Leaving aside whether or not refs are affected by the media, I take the view that as a fan, its better to ignore the sniping, don't buy a paper or listen to negativity, blah blah blah...However thats not always possible, and being only human, I take a slightly, sing when your winning attitude to the press, enjoying reading the papers when we do well or someone we hate is getting a slagging.
But some of the stuff thats gone on with us is beyond fair comment and public interest, John Terry's Dad being set up was such a liberty that even the Judge at his trial was apologetic, and described it as one of the worst cases of entrapment he's ever seen.
J
I've mentioned this before but I'm going to bring it up again, the Peter Cech incident at Reading. Leaving aside the sh*t storm that would have happened if say, two of Man utds goalies had been Hospitalised with serious head injuries in the same game. The following week Reading played Arsenal and Jens Lehman growled at Stephen Hunt everytime he came near him, the Sky commentator (it might have been Martin Tyler) expressed concern that this shouldn't affect Stephen Hunt's career and how hoped this would not follow him around and colour peoples judgement. (not to worry he was known as a two bob journeyman before the Cech incident, and that didn't change after it) I'm not suggesting that Hunt did it deliberately but the impression I got watching that game, was its been a week, we should all move on and try and help Hunt get past this.
But what really infuriated me about that was the treatment meted out to Mourinho, re the media, he was interviewed straight after the game, when he was clearly distressed and emotional, he expressed concern about the length of time it took for Cech to get to Hospital. I watched the interview live and my take on it was that he was generalising about getting injured players to Hospital, and he went on to say that he hoped all grounds including Stamford Bridge would review what happens when a player is clearly seriously injured. (The decision to get Cech to Hospital was down to the Chelsea medical staff that day and Mourinho would obviously have known this) However all I heard for ages afterwards, Patrick Barclay in particular brought this up a lot, was that multi millionaire (whats that got to do with it) Mourinho criticises hard pressed NHS Ambulance staff.
It was added to the list of Chelsea "crimes" such as terrifying Anders Frisk so much he retired, when it was common knowledge that he was going to retire after that season anyway to open a restaurant.
You can say that all clubs get this treatment but I dispute that, the only other club thats had anything like the press intrustion and negativity that we had, would be Man City.
Jack Wilshere's rap sheet is pretty bad, but he doesn't get the Ashley Cole, JT treatment nothing like it,and as someone else has pointed out, Sir Ryan of Giggs private peccadillos are rarely thrown up in his face by the press.
There are certain things we do bring on ourselves, the Ashley Cole tapping up being a classic example, thats fair journalism, footy related and we were bang to rights.
The Leveson inquiry didn't come about for nothing, many journalists are decent people doing a good job, but a fair few of them are total scum, I guess they have to be to do that job when working for certain papers. Its not paranoid to get p*ssed off by lies and inaccuracies and spite and it bothers me that things that are patently untrue go unchallanged and pass into negative Chelsea folklore.
