Culture wars, ref justice and how the league might look if Mo Salah didn’t exist

Depressing stuff from the Telegraph heads Mediawatch before some more light-hearted guff about ticket farces and Mo Salah not existing lifts the mood.

Oliver’s twist
The Telegraph’s award-winning chief sports writer Oliver Brown is once again highlighting his deep and profound love for women’s sport. Alas, by sheer bad luck and coincidence, he is once again doing it by stoking a miserable culture war rather than writing anything at all about, you know, women’s sport.

It really is rotten bad luck that literally every time Brown writes about the women’s sport he loves so very much and the future of which he is so desperately keen to protect it happens to be this kind of vile sh*t and never, ever under any circumstances coverage of any actual women’s sport.

Almost – almost – like he isn’t really that arsed about women’s sport at all. We’re sure that’s not it, though.

His latest drum-beating unpleasantness was irresistible because he also gets to have a pop at woke BBC nonsense.

The story is this. The BBC have named Orlando Pride striker Barbra Banda their women’s footballer of the year.

And using half-truths and worse, Brown has concocted a sh*tstorm that has been gleefully leapt upon by all the usual suspects. If you’ve got JK Rowling, Joey Barton and GB News in your corner, it really is time to reevaluate your life choices. Anyway, let’s wade in if we must.

The failure of Barbra Banda to meet sex eligibility rules is not in question: indeed, Andrew Kamanga, president of the Zambian football association, confirmed in 2022 the striker had not met the “gender verification criteria” and so could not compete in the Women’s Africa Cup of Nations.

This is just p*ss-poor journalism. Banda was withdrawn as a pre-emptive measure. She never failed any test and was never banned. To say Banda’s ‘failure’ to meet ‘sex eligibility rules’ is ‘not in question’ is simply not true. There is nothing concrete at all to which Brown can point as evidence of his assertion. He relies entirely on knowing he won’t actually need to prove anything, because his readers will lap it up anyway. It is tiresome culture war horsesh*t.

Mediawatch could go on at great and punishing length here but it’s all just too depressing for words. We’ll content ourselves with a grim, hollow chuckle at Brown saying this about Banda’s defenders with a tut-tut wag of his finger:

Banda’s supporters are upset by the backlash. But the emotion in this debate needs to be set aside.

And then gleefully retweeting JK Rowling’s definitely unemotional response to his turd of an article:

Presumably the BBC decided this was more time efficient than going door to door to spit directly in women’s faces.

Diet Coke
It is increasingly clear David Coote is a right f***ing wally who had grown far too fond of saying stupid sh*t to impress people online, but there is the distinct sound of barrels being scraped at The Sun now.

First of all, this is a ridiculous headline on their latest story:

NEW ‘COKE’ REF SCANDAL

Unless we’re all agreeing that Coke Ref is Coote’s superhero name or something, you really can’t be having that as the headline about a new scandal that is entirely unrelated to what all newspaper stories about Coote are required to euphemistically refer to as ‘white powder’.

This new one is in fact a betting scandal, and yes, again, Coote has been a complete f*ckwit based on the messages he’s exchanged here that he clearly never expected to be made public.

SHAMED ref David Coote was at the centre of an FA betting probe last night after it emerged he discussed giving a yellow card before a match.

Coote, 42, messaged a pal afterwards: ‘I hope you backed as discussed.’

Very, very, very stupid of him. And it certainly isn’t going to improve his situation. But it is now completely clear – if it wasn’t already – that the tabloids, led by The Sun, have Coote right where they want him for a good old-fashioned life-destroying monstering.

This latest storm involves some very weak banter the night before Leeds faced West Brom in a Championship game five years ago. Coote and a friend joked about giving Leeds’ Ezgjan Alioski a yellow card. Coote duly gave Alioski a yellow card. Which, yeah, doesn’t look good. There now absolutely has to be an investigation into this.

But what about the decision itself?

