Football journalism

chilling parallels with arsenal tbh

I never read tabloid journalism or listen to radio phone-ins relating to English football, but I wondered if you had a media that is as suspicious of the internet as our mob up here. Whenever there is a groundswell of support for an idea (e.g. Fans Against Criminalisation, the idea that Rangers may generally be fucked), it is always dismissed as the work of tinfoil-hat-wearing wotsit-munching mentalists rather than of functioning intelligent human beings with a useful means of contact and research and an ready-made audience at their fingertips. I just wondered if this was particular to the dinosaur media up here? (Hats off to STV though, their twitter presence and engagement is excellent)

― ailsa, Sunday, 15 January 2012 10:13 (Yesterday)

If anything I think it has made clubs

-try to be even more secretive abt 'big issues'
-allow twitter for players who, lets be honest, dont ever really say anything newsworthy but makes it feel like the fans are more connected and inside because they read what jermaine jenas ate at pizza hut
-ignore message boards and blogs until they have a new shirt or dvd to sell, in which they use them as an promotional tool, knowing fans do read them. i'm more likely to find out that arsenal have a dvd of [xyz] because arseblog are doing a competition about it than because it is mentioned in the sun and that has to be the same all around by now. Again this makes them seem 'inclusive' or whatever when it really is just shilling.

I think we won't really find out until there is an arab spring of a football club (to use a very awkward metaphor). If Bolton are 100m in the shitter and with no prospects, how long is it until Bolton fans a) find out through blogs and b) get together to do something about it, like an Ebbsfleet for a Premiership team or something?

FC United?

oh yeah, like that.

The Black Scarf Movement?

I'm hoping that Rangers going tits up, as discussed on many a blog/messageboard for years while the traditional media fail to mention it and mutter about internet mentalist conspiracy, will be the thing up here that shifts the balance. There was definitely an undercurrent of suggesting that Hugh Dallas is no longer head of refereeing at the SFA because of meddling nerds rather than because he was a bigoted bastard in charge of a corrupt system exposed by a journalist who wrote on the internet rather than in a print publication. Antiquated old twats like Hugh Keevins and Jim Traynor have no idea how modern communication works.

The odd thing is that almost every fan under 40 reads blogs and gossip, right? Or at least 60%? I know some folk who are seem like the most casual fans who check out Swiss Ramble or at least f365 and talk about stuff you don't hear/read within trad media. Once a week you are also seeing some sort of club protest at places were the trad media aren't talking about problems (isn't every thing said on tv 'give kean a chance already people!' as opposed to 'hmmm maybe they have an issue with how venkys run the club?') and this is gonna have to reach a tipping point soon enough, right? TV pays for the Premiership, not the other way round but they act like they are muzzled by the Etihad and can't speak about actual stories.

(Could you imagine how essential viewing Football Focus would be if you just gave it to James Richardson and told he can go as far as he wants before the libel cases came in?)

Interesting horrifying-if-you're-a-Blackburn-fan stuff in the papers today about the Venky's bypassing their own board on major decisions like... who the manager should be.

Yeah, a hoy hoy, the TV perception of the Blackburn fans is a good case in point. It just baffles me how guys in the media can fail to capture what's going on with actual fans or with the world in general in terms of communication and chat, especially when it is done more publicly and on record than yer man chuntering on on the Clapham omnibus.

even the soccer saturday guys have closed ranks on blackburn, it's quite weird

the prob with the blackburn fans is just, at least superficially and in the way it is going to be perceived by outsiders, that a lot of their moaning is just bleating "keane out". venkys out i would have a lot more sympathy with.

They only talk to each other, no? Explains why the occasional cheating, diving foreigner is incongruously fair game, like I dunno Christian Gross or Massimo Taibi. Steve Kean was one too until Ferguson and Moyes pitched in.

keane out, venky's out, i've no quarrel with either tbh. He's the front, the plant, the mouthpiece, the cuckoo's egg. A win or two doesn't alter that in any way.

Yeah but the 'don't be mean to kean!' line seems so uptight and against what fans feel, it borders on ludicrous.

"there was a staleness about them that invited harm"

this is a mccarra phrase from a long-forgotten match report that has inexplicably forever lodged itself in my mind

― r|t|c, Monday, 4 April 2011 20:55 (1 year ago) Bookmark

this has recently been superseded by "the evening fell under the control of marcelo bielsa's squad" just fyi

Adel Taarabt causes trouble. Despite his undoubted talent, Tottenham gave up on Taarabt. So, earlier this season, did Ian Holloway. On Saturday, Mark Hughes, who has replaced Holloway as manager, started his mercurial midfielder against his former club.

