blue b4 the moon
Well-Known Member
2 options would be nice a) it is and it's just a ruse to fuck them all over or b) they all fuck off and a whole new lot get the UK gig who are more objective & less red biased.
"The Athletic" launches in the UK | About to be bought by NYT for $550m (p 32)
- Thread starter Ric
- Start date
Dubai Blue
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It's an interesting business model. Instead of the current situation where the nationals have to pander to the inherent bias of the dippers and rags in order to survive in a mass market, it sounds like this will be very segmented, with writers producing content that directly targets the supporters of individual clubs.
It makes sense really. Why zero in on the supporters of 2 or 3 big clubs, whilst alienating pretty much everyone else, when you can produce niche content that appeals to everyone on a club-by-club basis? Getting a British audience to pay for content will be a huge challenge though.
One thing's for sure... The dinosaurs that get left behind at the newspapers will treat those that jump ship as pariahs and will do all they can to put hurdles in their way. Because if this is a success, it will be the final nail in the coffin of sports print media.
It makes sense really. Why zero in on the supporters of 2 or 3 big clubs, whilst alienating pretty much everyone else, when you can produce niche content that appeals to everyone on a club-by-club basis? Getting a British audience to pay for content will be a huge challenge though.
One thing's for sure... The dinosaurs that get left behind at the newspapers will treat those that jump ship as pariahs and will do all they can to put hurdles in their way. Because if this is a success, it will be the final nail in the coffin of sports print media.
Apparently he's asked for extra to include his florid similes, metaphores and sundry irrelevant fol- de- rols.
bobbyowenquiff
Well-Known Member
I hope you are right but payment-based services still need to attract subscribers and will inevitably gravitate to the clubs with the biggest world-wide fanbases (ie not us) I am just not convinced that any of the journalists working in football in the UK are good enough to attract a following. What we have here is lots of writers (some of them good) but very few proper journalists who know how to seek out exclusive stories. Most football reporters operate as a pack and after press conferences they work together on an agreed angle for them all to use. They do this to cover their backs and it explains why they are often behind the news with the main stories.
Paid for content websites can't survive without exclusive content.
Barney's a proper writer. He's mastered litotes, synecdoche and catachresis. I'd doubt the Athletic could afford him even if they understood him. He goes right over their American noggins.
crazyg
Well-Known Member
I'm on strong antibiotics after catching those three. It happened after I was "introduced" to Doug Piranha. He was a vicious bastard.
On the other hand, his brother Dinsdale merely sawed my leg off and nailed my head to the floor. A true gent.
Vienna_70
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- 100, 32, 106, +79, 19
- Team supported
- Treble Winners 2022/23.
He fucking snuffed it!
crazyg
Well-Known Member
Its a good job I never saw Spiny Norman.
Not sure if i can post this or not so mods please feel free to remove. Here's an article from the Athletic. I subscribe for my local 'murican NFL & NBA teams so I'm excited to see what they start pumping out for City. I thought the quotes about Pep and Ederson were a fun read
The USL can boast many wonderful things, but it doesn’t have many World Cup winners within its ranks. Nor does it have an abundance of players who have spent the majority of their careers with the reigning Premier League champions, receiving tutelage from some of the best coaches in the world.
The Charlotte Independence, however, have a player who ticks both boxes: 18-year-old goalkeeper Curtis Anderson.
Born and raised among the postcard-worthy vistas of England’s Lake District, Anderson was eight years old when he joined Blackpool’s youth academy. His parents would ferry him the hour-and-a-half to training four nights a week, and as the young goalkeeper’s prodigious abilities developed at the Lancashire club—and the family grew weary of the grueling commute—Anderson’s father quit his job and moved the family to within the catchment area from which the Manchester and Liverpool clubs were permitted to source pre-teenage talent.
When Curtis turned 11, dad’s faith paid off.
“Within a month of living there, I had Liverpool, Blackburn, United and City after me,” Anderson says after an Independence training session at their facility in Matthews, N.C. “I went to train at Liverpool, and I’m a fan, so always wanted to do that. And I also did a trial at City.”
Childhood allegiances count for only so much when it comes to professional football, however.
“Then, one day,” Anderson recalls, “my dad said, ‘Curt, you’re going to City. You’re moving to Manchester.’ And so I went.”
