Rory inspires, but golf is still for a certain kind of person

I am a golf fan, and Rory McIlroy’s win at Augusta National on Sunday meant a lot to me.

Much has been written about the completion of his career grand slam – only the sixth player in history to win each of golf’s four major tournaments – so I will say my bit quickly.

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You may have heard about his 2011 Masters collapse, where as a fresh-faced 22 year-old McIlroy squandered a final-day 4 shot lead in disastrously spectacular fashion. This was the first Masters tournament I remember watching, and every April since I have rooted for one player above all to win at golf’s most enchanting course. Yeah, you guessed it.

Regardless of form, or the strength of his opponents, not once did I – or indeed any fan or pundit – skip Rory when considering who was in with a realistic chance of winning the Masters. That speaks to his genuine talent and consistency across the last 14 years which, despite tour wins and Ryder Cup triumphs, have been a painful waiting game. When will he just win the bloody thing?

That wait ended on Sunday. If you caught his winning putt, you’ll know he fell to his knees in an outpouring of probably every emotion he had experienced since that sad Sunday in 2011. I felt that celebration, as did everyone connected to golf. It was an extremely rare sporting occasion where literally nobody (perhaps excluding the bitter Bryson DeChambeau) was against this. It was a win for the sport as much as it was for Rory himself, a hero exhaustingly fighting a losing battle for unity within the ‘golfing community’ at an ominous time of Saudi infiltration.

And so it showed. That’s if my Instagram feed was anything to go by. Your favourite footballer, BBC newsreader, Hollywood actor, man-of-the-people technocrat were all posting about this historic achievement. For once, golf news reached the mainstream. Even my own 25 year-old friends knew about this!

The least surprising thing ever would be an upsurge of bookings on UK golf courses over this coming Easter week. But for the thousands of young lads and lasses taking to the links, they should be warned that despite the magic you see on TV, the reality of your local golf club is no doubt a grim one.

Outdated values. Stubborn, reactionary leadership. Excessive green fees for non-members. There is definitely truth to the common perception of golf as a boring pastime for the rich, inaccessible for young people, all the worse if you are a woman or person of colour.

Recently I took two friends to a local club, which in addition to its 18 hole course offers a 9-hole par 3 ‘Academy Course’ suitable for beginners and regular players alike. A small level up from a pitch and putt, effectively. Being the only owner of golf clubs, I brought along two short irons, a wedge and the flat stick, plus a plastic bag of balls. This was, at least from my impression of the course, sufficient.

“Well, my friend, it appears you were under the wrong impression!” is what an elderly fellow quipped at me, index finger tapping on his ‘No club sharing’ sign, when I realised each player needed his own bag.

10 minutes and £20 later, we were back with our puny set of beginner clubs in ‘My First Ever Golf Bag’ bags. Chuffed with his protection of the sport’s integrity, the old fart ushered us to the first tee, proud that we looked “ready to play some golf now!” This was probably also a passive aggressive nod to our less-than-traditional golfing attire.

Our nine holes were enjoyable, and I could see playing potential in my two novice friends. They themselves agreed it was one of my better ideas, and that they’d consider doing it again. But the big blot on an otherwise fun, rewarding and mindful activity was a sour combination of the aforementioned jobsworth and our unreasonable financial stake in a sport which, let’s face it, is nowhere near as good as football or cricket.

How can we expect to democratise golf with such snobbish elitism?! That was my main thought driving home along the M56. We were three sporty lads at prime physical age, ready and waiting to treat ourselves to a reckless exhibition of short game. And yet we had to fork out a few hours’ wages for the right to do so. Even if we wanted to regularly wake up early on Saturday to do this, the inexpensive alternatives (Parkrun, tennis, a kickabout in the park) divert us.

Maybe my angry question above is the wrong one to ask. After all, I can see why ‘they’, the Man, like to guard it to themselves. Golf is a game of money. And of course, time is money. So it’s obvious that the overlords of the sport sponsored by Rolex and Citigroup will put measures in place to keep the riff-raff away. Besides, if you let them in they will clog up courses, playing slowly and destructively with balls and divots flying around. Even worse, their rejection of chinos, polo shirts and casual bigotry will really kill the renowned vibes of the clubhouse. Only once they are willing to pay the fees and respect our rules will they truly be welcome.

I of course am fortunate that my dad, like his own, took me to a municipal course with hand-me-down clubs when I was a child. Were it not for that, I’d almost certainly be like my two mates who follow golf from a distance and might ‘give it a go’ from time to time.

Luckily there are others like me who are a) good at golf and b) not an arsehole. But there aren’t many of us playing frequently, let alone chairing AGMs. So the current power structures will remain in place, regardless of what Rory McIlroy – an image of what the sport should be – achieves at the highest level. Sure, he is inspiring to many, but his sport is still only for the few.

You might actually be a fascist

It’s never nice to spend a Monday morning sweating over the fall of democracy. Even worse is having these fears compounded by the first hour of Jeremy Vine’s Radio 2 show.

Vine’s programme has a knack of wedging petty squabble stories between major world events. At quarter past the hour, you’ll hear from a war correspondent on the West Bank. At quarter to, it’s over to a National Trust park cracking down on public urination.

Today, there were examinations – in equal measure – of the rise of the far-right in Germany, and the lack of car parking in the Peak District. Call it a reach, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that there was something sinister linking these two stories.

Here are a couple of direct quotes from the Peak District story:

“Campervans are taking the space that cars could have. Apart from being an eyesore, they’re parking for nothing. I’m not saying all the people in the campervans are bad people, but some of them are chucking rubbish in our fields and using the fields as a toilet.”

“The problem is not just campervans, it is the Instagram and Tiktokers who want to catch the sunrise at Mam Tor without putting in the miles.”

Every caller had their own version of what the problem was, who caused it, and how it should be resolved. With a running theme of resentment, scapegoating and generalisation, it was a small example, albeit a silly one, of how debates of all sizes are settled at the moment.

And so to Germany, where yesterday 1 in 5 voters crossed the box of the far-right Alternative for Germany party.

Or are they far-right? Are 1 in 5 Germans fascist? Is it right to label democratically-elected political parties as neo-nazi? For half an hour on Radio 2, many contributors had a go at answering these questions. I thought: what if the answer to all of them is yes?

These things can all be correct, even if many of these voters were social democrats or conservatives at the last election. Or if they’re just concerned about the future of their town’s industry.

Unpleasant as they may be, there are reasons why respectable citizens feel compelled to vote for the far-right. We have seen the same patterns in practically every democratic state, including the UK.

Rather than drop your jaw and despair at the sight of these election results, it is important to give your specs a wipe and see clearly how it’s so easy for people to ‘become’ fascists.

Sure, 20% of German voters are not neo-nazis – at least in the way the term is usually applied. But as of yesterday, they would in fact like to see a party in government which, given the power to do so, would strip German democracy away and make life intolerable for social & ethnic minorities. Evidence therefore paints a bleak picture. But this isn’t to say fascists cannot revert back to a more moderate worldview. Political views are not set in stone.

