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Leeds United are Right: Gender is No Excuse for Amateurishly Stupid Punditry – by Rob Atkinson

Posted on 30/12/2020 | 28 comments

*Karen Carney – going viral with COVID theory*

As so often with Leeds United, a fine win capping a great performance is possibly going to be overshadowed by a storm in a teacup, and on this occasion the person brewing up the trouble is a pundit on the lamentable Amazon Prime live coverage of United’s game at West Brom. Let’s get one thing straight before we go any further. The gender part of this argument is sod all to do with my opinion of what’s been said in the wake of Leeds’ impressive 5-0 demolition of WBA. The pundit concerned, one Karen Carney, is self-evidently a woman, but that has nothing at all to do with the vacuously stupid remark she made after the match, to the effect that Leeds United probably secured promotion last season thanks to the initial COVID lockdown, which interrupted football for around three months. The break gave us a rest, you see – just us, nobody else, apparently. I’ve heard some crackpot theories in my time, but that one really takes the biscuit.

At the risk of introducing a few facts into this issue, when facts appear to be anathema to Ms Carney, Leeds United, after an earlier rocky spell, had just reeled off five successive wins immediately prior to the cessation of the league programme, recording clean sheets in all of them. When football resumed, with Leeds nicely rested according to Karen’s world view, United proceeded to lose their first game back 0-2 at Cardiff. There was much wailing and gnashing of teeth, with the more pessimistic Leeds fans bemoaning the COVID break, which seemed to have robbed us of the impetus we’d generated before lockdown. Happily, Leeds hit form again, and that Cardiff defeat was our last, as United recorded seven further wins (two of them with a blistering post-title winning hangover) and one solitary draw to win the league by ten clear points. Ms Carney’s enormous intellect seems to have missed the fact that this was the levellest of level playing fields, with each club having had the same “break” in their programme; it was always going to be down to which club handled such an extraordinary, unprecedented situation with the most resolution and professionalism. Let the record show that that was Leeds United, beyond any shadow of a doubt.

Given the above – and I’d be interested or more likely amused to hear any counter arguments – Karen Carney’s comments on Tuesday night were a hymn to rank amateurism, lazy, inaccurate punditry, and gross stupidity. And yet various people are screeching in horror, because the official Leeds United Twitter account had the nerve to mock this hapless woman’s ridiculous comments. To his eternal credit, Leeds owner Andrea Radrizanni took ultimate responsibility for the club’s tweet, rejecting any criticism of it on the grounds that Carney’s comments were “completely unnecessary and disrespectful to our club”. Well, quite. And well said, sir.

As usual, though, various parties are leaping on the misogyny bandwagon and claiming that it is so, so wrong to out Carney as a fool in this way. There are various problems with this. Firstly, Carney is not the only person to have been berated or mocked by possibly the most laconically witty and barbed club Twitter account of them all. Gabby Agbonlahor has had some this season, and quite rightly so, for his various inane remarks before and since United’s 3-0 dismissal of his beloved Villa. I’m acutely aware of this, because I had my say about that one, as I did more recently (on Twitter) when another inept pundit, Andy Hinchliffe, spoke fluent rubbish in and around Unted’s home game against Burnley the other day. For some reason, Messrs Agbonlahor and Hinchliffe did not immediately have the distaff side flocking to their defence – I wonder why?

Speaking rubbish on a public platform and then having people of any gender defend you because you happen to lack a Y chromosome is hardly unknown. But it’s not healthy and it’s not helpful – I’d go so far as to argue that it’s absolutely inimical to the cause of equality which I, for one, happen to hold dear. If you’re prepared to stand up and voice controversial (ie crap) opinions, then you have to be equally prepared to be held accountable for them. Either that, or we’re heading down a slippery slope whereby people who dress neither right nor left are able to say what they like with absolute impunity, as long as it’s merely crass and stupid, and not actually actionable.

Personally, I’m sick to the back teeth of lazy, amateurish comment as applied to my beloved club, particularly hoary old myths like Marcelo Bielsa‘s teams “always blowing up”. It winds me up beyond belief, whatever the provenance. When I saw Karen Carney spouting such arrant crap tonight, that was the flavour of my resulting ire – that here was another clueless pundit nicking a living by peddling easily disposed of myths about Leeds United. The only time her gender struck me was when I thought to myself, you’ve done the other female pundits no favours there, lass. I truly believe that it’s harder for a woman to make a mark in an area such as football punditry than it should be, because of the preponderance of men, some of them pretty poor fish like Agbonlahor and Hinchliffe. That being the case, a woman really should try to avoid the same lazy and cliched approach of her male counterparts, lest she strengthen the argument of those Neanderthals who hold that women should have no place in football. I certainly don’t hold that view, and that is why, when I hear the likes of Carney talking rubbish and being disrespectful of honest professionals, I will call it out – just as I have with equivalent male idiots. Gender is no excuse, and it’s no magic shield either. Those who argue that it should be need to radically rethink their own view of exactly what equality is all about.