In July 2012, Man City paid a hefty £15,000 fee for Anderson—despite Blackpool manager Ian Holloway pleading that he stay with the Tangerines and eventually graduate to a first-team role.
“They have got high hopes for him,” his father Terry told the North West Evening Mail at the time. “You wouldn’t pay £15,000 for an 11-year-old unless you thought there was something about him.”
Anderson left his family and friends behind, moved in with a host family and proceeded to spend the next seven years at the Etihad Campus, where he faced shots from fellow academy prospects like Phil Foden and Jadon Sancho while developing in the shadows of Joe Hart, Willy Caballero, Claudio Bravo and Ederson.
In 2017, he was a member of the England U-17 squad that reached the final of the European Championships in Croatia. A few months later, he became the first-choice shot-stopper as England claimed the U-17 World Cup. Anderson was instrumental in the team’s progress at the tournament in India: In a quarterfinal penalty shootout, he saved a penalty and proceeded to score one from the spot himself.
To recap, Anderson was poached by one of the best academies in the world and has represented his country (at four age levels), winning a youth World Cup trophy along the way.
So how on earth did he end up in Charlotte?
“I was due to go to Blackburn and the deal seemed to be done on deadline day, but for some reason, it all fell through,” he says with a tinge of frustration. “So then I couldn’t go anywhere because the window was shut. This was kind of the only option I had. I took it because I was desperate to play games. If I didn’t, I would have been stuck at City training every day, and I’d be sick of that, to be honest.”
Evidently, English soccer’s culture of leaving transfer deals to the very last second is to the USL’s benefit. Anderson was awarded the No. 1 shirt in Charlotte and has achieved his goal of playing first-team minutes.
“At City I’d played seven games in seven or eight months,” he says. “I came here and played nine games in eight weeks. That’s the reason I came.”
The 18-year-old is also pleasantly surprised by the level in America’s second tier, saying, “The standard is better than I thought it would be. If you look at the lower leagues in England, it’s so scrappy, whereas here, at least teams try and play.”
Charlotte Independence
✔@Independence
The new guy
@CurtAndo_
33
12:38 PM - Mar 21, 2019
See Charlotte Independence's other Tweets
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Traditionally, a youth prospect at a top English academy who hits his ceiling will head to a lower league team within the country. But several of Anderson’s World Cup-winning teammates have taken advantage of opportunities abroad: defender Joantahan Panzo left Chelsea for Monaco in the last winter window; Arsenal prospect Emile Smith Rowe has been sent to RB Leipzig in search of more experience; and Anderson’s former City colleague Sancho has made quite a name for himself in the Bundesliga with Borussia Dortmund.
While Foden has remained at City with the aim of breaking in from the periphery, Sancho sought a fast-track to success. Anderson is hoping to achieve something similar with his time in the States.
“I was already at the highest point I could have reached without playing in the first team,” he says. “And trying to get in that first team is mad—especially since they signed Ederson.”
Anderson chuckles at the mere mention of City’s cavalier first-choice keeper.
“He’s an unbelievable player and he’s so funny,” he says. “He’s the most laid back person I’ve met—he does not care at all! We’ll be in training and the ball will be coming towards him and it looks like he’s in a world of his own; it looks like he’ll never make it. The next minute, they shoot and it’s going top bins… and he’ll pick it out!”
Anderson was invited to train with the first team on several occasions and in 2018 was bumped up to the No. 3 spot when Claudio Bravo tore his Achilles tendon and Aro Muric was on loan in Holland.
“Training with the coaches everyday was amazing and training with Ederson—that guy is the best I’ve ever seen,” he says. “The way he plays, you think he’d make more mistakes. But he’s not really been caught out.”
View image on Twitter
Curtis Anderson@CurtAndo_
Had the most amazing 7 years @mancity learning from some of the best coaches in football and having the opportunity to train with some off the best players! Want to say a big thank you to everyone at the club for developing me into the person & player I am today! #MCFC
128
2:38 PM - Mar 19, 2019
26 people are talking about this
Twitter Ads info and privacy
Academy prospects are segregated from the first team at the Etihad Campus, with separate and slightly less luxurious facilities. The first team, Anderson notes, has mod cons like saunas and a high-tech altitude training chamber.
“The academy side is completely different,” he says. “It’s amazing for an academy, but it doesn’t compare to the first team facilities.”
