Stuff

Lots of people have been winding me up today.

Firstly there is Alex Ferguson condemning footballers for “living in their agents pockets,” a situation which “depresses” the Man Utd boss. Remind us what your son Jason does again Sir Alex? Oh that’s right, he’s a football agent par excellence, who at one point represented 13 members of the United squad, and has been implicated in more dodgy dealings than Barry Fry. Must make for awkward family dinners at the Ferguson house.

Then there’s the Cambridge Evening News and their deputy sports editor Paul Stimpson, who decided that, as there wasn’t much going on in the world yesterday, they’d lay into the United fans on the Scott Rendell = Judas facebook group.

One might question whether a publication which outed the mayor of Cambridge as a transsexual (explain to me how that one is in the public interest boys) and which continues to lead a borderline-racist campaign against Traveller’s is in any position to label itself a “family newspaper”.

However, leaving that to one side, it's the sanctimonious tone of Stimpson’s piece got right up my nose. I hope he’s never been in a crowd at a football match and shouted abuse at players or officials before, otherwise I guess that would make him a “small minded nasty oik” too? I’m not a member of that group, and don’t condone any of the stuff people have been saying, but there is a world of difference between a spur-of-the-moment outpouring of anger, and a “vicious online hate campaign”.

I assume the CEN will be running a feature on all the other, more positive, United-related facebook groups, but I won’t hold my breath. Unfortunately it is the kind of lazy, sensation-hungry journalists employed at the CEN that give the rest of us a bad name, grr.

Speaking of Judas, his comments on the Scum website also amused me. One minute he’s saying “it’s not about the money, honest guv, the offer to play in the footballing mecca that is league two was one I couldn’t refuse”, and the next he’s saying “Cambridge will definitely get promoted this season”, which of course would put us in, er, League Two. What a confused young man he must be.