If I remember correctly, the evening that a team put about 7 past SHA he continued with the (admittedly funny wind-up) 'phone-in having lost his father earlier that day.
Quote from: Legion on January 03, 2014, 10:06:14 AMIf I remember correctly, the evening that a team put about 7 past SHA he continued with the (admittedly funny wind-up) 'phone-in having lost his father earlier that day.Liverpool. I gained a lot of respect for him that night.
It just demonstrates how badly football has gone wrong, teams don't see the value of winning trophies anymore.
This whole episode merely serves to highlight a couple of the many globs of phlegm floating in the trough that is modern football. Firstly, unpalatable as you may find it, Lambert is absolutely right. I’m sure there isn’t a top flight manager who wouldn’t agree with him that the forthcoming FA Cup third round tie is a bit of a pain in the arse. It is not a priority for anyone. It’s useful to rest a few players, blood a few youngsters, but a big deal it ain’t. The competition has been devalued in many ways - not least by the association that runs it – and it’s hard to see how it can ever reclaim its previous cache without offering some enormous financial reward. After all, that’s all the modern game is concerned with. Secondly, while Regan probably thinks he’s being very clever gleaning these quotes - and Ross et al are seizing the opportunity to strike a blow for the fans by fuelling their indignation – all they’re really doing is ensuring that football interviews continue to become more anodyne and pointless as the years go on. (This isn’t exclusive to football, of course; anyone in any walk of public life now has to watch every syllable that emerges from their lips, lest an errant word should be recorded and shared and they find their career shattered around their ankles; I doubt Tony Blair, for example, has spoken a single unscripted word outside his house for the last twenty-five years). This is all well and good, until you realise that no one is actually saying anything.Back in the late nineties I worked as a sports reporter for a cable news station, and for a while it was my job to go and do the pre-match pressers with a couple of the local managers. My initial excitement at this prospect was dampened after a few weeks, when I realised I wasn’t about to unearth any great revelations. They were so guarded, so fearful of being misquoted or misconstrued, that everything was as bland as could be. I could have scripted it all myself. They might just as well have released a statement and saved us all the bother of turning up. But I didn’t – and don’t – blame them. This latest incident shows the dangers of giving an opinion. So next time you’re furious that Lambert’s watched a different game to you, that his comments don’t make sense and that the club is keeping the truth from you, bear in mind that they may well be toeing the accepted line. They’re saying what they have to say and what it’s safe to say, because ultimately they don’t trust the press with the truth. It’s a sorry state of affairs, but then look at what’s happened to Lambert today; something he hasn’t actually said has been blown out of proportion and made national headlines. You can say he’s been naïve, maybe he has, but he was expressing a truth that he’ll doubtless be castigated for. Unfairly, in my view. However, the more the press are starved of an insight, the more they’ll make of the crumbs they’re given, and the more the football world retreats into its shell. The disconnect between clubs and fans becomes ever more stark.The big losers in all this are, as ever, the fans. The Premier League exists in a bubble and keeps us at arms length; happy to pocket our cash and exploit our fanaticism, knowing we’ll turn up however difficult they make it for us, but when it comes to actually giving an iota of a toss about our feelings, they’re very much fingers in ears and blah-blah-blahing. What we want and what we dream of are increasingly incompatible with modern football. And that, folks, is just tough. If I'm really lucky I might have about thirty years left to see us lift this bloody trophy before I snuff it. Here’s to a 5-0 win on Saturday and an easy draw in Round 4.
The league is after all our bread and butter. Without it and the revenue it generates, the club would be in the stink, people wouldn't have jobs and the fans would desert the club.The Cup is a nice to win, for the big clubs (i.e. us) the early rounds of the Cup are a distraction from the day-to-day, it's the latter stages or when playing a big rival, that the Cup generates interest these days.
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Topic: The FA Cup. (Read 71747 times)
