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| Get goals or die tryin' |
When trying to overcome recent off-field misdemeanours to bag yourself an England squad place, who better to have fighting your corner than pillar of society and all round nice guy Joey Barton :-
"What do England want to do?" he added. "Do we want to win football matches or do they want to attract sponsors and earn a lot of money?
"Hopefully England will stop worrying about what the sponsors are going to say and that 'goody two shoes' is the right image for Team England. They need to start picking players to win football matches.
"Hopefully people will judge Andy purely on his footballing ability. If he's talking about picking players then he's got to try him - he can't be any worse that what's gone before."
Ok Joey, interesting points. Firstly I'm sure I can speak for everyone when I say that yes we want to win football matches, but at what cost to the image of the game in this country and England as a whole? I'm sure you know as much as anyone Joey, that nobody is perfect , but lines have to be drawn.
By no means do I expect every England player to be squeaky clean (there would be a huge shortage of players if this was the case) but even in his relatively short career Andy Carroll has certainly excelled himself when it comes to breaking the law. Since 2008 Carroll has been involved with the police on assault charges on three separate occasions, the most recent of which found him accused of assaulting his former girlfriend. He was also guilty of a training ground bust up with team mate Steven Taylor, which left Taylor with a broken jaw and Carroll with a broken hand, which he showed off in its bandaged state at a (how appropriate) 50 Cent concert the next evening (see above picture.) Most amazingly, Carroll, currently an England under-21 player, has already managed to get in trouble whilst on international duty - being sent home early from an under-19's tournament for breaking curfew.
Obviously this cannot detract from Carroll's form this year, as he has for my money been the best striker in the Premier League this season, which he showed at the Emirates on Sunday, scoring the winner to take Newcastle to 5th in the table, just three points off a champions league place.
To be honest Joey isn't far off by saying that he can't be worse than whats gone before. Whether he meant that Carroll is no worse off the pitch than Rooney (not true) or better on the pitch than say Peter Crouch or Emile Heskey (true) he may have a point.
For me though it comes down to this. In any other profession if you get arrested every few months, punch your workmates and anyone else that happens to aggravate you, then you get fired. If he does earn an England call-up any time soon it sends yet more mixed messages to both him and all the other highly paid 17-21 year old premiership footballers, that there actions off the pitch do not necessarily lead to consequences on it. Get them kids cleaning boots again...
Now Andy is only young and I truly hope that he cuts out the whole 'fighty, punchy, chavvy' part of his personality and knuckles down - as he truly looks like the sort of traditional centre forward battler that England so desperately need.
"Hopefully people will judge Andy purely on his footballing ability. If he's talking about picking players then he's got to try him - he can't be any worse that what's gone before."
Ok Joey, interesting points. Firstly I'm sure I can speak for everyone when I say that yes we want to win football matches, but at what cost to the image of the game in this country and England as a whole? I'm sure you know as much as anyone Joey, that nobody is perfect , but lines have to be drawn.
By no means do I expect every England player to be squeaky clean (there would be a huge shortage of players if this was the case) but even in his relatively short career Andy Carroll has certainly excelled himself when it comes to breaking the law. Since 2008 Carroll has been involved with the police on assault charges on three separate occasions, the most recent of which found him accused of assaulting his former girlfriend. He was also guilty of a training ground bust up with team mate Steven Taylor, which left Taylor with a broken jaw and Carroll with a broken hand, which he showed off in its bandaged state at a (how appropriate) 50 Cent concert the next evening (see above picture.) Most amazingly, Carroll, currently an England under-21 player, has already managed to get in trouble whilst on international duty - being sent home early from an under-19's tournament for breaking curfew.
Obviously this cannot detract from Carroll's form this year, as he has for my money been the best striker in the Premier League this season, which he showed at the Emirates on Sunday, scoring the winner to take Newcastle to 5th in the table, just three points off a champions league place.
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| "he can't be any worse that what's gone before." Barton |
For me though it comes down to this. In any other profession if you get arrested every few months, punch your workmates and anyone else that happens to aggravate you, then you get fired. If he does earn an England call-up any time soon it sends yet more mixed messages to both him and all the other highly paid 17-21 year old premiership footballers, that there actions off the pitch do not necessarily lead to consequences on it. Get them kids cleaning boots again...
Now Andy is only young and I truly hope that he cuts out the whole 'fighty, punchy, chavvy' part of his personality and knuckles down - as he truly looks like the sort of traditional centre forward battler that England so desperately need.
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