The other day I was chatting on twitter to Peter Wood from  Le Grove. He pointed out to me that it didn’t matter that I had proven him wrong because football was about “opinions“.That was the fun of football. Talking about it and having “opinions”.

In fact, he told me I was boring for refusing to preach about things I was not qualified to preach about. Then it hit me. He was right. Well right for a great number of people these days he was right. In the past we had to go down to the pub, get a bit pissed, before we started to talk like experts on subjects that we had at best a basic understanding of. But not now. Now we can get up in the morning, log into twitter or our blogs, and start playing a huge world wide game of fantasy football manager. Like any role play fantasy game, it’s better the more people that join in and play. There is no point us dressing up as Luke Skywalker unless someone is being Darth Vader. You certainly don’t want someone like me telling you its not a real light sabre and you and your pals are mad. Why? Because you are having fun. So people want to play this game. The game where fans with a basic knowledge of football, all chat and pretend that they are experts.

The reality is that most people reading this will be a little upset right now. Why? Because almost everyone thinks they have more than a basic knowledge of football. It never ceases to amaze me how so many people feel their one area of expertise in life is football. People will insist they “know their stuff” because they have watched football for X years. Well, my Mum has watched snooker for 40 years, and I can tell you she is not an expert. When we play a game (in this case fantasy football manager ) we usually like to play with people of a like-mind and similar standard. This mean that idiots will read a blog written by an idiot and agree. What is inconvenient to people playing fantasy manager is logic, reason and facts. They want to believe their thinking is right, and inevitably these three elements make that difficult if not impossible. So they ignore them and claim that it is their opinion and they are entitled to it. And that is true, everyone has the right to be stupid.

Most of us know, or at least know of, @GeoffArsenal . I like him, I like what he says. But most of all I like his default reaction to people playing fantasy manager, he says “but you don’t know that, you are guessing”  Geoff also guesses, but he says when he is guessing, he does not pass it off as fact. Many people don’t like Geoff and I suggest it is because he deals in far too many facts, uses logic and reasons why things cannot be as simple as simpletons think they are. In short, he is not playing their game. Our mate Peter however is great at playing the game. He is happy to jump to conclusions and proffer his speculation as fact at the drop of a hat. Not only does he play the game, but he has set up a playground where others can join in and play. And that, for those that want to play, is a good thing.