You couldn't make this up... The Guardian group, fresh from Keith Pullein's assertion that Liverpool are the only top four Premiership team that underperforms following an international break (a point amply proved by their 4-1 demolition of Arsenal yesterday) have given column inches to David James to discuss "sensationalist covering of gambling in football" - a bit like George W. Bush or Anthony C.L. Blair objecting to the sensationalist media coverage of torture or Genghis Khan objecting to misogyny and the undermining of property rights really. When the immoral start taking the moral high ground, you know that you are in entertaining territory. Although, interestingly, when we contacted the paper about the article, the subtitle was changed from "sensationalist etc" to some blurb about playing cards - top notch editorial journalism again... For a newspaper that refuses to confront the issue of illegal gambling in the game, this adjustment was revealing. Additionally, The Guardian no longer allows our occasional comments to appear in response to their internal blogs. Although I accept that my writing skills are somewhat limited, I am supremely confident about the content and the action of the paper is effectively a form of censorship of the truth about corruption in English football. Noam Chomsky warned us about the control of media in Britain...
Obviously, the ghost written article is dull in the extreme and addresses the £1 on the Grand National type of betting rather than the £5million insider trading on Premiership football matches type of punt beloved by certain operators within James's club hierarchy.
What is it with David James? At Fulham he was superb yesterday but, then again, some individuals at Portsmouth had taken out serious positions against Fulham in the betting markets. Redknapp's face when Pearce deflected a late equaliser was a sight to behold.
David says "they say you can spot a gambler a mile off". We say that distance is no object in detection. Try betting patterns.
David says his interest in gambling is "an obsession rather than an addiction". We say that this is an easy position to take when one is adjacent to the corruptive core.
David says that, as a teenager, "he couldn't win enough". We say "nothing new there then".
David says that "the majority (of Premiership footballers) enjoy a punt at the bookies". We say "well that's alright then unless the bookies are accepting million pound bets on your own matches".
David says "on England trips, Michael Owen and I would sit for hours playing 13 card brag". We say "no comment".
David says that one manager "positively encouraged" gambling. We say that "any manager placing £12million of bets on Premiership matches with Victor Chandler International in one season should be banned and exposed".
David says that the "current effort to ban super-casinos" is a "distraction". We say that we don't want Manchester being "a good place in which to test the social impact of a super-casino" as advised by The Casino Advisory Panel.
The hierarchy at Portsmouth is rotten to the core. Arms dealing, bungs and insider gambling... nice! Rather than listening to James pontificate about societal issues, we prefer to remember Denmark 4 England 1 when honest Mr James came off the bench at half-time and managed to let through four goals in thirty minutes before putting down his hilarious underperformance to the fact that he hadn't "warmed up properly".
Finally, we may bang on about The Guardian and their selling out to the corruption that blights Premiership football but it is simply that we expect more from a media outlet that allows a voice to Polly Toynbee and George Monbiot. The editor should be taking a close look at Williams, Lacey and the other corruption apologists in their sports writing team.
