I visited Westminster Abbey over the weekend, and there was a room there that had peoples' names on some extremely posh looking seats and also on a small printed sign that detailed the names and some date ranges next to each. These date ranges were, for example, 01/07/2017 - 01/12/2018, indicating incumbency - i.e., these people had been installed in some kind of position, a position that they currently held. I inferred from this that these people must have met at the Abbey regularly for some reason.
I had never heard of any of these people, but when I Googled their names it was evident they were extremely powerful figures within a variety of distinct but high-revenue business fields. I would imagine that the few that I Googled were multi-billionaires, yet I had no idea who they were and had never heard of them.
Given that these meetings between top-of-their-field people were taking place at Westminster Abbey, and the proximity of this room (which also contained King Henry VII's tomb) to the Houses of Westminster, I think it is a fair assumption for me to make that any meetings taking place between this esteemed group were not for the purposes of worship or leisure, and that extremely important decisions may be being made as we speak by these people in the Abbey. I was moved by the fact that I had never heard of these people and never seen their names on the news or the Internet or anything and yet there was a possibility these people were making decisions that were affecting the lives of many people less fortunate than them.
The only people we see in the media as 'being in charge and making decisions' are the top ranking politicians, the David Camerons and Theresa Mays of the world. Despite the politicians appearing in the media to hold all of the power, given the vast wealth that these officials in Westminster Abbey had, it wouldn't surprise me if they were the ones that truly held the power. As such, it struck me that these high ranking but essentially unknown people were perhaps doing the real orchestration and decision making affecting the masses, and the role of politicians may be just to be these invisible but powerful peoples' puppets. Perhaps the politicians are responsible not for deciding what should be done, but are responsible for selling the ideas of their masters to the public and doing the dirty of work of implementation.
Later, I began to think about potential (and slightly loose) parallels between what I'd thought at Westminster Abbey and the Ronald Koeman / Steve Walsh / Farhad Moshiri / Kenwright / axis of doom summer transfer window fallout scenario we find ourselves in. No information is disclosed to us as fans about what Steve Walsh DOF / Kenwright as chairman / Moshiri / Koeman's roles' requirements are, and the exact accountability each role entails, and whom is responsible for what, particularly in terms of player trading. As all of the above would presumably be required to sign off on any deals that EFC take part in, it's very difficult to establish which person really wanted which player, and also very difficult to establish accountability.
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One deal that does seem to me not to necessarily be Koeman or Walsh's responsibility is Rooney/Lukaku. Koeman, regardless of how clueless he was or wasn't, would have surely been able to see that what was essentially a straight trade of losing Romelu Lukaku and gaining Wayne Rooney was an absolutely appalling trade for EFC on the pitch, even if we did end up signing Giroud. Any of us could have seen this - on the pitch Lukaku is sensational in all the departments Rooney is not, and Giroud lacks pace and is 31. No matter what strategy we might have had in terms of tactics or formation, the most effective way of applying it would have involved keeping and using Lukaku.
However, from a commercial perspective, the 75-90-whatever million pounds received for Lukaku, plus the exposure that comes with signing such a globally reaching asset for both the club and, perhaps more importantly, the sponsors of the club like SportPesa and USM, which would get a huge boost from having Rooney appearing next to their company's name, the deal was a complete no brainer. Moshiri must have been laughing all the way to the bank at the prospect of this deal.
Not only must he have been laughing all the way to the bank, but the deal exposed him and his accountability minimally. Should Rooney and Everton do well on the pitch as a consequence of the deal, then great. If not, he can blame manager Ronald Koeman and make him wear the brown helmet. Either way, especially after he'd already invested quickly in other new recruits like Keane and Pickford, he gets the £££ and comes out of it looking like a benign, charitable investor and 'brings a blue home'.
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Now, this is not me absolving Ronald Koeman from blame for our outrageously poor summer transfer window. Like a politician doing a bad job, Koeman may have ignored the suggestions of DOF Steve Walsh, or failed in the implementation of a strategy suggested by Moshiri / Kenwright / or even posed a poor strategy himself. He certainly seems to be the one who wanted Klaassen / Sigurdsson rather than someone we needed more, and Cuco Martina can only have been his fault. However, for me, Koeman playing golf on holiday on the final day of the transfer window was like Neil Kinnock falling over on the beach to continue the politics metaphor, and as he is the one who has to face the public, regardless of the others roles in dealings, it's him that had to walk the plank for the lack of points won. The others in power, however, though also undeniably at least partly responsible, do not have to face the music. Ultimately they also put their names next to deals for players like Martina, but like those meeting in the Abbey, they are protected by those whose job it is to face the public.
Further, it may even be that Moshiri is someone else's puppet, and that someone else / some committee even richer and more powerful than him was really pulling the strings. We know virtually nothing about him or the people around him. And this is the point that I am trying to make, that the person who we place most of the blame on for the decisions made - politicians, Ronald Koeman - is not always the one that truly holds the power, and that the real owner of power and control is often hidden and more ambiguously defined. Sometimes there are bigger entities and forces involved that we do not see and these are often hidden from us deliberately.
This is why, to me, something like GOT and other open-to-everyone areas of discussion are important, so things can be discussed by the people that don't hold any power but do as devotees and dependents have to deal with the repercussions of decisions. We can't offer solutions, but by critical discussion and questioning of decisions and those making them, we can hope that our thoughts and feelings eventually trickle upwards, prevent the mysteriously powerful from becoming tyrannical and cold to our wishes, and help us get the best for the things we love so dearly.
You never know, the master of the puppets might just be listening in.
