyway, and make a life of your own in a strange land with strange people. Now thrust into the Premiere League, Christoph will find whether this is home or whether home is just a bittersweet memory. Do the girls in Dusseldorf still think of Christoph? Or is he just an exile making the best of what life made for him? Does life wait for him or does life beckon from some further place with its own carnies and its own fucking? These are the energies Christoph Zimmerman brings to Norwich City. It is an energy that can go either way, but fuck man, that’s just life. [Neil]

#2: JAMAL LEWIS – Hailing from Luton, young Jamal is just that: young. 21 years young. Oddly, he plays for the Northern Irish national team when he isn’t busy holding down the left back position for Norwich City. I say oddly, because you wouldn’t think a 21 year old black kid from Luton would rep the orange Irish way, but I guess his mom is Belfast born, so fuck it, don’t listen to me when it comes to making possibly racist assumptions. Young Jamal has spent his entire footballing life in the Norwich City system, which means that he is part of the heart and soul of their rise to the Premier League. He is not bought and paid for, a mercenary from the continent, but true Norwich. There is a purity in that, a clean energy, a positive energy that isn’t littered with past failures or abandonments and not many of us get to go through life like that, so shit, more power to him, I guess. But the world is just opening up for Jamal Lewis, son of a wild Irish woman no doubt, and he hasn’t suffered his first pain yet. That is still to come, and so it’s hard to trust in the spiritual energies of a dude who’s had it all work out for him for the most part so far. What happens when the Premier League stage is too big for him? What happens when his mom runs off with Thin Lizzy or what’s left of them? Jamal Lewis’ test is coming, and whether it makes or breaks him might tell the tale for Norwich City’s psychic spirit energies. That is a lot to bear, but fuck it, there’s gonna be a jailbreak somewhere in this town and Jamal and the boys need to be getting up and going down. [Neil]

#3: TIM KRUL – Krul is a Dutch GK who only came to Norwich City this past season, but he (as all good GKs should) played every minute of every match in their main competition. Krul historically has had some injuries, but did have multiple seasons of Premier League lower-level consistency as the minder of the posts for Newcastle United the early part of this decade. But he also spent a lot of time on loan after injuries, and while part of Brighton & Hove Albion Premier League squad in 2017-18, did not return to prominent role at that level. While he does give the Canaries someone with immense PL experience, this is exactly the type of philosophical choices that need to be made ultimately to determine whether a club looks to simply survive the Premier League (finish 13th to 17th) or make a move for a younger talent to try and thrive like Wolves did this past season. I imagine they’ll stick with Krul happily and hope for the best. [Raven]

#4: MAX AARONS – I'm always a mark for the young scrappy defender on the lower level Premier League clubs. Personally, this is the Alfie Mawson rule, but that might vary per your personal rooting interests. Max Aarons is that dude for Norwich City, came up through youth academy and they've been his only professional club (thus far). Turned 19 in January, which means he was born in the 2000s. Also his full first name is Maximillian, which I can get behind because my government last name is built off that same linguistical framework. He got the Football Championship Young Player of the Year award, but that also means he's getting attention from elsewhere, notably from Tottenham. Seems like a prime choice to be signed then loaned back for a season to the club he got sold from, because he's not gonna be starting for Spurs, and they're gonna want him to get some PL experience. [Raven]

#5: TEEMU PUKKI – In writing these profiles, I’m naturally going to be drawn to ex-Celtic players—dudes that I have actually watched play throughout a number of matches. So appropriately, my old bhoy Teemu is up first. To be honest, I’m both pleased for him and surprised as fuck that he broke out as big-time goal-beast with Norwich—30 strikes in 45 appearances is damn impressive. When he was with Celtic, he seemed to be in that non-scoring forward/striker mode—pull the defense out of position with some solid movement and then open things up for a strike partner or some roaming midfielder (what Football Manager labels the “defensive forward” or the “false nine”, I guess). I remember supporter-folk were excited because we picked him up from Schalke (Bundesliga!!!). But Schalke are to me one of the most boring clubs in football, maybe because their dull blue and white colors remind me of the Indianapolis Colts from when I followed American Concussion Ball as a kid. So Teemu never really made the breakthrough at Celtic, although you could tell there was a halfway decent player in there, of some sort. So he goes back to his Scandinavian roots, with Sweden’s Brondby (which maybe was fraught, given Swedes think Finns are degenerate trash and not really Scandinavian, or some such national-racist bullshit). He gets better and better there for a couple seasons, then claims his move to the English promised land (albeit the Championship) and just goes goal-wild. Maybe it has something to do with appearance, because at Celtic he seemed like this fuzzy little smiling tow-headed moppet, instead of some Finnish tundra-beast. But now he looks all unkempt, balding but hairy. That’s a thing, in my years of watching football—I’ve noticed many a player that was only at his best if he looked like he’d been battling pneumonia while living in a dumpster attendant’s shack. Clean them up (shave, haircut) and if they didn’t play like absolute shit, they were at least noticeably diminished. Anyway, good luck Teemu—maybe he’s a bit of a late (29) bloomer, but I suspect he’ll be back to running around but not scoring in the EPL and then back down to the Championship, or maybe a return to Germany and the lower reaches of the Bundesliga. [Paul]

