A curious night of Champions League football prompts curious coverage, in which Arsenal are met with silence and Bayern Munich go missing.<\/p>\n
Mediawatch is also thrilled to learn we\u2019re at the stage of a title run-in where it\u2019s time to start pretending there might need to be a play-off, and The Sun are gleefully patting Declan Rice on the back for slagging them off.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s a curious stage of the season, this.<\/p>\n
Positive influence<\/p>\n
The Sun are enormously impressed this morning with Declan Rice silencing the haters after Arsenal marched gloriously into the Champions League semi-finals.<\/p>\n
Declan Rice fires brilliant response after being stunned by question in awkward TV interview as Arsenal beat Sporting<\/p>\n
Brilliant. Stunned. Awkward.<\/p>\n
Declan Rice was not having any of the negativity surrounding Arsenal\u2019s performance after they reached the Champions League semi-finals.<\/p>\n
Rice was pretty dismissive, to be fair.<\/p>\n
When asked after the match if the contest proved frustrating, the midfielder said: \u201cFrustrating? Nah, we just got to a semi-final.<\/p>\n
\u201cPositivity all the way, who cares what people think, all that matters is what this group thinks, what this manager thinks.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re in another semi-final, I\u2019m delighted.\u201d<\/p>\n
Listen, fair play. Absolutely one in the eye there for anyone trying to put a negative or downbeat spin on things. As The Sun themselves put it, a \u2018brilliant response\u2019 to anyone whose headline might have said anything like, for instance:<\/p>\n
Underwhelming Gunners scrape into Champions League semi\u2026 but rocked by more injuries<\/p>\n
Or whose report said things like\u2026<\/p>\n
Instead, we got a damp squib of a quarter-final second leg, a bloody awful contest which was\u00a0just as bad as the first leg.<\/p>\n
You, of course, already know whose \u2013 entirely fair, by the way \u2013 headline and report those excerpts comes from.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
The sound of silence<\/p>\n
Here at Mediawatch we\u2019re long-time fans of L\u2019Equipe and the general distaste sprinkled throughout their football coverage for all things English and, well, most things football. We really don\u2019t think they actually like or enjoy the game all that much, with their notoriously stingy player ratings in particular the stuff of legend.<\/p>\n
Nobody at F365 or anywhere else is pretending Arsenal v Sporting was a classic<\/a>, and we do understand that being the neutral reporter sent to cover this game rather than the lucky sod who got Bayern v Real Madrid<\/a> must be a bit of a pisser, and there is always the lost-in-translation element to be wary of. But you can\u2019t just make stuff up, you French rogues.<\/p>\n Empty seats and absolute silence to celebrate qualification for the Champions League semi-finals: Arsenal, when boredom returns<\/p>\n Absolute silence? Non.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Play-off drama<\/p>\n It\u2019s that time of year once again where a potentially close title race prompts a fresh batch of articles suggesting the Premier League title race<\/a> could be settled by a play-off. BBC Sport are even getting involved, look.<\/p>\n Play-off pending? How a draw at the Etihad could set up thrilling finale<\/p>\n It\u2019s not untrue. It could. But there\u2019s also a reason why it has never, ever happened. A play-off for the title can only take place if the two teams are level on points, goal difference, goals scored, head-to-head points and head-to-head away goals.<\/p>\n Only once in Premier League history has even goal-difference been needed to settle things, and that still required Agueerrrrooooooooo and the single most absurd conclusion to a Premier League season in history.<\/p>\n Even if points, goal difference and goals scored were all to fall into place at frankly incalculable odds across the two teams\u2019 final five matches of the season each beyond this weekend, it\u2019s already a 13\/2 shot with the bookies for the infinitesimal prospect of a play-off even to extend beyond Sunday. Because anything other than a 1-1 draw between the two rivals at the Etihad ends those already minuscule chances altogether. And a draw is itself a result that makes it less likely they finish level on points anyway.<\/p>\n So we\u2019re not saying there is absolutely no chance the Premier League title is settled by a play-off. Just that it absolutely is not \u2018\u2019pending\u2019 and definitely isn\u2019t something anybody needs to be thinking about yet when there is still so much else to fret about instead.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n I can see clearly now<\/p>\n A slightly puzzling headline from football.london here.<\/p>\n Tottenham\u2019s route to Premier League safety now clear under Roberto De Zerbi.<\/p>\n You will have to forgive daft old Mediawatch, but we don\u2019t see a particularly clear path to safety for a team that hasn\u2019t won a Premier League game in over a third of a season<\/a> and now sits forlornly in the relegation zone<\/a> behind a small handful of theoretical rivals who are all playing conspicuously better than Spurs while over recent times collecting significantly more points.<\/p>\n But that\u2019s just us being negative ninnies again. The path is actually very clear indeed.<\/p>\n Tottenham\u2019s Premier League future is not in their own hands but they must at least remember how to win games of football if they are to stand a chance.<\/p>\n Come on, guys. Simply remember how to win games of football again. Can\u2019t believe neither Thomas Frank nor Igor Tudor thought of that, to be honest.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Lost cause<\/p>\n From The Sun:<\/p>\n Arda Guler led a host of RAGING Real Madrid players towards the referee after losing Bayern Munich.<\/p>\n It\u2019s always in the last place you look.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A curious night of Champions League football prompts curious coverage, in which Arsenal are met with silence and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":587754,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[69],"tags":[463,43576,424,24663,80494,403,99],"class_list":{"0":"post-587753","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-soccer","8":"tag-arsenal","9":"tag-f365-features","10":"tag-front-page","11":"tag-home-page","12":"tag-mediawatch","13":"tag-soccer","14":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/587753","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=587753"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/587753\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/587754"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=587753"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=587753"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=587753"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}