The sad truth is that the AfD gained popularity by providing very clear and uncompromising ‘whats’ (depreciating living standards), ‘whos’ (immigrants) and ‘hows’ (leave the EU, send migrants back) concerning the problems Germany faces. These are the same tactics we have seen all over European democracies.

The even sadder truth is that we are all being played, because what fascist leaders really want is for you to be suspicious of as many of your countrymen as possible. Good, if you think Middle Eastern immigrants are terrorists. Great, if you think transgender people become murderers in public toilets. Even better, if you think young people ascending a hill in the Peak District obstruct your ability to park a car.

That last example may seem like a joke, but think for a moment about what is associated with the very flippantly peddled stereotype of Gen-Z entitlement. It implicates school teachers and university professors, ‘woke’ media, the benefits system, workplace safety and anti-discrimination. All these things contribute to the downfall of our society, which the next generation – too ‘woke’ to realise – will no doubt hand over to foreigners for peanuts.

All of this masks the actual underlying causes of our dissatisfying lives. But if you want to cut corners, it is much easier to pin blame on people who in the grand scheme of things are powerless. If I don’t check myself, I could begin a crazy trip down the line of thinking that takes me from ‘Deliveroo riders do not respect the Highway Code’ to ‘my government permits undocumented entrants to serve multinational corporations which undercut British businesses’.

I will finish off by listing some common lies fascists tell. Which – and no judgement by the way – you may have once fallen for.

“People are finally being listened to” – no, people are being thrown unrealistic answers to their questions. Working people of all backgrounds are pissed off with elites because of how unfairly wealth and power is distributed. To protect themselves, elites in politics and business pick scapegoats. It’s not billionaires hoarding wealth and cutting jobs, it’s the Syrian refugees…

“These are legitimate concerns” – no, they are totally overblown concerns. I wonder how many AfD voters have met and spoken with a Middle Eastern immigrant or transgender person recently, if ever. Maybe if they had, they would empathise better with how hard life can actually be for these people. And indeed, how we all share much of the same struggles on a daily basis.

“They can’t be fascists if they respect democratic elections” – no. Besides violent revolution, there is no other way for these parties to gain power than through elections. Once in power, history shows how quickly they dismantle democratic institutions and rebuild them in their image.

In the end, fascism plays out as a top-down system, not just in law and policy, but the diffusion of ideas. The only kind of democratic legitimacy it gets is buy-in from people who are fed up with the status quo and want quick fixes. Scarily, that could be any of us.

Squeaky bum time: Theatre of Dreams out, swanky megabowl in?

Sir Jim Ratcliffe isn’t one to shy away from big projects. That’s why he wants to knock down Old Trafford, the largest stadium in British club football, and build the – even larger – largest stadium in British club football.

It’s an ambition that divides opinion, but one that has to be viewed in the wider context of football finance. The Premier League’s new Profitability and Sustainability Rules (PSR) have thrown the cat among the big-spending pigeons. Suddenly, it’s not quite enough to have a shady oligarch or entire shady country bankroll your squad’s facelift. Revenue is king. Without enough of it, clubs are presented with an unenviable fork in the road: scrimp, or suffer a points deduction.

Old Trafford doesn’t exactly have a problem with matchday revenue – its 75,000 capacity is comfortably the highest in the league – but it’s an old stadium with mounting issues. Its roof is as leaky as United’s defen- oops, that one’s been taken. Rust and wear runs through the brickwork as much as it does the United squad (that’s more like it). Missing out as a host stadium at Euro 2028 to the noisy neighbours’ Etihad stadium underlines the ageing process of the England national team’s second home – used only once since the ‘new’ Wembley opened in 2007.

Convenient then that Ratcliffe recently declared his flagship construction project as the ‘Wembley of the North’. This managed to screw up quite a few mancunian faces, with the Oldham native not quite grasping his supporters’ self-identity in opposition to the wealth-hoarding capital city. Nevertheless, the tagline for a new 90,000 seater seems to have stuck.

The justification given by Britain’s richest man is unsurprisingly about money. It would help to make up ground lost to the league’s recent renovators. Tottenham, Arsenal, West Ham and the aforementioned Man City profit from modern, well-connected, multi-purpose stadia which can host visitors like Lady Gaga and Beyonce – far more glamourous than Burnley and Luton Town. Evidence, such as Tottenham’s 600% increase in new stadium matchday revenue, highlights a trend towards maximising sales by keeping doors open in the hours before and after a game. The new generation of match-going fans have their whole day mapped out. That’s right, red devils, get in there early. It’s wall-to-wall craft beer and banh mi.

It’s not an unrealistic task either. Like rats, you’re never further than 5 meters from a United fan at any moment. So there’s no concern about filling the extra capacity. Nor would it do any harm to regenerate Trafford Park, an area where if I’m not attending a match or a gig at Victoria Warehouse, I must be lost.

But it’s worth considering what could be lost for good if the Theatre of Dreams is bulldozed. The saying “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” is probably frowned upon in architecture, but the truth is that Old Trafford continues to serve its purpose well. A leaky roof isn’t a sign of imminent collapse. Knocking the whole thing down and starting again would come with an immense cost (roughly £1.2 billion) which could otherwise be spent on improving the squad. It’s perhaps coincidence that Arsenal and Tottenham reached the Champions League final the same year their new stadiums were completed. But 2006 and 2019 marked these teams’ peak before a protracted, painstaking transition period. No more marquee signings when you need to pay off the new home.

For all their differences, I’m sure fans of Spurs and Arsenal share the sweet sorrow of latter-day White Hart Lane and Highbury. After years of routine, you take your seat at your club’s Saturday fortress for the final time. It then disappears to be replaced by a swanky mega-bowl. Despite attention to detail and a focus on acoustics, the atmosphere at Spurs felt flat during most games. Thankfully, the library comparisons had already been made with the Emirates. Although I’m now giddy with excitement at my club’s spending power, the humble quirks and mystique of White Hart Lane are still missed. Lord knows how United fans will mourn the Theatre of Dreams.

Even the most fanatical of United supporters may see their fiercest rivals as an example to follow. Like Old Trafford, Anfield is one of the remaining grand cathedrals of football. Over two rounds of redevelopment spanning ten years, its capacity kept pace with the league’s leaders, growing from 45,000 to 61,000. Kopites therefore don’t have to worry about losing what is such a core component of Liverpool’s identity and ethos.

Good for them. But for all its aches and pains, moving home is an inevitability in football as it is in life. Time swallows everything, including the steelworks of your football club’s main stand. Old Trafford’s best days are far behind us, so a new stadium for a new era makes sense – you don’t need a marketing degree to see that. Ratcliffe, in the spirit of ruthless modernisation (and self-congratulation), will choose to build. Fans are understandably sentimental folk but if they had their way, would any of the decaying stadiums of the 20th century be replaced? We’d still be sat in wooden chairs drinking Bovril.

Now, where’s my pint of Neck Oil?

The case for Ivan Toney

It could prove to be Gareth Southgate’s most important decision. It will probably be his least. Either way, he has to make it: Ivan Toney or Ollie Watkins?