The young keeper, however, enjoyed the Premier League-level facilities, and several interactions with Guardiola, when he crossed the divide.
“Pep delivers the training sessions, but hands them over to Mikel Arteta,” says the young goalkeeper. “I’ve only spoken to him after training, when he would come into the bootroom, sit down and say, ‘I thought you were good today. You should do this and this.’”
That sounds encouraging, but don’t be fooled. Anderson says the manager is “a lot more intense than he looks on TV. And his meetings in the lecture auditorium are very good—he shows how the team will play against certain players, then he’ll do a training session on that. But if he’s not happy about something, you know about it.”
One of the tenets of Guardiola’s philosophy is for goalkeepers to play with the ball at their feet and build out from the back, but Anderson insists this potentially dangerous style of play was instilled long before the Catalan arrived in Manchester.
“The only difference between the U-23s at City and Charlotte is there’s no risks here,” he says. “At City, we were literally taught to take risks the whole time—like playing out from goal kicks. Even before Guardiola, it was like that for as long as I can remember.”
The Independence have favored a less expansive approach in the 2019 season, particularly under coach Jim McGuinness, who was fired the day before the interview with Anderson due to the team’s record of one USL win in 14 attempts.
“The style of coaching is completely different here,” the teenager says. “At City, everyone’s playing out from the back, defenders are on the ball all the time, and it’s about movement patterns, playing through and breaking teams down. Here, it’s more direct. I think we’ll try and play a bit more and keep the ball with the new manager.”
Independence goalkeeping coach Nate Walzer is highly complimentary of Anderson’s abilities, attitude and success in adapting to a different style of play.
“He’s learned to play in our system and he’s learned which players are good at building out and which aren’t,” says Walzer. “He’s started to make better decisions on when and where to play, and where the press is coming from. At City, they build the play through, no matter what. He has some deficiencies, but he knows it and is working on it.”
At 18 years old, Anderson is aware that he has a long way to go until he can consider himself a finished product. However, unlike most prospects his age, he has gained invaluable experience playing across several continents—including Asia, where he lifted the U-17 World Cup, an experience he calls “the highlight of my career.”
“We were in India for a month and it felt like a senior World Cup,” he says. “Everywhere we went, we needed police escorts. At the group games there were 50,000 fans. The defenders 15 yards in front of me couldn’t hear me and I was screaming.”
Jordan Pickford isn’t the only Three Lions goalkeeper to take a decisive shootout spot kick; against Japan in the quarterfinals, Anderson stepped up to perform the task that has long daunted Englishmen on the international stage.
“We practiced penalties every day—England now do that at every level during a tournament,” he says. “I said ‘I’ll take one!’ on the first day we arrived, and I didn’t miss the whole time. So when it came to the game, the manager said, “Curt, do you wanna take one?’ I remember stepping up to the ball. I was so scared. In the end, I just put my head down and leathered it.”
It requires plenty of self confidence to take a penalty under such conditions—and several Independence staff members note that Anderson is self-assured beyond his years. After all, to travel 4,000 miles across the Atlantic in an effort to zigzag to the top of the European game requires fortitude.
However, there is a sense of trepidation when Anderson describes his current situation. When asked how he is enjoying his time in the Carolinas, he sounds once again like a teenager.
“It’s all right,” he says. “I can’t wait to go home, to be honest.”
Anderson insists he was undaunted by the prospect of moving to a new continent on his own—he left home at age 11, after all—but says that he misses his family, his car and little things like the restaurant chain Nandos. When the teenager hears this writer’s English accent, he comments on how nice it is to be reminded of the familiar tones of home.
He even says he misses the oft-derided gloomy weather of England’s northwest.
“Everyone says they want to live in a hot country,” he says, “and I live here and would rather be back at home in the cold.”
Anderson is on a season-long contract, with the option to stay another year. Although he is entirely professional in his outlook, he regards his American adventure as a means to an end.
“It’s not that I don’t love it,” he says. “I’m just here to play football. And I’d rather be playing football either at home or in Europe.”
He believes he has garnered interest from a few clubs in that part of the world, including Blackburn, who oh-so-narrowly failed to sign him in January. When the prospect of staying in the States to take an MLS job is raised, he is less than enthused.
“I dunno,” he says. “It’s the highest level here, but it’s not my highest level. I know what I’m capable of and where I can get.”