#6: MARCO STIEPERMANN – First time foreign manager is always gonna build his philosophy through people who speak his metaphysical and sometimes actual language. Stiepermann joined Norwich City as part of Farke’s first wave of signings in 2017, and has helped establish their offensive style in the midfield. He had 46 appearances out of 51 matches this past season, and with just one season left on his contract, tacked on a two-year extension to continue what they’ve done under Farke (hopefully). With Zimmerman as the German anchor on the back defensive line, Stiepermann works as the main German voice on the other end of the ball (along with Moritz Leitner and Tom Trybull), which gives the club the shared voice of Farke’s vision, although not nearly as obvious as the Portuguese visiting club that Nuno Espirito Santo built with Wolverhampton. It’s still very interesting to see these various national influences on English clubs at the top level. [Raven]

#7: ONEL HERNANDEZ – Winger Onel Hernandez is an interesting figure with Norwich City’s promotion. He’s German by national team identity, so it makes sense with the Farke movement he’s on this club. But he’s not your stereotypical German, being physically born in Cuba, and with Cuban heritage, having emigrated to Germany with his ma dukes and sister when he was 6. In fact, with Norwich City’s promotion, Hernandez will become the first Cuban to play in the Premier League. And, the main reason he’s in the German national team system instead of Cuba is because Cuban football only allows players based in Cuba onto the national team. He also just got engaged to be married, announced on his Instagram, where he has WILL YOU MARRY ME laid out in red rose petals for his girlfriend at a resort in Bali. In fact, his somewhat oddball (by careful footballer standards) social media presence made him a cult figure with Norwich supporters. [Raven]

#8: EMI BUENDIA – Norwich City is shockingly Eurocentric, with only two players on their main squad with non-European national identities. But Buendia, one of those two, added a lot with his presence. The young Argentine winger/midfielder aided the club’s expansive attack immensely second half of the season, once he was comfortable after joining last June. Beyond scoring threat, he was by far the club leader in assists (18!), and just generally helped create their flow of attack. Buendia previously played for Getafe in Spain’s La Liga, but his form this past season has star potential (Norwich didn’t win a single match this past season where Buendia didn’t play), so likely the club will enjoy a limited window of this young man before he moves on to bigger and more lucrative pastures (at a good profit to the club, which of course, is the bottom line of this shit to a certain extent… capitalism ruins everything around me, CREAM fuck the money, dollar dollar bill y’all). [Raven]

#9: BEN GODFREY – Another top young defender who, with Aarons, gave Norwich City the solid defensive line that allowed the offense to flourish. Godfrey's getting a lot of interest from Man United now, and you gotta figure there's no way Norwich City are gonna keep both Godfrey and Aarons, because let's be real, they're not gonna turn down that money. If I was a young promising footballer, I'd dread going to Man United right now. Then again, if I was a young promising footballer, I wouldn't be ruled by metaphysical idealism; I'd be getting paid the most I can, and fucking Instagram models without birth control. [Raven]

#10: ALEXANDER TETTEY – So continuing with some Scandinavian football metaphysics, we have Ghana-born but Norway-repping Tettey. A product of the Rosenborg academy, he dominates with them for a couple seasons as they perennially destroy the rest of Eliteserien, before moving on to France (or more correctly, Brittany, because like England, France did its Celt-oppressing colonial foreplay close to home) with Stade Rennais. Doesn’t look like he was an automatic first choice, owing to injury bligh, while there, though he did have a respectable number of appearances. Norwich picks him up for about a million pounds, and he’s gone on to be a Canaries mainstay as they’ve bobbed between the EPL and the Championship. Tettey fulfills one of those ethnic-national football archetypes—the west/central African defensive midfielder soul-eater; disrupting, destroying, harrying, and generally oppressing any strikers or attacking midfielders getting notions within 40 yards of the goal. But Tetty looks like he has some subtlety, as my man has collected the fuck out of some yellow cards over the years, but has yet to be sent off in his entire career. I can’t get into some bullshit-anthropology discussion in this limited space, but if I was building a team, a Ghana DM is the way to go. (Irish dudes are also solid in this position, so maybe it’s an Afro-Celt thing?) [Paul]

