Sean Dyche. Jesus fucking Christ, what is he? I went on the Internet, YouTube, it was late and I couldn’t sleep. I didn’t want to listen to music so I grabbed the Laptop to watch some stupid videos to occupy my head for a while until I felt sleepy enough. It’s a good place to see what the freaky humans are up to in the real world. I ended up clicking a link and soon I was link crazy clicking away until I ended up on a Doctors video channel. She was a Dermatologist. She had set the channel up to present to the world the crazy and interesting world of skin problems she faces at work. That work was in glorious high definition technicolour and there was Comedy as well as Tragedy within its video after video of zit-boil-cyst popping madness.
I watched for about an hour, video after video of pus running in rivulets, in thick waxy excretions, in blood curdling horror of infected boily bollocks. There was pain and drama, latex gloves, safety glasses against the risk of exploding zits, in armpits, in groins, on backs and in cracks. It was horrifying but ultimately fascinating too. My finger clicked next-next-next until after an hour or so I had to turn the fucking thing off. She should have called it the Sean Dyche show.
As I am not very well lately I have been ushered to the Billy Wright stand where I can sit in the family enclosure and keep my mouth shut. I am practically behind the Dugouts. I am twenty or so meters from The Dyche himself.
It was brilliant, fascinating and gross. Just like the cyst removal shizz. His bright-white and tight shirt was dazzling in the sunlight. He was a fucking walking Persil advert. It was hurting my eyes to be honest and I kept thinking of the little horrible woman in the movie ‘Poltergeist’ shouting ‘Don’t look into the light!’. His shirt collar was strangulation level shit and erupting from it wasn’t a normal neck and head of a human but what seemed like a Plasterers knee shoved through it, and on it was the rudiments of a face that seemed as if a seven year old had drawn a face upon that frazzled purpled knee with a box of Aldi felt tips.
Yes, it was ‘The Dyche’ back again at Molineux like a suspicious rash that wont clear up despite all the ointments you slather on it. Look at The Dyche standing there on the touchline, hands on hips surveying the golden fields of Molineux. He was here to conquer mate. I half expected him to cock his leg up and piss on the Home dugout. Watch the Dyche dart his hips forward so he can show the Locals his massive balls. He turns towards the Billy Wright as the players shake hands in pre-match pleasantries. The Dyche can’t watch that shit mate. No way mate. No chance. He hates that friendly stuff. It does his head in. That great misshapen Aubergine head is pointing right at me for a second and I am transfixed by him. He has the look of a 150.000 miles a year Gearbox Gasket salesman, his Vauxhall Insignia is an extension of his psyche. The air freshener that dangles from his mirror is a giveaway ‘Gaston Gasket Company’ Fir tree. It stops smelling nice within minutes but The Dyche doesn’t care. The Dyche has a body that PureGym designed. So big bulging soya muscles stretch his shirt arms, his shoulders defined by how much they hide his rudimentary neck. He needs those muscles to bulge the material on that £80 Brookes Brothers tailored Lizard shirt. The material is under tension, thank fuck for those Indonesian sisters and their sewing skills. If this was a Primark shirt it would explode into a blast of white confetti and everybody would think the match pyro was about to start. Fucking hell, Shouty PA Woman walks past. She doesn’t look happy. Our ear drums will be fucked at half time. But his arms…
Fucking hell did they do some work. It was hot within Molineux and the sun was painful. Certainly for the well lubricated on the way to this Bank Holiday match it was heaven as they rolled and strolled to and from in the mass of throngy-Song singing mass of ‘Gold’ and Black shirts. I got straight in the ground. I think if I had hung around too long I would have been lead away screaming about scrapping a coachload of Burnley fans on the car park at Wembley after the Sherpa Van game, the fat lad who said “Please stop hitting me” so I did. But I’m watching the match here and now, and it’s different now too. We don’t hit fat blokes in car parks. We clap and cheer, I want a foam Wolves hand and a Wolves shirt with ‘Horrible Cunt’ printed on the back and my squad number ‘666’. The bits I watch are horrible on Burnleys part and a bit dysfunctional on ours. If you want a blow by blow account of the match you will have to look elsewhere, but for the record we won 1-1. Or you could nick a copy of my first Viva Nuno book (available on Amazon) and read about the Preston and Barnsley away matches.
But Dyche. Wow. He never stopped opening that fucking mouth of his. It looked like a split in that forgotten lost casey ball kicked on the asbestos roof of a row of abandoned garages thirty years ago. White. Powdery. Flapping in the wind which when it blows through that horrific split moans and groans.
