Football
Why Arsenal fans hate Piers Morgan
People retweet him, players talk to him, and others think that he’s the voice of Arsenal fans. More people than is acceptable don’t know why he is so universally hated by Arsenal fans and a lot of those who do know we don’t like him simply think we don’t like him because we disagree with his opinions on Arsenal.
WRONG WRONG WRONG WRONG.
If you are connected with Arsenal in any way, then you need to know what follows. You need to make it your duty to ensure that anyone and everyone connected with Arsenal knows the truth about Piers Morgan when it comes to Arsenal. Here are some facts for you:
Piers Morgan was responsible, while he was at The Daily Mirror, for printing false reports which resulted in 35 Arsenal fans being branded hooligans and thugs after the trouble between Arsenal and Galatasaray Fans in Copenhagen. Many lost their their jobs and all lost their season tickets.
The truth? These were ordinary Arsenal fans who happened to be caught in the wrong place at the wrong time and were simply trying to protect their families as the trouble unfolded around them.
Piers Morgan and the Mirror eventually admitted they had gotten it wrong (eight years later) but they did it quietly. These people are still tarnished with the lies that Morgan printed about them and they are still banned from Arsenal.
All of the erroneous stories are unable to be located on the internet, which is both a good and bad thing. For those trying to explain to others the truth about Piers Morgan we often have little to back our stories up. For now we just have to make do with Piers Morgan’s apology:
This is a man who thinks having people wrongly accused and their lives ruined was a ‘dumb’ thing. Arsenal fans everywhere owe a duty to those falsely accused to ensure that all other Gooners, and new Arsenal players as well, know the truth about this man.
His apologies mean nothing as long as these Arsenal fans are still having to live with the consequences of his actions.
And if you think that Piers Morgan learned his lesson with this Arsenal ‘story’ don’t forget that this is the man who eventually lost his job because he printed fake pictures of soldiers abusing prisoners in Iraq.
Don’t let anyone think he is the voice of our club when it comes to celebrity supporters. He doesn’t speak for me. He never has and he never will.
Feature on Arsenal.com
For the second time I was asked to provide a piece for Arsenal.com, Arsenal FC’s official website. This was a preview of Arsenal’s upcoming FA Cup match away to Sunderland. You can view the piece here.
My first piece can be viewed here.
0Why ‘rape’ is not an acceptable footballing term.
There is something which is annoying me. No, it angers me, like no other issue in football at present. It isn’t the increased wages, the greed of players, the rise in ticket prices, or even Arsenal’s lack of trophies. The increasing use of the word ‘rape’ by football fans and pundits to describe certain events in football is the one thing I most despise about the modern game.
But it’s only a word I hear some of you say. To you, maybe. But to thousands of women in the UK alone and MILLIONS worldwide, it is a word which represents a life-changing event, in which the perpetrator most likely escaped without punishment. It destroys families and causes women the globe over to kill themselves.
It is certainly far more than ‘just a word’ and it’s repeated use to describe trivial events diminishes the shock value it should carry. A word like ‘rape’ should make you cringe at the very thought of it. As a society we should be disgusted by the very thought of the word so heinous is the actual act.
I had this discussion via Twitter a while back when I was asked what the difference was between using the word ‘raped’ and the words ‘murdered’ ‘battered’ or some other similar way of describing a footballing event. Well, I’ve known one person who has been murdered, a few who have been battered, and a sickeningly high number of women who have been raped. I won’t speak to the murder, I believe that comparison is too far-fetched, perhaps because the use of the word ‘murdered’ has become common place, or perhaps because it is used in other areas of life to describe something extreme and not just football.
Murder is murder and it will always be so, but rape? Well that is an epidemic and already it is a subject which is not taken as seriously as it should be. It ruins the lives of everyone it touches and the continued and increased use of it by fans and pundits diminishes the word every time it is uttered to express anything other than a forced sexual act.
I don’t expect everyone to agree, and while it will come across as incredibly sexist of me to say it, I expect those who disagree to be men who have never had to watch their wife, mother , daughter, or sister try and repair their lives after being the victim of such an horrific form of attack. I’ve yet to see or hear of a woman using it as way to describe one team beating another comprehensively.
There is a reason for this.
You might think that this is a whole big fuss over nothing, but to compare being badly beaten in football match to being held down and forcibly sodomised is insulting. Think about that for a minute. Think about how you would feel had that happened to you, now think about losing your precious football match and tell me they are even remotely the same thing.
If you don’t care that every time you use the word outside of its proper context you diminish both the severity of the act and the impact it has on the woman and those who love her then I doubt there is anything I can say to make you stop.
To the rest of you, all I ask is that you please reconsider your use of the word. Think about the memories and trauma you stir up each time a rape victim reads that word. Don’t you think she’s suffered enough without having her ‘experience’ likened to a heavy defeat in a football game?
