Let me start this off by telling you all that I’ve made an interview request with Jenas’ management company, like the rest of my emails I assume it will fall on deaf ears.
Jenas was lauded while at Nottingham Forest, one of the next generation of home grown English talent a box to box midfielder who was handy for a goal.
He became the second most expensive teenager when Newcastle paid £5 million for him in 2002, he had an absolutely incredible career at Newcastle scoring an amazing 9 goals in only 110 games, but ultimately it wasn’t Jenas’ fault that the his career at Newcastle never really hit the heights.
It was the players in the Newcastle squad that brought Jenas down after trips away with England, because “the demand wasn’t as high at Newcastle” and he found his levels “dwindling” while at the club.
So you mustn’t blame Jenas for his poor injury riddled career at Newcastle, it’s Alan Shearer, Patrick Kluivert, Gary Speed, Shay Given, Nolberto Solano and Laurent Robert that were pulling him down to their level which was the problem, that and having to play in Europe the first 3 years he was there, not that Jermaine simply wasn’t good enough to play at the highest level. Or that he rarely found himself off the treatment table that caused his career to stall.
Shearer himself feeling such guilt about failing Jenas and him not being able to develop fully as a professional, that he took to Twitter to publicly apologise to Jenas.
He was sold for £7 million to Tottenham where he finally escaped the “goldfish bowl” he was playing in at Newcastle. He signed for Tottenham at the peak of their powers with a squad including Mido, Danny Murphy, Paul Stalteri and Teemu Tainio,
To be fair to that Spurs squad they did have some decent players, Dimitar Berbatov, Jermaine Defoe and Robbie Keane is a decent trio of strikers, but I wouldn’t say their squad was vastly better than the Newcastle one he left behind so happily.
After winning the Carling Cup, Jenas went on loan to to Villa and then to Forest. He eventually signed for QPR as part of their old boys brigade that failed to keep them in the Premier League.
Thankfully though, when he finished playing he got himself a gig on tv, fortunately you don’t need to do much running and the risk of being injured while providing expert analysis is low.
His punditry is about as flamboyant as his playing style, bland, often over looked and mostly poor, not that he is alone when it comes to punditry, bar a select few, they are all useless, and add nothing to the pre game shows, I’d actually go as far as saying they distract from it.
He’s even got on the fucking One Show, competing with former greats of the broadcasting world in Matt Baker and Adrian Chiles for the most bland and personality void TV presenter award.
It seems as though anybody who played the game professionally can get a job on tv, I never wanted to watch Jenas play football, I certainly don’t want to hear him talk about it, or introduce a feature on the invention of the sewing machine.
Cheers, The Fat Man
Fat Lad Sports 