I wish Southampton would buy a Japanese player. Sky-Perfect TV would get all excited, send over an army of media and TV crews and, "presto," I would be watching Southampton games every weekend. Christmas would have come early for a frustrated Saints fan who hardly ever gets to see his team play, apart from the odd thrashings dished out by Manchester United and Arsenal when their fixtures coincide.
Many would argue that having to watch the likes of Southampton week in, week out is an activity that one should be paid to do, not have to pay for.
But because Junichi Inamoto signed for Arsenal and Akinori Nishizawa signed for Bolton in the offseason, Sky "far-from-perfect" TV decided to show all their weekend league fixtures. This would not be an entirely absurd decision if these two players were regulars in their respective sides -- yet they haven't even started a league game between them.
This fact was pointed out by our ever-alert soccer columnist, Al "The Bald Truth" Himmer, toward the beginning of the season, but nothing has changed since then.
In fact, it's gotten worse.
A couple of weeks ago we were subjected to first division Portsmouth (Southampton's bitter rival and worst enemy no less) in a meaningless game against Preston North End. Why? Because Japanese goalkeeper Yoshi Kawaguchi was making his debut for Portsmouth . . . on the bench! Couldn't get much more excitement than that for Saturday night entertainment now could you?
I can understand Sky's eagerness to follow the fortunes of their Japanese soccer heroes around the globe, but if they aren't even playing . . . ?? In that case, why not show the Arsenal and Bolton reserve team games live every week.
No disrespect to Mr. Inamoto, Mr. Kawaguchi and Mr. Nishizawa, but one does have to suspect the real motives behind their signings. Arsenal has a big squad, with a strong midfield and an equally competitive strikeforce and while its main rival Manchester United spent the offseason strengthening its squad at a cost of 46 million British pound with the acquisitions of Juan Sebastian Veron and Ruud van Nistelrooy, the Gunners certainly raised a few eyebrows when they "splashed out" 4 million British pound on Inamoto.
Did Arsene Wenger truly believe that Inamoto would be keeping the likes of Patrick Vieira and Robert Pires out of the side?
Being the shrewd businessman that he is, he realized that the money that Inamoto would generate from shirt sales and merchandising would more than cover his transfer fee, in effect rendering his purchase risk-free.
Harry Redknapp, when he was still manager of West Ham United last year, openly confessed to the killing that his club had made on shirt sales over the short-lived signing of Tsuneyasu Miyamoto.
No one is suggesting that Hidetoshi Nakata is a bad player, but at $28 million he wasn't exactly a snip and the price tag certainly raised a few eyebrows in the soccer world.
This begs the question: Are perhaps SkyPerfect and a few English clubs involved in a conspiracy? SkyPerfect pays for an English club to buy a Japanese player, contracts get signed, merchandise gets sold, TV crews get sent over, SkyPerfect gets its money back by announcing an increase in subscription fees and we all end up watching a Japanese star warming the bench.
Try complaining to SkyPerfect and you always get the same answers. While the staff are friendly and sound genuinely sympathetic -- even admitting to having received a large number of complaints -- nothing seems to get done. The problem is that SkyPerfect TV has a monopoly on English Premiership soccer so unless we all give up our weekly ritual of watching Premiership action, there isn't much we can do about it.
What the hell, I think I'll become a Bolton fan!