WRIGHT, WRONG, WRONG, RIGHT ON

Andy Kay dons his Avram Grant face mask, gets all grumpy and has another moan in Oh Kay.

Wright move

So Ian Wright no longer wants to work at the BBC as a football pundit. The former Arsenal striker claims that his role wasn’t that of an expert but more of a ‘comedy jester’. Bit harsh on comedy jesters if you ask me. Wright never had much to say of any gravitas and what he did spout forth was usually patriotic but excitable drivel delivered with sparing use of the English language. The truth is that with the BBC losing the rights to live England games and the FA Cup to ITV, Wright wasn’t going to get any work anyway. He wasn’t even part of the team covering Euro 2008. He’ll be much more at home presenting his new show ‘Gladiators’ on Sky One. Wright says he wants to connect with his audience. Bearing in mind that anyone watching such utter tosh is bound to brain dead, looks like he’ll get his wish.

Scottish (sweet) FA

Officials at the Scottish FA more than lived up to their initials last week when the Celtic player Gary Caldwell found out he was banned for the weekend match against Aberdeen after watching Sky Sports News. Caldwell was involved in a flare up with David Weir of Rangers after the Old Firm derby the previous Wednesday. The referee said he was reporting the players for violent conduct. Trouble is, no-one from the SFA bothered to tell the club. A spokesman said “The onus is on the club to get in contact with the SFA and not the other way round, because you can imagine if it was our job to phone around all the clubs in Scotland, it would be a huge task.” Amazingly, if you check out the Scottish FA’s web site, it announces that they have no vacancies. Perhaps there might be one – someone to explain to them what an ’email’ is, or indeed to suggest that they could replace the ‘vacancies’ section with a list of banned players. With just 42 Senior League clubs, 57 if you count the Highland League, that should take all of about 5 minutes a week.

Do what Gary?

Needing all the help he can get at the wrong end of the Premier League, Gary Megson called on Rafa Benitez to “protect the integrity of the Premier League with his squad selection” ahead of the game at Fulham. Benitez didn’t listen of course and his team with 8 changes, ahead of the CL tie with Chelsea, was still good enough to win. The interesting thing here is Megson’s choice of words Protect the integrity of the competition!! You mean, just like he did in the Uefa Cup when he named a team of second stringers and no hopers to face Sporting Lisbon because he had an important league match against Wigan a few days later?

Johnno

We don’t normally feature egg chasers on Footy Boots but the appointment of Martin Johnson as England head honcho merits a few lines. Notwithstanding the shabby treatment of Brian Ashton (no £2 million McClaren type pay out for him) Johnson is most rugby fans choice for the gig. He has no experience but he’s a winner and players and supporters like winners. However, he won’t be with the team when they tour New Zealand this summer. Johnno wants to stay at home as Mrs J is expecting. Admittedly, there were complications when she last gave birth but, just imagine for a moment, that after the FA had appointed Fabio Capello, they announced that he wouldn’t be available for England’s first two World Cup qualifying games due to family reasons. There’d have been uproar. Brian Barwick would never have had to buy firewood again due to the amount of stick that would have come his way. Not the RFU’s greatest hour.