Yeah, it’s the fact that he needs to caveat any praise with insinuations of cheating that grates though.
These insinuations appear so regularly in The Guardian, both among staff writers and freelancers such as Wilson, and the language used is so similar on each occasion that it can only be the result of a deliberate editorial line their sports journalists are being encouraged to push at every opportunity. It's clearly done in the utmost bad faith, as well, as they continually present highly contentious assertions as fact.
What irritates me is the nauseatingly smug level of moral authority they try to project when doing this. Be a set of shameless fake-news liars in the modern style if you really want to, chaps, but don't try and fucking gaslight us. We're not stupid enough to fall for it and we see right through you, vile racist propagandists that you are.