Marching On Together

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Posted in Football, Leeds United

Tagged Amazon Prime, Andrea Radrizzani, Andy Hinchliffe, equality, Football, Gabby Agbonlahor, gutter press, inequality, journalism, Karen Carney, Leeds United, Marcelo Bielsa, myths, West Bromwich Albion

Scrounging Graduate In “I Expect To Get Paid For Working” Scandal

Posted on 12/02/2013 | Leave a comment

“Daily Fail” Leader Column

In what is being seen by wishy-washy commie pinko do-gooders as a landmark ruling, senior judges have ruled that a university graduate was correct to claim government back to work schemes were “legally flawed”. As part of an appalling betrayal of their fellow members of the ruling elite, the three bewigged buffoons have quashed regulations entitling the government to force benefit claimants to work for nothing. The decision, handed down by the Court of Appeal but still subject to further legal avenues, will be seen as a dark day for those who view a return to slavery as the only way of maximising the economic potential of the poor.

Nit-picking

Government sources were today taking comfort in the fact that the panel of judges were not critical of back-to-work schemes as such, but were merely nit-picking over the irritating principle that ”Proles expect to be paid”. Cate Reilly (24), the university graduate who brought the original case, had been required to work for multi-million pound High Street tat retailers Poundland, instead of pursuing her voluntary work in a museum. Ms Reilly was shockingly frank in her remarks after the decision was made public: “I don’t think I am above working in shops like Poundland”, she stated. “I now work part-time in a supermarket. It is just that I expect to get paid for working.”

Mercenary

It is the impact of those last seven words that will be worrying ministers today. It would seem that, on the back of the troublesome minimum wage legislation passed by the previous government, even benefit claimants will now expect to be paid actual money for their job experience opportunities. This is seen as deeply disturbing by the government. A stricken and tear-stained DWP junior minister, who did not want to be named, quavered: “These nasty, ungrateful peasants should be grateful for the chances we’re giving them. But oh, no – they want to be paid. This is the sort of mercenary attitude that we see all too often, even in these hard times when we should all be pulling together. Companies like Poundland create a lot of wealth, and that helps drive the economy and pay bankers’ bonuses. How are they supposed to fulfil their obligations to shareholders if they’re going to have to start paying people?”

Bullish

Employment Minister Mark Hoban was in a more bullish mood, stating, “Ultimately, the judgment confirms that it is right that we expect people to take getting into work seriously if they want to claim benefits”. The government’s position, then – thankfully – is likely to remain that claimants should prioritise obtaining work over more frivolous considerations like being paid for it. We should, perhaps, be grateful for small mercies.

Unwashed

The TUC, on the other hand, was taking a predictably wild and woolly line, claiming that mandatory back-to-work schemes “need to be looked at again”. This will be seen by worried Cabinet members as a direct challenge to the official line that poor, largely unwashed benefit scroungers should be marginalised, exploited for every penny possible. This type of economic resource is vital as the country fights its way back to a position where MP’s can ask for a 32% rise in pay without causing outrage in grim northern provincial centres of Marxism where no self-respecting Tory would be seen dead.

Dangerous

Anybody who fails to take this worrying development seriously should be warned as to possible consequences by the words of a partner at leading law firm, Manches. Tom Walker, the employment law partner, stated that “This judgment upholds what is perhaps the key tenet of employment, namely the ‘work wage bargain’. If someone gives their labour to a company, they should be paid for it. However well intentioned a workplace scheme may be, it is very dangerous to introduce compulsory unpaid labour into the UK employment market.”

Treason

It is precisely this kind of dangerously retrogressive, sentimental and frankly treasonous thinking that is liable to drag our country back to the dark days before the average pay of a Chief Executive Officer reached levels 400 times that of the average employee. There is a real danger that, without the Government’s forward-thinking and courageous plans to create a sector of society who will expect to work for no financial reward, we could return to a time when the top people were getting by on perhaps no more than ten times the salary of the man in the street.

Now if that doesn’t worry you, then all of Mr. Cameron’s good work so far has been a waste. We have to stand firm – it is no less than our God-given duty. We must remember who we are, where we’re from and get back to exploiting those untapped resources at the bottom of the pile. That’s the Tory way, and that, says the “Daily Fail“, is what we are all bound to protect.