- Chelsea v Arsenal on Sunday: how the form books predict it
- Football has been utterly ruined, and it is time to fight back
By Tony Attwood
As you may know, the identity and location of the Sun’s oft quoted supercomputer is totally secret. Week after week, month after month, and indeed year after year, the newspaper tells us that its supercomputer has predicted the results of games, and the details of the end of the season league table.
Interestingly the newspaper never tells us which supercomputer is doing its research nor where it is. But it seems that even though there are only 16 supercomputers in the UK the acclaimed newspaper has repeatedly tapped into one of thexd sixteen systems, and reprogrammed it away from the defence of the realm and weather forecasting in order to predict the season’s football results and find out which team is going to win the league.
And of course it doesn’t stop at that because the latest is “Supercomputer predicts Champions League with two English sides meeting in final and another falling to familiar foe.”
It is mind-bogglingly stupid and pathetic gibberish, because supercomputers do not spend their valuable seconds mucking about predicting football matches. They are far too busy watching what the untrusted governments of the world are doing with their weapons deployment, what the weather patterns that swirl the earth are up to (they are changing in case you are interested – not least because of global warming), and checking that there are no nasty outsized rocks heading toward earth which are big enough not to be burned up by the atmosphere and could thus either destroy a country or two, or land in the sea and create tidal waves so vast that even people like me living in the English midlands would end up under water.
Beyond that supercomputers are involved in nuclear weapon deployment, molecular modeling, and seeing what practical use AI might actually have. They really don’t get around to predicting football match results.
And the clue is that in 2023 the University of Edinburgh was the host of the UK’s first exascale supercomputer, intended to build on experience with Isambard-AI.. The cost was around £225m, although, funding for this was cancelled by the UK government a few weeks ago. (Don’t tell the writers at the Sun, as they’ll be awfully upset).
But really if you really think that a computer costing quarter of a billion pounds (which has now been scrapped by the UK government because it was too costly) is being used to predict football results, well you and I are in different galaxies.
However given that the Sun keeps on insisting it is using a fantasy supercomputer to predict football results, it struck me that on a Friday afternoon we could do the same – in the same mythical way of course. So what has our laptop predicted?
Well, next week the editor of the Sun will be arrested and charged with hi-jacking a supercomputer.
But back to planet Earth. Arttea speaking at a press conference to a load of bonkers fantasists said (ie the English press), “It’s about the collective and everybody taking ownership. Certainly having a player like Martin helps because he has shown what an impact he has over the last four, five years. Let’s see how he goes, how he trains tomorrow. He’s available, he’s fit, then we make the decision.”
Elsewhere the Telegraph tells us that West Ham fear technical director Steidten in running to replace Edu at Arsenal, but I rather suspect the word “fear” is too bold here. Do clubs really not have any sort of plans for what happens if a person suddenly walks away from a club, or indeed is knocked out by the moon falling on the earth after a supercomputer changes its orbit?
I suspect the do, but it is a good story for journalists to suggest that clubs are so pathetically stupid that they don’t have any contingency plans anywhere, because it then allows them to suggest that the clubs are very stupid for not thinking the unthinkable and preparing in advance.
And yet elsewhere we read that, “Arsenal happy to take as long as six months over Edu replacement.”
How can both stories be true? Well, its very simple really.
First – the media don’t know any more than you or I do.
Second – the media is quite content to, and indeed actually enjoys, treating us fans as idiots. Just remember that next time you read a newspaper.
Third, the Sun’s imaginary toy supercomputer’s batteries have run down and they don’t have enough change to go and buy replacements.
