@viewfromthetrev

I had a socially distanced meeting with my management team, who informed me no one is interested in my views on Keir Starmer or my parenting stories but they just might be interested in my dumbass questions/comments about football. If that’s you follow me on Twitter @viewfromthetrev
Cheers

Think of the payoff

I’m currently reading a book about football managers, Living on the Volcano by Michael Calvin. Each manager has their theories on the game, (philosophy if you’re Brendan Rodgers), ideas gained via their playing career or life lessons from their upbringing but one thing remains consistent, they all get sacked.

@viewfromthetrev

Club vs Country

Congrats to England’s women who’ve got through to the semi-final of the Euros. If however someone could guarantee that they win the whole tournament but your club side would lose their opening 2 games of this upcoming season, would you take the deal?

Let me know via the comments button or @viewfromthetrev

Check out my comedy prongcast. Cheers

Fergie left red faced

Hola. Hope you are well.

It does seem odd in a week when the black players in the England U-21 squad were subjected to racist abuse in Serbia, that by the end of it the focus should turn to Rio Ferdinand not wearing a T-shirt. Ironically a ‘Kick It Out’ T-shirt.

It also seems slightly bizarre that the black players who didn’t wear the T-shirts are in some quarters seen as being the bad guys. Almost as if they are holding back the eradication of racism in football. I don’t think people should get bogged down by T-shirts, the protest was highlighting whether  the Kick It Out campaign is effective or merely a token gesture.

The not wearing of the T-shirts has been made into a bigger deal, because Alex Ferguson has promised, in slightly sinister tones to “Deal with him [Rio Ferdinand]”. It seems Mr Ferguson’s annoyance, stems from the fact that Rio’s actions embarrassed him, as the previous day he’d said that all the Man Utd squad would be wearing the T-shirts.

There was some talk in today’s papers that Rio would be fined but surely causing embarrassment isn’t an offence you can be fined for. If it were, parents up and down the country would be fined every week by their teenage children. It would also seem ridiculous that a black man could get fined for not wearing an anti-racism T-shirt.

After the flack the Liverpool players got for wearing the Luis Suarez T-shirts and now this, perhaps we should ban T-shirts from football. I’m off now to print up some ‘Kick T-shirts Out’, T-shirts.

Til next time, stay safe!

@viewfromthetrev

A monumental cover up

Hola. Hope you are well.

I’ve been in two minds whether to write about the  findings from the Hillsborough report but considering what was disclosed it feels wrong for me not to comment on it.

I was only 14 when Hillsborough happened and yet knew it wasn’t the fault of the Liverpool fans. I knew this from the moment the police put a statement out saying the Liverpool fans forced the gate open and then had to backtrack on this, when it was proved that the gate was opened by the police, without having anyone there to direct the Liverpool fans to the empty parts of the ground. If I could see the Liverpool fans weren’t to blame, when I was 14, why didn’t the authorities?

Why in a country that prides itself on fair play has it taken 23 years for the truth to come out, not justice, just the truth. I can’t imagine that in any other walk of life that 96 people can die and it takes 23 years for the truth to come out. I’m no expert on the legal system but how has this been allowed to happen? If the files were there to be viewed, why has it been left so long for them to be disclosed? Why have successive governments come and gone and they’ve not demanded the files be released?

The police come out of the report shockingly. What most surprised me was to what lengths they went to in an attempt to discredit the dead fans, by running criminal checks, and the coroner running tests to establish alcohol blood levels on all the deceased including Jon-Paul Gilhooley, who was only 10 years old. Not forgetting the fact that 116 of the 164 statements police officers made were doctored. I’m of the opinion that if you’ve mucked up, don’t make things worse by trying to cover your own back and shift the blame onto the victims.

The police  (with the help of  at least one Tory MP) also fed the press untruths, which leads me to Kelvin Mackenzie and The Sun newspaper and that front page headline.Instinctively, as a human you would probably question whether during a tragedy such as this, would you be robbing from the dying and/or urinating on the police. If you were the editor of a national newspaper,you’d think before giving the go ahead for such an explosive and hurtful piece, you’d make sure you had evidence to back up what you were saying. There were after all TV cameras there, so he could have looked through the tapes. Which makes me think, Kelvin Mackenzie was either grossly incompetent or guilty of maliciously spreading untruths against the dead.

There are of course other newspapers who ran similar headlines but it was only The Sun, who tried to pass these unfounded allegations as fact. Plus the other editors have had the good grace to disappear unlike Kelvin, who regularly appears on This Morning, Sky’s Press Preview and various BBC programmes.

If I were to end on a positive, I would say that the spirit of the families and the supporters for the justice campaigns has been unbelievable. I’m not sure if I’d been wronged by the system I’d have the energy to keep going for 23 years. I’d also say the response from other clubs and their fans, including historical rivals like Everton and Man Utd, shows that despite the team you support, we as football people know right from wrong, which is more than can be said about those that sought to cover up the truth.

