"But it is also an understandable response to an entity that has become a content machine, perfectly structured to meet the requirements of any moreishly successful streaming drama. Those requirements are: action that is endlessly repeatable but always essentially the same. Nothing ever really happens. But there is still a strong sense of things always happening. And the main characters must appear to be stuck together inexorably in the same space, at least until they can be replaced by others who are also stuck together in the same space."
"Don't keep returning to Spurs, bloodshot and shivering. Don't end up twitching on a Manhattan street corner, nodding at Jean-Michel Basquiat as he drifts past, waiting for your Spurs man to appear out of a fire escape, uncork his Spurs pouch, and say what do you need, while you chatter about just wanting to return to the club DNA, whatever that is, nobody knows, but it's Spurs, and Spurs is your wife and it's your life"
A prominent club functions as a content machine that satisfies media appetite for endlessly repeatable drama. The spectacle relies on familiar action and characters perpetually stuck together, producing the appearance of constant events despite little real change. Managerial sackings have become a manufactured plot beat, one of the few meaningful variations remaining within elite football's narrowed possibilities. The cycle offers ritual, entertainment, and seasonal markers while ensuring commercial revenue remains stable. Without crisis the franchise risks becoming a sterile, perpetual autumn: safe financially but devoid of jeopardy, spectacle, or genuine stakes, reducing the managerial role to public attrition.
Read at www.theguardian.com
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