*UPDATE – While I am aware that men also suffer rape, my experience in life has been through that of women who have been raped and that is why I have written this as a female-orientated piece. This in no way dismisses men who have also suffered this barbaric crime.
2Are we damaging young players?
There is a new buzz-word in football – ‘choking,’ it’s not a new word by any stretch of the imagination, but is one which I have noticed has been used more in recent weeks across a variety of levels (and sports) than it has in the last ten years (by my uninformed reckoning anyway).
I first started thinking about this piece a few weeks ago as I watched on in horror as the 21 year old Rory McIlroy had a nightmare final round in the Masters and a certain journalist on Twitter wanted to know would he be known as a ‘choker’ like he would in football. My response was that the journalist should be concerned more about why football seems to revel in youngsters freezing on the big stage (or simply being outplayed or out-thought by older and more experienced players) than wonder why golf didn’t.
Players of the ilk of Wayne Rooney, Jack Wilshere, and Cesc Fabregas are a rare, rare breed. They seem to have arrived on this planet as fully-formed footballers. Despite the fact that the Jack’s and Cesc’s of this world are in the tiny minority they are, unfortunately, the yard-stick used to measure and beat other youngsters who fail to reach their heights by the tender age of 21.
It is simply ludicrous.
There’s a reason that the Young Player of the Year category allows players to be considered up until the age of 24 – because they are still young, and they are still learning.
This is not an excuse for Arsenal youngsters who have not quite been able to hit their peaks before they reach 21, the club need to take responsibility when they use players who are not quite up to the top level. It is, however, a wake-up call to those who think it is acceptable to tarnish a youngster with the label of ‘choker’ or ‘bottler’ for daring to get nervous or make a mistake when under vast amounts of pressure.
Football could learn a lot from golf. As Rory disintegrated and watched his Masters dream slip away, pundits and commentators expressed sympathy and concern for him. When he stepped back on to the fairway in Malaysia, every one of them were rooting for him to win, to excise his Masters ghosts and put in a great performance.
I can’t help think that had he been a footballer, the first time he made a mistake in his next match, the entire footballing world would have been questioning his mental ability, Loudly.
How is that helpful to the player in any way?
We live in a world where everyone is judged by the best player on the planet (or in the league or of their generation). We endure players being overhyped (see Gareth Bale) while others are slated for failing to reach those mystical heights. It’s madness and it’s damaging.
But, more than that, picking on the kids in the way some do is simply embarrassing.
How about picking on someone your own age eh?
0Just who is running football?
We’ve all heard about it this week, Rooney swore down a camera, some people got upset, the papers ran provocative headlines (even though most journalists on Twitter said ban was ridiculous), the FA charged him, and now he will serve a two match ban.
The unfortunate thing with this example is that not many people like Rooney, so few people have any sympathy for him. Many see this as the FA putting right their awful decision not to take action over his stray elbow, but that is a naive viewpoint from people who should know better. Since when did the FA ever ‘make up for their mistakes?’
There has been a lot of mention today (because I brought it up) of Joey Barton’s clear homophobic abuse aimed towards Fernando Torres when the Spaniard still played for Liverpool. He appears (clearly) to call him a ‘fucking poof’ while grabbing his crotch – much more offensive than Rooney’s outburst you have to agree. The difference, people say, is that even though Barton’s offence took place during a live televised match, it was aimed at a player not at the camera. His homophobic abuse towards another professional is therefore less offensive than Rooney’s generic cursing down the lens of a camera.
With me?
This isn’t about, as some have suggested, letting Rooney off simply because Barton ‘got away with it’ (although he didn’t, he received a letter from the FA reminding him of his obligations – way to stamp out homophobia in football FA). It’s about asking why the FA have chosen to take up this cause rather than Barton’s which was clearly a more offensive action. Like UEFA deciding to charge Eduardo for diving when he went down easily, it was certainly not the worst offence you have ever seen in your life, and since then there have been more dives than you can count, yet nothing is ever said about charging these people.
The difference in both these cases? Media pressure.
You cannot deny that if the press create a storm the FA are more likely to act and this infuriates me.
Laws are laws and should be applied equally across the spectrum, regardless of coverage. If the FA are not capable of doing that, perhaps they’d be best handing over the reins to the media who are more and more pulling the strings and dictating who gets charged, who gets away with it, and telling the FA ‘just how the public feel about things.’
Well do you know what, more often than not, the media do not speak for me. I think it is ludicrous that a player can be banned for two matches for an adrenaline-fuelled outburst, that he only receives one game less than Ryan Shawcross received for snapping Ramsey in half is even more infuriating.
