England doomed to more World Cup quarter-final woe as ‘Arsenal star’ warns of ‘car crash’ | OneFootball

Mediawatch ever so slightly loses the run of itself today as another industry is lost to AI, with supercomputers apparently the latest put out of work as we live through the dystopian horror that is 2026.

Safer ground sees some chortling at Arsenal ‘stars’ with a little bit of Acewatch thrown in as well.

Plus a rare headline treat from the Express.

AI caramba

Mediawatch harks for the simpler times when meaningless guff predictions treated with inexplicable reverence came from ‘supercomputers’ rather than ‘AI’.

There’s something just altogether less dystopian about a supercomputer. It’s a cheerier, quainter term. It calls to Mediawatch’s mind something akin to Bertha (lovely Bertha) spitting out reams of that old printer paper with all holes up the side that say things like ‘SPURS WILL DO DOWN LOL’ in dot-matrix print while surrounded by serious, bespectacled boffin types scurrying around in crisp white lab coats and carrying clipboards.

Mediawatch probably does need to unpack its own desire to anthropomorphise supercomputers, but we do enjoy the image that pops into our mind whenever one of these adorable machines says some bollocks or other.

Much better than the thought that pops into our head when it’s ‘AI’ making the predictions. Then it goes from a quaint old factory machine and clipboard-wielding boffins to a planet-killing, joy-sapping, jobs-destroying computer program being operated by some coffee-quaffing hustle culture tech bro in California.

Even though it is basically the same thing. Please go back to saying it’s supercomputers. Even when it’s AI.

But whatever you call it, what Mediawatch will never, ever be able to understand – and if you go fully beard-strokey ahout it, this is actually a big part of the reason humanity is doomed – is why the AI/supercomputer’s predictions are treated with such reverent seriousness.

If a random bloke in a pub told you precisely what was going to happen at the World Cup down to the exact minute and detail of Brazil’s extra-time winner against England in the quarter-final, you would quite rightly consider him a mentalist and slowly, carefully – without upsetting him – attempt to extricate yourself from the situation.

When a computer does it, we think it must have some value. It’s insane, and it’s going to get us all killed in the end. It’s like there are vast swathes of people out there who haven’t even watched a single Terminator movie.

But before the robots rise up and kill us all, we’ve got maybe one or two football tournament cycles left where the main problem will still be this kind of mad sh*t where stuff that hasn’t happened is reported in hushed and serious tones as if it has.

Look at this weirdness from The Sun.

There are simply not enough PartridgeShrug gifs in the world.

Still, after news of England’s straightforward passage through the group stage, we get to the serious business.

There’s not an early surprise. None of this is real. It’s like claiming there was an early surprise in a dream.

In fact, that’s roughly where supercomputer/AI football predictions should sit in polite company. They are as boring and meaningless and irrelevant as hearing about the dream someone else had last night.

Still, good news about all the big-hitters.

Fair enough, this bit is obviously correct but we’re not sure we really needed to destroy a patch of rainforest to work that out.

This is where it starts getting really odd, though.

Mediawatch has enough issues with real-life dubbings. Who the juddering f*ck is dubbing things in AI? You can’t self-dub your own made-up stuff, surely. What are we doing here?

This next bit should surely have given the writer pause, though.

You’re so close to getting it. Yes, England v Brazil is widely slated to happen in real life, because it is literally the likeliest quarter-final from that section of the draw. It’s almost – almost – like we really, really, really don’t need AI in order to just plot a halfway-plausible but still very made-up route through a bracket-based tournament.

By this next bit we can actually feel our brain cells dying in our head as we land upon a detailed report of what we cannot overstate is a fictitious football match that hasn’t happened.

We’re not the only ones who see how this is insane, right? Please tell us it’s not just us? You all think it’s entirely batsh*t to say that a made-up goal that doesn’t exist is the biggest of Endrick’s career as well, right? Right? Please?

A hill Mediawatch will die on is that the biggest goal of Endrick’s career is a real one that actually happened for real in real life, and not one AI has made up.

The best bit is the knowing, chuckling tone present in ‘(of course)’ and ‘who else but’. You can’t do ‘It just had to be him’ material about made-up stuff, surely!? That’s only one tiny step removed from saying ‘You can’t write a script like this’ about what is, ultimately, a script that has been written.

Mediawatch is aware that we are overthinking this, and that we have given what is throwaway tish and diposable fipsy far too much time and attention already.

But we really do believe this points to a wider societal problem that has some very unsettling potential consequences.

That treating what is no more or less than fantastical fanfic like it has intrinsic value just because it has come from a computer rather than a human is absolutely unhinged behaviour. It’s just another guess, it’s not a stone tablet carved by God himself.

Absolutely any and all of it could just as easily come from the single brain of any vaguely knowledgeable football fan looking at the draw and tournament bracket, but would quite rightly – and this is the key – not be considered remotely interesting or newsworthy were that the case.

Still, congratulations to Brazil on their now inevitable sixth world title, we guess.

Look at the stars

Sounds unlikely we know, but The Sun have here come up with a headline that oversells the story that follows. We know, it surprised us too.

Who could this ‘former Arsenal star’ be? Why it’s Marcelo Flores, of course, who you’ll all remember vividly from his zero appearances for Arsenal or his single, solitary appearance in a matchday squad for a 3-0 defeat to Crystal Palace.

But he’s not the only Arsenal star making headlines at The Sun. Look at this one.

The ‘Invincibles star’ here is, inevitably, former goalkeeper Graham Stack who made zero Premier League appearances for Arsenal during the Invincibles season or indeed any other.

Had a go at Arteta here, though, hasn’t he? A ‘brutal warning’ over him ‘ruthlessly axing Arsenal ace’, no less.

Note here how The Sun move from stars to aces with effortless elan, using all their years of experience. The ace in question here is the ultimate – and indeed perhaps only – Carabaoman Kepa Arrizabalaga.

Stack’s ‘brutal warning’ of a ‘car crash’ involves a worst-case scenario where Arteta does indeed ruthlessly axe Kepa after his Wembley woes but then David Raya gets injured and a crestfallen Kepa has to play some vital games on the run-in with his confidence now shredded.

Come on, Graham. This is all just a bit far-fetched, isn’t it? Mediawatch is really struggling to imagine a scenario where a North London-based Premier League club’s back-up goalkeeper is immediately axed after a high-profile gaffe-strewn nightmare performance in a big cup game only for the No. 1 to then get injured and the confidence-shorn back-up have to be recalled. It just seems far too unlikely.

But still at least Arteta has been duly warned about the grave consequences of his ruthless decision to axe Kepa for the FA Cup game against Southampton.

Oh, wait, what’s that, Graham?

So it’s a brutal warning not to do the thing he isn’t going to do anyway? Righto.

Medium rare

Exciting fixtures news from the Daily Express.

A rare rarity? Those are rare.

Full house

Second house. He’s selling his second house. It fundamentally changes the entire story and every time that vital information is omitted from headlines and intros and instead buried deep down in the unread middle paragraphs, God kills a kitten.