By Myles Palmer
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ADRIAN PROUSE in Australia is wondering what I think of the Arsenal weblogs that keep appearing?
Well, cyberspace is infinite and there is room for everybody.
I mostly read the Guardian, Telegraph, Independent and Yahoo Sports World Soccer.
What is stupid is when websites slag each other off.
Please, get a life!
ANR does not criticise other websites.
Radio stations don’t slag off other radio stations. TV channels don’t slag off other TV stations, do they?
It’s an unspoken rule.
Of course it’s unspoken. Culture is what you never talk about, it’s assumed, shared.
Ian Grant and I try to be gentlemen. It’s an English thing.
Aussie sportsmen are marvellously competitive, but many think that sledging (gamesmanship by fielders against a batsman) is part of pro cricket.
“As an Australian I have thought on many occasions that there is too much emphasis on football in the English media.”
Quite true.
But when Murdoch poured his millions into Sky he told The Times, The Sun and the Sunday Times to give the Premier League saturation coverage, so we suddenly had 20 pages about football.
And all other papers had to follow.
And the tabloids came to set the agenda for the broadsheets.
Adrian, you are quite right to value the memories PV4 has given you. There have been few sights in football as thrilling as Vieira’s passionate virtuousity, which I’ve written about here and in the Professor.
You are a sane fan, so don’t allow the neurotic rantings of others to bring you down.
A football team means something slightly different to each person. We share it, but we can never wholly duplicate another fan’s reaction to a game. And we would not want to.
But PV4 can’t do it in every game.
And I can’t write well in every piece. And I can’t write every day or reply to every letter.
Does the one favour you refuse cancel out all those you have conferred?
By the way, I’m gonna be busy in March, and I’m going abroad in April.
TWO MAN CITY FANS, Paul and Rob, slaughter me for suggesting that stalwart stopper Richard Dunn is a bit slow.
What can I say?
Dunn IS a footballer. And he never misses a game.
And he was awesome against Arsenal. But he is not the quickest and never has been. But pace isn’t everything.
Distin is an athlete, but not much of a footballer. His idea of marking a striker is to stand three yards away from him.
When Distin tackles a player on his right, he does it with his left foot !
Distin is the next bullet Keegan has to bite if he wants to stay as manager.
I love Man City because Maine Road was near the university and I could walk there, or back, in 10 minutes, through the terraced houses of Moss Side, where kids played football in the street, and kicked balls against the stadium wall, and sly moustachiod men outside the betting shop would ask, “Got a light, white man?”
Interviewing Malcolm Allison for the student newspaper made me realise that managers are more interesting than players.
Sadly, it is Man City’s destiny to be owned by stupid people.
One chairman was quite sensible, but I think he walked because Keegan signed Fowler.
Keegan is still trying to persuade us that Fowler was a good buy.
I’m glad you like their players and rate them so highly.
The organisation of the Man City team has improved and I put that down to Stuart Pearce.
Methinks Mighty Mouse will be paid off in the summer and Pearce will take over. If not Pearce, Strachan.
I’m reminded of a story told to me by Paul Hince, a reporter on the Manchester Evening News.
Paul was working on a local weekly paper when one day he got a call from George Heslop, the former City centreback.
Heslop asked Hince, whom he knew well, to read him a match report which would be published in the following day’s paper, a game in which Heslop had played for, I think, Northwich Victoria.
So Hince read out the text of the report, which had been written by someone else.
And Heslop said, “Is that all it says? Fine, thanks very much.”
Hince thought it was an odd phone call.But he is a former pro footballer himself, so he knew how strange players can be.
Unknown to Hince, the reporter had filed two stories on that game.
One was a match report. The other was a news story which made the front page.
What had happened was this : George Heslop was a big, sturdy centreback who had fair hair and went bald early.
Heslop wore a wig and did some promo work for the wig company.
During the match a ball came over from the wing and Heslop dived to head it away – and his wig flew off.
So the centre forward volleyed his wig past the goalkeeper.
The photographer took a picture of the “goal”.
His front page photo showed Heslop’s wig stuck in the back of the net.
February 9th 2005.