Remember when Kevin Keegan showed how cross he was at something Old Red Nose said? He was wearing a pair of seventies headphones and started to echo the thoughts of most football supporters in the land by saying he would love to beat the red Mancs, love it. Nothing particularly exciting about that, at the time we would have loved it if anyone beat them. I in fact still enjoy seeing or hearing that they have been defeated, it’s one of life’s little joys.
Sadly for all people with a scintilla of sense and decency the media took that moment as their cue to start praising the purple veined old coot for his deft employment of psychology to unsettle his managerial opponents. Or in their lazy shorthand, mind games. In fact Keegan’s little show of passion was only notable because someone in football had just told the unvarnished truth, and had done so in a way that made it transparently apparent that they in fact meant what they were saying. I don’t think it had much impact on the outcome of the title. We all know that in a tight race the more experienced, settled team (with the weight of the football establishment behind them) will often succeed and Keegan’s Newcastle just didn’t quite have enough to stave off the vested interests and the red mancs.
What’s always struck me is the way we have since been told to view Keegan’s barely suppressed anger as an outburst or a rant. Who really used mind games here? I suggest it was the media. Repeat a lie often enough and everyone will accept it. The interview is passionate, honest and relatively mild by any reasonable measure. And yet the media felt the need to over react and do everything possible to destabilise the rival to their favourite. It’s not much to me, a meh moment really, they have an agenda, big deal, so what? That’s not news. But last week they were at it again.
I read on the BBC news feed that Rafa Benitez had ‘ranted’ and been guilty of an ‘outburst’. The BBC. An organisation which used to be rightly famed for some degree of journalistic integrity. Not a tabloid, not a Fregie fawning satellite channel but Aunty Beeb herself. Intrigued despite myself, I looked up and found a video of this drooling, wild eyed, ill advised crazy harangue to which the poor unsuspecting journalists had been subjected. And surprise surprise, what did I find? A rather diffident, polite gentleman calmly and rationally explaining that he was working for a shamelessly non-supportive organisation and that football fans have a role and that role is to get behind their team. Their role was absolutely not to make defamatory banners nor to chant abuse at the club they purport to follow. I say the club and not the manager advisedly. These buffoons at Chelsea will always claim they have the long term good of their club at heart and are in fact merely ‘having a go’ at an inept manager.
Bollocks.
You shout abuse at your manager and you are shouting abuse at your club. As George would say, simples.
We of course at Arsenal are familiar with what is happening at Chelsea. Not the manager go round nor the ownership model, I don’t mean that, but rather the unrepresentative berks getting their names checked by an all too willing and complicit media and claiming to speak for all of the fans. The prats who think they know more about tactics and player selection than a man who clearly has more experience and professional acumen than they have acne blocked pores. I don’t have much sympathy for Rafa – he knew precisely what kind of horrible organisation he was walking into. But I do think he was absolutely 100% correct in everything he said. And more than that he did not rant and it wasn’t an outburst but the media have decided that we must all think it was.
Here’s my question. And I expect an answer so sit up straight at the back. What do the print journos, the radio and TV people gain from raising up these revolting little men (who I refuse to name here) that claim (wrongly) to represent fan unrest? Who benefits? Beats the hell out of me. A conspiracy needs a clear aim before it makes sense to simpletons like me. So maybe they just like stirring the shit. Maybe it makes life more interesting.
One thing watching Rafa reminded me is how wise Arsene is to treat the press with such gently smiling benign contempt. I am astounded when supporters think it is they who are on the end of his subtle dissembling, that he aims his careful political double speak at the humble football fan. It is a duel with the media and one he conducts with a cautious dignity, choosing when to swat them aside and when to dangle a tidbit. Mind games? Compared with the oafish clumsiness of the sot from the North Arsene is like the child of Gary Kasparov and Machiavelli. When he blithely states that he makes no plans for Gareth Bale on Sunday do people really seriously start screaming that he’s a fool and he’s lost it? Or do they think he ought to tell those press hounds all of his plans and just hope no one from the Lane gets wind of them.
Given the enormous task Arsene has faced over the last few years and the revolting way he is treated it is quite incredible that a genuine rant or outburst has never happened. He should be instantly forgiven it it did, but instead he tolerates the imbecility of the press pack with an avuncular patience and a patronising indifference which you nor I would have little hope of maintaining. Just one more thing he does rather well in my opinion.
And with that I’m off to try to fill a football free Saturday.
Positively Arsenal 
Excellent. Spoken straight from my heart. I too had a look at that so called rant. AW S too by the way. Low&behold. No such thing. Just stirring the you know what. To sell print. Expected from tabloids that live on creating a story but the BBC? a reputable news agency peddling crapola to keep an audience. Shameless really. And no AW is not going to speak of his plans and tactics to the media right before a major game your simpletons. Wake up.
