The media centric world which just doesn’t understand what it’s like to be a fan

 

• Will Haaland and Man City be penalised?
• A quick look at the league table in case you missed it.

There is an article in the Athletic, the essence of which is making fun of fans that leave early, or fans that get up to go to the toilet during a match.  It is a light-hearted piece, but it struck me that it is also just another example of how journalists writing about football totally fail to understand both what it is like to be a supporter, and what matters to a supporter.

Arsenal’s stadium is, compared to many, a modern ground built to 21st century standards, but even here the queues for the gents can be extensive before and after the game, and doubly so at half time, thus going out to the gents during the game can be the only way of being able to make it in time, if you see what I mean. 

(I can’t, for obvious reasons, give any comparative comments about the facilities for those of a female persuasion.   But in terms of the arrangements for gentlemen, the toilets are inadequate if considered at times of peak demand.)

Now the fact that this is made a matter of fun in the article, reflects on the reality of the journalist – he or she sits in a specialist area where more than double the space that fans get is allocated to each person, along with arrangements for “refreshments” and the like.   Their time watching a game is one of luxury compared mine – and indeed I have one of the most expensive seats (aside from boxes and club level) that it is possible to get.

And I bother to write about this, because it seems to me to be at the very heart of the way that football journalists fail to understand their audience. They are not supporters as we are, they don’t attend games as we do, they don’t have problems with parking and getting into and out of the ground as we do…  Indeed they don’t have to deal with getting away from the ground when most of the trains are cancelled and one of the local underground stations is shut, as happened for this week’s game.

In short, they watch in luxury, without any of the angst that supporters have.   And yet it is they who are employed to write about the game and tell us what it was like.  In fact they have a total lack of empathy with and understanding of the world of supporters, for whom they are writing.

Let me give a simple example.  Arsenal changed their mode of entry this year so that to get into the ground we have to have a mobile phone with “Play store” or something akin to that on it.   Which is ok if one has such a phone and if the system works.

In fact there are all sorts of oddities within the system – in that my phone didn’t update itself to show details of the last game, but rather contained an entry pass for the game before.  Quite a few people seemed to have that for the match, but it turns out that it doesn’t matter.   You can have a pass for completely the wrong match and still get in.

OK it’s a bit of a detail – but it still makes for a lot of people hanging around trying to work out how to get into the ground.

Perhaps more of an issue is the size of the queues for food and drink – it really isn’t worth bothering about unless you are utterly desperate and don’t mind either getting to the ground very early or missing part of the game.

Such things are beyond the understanding and knowledge of the writers of the football reports and the commentators on TV and radio and hence their commentaries start from a position completely different from those watching the game.

Worse, when we get to the game itself, we find that they are forbidden (or have mutually agreed) from writing about referees apart from in a fairly oblique way that suggests that any error there is, is something unusual.

Likewise they won’t mention numbers – either because most of them are numerically challenged or they have been told not to.  The fact that Tottenham Hotspur have more than double the number of yellow cards that Arsenal have received seems not to exist in their world (although such numbers used to be highly relevant when Arsenal were top of the yellow card charts!)

Is it that the journalists don’t like Arsenal but admire Tottenham?   Or is it that yellow cards don’t matter anymore?

The same is true with their inability to notice things about referees.   Does it matter that Simon Hooper hands out almost double the number of yellow cards a game, match by match, as Paul Tierney?   Well, actually yes, since they are all supposedly working by the same rule book.

But really it’s not just facts like that which are the trouble, it is the fact that they apply across the matches.  Get Robert Jones as a ref and the home team is pretty much nailed on to get something from the game.   Get John Brooks and it is the away team that will enter the game full of the feeling that a win is extremely likely.

These are the big issues, and yet somehow they don’t get mentioned in the media.   It’s all a bit odd.