The headline fairly screams at you doesn’t it?
“Brown: Armstrong move will be a huge loss to Celtic.”
It makes it sound like a quote. It makes it sound like the team is going to be desperately weakened by this deal. It makes us sound like Brown is in disbelief over it, and honestly thinks we could come to regret the decision. It has so many connotations that headline.
And of course it’s entirely false and you don’t even have to read much of the article to find that out. It’s there in the first lines; “Celtic captain Scott Brown rued the loss of former midfield partner Stuart Armstrong to Southampton but said the move was right for both parties.”
What Brown actually said was he would be a “huge miss.” Which is entirely different from what they are suggesting, and Brown himself has taken great care to differentiate between what it means to him personally and what it means to the club itself.
“He’ll be a huge miss for us because he is great about the place with the lads,” he said. So this isn’t even wholly about what Armstrong brings to the team. “On the field as well he’s got legs, an ability some players haven’t got – to go past people, to score goals, to create chances – but it was right for both parties,” Brown continued. “He’s going to be a big miss for me especially, with his legs in the middle of the park.”
A big miss because of his nature and his friendliness off the park. And a miss to our midfield, and Scott in particular, because of his energy getting up and down the pitch. Nowhere in that article does Brown say the words attributed to him in that headline.
And I wonder why STV has to gild the lily like this. This is a straightforward news story, wherein Brown has paid some compliments to Armstrong but made it clear that the club itself is happy with the deal. There’s no need whatsoever for them to grab what he has said and twist it into a completely different meaning.
Except one; to put a negative slant on the story. For reasons they ought to be asked to explain and this is becoming tiresome. This is the third article on their “coverage” in the last week and a bit. Because it is ridiculous how they continue to treat our club whilst putting everything that happens across the city in a wholly positive light.
Their coverage is so one-sided and skewed that it’s becoming a parody now.
I’ve said this before, and will continue to; our club has few friends over there.