Different reactions to City and Arsenal defeats

[The Flash]

I read the BBC live report and it oozed positivity and when they reached the sending off it redoubled its sympathetic agenda. The difference in reporting the two matches was STARK! MD was vilified for gettin sent off and the arse red card at worst wrung a few hands at best and he was awarded the night's total wheelbarrowful of sympathy! Don't anyone tell me there is no agenda in the British rag meedya! Just wait till Spurs start their campaign in Europe again and they will be granted the same 'let's support a British team' shite that is never applied to City!

You label it the 'rag meedya', yet then say they favour Arsenal and now Spurs. How does that even work?

Maybe we should have an all-encompassing phrase like "ABC Media"? - Anyone But City.

 

[TCIB]

Some reporters will have a chip due to who they support, many have a soft spot or are spurs/gunner fans.
American media has no such personal connections on the whole with the prem and it's teams so will be more objective.
That is my reasoning anyway.

The ones serious about quality reporting though are usually alright, i admit some have only recently stopped acting like bloggers.
Shaun Custis and the likes though, Blackburn etc are just bloggers imo so i pay no attention to them.

 

[Chippy_boy]

I read the BBC live report and it oozed positivity and when they reached the sending off it redoubled its sympathetic agenda. The difference in reporting the two matches was STARK! MD was vilified for gettin sent off and the arse red card at worst wrung a few hands at best and he was awarded the night's total wheelbarrowful of sympathy! Don't anyone tell me there is no agenda in the British rag meedya! Just wait till Spurs start their campaign in Europe again and they will be granted the same 'let's support a British team' shite that is never applied to City!

I do completely agree. But you have to ask why this is, don't you. What is it about City that they don't like?

It's not the managers surely. We had the darling of the media Mark clueless Hughes, followed by Mancini who oozed charisma and who they generally liked and now Pellegrini who is cool and calm and also seems liked and respected. So it's not the managers.

We don't have any obnoxious players. Even the rag forums say our team is hard to dislike. No John Terries or biting divers in the team. (Micah has been known to do the odd bit of gymnastics, but he doesn't bite and is generally liked by the media.)

And it can't be the money either. Yes, some people are jealous and there's too much made of the money, but Chelsea have had oodles of money thrown at them and the media don't hate them, or are not as critical of Chelsea compared to us.

My guess is the reason they don't like us is because we are not from London. It was bad enough having the rags dominating english football and now another team from out of town are damned well doing it. And these southern wanker reports don't like it.

 

[The Flash]

I read the BBC live report and it oozed positivity and when they reached the sending off it redoubled its sympathetic agenda. The difference in reporting the two matches was STARK! MD was vilified for gettin sent off and the arse red card at worst wrung a few hands at best and he was awarded the night's total wheelbarrowful of sympathy! Don't anyone tell me there is no agenda in the British rag meedya! Just wait till Spurs start their campaign in Europe again and they will be granted the same 'let's support a British team' shite that is never applied to City!

I do completely agree. But you have to ask why this is, don't you. What is it about City that they don't like?

It's not the managers surely. We had the darling of the media Mark clueless Hughes, followed by Mancini who oozed charisma and who they generally liked and now Pellegrini who is cool and calm and also seems liked and respected. So it's not the managers.

We don't have any obnoxious players. Even the rag forums say our team is hard to dislike. No John Terries or biting divers in the team. (Micah has been known to do the odd bit of gymnastics, but he doesn't bite and is generally liked by the media.)

And it can't be the money either. Yes, some people are jealous and there's too much made of the money, but Chelsea have had oodles of money thrown at them and the media don't hate them, or are not as critical of Chelsea compared to us.

My guess is the reason they don't like us is because we are not from London. It was bad enough having the rags dominating english football and now another team from out of town are damned well doing it. And these southern wanker reports don't like it.

There's also the casual racism that they indulge in when sneering at our owner, the Arab.

 

[aguero93:20]

I read the BBC live report and it oozed positivity and when they reached the sending off it redoubled its sympathetic agenda. The difference in reporting the two matches was STARK! MD was vilified for gettin sent off and the arse red card at worst wrung a few hands at best and he was awarded the night's total wheelbarrowful of sympathy! Don't anyone tell me there is no agenda in the British rag meedya! Just wait till Spurs start their campaign in Europe again and they will be granted the same 'let's support a British team' shite that is never applied to City!

I do completely agree. But you have to ask why this is, don't you. What is it about City that they don't like?