#11: TIMM KLOSE – As I was gathering the minutes for the past 100 competitive matches, I always start at the farthest end of this for these promoted clubs that I don’t have any of the data for. So I can tell you that though he’s sitting at 11th on this list, Klose was at one point a way more prominent front and center player for this club. Norwich City signed this Swiss defender in January of 2016, when they were in the midst of their last previous Premier League season, desperately trying to restock during the midseason transfer window to avoid relegation. It failed, and Klose went down with the club. He was a starter in the majority of their Championship matches the for two seasons, but this past one only started about half the time, and became more of a sub than outright starter, as age has set in. But he also just signed a new deal to remain with the club, and as one of their elder players, and one of the only ones remaining from that last Premier League squad, he gives them guidance more than minutes. Plus, I have to admit I’m a sucker for dudes that do the double “m” thing at the end of really normal ass names. Although also there was a shitty pretend good restaurant in the small town I used to live in, the kind of place that works the rural American marks by offering “prime rib” or “seafood” specials, who also did the double “m” Timm thing, and now mid-blurb I’ve completely changed my mind. But being I went through the emotional labor of this thought process, I’m not deleting this part of the blurb. In fact, you should pay me for my emotional labor (Neil and Paul, too, to be honest). The venmo is @ravenmack23. [Raven]

#12: TOM TRYBULL – The young Trybull was another German import that came with Farke taking over in 2017. Norwich City moved from mid-table to top the second half of this past season by becoming an offensive force (which actually was pretty enjoyable to watch the couple times I caught them). Trybull, echoing the German keys theory I have posited to Farke’s success, was an important fulcrum of that shift, as he was near the top of the Championship in tackles, creating offense to move forward to the passing machinations of Moritz Leitner or Emi Buendia, which ultimately fed a goal-scoring growth led by Pukki. It will be interesting to see how this holds up with better Premier League defenses, or if the chemistry that came together second half of this past season can stay sweet with the addition of new players. Then again, that’s always an issue. It’s fucking football. [Raven]

#13: MARIO VRANCIC – One of the most studied realms of football metaphysics for me personally has been football and the dissolution of Yugoslavia. Because of my own spiritual paths, I’ve come to follow especially close Bosnian dudes, because that often means “white” Muslim, or somebody forced into Yugoslav diaspora who is Croat or Serb but chooses to identify at national team allegiance level with Bosnian multiculture. Vrancic’s story is the latter, moving to Germany as a wee tike, and eventually making it onto Bundesliga Mainz squad as a teen under Jurgen Klopp. When Klopp went to BvB, he brought Vrancic along. So the dude has pedigree. But beyond this, he’s part of Norwich’s collection of deft passing offensive options in the midfield. What sets Vrancic apart is his missile of a left foot, which in fact nailed the goal that sealed Norwich’s promotion. This past six months, it has seemed as Vrancic has grown scruffier, he has grown stronger. I hope the Premier League bump causes this to ascend into full-blown sweaty longish hair bearded Balkan spirit warrior, in the non-superclub nether regions of the English Premier League, where such forces can exist nicely without being forced into semi-retirement on a crowded Big 6 squad. [Raven]

#14: MORITZ LEITNER – Leitner is a German striker who was supposed to be Borussia Dortmund's next big thing, but got loaned out a number of times, most notably to Lazio. Finally he was sold off to lower level Bundesliga club FC Augsburg January of 2017, but didn't even make a first team appearance. That caused him to land in Norwich on loan January of last year, where he actually, you know, played. He got a permanent transfer before last season started, but he hardly came across as a dude worthy of the #10 kit, though he did make himself a supporter's hero by scoring an equalizer late against bitter rivals Ipswich Town in the East Anglian derby. [Raven]

#15: TODD CANTWELL – Cantwell joined the Norwich youth academy at age 10, and it's been his only club, outside of a loan to a Dutch club right after he made his senior debut. A young homegrown talent in a crowded midfield likely not gonna get a lot of PL playing minutes, but they can't get rid of a homegrown hero, can they? Of course not; they extended his contract. In a sport full of people not from England but during this time of UKIP-style blind nationalism, you're not gonna let an English kid (who is uhhh "traditional" English) slip away, even if he'll rarely get quality time in the Premier League. [Raven]

#16: KENNY MCLEAN – Here is all you need to know about this fool Scotsman named Kenny McLean – when Norwich City had their parade through town to celebrate their Championship title and promotion to the Premier League, McLean was drunk off orange Mad Dog 20/20, and declared himself the mayor of Norwich. That’s quality fucking metaphysics. [Raven]

