Pacific Quay Musings?

[stewarty 1,877]

25 minutes ago, Bill said:

One of my sons is a reporter for a daily newspaper and his views would dispute yours. Reporters are under constant pressure to prepare reports that make it past the editors and into print. Unless your name appears under headlines on a regular basis then your position is under threat. The power rests with the editors and they use it to ensure compliance with whatever views are adopted by the paper. Generally speaking, there is no journalistic freedom and whatever their personal opinions, reporters who still want to be reporters next week will write whatever they believe to be the views of their editors. So when attacking reporters for writing bollocks about Rangers, all you're doing is ensuring attention is kept away from those who actually decide what appears on the page.

Add to that the fact that there is just not enough time for reporters to do anything other than regurgitate press releases to create copy, or to trawl social media for click bait nonsense... actual journalism or reporting, regardless of whether its in a sporting context or otherwise, becomes a 'nice to have'

[Uilleam 5,485]

In today's Times, star BBC Sport Scotland pundit Steven Thomson admits that he doesn't watch football, although he is paid to offer views on specific games (which he does watch), and to pontificate on wider issues of adjudication, discipline, transfers, recruitment, management and managers, game governance, European football, International football etc.

 

To me this means either that he is close to merely 'winging it' (trousering his wedge under false pretences, if we are to be, em,.. unkind), or that Scottish fitba' is so insular and/or unimportant and/or irrelevant to football as a whole that no knowledge of anything furth of this country  has any relevance. 

 

He is revealing, however, on the shortcomings of Mr Michael Stewart, who is, apparently, and, to be honest, unsurprisingly, seldom right, but never wrong. 

 

Perhaps we get the ignoramuses we deserve. Perhaps BBC Scotland is really that cynical. 

 

STEVEN THOMPSON INTERVIEW

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/scotland/i-dont-really-like-football-that-much-and-i-dont-miss-it-it-is-never-on-the-tv-in-our-house-never-gppmh9dvm

 

‘I don’t really like football that much, and I don’t miss it. It is never on the TV in our house – never’

Steven Thompson, the former Rangers player who is now a successful pundit, tells Graham Spiers his favourite sports are tennis and golf

Graham Spiers

September 22 2018, 12:01am, The Times

 

It is quite amazing to hear of Steven Thompson’s mild contempt for football. This former player turned BBC Scotland pundit would, if he had his way, rarely see a football match again, or talk about football much again, and certainly not kick a ball again. Which makes his working life, as he says himself, “a huge irony”.

Thompson’s favourite sports are tennis and golf. Football, he says, comes a poor third. He has not kicked a ball since his retirement two years ago and, if his prayers are answered, he will go to his grave never having had to play in any “fives” or charity games ever again.

“I don’t really like football that much, and I certainly don’t miss it,” he says. “I’d rather be playing tennis, going fishing, or playing golf. Football is never on the TV in our house — never. Outwith this being my job — and by that I mean, me talking pish about football — I have no inclination to watch games. In my house football has never been discussed in 20 years between my wife and I. Football was my job but I had no interest in talking about it at home, or anywhere else, actually.”

Surely, though, he misses the professional game and the excitement that came with it?

“I’ve not kicked a ball since I retired and, apart from playing with my wee boy in our garden, I hope I never will again,” he says. “I get asked all the time to play in charity matches or in ‘fives’ but I’m not the slightest bit interested. I would happily never kick a ball again. I hear many ex-pros saying they miss the Saturday, they miss ‘the buzz’. Well, I don’t miss the buzz. Not one bit.” Thompson then admits: “This all sounds a bit strange, doesn’t it?” It certainly does, given that his job now is being a football pundit with BBC Radio Scotland and doing Sportscene on BBC One with Michael Stewart, another ex-pro, on a Sunday evening. Thompson cuts a smooth, distinctive figure, with that whopping, angled hair sculpted to perfection and his present di rigueur beard. When the cameras first meet him each Sunday night there is something faintly menacing in his presence.

As for Thompson’s relationship with Stewart, it makes for thoroughly intriguing viewing. They appear to get along, but with a slight “edge” to the proceedings. “Mikey and I get on really well,” he says. “And we have to, because we are together on a Sunday for eight hours at the BBC, working in an on-air pressure situation. So you can’t not get on.

“But don’t get me wrong: Mikey sees red mist before I do. He is also one of those guys who, even if he is wrong, he is right. If you could prove to him forensically that he had got something wrong, he would still say that he was right.

“So you need to get over that with Mikey. I just humour him over it. I don’t try to argue the point. On air I’ll say, ‘That’s not a penalty’ and he’ll say, ‘Yes it is’ and I’ll think, right, we’ve been doing this all afternoon, so let’s not keep doing it on air. I really like Mikey but, as I say, he’s never wrong. And don’t ever get involved in a discussion about politics with him [Stewart is a vocal Scottish Nationalist]. Because you will be there all day. We don’t share the same political views.”

But, if Thompson is not much keen on football these days, does he enjoy doing Sportscene? It is a long and intense shift every Sunday, poring over VT, in order to get the show right.

