Why I hate the WAG culture

Betfacts / Gary Speed / 17 August 2007 / 1 Comments Free £25 Bet

Bolton's midfield maestro and assistant manager Gary Speed shares his thoughts with Betfairians

I'm going to write today's column about how a wife shouldn't dominate a footballer's life - and believe me I've got strong views about it. In fact I shall make all that very clear just as soon as I've finished the ironing and then run the Hoover round!

Seriously I've got to say that I enjoyed every word of Roy Keane's midweek rant about players who let their other halves dictate their careers. We come from similar backgrounds and I've got to say I agree with everything he said. I don't think there's ever been a time when my wife Louise has influenced any part of my career and I'm pretty sure there won't ever be.

I had to do a survey recently for a magazine that asked me for five things I would change about football and the first one I put down was the WAG culture. It really annoyed me during the World Cup to see all the pictures of the girls out having a good time in Germany and I can't stand the celebrity culture that seems to have taken over this country. I've always felt that as footballers we do a job like everybody else, and yes, it makes you well known and you have a responsibility to supporters and the public - but I don't see it as something to be flaunted. Some of the best players over the last ten or 15 years, people like Ryan Giggs or Paul Scholes, have stayed well away from the limelight. You might have seen them interviewed about football and sport, but you know next to nothing about their families.

If Roy Keane really has lost out on signing players this summer because their wives felt the shopping wasn't good enough I think that's terrible. As a player you get a short career and you owe it to yourself to make the most of it. That means making decisions based on where you think you can be most successful as a player. Do that and everything else will follow.

I'm not saying that's easy for the families. When I signed for Newcastle I got a call to travel up to Tyneside on the Thursday night and it was four o'clock the next morning when we got everything sorted and the forms signed. I was straight into a hotel and by Saturday I was making my debut. Louise had no say whatsoever and it was pretty tough for her - we had only just moved into a new house in Chester a couple of weeks before and had just about finished getting it decorated and putting the carpets in. The two boys were very little and she had to cope with being left on her own for a few months while we got settled again. But the bottom line for us both was that it was my career, as a footballer I get very well paid, and there are certain sacrifices that have to be made.

Rant over - there's a few sacrifices needing to be made at the moment too because everybody at Bolton has got to put in some hard work to get our season started. Wednesday night's defeat at Fulham was disappointing - although we felt we competed much better than we did on the opening day of the season.

It seems everybody is in a hurry to write us off, which was probably always going to be the case because of Sam Allardyce leaving, but there's a great determination around the club that won't be the case. We've got a tough trip to Portsmouth this weekend but if we work as hard as we did at Fulham we're more than capable of getting something from the game.

People are drawing great conclusions after only two games and that's something we've got to deal with. Tottenham have got exactly the same problem where everybody wants to make an instant crisis for them. I see their odds for a top four finish have already slid out from around 3.2 to 6.5. But I'd still back the strength of their squad to get them up among the challengers and I think ours is good enough to qualify for Europe again too.

People are even asking questions about Manchester United after two games without a win, which is even more ridiculous. However good Sven Goran Eriksson's start has been you'd have to think that backing United to win at City on Sunday is good value at 2.02. Reading the reports of their game at Portsmouth I'd quite fancy a bet on Carlos Tevez to score in 90 minutes at around 2.8 because he's beginning to look sharp and hungry. He's clearly a player who loves the big games and can take the big attention in his stride and I'm sure that's why Sir Alex was so keen to sign him.

That said I'm a big admirer of the way Sven has handled himself. It would have been very easy for him to have said he'd never manage in England after all the stick he took as national manager, but he hasn't once reacted in that sort of way. His record says he's a top manager at club level and I think he'll prove that.

At least one of the big four will drop points this weekend with Liverpool playing Chelsea. It could even be both of them because it's bound to be a very tight affair. Odds of 8.6 for a 0-0 look very appealing to me, and I would certainly recommend looking at the prices for less than 2.5 goals. Liverpool might suffer from the travelling to France in midweek, but they've got such a strong squad that Rafa Benitez is bound to have thought all that through.

Tags: Bolton Wanderers, Carlos Tevez, Gary Speed, Roy Keane