Arsenal ‘Gunning for glory’ amid ‘perfect start’ JUST DAYS after crisis left them a ‘world away’ from title tilt | OneFootball

We’re back with a fresh week of Mediawatching.

There are vital questions about whether Arsenal are still a world away from retaining their Premier League title or are now in fact ‘GUNNING FOR GLORY’.

There’s the now standard Monday round-up of precisely how many transfers some clubs are definitely going to complete this week for sure this time.

There’s two different flavours of confusion about where precisely West Ham can be found, and impressive steps taken to avoid the unwanted spreading of misinformation.

Mediawatch first had its interest piqued by the Daily Express story that appears under this headline…

…because it set off our Spidey senses. We somehow knew this story absolutely wasn’t going to be about Tottenham missing out on a transfer, or about any transfer being cancelled, or that non-existent cancellation being in any way due to a player wrongly saying their team-mate is leaving.

We were right about all of those things. It was, it turns out, about Troy Parrott maybe not after all going to West Ham.

So we got what we wanted. But so much more. They had us at the headline, but the standfirst won our hearts.

You may want to sit down, Daily Express, we have some bad news. The Premier League has cooled its interest in West Ham, we’re sorry to say. Unusual, it has to be said, for the Daily Express to be living in the past like this.

But it goes on.

We know it’s easy to get confused by their name, but West Ham are very much an east London club. West Ham is just a bit less east than East Ham.

You’re probably wondering how this all relates to Tottenham, though. It’s our old friend the sell-on clause.

Ah, who remembers the good old days when a gnarled, overworked and underappreciated sub could be relied on to do boring legwork stuff like ‘maths’ for hotshot reporters who are just far too busy cracking open the next story – perhaps about the mysterious, unknowable location of West Ham in both a football and geographical sense. Just leave it blank, the desk’ll work it out.

Still, there you have it. A transfer that was never actually beyond the negotiation stage has now been cancelled and it’s cost Spurs ‘£m’ even though AZ’s manager himself still expects Parrott to leave before the transfer window shuts and also West Ham are now in both the Premier League and indeed west London.

It’s all happening.

Half the World Away

We must ask The Sun whether Arsenal are still a ‘world away from being champions again’ or if their ‘pre-season struggles’ are still ‘a warning sign’ or if Mikel Arteta still knows ‘Arsenal cannot cruise to another title with his current squad’ as was the case last week after a couple of pre-season defeats?

Or are they now ‘GUNNING FOR GLORY’ as they set out to ‘win everything’ after a ‘perfect start to the new season’ (sic) saw them win a pre-season game?

Or is it possible – just hear Mediawatch out here – that the truth might lie somewhere between two kneejerk reactionary extremes?

Wish upon a star

It’s been a long summer for Mediawatch. We don’t like to complain, but sometimes when there’s not actual football it can all go very strange here. It’s not healthy to spend as much time reading b*llshit as we do.

Which might in some part explain why we spent 20 minutes of our morning reading a Mirror headline trying to work out what the pun was before realising it was just a typo.

Stay. It’s supposed to be ‘Man Utd stay’. That’s all. FFS. We need a lie down.

Mock the Week

Just in case some of you aren’t keeping track of these important developments, here are the official Reach-approved numbers for transfers to be completed by assorted clubs THIS WEEK. This is, alas, the last week where we get to laugh at this, because after that we actually are in the final full week of the transfer window and such stories actually start to make a lick of sense, sadly.

The Manchester Evening News there. Think we’re all on tenterhooks finding out whether this is indeed the week when Ethan Wheatley’s future is finally settled. What a saga that’s been!

We’re genuinely not sure whether to give Football.London a sliver of credit or chide them for missing the obvious way they could have bumped that up to six by including Guglielmo Vicario. Although we must concede we don’t know the etiquette around constructing these stories; maybe it’s considered poor form or just not cricket to include transfers that will actually happen this week.

But the Football.London lads aren’t missing any tricks across north London.

Victor Osimhen and Jarell Quansah, if you’re wondering. We genuinely can’t be bothered to go into details about the other six. It’s your Reiss Nelsons and Fabio Vieiras. That kind of thing.

Tough times for the Liverpool Echo, though. A mere four Liverpool transfers for them this week.

Adding ‘The Barcola Solution’ to our list of odd football phrases that sound like the title of a John Grisham thriller. It’s not as good as ‘The Balogan Farrago’ but still a solid page-turner for reading by the pool.

Love Spreads

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