Ever get the impression that you just have a little too much interest in a game? That’s how I was feeling as kick-off approached on Monday night for the match between
Liverpool and Aston Villa.
My interest was four-fold, seeing as:
1) I’d bought Aston Villa points at the start of the season (see article below)
2) I’d decided to BUY STEVEN GERRARD GOAL MINUTES AT 26 for this match so was cheering him on.
3) I support one of Liverpool’s title rivals (won’t say who) so was keen to see the Scousers fall to their second defeat of the season.
4) I was involved in a particularly competitive fantasy football competition and this match was crucial.
So not only was my interest excessive in the match, but it was also heavily conflicted, basically coming down to four variables - £££ (long-term), £££ (short-term), pride (long-term) and pride (short-term). It was evident that there was no chance in hell of everything going my way so it was a question of prioritising, compromising and cutting deals with myself in search of a vaguely acceptable end result.
In the battle of the £££s, money in the future is never as useful as money right now, so I would have happily sacrificed a decent result for Villa for a couple of late Gerrard screamers.
What I’ve loosely described as ‘pride’ is more difficult to quantify and mixes poorly with gambling at the best of times. Supporting a club – and I mean really supporting here, living and breathing results and undergoing violent mood swings dependent on the weekend’s events – is a labour of love, but laborious none the less. Winning and losing money off a set of football results can bring similar feelings of joy and despair, though these feel distinctly more hollow than the genuine feelings of fandom – or so I’d always told myself.
Your emotional success in mixing gambling and supporting probably depends on your ability to internally differentiate between the two: while many, myself included, would flatly refuse to bet against their own team in a match, I know of people who do this every week for what they describe as an ‘emotional hedge’. But how much does the cash you win offset the pain of a defeat? And how much money would you have to lose on a bet to entirely knock the shine off a win? I suspect the amount is less than some would care to admit.
Before we get too bogged down in hypothetical questions of emotion, the more eagle-eyed among you will have noticed that the fourth ‘interest’ listed above was fantasy football? Now surely a silly game, which is basically betting but without any material reward, can’t be a serious consideration here? Not as simple. The fantasy football in question is a head-to-head league played among an intensely competitive group of office colleagues. With two defeats out of two so far, another losing week was nearly unthinkable.
As it transpired, I had Liverpool’s left-back Emiliano Insua (pictured above) whereas my adversary was fielding Villa centre-back Curtis Davies. As we were tied on points, in effect it was a straight match-bet between Davies and Insua. With Liverpool playing at home and firm favourites, any home win would be enough to send me through.
So what was I actually cheering for? By this stage, I had absolutely no idea. I resolved to just sit back and let the football come to me. Liverpool started the brightly and Gerrard had a couple of excellent chances in the eighth minute to score. There is a theory that if you’ve bought a player’s goal minutes then you don’t want them to score early on but I’ve never really gone along with this. After all, even an eighth-minute goal is worth a few points and I refuse to believe that it means Gerrard has somehow ‘used up’ his allotted quota of goals for the game. However, seeing as Gerrard missed both times, this never became an issue. Indeed, it was Villa who took the lead through an OG from the hapless Lucas – great news for Villa points, but a disaster for Insua, who lost his valuable clean sheet bonus thanks to the incompetence of his team-mate.
Then, as the first half ebbed towards a close, Villa amazingly scored again – this time through, of all people, Curtis Davies, my fantasy football nemesis. With this week’s contest now almost certain to end in another defeat, I consoled myself in the thought that everything else was going swimmingly: Villa were set to win away at Liverpool, which was wonderful news for their season points. Liverpool in turn were looking precariously poised in the title race, just three games in, which was wonderful news for my football club. And if they were going to launch a comeback, who better to lead it than Steven Gerrard, captain marvel?
Ah yes, about that. Gerrard went close a few times in the second half, but not in the last 20 minutes, when PGM buyers are most handsomely rewarded. This was no-one’s fault but his own: just after Torres had scored to put Liverpool back in the game at 2-1, Gerrard launched into a mad, bad and dangerous tackle inside his own penalty area, upending Nigel Reo-Coker and conceding the penalty that would cost Liverpool the game.
At 3-1 with 15 minutes left, the comeback was officially over. Gerrard and his team-mates meandered through a tepid last 15 minutes, without coming close to scoring. Bad news then for buyers Gerrard goal minutes, which made up zero, and terrible news for the fantasy football, but the convincing Villa win was more than beneficial elsewhere. All in all, a confusing night’s work.
JW
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