Harry Kane is the first name on England’s team sheet, so there’s arguably no need to care about his understudy. Ultimately, it all hinges on the great man’s ankle, for which I can give a concise history. 2016-19: brittle. 2020-2023: fine. March 2024: sore. Sadly for Southgate, a Kane-less international break wasn’t painless. England’s difficulty to convert chances was a reminder of his importance, no, necessity, to winning in Germany this summer. That’s inspiring if you consider the clinical difference he makes, bleak if you consider the drop-off. No surprise then if Southgate wishes never to call on Watkins or Toney to lead the line this summer. But one more twist of an ankle thrusts the chosen understudy onto the biggest stage.

Watkins is the player you’d go for if you were a hiring manager writing a report to justify a selection to your superiors. He has more goals this season than everyone except Erling Haaland. He is the main man for a club competing for a top 4 spot and a European trophy. At the other end of the table, Toney’s return to action hasn’t had the sort of impact envisioned by his adoring Brentford fans – the same fans who admirably ignore their star player’s ambivalence towards the club. In fact, all he’s done since serving an eight month betting ban is score a controversial free kick, fantasise about playing for Real Madrid and befriend Neil Maupay. A redemption arc could inspire a sequel to the National Theatre’s Dear England, but as it stands Ivan Toney is definitely not the archetypal do-gooder that befits the Southgate era. He’s a red flag player, and the last thing Southgate wants to do right now is concern himself with flags again.

On Tuesday all it took was a composed penalty and some slick interchanges for Toney to win me over. Some sucker I must be. This is probably what it’s like supporting Brentford. Such is his charm, I was rooting for him to do well in the same way one would a Westminster outsider on polling day. If an England call-up is like becoming a Cabinet minister, Toney missed out on the classic route of student union, law firm, campaign trail, dispatch box. As a youngster, his parent club Newcastle sent him on the world’s most boring road trip, visiting Barnsley, Shrewsbury, Scunthorpe and Wigan before finally abandoning him at Peterborough. His big moment came when Brentford bought him to replace the upwardly mobile Ollie Watkins – though Toney would argue his actual big moment will come when he’s finally airlifted out of the Gtech Community Stadium to sign for Arsenal.

Like Jamie Vardy and Ian Wright, Ivan Toney belongs to a line of players who were never meant to play for England, but whose grit and character got them there in the end. Even England’s record goal scorer laboured in the Championship for a while, unlikely to ever break into Tottenham’s first team. There’s clearly something about that kind of apprenticeship, away from elite, data-driven systems, which adds an edge to a marksman’s craft on the global stage. It could be that their footballing idiosyncrasies can catch an international opponent off guard. Leonardo Bonucci has never seen such rizz! Mats Hummels, have you ever come across a striker with that much dog in him?

Toney gave an experienced Belgian defence a harder time than Watkins gave a Brazilian defence who’d only just met each other. The signs were that the Brentford man is more adept at hold-up play, liberates Jude Bellingham and Phil Foden, and is generally just a nasty nuisance for defenders. Watkins is a fine player, but the devastating efficiency he has shown this year has come at the sharp end of a well-oiled machine under the instruction of a meticulous coach. He’s too polished for the more primal arena of international football.

England’s group contains three unfashionable but workmanlike teams. To progress, Southgate’s boys will need to break them down and win ‘the hard way’. Kane cannot be replicated, but his back-up must be a distinctive and complementary alternative. When there’s no space to run into behind Serbia’s low block, Watkins is ineffective.

Give them Toney instead. He’ll wind up Nikola Melenkovic into conceding a penalty, or cushion the perfect header into Kane’s path, or show no regard for the referee’s vanishing spray. It’s all about those marginal gains, which Southgate should really make a habit of caring about if this summer is partly an audition for his potential post-Euros day job.

Breaking: worker backs 4-day week

Just as a turkey would campaign ceaselessly against Christmas, I am a full-time employee who supports a four-day working week.

Admittedly, this is not my most original opinion. It is out of self-interest and, some might say, it’s the sign of someone who wants an easier ride in life. But there is more to this, a genuine belief in the four-day week’s tangible benefits, not just to the individual but to the collective.

Today I treated myself to a random day of annual leave. Officially, I ran a half-marathon yesterday so I knew I’d be sore and in need of some rest. Unofficially, yesterday was also St Patrick’s Day so I knew I’d be sore and in need of some rest.

I get 24 days of annual leave plus bank holidays. Of these 24, almost all are used for trips away, except today, which was spent mainly at home, and even more spectacularly, at the same table from which I usually work. It’s giving mundane, but in spite of this, I have had literally the most slay day, like ever. How very Gen Z of me.

I woke up at 9:15am, the sweet spot between the early bird and the dosser. I ate a cooked breakfast which covered most food groups. I completed some life admin so that by lunch (also cooked and covering most food groups) I had cleared my inbox, read some articles I’d missed over the weekend, and redeemed a gift voucher I received at Christmas. I punctuated my day with a sunny stroll with my girlfriend (see cover photo) then got my head down with some homework for an evening class. In relation to my normal Monday I had slept better, eaten better, been more active and felt more relaxed. A splendid day of leisure, albeit built on the foundations of my colleagues’ toil.

As is my right, after all. I think I, and a lot of us, hold a false and unhealthy view that there needs to be a valid reason for taking leave, otherwise it’s a total waste. What I found today was that a non-working weekday is actually a gamechanger. I’ve stocked up on so many endorphins that whatever happens between Tuesday and Friday, I should be well-equipped to bat it all away. I won’t exactly be skipping into the office tomorrow, but I’ll definitely have enough spring in my step if I wanted to.

‘Why can’t every Monday be like this?’ was the question on ~~everyone’s~~ my lips today. The extra time to think about non-work things led me to think about work things – crucially – as part of the bigger picture. Wouldn’t a four-day week be amazing for everyone?

I’m being serious, here. Coincidentally, one of the articles I caught up on today reported that 20,000 Brits are off work every month due to poor mental health. This was shocking but unsurprising given how many people I know with this experience – myself included.

Work-related stress tends to snowball into effect. Your team is understaffed so there’s a work overload, then a lack of control, then overwhelm, then burnout. That lack of control hits hard because you lose touch with your non-work responsibilities. The house is a mess, you haven’t called your mum in two weeks and your gym membership is obsolete. Consequently, your life is crap even when you’re not at work. I don’t think a four-day week would eradicate this entirely, but it would absolutely arrest the slide by giving workers a bit of their lives back.

Part of the issue with making this happen is that, actually, a lot of people don’t want it. Or, they think it’s unfeasible. These people are like turkeys who accept Christmas for its wider economic importance – the realists who revel in pointing out that we don’t live in an ideal world. Jeremy Corbyn was hilariously shut down by voters who viewed four additional bank holidays as pie-in-the-sky politics. Turkey pie, presumably.

It’s also disheartening to see something as important as work-life balance become yet another culture war, woke-liberal-nonsense, Gen Z-insanity-klaxon issue. There may be a grain of truth in my generation’s workshy tendencies, but contrary to popular belief we don’t spend all of our free time on Tiktok – I only averaged 2 hours a day last week! Seriously, I think us youngsters are rightly concerned about worsening working conditions. Ask yourself: how many people do you know that have taken mental health leave? Are they all skivers? Are they all out to compromise the economic output of the United Kingdom?