The following evening, Alioski is booked in the 18th minute of the game for a sliding challenge on Darnell Furlong.

Last night football experts said the booking was fully justified given the nature of the tackle.

Coote is no innocent victim, but this is getting out of hand now. We’ve reached the stage where breathless EXCLUSIVES are being produced from ‘Man engages in weak banter and then performs job correctly’.

There’s just no way this ends well.

Double trouble
Mediawatch has talked a lot about the ‘curiosity gap’ this week, and we’re still having a lot of fun watching the way Reach titles in particular exploit this phenomenon. Specifically, when they’re lifting stories from elsewhere and what they do to make their headlines that little bit gappier than their rivals without engaging in outright falsehood.

They are, grudgingly, excellent at it. Here’s another example from the Mirror, following a story originally from the Mail.

The story here is that Bodo/Glimt have been given 6000 tickets at Old Trafford for their Europa League clash this week. Due to the demand for tickets from Norway, United agreed to increase the initial allocation from 3800 rather than risk away fans securing tickets in home areas as has happened in the past.

The Mail headline it in their trademark style, which is about as far from the idea of the curiosity gap as you can get. They like to put the whole story right there in the headline if they can, ideally with some CAPS.

Revealed: Security concerns means Ruben Amorim’s home Man United debut will see DOUBLE the allocated amount of away fans descend on Old Trafford with 6,000 Norwegians in attendance

We’re going to quibble slightly with 6000 being DOUBLE 3800, and the Mail as ever just can’t help themselves when it comes to any story that involves foreigners coming to this country and thus feel the need to describe them in terms of an invading force. It’s not a good headline, but it’s the story. Security concerns after previous incidents have seen the away allocation significantly increased.

Run that story through the Reach headline curiosity gap generator, though, and you get this.

Man Utd ticket farce means Ruben Amorim’s home debut will feature DOUBLE number of away fans

It’s clever, isn’t it? You have to concede there’s an evil genius to it. We’re still pretending DOUBLE just means BIGGER, but fine; ‘ticket farce’ is the thing here.

And that ‘ticket farce’ is the situation in previous games where away fans – notably Galatasaray fans in last year’s Champions League game – obtained home tickets after the away allocation sold out.

Yet without actually saying it, the Mirror’s headline clearly implies the ticket farce surrounds this game. It piques the interest, the idea some kind of error or snafu has led to Amorim facing DOUBLE the number of rowdy Norwegians rather than it being a sensible farce-preventing decision United themselves have taken for very solid reasons ahead of a game that was never likely to sell out and for which, even now it is Amorim’s first home game, tickets still remain available on general sale.

Salah dressing
Mediawatch really is quite surprised that this needs saying, but here we go: no, Daily Mirror, Liverpool would not be 13th in the league without Mo Salah. Here’s their headline:

Premier League table without Mo Salah’s heroics – with Liverpool in 13th and surprising leader

Just… no. No. Stop it. This is utterly, infuriatingly meaningless. What they’ve done here is not just remove all Salah’s 10 goals, but his six assists as well. Turns out without those things, Liverpool would have far fewer points. This is apparently a revelation of great significance.

There are two obvious issues here, that we feel absurd even to be pointing out. One, if Salah wasn’t in the Liverpool team… somebody else would be. They wouldn’t just be playing with 10. They wouldn’t just refuse to take penalties in Salah’s absence. They might have fewer goals and fewer points, but they wouldn’t lose all of them. That’s just silly.

And second, you can’t just apply this weird handicap only to Liverpool and pretend it means anything at all. Why in this make-believe world do Man City get to keep Erling Haaland’s 12 goals, just to pluck the most obvious example?

Mohamed Salah’s impact for Liverpool this season has been plain to see, but a quick look at an alternative league table really hammers home his importance.

Well, quite. It really is plain to see. You don’t need to pretend that Liverpool would replace Salah with literally nobody to show he is quite important.