15 minutes into the match and I know the 4th official is having a deep existential crisis after being exposed to the rambling psycopathic rantings of The Dyche. The officials face looked carved on, as if the face had been blasted so much it could only offer a simple hard look. When he did smile it looked as if his face had forgotten how to pull those muscles into a rictus of jollity so he just looked in pain. I sense the spirit of Neil Warnock here. The contorted anger of Dyche seethes across the pitch like an oil of despair. The arms outflung in a mock crucifixion after a decision he didn’t agree with, he shakes his head, he can’t believe it. He goes to the 4th Offical and diatribes flow from his gaping maw as the Official fiddles with something in his hands and smiles again. The incident was Jota being sliced down once again, Burnley player booked…I mean it was the 6th or 7th time he had done it.
The Dyche has a stink of that Touchline football Dad about him and I have no doubts about that. Be amazed at ‘Apoplectic Sean’ maybe ‘Unbelievable Sean’ or ‘Fucking tackle him Sean’ perhaps the ever popular ‘Fucking Hell Ref Sean’? We also have ‘Clench fists Sean’ and ‘Sad Sean’ and the emotions just ripple off him and across that desolate over inflated head. His neck veins bulged like waste pipes and at times his eyes bulged out that much that you could have hung a wet duffel coat off them. Jesus Christ.
I had to take my eyes away though, sometimes. I might have got something like welding flash and had to sit at home with tea bags on my eyes. So I looked at Nuno too. Placid? Calm? Zen like? Nah mate, was he bollocks. Nuno had that internal monologue going in full swing. Where Dyche would broadcast emotion, Nuno held it firmly inside. A storm of thoughts, about tactics, movement, shape…everything. This was Soduko football, fitting variables inside other variables, constantly questioning himself. The tongue darts out and is on his moustache again. He pulls his beard. Glances back at the bench. He is about to say something and checks himself. Turns back to the match. Hand movements are violent and aggressive, finger jabbing here and there, his palm chopping, everything is knife like until he cajoles and sympathises, then the hands are sweeping and gentle showing movement and artistry. Then his jaw thrusts forward and his beard becomes a weapon too, thrust out erect and threatening. Nuno scares the fuck out of me sometimes.
As Burnley possess the ball he stands still, legs planted firmly on the astro turf of the technical area a shoulder width apart. Arms folded protecting and defending in spirit, his leg muscles jerk and spasm as he kicks and passes that ball with his team.
Dych also has shapes of course. He looks like an angry and bald David Lee Roth there are that many shapes. Unlike Nuno, Dyches shapes are all meaty thick and fat with much froth and drama. This is all about Dyche. It’s a false passion made for an audience. The black trousers, the white shirt, the shaved head, the crap Goatee beard that makes his mouth look like a bumhole. I bet he buys Kouros aftershave, he never changes it, he loves the smell, he throws a lot of it over that overstuffed neck before he goes on the razz.
Around him his backroom staff, the technical boys are all Dychean clones. Little angry Monkeys that exactly mirror the shapes and despair of the big Monkey himself. When he erupts they also erupt, when he shouts they shout. I half expect Dyche to pull his trousers down in the technical area and do a massive shit in his cupped hands to throw into the stand behind him, showering the Billy Quiet faithful with his slightly warm shit. How they would scream. I would cry with laughter. Dyche is a Dudley Zoo Chimpanzee in spirit and I am laughing to myself.
Sean fucking Dyche eh? Are our team knackered after their days out in Europe? Playing twenty games in three days or whatever it is? Of course they are. Travelling knackers you out. Running around tires you out. Their poor brains must be fucked. Poor Raul must feel like he’s been playing football non stop for two years. But they are Athletes of course. Their bodies will recover quickly, but the mental strain? That most important bit of flesh, the three pounds of watery gunk we call our brain? I’m kind of thinking that Nuno looks for mental fortitude as well as athletic prowess with a bag of wind. Who fucking knows eh?
But I’m thinking about this as I stand outside the Billy Wright after the game. Looking at the statue of Billy Wright and remembering when he ran over my foot in his Rolls Royce after a night game with my autograph book flapping around like a limp dick. Then I have a weird existential experience. I’m standing with my back to the crowds moving down Waterloo road and it seems like everybody is moving away from me, the people, the football club, the Molineux and the people walking towards me are an anthropomorphic mass of new shirts, old shirts, and it’s all blending into one mass.
I really don’t think I belong here any more. I feel like an anachronism, an errant variable. I feel fucking historical to be honest, like an artefact from another age. I think I never truly belonged here but for a few moments when I shared joy or disgust with thousands of other Wolves fans. I’m feeling that this whole shiny FOSUN lead experience isn’t for the likes of me any more, I look down at my feet and my little toe has finally poked through my training shoes and I can see my toe nail because I’ve also got a hole in my sock. My little toe is open to the elements man and I laugh to myself.
It’s all changed, the whole experience has become too dynamic for me and my simple bent brain can’t comprehend or afford it any more. I get back home and the first thing I do is take the dog down the cut. Gaz Mastic is down there having a quiet smoke watching the Perch swim underneath Devils Elbow Bridge. I roll a one skinner and he passes me his can of Karpackie to have a swig. I do. We watch the Perch and don’t say anything.