Life’s not necessarily always better in The Sun.
Afternoon all. I had a big article written and all ready to go about Villa, Josh Vela, NRC and the like. And then the computer decided now would be a good time to update itself. All that work wasted. I can`t even, remember the pithy opener I had penned.
But, at the end, I had written something about Fabrice Muamba and his interview in The Sun. And even though I am on nights and have to go back to bed, I think it is worthwhile giving up twenty minutes of sleep to re write my opinion on it. You`ll just have to imagine the rest of it. Basically Vela=Good. NRC=Good. Villa=We Can Win=Good.
Regular readers will know that, for family reasons, I neither read nor buy The Sun. However, I do recognise that it is this countries most popular paper and, as such, it is the best place to have your story read by the most people.
However, it is also the paper that had an image of Fab lying prone on the floor whilst he was still technically dead in an ambulance on the way to the London Chest Hospital. When the image was seen and tweeted about, their was a general sense of outrage, not just from Bolton fans but also from people who don`t give two whatnots about football. The paper quickly changed the image.
So, you can imagine how I felt when seeing that Fab had sold his story to the paper. Forget about arguments about the Hillsborough Disaster. Footballers have sold their story to the paper since the events of April 1989 and as you can see from the papers circulation figure, people still buy it. So saying that he shouldn’t sell his story because of something that happened twenty three years disregards the thousands of interviews that footballers have given the paper since that time. Fab selling his story to them has nothing to do with that, as onerous as it was.
But this is still the paper that showed the image. I understand that Fab had other things on his mind at the time the image was published and that he has hired his own PR firm to deal with interviews and the like rather than go through the club`s press office (probably a good idea otherwise they`d probably have him sat between at Zat Knight and Darren Pratley). But the PR firm should know how the public felt about what they had been shown. Every other media outlet had the good grace not to show anything. It is strange that they chose the one who did.
Don`t get me wrong, I`m not having a go at Fab about this. He is entitled to do what he wants to do and, as I said, for all its many faults, The Sun is the best place to have your story read by the most people. For me, I hope that whatever fee he was paid goes to help people that will be in the same situation as he found himself. Fab is a good man. I`m sure he will do the right thing.
We will return with a Villa preview tomorrow. Until then, get some zzzzzzs.