Interesting Article

[adios 717]

FA must censor Pardew and the redtop spinners

 

Simon Jordan

Sunday January 8, 2006

The Observer

 

Alan Pardew's recent attempt to put down Graeme Souness (a "hate-filled attack", said The Sun, "telling the Newcastle chief to shut it") was special. Souness, he said, was talking "nonsense" for suggesting West Ham's defenders were scared of Michael Owen - then he added this: "Let me tell you, the one thing I hate about other managers is waffle that is nowhere near the truth. I would never conduct myself like that."

 

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Admirable, really. Good PR: it made Pardew seem a little less like Ian Beale for a day and a little more like a paragon of virtue; it made Souness look small, and no doubt made a section of West Ham people flush with pride. But then you look at how Pardew does conduct himself, and the image begins to slip.

 

Three weeks before his comments he spent a day looking to catalyse a big piece of business: telling journalists it was "no secret" he wants to buy a top-quality striker during this transfer window, and how "Andy Johnson certainly falls into that category". He left it out there for a couple of days, then issued an apology, again via the press. "I made a mistake in mentioning Andrew Johnson's name," he said. "I shouldn't have and I apologise to everyone at Palace if I've upset them."

 

A genuine mistake, and a fair apology? Here's Pardew as Reading manager two years ago. "I shouldn't have spoken to the press about Paolo [Di Canio], but it was a genuine mistake," said Pardew. "Glenn Roeder is very upset and made his feelings clear to me. I've apologised to both him and to West Ham."

 

'Mistake' or technique? Pardew's not a paragon, he's just one more manager prepared to play the system, to try to turn a player's head, to create a problem for a rival employer. He made his latest 'mistake' to the press only a couple of weeks after his chief executive had formally, legitimately, called my chief executive with a £5.5million bid. They were told Andrew wasn't for sale - which, for the record, remains the case - and that was the end of it. Then Pardew tried plan B.

 

Yesterday, Birmingham - my favourite club, full of my favourite people - tried it too, telling the press they'd offered us £6.5m for Johnson. David Sullivan told the Press Association: "We've been told that Andrew Johnson is not for sale. Their view is that they are going for promotion and wouldn't look at selling him until the summer at least." It's just stunning. Let's be clear about this. Birmingham have not spoken to anyone senior at Palace, haven't made a bid, haven't made an enquiry. They haven't been told we'll sell him in the summer - they haven't been told anything. Sullivan has misled the press, his fans and ours, all - I'm guessing - in a sad attempt to make Birmingham look ambitious. It sums up the club - and its owners' routinely ridiculous conduct.

 

Football - I may have mentioned this before - is an intensely selfish business, never more so than during a transfer window. Sometimes it comes from suits like Sullivan, but most often from managers. There's a section of them who do what they want, when they want, motivated by self-interest, and sod the protocol. For most of the season I'm sure Pardew's happy to belong to that elite group of 92 managers with their code of mutual respect, happy with the old-pals act when it suits him - but not when it doesn't. Can you imagine the din if one of those other 91 tried something similar on him? He'd be wailing from the rooftops.

 

So how damaging is this sort of football spin? In our case, Andrew's too grown-up to be swayed by crap from West Ham or Birmingham, and, yes, in the scheme of things Pardew's 'mistake' routine and Sullivan's posturing are small fry next to outright tapping - but they can be just as destructive. And, unlike tapping, they go unpunished (though even last summer's record tapping fines - £300,000 to Chelsea, £75,000 to Ashley Cole and £75,000 to Jose Mourinho - were nominal in the context of their finances). The problem is that there's nothing beyond the unwritten code of decent behaviour to restrain press briefings. The one area where a spot of FA censorship would actually make sense is the one area that doesn't cause a flicker of interest in their media-monitoring bunker. (Hi, guys, by the way - happy new year.)

 

It's also the one aspect - the only aspect - of media transfer speculation that could be realistically contained. The unnamed sources are everywhere. The bulk of them, inevitably, are agents using friends in the media to achieve a move or contract for their player, or to alert other clubs to the player's availability. Theo Walcott's agent says he's not behind any of the stories linking his 16-year-old with top-flight reserve sides. OK, but someone, somewhere in the chain, either at the selling end or the buying end, or both, has been flooding the papers with £9m Theo stories for months.

 

Frankly, it's bizarre. In a rational world, papers wouldn't queue up to swamp their good, solid stories with a load more built on speculation, made-up bullshit and deliberate misinformation - but they know it's entertaining. Journalists demand to be fed these scraps of spin, and, managers, owners, agents and 'club sources' are queuing up to throw them.

 

What this mix of signals, sources and agendas means is that you have to take the power of the red tops seriously. They're like a chatroom for the football industry. Clubs grooming players, players flirting, sweaty agents spreading gossip. Certain chairmen - like certain Birmingham co-owners - using the press to show their ambition to the fans by linking themselves with players they haven't a hope of signing. And, in terms of the credibility the papers have in dressing rooms, I've had players arguing their worth based on the marks out of 10 they get in The Sun. The media and football live off and need each other. The papers get used by football people day after day and, circulation tarts that they are, they love it and beg for more.

 

 

So can it, should it, be cleaned up? It's often frustrating, often damaging. But agents and 'club sources' can't be unpicked from the process: it's another part of the pantomime, another industry mess to wade through. But what can't be tolerated is managers and executives feeling they can join in. Pardew concluded his "hate-filled" sermon by telling Souness he should "know better than to criticise opposition players"; he simply doesn't get it. There are far worse ways to talk about opposition players, and he's a bloody expert. The FA have to produce a simple, strict code of conduct that cannot be deviated from or misunderstood.

 

A manager or executive discussing the future of another club's player in the public domain must constitute a breach of an FA covenant, and it must result in a financial penalty. Yes, the unattributed club briefing will go on, but men like Pardew using the press as a way round the game's laws must be officially - not optionally - taboo.

 

Sound of silence

 

No Christmas card from Barry Bright, but no £10,000 FA fine, either. All I've seen is the transcript of my FA hearing, which is now with my legal team, and what appeared to be an FA PR puff piece in the Express, depicting Barry as a gentle crusader and me as an insensitive, trouble-making, rabble-rousing, big mouth know-nothing. Me, insensitive?

 

We're preparing both for my formal appeal - and this time I won't be answering questions from an FA-appointed QC who makes like a prosecuting attorney in a movie - and considering whether to take further legal action against them.

 

One positive development, though, might be this. In the past few weeks, David Moyes, Alan Curbishley and Steve Bruce have all made strong comments against individual refereeing performances, with Bruce justifiably calling Phil Dowd's performance "pathetic" and a "joke". Like my column, none of them were personal attacks, but in these three cases Moyes, Curbishley and Bruce were not charged. Trademark inconsistency, or evidence of an FA rethink?

 

Simon Jordan is the chairman of Crystal Palace. The fee for his Observer articles will be given to the Christopher's Children's Hospice, Guildford, Surrey.

 

Source

[snakehips 0]

A good article.

 

I don't know an awful lot about that Jordan fellow but he's painted in a bad light, I believe - though this has no bearing on me as I actually agree with his sentiments in the article.

 

There are double standards by the FA on a constant basis with the more influential members of the game being 'let off' regularly, with little more than a slap on the wrist, where the lesser lights get taken to task for similar offences.

[Chaser 1255]

i like the guy, arrogant, full of himself, but he's prepared to be no-ones monkey and doesnt mind care about being controversial. Fair play to him

[adios 717]

He's viewed like that because he's not afraid to tell it like it is. Fuck all good it will do, but it's nice to see someone call a spade a spade.