West Bromwich Albion held its 2012/13 supporters night and there weren’t a lot of surprises
in the awards: Gareth ‘G Mac’ McAuley cleaned up, Romelu Lukaku walked away with the top scorer award and James Morrison took the top assists award, fittingly for his
contribution in Albion’s triumvirate attacking midfield.
What is a surprise, however, is famous
Albion fan and ITV football powerhouse Adrian Chiles jokingly saying Albion’s
want away striker Peter Odemwingie should receive the ‘Tw*t of the Year’ award
for his Loftus Road deadline day escapades.
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| Odemwingie further endearing himself to WBA fans |
Chiles wasn’t comparing Twitter fanatic
Odemwingie to Roald Dahl’s children’s book The
Twits either, if you’re with me here.
No, he was comparing him to a
female’s genitalia in a derogatory term sense. In a week where Reginald D
Hunter’s brand of ethnicity-enthused comedy shocked professional footballers in
its brazenness, Chiles and regularly under-reported Albion’s awards night
failed to make much copy.
With SEO increasingly gripping online
newspapers, I’d have thought it would have got more coverage.
It did make the Daily Post, Nigeria’s online newspaper, which commented the audience
was “split between laughter and embarrassment as the reality of what Chiles had
said sunk home”; probably in quiet agreement as much as anything else.
Whether he should have said it or not, he’s
right. Chiles gets a lot of unfair criticism because he doesn’t fit
the Sky Sports mould of distinguished gent who allows rambling ex-footballers to
expunge a few clichés. He has a character and whether you like that or not ITV
seem to.
Odemwingie was deserving of such derision.
As a club who instilled faith into a man desperate to escape the racist,
antiquated views of Russian football, and paying him a hefty sum for that liberation,
I expect at the very least, like Harry Redknapp has said, for him to at least
wait around the corner from the ground and not flaunt his back-stabbing.
Odemwingie was not present at the awards
night, and that is probably enough of a vindication of his detrimental effect
on Albion’s second-half season.
Fair play, Adrian. I’m sure if it were an
award, no one else’s name would be more fitting than Odemwingie’s on that brass
plate.
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