I'm talking about the Chelsea v United game last Sunday. For the moment I'm going to put the Clattenburg/Mikel issue to the side. Before thaat issue appeared the amount the media concentrated on Clattenburg's performance was unbelievable. Had you swapped the incidents in the Villa v Norwich game with the Chelsea v United game then the media would have still ignored the Villa game and be more interested in whether there should have been a penalty and whether United or Chelsea's equivalent should have been sent off. While the offside goal and various other decisions would be largley ignored by the media and treated as 'unimportant.' There is no unimportant game in the Premier League. Vill and Norwich could well be fighting to avoid relegation at the end of the season. Now to the alleged racism incident. In my opinion, and I could well be wrong, the reason behind the complaints could well be down to a sensitive finger on the trigger from Chelsea. Any slight form of abuse and they're going to race to the FA to complain. I feel it is unlikely that Clattenburg did racially abuse Mikel. Why does he need to abuse? He has authority. Suarez' racial abuse was 'calculated and clever' to wind Evra up; Terry's racial abuse was playground stuff, looking for the worst thing he could say (neither is an excuse for racial abuse by the way, nothing is). Many Chelsea players have now sworn that Mikel was racially abused. It would be interesting to see who these players were and whether they were near him at the time of the incident. I also feel that Chelsea won't have the best of luck with the FA. Especially with A Cole's response to the Terry charge and the way the Chelsea official got written evidence to later be changed - something that was picked up on in court. If Clattenburg does go to court I will feel it WILL fail, as shown by the Terry case, because of the requirement that the standard of proof is a balance of probability. This was apparently said by Terry in the matchday programme! 'This is our dedicated Kick It Out game. We continue to be committed to eradicating all forms of discrimination from game' Hypocrite! Also, if Mikel was racially abused why didn't he react at the time?
I've only watched highlights of the game. I would say that Cole was not 'tripped' when Ivanovic got sent off and there was contact when Torres went down - so IMO the referee was wrong on both sendings off. I think Chelsea will find their case very difficult to prove, unless they can get an expert in lip-reading and I'm sure the officials will 'stick together'!!!!
Agree but it's still hypocritical, alternatively he could have not said that all. http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepag...bust-up-defies-belief-says-Steven-Howard.html A relatively good article in the Sun of all places on this.
I agree that he may have got those decisions wrong but my main issue with this part is that the media jump on this, but if you swap it with the Villa-Norwich game, as said above, the media would ignore it and be more interested in the missed penalty and the equivalent to Herd's missed red card.
Fully agree. Depending upon what paper you read it is now suggested that neither of the players involved actually heard any words of abuse, one of the people who did allegedly hear the words can't speak English and none of the other officials heard Clattenburg say anything despite being wired into his microphone. My doubts are also increased by the fact that the organisation who reported Clattenburg to the Police did so on the basis of media reports and not from evidence received from the players. If, and I repeat IF, this is just a stunt by Chelsea to get back at Clattenburg then they should be thrown out of the Premier League.
Hope it isn't a 'stunt' by Chelsea. But I fear it wouldn't have even been considered by Chelsea if the Terry thing hasn't happened. It looks like playground stuffd from Chelsea. 'They did it to me, so I've got to do it to them.'
And to prove the point that its no longer about the actual game, out of the 9 pages of "football" in todays Telegraph Sport there's no mention of last nights (bloody brilliant) matches until page six!
Cole was not tripped, Ashley Young however was. As a United fan, I first thought young did dive, but if you watch the replay, when Ivanovic's left boot clips the back of Ashley Young's left boot as He cuts acrossed Young. Torres was lucky to be on the pitch to get sent off for "diving." His first yellow was for a studs up challenge into Tom Cleverly's chest, that's a straight red. Regarding the dive, it was the wrong call no way around. Torres over exaggerated, but Evans still caught him and should get a yellow, I think he was expecting it.
I was confused by that. When something happens relating to the 'big' teams that isn't related to the actual football that's being paid the media tend to go over the top. I've always thought Henry Winter was a good football journalist but with this sort of stuff - especially when the verdict on Terry was given (4 pages, really???) - his standard has slipped a bit.
I also remember that about 80% of the match report of our game with Chelsea was taken up with the terry case even though there was pages on it.
it's all media bias lads towards the big clubs, and it's getting worse imo. less about the game but more about the players themselves, their egos and their foul-ups! i tend to start reading those papers sport pages at about page 5
I don't believe that Clattenburg said anything racist, he may not be a great ref, but he isn't stupid. He knows that he's mic'd up and people can hear what he's saying and isn't going to jeopardise his career. However, the other allegation that he called Mata a 'Spanish tw@t' is more believable. Not because he has anything against Mata, or the Spanish, but more that it was said as a throw away comment because he was annoyed with the constant hassle he was receiving from the Chelsea team.
Surely this thread should have been titled "The media are making football a mess"? It's really a thread about the media focus either on things external to a game, or little that happens on the pitch apart from the controversial incidents. We know why the media focus on the "big" teams: it's because they have big followings and are based in major centres of population. It's all about circulation, reader/listener figures, etc. That's also the reason why they give so few column inches to the football and concentrate on peripheral issues; the number of people actually wanting to read about the game is small in comparison with the audience for news about "personalities", WAGS, controversy etc. This also accounts for how little time is devoted in radio match commentaries to actually commentating on the match; commentators such a Alistair Bruce-Ball, or Ian Dennis, and others on R5L spend more time NOT telling you what's going on on the pitch than telling you about the game. Even Goreham and McVeigh on Radio Norfolk spend a huge amount of time NOT commentating on the game itself. The producers obviously think that listener numbers will fall away unless the commentary is made more interesting to people who really aren't interested in football as such. The big club/little club divide is incidental to this. As wonky himself points out, if no other game had taken place other than the Villa-Norwich game, the focus would still have been on the peripheral and the controversial, not the football.
The media control anything they wish to. Remember the Bond movie Tomorrow Never Dies when Jonathan Pryce attempted to start conflicts so that his media empire could broadcast it. Controversy, conflict, dissention, division are all the aspects that the media feels are in our interest. Racism, homophobia, sectarianism are the chapters in history that have been written not by the protagonists but by the media. Sport has never been so popular and is an easy target for manipulation. The media fuelled the financial explosion in football but now cry foul play by those receiving the benefits of that explosion. Yet we all know that News International was not alone in abusing the privileges afforded the fourth estate.