Anderson’s agent also looks after Wayne Rooney, and the teenager is aware that a scout from a nearby MLS franchise regularly attends Independence games.
“If I was to go MLS, I wouldn’t get stuck there like I guess you could,” he says. “If the option came up I would look at it, but if there was also an option to go home, I’d probably go home to be honest. So we’ll see.”
In many ways, Anderson has the world at his feet. He believes he will be playing in the Premier League, or a top European league, in the next few years. His goalkeeping coach Walzer offered the same prediction. And he believes he has another few years before the practicalities of being based in America would have a negative affect on his ascension to the England first team.
But the interview with the affable Cumbrian also highlights the sacrifices, hardships and loneliness that players must make—or have forced upon them—when striving to reach the top of the game. He describes pleading with his father to stay at Blackpool at age 11, as he wanted to stay with his friends. He didn’t see why it mattered where he played soccer—he just wanted to play.
“I told my dad, ‘Don’t let me go, please,’” he recalls. “‘I want to play for Blackpool. I’m happy here. Whatever you do, don’t make me go.’ He said, ‘Curtis, I don’t care what you say, you’re going. End of.’”
Seven years down the line, thanks to a botched transfer to Ewood Park, Anderson finds himself on the other side of the world. He says he doesn’t really socialize, and spends his time away from training watching goalkeeping videos in his rented apartment.
“It’s lonely because its not home and I haven’t got any friends here, but I’m of the mindset that I’m here for a reason,” he says. “So I just get on with it.”
The USL can boast many wonderful things, but it doesn’t have many World Cup winners within its ranks. Nor does it have an abundance of players who have spent the majority of their careers with the reigning Premier League champions, receiving tutelage from some of the best coaches in the world.
The Charlotte Independence, however, have a player who ticks both boxes: 18-year-old goalkeeper Curtis Anderson.
Born and raised among the postcard-worthy vistas of England’s Lake District, Anderson was eight years old when he joined Blackpool’s youth academy. His parents would ferry him the hour-and-a-half to training four nights a week, and as the young goalkeeper’s prodigious abilities developed at the Lancashire club—and the family grew weary of the grueling commute—Anderson’s father quit his job and moved the family to within the catchment area from which the Manchester and Liverpool clubs were permitted to source pre-teenage talent.
When Curtis turned 11, dad’s faith paid off.
“Within a month of living there, I had Liverpool, Blackburn, United and City after me,” Anderson says after an Independence training session at their facility in Matthews, N.C. “I went to train at Liverpool, and I’m a fan, so always wanted to do that. And I also did a trial at City.”
Childhood allegiances count for only so much when it comes to professional football, however.
“Then, one day,” Anderson recalls, “my dad said, ‘Curt, you’re going to City. You’re moving to Manchester.’ And so I went.”
In July 2012, Man City paid a hefty £15,000 fee for Anderson—despite Blackpool manager Ian Holloway pleading that he stay with the Tangerines and eventually graduate to a first-team role.
“They have got high hopes for him,” his father Terry told the North West Evening Mail at the time. “You wouldn’t pay £15,000 for an 11-year-old unless you thought there was something about him.”
Anderson left his family and friends behind, moved in with a host family and proceeded to spend the next seven years at the Etihad Campus, where he faced shots from fellow academy prospects like Phil Foden and Jadon Sancho while developing in the shadows of Joe Hart, Willy Caballero, Claudio Bravo and Ederson.
In 2017, he was a member of the England U-17 squad that reached the final of the European Championships in Croatia. A few months later, he became the first-choice shot-stopper as England claimed the U-17 World Cup. Anderson was instrumental in the team’s progress at the tournament in India: In a quarterfinal penalty shootout, he saved a penalty and proceeded to score one from the spot himself.
To recap, Anderson was poached by one of the best academies in the world and has represented his country (at four age levels), winning a youth World Cup trophy along the way.
So how on earth did he end up in Charlotte?
“I was due to go to Blackburn and the deal seemed to be done on deadline day, but for some reason, it all fell through,” he says with a tinge of frustration. “So then I couldn’t go anywhere because the window was shut. This was kind of the only option I had. I took it because I was desperate to play games. If I didn’t, I would have been stuck at City training every day, and I’d be sick of that, to be honest.”
