so this agenda thing.

[mad4city]

Chris, Chester and Dave Ewing...
Well said, lads. Considered argument on a Bluemoon agenda thread. Who'd a thunk it?

One theory of my own, that I offer as an aside rather than absolute proof: the game is now dominated by big financial concerns - and I mean that in every sense of those words. For both UEFA who are concerned with preserving the game amid financial pressure and those concerns applying that pressure there is therefore a pressing need to have a clear strategy, "going forward" (as they probably say). To that end, it does suit them to be able to confidently predict, not so much which clubs but, what sort of people they'll be dealing with in the immediate future.
I'd argue that Abramovich scares the life out of them for all sorts of nonfinancial reasons (who knows what sort of nut might next emerge from the old Iron Curtain) and Middle Eastern investment does so because they have the financial muscle to operate outside of the demands of sponsors.
So, to say UEFA don't have anything to gain by making it as difficult as possible for us may well be naive the naive stance. Then again, maybe I'm wrong in the above theory. Maybe these institutions are happy to invest mega millions and let it all ride on the vagaries of chance? The cynic in me says I'm not, though.

 

[The Light Was Yellow Sir]

Agendas? There's a lot of them about!!

Well well well, some sections of the media certainly have it in for Everton Football Club at the moment don’t they? Whether it is bemoaning the fact that we have actually managed to have some success with our loan signings, or touting our manager for other jobs or selling our players to all and sundry it’s clear that they have a bee in their bonnet over Everton.

I can just see the editors of these papers (although in reality I don’t know what to class them as) gathering his staff around and questioning how a club that is not one of their perceived ‘important clubs’ can have the audacity to be challenging the natural order as they see it? It’s Outrageous ! It’s preposterous !! They must be stopped at any cost !!

They sit around scratching their heads and staring into space. The boss asks ‘Really, you don’t have any ideas? I mean you lot assured me that Leighton Baines was a ‘done deal’, that once David Moyes and Marouanne Fellaini left they would crumble and now look at them !!!

Silence fills the room for a minute, then one uneducated (I mean in the football context) pipes up ‘Boss let’s just make any rubbish up about them, it might cause unrest, the manager might even blame us (yes Pards I’m looking at you). His boss then says ‘Won’t people laugh at us if we do that. Oh well it’s worth a shot, we have to do something.’

Anti Spurs agenda?
Looking for the report on the game in the people yesterday,they had a report on every other friendly except ours,even the Newcastle friendly which was abandoned,got almost a full page,Spurs game was not even Mentioned,and it was'nt in my Mail on Sunday either.makes me wonder.

If you want to talk about an anti-Spurs agenda, read the section dedicated to us in The Grauniad's preview of the new season. It's as if there's a bet to see how many snide comments they can cram into it.


Never mind your balance of probabilities; that there is an agenda seems beyond any reasonable doubt. Liverpool FC does not appear to be treated the same as any other club by the media.

Several examples of their duplicity and double standards have occurred during their recently discovered zeal for anti-racism. One shit-for-brains Kopite racially abuses (allegedly) an Oldham player; suddenly it was ‘a section of the Kop’ and it’s front page. The equally-shit-for-brains guy who did the monkey dance against United at Anfield? Check – front page.

Yep, they loathe Man United... however, it's best, I find, to ignore them. Lately, I have boycotted the daily rags and the talking-heads because of their biased, anti-Man United, agenda. Although, I must confess I took a gander at The Mail today, thinking I’d give them a chance to prove me wrong. Obviously daft on my part… it was all about the scousers… two seconds later I exited cyberspace.


Over the past few seasons the newspapers have clearly loved it when our backs have been up against the wall and we have seen the manager, the board and the squad take mountains of abuse. Even this season, where by all accounts we have been doing well, there seems to be negative energy emanating from everywhere. Remember when we lost to Manchester City 6-3, yet still we were top and in good form? I remember watching it on BT Sport and when Mertesacker gave Ozil and a bollocking at the end of the game, there was an "ARSENAL IN CRISIS" caption along the bottom. I thought this was odd seeing as we had been in superb form and had gone through a couple of proper crisises in the years that preceded this one.

Today we are seeing, in my opinion, the most blatant case of anti-Arsenal propaganda for some time

Am I imagining this here, or is something fishy going on?

Oh, and I've just heard that Gary Lineker on MOTD made a joke at Wenger's expense after he fell. Go figure
It would be a disaster to all pundits and media if we won the league again.
Can you imagine Sir Alex Ferguson being the butt of a joke if he had fallen over and potentially hurt himself?

