Are Man United benefiting from ‘big-club bias’ as star ‘points the blame’ after Ipswich clash?

It’s deadline day. We won’t lie, it isn’t Mediawatch’s favourite day of the year. Especially when it doesn’t end until 11pm and you know that’s just going to be deal sheet o’clock anyway before the actual deadline at 1am.

But at least it’s all grist for the content mill, isn’t it? And that’s all that matters.

Elsewhere, the Mirror can’t quite decide whether big-club bias is real or conspiracy nuttery, so decide to have their cake and eat it.

Martial law
Mediawatch has made the decision to largely ignore all the transfer guff and nonsense this morning, chiefly because if we went down our usual road of highlighting every disingenuous use of the word ‘as’ or misleading claim of ‘deal agreed’ or headlines that present the hastily assembled opinions of some journalists as a ‘verdict reached’ we’d quite literally never stop.

But we will make room for this astonishing slice of Daily Express chutzpah before we all move on with our lives.

‘Man Utd saved millions on record transfer deadline day signing thanks to clever clause’

‘Clever clause’ is clearly one of those headline phrases that has tested well in transfer stories because it’s all over the Reach network at this time, but this is perhaps its most egregious deployment yet.

Because the clever clause that saved Man United millions was… putting a ‘Ballon d’Or nomination’ clause in Anthony Martial’s transfer from Monaco. In 2015. It saved United about seven million quid, although one might reasonably argue that ending up with a Ballon d’Or-worthy player might actually have been better and of more value to United than the seven million pounds they didn’t have to pay Monaco in the end.

And then there’s the philosophical question of whether United could truly be said to have done anything clever – or indeed saved anything – when paying a total of £50m (including several other add-on clauses that were activated) for the ultimately underwhelming and disappointing Martial.

But above all that sits the most obvious problem: that it has all been packaged up and posted this morning and thus – accidentally, of course – created the unfortunate byproduct of looking like it might be about a Man United deadline day signing that has happened just now, instead of one that happened 11 years ago.

Four warned
It may be transfer deadline day with all its associated noise and nonsense, but that doesn’t mean calling a complete halt to another key pillar of tabloid football coverage: pretending that the most mundane quotes imaginable constitute a dig or burn or blast or outburst.

The Sun take their turn this morning to be enormously excited about two of the blandest sentences ever uttered.

‘Arsenal star Bukayo Saka has ice-cold four-word response when asked about Chelsea live on Sky Sports’

Ho-ho, what have we here, what’s he said about Chelsea, then? This should be good, given they play each other at the weekend in an early-season table-topping clash. On you go, lads…

Saka was asked by Sky Sports if he’s seen Chelsea play this season and he offered a coy response.

He simply replied: “Yeah, I’ve seen them.”

Saka was then pressed by Sky host Dave Jones what he thinks of Xabi Alonso’s side.

The England man smiled and said: “We’ll see on Sunday.”

It says a lot that we’re genuinely not sure which of these non-committal, entirely unremarkable, distinctly uncontroversial and even incontrovertible four-word responses is supposed to be the ice-cold one.

What do people actually expect him to say here? Be a bit weird if he said anything committal either way. ‘We’ll f*cking sh*t ‘em’ would be a far more entertaining four-word response, sure, but a bit of a daft one.

Bias remorse
Stunning cake-and-eatery behaviour from senior Mirror man Andy Dunn in his assessment of Harry Maguire’s handball-that-wasn’t in Manchester United’s 5-2 win over Ipswich at the weekend.

See if you can spot precisely where the ‘but’ is coming here…

One of the oldest gripes from a huge swathe of football’s fanbase is that the established, elite institutions get favourable treatment from referees. Big-club bias, to put it simply.

Most of the time, those complaints are paranoid nonsense. And, of course, no official gives any team – whatever its size – preferential status. They are strictly impartial and no-one has any evidence to suggest otherwise.

Wait for it…

But if the conspiracy theorists wanted early-season fuel for their theory, it came during Manchester United’s 5-2 win over Ipswich Town. The decision to allow United’s second goal – a Jacob Greaves own goal that put the home side 2-1 ahead – is already a contender for the worst VAR/refereeing call of the Premier League season. And we are only two games in.

Wahay! Dunn then spends the rest of the article tying himself in knots about the significance or otherwise of this decision and its biased nature or otherwise while painstakingly treading the finest of lines about the officials’ motives in which he, to paraphrase Barry Davies, questions them without questioning them.

Our favourite line, though, comes three paragraphs from the end of a lengthy piece making too much of a big deal of the decision to award the goal.

Ipswich manager Gary O’Neil also knew the goal should not have stood but was right not to make too much of a big deal.

And the conclusion is just a weasel-worded cop-out that allows Dunn to once again mention Big-Club Bias without having to put his own head above the parapet.

They were so good that they did not need help. They did not need any big-club bias. But did they get it? You decide.

Don’t encourage them, Jeremy.

Blame game
Sticking with the Mirror and fallout from Man United-Ipswich, because fallout there must always be, this is just an entirely mischievous bit of headline housery.

Luke Shaw points the blame for Man Utd issue as Rio Ferdinand singles out his teammate

Luke Shaw directed laid blame squarely at himself, which is very much not the implication of ‘Luke Shaw points the blame’ while the teammate Rio Ferdinand singled out was Lisandro Martinez. For praise.

So what you’ve actually got here is one player holding his hand up and admitting he made a mistake in a game his team went on to win handsomely, and a pundit saying how well another player performed.

Yet there it all is packaged up under a headline that suggests United’s squad is at loggerheads with finger-pointing and blame being dished out here and there by players past and present.

Big-club bias? You decide.

Slam dunked
The key (or Keys, if you will) reminder for this and every other deadline day:

So the window 'slams shut' today. Count how many times you hear that said. Truth is it simply 'closes'.

— Richard Keys (@richardajkeys) August 31, 2017