Declan Rice ‘sacrificed’ as Arsenal transfer deal emerges amid England squad ‘whispers’ | OneFootball

There have definitely been no leaks about England’s 55-man provisional World Cup squad, merely whispers that only Important Journalists and not the likes of you get to hear about.

Which would be odd but fine if said Important Journalists’ own newspapers weren’t reporting the leaks that apparently didn’t happen.

Meanwhile, in a delightful twist, there’s a rare case of self-sh*thousing over at the Daily Express, plus news of a Declan Rice sacrifice.

Careless whispers

John Cross in wild form for the Mirror on England’s 55-man provisional World Cup squad after his impassioned pleas for Ivan Toney to be Tuchel’s ‘wildcard’.

Now he declares Myles Lewis-Skelly MUST be on Thomas Tuchel’s longlist in a manner that suggests there is any doubt that Myles Lewis-Skelly is on Thomas Tuchel’s longlist.

We don’t even disagree with much Cross has said about Lewis-Skelly’s redemptive comeback over recent weeks, but the spicy take if you want to offer one here is about MLS making the actual final 26-man squad. His presence on the longlist is surely a formality.

The thing, you see, with a 55-man list is that it contains 55 names and that really is an awful lot of footballers. Thomas Tuchel has only selected 51 different players for England throughout his time in charge. Given some of those are now injured or have retired or have been conspicuously discarded, the prospect of an in-form player he has previously selected not being on that list is really not worth getting in a tizz about.

Then there’s Cross’ England squad ratings which forensically measure how likely a player is perceived to be for a place in the final squad. Not for Cross the traditional and insufficiently precise blunt instrument of the On The Plane/Staying At Home dichotomy.

We always do love an arbitrary numerical rating system here and remain fascinated by the idea that Jordan Pickford and Harry Kane are given entirely fair 10/10 ratings but Declan Rice gets only a 9/10.

The best bit, though, comes as Cross explains to us mere mortals from his Important Journalist ivory tower how the whole unpublished 55-man provisional squad works, while also revealing he knows perfectly well Lewis-Skelly will surely be among the names on that list.

That pompous semantic pedantry has us all told. We’ll give you three whispered guesses which newspaper published this headline after details of three members of Tuchel’s 55 emerged via whispers but absolutely definitely not leaks.

To be fair, we do prefer…

Line of enquiry

We are once again asking the Daily Mail to please understand that not absolutely everything has to go in the headline.

Take this extensive report on last night’s Championship play-off clash.

That is just altogether too much content for one paragraph, never mind one headline.

Not enough room to actually name the player accused of ‘discriminatory’ language, of course, with Taylor Harwood-Bellis’ role in headlines now and evermore entirely settled. He’s ‘Roy Keane’s future son-in-law’ now, he will become ‘Roy Keane’s son-in-law’ but hopefully not, God willing, ever ‘Roy Keane’s former son-in-law’.

What he will never, ever be, no matter how high he flies in this great game of ours, is Taylor Harwood-Bellis. He is Roy Keane’s future son-in-law. That’s his job.

Vindication!

You will have to indulge Mediawatch here as we pull our smuggest face, go full Captain Raymond Holt and claim our vindication with absolute glee and zero chill.

For years and years we’ve complained about deliberately sh*thouse tabloid headlines that insult and disrespect readers, headlines designed specifically to deceive and mislead you into clicking on something that isn’t really saying what it looks like it’s saying.

And now? The Daily Express have managed to trick themselves with one of their own sh*thouse headlines.

The headline in question is this:

The content itself was actually fine. There’s no real harm at all in listing the 51 players Tuchel has previously picked for England as he names a 55-man provisional World Cup squad. The similarity in those numbers is a handy point of reference and clearly the vast majority of that 51 – at least the ones who aren’t now retired or injured – will be on that undisclosed (unless you’re a very special whisper-hearing journalist, of course) 55-man list.

We even referenced that number ourselves just up there in the John Cross bit, look, because it is relevant. Absolutely fine.

But what the Express did and knew they did was put that content under a headline that heavily implied without actually directly saying – via the classic deployment of ‘as’ to cut-and-shut the two parts of the story together – he had named a 51-man squad now.

Until this moment, there has always been a hint at least of plausible deniability about what they were up to. Oh, does that look misleading? Gah! That is the one thing we didn’t want to happen. Alas and indeed alack.

But that all rather falls down when another of your own journalists sees your sh*thousing, falls for your sh*thousing, makes the exact comprehension error you hoped for, and then links back to your sh*thouse headline while making said error.

Nope. That line, by the way, comes from a site-topping poll on the Express’ football page asking their readers to vote on whether they think Jude Bellingham should be in England’s World Cup squad.

Reader, we will not be looking at the results of that poll. There are limits to what even we are willing to put ourselves through for you.

No sacrifice too great

And it is now a Mediawatch armed with their own accidental admission that Daily Express sh*thouse headlines work exactly as we always knew they did, that we bring you this similarly constructed doozy.

You know what it looks like. We know what it looks like. They know what it looks like. With any luck by this time tomorrow some poor overworked lackey in the Reach content factory will accidentally insert a throwaway line into some piece or other saying Arsenal have announced Rice’s shock departure.

They haven’t, of course. They haven’t even done anything. Not with sufficient recency to constitute news, at least.

We’ll concede there is an unusual element to the ‘first transfer announced’ here. Porto confirmed last week that Jakub Kiwior’s loan from the Gunners had, as expected, been made permanent. It was even used for this exact same sh*thouse purpose by the exact same source at the time.

Yet Arsenal themselves didn’t actually confirm it until Monday, and oddly did so in a routine ‘loan watch’ style round-up on their website rather than in a standalone farewell.

Still, though. However curiously they went about it, Arsenal confirmed on Monday morning something known almost a week ago and it thus has no place as a housery generator in any headline two days later.

And the Rice sacrifice? The Sacririce, if you will? Why that is nothing more nor less than noted Arsenal analyst Paul Scholes saying Rice should stay out of position at right-back for the remaining games of the season after Ben White’s knee injury.