It's not the managers surely. We had the darling of the media Mark clueless Hughes, followed by Mancini who oozed charisma and who they generally liked and now Pellegrini who is cool and calm and also seems liked and respected. So it's not the managers.

We don't have any obnoxious players. Even the rag forums say our team is hard to dislike. No John Terries or biting divers in the team. (Micah has been known to do the odd bit of gymnastics, but he doesn't bite and is generally liked by the media.)

And it can't be the money either. Yes, some people are jealous and there's too much made of the money, but Chelsea have had oodles of money thrown at them and the media don't hate them, or are not as critical of Chelsea compared to us.

My guess is the reason they don't like us is because we are not from London. It was bad enough having the rags dominating english football and now another team from out of town are damned well doing it. And these southern wanker reports don't like it.

There's also the casual racism that they indulge in when sneering at our owner, the Arab.

The Rag 'ed you mean ;)

 

[BluessinceHydeRoad]

The obvious point about the press is that it relies on reporters to fill it. The sports pages are filled by reporters NOT even necessarily by reporters who are particularly interested in football. Their career is journalism, they live in a world of words, of clever headlines and striking phrases. To keep their jobs they have to attract readers and writing studious, well balanced and objective articles isn't the best way of doing this. And if you want to get to the top, you have to work in London.

There are the thick end of 100 professional clubs in England and 20 of these are in the PL - that's too many to keep tabs on, so a reporter talks to people in London, gets interviews with London players, managers and other "experts", but picks up a fair bit of gossip about other clubs of "national significance" ie Manchester United and Liverpool who have a decent following in the capital. And there you are, before long the horizons of your world lead you to conclude that West Ham have four "world class" players, that "Scottie" Parker is the inspirational captain who hasn't quite stopped them being relegated, but must be the footballer of the year, and that the best player in the world (ie London) is Gareth Bale. Then the news that Fergie is retiring comes in and that he's said Moyes is his successor: bloody hell, he's from Everton (that's in Liverpool isn't it?), he must be a genius, and surely has a brilliant record there. An hour later he's "wee Davey" and "the natural successor".

Then Manchester City play Barcelona. All we know about City is that they've got a very rich owner - but they're no good, surely? They're bound to lose. Barcelona are apparently Barca and win loads. They'll be too good for City. They'll outclass them...

That's the way it's done... "Fergie's fury at ref's howlers", "Gunners gunned down by Barca's ref" became "Pellegrini loses it - astonishing rant at Swedish referee".

 

[BlueAnorak]

It's all about advertising clicks.
Post an article bashing City and you get lots of ABCs agreeing with the article and City fans posting there disapproval of the trolls.
Sadly there isn't a newspaper that simply reports the facts these days.

 

[Chippy_boy]

The obvious point about the press is that it relies on reporters to fill it. The sports pages are filled by reporters NOT even necessarily by reporters who are particularly interested in football. Their career is journalism, they live in a world of words, of clever headlines and striking phrases. To keep their jobs they have to attract readers and writing studious, well balanced and objective articles isn't the best way of doing this. And if you want to get to the top, you have to work in London.

There are the thick end of 100 professional clubs in England and 20 of these are in the PL - that's too many to keep tabs on, so a reporter talks to people in London, gets interviews with London players, managers and other "experts", but picks up a fair bit of gossip about other clubs of "national significance" ie Manchester United and Liverpool who have a decent following in the capital. And there you are, before long the horizons of your world lead you to conclude that West Ham have four "world class" players, that "Scottie" Parker is the inspirational captain who hasn't quite stopped them being relegated, but must be the footballer of the year, and that the best player in the world (ie London) is Gareth Bale. Then the news that Fergie is retiring comes in and that he's said Moyes is his successor: bloody hell, he's from Everton (that's in Liverpool isn't it?), he must be a genius, and surely has a brilliant record there. An hour later he's "wee Davey" and "the natural successor".

Then Manchester City play Barcelona. All we know about City is that they've got a very rich owner - but they're no good, surely? They're bound to lose. Barcelona are apparently Barca and win loads. They'll be too good for City. They'll outclass them...

That's the way it's done... "Fergie's fury at ref's howlers", "Gunners gunned down by Barca's ref" became "Pellegrini loses it - astonishing rant at Swedish referee".

Spot on.

