An eminent UK football writer is being urged to apologise by leading anti-lame campaigners for a comment made on social networking site Twitter prior to yesterday’s Manchester derby.
Matt Dickinson, Chief Sports Correspondent at The Times, shocked his thousands of followers by posting a Tweet that not only cast Manchester United’s highly eventful 3-2 FA Cup win at Manchester City into sombre irrelevance, but also leaves his professional reputation hanging in the balance.
Observing that all four first-choice midfielders from Sir Alex Ferguson’s legendary treble-winning side were present at the game in one form or another, Dickinson felt moved to write: “Giggs, Scholes, Beckham, Keane all at Etihad. But can United party like it’s 1999?”
A spokesperson for anti-lame organisation Pick it Out told Football Burp: “We are shocked and saddened that Mr. Dickinson saw fit to write something so brazenly naff – and, frankly, insulting – on a medium populated by no small number of young and highly impressionable individuals.
“Although we cannot yet know the extent of the damage caused by Mr. Dickinson’s comment, I shudder to think of how many children or young adults might have seen it, perhaps even shared it with their friends, and as a result now deem it acceptable to go around welding fairly tedious footballing happenstance onto epidemically over-deployed pop-culture references like some Alan Partridge cyborg manipulated by the detached head of Clive Tyldesley, which resides in a control panel in the midriff and chuckles away to itself about how strong Manchester United’s subs bench is.
“We want to make it quite clear that comments such as Mr. Dickinson’s are not acceptable in this day and age, and we trust that his employers shall take appropriate punitive measures.”
He added: “Remember, parents – keep your children away from ITV’s football coverage as if it were a medicine cabinet filled with sweet-wielding strangers.”
It is not yet known whether or not a big speech bubble reading “CHORTLE!” emanated from Dickinson’s lips immediately after posting the offending Tweet.
And here is Matt Dickinson’s controversial Tweet, which is still yet to be removed…(warning: reader discretion advised)…