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Most people who read about English football on the internet will be familiar with Neil Ashton. For those who aren't, he's a reporter and columnist for the Daily Mail who also appears on American television as NBC's lead football corespondent in England. He is very good at both getting transfer scoops and pissing people off. This week, he pissed off Andre Villas-Boas.
Both Ashton and fellow Mail writer Martin Samuel penned pieces this past week that were critical of Villas-Boas, and in particular his comment that "we should be ashamed" after the loss to Manchester City. Villas-Boas felt they twisted his words around and made it appear that he said his players, but not him, should be ashamed of what happened.
Here's the transcript of that exchange from the Mail.
Villas-Boas: I never told that the players should feel ashamed of themselves. We, that includes me.
Ashton: But if you say we should feel ashamed of ourselves, you are including your group of players?
Villas-Boas: Obviously.
Ashton: So...
Simon Felstein (Tottenham head of media): It's not about dividing them, that's the difference. It's not a discussion for right now, not with the cameras on Neil. I think we can talk about this after.
Ashton: No, I am happy to talk about it now.
Villas-Boas: We is us. We are everybody at the club. Don't you agree? Why do you think this is any intention to separate myself from it?
Villas-Boas had further criticisms of Ashton for what he felt to be a running history of personal attacks, and asked why David Moyes was not attacked in the same way when Manchester United struggled to start the season. There's a lot of good stuff in there, so I encourage you to read the entire transcript from the Mail.
There was also this:
'I think it's a very driven agenda by somebody that doesn't honour the club, neither myself nor my players,' Villas-Boas told BBC Radio 5Live. 'It's their team, their passion and they don't trade it for anything else, not like Alan Sugar who trades it for money.'
War damn Hotspur.
