EPL Talk » The Guardian

Chelsea Suffer Arsenal Disease In 1-2 Killer Blow

The Gaffer — Sun, 30 Nov 2008 21:59:02 +0000

For the first 60 minutes at Stamford Bridge on Sunday, the game looked remarkably familiar. Chelsea were passing the ball beautifully around the pitch. Wonderful movement off the ball. Using incredible amounts of imagination and creativity. Yet they couldn’t seem to score that crucial second goal.

Sound familiar?

Chelsea were Arsenal. Luiz Felipe Scolari’s side were a joy to watch, but they wasted chance after chance and failed to put the game out of Arsenal’s reach. Instead it was Arsenal, who played very much unlike the Arsenal we know and admire, that were the most decisive when they took the few chances they received to record an incredible 2-1 victory at Stamford Bridge.

After Johan Djourou’s own goal gifted Chelsea their goal in the first half, it was up to Robin van Persie to capitalize on two gilt-edge chances to win the match for the Gunners. The second was a beautiful twist and turn to kick the ball past the reach of Petr Cech, but van Persie’s first goal was mired in controversy.

My first reaction was that van Persie was completely offside, but TWI co-commentator Robbie Earle was quick to call the goal a correct decision after he noticed that the ball deflected off Ashley Cole into van Persie’s path. After rewinding the play in the game several times, I could see how Earle’s reading of the game was spot on.

Here’s how the rest of the media summed up the controversial incident:

“He looked well offside when he drilled home the equaliser after 59 minutes” — Phil McNulty, BBC Sport.

“As the Brazilian slipped the ball through, Van Persie was clearly offside. Mike Dean waved play on, mysteriously, allowing the Dutchman to beat Cech with a strong right-footed finish.” — Henry Winter, The Telegraph, and

“The first of Robin van Persie’s goals, should have been ruled offside.” — Kevin McCarra, The Guardian.

So, who was correct? Should the goal have stood and did Robbie Earle make the right call that everyone else missed? I’m siding with Earle on this one, but post your feedback below by clicking the comments link.

Poll: Tell Us What You Think Of The Fiver

The Gaffer — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 06:00:18 +0000

Berbatov To Man United: British Newspapers Follow The Sun’s Lead

The Gaffer — Sat, 12 Jul 2008 08:53:37 +0000

The biggest news of the past 24 hours is that Manchester United has reportedly tabled an official £20 million bid for Tottenham striker Dimitar Berbatov. Problem is there’s no evidence of an actual bid being made and all we have to go on is a quote from his agent in The Sun newspaper. What is the “money quote” from the agent that “confirms” that the “bid” has happened?

“I cannot make any comment until there is official confirmation from Tottenham or United.”

While the story may be true, it could also be the agent trying to start a price war to raise Berbatov’s price.

What makes the whole affair ludicrous is now the other British tabloids are picking up on the story and regurgitating the news, and all they have to go on is an article from The Sun. Meanwhile, The Daily Mail even had the cheek to call the story an exclusive.

Here’s a breakdown of how the story broke and how the other news organizations rewrote The Sun’s material without one of them crediting The Sun:

Headline: United’s £20m Berbatov Bid
Newspaper: The Sun
Day/time article appeared in RSS feed: Friday, 8:53pm ET
Number of attributed sources: One
Source: Emil Dantchev, Berbatov’s agent
Number of direct quotes: One (from agent)
Quote from agent: “I cannot make any comment until there is official confirmation from Tottenham or United.”
Article length: 266 words

Headline: Ferguson Turns His Attention To Berbatov
Newspaper: The Independent
Day/time article appeared in RSS feed: Friday, 9:03pm ET
Source: “There are reports” (i.e. The Sun)
Number of direct quotes: Zero
Article length: 965 words (although only 121 words are about the Berba “bid”)

Headline: United Bid For Berbatov
Newspaper: The Guardian
Day/time article appeared in RSS feed: Friday, 10pm ET
Source: “According to reports” (i.e. The Sun)
Number of direct quotes: Zero
Article length: 135 words

Headline: Exclusive: Get Berbatov: Fergie Puts 20m On Table For Spurs Ace
Newspaper: The Daily Mail
Day/time article appeared in RSS feed: Friday, 11:17pm ET
Source: None mentioned in reference to “bid”
Number of direct quotes: Zero
Article length: 628 words (with only 454 about the Berba “bid”)

At 2:48am ET on Saturday, BBC Sport mentioned 20 words about the story and appropriately placed it in their Saturday Gossip Column

Headline: Spurs Striker Dimitar Berbatov Subject Of Bid From Manchester United
Newspaper: The Daily Telegraph
Day/time article appeared in RSS feed: Saturday, 4:06am ET
Source: “According to reports” (i.e. The Sun)
Number of direct quotes: One (the same quote from The Sun)
Article length: 317 words

To me, this is all about selling newspapers. All of these tabloid and broadsheet newspapers want the eyeballs on their website so they can sell more advertising space. And those print newspapers who were able to squeeze the news into their fish wrappers last night will sell more copies today with the headline about Berbatov. As of press time, the only respectable English newspaper that hasn’t written about the story is The Times. That either may be by choice, if they determine the story is to be utter tosh, or they may be trying to write their own version of the story with new facts and quotes. Then again, they may have fallen asleep at the wheel.

