Dan Kilpatrick (Part two) | On Ange and ‘Clowngate’ (Q&A)

0:00Jack:Welcome back to Rule the Roost. Yes, it's one of those annoying ad read type things at the top of a podcast you're looking forward to listening to. Thanks for tuning in. Just a quick request before I start. If you want to help support the show this season, please leave me a rating on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. You can drop me a follow on Instagram at Ted Trunk or if you really fancy, head over to patreon.com slash RTR pod for extra episodes and access to the Discord community. All of these things really help the podcast to get discovered by more Spurs fans, and it keeps the show growing for the new campaign.

0:34Jack:Thanks for the support, and now, on with the show. This podcast is part of the Sports Social Podcast Network. Welcome back to part two of my conversation with the Athletics' Dan Kilpatrick. In this half, Dan takes on your questions. From whether he misses the Tier 1 ITK status of his reporting days, to his memories of the most accurate piece of transfer news he ever broke. He reflects on how his final interaction with Ange Postacoglu might have shaped his approach as a journalist going forwards and gives his verdict on the whole clown gate affair. If you do enjoy listening to Rule the Roost, please don't forget to leave a rating or a review on your podcast platform of choice, but only if you're going to leave a five-star one and a nice review.

1:18Jack:But from now on, enjoy the pod. Thanks a lot.

1:29Jack:so daniel we have received lots of questions obviously some are of a more mischievous nature and others are you know a bit more serious but we are this this this first one isn't so much of a question i just thought it was it was quite interesting actually it really stood out for me Ryan Jacobson, at Ryan Jacobson on Twitter, said that Dan is responsible for the most accurate piece of Giorno ITK of all time, May 2019. And there's a tweet here, Daniel, where it says, Tottenham's summer transfer targets are Ryan Sessignon, Tange Ndombele, Giovanni Lo Celso and Jack Clark. Do you recall this, Dan?

2:13yeah I do recall this I've been asked about this before yeah I think the the answer to this is that

2:19Jack:was it hotspot related it was hotspot related did me a massive favor on this um and which is kind of interesting because I would say generally like the aggregators aren't friends of reporters like they annoy us I'm not I'm not a reporter anymore but they you know they annoyed me a lot and I know that's true of a lot of other reporters because you'll work hard in a story or you'll go to a press conference and put quotes out and then you know within 30 seconds of it being published they'll have you know be dishing it out for free and you know without context you know across social media and kind of taking the credit for it but I think in this case I can't remember exactly obviously I was right and I had the transfer targets right but I think it was he for hospital related had aggregated you know a piece I'd done where I had kind of named targets that in most I think in probably every case or most cases were kind of already out in the media and I had you know checked them with probably the club and you know possibly external sources to try and verify and then had been confident enough to report them myself so So it wasn't like there were five names that no one had heard of.

3:38And I was dishing them out and telling people something that they couldn't necessarily find elsewhere. In a way, I guess I'd done my own kind of aggregation. But yeah, that did boost my credibility and it's probably helped me establish a tier one rating on our Coys and beyond.

4:02Jack:Well, there is a question on that. But before we do move on to that, I guess without putting you in an uncomfortable position at all or asking you to actually reveal any sources or name any names, when people are talking about journalists being briefed, if you like, do you have people, do you have agents of players reach out? For example, right now we've got the whole kind of shavi simmons stuff going ticking along in the background and you have various different journalists who are saying various different bits in my opinion i'm just like i'm just waiting for him to willy and us but whatever we don't we don't need to go into that but when when you were in that position would you be getting calls emails from people to just drop little bits of info your way no this was one of my biggest misconceptions before i started being a kind kind of proper, if you like, journalist.

