The cautionary tale of Ebere Eze, the World Cup-bound star who won the title at his boyhood club | OneFootball

For just about the last time, Mediawatch finds itself reflecting on the 25/26 season which has now completed its very last knockings. From tomorrow, it’s full speed into the World Cup and heaven help us all.

That can wait, though. Today we’ve got some numberwang from the Arsenal parade, Keysey being peculiar even by his standards, and a new hero emerges to cover Soccer Aid with the gravity and solemnity more usually associated with a state funeral.

Too right the World Cup can wait.

The Big Show

Arsenal’s Premier League title parade was quite the thing, spirits barely dampened by the previous night’s Champions League final defeat as masses of Arsenal fans took to the streets to celebrate their first Premier League trophy since 2004.

But just how many Arsenal fans were there? Let’s find out.

We’re very confident ‘hundreds of thousands’ is indisputably correct. And just as with an advert for any product that claims to remove ‘up to 100 per cent’ of anything, we have to go along with ‘up to 1million’ even if we obviously wouldn’t write it like that because we still have a little thing called shame. Although why stop at up to 1million? Why not up to 8billion?

Over 750,000 and we start to become sceptical. Over one million? Hmm. But congratulations to the Express for winning the biggest number award on this occasion.

Obviously X-formerly-Twitter doesn’t count because it’s a lawless wasteland of guff and doublespeak and outright deliberate lies, but let the record show on there it was apparently 1.5 million.

Eze does it

Speaking of X-formerly-Twitter and the Arsenal parade, among those hundreds of thousands of 1.5 million people was Eberechi Eze, with a Premier League medal around his neck and a trophy in his hands. Worth bearing in mind when considering this unhinged offering from Richard Keys.

Now we do apologise for bringing Keysey to your attention. It’s possible that until that moment you were enjoying a perfectly pleasant Monday.

Mediawatch always applies a high bar with Keys because pretty much everything he says is, by definition, deranged. It’s the same standard to which your Piers Morgans and the Jamie O’Haras of this world are held. It’s not a club you should want to be a member of. Looking at you, Gabby Agbonlahor and Jason Cundy.

But ‘ask Eze how he feels about his move’ to Arsenal? Sorry, what? The cautionary tale of the man who joined his boyhood club and won the Premier League title in his first season before playing in the Champions League final and then heading off to represent his country at the World Cup? And posted literally the day after OVER SOME MILLION PEOPLE lined the streets of London to celebrate that Premier League title? This comfortably clears even the strictest of nonsense thresholds.

We won’t speak for Eze, but we’re enormously confident he feels pretty, pretty, pretty good about his move.

And just to conclude the formalities.

Total first-team minutes for benchwarming cautionary tale Eberechi Eze at Arsenal in 25/26: 3118

Total first-team minutes for guaranteed starter superstar Eberechi Eze at Crystal Palace in 24/25: 3303

First Aid

Mediawatch is a grumpy old cove but we are at least blessed with a smidgeon of self-awareness. Enough, at least, that we know Soccer Aid isn’t for us and that’s fine. We’re not quite sure precisely when and how celebrities were able to hoodwink the general public into sponsoring them to go through the trials and tribulations of… living out their childhood dreams for almost real, but you know what? Fine. It’s fine.

It’s for a good cause. We don’t have to watch it, so we don’t. But we could not help but be drawn to this headline from the Mirror and letting out a hearty chuckle.

Truly, WATTBA.

And we really need you all to know that when we say this we say it with our whole chest: Kieran Horn, the man behind these ratings, is our new hero. Unironically and unapologetically.

What he’s done, and this really is magnificent work, is simply play it totally deadpan and gun-barrel straight. He’s written these ratings like they were ratings from an actual football match. There is neither a knowing nod nor sly wink to be found here. Absolutely straight as an arrow is our man Horn.

We’d have resorted to nudge-nudge PLEASE NOTICE WE ARE JOKING panic long before getting round to praising Danny Dyer for holding off Lukas Podolski.

And we like to think he knows exactly what he’s doing and exactly how funny that makes the whole thing, from the headline down.

We put it to you that any universe where the sentence…

…can exist is by definition better than any universe where it cannot.

We salute anyone who can write with such convincing and apparently sincere solemnity about a comedian, who had been on the lash in Budapest less than 24 hours earlier, being guilty of not quite tracking the run of one of the finest midfielders of his generation.

Other highlights include:

Some things never change. And…