And to aguero93:20's point - which I agree with - it is a fact that there are more rag journlists than City journalists. The rag journalists hate us with a passion, and this inevitably in itself slants the reporting. Everytime one of them gets to say anything, you can bet it has an anti-City slant to it. They don't hate Arsenal or Chelsea to anything like the same degree. They have rivalry with Liverpool, but they don't hate Liverpool like they hate us.

 

[inbetween]

It shows a lot about the lack of understanding of football I think, especially from journalists who just don't understand how the game works in terms of it doesn't matter how much you have spent, on a football pitch it is player vs player, man for man and everything else just becomes irrelevant. Barcelona might of outclassed us but when you look at the FACTS, they only did it in possession and unfortunately scoreline. I felt the game could of been any score though despite us being crippled with 10 men for just under half the game. Their dominance only showed really in possession, in actual chances made it's not like we had our backs against the wall. Had we been in our own half defending attack after attack I'd understand but for the vast majority of the match it was a valiant effort dealing with perhaps a handful of the best players in the world in their respective positions.

We have to deal with the fact that the expectation of Arsenal to win is based on them not spending money, or not a lot anyway. They will always be the team billed as the underdog against most teams in the Champions League and that is because they are relatively shite and have little chance compared to most of them. We on the other hand have been scoring freely and there was an expectation that we would take the game to Barcelona and really get a shocking result. Football doesn't work like that though, they are a fantastic team that keeps the ball but that is about it, the reason they look so good sometimes is because teams are completely naive in dealing with their qualities. They either go overboard defensively and hope for a break (it worked for Celtic!) or they try and attack them but it's tactical suicide to do that against a team that can keep the ball so well.

I think Barcelona are very beatable if you setup the right way and anyone who understands football knows that if you keep Barcelona to 1 shot in the first half and make several chances yourself then you are playing extremely well. I would ignore the media, they are just trying to play on the fact that Arsenal kept Bayern from scoring 5 as opposed to us who supposedly got outclassed by a team we should be beating. I know which headline I'd rather play under because one team will have a chance at the Nou Camp and the other will have absolutely no chance at the Allianz Arena.

 

[Pigeonho]

The obvious point about the press is that it relies on reporters to fill it. The sports pages are filled by reporters NOT even necessarily by reporters who are particularly interested in football. Their career is journalism, they live in a world of words, of clever headlines and striking phrases. To keep their jobs they have to attract readers and writing studious, well balanced and objective articles isn't the best way of doing this. And if you want to get to the top, you have to work in London.

There are the thick end of 100 professional clubs in England and 20 of these are in the PL - that's too many to keep tabs on, so a reporter talks to people in London, gets interviews with London players, managers and other "experts", but picks up a fair bit of gossip about other clubs of "national significance" ie Manchester United and Liverpool who have a decent following in the capital. And there you are, before long the horizons of your world lead you to conclude that West Ham have four "world class" players, that "Scottie" Parker is the inspirational captain who hasn't quite stopped them being relegated, but must be the footballer of the year, and that the best player in the world (ie London) is Gareth Bale. Then the news that Fergie is retiring comes in and that he's said Moyes is his successor: bloody hell, he's from Everton (that's in Liverpool isn't it?), he must be a genius, and surely has a brilliant record there. An hour later he's "wee Davey" and "the natural successor".

Then Manchester City play Barcelona. All we know about City is that they've got a very rich owner - but they're no good, surely? They're bound to lose. Barcelona are apparently Barca and win loads. They'll be too good for City. They'll outclass them...

That's the way it's done... "Fergie's fury at ref's howlers", "Gunners gunned down by Barca's ref" became "Pellegrini loses it - astonishing rant at Swedish referee".

Spot on.

And to aguero93:20's point - which I agree with - it is a fact that there are more rag journlists than City journalists. The rag journalists hate us with a passion, and this inevitably in itself slants the reporting. Everytime one of them gets to say anything, you can bet it has an anti-City slant to it. They don't hate Arsenal or Chelsea to anything like the same degree. They have rivalry with Liverpool, but they don't hate Liverpool like they hate us.

Just to pick a few out:
Custis - Newcastle fans as far as i'm aware.
The bald, pointy nosed guy who was on that SS clip, Rob somebody - Chelsea fan.
The other guy from that clip with the dark hair and looks like he's dead - QPR.
Taylor - Read somewhere he is a Forest fan.
Herbert - Wrexham, again I think that's been said on here before now.
Winter is a Cheslea fan
Scott is a gunner
Evans and Kay support Liverpool.

That's a handful of the more well-known journo's out there. Who is there who is a declared United fan, or 'rag journo' as you put it?