#17: GRANT HANLEY (previously ranked #17 for Newcastle United on 01-Dec-2017) – Oh man. Grant Hanley. Let me just say, that in the same way Landon Donovan embodies everything that is wrong with US soccer, Grant here does the same for Scottish football. There are like 20 slight-variations of Grant Hanleys bouncing around the nether reaches of the English football system. Generic central Scotland urban belt name? Check. Scottish, but not Scottish like “Angus MacTavish” or some shit. As an aside, I bet there’s like 50 Northern Virginia/Raleigh-Durham Research Triangle/Atlanta suburb upper middle class white kids names Grant Hanley, waiting to play lacrosse and hopefully get pepper-sprayed all-to-fuck when they get too han[d]ley with some poor young woman. Came through the Rangers youth setup? Check. Made a couple dozen appearances for the Scottish National Team, in which he was part of a backline travesty that got wacky-sax destroyed by some Baltic or Balkan national team? Check. Yet still gets picked by the succession of shite Scotland managers because he plays in England and/or has a Rangers pedigree? Check. Hanley somehow got appointed captain of Norwich, but then promptly got injured and then couldn’t get back in to the starting 11. Which is probably at least 50% of why Norwich is getting promoted. I supposed he’ll probably be cover while the club tries to survive the EPL, but I’d bet on Hanley pitching up in lower Championship/League 1 after another season, or maybe heading back to Scotland with a mid-upper club like Aberdeen or Hearts (though hopefully his English-experience will tempt Rangers into paying some stupid fee and wages for his less-than-mediocre ass). My final thought on Grant here is that the Scottish Football Association finally got some damn sense and appointed a hyper-competent manager in Stevie Clarke. Though supposedly healthy, I see that Hanley didn’t make Clarke’s call-up cut for some important Euro qualifiers, so I’m taking this as the expected sign that Hanley and his ilk are finally excised from the national setup. [Paul]

#18: ANGUS GUNN (previously ranked #16 for Southampton on 15-May-2019) – Gunn was a Norwich City youth academy kid, local wonderkid who was absorbed into Manchester City’s youth academy factory at age 15, where he remained as part of their stockpiling/hoarding of football talent. Two seasons back, he was finally given a chance to shine as a senior team player, on a season-long loan back to his childhood club, where he appeared in every match for the Canaries (only dude to do so), endearing himself to club supporters as a homemade Anglian hero. Of course, he was only on loan, and this was just Man City giving him a showcase to finally move him, so he went to Southampton, where he has appeared sparingly as back-up to Alex McCarthy. No diss to Tim Krul, but it’s hard not to want Gunn to comeback to the Canaries, and play for his childhood club in the Premier League, AGAINST MANCHESTER CITY! WHERE HE MAKES A WIN-PRESERVING SAVE IN THE FINAL SECONDS AND THEN IMMEDIATELY RUNS OVER WITH HIS GIANT ASS GK LANKY BODY AND BEATS PEP GUARDIOLA INTO AN SHRUNKEN ACCORDION NECK CARTOON MESS TO THE CHEERS OF ALL THE DRUNKS AT CARROW ROAD! [Raven]

#19: JAMES MADDISON (previously ranked #15 for Leicester City on 15-Jan-2019) – A midfielder from Coventry, James Maddison is only 22 years old, but he’s already managed to blow through not only Coventry but Norwich City and found his way to Leicester City like a quick passing storm. I’m not sure what sort of psychic metaphysical energies are still lingering from James Maddison in Norwich, but to be honest, with a name like James Maddison, they are probably well rid of him. I’m not saying that he is the reincarnated soul of former American President James Madison, but I can’t say that he isn’t either, and since Madison is one of the OG Founding Fathers, no one needs a psychic legacy of old Virginian plantation stock. The father of the Constitution is the sort of thing that sounds good, but not when you look at it from the perspective of marginalized people, for whom the Constitution was merely a codification of an existing oppressive capitalist oligarchy. What does this have to do with James Maddison the young footballer, or more specifically, for Norwich City, who fucking knows. It can’t help, but since he isn’t even around anymore, it probably can’t hurt either. James Madison was a slaver, he even complained late in life when the Northern states tried to curtail the ways of the slaver south. Fuck him and his plantation. [Neil]

#20: IVO PINTO – A wanderer, Ivo Pinto comes from the small town of Lourosa, Portugal. From there he no doubt dreamed of making his way to the big city, maybe fucking some Brazilian girls with his Portuguese paternalism, but life doesn’t always go the way people want it to. Fuck, it almost never does. And so Ivo Pinto knocked around Portugal before being sent off on loan to Romania, where he actually managed to land in the Champions League for Cluj, but a loan is a loan and he was sold off to Croatia, where his Portuguese charms were likely wasted on the Zagrebian ladies who cared nothing of Portugal and laughed as their Croatian gangster boyfriends slapped around the queer kid from the pervert Iberian peninsula. He then moved on to Norwich, where he tried to find a home, a place where he belonged, as the right back for their football team. But poor Ivo again finds himself being sent away, unable to enjoy the Premier League sluts, and is now back with Dinamo Zagreb. Maybe this time he will find a home, a place to root himself to and be a hero, but he’s pushing 30 and it probably doesn’t get better from here. Not wanted by his home country, tossed out of Romania and then England like a gypsy, barely tolerated in Croatia, Ivo Pinto’s energies aren’t looking so good. But that is his problem now, not Norwich City’s. [Neil]