It makes me sick. Whatever you think of Wenger, it's not on.
Always has been, always will be. we're not northern, so they don't like us.

Also, do you remember earlier in the season when they used footage from older seasons on MOTD to criticize our defending?

Laughable.

If we were called something like "Liverpool" or "Manchester United", they'd be sucking our appendages for our performances this season.

Im not surprised to see tabloid junk rags spitting out inaccurate nonsense,but it does surprise me to even the theoretically more responsible media outlets printing stories that simply defy common sense,and are not representative of the facts. It is stories of the kind we have this week that support the idea that there is a an anti-West Ham agenda in the press.

There are plenty more that could have gone here it rather suggests that if you look up agenda in a dictionary it should just have 'any football fan' as the definition

 

[gordondaviesmoustache]

For me, what annoys the most is not the negative reporting of City, but the almost comically uncritical coverage of united and Liverpool and their rank hypocrisy as organisations.

This is, in part, because of my allegiance to City, but also because in any other sphere of journalism such double standards from those at the top could reasonably be expected to be exposed and ridiculed by the media. Within the world of English sports journalism, however, are a load of 'Uncle Toms' who are happy to doff their caps to their Lords and Masters at the ancien regime clubs.

It seems not being banned from Old Trafford and being on nodding terms with Ed Woodward is more important than journalistic integrity.

Cockroaches.

 

[eversince 76]

Maybe there's no agenda. Maybe the media is biased and it's about the number of people reading their papers or clicking the webpages. Maybe it's about the traditional clubs wanting to keep at bay the numbers of sold merchandise. Maybe it's about Platini scared of clubs spoiling the CL as it is.

But when there's a "maybe" it's easy to reflect on it the opposing way.

Maybe there IS an agenda. Maybe the media IS doing favours to the clubs that need a bit of extra attention in the papers. Maybe Sky is expanding their programming with MUFC-TV due to the fact United will be in the shade without any European football interference like Liverpool over the last few years, maybe the traditional clubs (former G14) did discuss a way to at least keep the CL-money coming in and brainwashed Platini for him to form the FFPR ...

Time will tell. The only place you can do the right thing in the end is on the pitch. If we keep progressing I'm sure thatiwithin the 10 year plan of Sheik Mansour, people and the media will talk about us, our club, our academy like they have been doing to Barcelona over the last 8 years. Agenda or no agenda.

 

[cibaman]

An example of this is the BBC have a reporter following United in pre season Simon Stone City have no-one following City

If the BBC had sent someone to follow us I might have been tempted to write to complain of them squandering the license fee. Why should they?

We don't have a gobby new manager intent on proving to everyone that he's a tactical genius.

We're not in a state of crisis following last season

Now that Yaya's turned up we don't have any player dramas that are of interest to the media. There are no issues about who will be captain, what system will we play, can player A work with player B.

Our best players aren't there or not yet involved in matches.

We haven't announced that we're going to spend huge amounts of money but are struggling to do so.

We are boringly stable and in good shape. Nothing to report.

 

[Newman Noggs]

Alright - now this maybe a once-in-a-lifetime occurrence, but in the interests of glasnost, compromise and appeasing the conspiracy theorists, here is my olive branch of truth and reconciliation.
Agenda - no, it doesn't exist, as it implies a pre-arranged and coordinated multi-organisation Illuminati-esque set up of epic proportions, with the goal of destroying Manchester City.
Not only is this utterly unfeasible - it is also, by any reasonable criteria, going rather badly, if last year's Premiership is any yardstick.
Bias - well, yes - this probably does exists because, (and I know this will be hard to accept for some folk), not everybody supports Manchester City.
I know, I know - it's unfathomable, but some folks in the sports media actually support other teams.
This, along with the Sky 'loyalty' to their traditional cash cow big four, which Chris alluded to earlier, probably explains why not every article in the Daily Fail, or headline story on Sky Sports News is praising us to the heavens.
Many journalists are lazy - many don't like City's arrival at the top table - many have allegiances to other clubs.
This may result in bias or disproportionate representation in their tabloid chip wrappers, but it is proof only of possible bias, not a definite agenda, because these folk are simply far too thick to orchestrate such a conspiracy, and don't really give a flying fuck who wins the premiership just as long as scribbling a few paragraphs of bollocks about it pays for their bar tab.
So some folk are biased, but there is no agenda.
I know this will be akin to telling the believers that there is no tooth fairy, but they have to find out sooner or later.

Excellent post.

However, I'm not sure that I agree that the semantic distinction between "agenda" and "bias" makes them mutually exclusive. The OED defines "agenda" as "the underlying intentions or motives of a particular person or group" and "bias" as "Inclination or prejudice for or against one person or group, especially in a way considered to be unfair".

