Never mind Vinicius or Arsenal crisis or Liverpool reunion

The desecration of the word ‘exclusive’ continues apace as The Sun insist that a middle-aged man telling the dreariest middle-aged man anecdote imaginable constitutes major football news.

But at least the space that takes up means a bit less room for pretending Arsenal are bedevilled by doom and indeed gloom after losing one pre-season game, a crisis that has now entered its second day and is now surely fast approaching badge-cracking territory.

There’s also some b*llocks about Liverpool because there is always some b*llocks about Liverpool.

Butt of the joke

Genuinely astonishing content from The Sun this morning, claiming the following as both an EXCLUSIVE and the second biggest story in all of football this bright Friday morn, just behind the Arsenal-scuppering news of Vini Jr’s new Real Madrid deal. We’re not sure which of those two incorrect assertions has irritated us more.

Man Utd icon Nicky Butt BANNED from local tip after ‘raging’ row with staff

Mediawatch has said this before, but you cannot claim an EXCLUSIVE if the sole reason you’re the only people with a story is that literally nobody else anywhere on earth gives a single, solitary shiny sh*te.

But this is worse than that. How did The Sun get this EXCLUSIVE? How did they manage to unearth the deeply concealed news that Nicky Butt has been banned – sorry, BANNED – from his local tip?

They listened to Nicky Butt quite literally broadcast the news that he’d been banned – sorry, BANNED – from his local tip on the podcast he does every week with Paul Scholes and Paddy McGuinness.

It’s a thrilling tale, for sure.

Butt then claimed the attendant accused him of trying to sneak in items.

The dad of two told The Good, The Bad & The Football podcast: “He said to me, ‘Your windows are blacked out because you’re sneaking stuff into it, into the tip’. And I went, ‘No, it’s standard, mate’.”

He then decided to drive into the site, believed to be the Woodhouse Lane Recycling Centre in Altrincham.

Transfer rumour tropes being applied to Altrincham recycling centres. Truly, we live in an age of wonders.

He said: “I thought, well, I’m there now, I’m gonna go for it. So I’ve got up the ramp, I see this bloke getting up . . . trying to chase me up the hill, but he’s got his walkie-talkie out.

“So I’ve literally got up the top, throw all the bags out, and I’m going back down the hill, and he’s going mad at me. Anyway, I’m banned from the tip.”

But surely The Sun have done some small amount of additional reporting? Surely they haven’t just put an EXCLUSIVE tag on a transcript of a genuinely staggeringly boring anecdote, one you’d be annoyed at the time you’d wasted never to get back if your mate shared it in the pub?

Surely they’ve at least, you know, contacted the council to try and find out if Butt is actually banned – sorry, BANNED – from the tip? Or perhaps secure a witness to confirm any of this even actually happened?

Haha, of course they haven’t done that. They have ‘contacted [Butt] for comment’. We await the next update on what literally everybody is now calling Tipgate with breath suitably baited.

Friends reunited

Lovely bit of mischief from the Mirror here.

Darwin Nunez in line for unexpected Liverpool reunion after transfer twist

Now this is not Mediawatch’s first time around the transfer window block, so we obviously knew this headline didn’t mean what it (of course accidentally) looks like it means. Obviously they’re not saying Darwin Nunez is going back to Liverpool. Why on earth would anyone think ‘Liverpool reunion’ might mean that?

But we thought it at least meant a move where he would be… reunited with Liverpool. Like, he’s coming back to the Premier League and thus will play against them. That kind of b*llocks.

But no. This is not even that kind of b*llocks.

It is this kind of b*llocks.

Mohamed Salah could soon be joined at Trabzonspor by Darwin Nunez, with Salah’s former Liverpool team-mate also a transfer target for the ambitious Turkish Super Lig outfit.

That’s an unexpected Salah reunion you scamps, and you absolutely know it.

It’s the end of the world as we know it

We had our fun yesterday with The Sun getting into a full-blown panic about Arsenal losing one pre-season friendly, but the sheer volume of content they’re churning out about one pre-season defeat is starting to look like some kind of cry for help.

Mediawatch is increasingly uncomfortable in its seat as The Currant Bun attempt to drag a second day of discourse out of one pre-season game. One day of discourse about one pre-season game is already one too many.

Yet having initially pretended the defeat might have a meaningful impact on the 26/27 Premier League title race, The Sun were back 24 hours later with this.

Five things we learned from Arsenal’s woeful loss to Real Betis with Kepa displaced as No2 and Tzolis’ lethal asset

See, this is the problem. We’re not always convinced there are five worthwhile things to learn from actual proper games of football – the correct number if there are indeed things to learn is in any case, as everyone knows, 16 – but there absolutely are not ever five useful things to learn from a pre-season game.

This, though, is our favourite line in what is now The Sun’s fifth different ‘sky is falling’ story in the last 24 hours about Arsenal losing one pre-season game.

A pre-season defeat is never the end of the world…

We really wish that had been the thing they’d learned. But apparently not.

Poll tax

One to keep an eye on here. Mediawatch has dealt in the past – more often than we’d like – with the Daily Express trick of asking its infamously calm, thoughtful and rational readership to vote in provocative polls and then posting the provocative results of those provocative polls under headlines suggesting – quite incorrectly – that there is an actual story or indeed any viable content whatsoever involved.

Just this week, for instance, we had the Express pretending that the idle votes of a handful of its readers constituted a Man United ITK update.

This latest one we can track from its formative stages, though, for currently riding high on their football homepage is this.

Should the World Cup be stripped from Spain, Portugal and Morocco after migrant crisis?

Now there’s a poll question to catch the average Express reader’s attention.

We look forward to a headline that looks something like…

FIFA told Spain, Portugal and Morocco must be stripped of 2030 World Cup

…sometime early next week.

Fifteen, love

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