 

“Three or four years ago I’d get pre-match nerves doing a show like Sportscene but I’ve learned to just chill and be myself. Now I don’t worry about what I’ll say, or if I make a mistake, because I can laugh about it. It’s the old thing: the more you do something the better you get at it.

“Michael is very different from me. I’m a visual learner — I need to have notes written down on paper so that it can be processed in my head. But Mikey is different. He has got like a photographic memory. He can read something and just store it away. He generally doesn’t use stats but he can remember things, whereas I need to write things down. I love doing Sportscene, I really enjoy it. But when I finish on a Sunday night – having been inside the Beeb all day – you’re thinking, ‘Right, home, a large glass of wine, please.’ There is a bit of pressure to it.”

For a successful and articulate football pundit there is one other unusual aspect about Thompson: he maintains not the slightest interest in his past career. He played 16 times for Scotland, played in an FA Cup final, was a Champions League goalscorer and won titles in Scotland and England . . . yet he scarcely spends a moment recalling any of it.

“I never reflect on my career — never,” he says. “When something is done then, for me, that’s it, it’s gone. I’m more into ‘the now’ and what’s going to happen in the future. Maybe this is a bad thing but I reflect on absolutely nothing in my career. I had a rare moment of look-back about a month ago, when I found myself steaming in the house after a bottle of red and a wee whisky, and I started googling pictures of my career. There were thousands of them. But the guys at the BBC laugh at me, because I hardly think about anything in my career.

“One of them recently pointed out that I had played against Luka Modric, which I had totally forgotten about it. In fact, it was a game in which I scored for Burnley, when we beat Tottenham 4-0 in the Premiership. But I hardly knew anything about it. It had gone for me.

“Some ex-players can tell you every opponent they have played against. I can’t. I can remember some goals, but all these players, all the incidents, I absorbed very little of them. I can’t remember games I won or lost. Is this a bit strange?”

With this in mind, I insist on dragging Thompson back to one vivid game I remember being at, when he was playing for Rangers and was being booed by sections of the Ibrox crowd in a match against Dundee United in December, 2005. It was just weeks before Thompson left Rangers for Cardiff City and, during that 3-0 win that day, in which he scored, he made his feelings plain back to the crowd by refusing to celebrate his goal.

“Yeah, I remember it,” he says. “The Rangers fans always had somebody to boo or vent their anger at, and sometimes it was me. In that game I already knew that I’d be leaving the club, because Alex McLeish had told me I wouldn’t be getting my contract renewed, so maybe my head wasn’t in the right place. Plus, my form was pish.

“You’re on the pitch, and it is a horrible feeling having thousands of people ‘doing’ you. You basically just want to disappear. But I remember that goal. I felt I would be cheating myself if I then went and saluted the people that were booing me five seconds earlier.

“That is one of the things I don’t miss about football. There is pressure being on TV, and ‘live’ TV has its own pressures, but the pressure of playing, and not playing well, can be all-encompassing. It can become all you think about.”

More recently Thompson decided to relieve himself of another outlet for abuse: Twitter. He arrived in a blaze of glory on the social media site as “Thommohawk” in 2016 but was gone within the month. Why?

“I went on it for a few weeks. People were saying to me, ‘Thommo, you gotta get on to Twitter.’ I thought, right, OK, I’ll do it. But, honestly, there is an unbelievable and unhealthy amount of negative, vile sentiment on it. I just thought, why do I need this? Why am I sitting looking at this stuff? So I made a decision to come off.

“I quickly realised I didn’t want that stuff, I didn’t need that stuff. I’m on Instagram, which I like. It is friendly, it is pictures of friends or family, it’s about things that you enjoy. And you don’t get the abusive comments that you get on Twitter.

“Back when I started playing in 1997, if you had ‘a shiter’ in a match, you knew it yourself and you’d think, ‘shit, what’s going to be in the Sunday papers about me?’ Then you’d look at your mark in the player ratings. But that was the only negativity that could come into your life. Today, though, if you are a footballer or anyone else on social media, there is this instant abuse.

“My advice to my son, if he ever becomes a footballer, would be, don’t go near that stuff, don’t go on it. Because, as much as you might look for positive comments, in my experience there is more negative than positive. It is very unhealthy.”

Did Thompson ever consider going into management? “I did my coaching badges as soon as I came back up to Scotland with St Mirren, because you have this sudden realisation: what am I going to do when I finish? You realise you’ve had no further education, you are trained in nothing.

“So I did my B and A badges and really enjoyed them. But, having done them, I didn’t really go and pursue it, and I am so, so glad I didn’t.

“First, because I wouldn’t be prepared for it. Second, look at all these guys that have been sacked — Paul Hartley, Ian Murray, Jim McIntyre, the list is endless — where are they going to get back in? And third, when I look back, I wouldn’t change a thing about what has happened to me since I retired.

“I love doing what I do. I’ve met a whole new bunch of people working at the BBC. I’ve got a great bunch of friends. So I feel really comfortable. I’ve got a good life balance. I’m not complacent: I’m ambitious to be as good as I can be in my job. But I feel lucky. I’m happy.”

