Uh Oh Lawro

You may or not be aware of this, but Mark Lawrenson actually said something of interest yesterday. Unfortunately for Lawro however, it landed him in some pretty hot water, so don't expect him to come out with anything of the sort again.

So what did he say and where did he say it? Well, he said it talking to Irish media of course. Isn't it great that we Irish have the gift of making football people be completely candid, and getting them to say whatever the hell they want to say? I think so. Being an analyst in England is like being a caged animal, or even a circus animal that performs the same tricks week in week out. However, the Irish media lets the animal out of the circus. It's as if people see Eamonn Dunphy and think "Well if he can get away with it then why can't I?" so they end up being refreshingly honest, albeit largely wrong (some things can't change).

In talking to Today FM, Lawrenson probably got a bit too excited about his latest scoop, forgot about the fact that people in England can still hear about things that happen in Ireland, and went beyond the call of duty, at least in the eyes of LFC. Here's what he had to say regarding a topic I wrote about not so long ago:

"Sorry to name drop but I had a drink with Steven Gerrard at a function on Saturday night, and we were talking about Robbie Keane...He was saying to me that they [Keane and Gerrard] share the same agent and he thinks something is going to happen with Robbie Keane in January...He thinks he's going to be moved on."

First of all, sorry to name drop? Yeah right! You just wanted to shout the fact that you had a drink with Gerrard from the roof tops, didn't you Mark? My guess is that Lawro just made the whole Robbie Keane thing up in order to let it be known that he had a drink with Stevie G. He couldn't just say "So I had a drink with Steven Gerrard" and leave it at that. After all, that would just come off as a pathetic attempt to name drop, which is clearly not what Lawro wanted to do [???]. Instead, Lawrenson decided to attach an interesting but fictional piece to his Gerrard encounter, just so he could let it be known that he is on drinking terms with Steven Gerrard, but without sounding like that's all he wanted people to know. Nice try, Mark.

Of course being reasonable people, we can only assume that Lawrenson wasn't just making this whole thing up, right? I mean if we were to find out that none of this was true, and that Steven Gerrard never said that he thinks Robbie is going to be moved on, then I don't think the BBC would have any choice but to sack Mark Lawrenson based on his penchant for downright lying, nor would the Sun have any choice but to hire him for that exact reason. After all, one man's Busted is another man's Led Zeppeilin, or something...

Well all of this happened yesterday, and it left the footballing world in quite a stir, while Robbie Keane was probably left crying into his laptop screen wondering how in the world he could be moved on while Dirk Kuyt gets to stay. I'd love to be at Liverpool's training ground today, that's for sure.

But alas, this isn't the end of the tale. Lawrenson has come out saying things again, only this time he has retracted the one interesting piece of information he has ever given us. Why, Mark, why!? Larwo now claims that all of what he said on Today Fm was his own opinion, failing to realise that we gave up paying attention to his opinion long ago, and would actually rather lies than it. Anyway, here's what he said today about what he had to say yesterday:

"I'm sorry if it caused any aggravation but it wasn't meant to. Steven Gerrard's name should never have come up in terms of Robbie Keane going in January. It wasn't Steven saying that it was me saying it.

"The only connection I was making between the two was that they have the same agent and I have had a hunch for a while that Keane could go.

"But that is my opinion and nothing whatsoever to do with any conversations I had with Steven Gerrard.

"I happened to mention I spoke to him on Saturday night but I didn't mean for that to come across in the way that it has been interpreted."

So he did just do it for the sake of name dropping! That's real classy, Mark. Real classy.

What I'm not clear about is that referring to Gerrard, Lawrenson clearly said yesterday that "He thinks he's [that is, Keane] going to be moved on". But now he's saying that it wasn't Steven Gerrard saying that, but rather that is his own opinion? Did Lawrenson even have a drink with Gerrard at all, or was he just having both a drink and a conversation with himself? Or perhaps he did have a drink with Gerrard, but then quoted himself in the third person.

And where does the agent fit into it? If Gerrard never said anything regarding Keane, then mentioning their mutual agent is utterly meaningless. Saying that he was just trying to make a connection between Gerrard and Keane becomes completely redundent, because we're well aware of a pretty strong connection already - they both play for Liverpool! The fact that they share the same agent means diddley squat if Gerrard didn't voice an opinion on the Keane situation, which Lawro is now saying he didn't.

Honestly, given that I have trouble believing that someone would just make this whole story up for Irish radio, I think Gerrard did say those things, but then Lawro realised that he really shouldn't be repeating them in public. Now he's just trying to cover his tracks, but there's really no way to do that unless he wants to brand himself as either a complete fool or a filthy liar. If I were Lawro, I'd play the "fool" card. I don't think people will have trouble buying into that.