By Alan Duffy
OMG… Da playrz h8 me… Im a total ****… FFS!!! :(
We’ve all done it, had a few too many down the pub only to drunkenly text someone, usually an ex or someone we fancy. However, I doubt many of us have sent a late night text informing professional footballers that they had been dropped for the following day’s game.
Well that’s exactly what new Preston North End manager Graham Westley did. The former Stevenage boss only took over at the Lilywhites last week, but in texting players David Gray, Barry Nicholson, Adam Barton and Harry Bunn, at 2am to tell them they were dropped for the following day’s fixture, he has hardly ingratiated himself to his new playing staff.
The long and winding text ran to over 150 words and apparently included tactical analysis and motivational mumbo-jumbo.
The Daily Mail quotes a ‘source’, who said:
“It is unbelievable that the manager thought it was a good idea to deliver bad news like this in a text that arrived in the middle of the night.
“The fact it was just one of several texts made it even worse. You would have thought the manager would have wanted his players to get a good night’s sleep in before a game.”
Westley himself claims that the only reason the text was sent so late was that it had taken him until that time to add all the players’ numbers to his phone. So alcohol had nothing to do with it then?
Preston lost the game that Saturday 2-0 to Leyton Orient, by the way :(