4:59I thought that once you were, you know, you had a following on social media and you were kind of covering the club and you had a platform like ESPN or The Evening Standard, that people like agents would kind of approach you and would want to tell you stuff and would want to get their side of the story out there. But, and very occasionally that does happen, I guess, where you, you know, I would have got a message from someone saying oh can you reflect this or whatever you know this is happening but that was very very occasion like a handful of times in in the decade and and actually what I'm realizing now you know working at the athletic and working with people like David Ornstein who you know is obviously the best in the business um it's just the amount of you know not that I didn't know this already to an extent but like just the sheer amount of work that goes into kind of contact building and getting these stories over the line um that you know the level that that Ornstein does that I you know frank people was never doing um like it is the hardest part of the job you know anyone can well almost anyone can turn up at a press conference and kind of you know write down what the manager said and pick out the top line and and you know most people can kind of learn to to write and get you know feel for for news and and um stories when they're doing you know the longer they do the job but it's very very difficult to like get to a point where you know you're able to um kind of you know manage multiple kind of high level contacts in the way that you know certain people in the industry can um so you know in terms of people kind of again i think a huge misconception was this idea that I see it on the Twitter all the time or at least I saw it when I was on Twitter more just people saying oh that'll be the brief from the club or that'll be the club trying to to you know get their version of events out there or you know he'll have been told that by the press office or something and that again that just doesn't really happen like if a story is out there that's not true sometimes the press office will send a round robber message and say by the way this isn't true like I don't know where this has come from but you know I've never never in 10 years did you know someone from the Tottenham press office call me up and say oh you know what mate it'd be great if you did um you know you did this or you reflected that you know we want a smoke screen or we want to take the pressure off Daniel it just doesn't work like that you know they're not kind of proactively reaching out and that's not to say that you know deals aren't done and you know relationships aren't formed and that back scratching mutual back scratching doesn't happen but it's it's just not as kind of um avert as someone calling you up and saying please write this or you know how about doing this that doesn't really happen um you know you've got a you've got to be the one kind of what i find being proactive and sort of working for these stories if that makes sense they aren't going to fall into your lap people aren't going to tell you stuff without you seeking it out Billy

8:06Jack:Billy T everyone knows who that is he's asked after seeing Romano demoted to a tier 2-3 journalist does Dan miss his tier 1 status of the previous role I know you've spoken there about aggregators and wanting to be away from social media and everything Dan but between friends right and you're only human there must there must have been quite a part that was quite nice being like you know the ego stroke of being in the mix of having your kind of anything that you say any of your articles people literally hanging hanging on your words if you like

8:49honestly certainly in this the last few years not really uh maybe maybe the novelty had worn off But yes, definitely at the beginning, there was something really exciting. And, you know, that there is something exciting about being a journalist and, you know, having access to players and managers, you know, even in the arm's length way that I described at the top. you know there is something um you know really special about that and you know definitely early in my career I you know I loved it and I do kind of miss it now and I wonder if at some point I will go back to it um and I think maybe that that's sort of part of the reason I've made the change is because I think when that novelty wears off or when it when it becomes just a job and like less special then you start thinking about the downsides like the you know the travel and the late nights and the sort of um unpredictability of it um more than kind of you know how cool it is to be able to speak to harry kane you know every couple of weeks as you know there was a period where where that was happening um so no like honestly no i didn't As I said, I didn't love being on Twitter.

10:05Again, at the beginning, I did enjoy being on Twitter and growing my following. I was quite focused on that, but certainly for three, four, five years, I just haven't really enjoyed that element of it. I would have happily traded my tier one status and all the rest of it for basically the respect of my peers and colleagues, I guess. that was that was kind of more as in explaining myself badly here as in I'd rather people at my work and I worked with thought I was doing a good job than you know people online if that makes sense. Did you uh did you ever if you yeah if you've got any you wouldn't mind sharing did you ever have any decent uh off record mix zone chats or anything with any of the players down the years or any just chats any sort of conversations with anyone that ever stood out the conversations that have stood out that i've had over the years are conversations i've had with players when which are just like normal conversations when you're kind of having a conversation with a person rather than you know a footballer and you're doing your job and they're not in kind of media training mode and there are three off the top of my head that are cool I had a conversation with Votongan about chess when after I'd interviewed him at a hospital when he was giving out presents that I loved just found really interesting he was telling me about how much he loved chess and I just got into chess so he talked about that for a little bit and I think he had a great detail if I know he had a great detail because I remember it clearly he basically said he played Moussa Dembele a lot and he had never been able to beat Moussa Dembele at chess.

11:57And I loved hearing that. You know, it's just a little tidbit, but, you know, the Spurs fan in me was just kind of screaming with joy at that little detail. And obviously, Vertonghen was telling me just how much he loved board games. He loved Settlers of Catan.

12:14Jack:It's now just called Catan because of... Yeah. Oh, I see. The problematic association. It did used to be called Settlers of Catan. Yeah, so he played Catan and I hadn't played it. And I told him I hadn't played it. And unfortunately, I didn't have much board game chat for him. I think I told him to get into backgammon because I think that's a great game. I don't know how to play backgammon, you know, Dan. Backgammon is a great game. It's a great mixture of luck and skill. So you can beat someone who's far better than you just by getting a load of sixes, basically. But really, you need to know how to play it and have a kind of maths-y brain, which I don't, but it's a great game.