Evidently, English soccer’s culture of leaving transfer deals to the very last second is to the USL’s benefit. Anderson was awarded the No. 1 shirt in Charlotte and has achieved his goal of playing first-team minutes.
“At City I’d played seven games in seven or eight months,” he says. “I came here and played nine games in eight weeks. That’s the reason I came.”
The 18-year-old is also pleasantly surprised by the level in America’s second tier, saying, “The standard is better than I thought it would be. If you look at the lower leagues in England, it’s so scrappy, whereas here, at least teams try and play.”
Charlotte Independence
✔@Independence
The new guy
33
12:38 PM - Mar 21, 2019
See Charlotte Independence's other Tweets
Twitter Ads info and privacy
Traditionally, a youth prospect at a top English academy who hits his ceiling will head to a lower league team within the country. But several of Anderson’s World Cup-winning teammates have taken advantage of opportunities abroad: defender Joantahan Panzo left Chelsea for Monaco in the last winter window; Arsenal prospect Emile Smith Rowe has been sent to RB Leipzig in search of more experience; and Anderson’s former City colleague Sancho has made quite a name for himself in the Bundesliga with Borussia Dortmund.
While Foden has remained at City with the aim of breaking in from the periphery, Sancho sought a fast-track to success. Anderson is hoping to achieve something similar with his time in the States.
“I was already at the highest point I could have reached without playing in the first team,” he says. “And trying to get in that first team is mad—especially since they signed Ederson.”
Anderson chuckles at the mere mention of City’s cavalier first-choice keeper.
“He’s an unbelievable player and he’s so funny,” he says. “He’s the most laid back person I’ve met—he does not care at all! We’ll be in training and the ball will be coming towards him and it looks like he’s in a world of his own; it looks like he’ll never make it. The next minute, they shoot and it’s going top bins… and he’ll pick it out!”
Anderson was invited to train with the first team on several occasions and in 2018 was bumped up to the No. 3 spot when Claudio Bravo tore his Achilles tendon and Aro Muric was on loan in Holland.
“Training with the coaches everyday was amazing and training with Ederson—that guy is the best I’ve ever seen,” he says. “The way he plays, you think he’d make more mistakes. But he’s not really been caught out.”
View image on Twitter
Curtis Anderson@CurtAndo_
Had the most amazing 7 years @mancity learning from some of the best coaches in football and having the opportunity to train with some off the best players! Want to say a big thank you to everyone at the club for developing me into the person & player I am today! #MCFC
128
2:38 PM - Mar 19, 2019
26 people are talking about this
Twitter Ads info and privacy
Academy prospects are segregated from the first team at the Etihad Campus, with separate and slightly less luxurious facilities. The first team, Anderson notes, has mod cons like saunas and a high-tech altitude training chamber.
“The academy side is completely different,” he says. “It’s amazing for an academy, but it doesn’t compare to the first team facilities.”
The young keeper, however, enjoyed the Premier League-level facilities, and several interactions with Guardiola, when he crossed the divide.
“Pep delivers the training sessions, but hands them over to Mikel Arteta,” says the young goalkeeper. “I’ve only spoken to him after training, when he would come into the bootroom, sit down and say, ‘I thought you were good today. You should do this and this.’”
That sounds encouraging, but don’t be fooled. Anderson says the manager is “a lot more intense than he looks on TV. And his meetings in the lecture auditorium are very good—he shows how the team will play against certain players, then he’ll do a training session on that. But if he’s not happy about something, you know about it.”
One of the tenets of Guardiola’s philosophy is for goalkeepers to play with the ball at their feet and build out from the back, but Anderson insists this potentially dangerous style of play was instilled long before the Catalan arrived in Manchester.
“The only difference between the U-23s at City and Charlotte is there’s no risks here,” he says. “At City, we were literally taught to take risks the whole time—like playing out from goal kicks. Even before Guardiola, it was like that for as long as I can remember.”
The Independence have favored a less expansive approach in the 2019 season, particularly under coach Jim McGuinness, who was fired the day before the interview with Anderson due to the team’s record of one USL win in 14 attempts.
“The style of coaching is completely different here,” the teenager says. “At City, everyone’s playing out from the back, defenders are on the ball all the time, and it’s about movement patterns, playing through and breaking teams down. Here, it’s more direct. I think we’ll try and play a bit more and keep the ball with the new manager.”
