Gentlemen of a certain age will know the feeling that one gets in the middle of the night when one needs to avoid an incontinence related incident. Gentlemen of all ages will know the feeling that one gets at all times when one has missed their daily fix of Bluemoon. Here I am then.
Like yesterday, I’m having to go through the various posts of the last 24 hours plus assorted PM’s in one go. Having looked at the PM’s it's going to be tomorrow night at the earliest before I can give a substantive response to some of them, such is the detailed nature of what has been put.
But this is my attempt at one reply to all of the other posts, where I think it is necessary to respond. Sorry about the impersonal nature of this; I hope to be able to spend a lot more time on the board over the weekend even accounting for the usual fierce resistance of Mrs Burns and our daughters to my spending time away from the bosom of my family.
Following on from last night’s rant, the Mascherano incident at Leeds, whilst obviously shocking to many is of course outside the remit of the FA Watch campaign, given we have restricted ourselves to Premier League games only. Alan Wiley must feel that ‘swinging’ is a perfectly reasonable pastime for Premier League players to indulge in, given he has reportedly said he would not have dismissed the Liverpool player had he seen the incident at the time. I’m not going to comment on this except to say that I don’t think they should be doing it on a football pitch in full view of sensitive and vulnerable fans. Presumably Wiley thought it was all one big laugh, as he did with the Michael Owen goal in the 81st minute of added time last Sunday. Well it’s no laughing matter for us, the fans, who have to suffer the decisions he makes.
I see Portishead Blue and Hadfield Blue have reached stage 2 of the FA’s complaint process; that is, the reply the FA send when one of those smelly and ungrateful supporters has the temerity to challenge the blandness of their Lord and Master's original reply. The ‘As I'm sure you can appreciate, our staff are unable to engage in continued dialogue with all supporters’ and ‘While I appreciate we may not have alleviated your concerns, I would nevertheless like to thank you for taking the time to write’ appear to be the standard form of words for issue in these circumstances. It appears to be yet another example of a joint FA/Premier League initiative as this is almost exactly what the Premier League used to say when people kept on writing in about our old friend Berbatov. I suppose it would be said that the two organisations are simply working together to achieve a consistent approach across the industry – hmm.
I will be certainly using the opportunity to write to the Sports Minister Gerry Sutcliffe and forcibly express our concerns that the FA is not ‘fit for purpose’ – is that still the current ‘in’ phrase that politicians use? A request for a meeting with Mr Sutcliffe is not out of the question and something I will consider over the next day or so. You don’t ask you don’t get, and the timing for this would certainly seem to be right.
0103 made the point that it really can't be appropriate for the chief executive to continue to comment on a case while the disciplinary process remains ongoing. Well it hasn’t bothered Ian Watmore before has it! The fact there seems to be conflict of interest with him being a big Gooner and all doesn’t appear to have registered and raises serious question marks about the man’s suitability and ability to head up a body such as the FA. Quite possibly this is a point to be raised with Mr Sutcliffe, who I’ve just realised is a United fan (well he would be, representing staunch United territory in West Yorkshire) and will almost certainly feature in my next round of letters to the press. Watmore seems oblivious of the fact he would appear to be having a prejudicial impact on Adebayor’s improper conduct hearing; such behaviour of a Chief Executive is, let us just say, surprising to say the least – you may come up with a slightly different form of words to this of course, but the meaning will undoubtedly be the same!
Thanks to Chippy boy for writing to and publishing the response of his MP, Steve Webb. As I posted last night, I’m looking for someone to take on the portfolio of looking after MP’s and household names but I’ve yet to have any replies. Is this something that one of you could do – it would be a big help. PM me if you’re interested, or I’ll pick a name of a ‘volunteer’ at random!
Finally, a letter went off to the FA yesterday about Rio’s friendly ‘Welcome to Stretford’ gesture to Craig Bellamy after the fan had come on the pitch. I’ll start chasing the FA up for replies to my earlier e-mails after the weekend; they’ve had more than enough time to respond to some of the earlier ones.