Have your self a great Saturday STEWW and thanks for the write up..
UP. THE GUNNERS OF ARSENAL!!!!!!!!
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Morning all, nice one Steww.
This happens time and again in the media but I think many have now woken up to the media’s repetitious utter misrepresentation of the facts.
Whether it’s Keegan, Rafa or Arsene who are the target of any given article.
And they continually undermine themselves each time they do it.
The easily led and the ignorant still fall for it but they will fall for anything. It’s all rather odd though as they are in effect teaching people to ignore them; I’ve lost count of the number of time ‘x’ or ‘x’s’ club have supposedly gone into meltdown only to find the reverse is true.
To read recent headlines might make you think Arsenal are on the brink of collapse and that practically all of our games this season have been ‘must-wins’.
But we know that this is simply not the case. So why do they bother?
Presumably to ensure that at least the gullible continue to buy their output even if the rest of us have long since moved on.
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This is becoming a habit and a daily read, Keep em coming.
Question where is part 3 in the Arsenal series (usmanov)?
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With regards to the Media,
I used to read their articles, then just started reading the quotes to gain an insight into what was actually meant, then read their article. Stopped reading most journalists works along time ago.
Cannot get my head around whether their is an agenda or if their just lazy sods.
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Just read thru yesterday’s post-9pm (Nigeria@ GMT+1) comments.
Please confirm that its because you think I am Ateeb/beetA that I’m not allowed to play?
If so…I most definitely am not Ateeb.
I do not do twitter..
I do not know any “ACLFers” personally and was naturally soo excited to “see” so many old faces together again..
Its because I run a 9am-9pm interweb that I couldn’t say all this yesterday..
That I’m back again this morning continuing this is because I’ve always thought I was among friends…the more optimistic gooners
PG, you really burst my bubble yesterday…had me thinking all kinds of things…like a jilted lover…
Anyway, its another day…
I am not Ateeb.
RASERS!
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Like I posted yesterday, I wa out of town for lil while so I had no access to internet service. What’s the Benitez media outcry all about?
I hate 99% of the journalists. They are the source of the majority of the problems going on in the world even outside football. They paint a picture of crisis at every given opportunity.
Like u rightly wrote, Arsene is too wise for them to handle and that’s why they try the manipulation tactics out on the fan which sadly works on some faithless ones.
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A very good post as usual Mr Steww. Thank you for the delightful read.
I for one have gradually begun to realise the way the media works in regards to manipulating people. But its not just football, its politics, current affairs, history…morality itself is redefined.
Arsene Wenger has patience to match the great generals of past eras. I would have snapped and taken to the press pack with a baseball bat long ago, were I in his shoes.
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Still no sign of George then?
Wondering if he’s been bumped off with a plutonium dart to the jowel by Usmanov? If so, who’s next, eh, Steww?
Steww?
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as posted on ACLF (March 2, 2013 at 8:35 am):
How anyone can confuse me for Ateeb is beyond my understanding.
Don’t really know what to make of this blogging lark anymore…
Friendship?…meh.
Positively disappointing…
PURPLE REIGN?
…meh, but don’t see us losing to the Spuds.
..sorry Steww, nice write-up but I’m not allowed to post here.
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ANDREW
stop it. Nothing of that sort has happened to the master. Probably just a short day trip. Goodness sake.
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“Arsene Wenger has patience to match the great generals of past eras. I would have snapped and taken to the press pack with a baseball bat long ago, were I in his shoes.”
You and me both!
You never disappoint steww. Excellently written and a point well made. I gave up on the media years ago. Some might say it makes me uninformed, but I realised that whatever you read is not factual objective news, it is one (usually) man’s opinion with only the ‘facts’ that support his agenda. The days of Woodward and Bernstein are well and truely dead. There are hundreds of scandals begging for a journalist with integrity to expose them. Instead, they are the ones being found out for dodgy tactics and are known to keep quiet about things they know to protect vested interests. I have zero respect for any of them.
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Great stuff Steww.
As to why the same people who believe ‘appy ‘arry to be a better manager then the likes of Bobby Robson (or even Uncle Woy) are upset with managers who criticise their glorious knight whilst he is sat astride a slightly irate and fidgety horse, the great Sah Slurgus himself? I have neigh idea. Sorry, couldn’t help myself at the end there.
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Only the weak minded fall for that press bollocks nowadays, I think most people see through it, that’s not to say some dont use it for their own agenda. Last year on bbc 5live Ian Mcgarry accused AVB of being “borderline asbeurgers”, the other night they got him on after Rafas so-called rant and he was spouting his usual nonsense, this is the bbc folks, we pay for that.
