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The tabloids have found a cowardly way to pile pressure on a child, the ‘unrecognisable’ trope has hit a new low and Aston Villa are cast in the role of absolute bastards.

It’s a very odd Mediawatch all round, frankly.

Nothing is making much sense to us, and also it is just much too hot today. Possibly related.

Mad for it A recurring Mediawatch bugbear is the increasing cowardice of the big beasts of UK football media.

Back in the day they’d have had absolutely no problem piling the pressure on a 17-year-old to be the Next Big Thing on the back of one good game. They’d have told that literal child that it was his patriotic duty to be at the very, very least as good as Harry Kane or know that he’d let his country down.

It would be b*llocks, of course, but at least it would be b*llocks under their own name and with their full chest. The Suns and Mirrors of all our yesterdays would at least have owned that sh*t.

Now they play sneaky little games, hiding behind ‘fans think’ and copy-pasting the first four excitable guffings that come up on a search of X-not-Twitter.

Thus we have this from The Sun today.

Cowards. Say it yourselves or don’t say it at all.

We will give them credit, though, for a rather off-brand slice of subtlety within the inevitably X-sourced content that is the story itself. As a means to distance themselves further still from these wildly and unhelpfully premature MADJO IS KANE Mk II claims it’s artfully done.

We hear you.

We fall We can see what the Mirror were going for here. It’s quite a clever little headline on the Man United-Leeds pre-season ‘friendly’ – no such thing between those two, eh readers? Guffaw – in Dublin.

Only slight problem with that UNITEDS CAN’T BE DIVIDED line is that they could be and were. As the Mirror themselves state:

Still, nice gag.

As ever, of course, our wider concern is with the very idea that a pre-season friendly can actually have five talking points.

We’ve read the whole thing regardless, yet remain none the wiser about what the Bruno Fernandes reminder actually was. As long as Michael Carrick and Bruno remember, we guess it doesn’t matter if we don’t.

Proper villans

Mediawatch very much enjoyed this headline from the Mirror.

That ‘massive Aston Villa problem’ being that Ezri Konsa is an Aston Villa player and they won’t let Arsenal just have him because they would rather like to. The bastards.

That is quite literally how transfers for contracted players work and have always worked. We’re really not sure how or why this is an Aston Villa problem.

There’s a star man… From the Daily Mail:

That’ll be Memphis Depay, then, whose starring role at Man United extended to two Premier League goals in 33 appearances.

UnrecognAIsable A new low for the already-barrel-bottom-scraping ‘looks unrecognisable’ trope, courtesy of the Daily Star.

Not, oddly enough, because of the usual issue here that the subject is in fact easily recognisable. But because the entire thing isn’t actually real. Even the Chicharito one, insane as it was, existed within the realities of our universe. It at least had that.

The clue that it isn’t real lies in the idea that Alexis Mac Allister, for it is he, could’ve grown a full head of lustrous Szoboszlai locks in the time since the World Cup final. They can do amazing things in Turkey these days, but this would require an actual old-fashioned wig.

Or something rather more modern. We’ll let the Star take up the story.

Nothing more embarrassing than a self-dubbing. Although everything else here comes pretty close. Because we cannot stress enough that he hasn’t in fact returned to pre-season training looking unrecognisable.

Please stop saying it, guys.

What an albeit that is, by the way.

The Star did get one thing right, though.