Arsenal success met with ‘absolute silence’ as Bayern Munich disappear altogether | OneFootball

A curious night of Champions League football prompts curious coverage, in which Arsenal are met with silence and Bayern Munich go missing.

Mediawatch is also thrilled to learn we’re at the stage of a title run-in where it’s time to start pretending there might need to be a play-off, and The Sun are gleefully patting Declan Rice on the back for slagging them off.

It’s a curious stage of the season, this.

Positive influence

The Sun are enormously impressed this morning with Declan Rice silencing the haters after Arsenal marched gloriously into the Champions League semi-finals.

Brilliant. Stunned. Awkward.

Rice was pretty dismissive, to be fair.

Listen, fair play. Absolutely one in the eye there for anyone trying to put a negative or downbeat spin on things. As The Sun themselves put it, a ‘brilliant response’ to anyone whose headline might have said anything like, for instance:

Or whose report said things like…

You, of course, already know whose – entirely fair, by the way – headline and report those excerpts comes from.

The sound of silence

Here at Mediawatch we’re long-time fans of L’Equipe and the general distaste sprinkled throughout their football coverage for all things English and, well, most things football. We really don’t think they actually like or enjoy the game all that much, with their notoriously stingy player ratings in particular the stuff of legend.

Nobody at F365 or anywhere else is pretending Arsenal v Sporting was a classic, and we do understand that being the neutral reporter sent to cover this game rather than the lucky sod who got Bayern v Real Madrid must be a bit of a pisser, and there is always the lost-in-translation element to be wary of. But you can’t just make stuff up, you French rogues.

Absolute silence? Non.

Play-off drama

It’s that time of year once again where a potentially close title race prompts a fresh batch of articles suggesting the Premier League title race could be settled by a play-off. BBC Sport are even getting involved, look.

It’s not untrue. It could. But there’s also a reason why it has never, ever happened. A play-off for the title can only take place if the two teams are level on points, goal difference, goals scored, head-to-head points and head-to-head away goals.

Only once in Premier League history has even goal-difference been needed to settle things, and that still required Agueerrrrooooooooo and the single most absurd conclusion to a Premier League season in history.

Even if points, goal difference and goals scored were all to fall into place at frankly incalculable odds across the two teams’ final five matches of the season each beyond this weekend, it’s already a 13/2 shot with the bookies for the infinitesimal prospect of a play-off even to extend beyond Sunday. Because anything other than a 1-1 draw between the two rivals at the Etihad ends those already minuscule chances altogether. And a draw is itself a result that makes it less likely they finish level on points anyway.

So we’re not saying there is absolutely no chance the Premier League title is settled by a play-off. Just that it absolutely is not ‘’pending’ and definitely isn’t something anybody needs to be thinking about yet when there is still so much else to fret about instead.

I can see clearly now

A slightly puzzling headline from football.london here.

You will have to forgive daft old Mediawatch, but we don’t see a particularly clear path to safety for a team that hasn’t won a Premier League game in over a third of a season and now sits forlornly in the relegation zone behind a small handful of theoretical rivals who are all playing conspicuously better than Spurs while over recent times collecting significantly more points.

But that’s just us being negative ninnies again. The path is actually very clear indeed.

Come on, guys. Simply remember how to win games of football again. Can’t believe neither Thomas Frank nor Igor Tudor thought of that, to be honest.

Lost cause

It’s always in the last place you look.