Neil Ashton’s pursuance of Andre Villas-Boas’ ambulance, and the resultant prang the hack received as the boss applied the brakes, gave me an considerable sense of well being.
That feeling you only get when something occasionally goes right in the world.
It’s now pretty safe to say that André’s tenure at Spurs has been and will continue be a tough one. We need to prepare for further assaults on his competence and his character. Believe me they will come. That’s what ambulance chasers do. They don’t make balanced decisions. They chase. That’s their gig.
After being quite frankly not just pestered by the occasional wasp, but bullied by an increasing swarm, AVB did what anyone with a brain and a spine would. He lit an old broom and plunged it into the nest of the pests.
I described those heckling AVB as pissed up jackals. A description I must confess, I’m struggling to better.
Lord Sugar is a dullard. A dull man who has been successful not on the backs of others, that would be unkind as he clearly has business sense in spades, but certainly he’s been very careful to insulate himself with many that are wittier, wiser and warmer than himself.
Once you move away from the business achievements (don’t forget folks, this is the man that brought us the vertical record player and in 2003 predicted that the iPod would be “Dead. Kaput by Christmas” of that year) his Lordship is a man that struggles outside of the boardroom.
His Twitter account must make for fascinating reading if it is your only link to the outside world. But for those of us that are a little more connected, it’s an endless stream of time expired newsflashes and stale opinion. Sadly it serves to reveal just how heavily scripted Sugar is on TV. One can’t begin to imagine how torturous the life The Apprentice’s production team is.
When a former a director of a football club slates a current manager, it’s ordinarily an indication that the coach is on borrowed time. But when that former director is the artiste formally known as Alan Sugar, the criticisms are in fact, inadvertent praise.
Sugar’s decade at Spurs wasn’t a memorable epoch in the club’s history. This is the man that brought you Peter Shreeves, Doug Livermore and Ray Clemence, Osvaldo Ardiles, Gerry Francis, Christian Gross and of course, George Graham on his managerial conveyor belt.
When Sugar famously said, “I know more about schmaltz herring than I do about football”, he wasn’t kidding. Under his stewardship, Tottenham Hotspur served up some utterly abysmal football only winning one trophy, the League Cup under “the man in the raincoat.”
When Sugar eventually sold his shares in Spurs he said that his involvement (some 16 years) had been a “waste of his time” as if this sale was somehow “washing his hands” of us. Surely he got that about face, and it was the supporters that benefited from his exit?
So no, Lord Sugar’s comments weren’t helpful. They were, in keeping with all of his other football pronouncements; simply not worth reading.
A committed West Ham fan and ghost writer of “Always Managing” the Arry Redschnapps biography, Martin Samuel, made digs at André that were as predictable as they are transparent.
Yes, journalists are entitled to an opinion. But when they construct pieces solely designed to advantage an agenda, they stray into a territory where they are passing off bile as informed analysis.
The truth of the matter, is that Arry would sing and dance if Levy, AVB and Roy Hodgson were all run over by the same bus. In the hall off mirrors that is the myopic mess of the QPR supremo’s mind, it wasn’t his own idiocies, but at the hands of these 3 gits, that he was sent spiraling from the top flight …to scratching about in the Championship.
And so what of former News Of The World, now Daily Mail hack, Ashton? Here we have a bloke who told a lie and then tried to pass it off as opinion. I would expand, but that’s it.
What’s brilliant, in an upside down, through the looking glass sort of way, is that the reporting of AVB’s reproach to the above named time wasters. This was recorded in an equally low rent and snide fashion. André’s calm, considered and wholly reasonable exchange with Ashton has been branded a “spat”, “rant”, “outburst”, “explosive”, “accusatory” and “heated.”
AVB didn’t “lash out” either. Rather he put 3 chumps who had been playing fast and loose with his integrity, in their places. And rightly so.
Under AVB, in a post Bale wasteland of frequently dire football and suspect tactical decisions there are bound to be complaints. Many of them will be very valid. However, masquerading a clearly driven and determined agenda, as analysis, is fundamentally dishonest.
The systematic collapse of the conventional printed press has thrown “old school” hacks into the same pond as experienced online journalists, not to mention the morass of self publishers.
Some, like Ashton, are not adapting well, as they are ill equipped for this entirely unforgiving business. The biggest mistake you can make, is to underestimate your readership.
“Let the shipwrecks of others be your markers in a storm” is a great line Galton & Simpson gave to Tony Hancock. Principally, because it’s true. talkSPORT have a great business, but they’ve painted themselves into a corner they can never escape from. Yes, there are lots of white van man listeners out there, but an infinitely bigger audience get about by alternate means.
Samuel, Sugar & Ashton (sounds like an Estate Agents off the Barnet High Road) haven’t just abused AVB to no good purpose, but they’ve demonstrated unchecked contempt towards …you, the reader. The mentality at play here is, “Oh those unthinking mugs will swallow anything. They’ll never guess what we’re up to.”
Wrong.
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