Music Friday: "Shamrocks and Shenanigans"

I should have featured this song around St. Patrick's Day. But let's have the tune round the last day of month.

Music Friday: "First Breath After Coma"

The other day I was talking to someone about instrumental music, mainly jazz music, but I mentioned how I liked the band Explosions in the Sky. 

I don't have the band's album The Wilderness (2016), but I'm sure I'll pick it up sometime. 

Here's a great tune: "First Breath After Coma." 

Musing of the Moment: Tottenham Hotspur, Conte, and the Future

When I started watching Premier League football, I had no idea that the team I would pick, Tottenham Hotspur, would provide so much drama over the past few years. 

I guess I should have done more research into the squad. I simply saw them as a consistently good club that had a good chance to improve and contend. That was during the middle of the Pochettino era. 

One of the best journalists who covers the Spurs beat, Alasdair Gold, has a good article up on Football London that gives a fair history of the current situation with Antonio Conte: "The Inside Story as Daniel Levy Faces Major Decision To Call Time on the Antonio Conte Tottenham Era." 

The pundits have covered Conte's explosive press conference after the terrible draw against Southhampton at great length - much writing and speculation and tongue wagging has been had. 

It appears to be a foregone conclusion that Conte is out. It's just a whether a question of when: soon or later like after the season. 

But I cannot see him sticking around. I don't know how he goes back into the dressing room after calling players "selfish." That's a statement to make to people face to face, not in a press conference, especially a press conference before the international break in which he has no contact with them. That move seems very calculated to me no matter how he is described and passionate and emotional. 

I like Conte to a degree. He obviously has a strong track record. But here are reasons why his regime has not worked out (even though, if you think about it, Tottenham are still current in the top four): 

• For someone who fancies himself a defense-first coach, the team this season has given away an astonishing amount of goals. They've scored a lot, but still, they have given away too many goals. A lot. 
• He's too rigid with his tactics. He almost always plays a 3-4-3, which I like as a system. However, when Spurs have played teams with a lot of midfielders, it seemed obvious to me that we should have switched to a 3-5-2 in matches, for example, against Arsenal.
• He doesn't give young players or newly acquired players enough playing time. A prime example is Djed Spence, the England international who is starting regularly for Rennes. Another example is Richarlison. He's had injury problems for sure, but when he's been available, he needed to be used more often. Oh, and Danjuma. 
• As much as I like his passion, he spins out of control too often in public. The obvious example is the last press conference, but over a year ago think about the press conference after the loss to Burnley. This dust-ups are good for journalists but not for the club. 
• As much as his criticism of players rings true for some I think, he has to have lost the dressing room. And even if he stays around, consistently not addressing his contract and future at Tottenham has made his players, I would speculate, think he won't be around next season. 
• He doesn't seem to care much or be concerned much with developing academy players. 

So let me speculate about the future.

Tottenham needs someone who plays attractive football. They need someone to develop the academy and see his job as a long-term project. 

I know there are reports out there that some people on the Tottenham board are not as sanguine about this prospect as many of the club's fans, but I think we need to go back to Pochettino. 

He's a solid coach who wants to be at Tottenham. 

He directs a squad that usually plays attractive football. 

He will be involved with developing academy players. 

Also, the club he returns to is significantly different than when he left since they have a much larger scouting staff and a strong Managing Director of Football. And they seem more liable to spend money. 

The main issue I see is that the players who have been acquired over the past windows under Conte were acquired for Conte's system. 

However, I think players like Gil, Spence, Bissouma, Sarr, Scarlett, Udogie, Richarlison, Kulusevski, and Skipp, et al. would flourish in his system. And probably some others in the army of loan players, someone like Reguillon, might do quite well. 

Hire Pochettino. 

Music Friday: "The Impression That I Get"

A Music Friday hitting on St. Patrick's Day, eh? 

Here's a song I hear every so often on SiriusXM's Lithium channel. It's from the 90s and is Irish-y I guess. 

I was thinking of featuring a song by The Pogues, but I didn't know which one to feature. I had a friend in college who loved The Pogues. 

Musing of the Moment: Visiting Ole Miss

At the start of our spring break, Mrs. Nasty, my son, and I planned to go to a baseball game at Ole Miss on Saturday and then a baseball game at Alabama on Sunday. 

With the spring weather, we eventually couldn't see a game at Alabama since inclement weather was imminent on Sunday, so Alabama rolled out a double header on Saturday when we would be watching Ole Miss play Purdue. 

So we hung out in Oxford, Mississippi for a couple of days and saw Ole Miss win a baseball game on an opposite-field, walk-off homer in the bottom of the 10th. 

Mrs. Nasty graduated with her Master's from Ole Miss over twenty years ago, so it had been a long time since we had been there. 

Of course, as one could expect, the campus and Oxford have changed quite a bit. There are new buildings everywhere. The football stadium is much bigger. There's another student recreation center. The baseball stadium is significantly more posh. 

With the new buildings, they have built within the campus, so the campus felt more cramped than I remember it. Mrs. Nasty felt the same way. 

At least a few things have stayed the same. The square is still vibrant. 

And Ajax Diner is still one of my favorite restaurants of all time. They need to update their main page of their website though. 

Music Friday: "Criminal"

Fiona Apple is one of those artists who broke ground in the 90s. I always liked her songs, but I never got any of her albums back then. 

I mean, I was listening to Tori Amos and Liz Phair back then, so why the hell didn't I support Apple. I don't know. 

Anyway, I'm rediscovering her early stuff after I bought The Idler Wheel... a decade ago. 

Here's one of her more famous tunes. 

Music Friday: "Autumn Leaves"

Here's a classic tune from Cannonball Adderley's Somethin' Else from 1958. 

It's the first song on that fine jazz album.