I don’t think so. And even if you don’t think so either, you may still maintain that the four-day week would grind the economy to a halt. Thankfully, trials and research are underway to get to the bottom of this four-day lark and effectively prove you wrong. Early results show most companies stick with four days, reaping the benefits of an energised workforce. Feedback from participating firms – not yet bankrupt – calms nerves about productivity levels.

As Roosevelt said, the only thing we have to fear is fear itself. In that spirit, fear not what life would look like if you took next Wednesday off. Dream instead of what you could do with it. An overdue trip to the waste and recycling centre. A few lengths at the local swimming baths. Why not bake a turkey pie for afterwards? It will barely cost the the country a penny, but you will be all the richer for dedicating some time for yourself.

Ten Hag needs a guiding principle. Is youth the answer?

Are Manchester United sleeping giants or just taking a power nap?

For now, times are tough at Old Trafford. We have here a colossal football club with barely a faint hope of a top 4 finish this season. They’re coached by a perennially stressed Erik ten Hag, who promised riches but is living hand-to-mouth, picking up just about enough wins to avoid the sack. Under new (minority) ownership, the road ahead – be that straight and smooth or winding and bumpy – is still unclear.

There’s been barely anything positive to say about the Red Devils since Sir Alex Ferguson stepped down from his throne in 2013. There have been cup triumphs and memorable victories, but the harmonious feeling of ‘we’re on the right track’ has been seldom felt for a solid decade.

That was until a United XI of a very youthful complexion turned in the club’s most convincing performance of the season in a 3-0 win against West Ham last Sunday. There came a moment, on an advertising board for a tyre company, where the wheels on a new United era got turning.

With the +3 in the bag, Ten Hag could sleep easily knowing his job status was intact for at least another week. But uninterrupted sleep wasn’t the only rare treat from the weekend. Finally, ‘hope’ was a word being bandied about the red side of Manchester. We can’t tell if this newfound optimism is naive. But it has a clear source: the joys of youth. Which, if Erik had any sense, will shape the second half of his team’s season.

So far, Erik the Red has been a different man compared to Erik of Amsterdam. The latter led Ajax to within a Lucas Moura’s hair’s breadth of the Champions League final in 2019, and lifted three consecutive Eredivise titles. The former, in year two at United, is more closed-off, exasperated and seemingly overwhelmed by all the plates he has to spin as the manager of England’s biggest football club.

There is mitigation, of course. He has had more than his fair share of man-management to do, ranging from the disquiet of Jadon Sancho to the serious legal cases involving Mason Greenwood and Anthony. His employers are the Glazer family, the target of an infinite number of rants from club legend Gary Neville (all of which are accurate). The club’s player recruitment strategy, if they even have one, has prioritised overspending on ill-fitting players. Ten Hag is a disciple of Cryuff, Van Gaal and Guardiola, but even he can’t magic up solutions to these problems. Yet it’s exactly because of his managerial pedigree that the team’s failings on the pitch have raised my eyebrows.

Ten Hag, the timid new hire, stunted his own progress last season by falsely believing that he will be judged more by his mistakes than by his initiative. The precedent was set after his team were embarrassed 4-0 by Brentford in Ten Hag’s second game in charge. Their next fixture was not quite a must-not-lose but definitely a must-not-be-thrashed versus Liverpool. Damage limitation was the order of the day, and a resolute United nicked a win against their rivals. As a one-off exercise in pragmatism this is fine. But it set the tone for the Ten Hag administration.

When United held an attacking Tottenham outfit to a 2-2 draw at Old Trafford last month, I saw nothing that pertained to a clear game plan from the home side. That is, nothing beyond praying Spurs’ high defensive line would create space for their pacey forwards to capitalise. Tottenham dominated possession but lacked bite in the absence of key attacking players. In the end, the scoreline flattered an uncreative United saved by clinical finishing from Marcus Rashford and Rasmus Hojlund.

Once an agenda-setter, Ten Hag now sets up his team purely to thwart the strengths or target the weaknesses of his opponent. That just can’t run in an Enlightenment era of football where clubs have a wealth of information and technology to drive a chosen philosophy. I’m not saying every coach has to be an ideologue – even Pep Guardiola displays ruthless pragmatism – but the most successful teams build from their own idea of how to play. Impose your vision first, then adapt it to your opponent. Even Luton Town have a distinct way of playing. It’s aerial and industrious, but it works for them.

Ten Hag’s approach this season has done both himself and his players a massive disservice. This was evidenced on Sunday when United finally took the handbrake off. Playing their natural game on the front foot, I saw things in a new light. You take a team of internationals, inject some confidence and belief, give them a framework of sound tactics, and suddenly the sum of its parts equates to its output. Makes sense, right? Even more exciting if your name is Erik and you want to be employed for another few years was that United had three fearless headline acts under the age of 21.

They say there’s beauty in the struggle. It might be the case that 2023/24 is a season of underachievement, but it may also be regarded by the football historians as a turning point for Manchester United. The season a new generation of talent found its feet. That is, after all, the main thing Ten Hag has going for him on the pitch. It runs deeper too. United’s under 18s are currently unbeatable, so there could soon be more youngsters joining Alejandro Garnacho and Kobbie Mainoo in the first team.

If Ten Hag previously lacked a guiding principle then he’s now got one staring him right in the face. He just needs to harness it. There are numerous reasons why he should champion the power of youth, too. The first reason, which glares down at him most matchdays, is Sir Alex. There’s no better example of a manager who stumbled around during the first few years of his tenure waiting for success. Then came the golden generation of all golden generations, the Class of ’92, which paved the way for a footballing dynasty.

There are other fine examples. Despite an FA Cup win, the jury was out on Mikel Arteta for at least the first two years of his time as Arsenal boss. ‘Lockdown Arsenal’ is something of an internet meme (though Arsenal Fan TV is largely culpable). But the light at the end of this tunnel was defined by the sprouting of young talent, in particular Bukayo Saka and Gabriel Martinelli.

Who could forget the pinnacle of Premier League youthfulness? That is, of course, the Aston Villa teams of 2012-14, who are statistically the team with the youngest average age in PL history. A 15th place finish in 2013 doesn’t jump out as success now, but Match of the Day’s Alan Hansen – notorious for his views on young teams – called for Paul Lambert to win the Manager of the Season award on account of the refreshing transformation of Villa under his stewardship.

My point is, even if you can’t win anything with kids, as a manager you sure can buy yourself some time. Fans are hardwired to back academy products as ‘one of their own’. Errors are easily forgiven, and outstanding performances are etched into a club’s history (see: Federico Macheda). It really is as simple as concluding: everyone’s happy to see a young lad playing well.

The second thing, which may be of greater interest to our Erik, is that investing in young players often produces results. It’s not an exact science, but fledgling footballers tend to play with more freedom. They’re keen to impress, have not yet been conditioned into playing a certain way, and usually don’t have to justify a heavy transfer fee or an international call-up.