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Nice work, Stew. I totally agree with you. The media gave little to gain by saying that Rafa has been quite fair and sensible when addressing the fan issue. They are just a professional hype machine. Nothing to do with news and less to do with integrity.
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I just can’t work out where the the media sees their future?
If most people are seeing through their nonsense, dismissing it or just ignoring it, what next for them? They seem to have gone from ‘must read’ to ‘nobody reading’ in an incredibly short space of time.
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Aman my old friend.
I dont know what you are talking about.
I never compared you to anyone .Least of all Ateeb
I have just seen your posts .I would have approved you in an instant.
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Can someone pop over to ACLF and apologise to Aman that I kept him waiting?
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Amen, Steww.
As for the media, if you want to know how much they have failed us just google Bradley Manning who this very week is being court-martial-ed because he exposed the whole tissue of lies underlying American foreign policy. Did you know he tried leaking his info to the Washington Post and New York Times? Guess what, yup, zero interest. Hence his going to Wiki-Leaks and guess who else is being persecuted and is just one step out of jail, Yup, Mr Wiki-Leaks himself, Julian Paul Assange. Yes Manning was in court this week being prosecuted by the American government. Did you see much in the media about it?
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Apology accepted PG…
all is well in my RASER world again though I must admit I’m still quite perturbed about the whole thing….but I’ll get over it….
Enough about that…hello positivelyarsenal.
Is there really a “they” in how we define the media?
I prefer to denigrate the individual behind a weak article, and if I can’t then the publishing parent company.
Too many hide behind the facelessness of the interweb but everyone leaves a trail..
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Aman ,Ateeb did try to post,
I have only seen your posts this very morning.
Every first post has to be approved .Evey new poster goes automatically to moderation.
I approved you the minute I saw you first post.
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Hello Aman – really great to see you!
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I saw his post yesterday but decided I didn’t like the look of him and left him in the bin George.
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Really Stew?
He is about as positive as you get.Funny and loyal to his friends.
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Well I’ll take your word for it….
😉
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Ooops those things are banned aren’t they?
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I doubt I could do what most football managers do and respond to inane questions from the tribe of media pygmies as I stride down the tunnel at the end 90 minutes of physical and mental trauma – Arsene does it far better than most and has done for every week of his time in the EPL
If anyone asked me about my performance or the result of a contest recently decided i can assure them they would know what an OUTBURST was like
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To be vaguely fair to the media even ten years ago they enjoyed a little thinking time before writing and publishing, or appearing before the camera
Now the game is 24/7 immediate sensation masquerading as news, a demand to grab the attention of the viewer, listener, reader in front of 100 other sources
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hello Andrew – how’ve you been?
The bin’s a filthy place to keep an “old friend”, steww, but I so like the look of your new digs I just wouldn’t stay still.
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And I forgot to say how much I enjoyed the piece Steww
A writer who takes time to craft the document
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Sorry Aman but you were directing your rants at George so I wanted him to have the pleasure of unlocking you!
Hello anicoll – thank you.
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Great thanks Aman – enjoying catching up with old friends! Sorry you got delayed on the way in, cold on the outside isn’t it! Pull up a chair, the fire’s on!
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10/10 steww, well said ….one explanation = gutter press sells, subculture behaviours…anything for hits.. even his first “rant” when at liverpool wasnt a rant at all. they just make fun of his accent like they do to wenger…
hey aman ! hehe raser indeed. wlecome buddy.
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I did DM George via Twitter, Aman, but I think his probationary conditions are pretty tight these days. After the last time …
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Welcome Aman my old friend. Who mixed you up with Ateeb? Well I’ll never. Steww has a lot to answer for. (I would have inserted a winky smiley but king George has binned them.)
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I’ve always seen the Keegan ‘outburst’ (to perpetuate the silly football cliché) just like that, steww. I liked it, and I loved that Newcastle side in a way. Most AFC fans I’ve met disagree with me on this one, but I also liked William Gallas ‘sulking’ on the half-way line. He wasn’t sulking at all, of course – and the passion he played with that day made me puff up with pride… despite the subsequent ridiculous panto bollocks it got painted up with. Completely false. Ah well. Fuck em all, Tottenham, West Ham, Liverpool. We are the Arsenal, We are the best, we are the Arsenal so fuck all the rest.
Feeling confident about tomorrow.
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( 🙂 )
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Hang on Limps is in the bin. Back in a sec.
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I don’t know. The desolation of a football free Saturday…. Limps is in a bin.
Sounds like a John Cooper Clarke song.
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That effin bin is like a rite of passage …
*shakes head*
Necessary evil I’m afraid.
Good to see you LA!
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John Cooper Clarke? Right, that’s Tuesday playlist started. Thanks Limps.
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Thats ok steww, George only just made it on time to “the unlocking”…I was on me last breath…
feeling warm & fuzzy now I’m in the company of “loved ones”…
wassup Shotta, Limpar, ………..Hunter13!
