So this morning, The Daily Record is running a story saying that Brendan Rodgers is being lined up by Arsenal. There’s just one itty-bitty problem with it; not one word of it is true.
For starters, when are these people going to get their narrative straight? On the one hand we have Brendan Rodgers, past his best, leading Celtic to European disgrace and letting Sevco back into a title race that should have been long since laid to rest … and on the other he’s wanted by one of England’s biggest clubs.
Am I the only person who doesn’t see the logic in their position?
Besides, their story today piques my curiosity for other reasons. The writer is a guy called John Cross; he’s not one of their usual scribes, which caught my attention straight away. The important part of the article reads thus:
“Celtic manager Brendan Rodgers is reported to be on a list of candidates who will be considered for the Arsenal job if the club decide to axe Arsene Wenger this summer …. The Mirror report that Arsenal are already looking at succession planning with Monaco’s Leonardo Jardim, Germany boss Joachim Low, Hoops boss Rodgers and Manchester City coach Arteta among the likely candidates.”
You see the crucial bit? “The Mirror reports …”
The Record is taking its editorial line here from another paper. Except that The Mirror and The Record are part of the same in-house family. Which got me thinking. So I did what any diligent researcher would do, and I went to find the actual article in The Mirror, to see if it could shed further light on the subject. And guess what?
The writer of The Mirror piece is also called John Cross.
Could it be the same guy? Well if it isn’t, he sure as Hell writes a lot like him. And when I say a lot like him I mean identical to him. Exactly the same words. Because – haha – it’s exactly the same article; this is Trinity Mirror trying to pretend their bullshit story is The Mirror is credible by repeating it word for word in The Record, except here it uses The Mirror as source material.
Imagine using your own story to stand up your own story. Is that journalism? Apart from taking cut and paste to a whole new height, this is amongst the sloppiest pieces of work I’ve come across. Even if the writer himself had damn all to do with The Record story, but merely allowed it to run under his name, he ought to know how shabby it is to put that to something that cites something else you wrote as primary source material, without making that clear.
Do none of these people have professional pride?
The story itself is absolutely honking. It’s full of the usual “if’s, buts and maybes”; if Arsenal replace Wegner in the summer then they might perhaps possibly in one conceivable scenario put Brendan on the shortlist …” It’s trawling, it’s not news.
What the writer fails to mention is that there’s not a club in the land which doesn’t have a wish-list of managers just in case, in the event of.
Except Sevco maybe, who were apparently the last people on the planet not to realise Pedro Caixinha was a joke and were caught completely cold by their own decision to fire him.
So although I am certain that somewhere at The Emirates there is a list of managers and Brendan’s name is on it, the larger question is how big the list is.
A shortlist isn’t necessarily … a short list.
Any job that comes up in the EPL, Brendan’s name will be on the list of possibles. Of course it will. But that’s a long way from him being asked to come for an interview. It’s an even longer way from him agreeing to go for one. The guy is happy at Celtic Park and he has never hidden his disdain for the culture in English football which is all about ingratitude and inclined towards sacking people before they’ve properly started building something.
This story has already gone viral of course. The clickbait sites are running with it, talking about the “seven-man shortlist” … you can gauge how accurate that is by one of the names on it; Mikel Arteta. He is “joint assistant coach” at Manchester City, having never once taken charge of a first team match anywhere in world football. And we’re supposed to believe that Arsenal decided he might be a good fit to replace a club icon?
He played for them, of course, so that helped their crack sports team join the dots.
It’s clear that the standard of tabloid hackery in England is as abysmal as it up here.
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