Then there’s the financial side of things. Buying young and cheap is a win-win method. If a prospect makes the grade, you’ve avoided spending millions on an established player. Otherwise, he can be sold on for a profit. The wisdom of such a recruitment strategy will drive new investor Sir Jim Ratcliffe’s planned overhaul of the club. In fact, it’s in vogue at most big clubs. Chelsea and Manchester City have seemingly produced half the professional footballers in the world. Tottenham recently beat Barcelona to the signature of talented young Swede Lucas Bergvall. Whether or not he makes an appearance for the club, it’s safe to assume Spurs will make money from this.

I anticipate the ‘this is all well and good, but’ counter-argument from Man United fans. The fact is, a super-club like United can’t afford a protracted transition phase, crossing their fingers for Hojlund and co while the blue side of Manchester has all the fun.

The three-time Champions League winners have failed to qualify for said competition five times over the last decade. That’s five times too many. It’ll soon be six unless they muster a faultless run to the end of the season. Ultimately, few onlookers expect any success for United this season. But that doesn’t rule out the potential for productivity.

Erik Ten Hag has often appeared lost. Last week, while his young stars shone on the pitch, his North Star flickered ahead of him. Don’t worry United fans, there is a way forward. The future has already arrived.

They took You’ve Been Framed from me. They can’t take the Six Nations.

The future of the Six Nations is uncertain. That is, if you’re a UK television viewer.

There’s been some back and forth recently with regards to who should broadcast the cherished rugby tournament. The Six Nations has always been on free-to-view channels (either BBC or ITV), but is not among a group of ‘crown jewel’ sporting events like the Olympics or Wimbledon which are locked into public broadcasting. Back in November, the government refused to upgrade the Six Nations to this category, in turn raising the possibility of it being snapped up by a private broadcaster when the current rights deal is up in 2025.

Who’s happy or sad about this? Who feels anything at all?

I certainly didn’t feel much until the Welsh Rugby Union expressed its fear that upgrading the Six Nations to a ‘crown jewels’ free-to-air TV event would spell disaster for Welsh Rugby.

‘Short-sighted’, ‘illogical’ and ‘pathetic’ were all words that sprung to mind when I read this. I suddenly felt enraged, despite having little reason to be. I’m no rugby fanatic. In fact, I’m probably a rugby fan’s worst nightmare. I care much more about the future of football and cricket, even (or indeed, especially) if that comes at the expense of a sport watched by Top Gear fans and played by Saltburn extras. In international rugby, my support is divided between England and Ireland. This would irk anyone. It even irks me a little.

I suppose what’s really annoyed me about the Welsh RFU’s position is this: it takes for granted how a tournament riddled with design flaws sustains Welsh rugby more than anything else.

When you break it down to its fundamentals, the Six Nations is actually quite shit. Besides the Ryder Cup in golf, the Six Nations’ format doesn’t really have an equivalent in any other major sport. That’s rarely a good sign, given that sporting events are market products – the best ones are often replicated. Football had a Home Nations Championship that was discontinued in 1984 due to hooliganism. The Davis Cup in tennis started as the United States versus the British Isles, but is now more of a de facto world cup.

So here’s how my cynical eyes view the darling of rugby tournaments. Every year, six teams – none of which can claim to be the best in the world – compete in a round-robin league. You can tell who will win the whole thing by the halfway point. The same goes for the recipient of the ‘Wooden Spoon’ (clue: it’s Italy. In 18 of the 24 editions of the Six Nations, Italy have come last). The matches – not quite weekly, not quite biweekly – diminish in significance and excitement with each round. But for two rare outcomes: an Irish Grand Slam on St. Patrick’s Day, or a rare final showdown between two contenders, the victors tend to enjoy a leisurely coronation. It’s even better if their last game’s against Italy; the two can just scrap the pointless trouncing and skip to the trophy ceremony. Can I be more petty? You could argue it messes with the weekend TV schedule…

Of course I don’t mean all of that sincerely. Even I am feeling a buzz of excitement ahead of the tournament’s curtain raiser on Friday 2nd Feb when Ireland and France – the top two teams in 2023 – lock horns once again.

The first day of the tournament is like Christmas for any fan of the ol’ ruggers, all the more so for how the Six Nations finds definition in tradition. Cold winter weekends. Pints of Guinness. Crowds bursting with colour. Flags and face paint. Singing the national anthem without it feeling racist.

The Six Nations is actually how an international sports tournament should look and feel in many respects. The French and Irish fans won’t be segregated within the confines of the Stade de France, nor will any set of supporters over the 15 matches of the competition. They don’t need to be, which might not compute with football fans who are so used to V-signing over a line of stewards. Many team sports have rivalry at their core, yet rugby’s version is arguably the most respectful without losing its edge. Why shouldn’t other sports follow suit?

Then there’s the cups within a cup. Calcutta, Millennium, Centenary Quaich, the Giuseppe Garibaldi Trophy. This Russian doll effect means that there is more at stake than just the league table. Scotland will host England at Murrayfield this year hoping to retain the Calcutta Cup for the fourth year on the trot. Their previous four before those took eighteen years to get. It’s always a captivating grudge match, regardless of either team’s fortunes in the wider context of the competition.

The charm of the Six Nations hits me from a distance. I’ve never attended a match. I don’t make plans around it. My admiration for it is therefore only possible through the medium of free-to-air TV. As a kid, I watched it because it was on before You’ve Been Framed. Then it was on at whichever pub – they didn’t need a licence to show it. Now, if I am free on the first Friday of February then, well, I guess I’ll stop by a television for a bit to watch the rugby.

Move it over to a private broadcaster or, worse still, one of the many streaming services in our lives, and the Six Nations becomes to me what The French Open is, or Serie A, or Keeping Up with the Kardashians. I’ve already had to rely on the charitable donation of a TNT login to watch England’s Test tour of India. Not everyone can justify paying for Sky Sports either. Ultimately, I wouldn’t have the money or the desire to keep watching the Six Nations if it left free-to-air. For thousands of other undevoted followers, rugby would effectively be kicked into touch.

So let’s circle back to the Welsh RFU. It’s easy to sympathise with their predicament. They’re broke. And in recent years, Wales has fallen behind their home nation rivals in pretty much all aspects. There’s little cohesion within their domestic structure, attendances at Welsh clubs are low, and player development lacks the organised effort generated by the larger private education systems in England, Scotland and Ireland.

It sucks, because the Welsh are ultra passionate about rugby. But passion doesn’t necessarily generate investment, whereas TV rights deals definitely do. With survival in mind, the Welsh RFU wouldn’t turn down a round-table with the top brass at Sky, Eurosport or TNT. The danger in following short-term windfall though is cutting off the next generation of rugby fans and players. There is no doubt that English cricket has suffered from putting the Ashes behind a paywall. Nor would I receive so many odd looks from my friends if I spent three days watching the Ryder Cup on the BBC instead of Sky Sports.

The Welsh Union might point to a more favourable example: Formula 1, which has exploded on the global scale and continues to attract large UK audiences despite it moving from the BBC to Sky Sports (note: you can still view F1 on Channel 4 in highlights form).

