Apparently Crouch is coming to Arsenal to replace Ade. The reason is the two players have a lot in common. Crouch is tall and so is Ade. Also Ade is tall, and so is Crouch – so you can see the link.
Of course you will now want to know all about Crouch – and fortunately we have his autobiography.
The highlight is his wholesale attack on the town of Chelmsford – page after page saying how the population are sub-human, demented idiots who go around pouring oil down the drains, and beating each other up.
It is one of the wildest craziest pieces of writing in football. No that is wrong. It is not one of them – it is by far the worst example of writing in any football book. If he had written in the same way about people from (say) Pakistan, or people of a particular ethnic group, he would have been condemned as racist and put on a slow boat to Greenland.
But he chose a small English town, and got away with it. How weird is that?
But that’s not all you need to know about the Crouch person. He has been sent off for every one of the four teams he has played for – quite a record (even Robbie Savage hasn’t managed that).
One of these events was the sending off against Chelsea in the little cup semi-final in December 2007.
The offence was fairly awful – a dreadful lunge in which he can be seen with both feet off the ground flying through the air towards Chelsea’s John Obi Mikel. Worse, he argued with the ref for a while before going off, screaming “Fuck off” at the crowd who were booing him as he left. (It is generally accepted that players should never do anything to inflame a crowd – and some players have been given extra time out of the game for such events, although the FA have a long history of extreme leniency when dealing with Liverpool.)
It was undoubtedly with this feeling that Liverpool players can get away with anything in his mind that Crouch then decided to take matters much further. He went public with an attack on all non-English players (including presumably those who play for Liverpool) accusing them of repeatedly diving and making up injuries.
This is of course an attack on the integrity of other footballers – something the FA is supposed to protect and which can lead to a charge of “bringing the game into disrepute”.
What he said swas, “If you go in on Lampard or Terry, would they roll around like Mikel did?… Foreign players have brought a lot to our game but that’s something you don’t want to see.”
Because of the curious nature of the discrimination and racism laws it is not illegal to single out a group by their country of origin. But it is something more commonly associated with the politics of the BNP.
Anyway, back to the autobiography. Crouch goes on for page after page against Chelmsford, claiming that he witnessed the semi-human inhabitants pouring oil down drains, and getting drunk in pubs.
And really, you are left with a very odd feeling about this person.
Do you think the Crouch creature would be welcome at Arsenal?
