belated tslr articles- oct

Flairwatch

By Tom Stewart

Hello fans, a busy month has been had by all down here at flair towers HQ.

I’m sure you’re all as excited as I am about the Gus Bus being on an inevitable path of destruction towards the Championship. Wait, no, not the Championship, the CHAMPIONS LEAGUE!

HOWEVER, i do have several complaints.

As a connoisseur of flair, I would like to remind you all what actually constitutes flair.

-Preferably foreign (Federico Turienzo)
-Possible underachievement of some sort (ie Lee Hendrie)
-Alternative career of interest (Stephen Bywater- Cage fighter/erotic artist)
-Drug/Alcohol/Sex/General Scandal (Roman Bednar)

It is point two that i take issue with. In my mind, Gus just isn’t doing enough to help us underachieve. What’s all this top of the league, playing great football nonsense?! In my mind he has sold out on his flair values and has betrayed flairniacs everywhere.

True flairniacs, or “Original” Flairniacs as they’re known, don’t demand success on the pitch, all they crave is flair players, in white boots, alice bands who underachieve. The flairest team of all time, in my view, is Kevin Keegans 1995-96 Newcastle side. This was a team who paid little to no attention to defence whatsoever. They had the ultimate choice of goalkeeper- Pavel Srnicek or Shaka Hislop. They had Phillipe Albert. They had Peter Beardsley. They had Faustino Asprilla, and of course, They had David Ginola.

However, this team would’ve been nothing in the flair world were it not for the complete capitulation that they managed to pull off. I’m not sure anyone has collapsed in such style. The Toon were 12 points clear at the top of the table, before a dramatic loss of form saw them lose out on the title on the last game of the season. During this time, Keegan completely lost the plot, refusing to strengthen they obviously weak defence and instead splashing out on erratic striker Asprilla.

Not only was this a collapse of epic proportions, it also raised expectation levels on Tyneside to monumental proportions, meaning that no manager has ever been able to match Keegan’s accomplishments. Newcastle do, however, consistently perform in the race for the flair title.

An example of a club selling out on it’s flair ethics is, and this has a link to Gus, Chelsea.

In the late 90’s/early 00’s, Chelsea were a cosmopolitan, swashbuckling flair unit. The likes of Poyet, Gianfranco Zola, Gianluca Vialli, Roberto Di Matteo, Jody Morris, Frank The Beef, Marcel, Ed De Gohjakhkjfaknfanf and of course, Tore Andre Flo lit up Stamford Bridge with a combination of beautiful football and regular defeats to rubbish teams. This was fine, they were cool, they were sexy, they were fabulous. But something went wrong somewhere along the line. Almost overnight Chelsea, under the management of an uber-flair boss, turned into an efficient, well oiled, negative victory machine. Sound familiar? They quickly became the most hated team in the land as they swept aside all before them. My only hope is that the same doesn’t happen to us. I want us to be admired, but in a sympathetic flair way (think Arsenal), not feared and loathed.

Anyway, thank you for reading my words of Wisdom

Your Eternal Leader,
Tom Stewart