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2012/writers/peter_berlin/04/21/premier.league.thoughts/index.html

As United's manager begins his annual summer holiday in the south of France he may reflect that calligraphy derives from the Greek words kallos and graphe. Meaning "beautiful writing", it is a form of expression intended to address the heart as much as the eyes.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/blog/2012/jun/05/shinji-kagawa-manchester-united

guessed richard williams

http://www.dailystar.co.uk/football/view/254015/Liverpool-job-is-Brendan-Rodger-sLiverpool-job-is-Brendan-Rodger-s

just putting the worst football headline of all time here for posterity

The new Blizzard contains the following sentence:

Constantly high, drunk or both, Lundekvam took to roaming around in his garden with a huge knife, hunting paparazzi.

haha yeah,i read that. Thought it was a poor issue in general though.

Manchester City had two new players on show. One was Jack Rodwell, right, spoiling his debut with the mistake that led to Southampton's second goal after a £15m transfer from Everton. The other was not technically foreign to this parish: Carlos Tevez 2.0, who is promising to be all the good things, and none of the bad, that any £250,000-a-week forward should be.

The pain inflicted by the loss of Fábregas and, more recently, Robin van Persie – not to mention Nuri Sahin's decision to join Liverpool on loan from Real Madrid – was temporarily at least diminished by his new 5ft 6in Spaniard.

..

From Giroud's viewpoint this could only be a good thing. Long before Cazorla had assuaged Wenger's anxieties – not to mention ruined José Reina's afternoon – by scoring Arsenal's second goal, their lone striker had appeared a weak link.

These are, of course, early days and expectations are, as Wenger puts it, very high. Giroud must be given a decent chance to adapt to a new football culture but it is impossible to resist the thought that a move for Andy Carroll on Arsenal's part last week might not have been quite as left-field as it sounds. Alan Pardew, Newcastle United's manager, sees shades of Zlatan Ibrahimovic in the England centre-forward and what better habitat in which to coax them out of him than The Emirates?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/blog/2012/sep/02/santi-cazorla-arsenal/print

These are, of course, early days and expectations are, as Wenger puts it, very high. Giroud must be given a decent chance to adapt to a new football culture but it is impossible to resist the thought that a move for Andy Carroll on Arsenal's part last week might not have been quite as left-field as it sounds. Alan Pardew, Newcastle United's manager, sees shades of Zlatan Ibrahimovic in the England centre-forward and what better habitat in which to coax them out of him than The Emirates?

― Unlike humans, dogs don't talk shit (Nilmar Honorato da Silva), Sunday, 2 September 2012 23:40 (Yesterday)

i think i just threw up a little in the back of my throat

Ezra Pound described his incomplete poem, Cantos, as a "rag-bag", but he could just as well have been talking about Queens Park Rangers' style of play.

Was that Richard Williams? Please tell me that was Richard Williams.

once again williams is surprisingly found innocent

http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/blog/2012/oct/05/premier-league-10-things-weekend

it's this new (?) prat at the graun, not his only choice line either

£'s the cuntos morelike amirite

http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/blog/2012/oct/03/steven-fletcher-sunderland-scotland

first comment hall of fame btw, sweet as a nut

And then there is the question of Gervinho. The Ivory Coast international often looks like an embarrassed teenager on an early sexual encounter; he's scoring, yet most of his time is spent fumbling around without really knowing what to do.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/football/19885940

I once got a text off Coyle that featured a smiley face. He is an easy man to like.

cool story

that gurning bio pic.

International weeks are a killer, mentally. I felt Coyle's passing should be marked, but I just couldn't get it together to revive any thread for it.

I wasn't sure where else to put this because Ray Hudson isn't really a journalist and there's no commentary thread I'm aware of. But seriously, this is one of the best things: http://illustratedray.tumblr.com/

wait, we really don't have a general commentary thread? ilf is still just an infant

Coyle got such a free pass from journalists and pundits in general it was ridiculous. He took down a Bolton team that had been established in the top flight for an entire decade and no one seemed that bothered. Even 2/3rds of the way through last season people like Alan Hansen were still saying "he's a good manager, he'll sort it out..."

i believe i have a guffbank thread somewhere

AVATAR EYES

Eh I think the free pass was more due to a player actually dying midgame tbf

Nah it was happening before that. Martinez gets a similar free pass.

http://i.imgur.com/KHe3O.png

they've changed it now. This slipped by them though

Banks, who won 7 caps for the Three Lions

would of won more if he had of played for one of the sky 4 and not stoke

Is there anything de Gea could conceivably do to move into the 'not crap' pile?

bulk up, get intimidating tattoos, date hollyoaks extra and then dump them with a text sent at exactly the same time as he is photographed leaving a brothel

And is there anything Hart could do to be not the best keeper in the world?