Independence goalkeeping coach Nate Walzer is highly complimentary of Anderson’s abilities, attitude and success in adapting to a different style of play.
“He’s learned to play in our system and he’s learned which players are good at building out and which aren’t,” says Walzer. “He’s started to make better decisions on when and where to play, and where the press is coming from. At City, they build the play through, no matter what. He has some deficiencies, but he knows it and is working on it.”
At 18 years old, Anderson is aware that he has a long way to go until he can consider himself a finished product. However, unlike most prospects his age, he has gained invaluable experience playing across several continents—including Asia, where he lifted the U-17 World Cup, an experience he calls “the highlight of my career.”
“We were in India for a month and it felt like a senior World Cup,” he says. “Everywhere we went, we needed police escorts. At the group games there were 50,000 fans. The defenders 15 yards in front of me couldn’t hear me and I was screaming.”
Jordan Pickford isn’t the only Three Lions goalkeeper to take a decisive shootout spot kick; against Japan in the quarterfinals, Anderson stepped up to perform the task that has long daunted Englishmen on the international stage.
“We practiced penalties every day—England now do that at every level during a tournament,” he says. “I said ‘I’ll take one!’ on the first day we arrived, and I didn’t miss the whole time. So when it came to the game, the manager said, “Curt, do you wanna take one?’ I remember stepping up to the ball. I was so scared. In the end, I just put my head down and leathered it.”
It requires plenty of self confidence to take a penalty under such conditions—and several Independence staff members note that Anderson is self-assured beyond his years. After all, to travel 4,000 miles across the Atlantic in an effort to zigzag to the top of the European game requires fortitude.
However, there is a sense of trepidation when Anderson describes his current situation. When asked how he is enjoying his time in the Carolinas, he sounds once again like a teenager.
“It’s all right,” he says. “I can’t wait to go home, to be honest.”
Anderson insists he was undaunted by the prospect of moving to a new continent on his own—he left home at age 11, after all—but says that he misses his family, his car and little things like the restaurant chain Nandos. When the teenager hears this writer’s English accent, he comments on how nice it is to be reminded of the familiar tones of home.
He even says he misses the oft-derided gloomy weather of England’s northwest.
“Everyone says they want to live in a hot country,” he says, “and I live here and would rather be back at home in the cold.”
Anderson is on a season-long contract, with the option to stay another year. Although he is entirely professional in his outlook, he regards his American adventure as a means to an end.
“It’s not that I don’t love it,” he says. “I’m just here to play football. And I’d rather be playing football either at home or in Europe.”
He believes he has garnered interest from a few clubs in that part of the world, including Blackburn, who oh-so-narrowly failed to sign him in January. When the prospect of staying in the States to take an MLS job is raised, he is less than enthused.
“I dunno,” he says. “It’s the highest level here, but it’s not my highest level. I know what I’m capable of and where I can get.”
Anderson’s agent also looks after Wayne Rooney, and the teenager is aware that a scout from a nearby MLS franchise regularly attends Independence games.
“If I was to go MLS, I wouldn’t get stuck there like I guess you could,” he says. “If the option came up I would look at it, but if there was also an option to go home, I’d probably go home to be honest. So we’ll see.”
In many ways, Anderson has the world at his feet. He believes he will be playing in the Premier League, or a top European league, in the next few years. His goalkeeping coach Walzer offered the same prediction. And he believes he has another few years before the practicalities of being based in America would have a negative affect on his ascension to the England first team.
But the interview with the affable Cumbrian also highlights the sacrifices, hardships and loneliness that players must make—or have forced upon them—when striving to reach the top of the game. He describes pleading with his father to stay at Blackpool at age 11, as he wanted to stay with his friends. He didn’t see why it mattered where he played soccer—he just wanted to play.
“I told my dad, ‘Don’t let me go, please,’” he recalls. “‘I want to play for Blackpool. I’m happy here. Whatever you do, don’t make me go.’ He said, ‘Curtis, I don’t care what you say, you’re going. End of.’”
Seven years down the line, thanks to a botched transfer to Ewood Park, Anderson finds himself on the other side of the world. He says he doesn’t really socialize, and spends his time away from training watching goalkeeping videos in his rented apartment.
“It’s lonely because its not home and I haven’t got any friends here, but I’m of the mindset that I’m here for a reason,” he says. “So I just get on with it.”