Til next time, stay safe!

Random Fixtures

Hola. Hope you are well.

Short blog today. I thought I would mention that I made my debut at the Olympics on Monday. I went to see Japan vs France in the women’s football semi-final. It turned out to be a good game, 3 goals and a missed penalty. The atmosphere was very family friendly, arguably the friendliest game I’ve ever been to. The only downside was when people decided it would be a good idea to do the Mexican wave. I didn’t join in, it seems a little disrespectful, this was the Olympic semi-final after all. How would the people who were contributing to the wave, like it if during an important presentation at their work, the audience started doing a wave?

Since moving to London just over 18 months ago, I have been to 4 live matches, including this one. The others have been Charlton vs Oldham in a League One game, Dulwich Hamlet vs Folkestone Invicta in the Ryman 1 play-off semi-final and the other was Crossworld v Fanatics FC in the final of the London Football League Saturday PM Plate competition. I think that is a pretty random set of fixtures. Feel free to let me know what your last 4 fixtures have been. (You can contact me via the comments button)

Til next time, stay safe!

When’s a choc-ice not a choc-ice?

Hola. Hope you are well.

After the last blog post being about John Terry’s court case and this one being about choc-ice-gate (as I’m calling it), I feel I have to say that I’m not obsessed about race. I also feel I have to say I have nothing against choc-ices, although on a hot summer’s day I will often favour an ice cream, that’s not a slight on choc-ices, it’s just that I have sensitive teeth and it’s easier to lick an ice cream than it is to bite through a choc-ice.

Anyway enough about actual choc-ices and on to metaphorical choc-ices. I have to admit that I was a little surprised when I heard the FA had got involved in choc-ice-gate, by charging Rio Ferdinand with improper conduct for his part in retweeting a tweet referring to Ashley Cole as being a choc-ice. The tweet does have something of the playground insult about it but obviously the FA felt they needed to show this behaviour wasn’t acceptable.

Some people have tried to attach racial connotations to the term, despite Rio Ferdinand and Ashley Cole being the same colour/racial mix. Can you even be racist against someone who is the same race as you? That’s a philosophical question that may be beyond this unknown comedian.

Secondly, as a black person I’ve not heard the phrase choc-ice being used in such a way. I’ve heard the term, ‘coconut’ and ‘bounty’ used as a derogatory term but not choc-ice, that’s not to say it hasn’t been used in such a way.

And thirdly, it seems obvious to me, that the view original tweeter Carlton Ebanks was expressing was that Ashley Cole was prepared to support his white colleague John Terry on a matter of racial abuse rather than Anton Ferdinand who like him is black/mix raced. So the tweet was more to do with Ashley Cole’s integrity, character and what he stands for, rather than a racist slur.

I’m not going to say the whole incident has blown out of all proportions but according to today’s newspapers the police have quizzed Carlton Ebanks. I’m not sure how he did in the quiz but he must have done ok, as at the time of writing it was reported that the police wouldn’t be pressing charges.

My biggest problem with choc-ice-gate is that on the same day as Rio Ferdinand was charged by the FA, Gillingham FC were found guilty in court of racially victimising and unfairly sacking black player Mark McCammon, yet which story received more press attention?

It will be interesting to see if the FA get involved in punishing Gillingham, although they might be too busy sorting out choc-ice-gate.

Anyway with all this talk of a choc-ices, I think I might buy one, the next hot day we have.

Til next time, stay safe!

Teflon John

Hola. Hope you are well.

I thought I might do something a bit different and just write about one subject. The subject in question being John Terry and more specifically his racial abuse case.

I’ve said it before on this blog, that whether John Terry was found guilty of racially abusing Anton Ferdinand or not, it wouldn’t make any difference to how I view him. I can’t imagine what he would have to do, before I thought less of him.

As it happens we now know that when he uttered the words, “F***ing black c**t” towards Anton Ferdinand he was merely asking the question, “Did you think I called you a f***ing black c**t?” or he was being sarcastic. Or as the magistrate put it, “It is impossible to be sure what the Chelsea captain said and it may not have been intended as an insult”.

At this point I feel I should say, I will view it as an insult if you use the phrase, “F**king black c**t” towards me, even if you are enquiring as to whether you thought I thought you had called me a, “F**king black c**t”.

I do think it was interesting that in this case, the judge was unable to determine conclusively what John Terry’s intentions were in using this phrase, yet the Independent commission that ruled on the Suarez case were able to do just this, despite the case been made more complicated by language and cultural differences. I know that there were different burdens of proof at work, with the prosecution in the John Terry case having to prove ‘beyond reasonable doubt’ and Suarez judged by ‘the balance of probabilities’. With this in mind it will be interesting to see if the FA will pursue this matter further.