 

Edited September 22, 2018 by Uilleam

[Gonzo79 13,741]

Steven Thompson and Graeme Spiers in a room.

 

I'm bored at the mere mention of it.  I bet they compared waistcoats.

[der Berliner 3,279]

Thompson spent 3 years at Rangers, 1.5 in Cardiff and 3 in Burnley. I would assume that with these three clubs he never earned less than 5k a week. That alone would get you nearly 2m. Plus any earnings in his 5 years in Paisley. Unless he gambled it all away, it should see him in good stead to worry about his post-career time.

 

Thing is ... the folk inhabiting the studios and commentator positions in modern day Scotland - and I exclude RTV here - are either very low key, sub-standard or downright incompetent. More often than not, a combination of all that. Which is as scary as it is disappointing.

[MacK1950 2,241]

Started reading the article became bored before halfway and thought that the BBC have really went low with him (Thomson) as a main critic and like Gonzo the thought of the two imbeciles in the article being together gives me the creeps.

[Walterbear 557]

On 21/09/2018 at 10:33, 26th of foot said:

A quick update on last night's PQ administrations.

 

Paul Mitchell(Jambo) and Steven Thompson(EBT toting St Boo fan) were in a PQ cupboard providing 'live' commentary of Villarreal vs Rangers.

 

Big Dick, Liam McLeod, Wullie Miller, Tom English, Michael Stewart, and Paddy Bonner were all at Sellik Park. At half time and full time of our game, the only discussion was ra Sellik. Big Dick provided our score in Spain with details of scorers, whilst doing a run down on other Europa Cup results. At culmination of events at Parkhead, they spent twenty minutes discussing the merits of Leigh Griffiths, there was NO summing up of our game. Both Chris McLaughlin and Scott McDonald were at Sellik Park too, they were in hospitality.

 

Now, if PQ dispatch the usual crew to Salzburg in a fortnight to cover the green'n'grey hooped horrors, and provide commentary of Rangers vs Vienna from the PQ cupboard; then we have got them NOT providing a similar service to all license fee paying supporters. Why they did not travel to Spain is a most legitimate question?

This is the issue for me. FOI on costs spent on covering Scottish teams abroad whilst Rangers are playing in the same competition on the same day a mile up the road. I can’t do an FOI but someone sensible should. Someone also might want to throw in hospitality accepted versus hospitality rejected question. Not sure if they collate data on rejected but they must on accepted. You could ask Rangers how often they have invited BBC executives over the last 10 years and how often the offer was taken up. 

 

 

Edited September 22, 2018 by Walterbear

[Walterbear 557]

On 21/09/2018 at 10:54, BlackSocksRedTops said:

They are friggin shameless. The overall narrative regarding our game was to focus on our shortcomings. Let's not dwell on the fact that a team from Scotland got a credible draw against a team that finished 5th in La Liga (by far the most successful league in European football over the last decade). No no, let's talk about how we should have got hammered. How Villareal had players missing blah blah f*cking blah

It is surprising how the BBC boycott is now all out hostility and marginalisation. It’s actually a disgrace from a national broadcaster extorting licence fees from all. 

[Walterbear 557]

On 21/09/2018 at 12:18, der Berliner said:

 

Not exactly ... in saying that Scrote can say and write what he likes I also pointed at those who allow/-ed him to do it.  Those who close ranks when questioned and point at the "integrity" of the BBC as a whole. Only that they shamelessly exploit said integrity for their agenda ... or, if you want, bias. And that cabal at BBC Scotland Sport is rather entrenched.

 

Interestingly enough, since you pointed it out, certain articles on us, not least when it came to the new club stuff and the constant "liquidated club" slurs where, after a handslap aimed at Scrote by the now defunct BBC Trust, written "By BBC staff" et al, rather than a specific author.

 

More generally, I wouldn't say the above about all and every reporter / journalist, as it is a widespread field. But over the last couple of decades I came across many of them - mainly at sport events - who fall into that category.

 

It’s shades of grey in BBC. The folk who did the mad men McCoist stuff were told they shouldn’t do it because Glasgow is what it is but they still did. That type of BBC output also has to be viewed differently to a factual piece by Daly or McLaughlin as one is journalism and the other is creative media. It’s interesting that the BBC are clearly anti Rangers in both forms. That shows how deep rooted the bias is 

[Gonzo79 13,741]

31 minutes ago, Walterbear said:

It is surprising how the BBC boycott is now all out hostility and marginalisation. It’s actually a disgrace from a national broadcaster extorting licence fees from all. 

Which is exactly why we, collectively, need to do something about it.

 

We have a huge support.  We can cause major problems for the likes of the BBC if we get our act together.

[Walterbear 557]

It’s an interesting point. Turning off the radio or telly seems to have no effect because they take your money anyway. 

 

The more interesting aspect is ‘why do we need them’? And other than being bloody annoying and unfair do their actions damage our club?

 

We have gone through the leagues, we are playing at a high level in Europe and the BBC are irrelevant to our progress from what I can see. We need well meaning business men and a fan base few clubs can match to come out of this shiite. We don’t need the approval of Dick Gordon and his chums to be successful. But I would like to know how the money is spent on covering clubs.