And all of this comes from one news story in The Sun which features plenty of hearsay and one innocuous quote.

The British press are quick to criticize football clubs and stars, but isn’t it time that they raise their journalistic standards and refrain from lazy journalism?

Latest Gaffe Confirms The Premier League’s Biggest Weakness Is The League Itself

Jeff Hash — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 02:58:24 +0000

You have to hand it to the Premier League at times; when it decides they really want to shoot a hole in their foot, they know how to do it with little effort.

The Guardian broke an exclusive story today on comments made by Sir David Richards, chairman of the Premier League for the last nine years, to a conference in Dubai late last month. In the comments, Richards basically dismisses the League’s insistance it has nothing to do with the downfall of the England National Team, telling the group that the member clubs don’t develop young players because of how easy it is to go out and buy stars. He goes even farther after that, telling the crowd that, for all intents and purposes, the league led to the firing of Steve McClaren as England manager due to an inability to get the best players.

Richards told the Guardian that he did make the comments (hard to deny given the audio available on the newspaper’s website), but that they weren’t quite what he had meant. The league, for its part, later released a statement saying “These comments do not represent the collective view of the Premier League.” While that maybe true, and while the real power of the league is in the hands of the club owners, it doesn’t change the fact that one of the most senior members of Premier League management has told the world the league is holding England back. And now it will have to figure out a way to extract itself from this mess without looking like it is just punishing a man for thinking differently.

This sort of problem is hardly a new development for the league; just look back at game 39. If you look at the league’s initial announcement, the plans given were loose at best and showed very little work had been done both inside and outside the league in tying it down. The PL basically went in believing that the its stature would give them what they wanted in time. Instead, the league found itself hammered by all fronts, varying from FIFA and the FA to other national football federation and its own supporters. Facing this tidal wave, the league’s response was scattershot, letting itself and the plan get destroyed until they finally surrendered. The league ended up with weeks of bad headlines and didn’t even get what it wanted in the end, a clear public relations loss.

And then there is the constant accusations of the league being top-heavy, repeated again recently by Newcastle manager Kevin Keegan, a debate the league never truly gets away from.

These situations show one difficult truth: for all the enemies it has, the Premier League’s greatest enemy is themselves. Because of its different member clubs, it has a hard time keeping a straight story. But this is true for every soccer league, and yet the PL seem to be the most unable to put its house in order, or at least hide the rough spots. For better or for worse, these teams need to accept that it has to work together to face its critics, or it will keep losing its public relations battles. Unity is not in the individual teams best interests, but it should be the league’s highest interest. This has already cost them in the past, and without a change, it’s guaranteed to do so again.

BBC Launches Euro 2008 Blog

The Gaffer — Wed, 28 May 2008 06:08:32 +0000

There are only 11 days (or 264 hours) between now and the beginning of Euro 2008, and it all seems a lot like World Cup 2006 all over again.To me, World Cup 2006 was the zenith of soccer coverage on the Internet. I watched all of the matches on a daily basis from my desktop (now that I’m no longer at that employer I can come clean and praise the efforts of our IT staff who diligently hooked up a satellite on top of our office building and then relayed the ESPN2 coverage to the desktops of the few soccer diehards in the building).

But I also consumed lots of excellent coverage from the Internet to help supplement my daily diet of World Cup matches. The four major parts of my diet during that glorious summer were the daily doses of (1) the Soccer Shout Podcast, (2) The Guardian’s World Cup Podcast, (3) the blogs from the Fox Soccer writers stationed in Germany including Oliver Hinz, Nick Webster and Jamie Trecker, and last but not least, (4) the BBC World Cup Blog.

Speaking of the BBC World Cup Blog, the Beeb has returned with a new blog, this time for Euro 2008. The BBC’s new Euro 2008 blog will include articles from a cast of characters including Gavin Peacock, John Murray, Jacqui Oatley, the one and only Fletch and many others.

A new feature that I’ll be looking forward to this summer is the acquisition of artist Paul Trevellion and his “You Are The Ref” comic strips, which will become a regular feature of the blog throughout the summer.

Meanwhile, The Guardian has already announced that it’ll be returning to the podcasting airwaves with a daily episode during Euro 2008. Now all we need is the return of Soccer Shout (c’mon Phil) and Fox Sports to get their act together so we can dream we’re experiencing World Cup 2006 all over again.

EPL Talk will be joining in the fun with our own Euro 2008 coverage from the expert bloggers (plus my coverage live from Switzerland for the Italy against Holland game).