Jack Wilshere: Take no notice of prats like Stuart Pearce
It's a sad day for me today. My eldest son started school this morning and is now, officially, a big boy. I was amazed at how small some of the children are in his class, having never realised that my boy was so tall. The house seems extremely quiet now with a sleeping baby and Sky Sports News reporting the same stories I saw before going to bed last night.
Enough of the personal guff, on to today's opinions.
Tomorrow night Wayne Rooney will play for England. This appearance will be despite the lurid stories in yesterdays paper about his "private life" as Sky put it. It's interesting to note at this point that, following Jack Wilshere's arrest last week, Sky Sports made the youngster a main headline. They failed to note at any point that Wilshere had been released without charge. For the next two days it was front page news for The Sun also. When I got up yesterday I put Sky Sports News on as usual and saw the following on the news strap "Wayne Rooney to stay with England squad despite newspaper allegations about his private life." I fully expected to see what the allegations were in the next part of the rolling news. Instead, it moved on to tell us that Michael Dawson would be out for eight weeks. Nothing more on Rooney. I immediately pressed the text button to see the details of these Rooney stories. Nothing. It was only when I got my News of the World that I was able to find out what it was about. I find this quite unfathomable. One week a young England player is arrested and released with no charge - major headlines. The next week a senior (the most famous of the current England players) is caught out in the press for being the scumbag most of us already knew him to be - no story here apparently. I wonder if Rooney will find himself losing many of his major endorsements in the way that Tiger Woods did. I bet he won't, simply because the press have made nothing of it on the whole. The treatment of Jack Wilshere in the press, as against that of Rooney, is quite astonishing. Now that one of the England players has had their shenanigans spread across a Sunday paper there is, surely, no reason why all the injunctions held by England players should not be lifted.
The coverage given to Wilshere's arrest, of course, had a knock-on effect for him on Friday evening when he was left out of the England U21 team. Classless thicko Stuart Pearce then announced to the press that, in his view, Jack had "taken his eye off the ball." What a prick Stuart Pearce is. Does he think that his public assessment of Jack (based on a couple of days on the training pitch) is going to gain the boy's respect? If that is Pearce's opinion then fine, say it to Jack in the privacy of the dressing room, but never dish out a public bollocking to a player. This is why Pearce will never be a Manager of any ability. The only reason he has the job he currently holds is that Capello wanted a recognised England tub-thumper around the set-up. Stuart Pearce is a poor man's Kevin Keegan - though he seriously lacks the charisma and motivational qualities that were a feature of "King Kev." I hope that Arsene Wenger makes a point of selecting Wilshere to start against Bolton on Saturday, and that he goes public and criticises Pearce again. You will remember Pearce similarly humiliating Theo Walcott at the European U21 Championships last Summer, and then got the sharp end of Wenger's tongue. This, of course, was after Theo had scored his hat-trick in Croatia where Pearce's entire tactical approach on the England bench (easily picked up on Setanta's effects microphones) was to constantly scream "THEO" at the top of his voice. Yet another cretin to add to the list.
And so we come back to England's double-standards, played out live on Sky tomorrow night. Wayne Rooney will play, I am sure. So how is it that Jack Wilshere has "taken his eye off the ball" and is dropped, whilst Wayne Rooney will be continuing his role for the National team? If anyone has "taken their eye off the ball" and, let's be honest, there was plenty of evidence in South Africa, it is Wayne Rooney. Quite apart from the moral aspect of his disgraceful behaviour, Rooney does not deserve to play for his country right now. Capello should have some courage and drop the Scouse runt, just as his token Englishman did with our Jack on Friday.
More tomorrow.
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