#21: JOSH MURPHY (previously ranked #15 for Cardiff City on 15-Apr-2019) – Longtime Norwich City player in the first part of this decade, along with his twin brother Jacob, both as wingers. Josh even made 9 Premier League appearances for the Canaries back then, while Jacob never did. But they separated paths, and Jacob ended up at Newcastle United, where he’s been playing in the Premier League the past two seasons. Josh was excelling at Norwich City, so was moved to Cardiff City this past season, as part of that bastard club’s attempt to build a Premier League-quality roster. Their efforts failed, and after a single season of being at Premier League level with his twin bro, Josh is back to the Championship, while Norwich City is back up. He’ll likely get sold off to some other Premier League club, but a return to Norwich City is looking unlikely. [Raven]

#22: HARRISON REED – Reed is actually a midfielder for Southampton, but he spent the entirety of the season before last on loan to Norwich City, thus he made this list. It's actually good to see how much of Norwich's 25-man metaphysical roster is signed to the club, and not them winning promotion with a handful of loanees and former PL washouts. It gives you hope they might be able to continue their success, and somewhat duplicate what Wolves did this season. I mean, it's gonna be hard to finish that high (7th is like winning the PL minus the big six clubs, which also is why Leicester City winning it a few seasons back is even more impressive in retrospect), but Canaries look equipped to not be in a relegation slog. Maybe. [Raven]

#23: JORDAN RHODES (previously ranked #23 for Middlesbrough on 01-Apr-2017) – Ahh, Grant Hanley on the flipside of the halfway line. Rhodes is yet another archetype—the tallish Scottish “striker”, that was actually born in England, who “puts himself about”…..and maybe scores one goal every five games or so. See also: Sheffield Wednesday’s Steven Fletcher and Raven’s Swansea boy Oli “Burn-Dog” McBurnie for comparable examples of the genre. Rhodes went hog-wild for several seasons with Huddersfield and Blackburn, such that I can recall a fair bit of Celtic supporter chatter about bringing him up to Glasgow. Followed by the usual recitation of how interested the player supposedly is, to play for such a glorious club that he also probably supported as a child, yet Celtic can’t pay either the asking price or the player’s wage demands (because of England’s standard lucre). In fairness, I think Rangers also have to deal with the same narrative in regards to whatever English-based troglodyte they’re coveting. But Rhodes’ appearances and productivity absolutely nose-dived, and you start getting Celtic chatter about “reviving his career in Scotland” and…fuck man, it’s really hard to mire yourself in following the SPL. He’s also done fuck-all for the Scottish National Team (which he qualifies for on some super-tenuous technicality about living there for a few years as a kid, despite being English as fuck). Rhodes is done—even after going back to Sheffield Wednesday when his loan is over. They’ll probably be looking to unload him, and I really do not want to hear anymore shit about bringing him to Celtic. [Paul]

#24: NELSON OLIVIERA – The second half of the season is when the Canaries really started firing on all cylinders, surpassing Leeds United as the top club in the SkyBet Championship. (I have refrained from using the sponsor title but I didn't feel like typing the long thing out that time just now, which caused me to then type this out, which means ultimately I fucking lost, again, because of succumbing to capitalism.) That second half of the season, Oliviera was seen as surplus, and loaned out to fellow Football Championship (ha!) club Reading. There was talk of a permanent transfer now, but it hasn't happened yet. If he was surplus at second level, he's definitely gonna be football detritus at the top level. [Raven]

#25: DENNIS SRBENY – Yet another German. How does Brexit prejudice apply to Germans? I guess that question assumes one thinks of Germans as blonde-haired fair-skinned Germans, not the diverse reality of German citizenship in 2019. It’s weird how enculturated all these fucked up things are in our heads. Is that just an American thing? Obviously not with Brexit and Marie Le Pen and even the Brazilian dude and Filipino dude and fuck man what a time to be alive. (Any time is what a time to be alive though, tbh.) In conclusion, YET ANOTHER GERMAN. (See y’all on the 15th!) [Raven]

[2k=0] Middle Generation Syndrome

I'm tired of the last election being re-elected every damn day inside the cyberwebs. Tired of having two tired ass choices from the Baby Boomer era beaming commercial propaganda at me from all sides trying to convince me to keep throwing good votes after bad at a lesser-of-two-evils process of progress. The lesser-of-two-evils has gotten us nowhere noticeable in my lifetime, and instead of having true rainbow coalition (original Fred Hampton flavor) of choices, we get the binary light switch – back and forth, off and on, like a sugar-upped 5-year-old flicking the goddamn lights at bedtime. That’s not progress; that’s some bullshit.