Formula 1 can entice new audiences by virtue of it being, for want of a better phrase, a sport for nerds. There’s a large, rich, slice of the pie for those interested in engineering and mathematics. That’s half of the sport’s narrative, and it compliments the more stylistic appeal of F1 which Netflix cameras can capture: the brands, the drivers’ personalities, the circuits.

Rugby deals more in intangibles. Ask ten rugby fans what pulls them into the sport, and at least nine will cite some sort of emotional attachment. There may also be one anomaly, rambling about an effective kicking game or some other tactical component. But in the end, rugby cultivates its swathes of followers through sadomasochism. Through the blood, sweat and tears of a bruising victory. That sort of emotion has to be learnt from a young age. Introduce rugby to a fully-formed adult and they’d run off in fear.

The best way to ensure the long-term survival of rugby is to keep it as accessible as possible. Keeping the Six Nations on free-to-view, or even enshrining it like the FA Cup final or Wimbledon does just this. Flogging the sport’s second biggest tournament to a private broadcaster does the exact opposite. I can see why Wales RFU might want to kick for 3 points. But as is often the case in rugby, protecting the ball is a better way to win the game.

Crystal Palace: the football club about nothing

The protestations of Crystal Palace fans at the Emirates this weekend felt overdue. But then so do a lot of things at Palace, such is the uneventfulness of their existence. Barely a day goes by where I do think of Crystal Palace. Yet the situation at the club is now heating up to boiling point. The supporters clearly aren’t happy, and it’s worth considering why.

Crystal Palace are, on closer inspection, one of the most fascinating clubs in the Premier League. They are currently busying their way through their tenth consecutive season in the top flight, in the very manner they did for the previous nine. In those ten years, Palace have finished no higher than tenth, and no lower than fifteenth. They’ve never flirted with Europe and have avoided being serious relegation candidates. It’s a record so unremarkable, it’s remarkable.

If the Premier League table was the M1, with every team quickly headed north or south, Palace would be loitering in a service station just outside Leicester. But their occupation of this anonymous lower-middle section of the table has not been as boring or bleak as it suggests.

Think of Andros Townsend at the Etihad, Dwight Gayle crushing scouse dreams, or Alan Pardew’s Wembley boogie. Palace have entertained. In Marc Guéhi, Aaron Wan-Bissaka and – unquestionably – Wilfred Zaha, some of the country’s best young talent has emerged at Selhurst Park. Speaking of, being a spectator there is often a fantastic experience, even when the game itself doesn’t match it. Palace supporters home and away are as passionate and devoted as you’ll get.

Right now, they’re definitely not glad all over. And I can totally see why. If I was a Palace fan, I would be looking around enviously at other Premier League clubs of similar stature who have managed to climb higher. Seagulls aren’t supposed to outfly Eagles, yet the trajectory of rivals Brighton – who not long ago were playing at a small-time athletics track – has been steeper and more inspiring.

‘Wasted potential on and off the pitch. Weak decisions taking us backwards’ is what the banners read on Saturday.

This definitely rings true. Crystal Palace are the league’s resident make-doers. Their life cycle goes like this: develop and sell talented young players, reinvest within their means, beat a Big 6 team under the lights at Selhurst, finish between tenth and fifteenth. Repeat.

Contentment with this routine points to a lack of ambition. So in that regard, supporters are right to feel short-changed. Shouldn’t ten years in the top flight merit more than this? We can’t know for sure what the winning fans at the 2013 playoff final expected, but it certainly wasn’t stagnation.

The worry amongst supporters must be in part due to the fine margin between comfortable mid-table finishes and relegation. The precedent set by Southampton exemplifies how Premier League status cannot be taken for granted. Following four top-half finishes and a taste of European football the Saints got complacent and wobbled around the wrong half of the table. Ralph Hasenhüttl steered them away from danger until he could no longer. In 2022/23 he got the sack, and Southampton hit rock bottom.

The truth is that Southampton were a ticking time-bomb for five seasons before their eventual demise. There just happened to be three worse teams in the league. You can make a fair case that Crystal Palace have now taken on that mantle. Swap out Hasenhüttl, and it’s Roy Hodgson as the competent but limited caretaker.

Roy spoke diplomatically after Saturday’s embarrassing defeat. If he’s sacked anytime soon there could be a job for him in the Foreign Office. It’s not like retirement appeals to the veteran coach.

“All I would say is they (the fans) are totally entitled to their opinion. I do understand their frustration, even anger and disappointment that things haven’t got better… If we are going to go forward and avoid relegation and do well, we need these fans with us. Hopefully we can keep them on board and the best way to do that is by winning football matches and playing better than today.”

It wouldn’t surprise me if it was another manager who carried out the tasks Hodgson outlines. The unemployed Graham Potter, responsible for Brighton’s aforementioned rise, was in attendance at the Emirates.

But to give Hodgson his due, there is an alternative way of viewing Palace’s situation.

The Premier League is a beast. It will happily chew up and spit out any team that takes a couple of missteps. In fact, since Palace came up in 2013 twenty clubs have also celebrated promotion. Of those twenty, only ten are in the Premier League this season. So we’re talking about a 50% chance of survival.

Break it down further, and you can deduce three subcategories of promoted club:

Established PL outfits: Newcastle, Brighton, Aston Villa, Wolves, Brentford.
Unsettled PL status: Leicester, Burnley, Bournemouth, Watford, Middlesbrough, Fulham, Leeds, Norwich, West Brom, Sheffield United, Luton, Nottingham Forest.
Not seeing them in the PL anytime soon: QPR, Huddersfield.

Where do Palace fit? Based on the evidence it has to be the ‘established’ section. But their PL status appears more precarious than the other five, perhaps with the exception of Brentford.

For all the tedium and moans and groans concerning the last ten years, the bottom line is Crystal Palace have fared much better than the promoted clubs who are now jostling for what Palace have: stability.

Should Palace fans not instead reflect on the ten years preceding 2013, rather than the ones following? After all, they so nearly suffered the same fate as clubs like Charlton, Portsmouth and Bolton. If you thought QPR and Huddersfield had it rough, try plotting an escape from League One. Two points kept debt-stricken Palace away from the third division in 2009/10 following a points deduction, and we could so easily have never spoken about them as a Premier League team again for a long, long time.

That lived experience is probably what influences the judgement of chairman Steve Parish and sporting director Dougie Freedman, the latter of whom is a club legend who played and managed at Selhurst Park during their Championship years.

Of course, Crystal Palace could break convention: hand over the keys to John Textor, deploy a ‘Moneyball’ recruitment strategy, go for broke and finally breach Europe. But that project could so easily go down in flames. Parish and Freedman probably see it that way too, and thus battle on knowing they will just about have enough to stave off relegation for another year. This season, it would be the first without the talismanic Wilfried Zaha.

It all comes down to the one thing every football club craves. No, not trophies. Stability. That key word again. Mauricio Pochettino once infuriated Spurs fans and made a meme of himself by likening top-four finishes to trophies. But he had a point. The same notion was more eloquently worded by new Tottenham boss Ange Postecoglou ahead of his first FA Cup match. He effectively said the end goal should not be the silverware itself, but positioning the club to compete for silverware on a regular basis. Palace might still be some way off that, but success is relative.

