The Offside Treble – Wayne Rooney’s Manchester United ‘dive’, Chelsea fans a disgrace and the return of Tim Sherwood
In this week’s edition of The Offside Treble Jen muses on Wayne Rooney’s moral values, the now infamous Chelsea fans in Paris, and the return of Tim Sherwood to the Premier League.
Ducking and diving
Football tittle-tattle has been dominated this week by accusations of diving levelled at Wayne Rooney. The United captain took a tumble in the box to earn a penalty as they came from behind to win their FA Cup match against League One team Preston North End 3-1. The funny thing is, Preston’s goalkeeper Thorsten Stuckmann didn’t appear to touch the Red Devils midfielder.
Speaking about the incident afterwards, Preston gaffer Simon Grayson diplomatically stated: “I’m not saying it wasn’t a penalty. I’m saying there was no contact.” He added that as far as he could see, Rooney had simply attempted to hurdle the path of the oncoming keeper. Stuckmann, on the other hand, claims the England star admitted his crime on the night and apparently he apologised saying, “Sorry, it was my chance to get a penalty. I had to use that.” If it had been me, I would just have kept my head down and hoped no one noticed … So there you have it: I officially have more questionable morals than Rooney.
God save us!
I am forever writing about Chelsea, but then they are always in the news for the wrong reasons. Maybe Jose Mourinho’s conspiracy theories are not as fantastical as they seem or maybe they are just terribly unlucky ..? Of course, it’s not ‘unlucky’ for fans to be filmed pushing a black man off the metro in Paris chanting “Chelsea! Chelsea! Chelsea!” and “We’re racist, we’re racist and that’s the way we like it, wooooaaaaahhhh” before the PSG game.
I hope we can all agree this is abhorrent and embarrassing to us as a nation (that’s right, YOUR nation is embarrassed by you so you can chalk that ambassadorial mission off as a failure). Quite apart from being offensive, it’s also a downright childish chant but I guess that’s what happens when you have one brain cell.
Prime suspect
And the winner of this week’s Premier League failing team managerial lucky dip is … TIM SHERWOOD! Congratulations to Sherwood, who was announced as Aston Villa’s new boss on Valentine’s Day after a brief fluttering of eyelashes betwixt the two parties. Despite having flirted with an appointment at Crystal Palace several times last year, the former Tottenham ace has been out of a job since being sacked following a stint as Spurs head coach last May.
Villa midfielder Ashley (Roy) Westwood yesterday hailed Tuesday’s inaugural training session under Sherwood as “electric”, so we can expect to see Villa going all guns blazing against Stoke City this weekend. But Westwood is not Sherwood’s only fan, according to reports this week. He also has the backing of ‘known Aston Villa supporter’ Prime Minister David Cameron. Taking the opportunity to look like a man of the people at the headquarters of well-established man of the people’s car, Rolls-Royce, this week, Cameron said: “I am sure Tim Sherwood is going to make a big difference.” Not sure how Sherwood will have taken the news, given that having the Prime Minister’s confidence is usually more devastating than having the chairman’s.
Read more from Jen Offord here!
The Offside Rule 
Thank you Mr. Offord for being so objective about this racism issue. I am a black man from Nigeria and I am a Chelsea fan. I’ve read many articles on the subject, all using the term “Chelsea racists”. Like other BPL teams, Chelsea is a multicultural and multi-coloured family (ownership, management and fans). It is a big shame that some few rotten apples are spoiling the whole barrel and I am glad that they are being identified and expelled. We don’t need such people anywhere in the world, not just football.
And this is where I have my own issue with most British writers. The truth is that while the people in the world of football may persuaded to see those people as only “Chelsea racists” as being addressed in most articles, the people outside will see them first as “British racists”. I know some British writers get a big kick out of criticizing Chelsea for reasons best known to them. But on this issue, it is like trying to cut their nose to spite their face and it would do them a lot of good to spend most of their energy on controlling the damage this horrible issue would do to their nation instead of trying toput Chelsea down.