Match Day Thread Tottenham Hotspur v Burnley

While their reputation was certainly deserved, remember who they were going up against: in 1964-5 they were came second to Busby's Man Utd in the league and FA Cup, while in 1965-6 they were challenging Shankly's Liverpool for the league - and in the seasons afterwards they were often there or thereabouts in challenging both those teams in the league.

 

Ward did feign injury. Barely any contact and he went down and rolled around.
Ok, he didn't go for the Oscar and pretend he'd been shot, but there was nothing wrong with him.

Just watched the MOTD coverage and it was pretty shoddy.
Neither Barnes foul was shown, none of Alli's misses were included and they focused on Burnley being robbed.
It was a game that we definitely deserved to win and didn't get the rub of the green in.
The opposite was presented as the story.

 

The reporting of matches in the tabloid press has for a long time been centred around one singular issue. It can be something that happened in the match or sometimes it'll be a manager meltdown or any load of old nonsense but over half of the 'reporting' concentrates on that issue. The little that is left is grudgingly allocated to reporting the game. MOTD has become that kind of reporting. Increasingly, important incidents in matches don't appear in the highlights.

What does appear all to often is some no-mark, know nothing, nobody spouts off about something they patently know very little about. Trevor Sinclair? Charlie ****ing Adam? Kevin kilbane? Do me a ****ing favour. I would willingly donate money to medical science to bring Jimmy Hill out of the ground and attempt to re-animate him and I never cared much for him when he presented the show. If Coleman returned I would think I'd died and gone to heaven.

 

I think it's a criticism that you can level at the media in general, unfortunately.
It's all become very click-baity and focused on attracting attention, rather than focusing on accuracy.

Not a fan of Adam, by any means and I don't think that he added anything.
He used the opportunity to point to inconsistencies that affect Stoke, in my opinion.
Hughes has talked about it a lot recently, as he feels that they're still suffering from Pulis image issues.
They handed this to Adam on a plate and he gobbled it up. Like a pie. The fat ****.

I do like the fact that they've started using more current players, though.
Watching people being slagged off while they're analyzing their own footage is pretty funny.
Troy Deeney was on recently and it was interesting to see him addressing Watford's display.
They lost and he was quite fair about why and what needed to be improved.

 

I'm surprised you think a London-centric BBC would be anti-Spurs. It took the BBC 60 years to employ a newsreader with a regional accent. There are probably many Spurs fans in the MOTD production office. There won't be any Burnley fans.

But like most of the media these days, they are lazy in their reporting (no depth, no analysis - just reference to issues likely to attract the most interest). And they are competing with so many other media outlets these days, they have to try and create a story around a game to get people interested. It was a particularly ordinary game with a very predictable result: you need an angle to make the coverage interesting. Putting the cause of the underdog is pretty standard stuff. Your second goal came soon after Sissoko committed a foul which could have merited his sending off - tailor made for a lazy storyline to focus on in the presentation of an unspectacular match.

 

We've all endured a couple of decades of Hansen and Lawrenson pissing themselve laughing at the mention of Spurs. They might not like Everton but they accorded them something approaching grudging respect. As it happens, during their reign as pundits Spurs were a far better performing club than their alma mater's neighbours but as they both live up there they poked fun at us from a distance. That doesn't bother me nearly as much as the dreadful reporting of most of the games and issues.

I didn't care for the Liverpool boys but Mary Poppins and Danny Murphy? Dear God.

 

BBC Sport
101-110 Broadway
Salford
M50 2EQ

 

Right opposite the Imperial War Museum, which is another London based operation. Both might have an offshoot in Manchester, but are still London based and run. The BBC is the epitome of London.