Tw*t of the Week Special – and for the last few weeks

Last updated : 06 January 2005 By Tony Scholes

He and his club made an offer for one of our players, I have no problem with that even if the offer was something of a joke. They have a right to make offers for players just as clubs have a right to tell turn them down.

Jewell though made a derisory offer for Robbie Blake and then decided to go public about it, and this was repeated another couple of times for offers that were quite frankly not much better.

This is the way Wigan do business according to Jewell, the first offer is just a negotiating point according to him. I wonder what he thought of the second and third offers.

But worse still, this nasty little man (little, did I say little?) then decided to tell the world that Robbie Blake wanted to play for Wigan and Granada television shamefully gave him the vehicle to repeat it during their appalling ‘Granada Soccernight’ programme.


How did he know? They weren’t allowed to talk to him. Even Jewell was bright enough to work that one out eventually so then changed it his comment and suggested that Robbie had told the Wigan players. Oh yes, we believe you Jewell. I bet Robbie was always calling round to see the Wigan players.


He unsettled our player, Steve Cotterill said our boat had been rocked, and he was asked to go away.

Now apart from clearly being somewhat ignorant he obviously isn’t quite the brightest either. He was quite serious when he claimed he didn’t know why he had received a hostile reception from the Burnley fans and suggested that Steve Bruce would not have got the same treatment.

It had never occurred to him that Steve Bruce had made no attempt to unsettle our player through the media, that Bruce had never made public a whole series of silly offers and in fact had conducted his business in the way it should be conducted.

Jewell knew he had lost, even the player himself said there was no contest when Birmingham came in. That’s right – Robbie Blake did not want to go to Wigan.

He wouldn’t let it go though and accused Burnley of being a small club who had never been involved in big transfers. He said that we wouldn’t sell the player to Wigan even if they offered £3 million.

Well, you should have tried us, I reckon if you had tried to conduct the transfer in a fair manner and had made a good offer (just as Birmingham did) then you would have got him. But rather than £3 million you then said your offers were fair and you would go no higher. Which is the truth then Jewell?

At the crucial time your chairman swanned off out of the way to Barbados and any chance you had was gone. That’s very big club and professional in approach.

Jewell was described in our local paper as ungracious and obnoxious to the end. Reporter Chris Boden must have been feeling very charitable about this nasty piece of work when he wrote that.

As disappointed as we are to have lost Robbie Blake most Burnley fans are delighted he won’t be going to Wigan’s Concrete Jungle and working for the awful Jewell, someone who Blake has previously fallen out with.

Jewell seems to think Wigan are a big club – wrong, they are a small club with some money and the money clears off every Christmas for a break in Barbados. What a way to run a club.