Phil Brown is a liar. Let us examine what he said.
“He wouldn’t shake my hand when we beat them fairly 2-1 at the Emirates. He wouldn’t shake my hand when they beat us, fairly, 3-1 at the KC Stadium.”
Just to be sure I’m not misquoting or rejigging the text, listen for yourselves. This is Phil Brown talking to BBC 5Live yesterday on the Victoria Derbyshire show:
Straight from the horse’s mouth. So, I wonder what we should make of this, after Arsenal‘s 3-1 win at the KC Stadium:
And what about the picture below, taken after Hull beat Arsenal 2-1 at the Grove last September. A game, as others have pointed out, where Hull were applauded from the field by Arsenal fans.
For further proof of the handshake Brown says Wenger did not take part in, have a look at this link which has a different picture with date, time and info.
So, if Phil Brown is telling fibs about something as simple as a handshake, something so simple to disprove, doesn’t it cast serious doubts over the other stuff he’s been saying? His interview on 5Live yesterday was hilarious. From bizarrely complaining about the way Cesc was dressed he then gloated about getting ‘up the noses’ of the Arsenal hierarchy, as if that was somehow more important than, you know, beating Arsenal in a football match. Calling the presenter ‘My darling…’ was patronising and toe-curling as well.
When asked who else witnessed the spitting incident he claims to have seen, his inability to answer, his spluttering and eventual retreat into accusing the presenters of questioning his integrity spoke absolute volumes to me.
The whole thing is thoroughly distasteful, not least because there is now this assumption that Fabregas did spit. An inconclusive 4 year old video of the Michael Ballack incident is no proof of spitting, then or now. The only people to have seen Cesc spit are Brian Horton and Phil Brown. Not one other person in a busy tunnel (or was it the pitch, Phil?) saw anything to back up what they’re saying.
No other member of Hull staff can come forward and give credence to what Horton told Brown happened. No, wait. Brown witnessed it himself. Of course. His word, and Brian Horton’s, against Cesc’s. And Cesc says he didn’t spit. I believe Cesc.
I don’t believe a man whose team have lost most of their last 20 games, who is under huge pressure, who is facing the prospect of relegation, and for whom a story like this is a convenient distraction from the small matter of the football team he’s managing playing like useless cunts.
Last night Cesc reiterated his denials, saying:
I’ve absolutely nothing to hide and nothing to be ashamed of. The simple fact is I did not spit at the assistant manager of Hull City.
And of the Ballack incident that is being bandied about as some kind of proof, he said:
I remember the incident clearly. It was four years ago and I leant over and shouted at him. I did not spit at him.
Christopher got in touch to remind me of the match reports of that Bayern game. Here’s what Henry Winter said at the time:
The Germans were winding the clock, Ballack cleverly going to ground under a challenge from Fabregas, who was cautioned for shouting an insult at the prostrate midfielder.
No mention of spitting. Neither the BBC nor the Guardian saw fit to mention anything about the Ballack thing and had their been a spitting incident you can be quite sure it would have been all over the papers. So can we put to bed that myth, please?
The FA are currently investigating the incident and I’m sure that no charges will be forthcoming for our captain. I’m quite sure that they will say there is no case for Cesc to answer. Yet even when that happens he’ll be stained by the allegation made by Phil Brown and the ‘evidence’ of the Ballack incident. The whole thing is most unsavoury and leads to the kind of cowardly, anonymous sniping that you’ll find in this Mail article.
If there were some harsh words after the game, so what? At every level of football there are rows after games which are won in contentious circumstances and if anyone tries to tell me that Cesc was the only one dishing out a bit of banter I’ll call them a liar. Do you think Hull players didn’t mouth off? Didn’t tell our players to ‘fuck off’ or anything else? Of course they did. It’s part of the game, it happens week in, week out but only Cesc is being vilified for it. Mostly because they don’t have a shred of evidence to take him to task over the alleged spit.
I’ll repeat what I said yesterday. If Cesc says he didn’t spit then I believe Cesc, and so should every Arsenal fan. He might be a bit spiky at times, what great footballer isn’t? But he’s a good young man, not a party boy, not a show-off, not a scumbag who roasts girls and films it while on holidays, he doesn’t drive drunk, kick people’s heads in, run up huge gambling debts, get arrested, shag grannies, take drugs or anything else that disgraces football.
It smacks of xenophobia, it’s much easier to believe a foreign player is the villain of the piece than the clearly deluded but traditional English manager.
When someone like Kevin Nolan tries to break another player’s leg with one of the most horrific challenges I’ve ever seen the ex-pros can’t get on TV quick enough to say ‘He’s not that kind of lad’ or ‘He didn’t mean to hurt him’.
Yet someone alleges that Cesc Fabregas spat on the ground and we have a litany of half-witted ex-footballers coming out and saying stupid things like they’d rather have a broken leg than be spat at. That spitting is somehow worse than violence and serious injury, which is so idiotic it’s beyond words. The good old boys who defend Nolan for something the whole world has seen, and condemned, can’t wait to stick the knife into Cesc for something that nobody but a fucking oompa-loompa looking cunt from Hull claims to have witnessed. It’s mental.
It’s nothing less than a vicious and unmerited character assassination on our captain from two angry, bitter men. Every Arsenal fan should support Cesc. He is our captain, he deserves our support.
The last word, for today at least, can go to Phil Brown:
