A theory of nothing

Why bad football managers are like annoying humanities students, applying the same theoretical template to every problem

In 1999, I gave up on academia. In part that was a financial decision; I’d been accepted to do a DPhil at York, with exactly the right tutor for my proposed subject, but even if I had got funding, which I hadn’t, I had no idea how I was going to pay for it. Mainly, though, it was because I’d become disillusioned, turned off by the backbiting and petty p…