Man it feels GREAT to be here and I haven’t even gone thru the archives to see who else lives here……
“RASERS to the fullest”…(cartwheels)
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Excellent again, steww. Totally agree with you about what Rafa said. Just like the time before, about the favouritism from which ManUre benefits. Labelling opinions which challenge shibboleths or received wisdom “a rant” enables the public to dismiss the views and of course has the benefit of providing lots of easy material for the media – replaying the “rant”, getting reactions, etc.
“What do the print journos, the radio and TV people gain from raising up these revolting little men (who I refuse to name here) that claim (wrongly) to represent fan unrest?”
Quotes and clicks/sales, is the answer. If people understood that the role of the information media is to make money, not to provide information, the Goonerverse would be a wiser place. With no time to actually investigate or research anything and under constant pressure to fill every hour with “news”, a ready source of quotes, especially negative ones, will always be welcomed by journos. (Incidentally, this also explains why AW is, paradoxically, rather popular with journos – he always gives them something interesting, even if they don’t get to use it.)
Also, there is a general misconception that journalists always go out to look for stories, or write stories on the basis of what they have observed. Editors decide on a narrative which they will stick to regardless of the facts or subsequent events (this is why headlines are so often unsupported by any quotes used) and crucially, which is the same as the other media outlets. The media love a scoop but hate to be out of line with the stance of others, just in case they end up looking silly by having “got it wrong”. The narrative is usually one that will sell most papers/provoke most clicks. What happens is that earlier in the day or the week, the editor tells the journalist what “the story” is and s/he is sent to the press conference to get the quotes for that pre-determined story or to try to rile AW (to get a “rant”). This is what makes the pressers so entertaining sometimes – they ask loaded questions in order to elicit answers that will fit into their story, and AW can see them coming a mile off. I laugh out loud sometimes when I listen to the clips.
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@ Passenal March 2, 2013 at 10:38 am
Bang on again.
There are a few journalists of integrity and passion left (even in sport journalism), and occasionally they have their day. But the vast majority (or their bosses?) are as you describe.
In the mass market media, the resources devoted to what is basically gossip or single-issue vigilantism are immeasurably greater than those applied to real investgation or reporting. And they have the gall to hide behind the concept of press freedom when insisting on their right to use underhand methods to expose who stuck what in whom. The press has to be free because they are supposed to be the ones who hold the authorities to account, protect our rights and liberties. But that is so rarely the focus of their energy, largely because they have to make money and sadly most people are a lot less interested in serious than in sensational issues. Serious AND sensational (eg MPs expenses or phone-tapping scandals) is when they hit the jackpot, but that doesn’t happen often enough to keep them going.
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You sum it very well FG. It’s funny the amount that people who’s job is to sell newspapers or radio advertising are allowed to get away with. People who sell shoes aren’t allowed the same latitude.
I think shoes are better that papers so maybe that’s why I don’t fit in this world.
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@ steww
“I think shoes are better that papers so maybe that’s why I don’t fit in this world.”
ha ha
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Pass, speaking of Woodward & Bernstein, did you see old Woodward try to paint the Obama white house as bullies this week? He ran to some right wing news outlets with a wild story about a thretening e-mail sent by an Obama advisor and it was all proven to be a lie.
Shotta, the way the media treated the Manning and Assagne affairs is truly sad. Thankfully, if Beppe Grillo and his Cinque Stelle movement are an example, old media is on its last legs. All we need is a proper education system to help the up and coming generation learn how to think critically, so they can connect the dots on their own.
F*ck! Chelsea is ahead against West Brom.
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Manure scab a goal v Norwich just before 1/2 time.
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Quite brilliant, Steww. Not only just brilliant or sort of brilliant, I mean very brilliant. Very brilliant, Steww.
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…and welcome, Aman.
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one of the reaspns we are on this site is because we are not fooled by the self praised crap these people produce and one of the reasons the amount of doomers have gone up(obviously believing all their told) , when in discussion with such people one of their regular arguments is always “but its in the papers” yeah a real powerful one i know.
the unfortunate thing is sports journos used to know about their sport and could write as well, now they are just soap hacks and will write about everthing they can to avoid mentioning football so their ignorance remains concealed.it always makes me laugh when a report has the score at the top and thats the only semblence of sport the remaining paragraphs holds. the radio and tv press are just as bad and seem to be more like angony aunts providing a service for the manically depressed fans which is now a necessity for modern football. even the pundits (most having played football) would suprise you if they managed to conclude the ball is round. the latest classic being ray parlours assesment of the derby saying at the end of the game there will either be a 7 point gap or a one point gap depending on who wins then going on to explain he thinks it will be a draw and so it will be four points …. incisive stuff ray !
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