Stuck in the middle

YOU feel a bit like the pupil marking the teacher when putting together an end of term report on Giovanni Trapattoni.

On the one hand there’s me, whose highest achievement in the game was once making the Templeogue College ‘B’ team only to be substituted at half-time after missing a sitter. And on the other, there’s Giovanni Trapattoni whose footballing CV is, well, a little bit fatter than that.

No less than the public, the media generally don’t have to be asked twice to express an opinion on the gaffer du jour, and if the same man is seen to be struggling, then the means of expression will quickly run the gamut from robust to damning to X-rated.