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Steve Evans’ Sacking is a Timely Reminder That We Must Cherish Football’s Least Likeable Man

Steve Evans is a mirror into the soul of modern football, and the sooner we come to terms with that the better.

Steve Evans is one of the most unpopular men in football. There are no two ways about it. Watch a clip of him prowling the sidelines for a couple of minutes, and it's not hard to see why. Fake tan oozing from every pore, hair dyed peroxide blonde, the 53-year-old looks like he's on a perpetual lads' reunion holiday in Benidorm. Stick a cigar in his mouth and a warm tinnie of Heineken in his hand, picture him dancing to I Am The Music Man on a structurally unsafe fifth-floor balcony, upsetting the other hotel guests by belting out the words in a thick Glaswegian slur, and you start to get some idea of what it must be like to share a touchline with the erstwhile Leeds United boss.

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Steve Evans is the sort of bloke who ends up being best man at yer da's third wedding in Marbella, only to lose the ring in a jacuzzi after gatecrashing a five-star resort. Steve Evans is the sort of bloke who annihilates the khazi on a yacht party, then blames it on "the way these Spanish do tha' brekkies!" with an uproarious laugh. Steve Evans is the sort of bloke who chunders all over his flowery shirt after a night on the VKs, only to get his second wind in the cab on the way home and start swinging at his mates because they won't let him go back to Linekers Bar. He is loud, brash and infinitely objectionable, and he doesn't give a kernel of turd what the world thinks of him.

All that aside, there are several serious reasons not to like Evans. During a spell at Boston United early on in his managerial career, he was given a suspended jail sentence for helping the club to cheat the taxman out of £250,000, money that was then used to finance transfers and help his team achieve promotion to the Football League.

That was the first controversy of many. While at Crawley Town, he was handed a 10-match ban after being sent to the stands six times over the course of a single season. He was later given a six-match stadium ban and fined £3,000 for "using abusive and insulting words and behaviour" towards a female member of Bradford City's club staff. He had spats with managers, journalists and chairmen, while opposition fans came to loathe him with a passion. When he left Crawley for Rotherham United in 2012, the players celebrated his departure with the collective relief of hostages who have just been released by the FARC.

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As such, you might think we should celebrate his sacking by Leeds United. You might think that we should be glad to see the back of him, and that the Football League will be a better place in his absence. After all, this is a man who once celebrated escaping relegation by donning sunglasses, flip-flops and a massive sombrero for the final day of the Championship season; a man who made football fans the world over cringe in horror at the absolute yer-da's-best-mate antics of it all. There is absolutely nothing redeeming about Steve Evans.

And that is exactly why we need him. That is exactly why we must try to understand him, and come to terms with what he represents.

Steve Evans is a monster of our own making. He is a metaphor for what modern football has become. He has absolutely no conception of good sportsmanship; he is not remotely interested in fairness; and he is completely remorseless in his pursuit of his own ambitions, to the point that he would probably turn up to work nude, in only a sombrero, every day for the rest of his life if it guaranteed him a position with a mid-table Championship club.

Still, he loves his banter. He is all about the banter, until a minor refereeing decision goes against him and he goes completely fucking spare. It's this heady mix of affected levity and extreme angst that perfectly sums up the condition of the modern fan. Steve Evans is part of a broad socio-cultural phenomenon, and we have to face up to the reality that his terrible behaviour is never too far from our own.

When we behold Steve Evans on the sidelines, swearing his head off, lashing out at the fourth official, gnashing his teeth and stamping his crumpled sombrero into the ground, we are only looking at a manifestation of ourselves. Steve Evans is the darkness inside us all, the Twitter-troll-meets-dad-lad that threatens to consume every football fan from within.

Let's cherish Steve Evans for what he is, then: a terrible indictment of football in the modern era and, naturally, a man who should be given another job post-haste.

@W_F_Magee