Mostly though I get tired of Baby Boomer generation controlling so many of the official corporate narratives (of which have become super entrenched in my lifetime – from both binary sides of the political spectrum, as Reagan on has been somewhat of a tumorous explosion of corporate powers starting to fill all the gaps and cracks in the settling foundation of our constitutional republic). They act like two arguing white ass rich as fuck 60-somethings is somehow a BOLD AND IMPORTANT CHOICE BETWEEN TWO SUPER DIFFERENT same things (or at least not different enough for me to see from too far down the socio-economic and psycho-social ladders). But really, this is not about a same thing argument, because that’s been argued incessantly the past six months, and I don’t need comfortable white people blowing up my @s with how my lack of giving a fuck was the sword of Damocles with which Donald Jose Trump is going to decapitate the Statue of Liberty with and destroy freedom for everybody from marginalized communities (who never really had that type of freedom to begin with).

What bothers me is how that generation feels entitled to my support, from both sides of their limited spectrum (two), and that for me to want anything else is out of line. I should clarify I’m a 40-something, thus in the bullshit cultural context of labelling generations, I am Gen-X, not Baby Boomer, and have always felt very much like the younger sibling to that generation, who will not fucking give up anything they have, at all. They’ve held the wealth (we are the first American generation as Gen-X to have less than the one before us), they’ve held the power, and they’ve involved us as little as possible. We were too immature, or not focused enough on traditional shit. We got too many shitty tattoos that ruined our ability to get a real job. We loved too much dumb shit like cartoons and video games because they, as our older sibling (parents) left us to raise ourselves in front of the cable TV box and Nintendo machine (with old TV Guides holding the cartridge in place) while they went out and accumulated all the fucking wealth in the newly globalized world. We could manage their webpages and shit like that, and they gave us a big enough cubicle we could set up some action figures, but we never got access to the big table behind closed doors. Our bigger sibling was taking the family business (if you consider United States a family, which I guess it might be, just a fucked up dysfunctional one where there’s a lot of hatred), and we were going to be given a token role.

As we went to escape from this through cultural consumption, all of that reflected back (in the traditional formats) on them though – the music they made, the books they wrote, the movies they made. They were so fucking brilliant. Our music wasn’t even music, our books not even real literature. We weren’t doing it right, which is why we weren’t at the big table behind closed doors. Greedy fuckers. But they’d talk about that little bit of time when they were protesting to make shit right in our aforementioned fucked-up dysfunctional family, how they took to the streets in the ‘60s, and all that accomplished. Self-important fuckers, owning everything, and looking down on us.

Being the younger sibling was rough enough, but then a third sibling came along, younger than us, cornily titled (because we need corny titles for generations apparently) the Millennial generation. They grew up in the second wave of games and devices and doodads behind us, and whereas we had to fucking complain forever to get a Sega Genesis (being told the Nintendo worked just fine, just stuff the TV Guide into it), they got like 19 different things to play with. And I ain’t really mad at them, because if we could’ve gotten 19 different things, we would’ve took it too. Plus the younger sibling is way more chill. The thing I don’t like though is how all you hear about is them. Older sibling ain’t giving up no loot, no jobs, no wealth, and the younger sibling got nothing. “Millennials deserve something too!” And they start complaining in strange fractured ways through digital mediums that’s hard to understand, but is also kinda our fault, because we used to show them all this shit at a way too young age maybe. I don’t know. But as our older sibling starts to look so tired and binary and full of shit, the family conversation skips us completely, and jumps to younger Millennial sibling – what they’re gonna do, and how they have to work with the older sibling to fix things, or just take over roles from the older sibling completely, and make necessary changes to ensure the family business (of pretending to be free) stays open for another couple generations. Older sibling’s like “we gotta find a good job for youngest sibling, make them a part of this thing!” because they’re sitting around, getting gas money from part-time gigs, but yo, we ain’t really got shit ourselves. They done forgot about us over here in our dank ass cubicles, thinking we happy because we got a Junkyard Dog figure off ebay standing up. Them old motherfuckers got vacations to St. Lucia and spend three weeks every summer at the beach, and think we’re good because we got a goddamned JYD figure, and go camping one week a year (because that’s all we can afford).

Younger sibling has taken the binary problem of older sibling, and blurred the fuck out of it, to where they got a buffet of genders and no real hardcore positive regard for those old racial structures. And to be honest, I don’t really mind it – it makes more sense than what older sibling still tries to enforce through their cultural control, but also it feels overboard at times, like they’re just trying to piss people off, and do wild shit to make the family uncomfortable. It doesn’t really bother us, but it gets tiring when the two of them is arguing about shit, and we’re just sitting there, mostly unheard but not really trying to speak that much at this point anyways. Ain’t nobody listening.