What does the future hold for them? Palace could be West Ham or Brentford, capitalising on their geographical placement to grow their club and looking up the table rather than over their shoulders. But by the same token, they could be Milwall or Charlton – the forgotten quarters of London football – stuck and frustrated lower down the pyramid.

The enlightened view may be that fans care about how stability is achieved. Villa have been propelled by an elite manager who gets results. Brighton have cracked player recruitment. Newcastle have a bottomless pit of petrostate funds. Whichever way it’s done, all three examples speak to purposeful improvements. A clear line of sight in an upward direction. Were Palace to find their own version, they could finally secure that coveted ninth place finish. Accomplish that, and for the Eagles the sky could be the limit.

Arsenal and the crushing weight of near-success

Time moves way too quickly in football.

On Christmas Day, Arsenal were top of the Premier League having earned a more-than-respectable point at Anfield. ‘Top at Christmas’, a purely symbolic accolade, is nonetheless a firm indicator that a team are title contenders.

Fast forward two weeks from Christmas. Arsenal have lost all three games they have played, scored just once, and are engulfed in a ‘crisis’. A small, forgetful minority of Arsenal fans (presumably the ‘Amnesiac Army’) are calling for Mikel Arteta’s head.

I’m a Tottenham fan, so Arsenal’s long-overdue meeting with cataclysm does, in one sense, fill me with joy. And I could jump on the bandwagon. Yes, definitely sack Arteta! Get rid of Bukayo Saka too, he’s useless!

But I also observe this with intrigue and empathy. Arsenal seem to be suffering a case of ‘near-success syndrome’.

1: what crisis?

At present, the press is rife with criticism of Arsenal, as well as reasons and remedies for their recent failings. ‘We need a killer’, says Ian Wright, essentially describing himself in the 1990s. Arsenal have ‘killed William Saliba’s love for the game’, speculate Sport Bible with just a hint of exaggeration. Even Arteta himself fears his attackers have ‘mental block’.

Reactions like these aren’t unfounded, but they are overblown. Arsenal are obviously having issues in front of goal, but at Christmas, i.e. three games ago, Arsenal had scored 36 PL goals in total – just one fewer than Liverpool and four fewer than Manchester City. They also had the joint-second best goal difference in the league, and had scored 3+ goals on seven occasions in all competitions.

So clearly then, it wasn’t long ago when Arsenal’s supply of goals was healthy, and helped by their defence keeping it tight at the other end of the pitch.

And yet I was led to believe that Arsenal’s forwards couldn’t hit a barn door and that, given the circumstances, paying £100 million for Ivan Toney was ‘sensible’ and ‘the price of success these days’. That’s not to speak disparagingly of Toney, who I would take at Spurs in a heartbeat. But for that money, it would be the kind of short-sighted deal for a player who hasn’t kicked a ball in eight months that invariably backfires.

The situation at Arsenal still feels quite disastrous though, doesn’t it? Even if it probably isn’t.

2: last season was mad close

Perhaps the cause of this malaise is the psychological impact of near-success.

We need to remember how good Arsenal were for so much of 2022/23 before, tragically, ending the season trophy-less.

At Christmas last year, Arsenal had taken 37 points from 14 games. That’s points dropped in just two matches. They were comfortably the league’s best team for eight out of ten months. For the first time since 2013/14, Spurs were beaten home and away by their North London rivals. The 0-2 at our place was one of the biggest NLD non-contests I can remember.

04 March 2023, London – Premier League Football – Arsenal v Bournemouth – Reiss Nelson of Arsenal celebrates their third goal with his team mates – Photo: Jacques Feeney / Offside.

The bottom line is, Arsenal hit terminal velocity and practically every single squad member was playing out of his skin. They were dancing their way to success to the tune of the Saliba chant.

But that success never came. We all know what happened and sadly for the Gooners of this world, it wasn’t even that big a down-turn in results. ‘Bottlers’ is an overused term, and does not apply to Arsenal in 2022/23. It’s nigh-on impossible to win every game, and invincibility is – well, I’ll stop right there.

No one can say Arteta stood still in the summer either. The state of his squad was, on paper at least, stronger in August than it had been in May. The £100 million spent on Declan Rice looked to be (and still could be) the difference between first and second.

But no amount of money can pay off the psychological deficit Arsenal plummeted into last season. I say this because it must be so challenging, even for the hardiest of athletes, to reach what is seemingly your absolute best and still stop short of victory. More so in a collective sport where there are additional parts involved.

3: empathy

Let’s put it this way: I have been conditioned to block out anything close to a positive thought about Arsenal. Yet it was hard not to like their team. Bukayo Saka was England’s best performing player. Martin Odegaard, rejected by Real Madrid, had fulfilled his huge potential which for years looked misplaced. Reiss Nelson scored one of the great last-minute winners against Bournemouth, and my feelings of contempt and dread (it had the air of a title-winning moment) were strangely mixed with admiration. What a goal and what a moment.

I mentioned empathy before, and I did so because Tottenham have experienced similar. In the 2018/19 season, my team looked to have performed every possible footballing miracle to reach the Champions League final. It was such a pinch-yourself scenario – the kind of pie in the sky ambition you never think is actually going to happen.

As brilliant and unexpected that journey was, I look back on it with a bitter sweetness that poses the same question Arsenal currently ponder. How do you better your best?

What followed, after the loss, was the worst kind of comedown: intense and long-lasting. Many of the players who were instrumental during Tottenham’s run to the final were shadows of their former selves. We were, let’s face it, rubbish, and continued to be rubbish for another four years. From the starting XI in the CL final, only Heung-min Son is still at the club. The manager lasted four months. There’s no doubt about the mental toll that the defeat took on the squad and staff, and some former players have attested to this.

4. monkeys and elephants

There are two possible prizes for second place. One is hope, the dream of going one further in the future. The other is an existential crisis, at the core of which is the anxiety that you’re at the ceiling and can go no higher. Arsenal started this season with the former, but risk allowing the latter to take over with this dip in form. There’s a monkey on their back and it needs to be shaken off quickly.

But more important than the monkey in this room is the big, sky-blue elephant: Manchester City.

Last season, Arsenal were the latest in a line of unsuccessful rebels to contest City’s Premier League hegemony, which has stood since Pep Guardiola’s first of five titles came in 2018.

There is a more devastating complexion to City’s dominance than anything Sir Alex Ferguson ever built with his great Manchester United teams. United, even during their two Premier League peaks, traded blows with other clubs – mainly Wenger’s Arsenal and Mourinho’s Chelsea – and were knocked down. Never did United’s power appear absolute. With City, who flaunted five major trophies to their faithful at the end of 2023, it feels different.

You can view Guardiola’s City in one of two ways. There’s the Star Trek version, which is a vision of Man City as a vessel of football discovery, going where no team has gone before, constantly innovating the tactical rules of the game. Full-backs are wingers. Full-backs are midfielders. Full-backs are centre-backs. Centre-backs are midfielders. ‘We cannot replace him’, so Sergio Aguero for some time is not replaced. Then the False 9 becomes the Most 9 you can get, and Erling Haaland subsequently elevates City to an even higher level.