I’ve heard some people say that, John Terry should get the England captaincy back, now that he’s been found not guilty. If this was to happen and I don’t think it will, then in the spirit of fairness Fabio Capello would have to be restored as the manager.

What I didn’t like about the case was that there appeared to be a witch hunt against the Ferdinands. I think what needs to be made clear is that Anton Ferdinand wasn’t on trail. He was the one the words were directed at, not the perpetrator. He wasn’t even the one who reported the incident and it wasn’t him who decided this should go to court, that was down to the CPS. Not that they can be blamed, if someone uses the phrase, “F**king black c**t” on a football pitch it is probably going to be investigated.

As for the whole choc-ice furore, that was a little embarrassing, with some people trying to say that by referring to Ashley Cole as a ‘choc ice’ Rio Ferdinand was being racist and therefore he can’t really complain about what John Terry said. I don’t want to shatter anyone’s illusions but referring someone as ‘choc ice’ and someone as being a ‘f**king black c**t’ is hardly comparing like for like.

One thing I did find out from the case is that Anton and Rio’s dad is called Julian, like me. I might never have known this, if it wasn’t for this case, so if for nothing else I’m glad the case happened.

Til next time, stay safe!

It’s the way you tell them Fernando

Bob Wilson

Hola. Hope you are well.

It seems like quite a lot of things have happened in football since my last blog post, so I think I’ll just go through them, starting with why I generally don’t do predictions.

Before Liverpool’s Europa Cup game against Braga, I texted a friend and said, “If Liverpool don’t concede they should go through”. Well they didn’t concede, and went out by virtue of losing the away leg 1-0. It’s foresight like this, why my local bookies has more of my money than I have of theirs.

Possibly the oddest piece of news this week (and possibly many weeks) was that Fulham are going to erect a statue of Michael Jackson outside their ground at the request of their owner Mohamed Al Fayed. No disrespect to the late ‘King of pop’ but I would hardly describe him as a Fulham legend. Surely there are more deserving candidates. It does beg the question, why? and where will this end? Maybe Michael Jackson’s estate will reciprocate the gesture by erecting a statue of Bobby Zamora outside Neverland.

In other news Kolo Toure failed a drug test. Arsene Wenger was one of the first people from the football world to come out and defend him, saying he’d spoken to Kolo and that the source of the banned substance, must have come after Kolo took some of his wife’s slimming pills. Knowing women as I do (moderately) I bet his wife is peeved that the world thinks/knows she’s taking slimming pills.

Talking of Arsene Wenger, his Arsenal have managed to be dumped out of 2 more cup competitions since my last blog post. (I don’t think the quadruple is going to happen now). I do feel slightly sorry that for the second season running Arsenal have been out played by Barcelona. The reason I say this is because Barca, out Arsenal, Arsenal. In the premiership Arsenal are the team with all the flowing football and the ability to pass teams into submission. But when they come up against Barcelona, they are at the receiving end of such treatment. I imagine it’s like a woman turning up to a function in a new dress and getting complimented on her look, only for Kolo Toure’s wife to turn up, with her new slimline figure in the exact same dress but looking even better in it than you.

In other Arsenal news, they brought Jens Lehmann back to the club, on a short-term contract, due to Arsenal’s goalkeeping crisis. It does seem quite remarkable considering Jens retired from football over a year ago and that Arsene deemed him not good enough for Arsenal a few years ago. It seems Lehmann got the gig because he’s ex-Arsenal and he was around the club (as he’s doing part of his coaching badges there) which makes me assume on that basis Bob Wilson couldn’t have been that far off from being asked to dust off his gloves again.

It’s also good to see that Fernando Torres, has given up scoring goals and is now taking up a less lucrative career of comedy. I say this after reading his comments about being at Chelsea, “Here you don’t have to demonstrate that you are professional. It’s taken as the minimum”. This coming just a couple of weeks after Chelsea player Ashley Cole shot a student at the Chelsea training ground. But I’m sure Fernando was aware of this, as he knows the secret of comedy is in the timing.

And Finally… it would appear Alex Ferguson has gone a little more mad than usual. Firstly he stopped talking to the press, including Man Utd’s own in-house station MUTV. Then he accused Graham Taylor of having a short memory, because Graham Taylor had the temerity to say he didn’t think Mr Ferguson should so openly criticise referees. Fergie hit back by referencing Graham Taylor’s infamous rant when as England manager he told the fourth official/linesman to tell the referee he’s cost him his job. This happened in 1994. You can’t accuse someone of having a short memory for not referencing something that happened 17 years ago. If anything, Fergie has too long a memory. In many ways he’s the elephant of the football world.

Til next time, stay safe!