Meanwhile, over the Labor Day cookout, older sibling was explaining how instead of putting new variety of lights in the old home place, we should just keep the same old off-on binary switch and just put in energy saver bulbs. They were asking us which we liked better – the steak (Trump) or chicken (Clinton) without even noticing we didn’t get any of either, opting for cole slaw, potato salad, and kimchi (all of which we brought) and fat cup of homemade chai from younger sibling. Older sibling has inherited control of the old family home place as the eldest, and isn’t too keen on involving the rest of us, other than suggesting what we should do and letting us do it so long as we agree with them.

Younger sibling doesn’t really give a fuck to keep the home place in any traditional order. When older sibling’s around, they act like they’ll help keep it up, but when it’s just us, they’re like “lol I’m just gonna live here until the place falls apart. I don’t have any money to fix it up, so if it falls back into the Earth, fuck it, I’m just gonna go live on the couch at my friend’s house.”

I smile when they say that, because that’s exactly what we did, for like three years. But we got roped into the family business with promises of growing into a bigger role, which never came. Older sibling got us geeked on the way it’s always worked, so now we got a mortgage with about 30% more owed on it than the bank value, so we ain’t moving nowhere, and we can’t afford to even quit unless we want to disappear. Can’t even do that because we got our own kids now, younger than Millennial sibling, and fuck, some nights I lay awake stressing on how chaotic this world and the family business falling apart must feel to them. Not to mention they living in the constant glow of the tiny screen/mirror, to where they’ve got an altered view of themselves. So we – as middle child – try to hold it together, try to keep holding course, and hope it all works out, and we can provide for our own kids. Make the shitty drive to work every day in my late model minivan with one wobbly wheel (always the right front), maxed out on all devil spreadsheets which older sibling told me years ago would naturally start turning from red to green by now if I did everything like it had always been done. Motherfucker’s more red than ever, with no green in sight. So I smile, because even though I feel like my younger sibling gets all the attention, they’re right – fuck it. I hope they do go live on their friend’s couch, and never get roped into sitting in one of these stupid fucking cubicles, looking at their Junkyard Dog figure, thinking that yes indeed, life thumped the spirit out of you.

Anyways, being the middle generational child sucks. Older sibling gets all the shine, and is running shit at the family business. Younger sibling got all the toys, and doesn’t even give a fuck about the family business. Kinda wish I had the power of the eldest, or at least some of it, but at the same time I don’t really want it because it’s pretty obvious what a hypocrite my Baby Boomer elder sibling is. Kinda wish I had stayed crashing on couches and abandoned any hope of assimilation into the family business (of still pretending to be free) like it looks like my younger Millennial sibling seems bent on doing. And at the same time, I can just see it play out now – where older sibling just hands the whole fucking thing over to younger sibling, and I’ll still be sitting here in the corner, overlooked, fiddling around, pretending to care while really not caring at all. It feels like I’ve wasted my life, and by whatever financial metrics one might use (applying more of those devil spreadsheets logic), I likely have wasted it mostly. Sadly, it also feels from basic quality of life heart check-ins that I likely wasted it far worse than I’d like to admit. There’s been no pay-off, no three weeks every summer at the beach, and no hope for retirement. But I’m supposed to be thankful because unlike my younger sibling, at least I have a job, one that I can’t ever quit, and won’t ever be promoted from.

Kinda wish my younger sibling would just burn the house down, absolving us all of any responsibility for maintaining the pretending to be free charade, and I can just wander off into the mountains. Honestly, I’d probably help them if they asked, and likely it would work out better because they’re always the best about planning things like that out, what with self-snitching every waking thought through digitalia. But I’m not gonna bring it up either, because they don’t give a fuck what I think. Nobody does. So I just sit here, miserable and depressed and hopeless, but pretending everything’s going to turn out okay. 

May the Two

I struggle with the locale I live at, feeling the allegedly artistic and intelligent and creative are deficient in those qualities yet abundant of confidence that what they do is important. The problem with this is I struggle with those feelings as well. It's hard not to wish you were recognized for your talents more, especially when you literally struggle to maintain status quo in your financial life and are pretty much doing the slowly sinking tread water thing that pretty much everybody is doing from $13K a year up to $87K a year. It's our culture; that's what's been built, and what holds us in place.

Also with everyone being able to circulate their thoughts/art/creations online to what is potentially an audience of EVERY FUCKING PERSON ON EARTH, you start to feel like there should be some sort of acknowledgement of what you are doing, some affirmation that what you do is worth it not just to you but someone else, and you are having an affect on the world. I know I have been paralyzed by wishing for that at times (not literally paralyzed, but my thoughts are too often attached to the fruits of creative actions as opposed to just doing shit for the sake of doing it). And there are people who are successful with the things they do, meaning they seem to be doing it for their job, and that confuses me as I'm not even sure how you do shit like that. I guess I fall back on my assumption you have to be born with a certain amount of shelter to afford yourselves psychic luxuries like "doing what you love" with your life, but that's only partially true and also partially a cop-out on my part.

