What is the secret identity of the mysterious Arsenal-supporting super striker in the Mail?
The Daily Mail forget to name the player they’ve been talking about for seven paragraphs, Spurs are signing everybody and The Sun land a blow for equality in sport. It’s Mediawatch!
To the Victor belong the spoilers
It’s a well-established tool of the online journalism game to avoid giving the game away by saying who or what you’re writing about early in a news story, especially if that piece of information is likely to be underwhelming in light of the big sell it may have been given in a conspicuously baity headline and/or intro.
A novel – albeit we assume accidental – twist on that from the Mail, though, who have taken to avoiding providing the name altogether in a bit of tish and fipsy that manages nevertheless to get the words ‘Arsenal’ and ‘target’ and ‘strikers’ and ‘Osimhen’ into the same headline.
One of Europe’s hottest strikers reveals he’s a lifelong Arsenal fan and calls fellow Gunners target Victor Osimhen a ‘brother’ to him
Okay then. Strong stuff. Who is this hot young striker? Maybe the always-helpful Mail Online bullet points can give us a steer here.
Arsenal dropped to fourth in the Premier League, five points behind Liverpool
The Gunners have also previously been interested in signing Victor Osimhen
Yes, Osimhen again, very good, but who’s the striker we’re actually talking about? To the intro. Surely that’ll help us out.
One of Europe’s most promising young strikers has revealed that he is a lifelong Arsenal fan and lumped praise on Napoli star Victor Osimhen who has also been linked with the London club.
Still no joy. Third mention for Victor Osimhen, though. That’s good. We’re also faintly nauseated by the idea of praise being lumped rather than the more traditional heaped, but we can’t entirely put our finger on why. That one’s probably on us. On we go…
The Gunners have fallen off the pace of Liverpool in the Premier League title race, dropping to fourth in the table with a five-point gap separating both sides.
Be weird if it was a five-point gap separating only one of the sides. Who’s the striker, though?
Mikel Arteta’s side have not been clinical enough in front of goal this season, having scored only 37 goals. For perspective, Liverpool and Aston Villa in first and second have scored 43 while Man City, in third have scored 45.
WHO IS THE STRIKER, THOUGH?
As the Gunners are on the hunt for a new striker, Bayer Leverkusen’s promising young star has revealed that he has been a lifelong fan of the north London club on John Obi Mikel’s The Obi One Podcast.
What’s great here is that they’ve clearly got so far into the story not naming him that they’ve now completely forgotten they still haven’t actually got round to it. We probably could guess now, given the Osimhen, Mikel and Leverkusen clues, but still.
What’s also great is the name of that podcast. Credit where it’s due.
The 23-year-old is widely regarded as one of the most promising forwards in European football, having score 16 goals in 23 appearances across all competitions for the German side so far this season.
It’s genuinely a fun guessing game, this. Award yourself points by how quickly you got it. Ten if after the headline, six for the intro, three for the Leverkusen mention and minus one if you still don’t have it.
High-flying Leverkusen are unbeaten this season in the German top flight, with Granit Xhaka having joined the club from Arsenal in the summer.
We are by now six paragraphs into a story about a player without that player’s name being mentioned. Heroic stuff.
And before lauding the impact that the ex-Gunners midfielder has had on the side, Boniface unveiled: ‘For me, right from a young age I’ve supported Arsenal all my life.’
At last! There it is. The absence of a first name giving it all away. And now Victor Boniface – for finally we discover for sure it is he – is injured anyway.
Life Hack
Amazing how often this happens: a player does something to draw attention to himself in an actual football match and turns out by sheer coincidence to have been a target for all of the top teams all along.
It truly is serendipitous that this occurs so often in a media landscape with little interest in covering actual football matches when there is transfer tittle to be tattled.
The Sun are the lucky scamps today to have happened upon the happy news that Hayden Hackney, fresh from his winning goal against Chelsea in the first leg of their Carabao Cup semi-final, turns out to be a target for both Manchester United and Liverpool, and to a lesser extent with regards SEO purposes Manchester City and Tottenham.
Kit reveal
Always great to see major publications giving the women’s game equal prominence with the men, so hats off to The Sun for doing just that with the photographs in their story about Aston Villa ditching Castore for Adidas after the whole ‘wet-look’ kits fiasco. What a moment that is for equality in sport.
Three and easy
Can’t really argue with this headline from the Express.
Tottenham could make three more signings this month after Dragusin and Werner deals
They absolutely could. Neither you nor we could stop them. But why settle at three? They could make four! Or five! Or 12! If we’re just plucking out unlikely numbers of things that could happen, then three just seems a bit drab.
Mediawatching F365
Headline on website that should know better:
Man Utd takeover: Keane gives scathing Ratcliffe assessment with blunt response to arrival
Actual Roy Keane quotes:
“It can’t be any worse than it has been over the last few years in terms of decision making, people making decisions upstairs in regard of recruitment, the fees they’ve been paying out, the wages they’ve been handing out.
“You hope there’s a change of dynamics at the club, new opinions. But only time will tell.
“Focus on the football. Hopefully decisions from upstairs will improve over the next few years.”
Punishment beatings have been duly administered and will continue until morale improves.