It has been a while since he wrote but pompeycarpet returns with some musings of his own on ‘what we learned last week.’
It’s been an interesting week in the world of football, with huge snowfalls (again), trouble in Africa, statements and interviews flying around left right and centre from our owners and ex’s. But what were the most significant events to happen this week?
Here’s my pick:
1) Under-pitch heating isn’t important. This time last year, our home game against Man City was cancelled. The reason? Extreme weather had caused the pitch to freeze. Queue the media heckling for us to be fined, and tossed out the league “surely all premiership clubs have under-soil heating?” was the cry. Stan Collymore went one better – “all football league clubs should have under-soil heating” was his shout. Fast forward one year, and SIX premiership ties were cancelled this weekend due to extreme weather – of these, 5 had under-soil heating, however this expensive facility did nothing to prevent the postponing of the game. To make matters worse for the “under-soil heating” brigade, a 7th game was cancelled on Saturday, following a failure of the heating system. Despite the expensive technology, a simple frost cover probably would have worked better.
2)Mark Jacob, and Pompey, REALLY don’t approve of the African cup of nations. And rightly so! We are the ones paying the players wages (albeit late), not the national side, yet we are the ones left struggling to cope. Jacob has made every effort to get the players back – complaining to FIFA about the timing of the tournament, and (more recently), the safety of the players. And having seemingly failed to prevent our players from participating, he is rumoured to be trying to get all the games we are due to play whilst the tournament is on postponed. So far so good on that one.
3) No-one knows anything about Ali al Faraj. Ok, this isn’t all new. Personally, I never knew anything about him, nor did I know anyone who did. Even Google and Wikipedia had no idea – and they know everything. However, I did at least assume that Mark Jacob – Al Faraj’s representative on the board had met him. Sadly, it turns out he hasn’t – he’s only met his representatives. Which leaves us with the question. Have these representatives ever met the big man himself?
Do you agree with these? If not, what have YOU learnt this past week?
Written by pompeycarpet.
The views within this article are the views of the individual who wrote and submitted this piece, sometimes solely theirs. They are not necessarily shared by the Vital Pompey Site Journalists.