12:53A bit like poker, in a way. Yeah, yeah, exactly. And then Ben Davis, he's a very ordinary bloke. I've had a few normal conversations with him. And then the other one was Lloris. Again, after an interview, we had to walk back kind of across a school for literally just between five or ten minutes, and I chatted to him about France. and I think we were chatting a bit about Dembele, sorry, Ndombele, who just joined the club and kind of Lloris looking after him and stuff. And those are the conversations kind of off record that stand out just because normally you're sort of asking very, you know, football-y questions and they're in a certain frame of mind and answering in a certain kind of media-trained way.

13:46Yeah. Lovely.

13:50Jack:Cody Mack at Comac Do asks on Twitter, on a scale of one to 10, with one being pantomime and 10 being genuine, where do you rate Ange Postacoglu's reaction to Clowngate? Sorry, one being pantomime, 10 being genuine. Yeah. oh I think oh I think an eight oh okay I mean I think yeah I mean I think the thing with Ange and I touched on it earlier is I really liked Ange but you know I do think he you know he's a he was a proud guy and I think in a way that kind of was part of his his downfall in the end and I think you know he wasn't really able to brush off criticism from fans and from, frankly, fairly irrelevant people like me in the media who he probably should have just ignored.

14:56And so I think he probably was genuinely offended.

15:02Jack:Do you feel like your words were taken out of context a bit on that whole thing? Because from the outside, it wasn't just like a case of you being a mate. I couldn't help but feel that you were not misquoted or anything like that, but I do feel like the point you were making was misconstrued quite willfully as well. Not perhaps, but actually, I think probably by Ange and by lots of the people that really liked Ange. Yeah, I mean, I certainly know what you mean. um you know I've seen a lot of people say since when when we're sort of talking about reporting on the incident that I asked him if he was a clown which obviously isn't what happened um I wrote a piece which was about how Ange would be how Ange was facing two very different outcomes in terms of the way he was viewed depending on the result of one game um and you know my the whole point I was made I was trying to make an extreme point about the kind of binary nature that he would be viewed by the fan base and I guess outside the fan base depending on this result and obviously if he won which he did and this is the reality we live in um you know he's a legend and then the context was I think we all kind of knew that he was probably going to go whatever happened and if he won he'd be a legend and that's the reality we live in and you know he's always going to have a place in Spurs history and a place in the hearts of Spurs fans and rightly so but if it have lost that game to you know Amarim's United then I think people would look back on him as a and clown was the wrong word and I've said that many many times and I'm you know it was the wrong word it was a bit crass it was too extreme I should have said you know failure or zero or something else um but you know he would have people would have looked back and I think you know had a a pretty low view of his tenure given what happened last season and given that Spurs finished historically low and that yeah that was the point I was trying to make I'm not sure if it was like willfully misconstrued by Ange I think probably I was kind of buggered by it being in the headline you know hero or clown and you know I didn't write that headline by the way but I'm not blaming anyone else I should have checked it um but so I don't know if I kind of read the whole article or whether you just skimmed it saw that it was in the headline and saw that I'd used it in the copy and thought that's enough um but yeah certainly I think some people who kind of you know have been have got very angry about it probably have sort of um not really either not read the article or not really appreciated the kind of point I was trying to make or the context of it but look you know it's it's long in the past now um I've spoken to Ann Shinch he was very gracious um gracious about it um I've sort of spoken about it on various podcasts now and said oh you know it was the wrong word I regret using it but it is what it is I thought he was going to offer you out mate it kind of it felt that way his uh it was horrible like it was you know yes it was also like my last week of the job like i was well you were like in between jobs at that point weren't you and you suddenly got all this negative three days left at the standard and look you know i wasn't taking the piss or anything but anyone who served the notice period will know that you get to that point and you're just kind of trying to bat it out for a draw you're kind just looking what you don't want is a massive story involving the team you cover winning the first trophy for 17 years and um you to suddenly be at the center of um a kind of media storm because the manager calls you out and and your question makes back page headlines so i was kind of like i'm not i was kind of like oh i deserve this i guess but like i wish it wasn't now just Just for full content, I mean, it's quite mad.

19:03Jack:I remember even listening to like TalkSport and you've got Simon Jordan there, like ranting and raving about you, about Dan Kilpatrick calling a manager a clown. You don't call a manager a clown. You don't, you might have problems. Really? You don't call him a clown. Yeah, like raving about it. And I just thought, God, this is, I felt bad for you, mate. Like as a mate, I was like, God, this is unpleasant for Dan right now because honestly, I felt it was, as football headlines often are, it was just blown up so disproportionately for the point you were making, which was essentially, let me say, it's zero or hero time.

