Arsenal sent Barcola ‘transfer message’ that is neither transfer message nor sent to Arsenal | OneFootball

The two big ‘football’ stories of the day have left Mediawatch first queasy and then enraged, which is never a good start.

And that’s before we even get to transfer messages being sent to Arsenal that are neither transfer messages nor being sent to Arsenal, and some elite mischief-making from the Mail as Spygate turns into Ticketgate.

Today is a very silly day.

Football news

We don’t really have anything much of value to say on this beyond feeling the need to express a kind of vague queasiness about just how prominent the news of the end of Leandro Trossard’s marriage is across all the usual-suspect sites this morning.

It’s not like there’s a shortage of actual football news this morning. Man City have kept the title race alive in England, as have the officials in Scotland. Meanwhile, Spygate 2.0 is an absolute gift from the gods for a football media that simply adores a juicy yet very, very stupid scandal absolutely chock-full of a winning combination of genuine outrage and cartoonish slapstick farce.

Yet here we are. Somewhere within the top four or five stories across every major tabloid side in the country comes ‘news’ that really is absolutely nobody else’s business. And all of it reported with such undisguised relish that frequently approaches glee.

The single biggest football story on planet earth this morning, according to the Daily Star.

‘GUNNER MARRIAGE SPLIT’ parps The Sun nonsensically above a story that required the combined newshound efforts of not one, not two, but three intrepid reporters to read and rehash a statement posted publicly on Instagram.

The Daily Mail there, obviously.

Spotter’s badge to the Daily Express.

The Mirror at least plays it reasonably straight if with undue prominence.

Look, we’re no sweet summer child. We get why this celebrity magazine gossip-column sh*te gets clicks. Especially after all the looky-loo rubberneckers got themselves all excited about Laura Hilven’s social-media activity last week.

None of it is anything new. But it doesn’t mean we have to like it or think it reflects at all well on any single person involved in the writing or reading any of it.

Disgraceful intro of the day

Rare that Mediawatch gets an unnecessarily hot head over tish and fipsy that doesn’t really matter (ha!) but we are absolutely raging at The Sun here. Raging. Just look at this utter disgrace of an intro.

Are… are you actually suggesting here that the Muppets aren’t some of the world’s biggest stars? You appalling, irredeemable heathens.

But really what can you expect from an article that goes on to describe The Muppets and Sesame Street as ‘rival’ shows. Honestly, this might be the worst thing The Sun have ever done.

I am a message

We’ve calmed down a bit now, we think. Let’s soothe our troubled soul with some good old-fashioned transfer bullsh*t courtesy of football.london. Thanks, guys. We appreciate you.

What’s good about this one is that, while you all obviously know precisely how many times Luis Enrique used the word ‘Arsenal’ in relation to Bradley Barcola, it’s actually even worse because he made a very specific point of saying absolutely nothing about anything having withdrawn the player at half-time of PSG’s title-winning win against Lens.

The only message here is ‘You must think what you think’. And what football.london think is that this is a transfer message to Arsenal. Which, to be fair, is what they think an awful lot of things are.

Ticket out

Bit of mischief-making here from the Daily Mail after Southampton, embroiled as they are in the whole Spygate 2.0 drama, have also now had to delete play-off final ticket details from their website.

The reason for that is that they bungled the timing of their announcement, which was supposed to coincide with fellow finalists Hull’s.

It doesn’t actually have anything to do with the Spygate saga or the slim possibility the whole disciplinary procedure and inevitable subsequent appeal might all be wrapped up so swiftly that they might actually get kicked out of the play-off final. The Mail know this, but they put the news under this headline anyway.

Indeed, so excited have the Mail got about all this that by the time we reach the intro their cut-and-shut tendencies have resulted in a rare double amid. Nothing good can ever come from finding yourself in a double-amid situation.

Ten paragraphs, if you’re interested. Ten paragraphs of undeniably juicy gossip about all the lovely spy drama before this grudging admission.

But even if anyone other than Mediawatch has bothered to read so far, by that point the sweet, delicious clicks have long been safely banked from Hull, Middlesbrough, Southampton and elsewhere so who cares, yeah?