The past few days have been a tumultuous nightmare of bad publicity for the England team and the Football Association. As the spiralling blame game continues, none of the associated parties are emerging without any fault.
Ally McCoist’s Rangers career hasn’t always been plain sailing. Despite his status as the club’s all-time top scorer, and, of course, the various winners medals he plundered as a player with the Ibrox club, there have been dark days along the way.
You can imagine how the story goes. It’s match point, Andy Murray is losing a crucial tie break at Wimbledon. His opponent hits a ferocious back hand which the umpire decides was in. However, Hawk Eye proves that the ball was in fact out. The Umpire has this impressive tool at his disposal, so the game continues. Murray regroups and wins the tie break and the match. Andy Murray marches on at Wimbledon, Britain’s sports fans rejoice. Now, imagine this quite different scene.
Perhaps it was Sir Alex Ferguson’s fault. After all, at the turn of the year the Manchester United manager was vocal in his dismissal of the prospect of signing any new players during the January transfer window – despite the fact that the treatment room at Old Trafford has been a busy place of late.
Why are footballers (most sports people in fact) always banging on about ‘taking each game as it comes’? Is it some kind of sports psychology technique? Ignore the blindingly obvious fact that this is so unoriginal as to be offensive, in order to maintain focus? Maybe, but it certainly doesn’t make for an interesting listen.