English Tabloid Press Flummoxed as Manager’s Wife Says ‘So What’

The English tabloid press are today at a loss as the wife of an EPL manager refused to take the Fake Moral Outrage Motorway for the benefit of salacious tabloid gossipers. They were about to publish lurid revelations about the private life of bottom club Portsmouth’s Israeli manager Avraam Grant.

Terry Fired as England Captain

The story that an unnamed EPL manager visited a massage parlour was first run on December 23 but the recent ‘freedom of speech’ ruling on allegations about John Terry’s private life gave the tabloids the right to reveal Grant’s name as the manager in question. The 54-year-old former Chelsea boss was reported to have spent more than an hour inside before leaving in a chauffeur-driven car.

But they reckoned without a formidable foe, his wife Tzofit Grant. Tzofit has been married to the former Chelsea first-team coach for 16 years and they have two children. She is an unusual woman to say the least. She is well known in Israel for such practises as drinking her urine and bathing in liquid chocolate and spaghetti live on television. When her husband decided to confess that he was about to be the subject of tabloid revelations in England, her response was “so what?”

“He phoned me to warn me about the publication and my response was ‘Yes, and?’ ” Tzofit Grant, a television presenter, told a radio station in her native Israel. “If he has gone to a brothel it is no one’s business.”

Five Four Three Two One

Portsmouth’s stressful season has not made Grant’s life comfortable and Tzofit defended his action as a form of stress relief for the manager of the top flight’s worst side. “He’s the Portsmouth manager and it’s a tough job,” she said. Portsmouth are five points adrift at the bottom of the league. The club has had four owners this season. The players’ wages have not appeared three times.

“He needs a massage not from one woman but two. Morning and night. He’s a great manager with amazing potential who is stuck in a shitty team,” she added to the non-glee of the Portsmouth public relations department.

“He owes no one any explanation and the fact he chose to have a massage doesn’t make it a brothel. If he had a good time there as well, that’s cool. It was in broad daylight and he walked in there wearing a Portsmouth tracksuit and came out of there smiling because he had nothing to hide. Do you think he would have done that if that was a brothel?”

Not that her opinion of brothels is necessarily negative.

“You men need it,” she said. “I only feel sorry for the women involved . . . I’m not cross with him about this kind of rubbish but only about one thing — and I told him that. I’m cross that he doesn’t start every morning and end every night with a massage.”

Grant takes his Portsmouth side to Old Trafford to play Manchester United. Sir Alex Ferguson has been noted for inviting opposition managers for a glass of wine in his office after matches. Let’s hope the occasionally brittle Glaswegian doesn’t rub him up the wrong way.

Pompey Takeover to be Challenged

Portsmouth now have their fourth different owner of the 2010 season but the latest takeover faces a legal challenge. Hong Kong-based businessman Balram Chainrai has taken 90% of the club’s shares after the existing owners defaulted on loan payments due to him. He says he is only looking after the club until yet more new owners come in.

But a lawyer for the club’s previous owner, Ali Al Faraj, will challenge whether such a takeover can go through.

Chainrai and any directors he wants to appoint must now pass the Premier League’s fit and proper persons test, but there is every likelihood the troubled south coast club will have a fifth owner before the end of the season.

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