by PrezIke » Thu Mar 24, 2016 5:06 pm
Watched yesterday's ESPNFC and it was a completely sensationalist and one sided attack of us. It was later put into the context of the cliched mantra of "if Leicester can do it anyone can." Of course, who cares if all of the history and data would point to their performance being an statistical anomaly. Are we really to believe that all of the years where the biggest, richest clubs have won the league and made up the top 4 don't count when one season in decades it happens? Could it be that your inner desire to see big clubs fail, especially ours, lead you to pile it on further.
In fairness, Arsenal, Chelsea and United have been given their share of criticism this season, but the inability to provide any balance when discussing a clubs' struggles reeks of gutter journalism, while I notice many journalists who seem to have some kind of romantic fascination with many of the bigger clubs outside of the PL.
Even Raphael Honigstein chimed in to suggest we were never a "great team" just a "team of individuals" that if you remove some of them we fall apart.
I'd say, fair enough to criticise our performance this season, and all top PL sides, but there were ZERO comments to even consider countering this narrative as pure gospel. If you claim to be balanced journalists you surely must at least consider alternative narratives and variables. Of course that isn't fun to listen to or watch and in the end they are in the game of selling themselves as a product to make the maximum money they can, which they hypocritically complain about seeing clubs do as well in a generally capitalist economic system of world football.
Could our performance and other top PL sides this season possibly also about the amazing number and length of injuries we (and Arsenal to a lesser extent) have sustained this season? Or how about the fact that possibly due to the amount of money that is in the PL that there is a far greater balance of talent in the league from top to bottom that there are very few easy games? There are more cups/matches and congestion in general than in other nations. PL referees are not only inconsistent, but allow for much more physical play than in other leagues. Could all of these factors just even POSSIBLY play into the increasing greater risk for injury and why (I suspect) there is more rotation/larger squads than you might see in Spain, Germany, Italy or France because they have easier competition top to bottom, less physical play allowed, and some have a winter Break (La Liga and Bundesliga I know do)?
This does not mean criticisms are not warranted, but the lack of perspective in analysis in what seems to sound like sophomoric reasoning at times is weak to put it mildly.
