Sleazy Does It
And so the year ends with United tucked in behind Arsenal at the top of the table, awaiting an eminently winnable Champions League tie and an FA Cup visit to our happiest of hunting grounds. Admittedly, post-Rooney’s freak injury, form hasn’t yet touched the stellar heights of a couple of months back when United were playing football as bewitching as any I could remember, but, with the single exception of the Reebok, results have been superb. So, everything’s rosy then? Not quite.The rum doings of the Christmas party have shone an unwelcome light on the ‘seedy antics’ of the first-team squad, and it’s not hard to imagine that Fergie is living in a permanent state of boiling apoplexy at the moment. When the tabloid dogs go sniffing with this kind of intent you can guarantee a daily stream of ever more lurid headlines. Even the quality press are getting in on the act with the Guardian today devoting a full page to the way United players supposedly ‘harvest’ the pick of the Selfridges and Harvey Nicks counters to garnish their parties.
At times like, this no amount of photos of Ronaldo wearing a Santa hat, giving the thumbs up next to some sickly kid in a hospital bed, are going to erase the noxious stench that arises from that image of a few first teamers – and Jonny Evans – swaggering in their virtually matching jeans and leather jacket ensembles, and similarly matching smirks, towards that ‘ill-fated night of sleaze and debauchery’.
It’s Paul Scholes I feel most sorry for (apart, obviously from Evans or the anonymous 26 year old woman, depending how that turns out). No player less deserves to have his image dragged into the mire than Scholesy, yet there he is strolling along. On Wednesday morning Nicky Campbell summoned the full extent of his moral superiority – no mean feat considering he has more of it than virtually any other individual in the country - to castigate all professional footballers for their moral failings, with particular reference to those that play for us. Well give me the humility of Paul Scholes any day over the posturing of a superannuated phone-in host.
And while we’re on the subject of what one must, in true tabloid spirit, refer to as that photo before that party, can someone please have a word with Gary Neville about his decision to attend the do wearing trainers.
How different to last year’s Christmas do when footage of the team indulging in a beery singalong of United songs underlined how strong team spirit was in the post-Van Nistelrooy era. Indeed they reprised the singing session again this year, but team spirit can perhaps go too far when five guests – the legal team no doubt warning them against anything more specific than that – shared the same receptacle later in the night.
When it all blows over and the tabloids have a new fleeting obsession to play with, we can get back to thinking about football. About that nagging thought that keeps telling you that Ronaldo bottles it in big matches. About that hope that Saha is going to ignite any second now and play like he did at the start of last season. And about the image of Red Square, packed with thousands of reds, pissed out of their heads.
posted by Royton Red @ 2:37 PM
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