Slipperduke
The Camden Cad
Journalists and football managers have a fractured relationship. After all, it's difficult to cultivate friendships with a group of people who will praise you one week and actively seek your dismissal the next. I know that I'd be less inclined to enjoy Carlo Ancelotti's company if I opened up Chelsea's programme and found him telling Stamford Bridge that 'Iain Macintosh has taken his column as far as he can. It's time to bring in fresh blood, someone who can do semi-colons.' Overall though, we get by. At least, we get by until someone does something stupid.
The hysterical reporting of Arsene Wenger's 'foul mouthed' press conference where he 'turned the air blue' is a case in point. Given the hype, you could be forgiven for assuming that Wenger had flipped out Basil Fawlty-style and screamed abuse at his biro-wielding tormentors before bursting into tears and smearing profanties on the wall with his own fluids. If only. Even the tabloids themselves had to admit that what actually happened was this; someone asked Wenger about a tackle and he said it was a bad one. Someone asked him to clarify his statement, presumably so they could at least stitch him up with some accuracy the next day, and Wenger said, 'leave me alone, for fudge's sake.'
That's it. That's all it was. Joe Kinnear, he was not. He wasn't even Harry Redknapp who, earlier this season, laughed off a transfer story as something created by 'you fudging people.' That one never made the papers for some reason. And yet this one expression of Gallic frustration with a predictable press-room chasing a predictable story was enough to be tweeted around the globe within minutes by 'shocked' reporters, and given space of its own in national newspapers.
Football is an emotional game, but with so much money pumping through it, it's big business as well. The insanity of staking huge fortunes on a game so chaotic and unpredictable is something that will surely baffle historians in the distant future, but for now it seems perfectly logical to blame a stressed-out middle-aged man in a tracksuit for the failings of some feckless teenage millionaires. I'd swear if I had to deal with that kind of pressure. I'm happy to be a part of this industry, I really am, but if we're going to put the boot in, let's at least do it for something worthwhile. People swear. Get over it.
QUOTE - "It’s you who make the controversy. I can give you my opinion on the football, but don’t try to drag me into your controversies" - Arsene Wenger deals out home truths.
The hysterical reporting of Arsene Wenger's 'foul mouthed' press conference where he 'turned the air blue' is a case in point. Given the hype, you could be forgiven for assuming that Wenger had flipped out Basil Fawlty-style and screamed abuse at his biro-wielding tormentors before bursting into tears and smearing profanties on the wall with his own fluids. If only. Even the tabloids themselves had to admit that what actually happened was this; someone asked Wenger about a tackle and he said it was a bad one. Someone asked him to clarify his statement, presumably so they could at least stitch him up with some accuracy the next day, and Wenger said, 'leave me alone, for fudge's sake.'
That's it. That's all it was. Joe Kinnear, he was not. He wasn't even Harry Redknapp who, earlier this season, laughed off a transfer story as something created by 'you fudging people.' That one never made the papers for some reason. And yet this one expression of Gallic frustration with a predictable press-room chasing a predictable story was enough to be tweeted around the globe within minutes by 'shocked' reporters, and given space of its own in national newspapers.
Football is an emotional game, but with so much money pumping through it, it's big business as well. The insanity of staking huge fortunes on a game so chaotic and unpredictable is something that will surely baffle historians in the distant future, but for now it seems perfectly logical to blame a stressed-out middle-aged man in a tracksuit for the failings of some feckless teenage millionaires. I'd swear if I had to deal with that kind of pressure. I'm happy to be a part of this industry, I really am, but if we're going to put the boot in, let's at least do it for something worthwhile. People swear. Get over it.
QUOTE - "It’s you who make the controversy. I can give you my opinion on the football, but don’t try to drag me into your controversies" - Arsene Wenger deals out home truths.
