I guess no-one wants to see their club captain pissed and making an arse of himself, although I'm also fairly sure that we've all done the same ourselves at one time or another.
However, I think people have to consider that they don't necessarily have all the relevant facts about the situation.
We do have a game on Saturday, but I'm pretty sure that AW will have already been told that he won't be in the squad for it. I don't know what the training regime is the day before a game. Do they train? Do they limit it to just the players that will be involved on matchday? I don't know, and I'd guess neither do most of you.
If he does have to train today then you'd hope the coaches would notice the state he's in and take the appropriate action. If anyone's worried that they won't notice then you might do better by e-mailing the club than bitching on here and hoping somebody notices.
If he isn't training today, and isn't playing tomorrow, then I can't see the problem. If one of us went out and got completely hammered and behaved like a bit of a tit on a Friday night, and I'm sure some of you do, we'd be a bit pissed off if we arrived at work on Monday morning to find that we were in the shit with the boss because one of our clients had seen us out and thought our behaviour was inappropriate.
And I don't buy the "he's a professional athlete we're just ordinary working blokes" bollocks. He's a lower league clogger that probably earns about £75k a year. He's not John fucking Terry who earns 3 times that a week. His lifestyle's not that different to that of some of us.
And a load of us have got responsible jobs where people rely on us as well. Tans is a firefighter for fuck sake. Is anyone going to argue that him keeping himself fit and clear headed isn't more important than some bloody footballer? Does that mean you'll be slagging him off if you see him out getting hammered one night when he's not back on shift for 3 days?
This judgemental attitude just seems a bit hypocritical considering the tales of drunken debauchery that get posted on here week in week out. Ben wakes up one morning with no memory of the night before other than taking a dump in an alley, no clothes, no wallet and no 'phone and everyone's highly amused, but a footballer wobbles about a bit and talks bollocks loudly in a bar and it's a total disgrace.
Errrrrrrrrrr..........right. Rant over, I must go an put this soapbox away before someone trips over it.
The bottom line is the best players in teams don't go out and get battered on a week night, they condition themselves, eat the right food, don't over do it on the booze.
Best example I can think of is when Lee Sharpe and Ryan Giggs were caught at a party by Fergie when they were younger, Fergie sat them both down and said you can continue going out partying and have no career or you can give it up, knuckle down and make something of yourself. Giggs chose his career and has gone on to become one of the biggest players in modern day football where as Sharpe chose partying and disapeared into a nobody with a career that promised so much and delivered so little.
To use Tans as an example is stupid because if your a fireman and your on the duty the next day you shouldn't be getting pissed the night before its that simple. You say hes ONLY on £75k a year, I think most of us would kill to earn just £20 a game to play footy. Its the game we all love and to get paid to play it would be amazing and as its such a short career you have plenty of time to drink after.
The best managers in the game do not allow a drinking culture at there clubs and thats the main reason there teams are such a success.