19:42Jack:Yeah. I didn't know, Simon Jordan had actually spoken about me. But I did have, yeah, I mean, the thing that was grim about it was just that I don't mind getting called out. It happened to a lot of people last season. I wasn't the only one. It probably was the worst case of it. but a lot of us got anged last season and the season before. That's what he's like. He reads stuff and he takes umbrage of stuff he doesn't like. It was just the ubiquity of it. I was getting messages from all over the place. My mum and sister had somehow found out about it. Two people that honestly don't follow football and weren't interested in the Spurs game were messaging me being like, someone's told me at work.

20:25My sister was like, the next day, someone just told me at work that you called the Spurs manager a clown. I was like, how has it got back to you? So, yeah, it was just, you know, it pretty helped that I wasn't on Twitter. But, like, I'm not on Twitter because I didn't want to be the kind of journalist who's at the centre of a story, if that makes sense. I never wanted to be about me. So I didn't really enjoy it. But, you know, look, I slept on it. And, you know, it was kind of, after a pretty rough evening of feeling like crap the next day. It was, you know, I suppose we're in a European final.

21:02So I had to kind of get on with it.

21:05Jack:Andy Perry at Andy Perry 145092 asks, if you were still reporting now, would that interaction with Ange change how you reported on managers or players? Yeah, good question. I mean, yes. If I'd stayed at the standard and was still reporting, I mean, I would have, yeah, I would have been burned by it and I would have been a lot... I do think, you know, possibly the fact that that word slipped through the net was a sort of consequence of, you know, the sort of state of the standard. You know, I think if I'd have filed that piece for The Athletic, someone, because three editors read it before it goes live, someone would have said, are you sure you want to say clown?

21:55and do you want this in the headline? So I'd have been, it depends where I was working really, but if I'd have still been at the standard, I'd have definitely been a lot more careful about language, even single words, and I'd have been a lot more careful about checking the headlines as soon as my pieces went up, to be honest. So yeah, it would have, yeah, I mean, it has had an effect on me. It was a lesson really.

22:26Jack:Yidden Agenda at Yidden Agenda says seeing one or two print pieces calling out Levy is the problem at Spurs do you think this media attention would have more effect on him than the fan protest he seems brazenly unaffected to chance in the stadium but do you think negative media spin pressure do you think negative media spin puts more pressure on his ego that's a really good question

22:56that is a really good question I mean I think I guess the two go hand in hand right I mean you know if the media is kind of frothing at the mouth about Levy but fans aren't fussed then I don't think that's real pressure you know I think that's a that's a kind of fake type of pressure um so it but I guess you know cause and effect one thing would inevitably sort of lead to another I think so um yeah I mean I guess it's I think I think the media have always you know again I used to get a lot of stuff about you know being in Levy's pocket and you know the media kind of giving him an easy time but I think you know it you have to as a reporter you do just have to look at the facts and you can't be led by emotion and you know I think the facts of Levy's tenure a lot more nuanced than people like to make out.

23:51But, you know, I imagine if, you know, I imagine if there was a lot more pressure on him from the kind of print and broadcast media, that would inevitably lead to kind of perhaps more awareness from fans and more kind of protests. So, yeah, I'm sure it would make a difference, but I'm actually not sure which he would feel more, if that makes sense, kind of unrest. What do you think?

24:21Jack:It's hard to know. I mean, I'm a weak, emotional fool and I couldn't help but feel... You know, last year when it was really intensifying and there was pretty much the entire stadium singing Daniel Levy get out of our club and I think it was his wife sat next to him, just gave him just a little pat on the leg. I remember that, yes. And it was just quite telling. And I suddenly thought, God, I reckon it probably does get to him a bit more than he lets. Look, he's a pretty cool operator, Daniel Levy, isn't he? You know, he doesn't say much in interviews, even the overlap exclusive he did with Gary Neville not so long ago.

25:01Jack:It just felt like a rehash of things that he was saying when he opened up the stadium.

25:08Jack:He doesn't give an awful lot away. And I think it's probably on a two-pronged thing, right? I think the negative media spin is what starts to actually impact the brand of Tottenham Hotspur. That's not good for the club. That's not good for the business of Spurs. So I think that's obviously very worrying on a certain level. But the fan protests, when there's pictures of you photoshopped onto the bodies of insects and with always various other questionable images floating around about him being a parasite and that type of stuff, which is pretty dodgy ground. But when you're seeing that type of stuff flying around, when you're hearing, I'm sure nobody on a personal level likes hearing tens of thousands of people singing about you being a CUNT and that type of thing, right?

