Search: 'Kieron Dyer'

The scuffle at St James' Park was anything but savoury, but let's not get carried away

If you look outside for a moment, it’s likely that the streets will be awash with children scrapping with each other in imitation of the fight broadcast from St James’ Park on April 2. Some will be pretending to be Lee Bowyer or Kieron Dyer, others will have been assigned the roles of peacekeeper Gareth Barry and bystander Lee Hendrie. Who knows where it may lead? When will footballers realise that they are role models whose every action, however stupid, will likely be mirrored by impressionable youngsters?

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Arsène Wenger isn’t prejudiced against English players, says Jon Spurling, but the exploits of Paul Merson, Francis Jeffers and Jermaine Pennant won’t have impressed him or anyone

Having been described in Le Monde as “une honte” and in Die Welt as “eine Schande”, Arsène Wenger appears to be “a disgrace” in every European language. Paul Merson’s comments, which first ap­peared in the Daily Mail, were quickly taken out of context by an assortment of newspapers around the continent. Le Monde excelled itself, suggesting that Merson had also labelled his former manager “une brome” (“a joke”). In fact, Merson had described the absence of any British players in Arsenal’s squad to face Crystal Palace as “a joke”, rather than directly name-calling Wenger. By selecting an all-foreign squad, the Arsenal manager left himself open to a raft of criticism. José Mourinho claimed that “the backbone of my Chelsea team will always be English”, ignoring the fact that only three of his regular starting XI (John Terry, Wayne Bridge and Frank Lampard) are British and that a spate of injuries could easily leave him in the same boat as Wenger. Mourinho added: “He [Wenger] is forgetting the influence which English players have had on Arsenal.” The opposite is true. Wenger is totally au fait with the legacy left by English players at Highbury, perhaps overly so.

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Dear WSC
As an avid AFC Wimbledon fan, I was amazed at Robert Jeffrey’s article (WSC 212) which makes the club look like it is in a total mess with constant bickering and some pretty unpleasant fans and management running the club. I am not sure how we could have won 42 league games out of 46 if we were in such turmoil. Things are never perfect, but for goodness’ sake the feeling for the club has never been stronger or more positive, while suggesting we treated Kevin Cooper like Tottenham did Sol Campbell is such a disgraceful distortion. Plus rubbish like “We have, quite simply, forgotten how to be happy.” I know no one at the club who even feels vaguely the same way, so perhaps he should think of doing something else on his weekends as it won’t get any better than this.
Richard Brazier, via email

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Sunday 1 Mark Palios resigns, saying: “My action is essential to enable the Football Association to begin to return to normality.” Sven gossip-broker Colin Gibson is also reported to have offered to quit. At this rate Tord Grip will soon be answering the phones.

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However unjust their elimination from Euro 2004 might have seemed at the time, the truth is that England will never go further than the last eight in a major tournament until there is a major rehaul of the Premiership

 England’s elimination at Euro 2004 felt like a compilation of all their previous tournament crises. The team tend to rely on survival through attrition, of desperate defending with their “tin hats on”. But that never pays off, so other reasons for failure are found, often involving making a scapegoat of a referee (Urs Meier this year, Kim Milton Nielsen in 1998). This means uncomfortable questions don’t have to be posed, such as whether it’s right to place faith in star names when they are playing as badly as David Beckham, or indeed whether the best English players are in fact especially good in the first place.

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