For the more cynical among us, there’s the Star Wars vision. Pep, obviously, is Darth Vader. The Death Star represents the City Football Group, using its endless resources – harvested from an ethical minefield – to mow down the rest of the footballing galaxy. The fact that Guardiola mentored Arteta makes this even more of a compelling analogy – Mikel, I am your father.

Manchester City’s stranglehold of English football is such that it would take something miraculous to dethrone them, which Arsenal so nearly conjured up. But if you shoot for the king, you best not miss.

Arsenal are, right now, hyperconscious that their best chance to do that may have passed. That realisation has tainted what was otherwise an assured first half of the season. How they manage the crisis from here will have a huge bearing on the second half. Use the force, Mikel.

Thanks to Dawn FM, I really like The Weeknd (again)

If Spotify Wrapped was around in 2013, mine would’ve been dominated by The Weeknd. And after a long period of distance from his music, I think he might come close to topping my Wrapped in 2022.

When I say distance, I really mean it. To cut a long story short: he drops a poor album in 2015, I rarely search his name thereafter, grow up, get a job and one day I hear Take My Breath while closing down a restaurant. Suddenly, The Weeknd is back on my radar.

It’s why I gave him another chance and pressed play on his excellent recent project, Dawn FM. But before I wax lyrical about this new Weeknd, let me contextualise my following of him up to now.

My teenage self owed a lot to Abel Tesfaye (his real name). The Weeknd – along with frequent collaborator at the time Drake – was the artist who drew me away from the indie landfill and towards a new world of RnB and rap music.

For a kid like myself, this was a world shrouded in mystery. But rather than frighten and shoo me back to the comfort of guitar music, I gained entry to the cool club at a very young age. Maybe I used a fake ID.

Mystery was something The Weeknd embodied best – and it wasn’t just about why the ‘e’ was missing. It’s hard to imagine now, but he made his first careers steps under a veil of anonymity. His songs were posted on Youtube under the alias “xoxxxoooxo”. Interviews and live footage were at short supply. All fans could go off was this angelic voice, juxtaposed with music of the sombrest order and themes which quite frankly I had absolutely no business familiarising myself with. Admittedly, that’s actually a lot to go off. Especially if we consider…

Trilogy. The compilation album gluing together his first three mixtapes. This was like a sort of Bible to me, only it was full of references to sex and drugs. Not very holy, I know. But I treated it as such, and listened, studied and puzzled over it almost constantly throughout the summer of 2013.

It was perfect, and being 30 songs long, I could re-enter it at any point and notice something new. There are some blisteringly good tracks on it, almost too many to name a select few. I mean, just look at the ones off his first mixtape House of Balloons alone! Each of which is, dare I say, really quite sexy, and two contain slick samples of Beach House and Siouxsie & the Banshees respectively. For a first release, great artistry was on show straight away.

Summer became autumn, and he released his debut studio album Kiss Land, aka one of the most underrated albums of the 2010s (objections not welcome, I am the voice of reason!!!).

In short, I joined the jet stream at the perfect/worst time (depending on if you’re my parent), was swept into the world of The Weeknd and had all the drug jargon to show for it. Almost a decade on and even without a refresher course I can still remember the lyrics to all 40 songs! Where’s my medal?

So why did I take a 180 degree turn? Deep analysis probably isn’t necessary. Beauty Behind the Madness flattered to deceive. To prove my point, try naming as many tracks from it besides The Hills and I Can’t Feel My Face. See?

The Weeknd turned into a mainstream artist whose words and music said and did little for me. As I approached adulthood, what was once cool and hedonistic became actually quite cringe. Lyrics like “I’m a motherfuckin’ starboy” and, even more so, “Girl, I do this often, make that pussy poppin'” simply weren’t landing. So I took off. Goodbye, Abel.

Until now! I feel the need to write about Dawn FM because in the last few weeks I’ve been unable to escape it. It’s stayed on repeat and at the top of my blame list is the album’s unofficial opener Gasoline – far too catchy for me to maintain any sort of variety in my recent music listening. It sets the tone for the first string of songs on the album, which plays like a mini DJ set. It’s 15 minutes that vibrate with energetic, electronic synth-pop. It feels like something from the 80s but it’s got that modern edge that reminds you it’s as fresh as a daisy. You can’t help but dance, and as I train for a half-marathon it’s really helped put some much needed movement back into my stiff hips.

There’s a couple of standout moments in the early stages of the album. It’s hard to describe, generally speaking, how just a few seconds of music can really prick up your ears and send a tingle down your spine. Let’s call it a sweet spot. Here, it can be felt in Sacrifice (the grove on this?!) when at 00:23 Abel breaks up the first verse with ‘My, ooh‘ as a piano momentarily bolsters the already hard-hitting beat. In the aforementioned Gasoline, the transition from verse to hook at 1:24 (“And I love it when you watch me sleep…”) ironically feels like some sort of awakening; the change of pitch and tone having the effect of The Weeknd’s voice coming to life.

The comparatively laid-back but equally catchy Out of Time lowers the pace of the album, all the while allowing The Weeknd to get some stuff off his chest. He exposes his vulnerable side; there’s this girl he loves but lets slip away. The subject matter is nothing new, and I think of Tears in the Rain (the closer on Kiss Land) as a point of reference. But the sentiment feels different now. Whereas a decade ago he’d lament losing a lover before admitting he was only going to go back to his old ways, pour some more lean into his cup and treble his body count, it’s clear now he’s pretty much past all of that.

Is There Someone Else? is further evidence of this: “I don’t want to be a prisoner to who I used to be, I swear I changed my ways for the better“. By his own admission, Abel is ‘sober lite’, having removed hard drugs and heavy drinking from his life. And while I won’t sit here and knock popstars for taking drugs – it seems to come with the territory – we’ve seen how substance abuse can derail careers and it’s good to assume that The Weeknd now has more control over his life. Perhaps this explains why it’s extra satisfying to enjoy his music again.

Here and there, we encounter blemishes on the album. The second half is markedly weaker than the first, and some tracks really struggle to stick in your mind. Less Than Zero, for example, sounds like a sped up version of his billion-time streamed Save Your Tears, which I can say with confidence we’ve all heard plenty of times before. The lowlight for me is Every Angel is Terrifying. You can see what’s he’s doing with it, but the attempt to reinforce the radio motif feels more like the soundtrack to a bad trip.

Overall, Dawn FM is superb. Can we call it a return to form? Not really. If we did, Abel could simply refute the claim by taking his four Grammys and however many millions of dollars, turning around and walking off with a big smug grin on his face.

However, this album feels like something of a turning point. Big hitters from After Hours and older tracks like Wanderlust and A Lonely Night represented an orientation towards an electrified 80s sound which bordered on being gimmicky. It’s only now on Dawn FM where this move feels to have consolidated itself to the extent where it’s unquestionably The Weeknd and unquestionably great. I’m (back) here for it!