The double standards of Match of the Day

Mikey Delap (no relation to Rory as far as I know), the editor over at Vital Blackburn has had a right good rant at the so-called expert pundits and the BBC's MotD in particular after this weekend's matches.

We Stokies often feel that some of our players have had a raw deal in the media. It's certain that Tony Pulis has crossed the Whinging Wenger off his Christmas card list - presuming he was on in the first place and so it's refreshing to find out that we aren't alone in thinking that there's a case of double standards at work here.

Thanks to Mikey for letting us reproduce his article here:

I always feel that when something happens that riles you, it is best to let the dust settle first before opening your mouth and passing comment. Sometimes if you rock and roll too early you are left looking a bit of a fool and end up saying something that you regret.

The riling event(s) in question were the series of tackles that took place this weekend that did or didn't catch the attention of the oh so impartial Match of the Day crew and their Match of the Day 2 sidekicks, complete with Irish accents.

The focus of this last weekends action and the new 'in' thing for pundits to rant and rave about was a series of fouls/tackles/orthodox karate from various players that contained different levels of violence. But as with all things Premier League and football nowadays, the perspectives on each incident from the 'experts' was at best clouded by fear of who they might upset and at worst completely biased.

Kicking off proceedings and bringing attention to the fouls of Saturday and Sunday was an absolute shocker of a foul by Karl Henry on Jordi Gomez in the Pie Eaters v Wolves match. It was worth 4,078 red cards and was rightly condemned by the suited and booted in the comfort of the Match of the Day studio. So far, so good, well done to Mark Lawrenson and his thatched cottage hair.

But the high jinx started after highlights of our beloved Rovers away at Stoke. After the defeat we cut to the studio and all of the pundits were quick to highlight two fouls by Steven N'Zonzi and Gael Givet that were apparently in the same league or in the same ball park as the Henry tackles. A few replays and a few ooo's and aaah's later, the pundits had made it clear they thought Rovers had got lucky.

However, back on Planet Earth, both of the tackles they had needlessly bought to the viewers attention were as clumsy as a midget on stilts and probably in the vicinity of a yellow card, but it was hardly worth a mention was it? We would all be sat there watching highlights of full blooded challenges until 4.36 am on a Sunday morning if we were to watch a collection of similar challenges from games over that weekend!

But to make matters worse, 24 hours later, another truly reckless challenge by serial death merchant Nigel De Jong on Alan Shearer's mate Hatem Ben Arfa was more or less completely ignored by the big, bad media giant in their sister highlights recap.

It was not quite as x-rated as Henry's granted, but it was in a whole other world to the sloppy tackles of The Zonz and the bearded Frenchman... yet the negative coverage afforded to both sides and to both incidents was way out of proportion to what actually happened.

Call me flat out paranoid but did we not want to upset the new massive club on the block? Were we not caring too much if we upset the little boys? Go back and watch the tackles by Steve and Gael, if those were tackles made by say Gareth Barry or James Milner would they have even made it out of the woodwork and onto TV? Highly, highly doubtful.

It would be really nice if one day, these sort of things got fair coverage and the men who got paid far too much for their actual output and input grew a set and heaped as much criticism on the Man City's and Chelsea's of this world as they do the Stoke's and Blackburn's.

Link to The Wild Blackburn Rover

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