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The international break is almost over, so it’s time for punchy Bukayo Saka opinions, brutal putdowns and Zinedine Zidane mischief in a North London-centric midweek Mediawatch…
Going for Gold
Mediawatch woke up this morning pretty sure that Arsenal have more than six fans but we must hold our hands up and admit we were wrong. Every day is a school day, and today we’ve learned that Arsenal have precisely six fans.
Because The Sun have announced that ‘Arsenal fans all have the same concern about their potential new home shirt after it was ‘leaked’ online’ and they can only say this because they have tweets from all six of them to prove it.
And the concern they all apparently have is that the purported leaked kit has a bit of gold trim. And all the supporters – all six of them – fear that will only work if Arsenal win the league and have gold Premier League badges to go with the gold trim.
Here’s what they said, look.
One tweeted: ‘Only put gold on our kit if we win the league – otherwise we don’t deserve it!’
A second wrote: ‘The gold looks awful.’
A third declared: ‘We have to win this title such that the Adidas gold design would match the Premier League gold logo next season.’
A fourth commented: ‘Not gonna lie didn’t rate the original leaks but these with gold winners patches could look.’
A fifth said: ‘This literally only works if we win the league.’
While a sixth added: ‘Hope it has the gold colour lion crest for champions.’
But this comprehensive round-up of all six Arsenal fans doesn’t even quite reveal the unanimous verdict promised, does it? It’s actually two-thirds of Arsenal fans who think this kit only works if they win the league, one sixth of Arsenal fans who think it looks awful regardless and one sixth who merely hope they win the league.
Weird how this wasn’t a thing when Leicester had gold trim on their 2019/20 adidas shirts. But maybe their six fans didn’t all have the same concern. And what about Wolves? Hmm?
Language barrier
‘Zinedine Zidane comments on managing in England as he’s ‘named’ on Tottenham shortlist’ is one of those Mirror headlines where you already know it’s going to be disingenuous, and the only question is precisely how disingenuous.
So, were these Zidane comments on ‘managing in England’ issued ‘as’ he was named on Tottenham’s shortlist? Obviously not. They were from last summer, which actually wasn’t quite as bad as we’d secretly hoped. But were they about ‘managing in England’ generally, or something more specific than that? The ‘last summer’ bit is a clue…
“Would I want to go to Manchester [United]? I understand English, but I’m not completely fluent in it.
“I know that there are coaches who go to clubs without speaking the language, but I work in a different way.”
So it was a specific response to a specific question about a specific club citing a specific reason that, for all we know and which nobody at The Mirror has bothered to ask, no longer applies.
There are, of course, a great many reasons why Zidane probably won’t be the next Tottenham manager. And we did enjoy the hint at the main one.
‘The Frenchman is notoriously selective over which jobs he chooses to take…’
Can’t argue with that: only ever choosing to take the manager’s job at one specific club would certainly satisfy the definition of ‘selective’. Still, he’d be rushing to North London right now if only his English were un peu mieux.
Brute force
We saw Martin Keown’s quotes about Spurs and Arsenal and Conte yesterday. We found them interesting enough that we did a news story on them.
But embarrassingly, we failed to notice that they weren’t just some mainly reasonable, entirely inoffensive and often simply factual observations about the two clubs’ current trajectories. No, it’s taken the Daily Express to steer us right on this one.
‘Tottenham and Arsenal hatred running deeper than ever in latest brutal putdown’ is the laughably overblown headline.
A reminder of those Keown quotes in full.
“I think they should have kept him [Conte] through to the end of the season, without a doubt.
“I think Arsenal has played a part. The fact Arsenal are 20 points clear of Spurs and this time last year there was a run-in for the top four, puts Spurs under enormous pressure.
“He knew he was going and he wanted to say, he basically needed to say it, what was wrong at that football club.
“I think they should take stock of that, look through what was said and I think they should all reflect on it.”
Such hatred. Such brutality. Why can’t we all just get along?
The best
As soon as we saw Tony Adams’ Bukayo Saka comments in his Sun column this morning, we knew.
“If there’s a better player in world football at the moment, someone who both scores and makes goals, the only one I can think of is Lionel Messi.”
You know what? Fair enough. It’s an opinion. We love the brilliant starboy as much as the next snarky online lunchtime football media round-up, but we’d probably not go quite that far. Tony Adams, though, is of course fully entitled to hold and express that opinion.
And he’s fully entitled to have that opinion accurately represented elsewhere because it’s very clear and unambiguous. “If there’s a better player… the only one I can think of is Lionel Messi.” He’s very much not saying Saka is as good as Messi. He’s specifically saying Messi – but Messi alone – is better than Saka. And the secondary clause is also important: Adams is talking specifically about those players who both score and create goals.
‘Saka second only to Messi as a scorer and creator of goals’ is still a pretty punchy opinion, but not punchy enough for the internet in 2023.
So, sure as night follows day, up pops the Mail.
‘Arsenal legend Tony Adams claims Bukayo Saka is the best player in WORLD right now along with Lionel Messi’
Sigh. No, he… ah, you know what? We just can’t be arsed.
