Extraordinarily bad article on Blackburn Rovers saved only by the outstanding savaging it's taking below the line.

As an interested follower of Rovers, I've been bemused by The Guardian's coverage of the club since Venky's took over. From Paul Wilson's Should Steve Kean be manager of the year? to the general opprobrium thrown at the fans for "their shocking behaviour" in other articles and match reports, the Graun in particular appears to have it in for Blackburn Rovers fans.

If there was ever one club,which should have a David Conn article investigating its hierarchy, it is Rovers yet the Graun consistently seems to belittle the fans and their protests instead. Short of the football editor being a Burnley fan I can think of no other reason for the continuing and frankly bizarre defence of Venky's and Kean.

Wow, that really is a shocking piece of poorly-written propaganda.

Someone should be digging around for any Venky link to the Guardian.

Verbal terrorism? I think they call that freedom of speech. I think that Rovers need to get it together with those 50,000 chicken farmers, if only to highlight Venky’s lack of popularity.

The number of removed comments that failed moderator approval is also especially high, indicative perhaps of the level of dissent against this sorry excuse for journalism. The succulent lamb that protected Rangers for so long seems to have been transformed to greasy Chicken for Blackburn.

They crow not, Jesus.
Such is gratitude, yeah, cheers for the ineptitude.

That's appalling. It's a shame most of the replies have been removed .

Commodore wrote:


They should merge with recently-expired League of Irelanbd powerhouse Monaghan United (poultry's the dominant agribusiness in those parts).

When I saw the thread title, I thought it was going to be about this nonsense that appeared in the Indy this morning.

I mean, I'm used to the tired "Why can't footballers be more like cricketers/rugby boys/Olympians" bollocks by now, but this was several grades worse, the kind of "football fans aren't as civilised as the rest of us" thinking that at its ultimate conclusion saw fans herded into pre-Hillsborough cages.

And that Venkys puff piece in the Graun is a shocker too. Two newspapers who ought to know better have let themselves down spectacularly by publishing this shite.

The Guardian, which is increasingly going to the dogs, ran an "Olympics great, football repulsive" piece of its own the other day too. Hearteningly, almost all the comments below kicked the living shit out of it.

I presumed those pieces have been made mandatory by the PCC.

The Guardian one was by Geoffrey fucking Wheatcroft, they couldn't manage to scare up a sports journo to write it.

Sorry, it seems the one I was referring to appeared in the Observer, not the Guardian.

www.guardian.co.uk/football/2012/aug/19/...olympics?INTCMP=SRCH

blameless wrote:



Yes but no, the point to make certainly being that this simply isn't true now like it was in the 1980s. In those days? Yes it was, football crowds were often infiltrated by packs of fucking scum. Dart-throwing, children-beating, window-smashing, publicly urinating packs of sub-human scum. I cringe every time I see any new "expose of the old days" jolly piece of hoolie-fiction published in the football section of Waterstones, it should all be put in the "true crime" section, and the authors banged up for years for attempting to profit from the proceeds of crime.

article is shite but by Guardian going to the dogs do you mean in terms of sports coverage or just generally

I tweeted this article with a (not particularly rude) comment on the kicking it was getting in the comments section thus earlier today:



and got the following reply from one of the Daily Telegraphs sports columnists, one Jonathan Liew (of whose existence I was previously unaware):



Oh, right. I see.

(I didn't bother replying - I really don't have the time)

Has he deleted the tweet? I can't seem to find it.

Because I do have time to reply.

It's still on my time-line (but I don't whether that is because of the Twitter client I'm using or not).

Ah, there it is. Four hours ago.

Very strange, but then he sometimes is.

It's buried behind the paywall now, but Michael Gove wrote about the Glazers once. Opposition to them was from people who didn't understand capitalism.

Someone from the Telegraph used the phrase "let's all dick on a journalist"?! I know it's on Twitter but that's appalling. Is it an oft-used term?

Liew is not a typical Telegraph journo.

See, e.g., his Twitter photo:



or another tweet of his:

I can't find him anywhere. Good, I suppose.