It’s time the FA decided just who is running the game in this country – them or the media. At the minute, I know who I think it is.
0It’s only ever men who say sexism isn’t a problem in football.
First published on the LadyArse Arsenal blog
There is a bit of a feminism alert here so any Neanderthals might be best stopping reading now. Then again, as Rebecca West once said, “I only know that people call me a feminist whenever I express sentiments that differentiate me from a doormat or a prostitute.”
For those who aren’t quite clear, feminism is nothing more than the desire that women are treated like equal human beings, not a desire to denigrate men. How dare we huh?
Just getting that clear.
In the Wolves v Liverpool match there was a female linesperson in what apparently was her second match. She had one ‘call’ to make, an offside decision which she got right and, as a result, Liverpool went one up. Before the replay every woman on twitter, even non-football following relatives of people on twitter, were hoping that she had got it right. This, of course, prompted a few men to completely miss the point and respond with variations of ‘why are people surprised she got it right, she’s a professional, and a few other statements which simply highlighted the fact that where one portion of fans are sexists in the extreme, the remainder could be said to be totally ignorant to that fact no matter how ‘PC’ they try to be.
As @HayleyWright said, the women weren’t celebrating because she got it right, we were celebrating because had she got it wrong there would have been a ‘retarded backlash against women officials.’
And there’s the thing, when a man gets it wrong (which they do often, just see the linesman in the first half of the Arsenal match yesterday if you want a few examples) he is simply branded useless. When one woman gets something wrong, then all women are branded useless and told they have no place in the game.
Now I’m not saying that this is the view of the majority, but it is the view of a significant portion of football followers. Sad but true and no doubt a lot of you will argue that I’m over-reacting to the size of the problem, but I guarantee that you will all be men and that no woman will back up any statement which says there is no sexism in football, or that sexism is ‘under control.’
Cue Andy Gray and Richard Keyes, hardly poster boys for progression, but nonetheless, women could have expected a far better reaction from two of the most well-known pundits in the game.
Not so. Caught off-camera, but still miked up, they let rip with comments which, had they been about race, would have seen them removed from the airwaves a la Ron Atkinson. But they won’t be, and that, in turn, endorses the view that sexism does no harm and is an acceptable part of football.
So what did they say? Well, the conversation went like this:
RK “someone should get down there and explain the offside rule to her”
AG “Can you believe that? A female linesman. Women don’t know the offside rule”
RK “Course they don’t. I can guarantee you there will be a big one today. Kenny (Liverpool manager Kenny Dalglish) will go potty. This isn’t the first time, is it? Didn’t we have one before?”
The conversation then continued.
RK “The game’s gone mad. Did you hear charming Karen Brady this morning complaining about sexism? Do me a favour, love.”
Do I need to point out what the hell is wrong with that entire conversation? For a start, I am female and I understand the offside rule better than any man I know (in real life). I understand the whole first phase, second phase, active etc and can call it better than most I ever watch matches with. I get it. I’ve been going to football for over 30 years, how dare ANYONE tell me I don’t know about football or the laws of the game simply because of my gender.
HOW FUCKING DARE THEY.
It’s as stupid as saying ‘Oh he has blonde hair, how the hell would he know anything about football!’
But I know how the arguments will go, I’ve had to fight against them my whole life. I had one guy I worked with who wouldn’t even talk to me about football because I was female. Then he wouldn’t talk to me because I humiliated him in front of the entire workforce by knowing more than he did. Small penis would be my guess. Is that sexist? Oops.
They didn’t mean it. They were only having a bit of banter. Blah blah blah. Substitute race for gender and would it be a ‘joke’? Would it be tolerated?
Of course it wouldn’t. But excluding 50% of the population? Well that’s just fine and any woman who gets annoyed about it is clearly just highly-strung or on her period.
It’s a fucking disgrace.
As I’ve already mentioned, the MALE linesperson at the Arsenal match in the first half got at least three calls wrong. These weren’t even debatable, they were just wrong. Has there been any mention about how men don’t understand the offside rule? How he let his whole gender down? How he has shown that men shouldn’t be involved in the game? Don’t be so stupid, yet here we are, talking about it when the woman involved GOT HER CALL RIGHT.
Not only is sexism alive and well in football, like homophobia, it is acceptable and there is no will to change it.
The fact that a number of people will now try to argue otherwise just reinforces this point, so please, let me hear why this isn’t an issue.
I’d love to hear you explain how that entire conversation isn’t indicative of the mainstream view in football. Please.
All this stems from her getting the decision right. Can you imagine what it would be like if she’d got it wrong?
And THAT is why women of the web united in their joy yesterday.
Simple really.
Shame on you Sky.
Shame on you.
UPDATE – Listen to the audio for yourself here
This post is also in the ‘features’ section where you can find additional comments from readers
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