Kane looks like an old man trundling around the pitch. How bad has he got to play before any manager is brave enough to drop him or drag him off
Just read the piece with Semmens on Athletic. Good stuff, very sensible as you’d expect. Lots on good positive relationship with Ralph. Happy to run club to break even, wants to be a Levy-type in negotiating and not be kicked around by clubs with bigger budgets. Still want a recruitment head but pushing it back until 2021 so they’d can understand more about the post-Brexit, mid-COVID-19 landscape and what it means for player trading in UK. Nice to have a club office with transparency and clear, connected thinking. I love it.
From the few clips I’ve seen of Tottenham’s Amazon prime doc, Kane shouldn’t be captain. The most uninspiring team talks I’ve heard. Just because he’s the best player (arguably) doesn’t mean he should be captain, and I’ve always preferred a CB or CM as captain.
At £1 a month for a year, I'll sign up to it. https://theathletic.com/checkout2/intro1/introperiod12?source=uksocial
I’ve enjoyed their analysis and coverage a lot. The one thing I will say is that I think (similar to the echo and local papers) is that direct coverage of a team delivered specifically to fans of that team is going to result in weird conflicts of interest that national papers deal with better. They need to represent good PR for the club to have access to club figures and the fans are much more likely to pay for a positive spin. It’s a lot of the same problems that niche industry journalism faces. They can get around it a bit by selling their coverage of other sports hard, but it does seem a bit circular and sycophantic at times. I don’t know what that means for their future, but for now I’ll enjoy the articles about Danny Ings’ running style.
To be fair to Dan Sheldon, he isn’t actually a Saints fan, which has helped with his objectivity while reporting for both the Echo and now the Athletic. Like Villa fan Adam Blackmore on Solent though, he will undoubtedly develop a soft spot for the main focus of his work.
Carl Anka wasn’t a Saints fan last season either. It still remains a problem when you have pressure to cover something positively to ensure you have access to it. If Sheldon writes a piece slating the inability to properly replace PEH before the season opener then he doesn’t get that Semmens interview I’m sure. Throw in that positive coverage is better received by fans of the thing, a group that you’re also trying to sell subscriptions to and it’s a bigger problem. I question it, is all. Niches like video games journalism have similar issues. Covering a thing for fans of that thing, funded by advertisers of that thing. It’s incestuous.
I completely take your point, and I don’t disagree. On the other hand, there’s an interview with Semmens in this week’s Total Saints Podcast, which is always very critical and questioning of anything relating to Saints, where the need arises! I guess the thing to do is wait and see what happens with the Athletic’s coverage.