What’s the ‘most important’ reason England could win the Euros? Kane? Bellingham? Or Southgate?

Oliver Holt makes a bold pitch for the Gareth Southgate post-England autobiography ghost-writing gig with a puff-piece that starts off reasonably and ends with Southgate being a better manager than Harry Kane is a goalscorer. It’s the glorious return of Mediawatch!

Due South
Mediawatch doesn’t entirely disagree with the central premise of Ollie Holt’s Mail column urging even wavering supporters to get right behind Gareth Southgate as he leads England into a major tournament for the final time this summer.

But we do think Holt might have slightly overegged things in declaring Southgate the most important reason why England could finally end that long wait for a major trophy in Germany.

It is our shot because of the raft of brilliant players England can field but, most of all, it is our shot because of the manager who commands them.

Most of all? Really? Is Southgate really the main reason England are among the favourites this summer?

When will people realise? Southgate is not our weakness. He’s the opposite of that. He’s England’s best chance. There is an awful lot of talent in this team but there is just as much talent in the manager.

That’s just a huge leap. Holt quite rightly goes on to label Harry Kane the best striker at the Euros, and makes a convincing case for Jude Bellingham to ascend to best in the world status in the post-Messi, post-Ronaldo landscape. Not even Southgate would put himself in a ‘just as much talent’ bracket that includes that kind of GOATery. And not just because he is ‘kind and measured’ and ‘a good man’ as Holt adoringly tells us.

Southgate has done huge amounts to shift the culture of the England team and deserves credit for it; he is undoubtedly a major factor in England’s improvement over recent years. But let’s be real. The optimism around England’s chances simply doesn’t owe more to his continued presence in the dug-out than it does to Kane’s continued improvement from an already absurdly high level, or to Bellingham’s explosive start at Real Madrid, or to the presence of the many other excellent players Southgate has available to him.

And of all of those reasons, the most important is Southgate. He is the man who leads it all, who brings it all together.

Hmm. Still gonna go ahead here and say Kane and Bellingham being brilliant is the most important. A fairly simple thought experiment proves as much. If Southgate were to miss the Euros for some reason, would people still believe England could win it? Now replace Southgate in that sentence with Kane or Bellingham.

It’s a classic piece of Holtery really: taking a reasonable premise – in this case ‘Southgate has been a good England manager and is an important part of the puzzle’ – and then pushing that reasonable idea to an absolutist extreme that cannot be supported.

Still, might help get him the Southgate autobiography ghost-writing gig after the summer. And that’s the real quiz.

Pick AXED
To the Mirror next, and Arsenal transfer news. We know it’s Arsenal transfer news, because it’s right there at the start of the headline, look.

Arsenal transfer news: Thomas Partey AXED as four-man striker shortlist made

Couple of liberties here, obviously. The first is that putting ‘Thomas Partey AXED’ immediately after ‘Arsenal transfer news’ doesn’t so much hint it’s an Arsenal AXE as flat out say it.

Obviously, it’s actually about him being left out of Ghana’s AFCON squad because of injury, which also isn’t really AXED.

Either way, it surely takes this headline beyond the mischievously misleading and into the realm of the downright wrong. But what about that ‘four-man shortlist’ that’s been made? It would be fine, as long as it was followed with the words ‘by us’ because make no mistake this is the Mirror’s shortlist and may or may not bear resemblance to any shortlist that Arsenal themselves may or may not have made.

Still, at least it’s impossible to take issue with an intro that goes to the other extreme of being so undeniably accurate as to be not worth saying at all.

Arsenal will need to get back to winning ways in the Premier League if they want to keep their dream of winning the title alive.

No lies detected.

Reheated Rice
Please consider the below Daily Express headline, imagine for a moment you don’t understand how headlines – or indeed Mediawatch – apparently work in 2024 and think about what you might expect the story to be about.

Arsenal star Declan Rice issues ‘honest’ Liverpool title remark after blazing row

You might, quite innocently, think that Declan Rice has had a blazing row about Liverpool’s title chances. You might, of course, be wrong.

What’s actually happened is that the Express have simply reheated Rice’s immediate post-match comments after the 2-1 defeat at Fulham and pretended they are something they absolutely are not.

We’re huge fans of that ‘honest’ quote, which can only come from  a throwaway opening Rice gives in the line ‘To be honest, I don’t really look at the table’ and even bigger fans of Liverpool being shoehorned in there because he also, in an entirely different part of his quotes, mentions ‘the draw against Liverpool’. He even said ‘There are a lot of media who talk and say Arsenal are going to win the league this year’ so you can even argue the ‘title remark’ bit is valid.

It’s an absolute cut-and-shut mangling of what Rice said, but he did use the word honest, he did mention Liverpool and he did utter the phrase ‘Arsenal are going to win the league’. It’s all there, if you don’t mind deceiving your readers completely.

But what about this ‘blazing row’? He was roughly as annoyed as you’d expect a player to be when giving post-match reaction to a damaging defeat, but there was no blazing row. We’d have remembered that.

The Express have got it all covered, though.

But before Fulham’s second, Rice was involved in a heated row with Arsenal team-mate Gabriel Magalhaes.

Of course. No doubt that was about Liverpool’s title chances too.