26:03It's not, it can't be a pleasurable experience. So which one bothers him more?

26:10Jack:You know, I don't know. I guess probably he is a businessman. He is somebody that's concerned with building Tottenham as a brand and everything. So probably if he were pushed, he would probably say the negative press affects him more. But I don't think it's to say that hearing terrible things sung about him, seeing dodgy banners and things made about him doesn't bother him. You know, I think it probably does, but just on a very personal level and probably on a level that isn't going to motivate him to suddenly think, oh okay I'll drop 100 million pounds on you know whatever striker the fans want us to buy this this window you know yeah I think you've answered that question much better than I have I do think by the way that Levy is affected by criticism I think it's actually a bit of a myth that he's kind of obviously he's perpetuated himself because he's said it many times well I feel like the whole thing about him having a really thick skin and it being water off a duck's back I don't really buy that because I mean if that was true then I mean I can go back to sort of you know the my dealings with the club you know there was certainly a period where certain people at the club were you know were were not really fussed about what you wrote about a manager or players but they were always really on your case if it was anything negative about Daniel or anything they thought was unfair about Daniel you know it seemed like everyone else at the club was sort of fair game, but he wasn't.

27:39And either he was aware of that and wanted that to happen, wanted the club to try and be policing what was said about him, in which case he's not as thick-skinned as he makes out, or he's not aware of it, which is possible because I do think he probably doesn't closely read everything. and I do think Levy is kind of well maybe not now because the structure around him has changed but he had a lot of people around him for many years who were the kind of same people and I think were probably to an extent kind of telling him what he wanted to hear that's just my view not really I've not really been explicitly told that but that was the impression I got that line that he gave to Neville where he said effectively like they'll miss me when I'm gone I kind of feel like that is just his view that he's a great job and he may well be right you know there are many many worse ownership models and owners than Daniel Levy so perhaps if he did sell it would all be pining for him in six months who knows

28:52Jack:Bootsy at Bootsy Blanche or however you pronounce it says will Vinay Venkateshen do anything to help THFC or is he hired to help Enoch? It is quite funny, isn't it? For the club to go big on signing, on hiring somebody like him, a big flashy kind of video, him sat down with Daniel Levy having a chat for him to seemingly just disappear into the background. What's he doing? I mean, I don't know about helping Spurs or Enoch. I don't really understand the premise of the question, but he's obviously a very experienced football executive who did help to grow Arsenal and did good work there and was very well respected.

29:41So I think he seems like quite a smart hire to me. I guess the point about helping Enik is, we know that Spurs are looking for investment from outside, right? Levy said he's looking for a partner and there's been endless rumors about minority investment. And I think probably having someone like Vinai, particularly in lieu of someone like, replacing someone like Donna, is probably appealing to outside investors because you've got a more sort of traditional setup, right? You've got a CEO, which most big businesses have, rather than Donna, who was kind of an executive director, who had been there for many, many years and probably had a bit more of an undefined role, I think it's fair to say, than Vinay.

30:31So I think maybe from that point of view, from it being feeling like more of a sort of traditional business opportunity, that would be good for Enoch. But I think obviously he's coming in to run the sort of football and non-football operations. And so, you know, really he's here to kind of keep growing Spurs on and off the pitch.

30:54Jack:George Finger at do not follow 1882 asks have you ever thought of renaming yourself to Dan Let Patrick Live to appeal more to the woke

31:09Jack:I don't really know how you're supposed to answer that but it's quite funny yeah no I'm afraid I haven't but sorry I haven't got a joke to make I think it caught you it took you off guard that a little bit it's quite a good one um tom foynes you might you might know him he uh asks is dan gutted that he's left the news beat just as frank has taken over or are you happy to be able to watch it unfold as a fan um and a side note to that is and is he sad he won't get the opportunity to take down the third manager in a row i'm yeah i mean mixed feelings on it like i am really looking forward to being a fan again.

31:51And like, I think Frank Spurs are going to be, you know, a good team to support. But yeah, there's part of me that's a bit disappointed. As I said earlier, like, you know, we know he's a good speaker. I'm sure his press conferences are going to be, are going to get livelier, you know, as he gets his feet under the table and gets a bit more confident. I think he'll start, you know, throwing a few more punches maybe and being a bit more outspoken. And I do, you know, I'm going to miss that. I think he'll be a good person to cover. But like, I'm just like last weekend, I actually missed the first half for different reasons.