Arsenal: Media circus all about accountability and respect

Arsenal’s win over Tottenham Hotspur defied what many journalists thought, and the backlash has been nothing short of a circus.

Arsenal won the North London Derby and, in case you haven’t noticed, the headlines have changed massively from where they were before the match. Before the match, all people could talk about was the power shift. Or about how the Gunners were in free fall and Maurico Pochettino may have been touched by the hands of God, how else do you describe all his success?

Now, the media headlines are the complete opposite. The same places that gave the Gunners no chance are now saying that they can challenge City, that it’s time to take them seriously again.

Not just that, but in case you missed the fiasco surrounding the reporter who made a combined starting XI that was solely composed of Spurs, here’s a quick summary. The Gunners’ own twitter handle responded to this post as the game was concluding with a GIF of Mesut Ozil sipping tea.

This reporter the received an outburst of abuse for his pre-match combined XI. While certain abuse is certainly something to be scolded, the fact that some fans are simply holding him accountable for a rash claim should be expected, if not encouraged.

Part of the problem with the media is that no one holds them accountable. So when they are completely and positively wrong and they get caught on the back foot, they just disappear and re-emerge with something else. And to this particular reporter’s credit, he at least said he was wrong. But if you’re going to do something like have a “combined” XI with just Spurs players, what could he expect to happen?

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Now granted, the homophobic, antisemitic, etc. remarks are not excused, but people wanting him to be held accountable for piss-poor logic? That’s is absolutely excusable. It wasn’t just bad logic though, it was disrespectful to the Gunners. If I were to go out there and put together a combined XI of Arsenal and Spurs and I left all Spurs out, I would understand that abuse was going to follow because as a football writer, you can’t let an agenda get that much in the way of your commons sense.

But it wasn’t just this one guy. Everyone is griping and groaning and positively banking on the Gunners to fail and it absolutely reeks of attention-grabbing click-bait. That kind of crap should and now is getting called out. If Pain in the Arsenal is ever guilty of crapping out click-bait, I’d want it brought to my attention so I could at the very least accept responsibility or defend myself.

These people don’t do that. They move on to the next headline. It’s understandable that people get things wrong. Hell, I thought Ricardo Rodriguez was all set to be an Arsenal player two summers ago. I’m glad I was wrong, but the point is, we are all wrong sometimes.

It’s just a circus, following the Arsenal headlines, nothing shows that more than the drastic switch these past three days. From “doom and gloom” to “yeah, they can win the league.”

Next: 5 Things Learned Against Tottenham

It’s obsession, and the worst kind. At some point you think they’d learn their lesson.

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