One thing my wife and I jibber-jabber about is cutting ties, which has direct visual relation to being attached to the fruits of our actions. For us, it's in relation to bad relationships in our lives, visualizing a rope physically being cut between yourself and that person, to have no attachment to them, which doesn't mean you are like "fuck you" but does mean you are not controlled by their emotional tugs and pulls and nonsense. I am trying to be better about visualizing that with regards to my creative business on this earth. It's my job to blather nonsense constantly, that's what I'm supposed to do. And whether self-publishing or internet posting or haiku tweeting or zine making or traditional publishing or whatever, I have to cut the ties that attach me doing these things to some sort of end acknowledgement by others, whether that mean people wearing a t-shirt of mine or I get paid and pay my monthly bills with words essentially. I have to cut loose of that. In fact, to be honest, we all do. Shifts are happening, and honestly everybody is online right now feeling like they are sharing their special ways with the world, waiting for the world to acknowledge how special they are. Guess what though? We're all special. Everybody has fucking art in their head; whether you let it out or not, it's there. Also guess what though? With the globalization of culture through internet (which is still heavily segregated believe it or not... I know we like to think we see the entire world better now but seriously, any google search has a filter bubble over it, and it's not like if you search "soccer results" they show you shit from the African Champions League) we've all become more homogenized, more like each other. That actually makes it even more important we all let our individual crazy art out of our head, to fight the homogenization of bullshit, because nine times out of ten, when something is homogenized, there's somebody looking to make a dollar at the far end of the homogenization process. All the googles/facebooks/apples are not just kicking it trying to improve humanity; they are trying to improve profit. If they can make you think they are "doing good" and making life better, then you'll buy in.

Essentially that's the problem too - always buying in. I just self-published a book of haiku which actually is a pretty neat fucking collection of haiku. I have sold like 12. I didn't expect to sell more than that, but that gives you an idea of how things translate into reality. And one day when I sold two copies the same day, the book was like in the top 20 of poetry on Amazon's American site. Seriously, with only two copies sold. So no matter how skewed the algorithms are, there's not a lot of actual financial gain involved if I can jump into the top 20 and clear like $5.50 profit. What I'm saying here is the big pay-off is not imminent, no matter how wildly creative and talented and special genius you are. Perhaps you have the financial backing behind you to push yourself hard in the internet paint, and start to turn a nice profit, but having financial backing/promotional support does not directly correlate with artistic genius, ever. In taking a fiction workshop with an author dude who won the National Book Award before this semester, he told me there are two things required to become a successful author - you have to be good, and you have to have the right person notice you are good. That's the way our culture is built.

So here's the thing though... I don't want to support that. I don't want to be made into some asshole who looks like an asshole doing asshole things as a self-proclaimed writer. I just want to make shit. So many ideas and so few hours. Once you unleash the creative inside you, that's how it gets, and that's how it should be. You should be struggling to keep up with your artistic productivity, everybody should. Fuck making money, fuck being recognized, because all that is going to crumble under its own greed like a Bangladeshi garment factory. Creative processes are supposed to help us see the bullshit in our own lives, and to beautify the ugly. That's the whole point of it, from the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel to graffiti on freight trains - it beautifies the ugliness. It doesn't take a genius to want to make something ugly look pretty, so no matter how wildly creative you or I am, we are not unacknowledged geniuses or artists yet to be discovered. We should be taking the pressure and turning it into gold and diamonds and leaving it all around us, fuck whether somebody knows about it or not. It's important to do so, leave it everywhere, hidden in letters to prisoners or lost tweets or left on benches and stapled to telephone poles. Too often in our culture, especially where everybody feels like they are "marketing" to EVERY FUCKING PERSON ON EARTH through the cyberbot machines, we do our thing and see it as gold and diamonds and automatically are like, "Man, I wish I could get paid for all these gold and diamonds I created." But that's not how it works. You leave it in the world, and then some other asshole will come along and mine it and make the money, and then it will be gone and hidden behind locked doors. That's how this culture works. Don't feed that; do your thing and do it fucking everywhere and don't be attached to that meaning this or that should happen and most of all, don't ever give a fuck about what happens after you do it. If you unlock that creative onslaught, let the miners come along and exploit it or the assholes steal it, because as long as you stay in that solid creative space, you'll do it forever. It'll be like breathing or eating, just something that has to happen daily. And if it's happening daily, why the fuck would you be so attached to what you did three months ago? Leave it there. Cut the ropes. Cut the fucking ropes.