Sunday, March 06, 2011

Negative capability



Ready to get a bit pretentious? Strap yourself in then, here we go. In 1817, while musing on exactly what gave Shakespeare his extraordinary genius as a writer, John Keats decided that the secret lay in what he described as ‘negative capability’. This he defined as, and I paraphrase only slightly, the ability to hold two seemingly contradictory ideas in mind at the same time. (Full disclosure: I just paid Wikipedia a quick visit to see if my Keats knowledge was holding up.) It’s a concept that, as United fans, we’ve had to take a crash course in this season.

For starters, there’s the fact that this is one of the most toothless and mediocre squads to have been assembled during Fergie’s time at the club, for proof of which you need only look at our dismal record of away performances. Except, this thought is counter-balanced by the fact we’re still top of the league and may well cancel out the memory of all those dire awaydays by taking the record up to 19.

It doesn’t stop there either. Alex Ferguson is a genius without comparison, a figure whose track record at United allows him license to do whatever he wants, without quibble or question, for as long as he wants to do it. Apart from the fact the same bloke is also a source of public embarrassment who heaps shame on the club with every hypocritical, myopic referee-slandering rant, and who has the effrontery to compound this by regularly snubbing every media outlet that his core support is likely to see, while happily opening up to a New York based digital radio station. And still persists in the line that the mediocrity of his squad is no way related to the Glazer’s financial chicanery.

It’s a wonder the weight of carrying these contradictory notions doesn’t do us an injury. And still they come. Nani? The notion that he is the team’s outstanding attacking force, able to bamboozle defenders at will, seems curiously difficult to take root, challenged as it is by the obduracy of the idea that he is little than a preening liability who will never be fit to lace Ronaldo’s silver boots. And he is tweets are shit too.

Wayne Rooney? Rampaging force of nature, a throwback to a sepia-age when footballers didn’t think it acceptable to spunk what to some is a week’s wages on a single packet of Marlboro. That Wayne Rooney. The one with a first-touch that has all the class of a Bolton call-girl, and who lumbers around the pitch, playing one lumpen, rotten ball after another. And who scored the finest goal of the season in the derby.

They don’t allow your thoughts to settle for a second this side. But I suppose tranquillity isn’t what you sign-up for when you support a football team, especially not this one. Let’s hope that all these contradictions level themselves out to make a thoroughly undeserved 19 come the season’s end.