Joleon Lescott today told Sevco they wouldn’t be signing him, even after Mark Warburton made a personal trip south to plead the impoverished club’s case. Whether he was simply unwilling to accept a fraction of his current salary or whether it was, as he and his people said, “family reasons” (they probably laughed at him when he told them who he was talking to) isn’t really relevant. Players turn down clubs all the time; it’s hardly news.
What is news is that the Scottish media, most probably with a steer from the club or a friendly PR firm, are already engaged in a high gear “damage limitation” exercise, either to save their blushes – after they’d all trumpeted this deal – or to save those at the club.
But they couldn’t even get their stories straight, in a Keystone Cops style shambles that has different versions circulating all over the shop. The Record’s headline on the story has been written to suggest the club decided to go for Senderos instead. That’s standard stuff from them.
But according to the BBC the player failed his medical.
There are rumours that it was about money.
It hardly matters.
Most of the press had this as a done deal.
Which is why so many outlets are scrambling to write their own versions about why.
One in particular, The Scottish Sun, who put the player and their assertion that he’d signed already on the back page today, will have a particular interest in Made Up Pish to explain to their dwindling readership how they got this one so wrong.
What makes the BBC’s story so shocking is that they’re the national broadcaster, and they took their steer from someone who’s priority is clearly not what’s in the player’s best interests but puts covering someone else’s backside front and centre. Their story that he’s failed the medical is troubling because that could impact on Lescott’s chances of finding another club … it’s the kind of thing a Sevco blog might have written.
The player is now expected to hold signing talks with David Moyes at Sunderland.
A guy who’s just failed a medical shouldn’t be able to breeze through one at another club, right?
Well John Hartson did, and the rest, as they say, is history.
The hacks really need to do better here. Today’s news comes hot on the heels of a quite extraordinary piece of backside-licking guff from Chris “Union” Jack, who’s newspaper last night actually let him write (and then published!) an article in which he said Warburton had gone for “quality over quantity.”
Nine signings, including two from Accrington Stanley … and Clint Hill.
Jesus wept.
Today’s news just increases the feeling of surreality which surrounds Ibrox right now, and the hacks attempt to spin it really is pretty poor.
Getting their story straight would have been a help.
I guess Level 5 didn’t get their statement out to everyone this time.