Henry Winter throws his toys out the pram on Alexander Isak
Another day, another southern based journalist’s head has fallen off regarding Newcastle United. This time the dubious award goes to recently dismissed Times Chief Football writer, Henry Winter.
Speaking on that bastion of journalistic integrity, talkSPORT, Winter had this to say when asked about reports claiming Newcastle have slapped a £150m+ asking price on Alexander Isak's head:
"Where have they plucked the figure out? Where do you get £150m from? Three years left on his contract. £150m is a nice round figure, but there are also issues with PSR; they went through that with Elliot Anderson. If it is £150m, where does the negotiation start? Arsenal should be interested because they need a centre-forward, and their budget is sort of £80 million for a top striker."
Baffling comments from Winter
Where do you even start with comments like this? They are especially low-rent coming from a man with 30-plus years’ experience in sports journalism, who was once voted the best of all sports journalists in the country in 2010 by the Press Gazette – mind you, that was fourteen years ago so I guess he’s been on a downward trend since…
Winter comes across as an embittered, ‘big’-six supporting baby who can’t stand the fact that Newcastle United are not a feeder club for their ambitions and are instead looking to upset the applecart by gatecrashing the established order.
Forgive me a little literary licence here but I will translate what Winter actually means: ‘how dare that little, old club from the frozen northeast wastelands have a better striker than cosmopolitan London clubs Arsenal, Chelsea, and Tottenham, and media-darlings Liverpool and Man Utd. How dare they, they must sell him to one of the aforementioned immediately, and at a value that suits them and not NUFC.
The sense of entitlement is hardly surprising from someone who ghost-wrote the autobiographies of Kenny Dalglish (a man who ripped up Kevin Keegan’s team to satisfy his huge, over inflated ego at being inferior to KK), John Barnes (a talented-trailblazing footballer for sure, but a milker, and time waster at United) and Steven Gerrard (diver-in-chief and a thoroughly unlikable footballer who thankfully is only really remembered outside of Liverpool for slipping on his arse).
Look, I understand that transfer speculation is going to happen; it sells the (dying) papers, it drives clicks on websites and Shorts on YouTube, especially with January literally around the corner.
However, I don’t see other clubs being basically told to stand aside and let one of their best players leave the club, no questions asked, just so Arsenal can win the title – the media certainly didn’t encourage Palace to do so when we were bidding for him in the Summer.
I’d say they must do better; but honestly, they’ll never change, luckily, we’ll never stop calling them out.
