Poor old Gary Megson. Not only does he have the misfortune of being the manager of a team who are to attractive flowing football what Cristiano Ronaldo is to humility, but he and his fellow managers also have the misfortune of having to put up with us beastly fans questioning their managerial abilities!
I know! How can he cope? It is common knowledge that the fans know nothing about the game, while managers decisions are, without exception, entirely productive and garner the desired effects.
Speaking after Saturday’s game with Birmingham City, during which irate Blues fans had called for manager Alex McLeish to change from a 4-5-1 formation, to a more attack minded 4-4-2, Megson moaned;
“Everybody thinks they know that little bit about it,” Megson opined to The Bolton News.
“I remember having a giggle with Alan Curbishley at West Ham a couple of seasons ago.
“I was getting a load of stick, there were demonstrations about me; Alan makes a substitution and then he gets a chant of ‘You don’t know what you’re doing!’
“I sidled up to him and said ‘you do realise there are only two people in this ground of 30,000 people who don’t know what they’re doing, don’t you?'”
If you ignore the overstated irony, this is a rare example of unusual foresight from the Bolton boss.
Megson was then kind enough to give fans a quick appreciation of the rigours his lofty position, as well as a quick lesson in semantics;
“An opinion without any consequence is an opinion. An opinion with consequence – that’s a decision.
“We [managers] make them. Most people don’t. They should have all these phone-ins before kick-off but they don’t.”
Did you see what he did there? Have the phone-ins before kick off! Brilliant! This means all our wild theories and beliefs will undoubtedly be proved wrong by that afternoon’s game. Ergo the fans, me and you, know bugger all and should let them get on with it without sticking our noses in! Fantastic idea Meggo!
It is quite endearing to have a manager speak his mind amongst the sea of tired epithets and clichés that pass for most managerial interviews. However Megson’s assertion, that all fans should, basically, shut up and let him and his ilk make the decisions without comment or opinion, takes away the basic and inalienable right of any fan. Managers and professional footballers at the top level, live in this cosseted world where they are paid extremely well, worshipped and have their every whim catered for. The down side to that is that when they get it wrong, people are allowed to say so. However this, it seems, isn’t good enough for Mr. Megson. It sounds to me very much that he wants his cake and to eat it and then steal a fulsome piece of yours too.
It is therefore with the greatest of respect and following the ‘Megson idiom’, that I respectfully ask you to keep any opinions on this subject and article to yourself. We, as football fans, wouldn’t want to upset him by having wild and scurrilous opinions of our own.
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