Mediawatch: Reject a £59m offer for Defoe? Sure

Daniel Storey

Is that an apology, then?
‘Golden Graham’ reads The Sun’s headline after the tragic passing of former England manager Graham Taylor at the age of 72.

‘He never bore grudge…even after this’ reads the secondary headline, pointing to The Sun’s own infamous headline of ‘Swedes 2 Turnips 1’ from 1993.

‘YOU HAD to admire Graham Taylor for his ever-so-English ability to look his tormentors, myself included, full on and never bear a grudge,’ writes former football chief Alex Montgomery, brought back for a special column.

‘It would have been so easy for him as England manager to snub papers like The Sun. Instead he chose to ignore what was a campaign to get him out of the job when his challenge for the 1992 European Championships failed so badly. That resulted in our classic headline above my match report.

‘As it turned out, Taylor always admired the headline that summed up his failure as England manager. It was penned by the great SunSport production journalist Dave Clement, an absolute master of the tabloid headline.’

Taylor did indeed admire that headline, but what Montgomery fails to mention is just how much The Sun’s subsequent coverage hurt Taylor. He was belittled, vilified and humiliated, mocked up as a root vegetable and given a moniker that would haunt him for the rest of his life. This was the worst strand of tabloid journalism: personal attacks to sell copy.

“The operation on my knee, goodness it hurt. It was the sort of pain people say they wouldn’t wish on their worst enemies. I’m different, I would,” Taylor said in an interview with the Daily Telegraph in 2013.

“I remember I met Kelvin McKenzie, who was the editor of The Sun at the time, and he told me I was being over-sensitive to complain about his paper calling me a turnip. He said it was a bit of fun. Well, I was at a match in Brentford several years later, making my way to my car after the game when I saw out of corner of my eye two yobbish-looking people coming out of the pub with a pint in each hand.

“They were shouting ‘there’s the effin turnip’ and they chucked the pints over me. If it wasn’t for the swift action of the Brentford security people, I reckon it would have been worse. Was that just a bit of fun, Kelvin?”

As for the ‘master of the tabloid headline’ Clement, Taylor wasn’t exactly enamoured. When Clement retired, The Sun crassly invited Taylor to present him with a special leaving present: an autographed copy of that headline. It was an invitation that Taylor rejected out of hand.

To not accept the paper’s guilt in Taylor’s struggles is one thing, but to turn the first paragraphs of your tribute to a kind, humble man into a self-celebration of your newspaper’s work really is quite another. Still, not the like The Sun to fail to reveal the full truth, is it?

 

I just don’t think you understand
Unsurprisingly, Dimitri Payet’s toys being strewn across the West Ham dressing-room floor causes quite a stir in Friday’s papers. In The Sun, Neil Ashton is angry. Angry enough to partake in a fair amount of revisionism.

Ashton accuses Payet of ‘having the past five months off’ and ‘barely lifting a leg’ this season, saying he ‘always has an excuse for poor form’.

Payet has not been as good this season as during his magnificent 2015/16 – that is clear. But hang on just a minute. He has created 74 chances in the Premier League this season, 16 more than any other player in Europe’s top five leagues and at a better rate than last season. He also has three goals and six assists.

Is Payet behaving like a bit of a mardy d*ck? Yes. Has he lifted ‘more than a leg’ this season? Obviously. Is he immune to most of the criticism for his performances, given the lack of quality around him? Probably.

 

And while we’re on Dimitri Payet…
…Fair play to the Daily Mail for claiming a back-page exclusive on the fact that Dimitri Payet is on strike but West Ham have told him he can’t leave.

Here’s Slaven Bilic speaking in his press conference on Thursday:

“We have said we don’t want to sell our best players but Payet does not want to play for us. We are not going to sell him. I expect from him to come back and to show commitment and determination to the team like the team has shown to him. We aren’t going to sell him.”

At least give him a third of that exclusive, fellas.

 

The brat is back
The Usher award for U-turns is a regular Mediawatch feature, but we may have found our winner. As part of his Inside Track column in The Sun, Neil Ashton criticises Jurgen Klopp for Liverpool’s recent poor run of form:

‘JURGEN KLOPP got a free hit last season. At some point, though, he has to take Liverpool across the finishing line. Big managers do it year after year. Jose Mourinho, in the opposition dugout at Old Trafford on Sunday, is an old hand at it.’

Mourinho is the gold standard to aspire to, then. So we’ll let you guess who wrote these not entirely complimentary words about the Portuguese on November 27:

‘HE is dragging the good name of Manchester United through the gutter. Mourinho is a menace: out of control, centre stage for all the wrong reasons. This angry, snarling, growling man cannot be stopped. He is at war. English football has earned another well-deserved break from him. He is a fool, to himself more than anything.

‘Mourinho was once the face of the world football, the main man after winning the Champions League with Porto and Inter Milan. Everybody – Real Madrid, Chelsea, you name it – wanted a piece of this charismatic super-coach. Now he is just a petulant, spoilt brat.

‘Players would rather play for Arsene Wenger, Pep Guardiola, Antonio Conte or Jurgen Klopp these days and he just cannot handle it. They are the main men. Mourinho is just another United manager passing through.’

Helluva 47 days those, Neil.

 

Philosophy, with Paul Merson
“Playing last means the rest of the top six might have won so it’s a game neither side can afford to lose” – Paul Merson.

And playing first means the rest of the top six might go on to win so it’s a game neither side can afford to lose. And playing in the middle means the rest of the top six might win either side of your game, so neither can afford to lose.

Look, you just can’t afford to lose, OK?

 

Maths, with Paul Merson
“Sunderland have to keep Jermain Defoe this month. Unless someone comes in with £60m – which they are not going to – then you can’t sell him” – Paul Merson.

Just plucked a number there, haven’t you Merse? Can somebody please bid £59m – the eighth highest transfer fee of all time – just to see his anger when Sunderland accept it quicker than you can say ‘We are allowed to reinvest this cash, you know?’.

 

Scouting, with Paul Merson
“I think the hosts will win, even without Dimitri Payet. Let’s be honest, if it wasn’t for West Ham then we probably wouldn’t even know who Payet is – they put him on the map and then he treats them like this” – Paul Merson.

No Paul, you wouldn’t know who Payet is. This was a player who arrived at West Ham with 15 senior France caps and had been named in the Ligue Un team of the year. West Ham didn’t put Dimitri Payet on the map; Dimitri Payet put Dimitri Payet on the map by being bloody great.

 

Who did you used to play for again?
Shout out to former Liverpool player and manager Graeme Souness and his combined Liverpool and Manchester United XI for Sky Sports.

Why wouldn’t you pick a defence comprising solely of Liverpool players? And why wouldn’t you pick Jordan Henderson over Paul Pogba?

Oh, that’s why.

 

And who did you used to play for again?
Fans of Mark Lawrenson’s BBC Sport predictions column will be relieved to hear that he has not picked Liverpool to lose at Old Trafford this weekend, thus retaining their lead at the top of his Premier League table. Poor Hull only have three points.

You probably shouldn’t be that surprised: Lawrenson has predicted that Liverpool would lose twice in the league since April 2015, a run of 63 matches.

 

Recommended reading of the day
Simon Burnton on Graham Taylor.

Amy Lawrence on Dimitri Payet.

Nick Ames’ guide to AFCON 2017.