Football journalists and pundits – why do we listen to them

BY BABA GRUMPY

I never spare the BBC or any other media person in all of my posts on Twitter or in any of my articles.

The media / press / journalists or whatever you choose to call them, pride themselves as the Fourth Estate of the Realm a throwback to the time when Royalty reigned. In today’s democracy, they are supposed to be the group that holds the Executive, Judiciary and Legislature to account. But they are not.

Even if they are. Who holds the media to account? In most societies especially in Western style democracies, there is a body similar to the Press Complaint Commission. The reality though is that the media is unaccountable.

Media houses ruin the reputation of individuals and apologize in the footnote of Page 109 of the index 5 months later.  How can that be fair? They hack the phones of murder victims and only get to pay peanuts 15 years later. That is not accountability.

In most countries with something of a ‘free press’, there has been as many media scandals as there are political ones.  Yet there is a huge lack of belief in politician but many still give the media a pass.

It is fair to say that the media especially in Western Countries are part of the Elite. Majority of them all attended the same elite universities; they move around in the same social circles and buy into each other’s agenda depending on their political persuasion.

There is an adulterous relationship. This is especially evident when a newspaper pays an MP almost a quarter of a million pounds to write a few words. You also find out that a senior journalist can be planted at the heart of government at the behest of an unelected Press Baron.

It is this adulterous relationship that has delivered Trump as American President and Brexit. The media has not been held to account and are allowed to promote their own version of events rather than the detail of what is actually happening or what has happened.

Don’t get me wrong, we as individual members of the public have been complicit. Especially the very gullible amongst us who take the words of these press people as gospel. We have refused to think for ourselves and once we adopt a position, we become so welded to that position that we refuse to countenance any other position.

Like political journalists, like sports journalists. We need to all realize they have a product to sell to us. If we don’t buy they will go bankrupt and they might as well do, as there is no value to the role they are currently playing.

Some might disagree because they think they inform, they entertain, they produce content etc. I disagree. Does it matter if Amazon is the broadcaster for La Liga and the Premier League rather than SkySports? Does it matter if Facebook takes over the rights to Match of the Day rather than the BBC?

Not a jot in my opinion. We might sadly still see the same mugs on the programs but there will be a very satisfied smile on my face especially with the BBC lot knowing that those pretend pundits are not being paid from my TV licence fee.

You might also think about all those wonderful stats that the match commentators and presenters spew before, during and after matches. Well OPTA do them without adding any bias to it. They also tend to present a more rounded set of stats rather than present only the ones that supports their bias like the media do.

What the L does it matter that Arsene Wenger hasn’t defeated Spurs in the league in 7 meetings when he has defeated them 3 times in the last 3 Cup ties?

I am perfectly happy for us to do away with the sports media and football pundits. The effing lot of them. They no longer serve any purpose especially as with the advent of Social Media they now realize their original role is redundant. Majority of what they claim to be content and exclusives nowadays have either been on social media for a week or it is stolen from their.

If I want to see how Mesut Ozil lives, I don’t have to wait for anybody to do an interview with him. I go to his social media page and splurge to my heart’s content.

If I want to understand Arsene Wenger’s football philosophy and reasons behind his tactical decisions match in, match out, I watch videos on Arsenal.com and listen with a keen ear.

If I want to genuinely understand what a disaster referee Mike Dean is, I go to whoscored.com or follow a regular person on social media who understands stats and is upfront with their bias.

Football journalists don’t understand football, they don’t understand football finances and football management yet they lay claim to speaking authoritatively on these subjects. English football journalists and media especially.

Any media person who calls Ozil a lazy footballer should have their licence to practice withdrawn. How can such a person pretend to understand football?

Pundits regularly mouth of about managers and sometimes about other players. Some of these pundits have had varying degrees of success as footballers. But how does your success as a steam rolling Number 9 helps you understand the Number 9 role a player like Alexander Lacazette plays today. I am looking at Alan Shearer here.

I doubt Shearer has never had to dribble the ball past anybody ever. What gives him the right to criticize or claim to understand Sergio Aguero’s talents?

This is before we start to talk about their criticism of managers. None of them has had anything close to a career in management. I used to heavily criticize Gary Neville before and during his time as Valencia Manager. I have piped down because Gary has displayed some form of humility since he came back to the Pundit’s couch. He now understands management better.

Football journalism and punditry today is all about gossips, click bait articles, making stuff up and generating controversy. They are constantly looking for the next manager to be fired, the next under pressure manager, the latest made up dressing room bust up and the latest manager who has never won anything but is the best since sliced bread.

It is so easy to see why they can never be enamored of a club like Arsenal and a manager like Arsene. The club doesn’t leak like a sieve. There is nothing to see here, move on but guess what, they still make stuff up.

But when they are called out, they become crybabies. From their articles, you come away thinking these guys are so knowledgeable and would have made a success of running multiple football clubs if only they had gone into that line of work. Not true. When it comes to the crunch, they shirk responsibilities.

Imagine how they all jumped on the Everton transfer window bandwagon. Top 4 / winning the title was the target for Everton they said. All tosh. Rubbish. Mourinho and his giant basketball players were going to win the league. They were last seen struggling to beat Brighton, their big bully of a striker lashing out in frustration. I hope he gets a well-deserved ban.

Just look at Adam Crofton and the miserable band that tried to support him. The media and their cohorts are quick to pounce on anything anti arsenal – the AGM, the defeat at Man City and Stoke. They said nothing. They were not interested only to start bleating when we defeated their darling Spuds and now Burnley.

They wheeled Troy Deeney into their studios to traduce Arsenal players. Very unprofessional of the media and of Troy Deeney.  They promote Pochettino, a manager who has won nothing and whose realistic chance of winning any silverware is between zero and nil. They give the AFTV lot the air of oxygen because they know it drains the confidence of the Arsenal squad. If there is any anti Arsenal bandwagon going, the media and pundits will jump on it.

The reaction of the majority of Arsenal fan base in the past week has been commendable. If the general public can rally against the media like the Arsenal fan base have maybe Brexit & Trump might be a thing of the past.

The power is in our hands. Stop reading, watching, listening to them. They will soon go away like a Polaroid Camera.

Baba Grumpy works in financial services in the United Kingdom. He blogs mostly about football at http://babagrumpy.blogspot.co.uk. His Twitter handle is @BabaGrumpy