Mean Myhre Spoils Teddy's Big Day

West Ham United 0 Charlton 0



It was Teddy Sheringham's 40th birthday on Sunday, and this, if you read the BBC website sports reports, is what this game was all about. The reporters working for the BBC continue to ignore any intentions or desires Charlton Athletic and their long-suffering supporters (don't they pay their licence fees just as much as everyone else?) might have.

Elsewhere, when the result became known; the usual stuff started. Some reports used the customary 'ground out' structure, implying, as I have said often before, that the goalless draw had previously been agreed on. However, not everyone said this, and from reading quite a number of other reports, proper professional ones, I am able to conclude that it was a lively, well-fought game in the spring sunshine, and the result was fair.

The BBC, however, were not having any of this; Sheringham came on to play the second half, in their view the most exciting bit of the entire proceedings; and Thomas Myhre then spoiled his birthday, they implied, by making a point-blank save near the end and thus depriving Teddy of a goal to celebrate it with. Both Myhre and Charlton were made to look mean for not making the great man a present of a goal for his Big Day. Pathetic.

Of course I and many others mainly remember Sheringham for his part in the Hong Kong 'dentist's chair' affair in which Paul Gascoigne and various others, and of course the Birthday Boy, had a jolly time forcing industrial quantities of neat spirits down each other's throats. Oh, and I seem to recall that he played for Manchester United; and Tottenham; and maybe someone else; and now he is at West Ham; and he is still playing at 40. Reward enough, I would have thought.

In fact Dennis Rommedahl (on the right, above) forced as many as four corners in as many minutes at one stage in the match. Unaccountably this was not mentioned in the BBC report, at all.

And is there something slightly derogatory in the BBC's use of 'point blank' to describe Myhre's save from Teddy's shot? Maybe in their eyes it will come to join last-minute goals and anything positive done by a substitute as appearing not quite to count. At least where Charlton are concerned.

Anyway, there are other people in the world; Sheringham wasn't the only person to have a birthday on Sunday; many Charlton fans, statistically, must have had; and anyway mine's coming up fairly soon; what about me?

A victory by three goals or more would have dropped West Ham's goal difference, and raised Charlton's, by enough to have put us ahead of them in the league; was I alone in hoping for a 1-4 result? Quite possibly; but 0-0 is better than losing, and I am glad to see that Charlton are not in the mood for giving anything away right now; there is a reasonable chance of exceeding last season's points total of 46 in the remaining games.

But the BBC won't like it, you watch.