Sunday 18 August 2013

NorthBankBen - the worst side of Twitter

1- Chamberlain has done his cruciate ligaments. Minimum of 3 months out.

2- Either way, bottom line is Ox is out for 3+ months.

3 - It's suspected to be his cruciates. Very serious injury either way for Chamberlain.

4- Don't know exactly the injury to Chamberlain something to do with his "ligaments."

The above tweets are from @NorthBankBen yesterday afternoon. I shall fill you in one some basic facts and then leave you to make up your own minds about @NorthBankBen.

Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain has a knee injury, the extent of which is not yet known and was definitely not known yesterday afternoon at the time of the tweets. He reportedly left the ground on crutches and obviously there are great concerns that it may be a serious injury. It is worth remembering that he has not yet had the knee MRI scanned, a rather key fact. It is impossible to tell the difference between some minor and some relatively serious knee injuries straight away, it may or may not be serious, simply no one knew but the expert @NorthBankBen felt certain enough to say that he 'HAD DONE HIS CRUCIATE LIGAMENTS'.

Such idle and baseless speculation is not only highly ignorant but it is deeply reckless. It is absolutely fine to say that it may be a serious injury and that there are concerns, just as the newspapers have done to today, but to state that a player has done 'his cruciates' when one doesn't know this for a fact is deeply reckless and irresponsible. The player deserves some respect for starters, stupid comments like @NorthBankBen's get propagated around Twitter in an instant, imagine how this is for the player and his family, it is utterly shameful. People should be far more responsible before ignorantly shooting their mouths of in this fashion. @NorthBankBen's further tweets show that he is furiously backtracking and that he doesn't understand much about knee anatomy, he is digging his own hole deeper and deeper. He should simply have apologised for his immensely stupid first tweet.

I hope the Ox makes a rapid recovery, and I shall wait for official news before stating what precise type of knee injury he has sustained. It may be serious, it may be his cruciates, it may not, it may be a collateral injury, a bit of bone bruising etc, we simply don't yet know. So how about we show a bit of respect to the player by not making up statements of fact in the manner of @NorthBankBen? I have been blocked by @NorthBankBen, presumably for daring to point out his immense ignorance. I would encourage everyone to ask him just how he knew that Oxo had 'done his cruciates' before a scan had even been performed? Was it by magic?



Friday 16 August 2013

Top down system failure


It has been a fantastic summer of sport, we have some truly excellent cricket, golf and athletics most recently.  It is just crushingly frustrating that the club have been so inactive and seemingly disorganised in bringing players in.

The clearing out of useless deadwood has been the one positive piece of work.  However we have brought in just one player to counterbalance this huge loss of squad numbers.  With just a few days til the closure of the transfer window, this is a truly disastrous situation and one that was entirely preventable.

We have big games coming up and the squad is weak beyond belief.  The fact that this is the case demonstrates that our club's management structure is failing, we have bucket loads of money but for some reason the deals have not been done.  The precise reasons for this failure appear complex but there appears little doubt that the manager and owner need to shoulder a decent chunk of the blame.

It is hard to know what else to say.  Most fans with intact logic circuits are struggling to get their heads around out incomprehensible lack of activity in the transfer market.  I am struggling with it too, just how ludicrous can things get before someone takes control of this situation?