Good news at last for beleaguered Spurs, while Arsenal hit by worrying ‘transfer link’ | OneFootball

There’s some much-needed good news for Spurs, whose doom-spiralling fans will be delighted to know their absolutely terrible team is about to go on something of a run.

This Monday morn also brings the real story from Wembley and a definitely real and worrying transfer update for quad-mourning Arsenal.

Mediawatch is as surprised as anyone to discover that things are thus worse for Arsenal than they are for Tottenham at this time, but you can’t argue with the facts.

Blimey O’Reilly

Nico O’Reilly’s quickfire double as Manchester City ended Arsenal’s quadruple dream was a gift to headline writers, and they didn’t disappoint as this collection of on-brand work shows.

CRIKEY O’REILLY – Daily Mirror

LIFE O’REILLY – The Sun

Man City made it look like Arsenal were playing with nine men at Wembley. Now their dismayed supporters will live in fear defeat will bleed into Premier League – Daily Mail

Getting away with it

You must forgive Mediawatch’s geeky obsession with headlines, but this one from the Mirror excited us a little bit.

Now you and we are very familiar with the long-standing tactic of using the humble, innocent-looking ‘as’ to make two entirely unconnected and very flimsy pieces of information appear to represent one compelling whole (there’s a lovely example coming up later on in here, for instance, look forward to that), but this is slightly different and thus – to us, at least – fascinating.

This is using two pieces of information that are related, but reach entirely opposite conclusions to form one completely misleading whole.

What you have here is a headline that equates the ‘disallowed goal verdict’ of Darren Cann, who knows what he’s talking about, with a mysterious ‘some’ who apparently believed Sunderland ‘got away with one’.

And thus you have a headline that heavily implies Newcastle have been robbed when the only expert testimony says the exact opposite.

And as for the ‘some’ who said Sunderland ‘got away with one’? Turns out that’s actually just Alan Smith on commentary for Sky. To be honest, good call not to undermine the intro with that information. On balance, we’d agree it probably is better to have people assume it’s just some randoms off twitter.

Super Spurs

At last, some good news for long-suffering Spurs fans as their wretched team continues to banter them into submission. Fret no longer! You’re going to stay up! Hooray! According to a Supercomputer! Ah.

Now Mediawatch enjoys mocking the predictions of Supercomputers as much as anyone else, but this one does seem to be malfunctioning particularly badly.

Ticking absolutely every single box, The Sun bring us this vital and very real update.

The thing is, they don’t. They actually have Spurs p*ssing it by four whole entire points. Because the supercomputer, in its great supercomputery wisdom, believes that a Spurs team that has managed five points and no wins in 13 Premier League games this year is about to go and win three (and draw two) of its remaining seven to end up with 41 points and finish four clear of relegated West Ham.

Now… it could happen, but we would struggle to consider that the most plausible of all possible scenarios from this point. And even The Sun, who have never yet met a supercomputer they didn’t trust implicitly, are having doubts.

Indeed they might. We don’t want to cast doubt on the prognostications of a supercomputer that’s operated by both boffins AND brainiacs, but have they considered switching BETSiE off and on again?

Oasis of calm

Never let it be said The Sun can’t find the real angle from any football match, though. And It wasn’t Crikey/Blimey/Life O’Reilly at Wembley on Sunday. Or Kepa. Or even Arteta. No, it was this.

Yes, a rare joint outing for the Gallagher brothers, there. As long as you forget the quite notable and very public world tour they went on together last year.

Still, great to see them ‘reunite’ at Wembley for the first time since appearing in front of *checks notes* 160,000 people there across two nights in *checks notes again* September after *checks fictional notes a third time due to frankly ill-judged commitment to tired bit* playing in front of over 400,000 people there in July and August.

We’re being naughty, though. The Sun have explained their reasoning.

It is their first joint public appearance since 2009, as long as you ignore all the other ones.

Playing favourites

Expert headline construction work here from the oft-overlooked Daily Star. They may be very much the smallest of the three surviving red-tops, but they can still deliver a sh*thouse headline with the best of them.

The ‘Gunners star’ Man United have their eye on is third-choice left-back Myles Lewis-Skelly, who hasn’t played a minute of Premier League football since January. How do we know United are after him? The Star tell us it was reported by their Reach stablemates across the desk at the Mirror.

A quick look at their near-identical story just says United are ‘reportedly’ considering an approach without even mentioning where those reports come from. Missed a trick here, really; they should have completed the circle-jerk and said it was the Daily Star.

Anyway, think we can safely file every element of that under bullsh*t. But wait, what’s this about a ‘Mikel Arteta favourite’ admitting a transfer link?

That would be David Raya, the Mikel Arteta favourite who quite significantly was not selected by Mikel Arteta for the Carabao Cup final. And the transfer link? That Bayern Munich tried to sign him. Before he signed for Arsenal.

So… also bullsh*t. But splice those two bulls*its together, if that’s even a thing you can do with bullsh*ts, and you’ve got a headline that suggests one of the biggest football clubs in the country is about to sign a ‘favourite’ from another of the biggest football clubs in the country, and also that the news has come from the player himself.