ENGLISH PREMIER LEAGUE:STEPHEN IRELAND says he feels "picked upon" by the media in the aftermath of an interview in French football magazine So Footin which he is quoted making disparaging comments about, amongst many other things, the cities of Birmingham and Cork.

The player issued a statement yesterday through his representatives in England claiming that he had been misquoted in places while in others he had not expected the content of a long conversation with the journalist to come across so harshly in print.

In a lengthy interview to be broadcast on Newstalk's Sport Saturdayprogramme this afternoon, the Newcastle United midfielder appears to concede he simply felt that the bulk of his comments would not be reported.

“I saw the interview last week and actually asked them to pull it,” he says. “I said to them this is not what was supposed to be released. It is blown so far out of context, that it’s ridiculous.

“The girl taped the whole three or four hours of the interview,” he continues. “They were really quick fire questions like: ‘Where will you retire to?’ And I just said, ‘Hopefully LA.’ And she said, ‘Not Cork? Not Ireland?’ And I said, ‘No, hopefully LA.’ But the girl basically just taped the whole three or four hours of the interview. All they said there was supposed to be in the interview was the 15 questions.

“But she obviously just relistened to this and thought, ‘I can make something of this’.”

Pressed on his comments regarding Cork, which he is quoted as saying he would rather shoot himself than live in, he insisted: “I love Cork. I have Cork tattooed on my body . . . My kids go back there every two months. If it was so bad I wouldn’t have my kids going back there. It’s very close to my heart.”

In the original interview, Ireland is also quoted as describing Giovanni Trapattoni as “arrogant” and Birmingham as “crap” but, he tells Newstalk, “I don’t want to be in people’s bad books but if it is that way then I can only apologise and try my best to try to change people’s opinions.”