My argument would be that a collective or even individual bias in favour of certain clubs means that there is a collective, even if not specifically agreed, or individual underlying intention to promote those clubs at the expense of others.

In the scheme of things, it shouldn't matter except that nobody would deny the power of advertising and propaganda. This constant drip, drip of negative publicity, at the very least, retards our progress and vice versa for the favoured clubs. This makes catching up commercially more difficult than it should be. We will prevail of course because we can invest in indirect means of promoting the club such as our overseas club projects whilst the institutionalised bias passes into history. I can't think of another club in that position.

 

[Bill]

there is both.
an agenda from the powers that be to clip our wings. obvious as the nose on your face.
an agenda from the media to encourage clicks/ viewers from the plastics in the far east. lets be honest if we see a rag fest we turn it off, a million viewers gone. if the plastic rags see a blue fest 5 million turn off. now we are ripping up trees the media are losing millions ney billions if they report our success.

the bias comes from the people who are jealous, jealous they they are not us, that their team (i.e the scum) are in debt and can't buy a toure or an aguero. these people are supposed to be journalists, print the truth in a profession and honest manner. truth is they don't. they print bile and negatives only. again its there for all to see.
had talkshite printed an article with say 3 clubs that have over the years bought flops I'd accept that, but to only do city, on top of the rag love in every day speaks volumns. if that's not an agenda I don't what is. the mail, why leave the champions and serious contenders again for the title off an article about who could win the title? why do that? or is it yet again coincidence? its an agenda. like it or not its there. the sooner the mard arses on here realise the better. they wouldn't look such dickheads.

 

[jrb]

Sky News.

The sports bulletin.

Breaking news!

"Luke Shaw made to train alone by Van Gaal."

I can rest easy now and plan my day ahead.

 

[nijinsky's fetlocks]

its an agenda. like it or not its there. the sooner the mard arses on here realise the better. they wouldn't look such dickheads.

Yes, of course there is mate.
Now put the top back on the carpet glue, there's a good chap.

 

[tonea2003]

Alright - now this maybe a once-in-a-lifetime occurrence, but in the interests of glasnost, compromise and appeasing the conspiracy theorists, here is my olive branch of truth and reconciliation.
Agenda - no, it doesn't exist, as it implies a pre-arranged and coordinated multi-organisation Illuminati-esque set up of epic proportions, with the goal of destroying Manchester City.
Not only is this utterly unfeasible - it is also, by any reasonable criteria, going rather badly, if last year's Premiership is any yardstick.
Bias - well, yes - this probably does exists because, (and I know this will be hard to accept for some folk), not everybody supports Manchester City.
I know, I know - it's unfathomable, but some folks in the sports media actually support other teams.
This, along with the Sky 'loyalty' to their traditional cash cow big four, which Chris alluded to earlier, probably explains why not every article in the Daily Fail, or headline story on Sky Sports News is praising us to the heavens.
Many journalists are lazy - many don't like City's arrival at the top table - many have allegiances to other clubs.
This may result in bias or disproportionate representation in their tabloid chip wrappers, but it is proof only of possible bias, not a definite agenda, because these folk are simply far too thick to orchestrate such a conspiracy, and don't really give a flying fuck who wins the premiership just as long as scribbling a few paragraphs of bollocks about it pays for their bar tab.
So some folk are biased, but there is no agenda.
I know this will be akin to telling the believers that there is no tooth fairy, but they have to find out sooner or later.

Excellent post.

However, I'm not sure that I agree that the semantic distinction between "agenda" and "bias" makes them mutually exclusive. The OED defines "agenda" as "the underlying intentions or motives of a particular person or group" and "bias" as "Inclination or prejudice for or against one person or group, especially in a way considered to be unfair".

My argument would be that a collective or even individual bias in favour of certain clubs means that there is a collective, even if not specifically agreed, or individual underlying intention to promote those clubs at the expense of others.

In the scheme of things, it shouldn't matter except that nobody would deny the power of advertising and propaganda. This constant drip, drip of negative publicity, at the very least, retards our progress and vice versa for the favoured clubs. This makes catching up commercially more difficult than it should be. We will prevail of course because we can invest in indirect means of promoting the club such as our overseas club projects whilst the institutionalised bias passes into history. I can't think of another club in that position.

i think the distinction is that the agenda would have to be a collective will and intent to specifically stop us for the many reasons being expressed on here

where as the bias which i think is happening is just the pro reporting of rags and dippers with no intent to not report on us.

thats how i see it anyway