... in one of the broadsheets' match reports.

I've checked the online Telegraph, Times and Guardian so far and it hasn't been easy. In fact the Guardian's footballunlimited.co.uk contrives to feature a match report that fails to discuss Newcastle's performance at all. That, though, is possibly preferable to the Times' Oliver Holt who manages to include words - Newcastle were toothless in attack and clumsy in defence - that seem fantastically at odds with what actually happened. That just leaves the Torygraph and - what with Henry Winter always getting the ManU reports - a write-up by David Miller - someone who has in the past displayed a quite phenomenal anti-Newcastle bias - asserting that it was two points lost by Chelsea rather than gained by us. B@st@rds, the lot of them.

-- Anonymous, August 20, 2001

Answers

2 points lost by us methinks :))

-- Anonymous, August 20, 2001

A pea

-- Anonymous, August 20, 2001

That was commendably fast, Sir, you beat me to the answers page spot.

-- Anonymous, August 20, 2001

All the girls say I'm fast....

-- Anonymous, August 20, 2001

Yeah I notice most of the on-line match reports are headlined something like "De-Hoey howler gifts Newcastle a point" e.g. Guardian Unlimited - "Ed de Goey's calamitous late howler gifted Newcastle a draw as Claudio Ranieri's new Blues failed to lift off." - What??!!

-- Anonymous, August 20, 2001

Look, the point about sports "journalism" is not to report the "facts" of any event but to satisfy the whims and fancies of a target audience and these particular papers (what used to be called the 'quality' press) are into that in a big way. Last year NUFC were openly referred to as "this most old-fashioned of teams". What they meant was a large home support from a local area, i.e., what football teams USED to be. The view of these writers, and what they think their readers want to hear, is that in the modern all seating stadium, with pan-European football, and be-suited 'spectators' not fans, teams like NUFC (and we are top of the crime statistics) are an anachronism. Those writers are far too wrapped up in their own ideals of what modern life should be to ever view a match with any idea of objectivity. Of course we are not objective either - we want NUFC to win all the time. Well I do!

There never will be fair reporting of NUFC from the likes of the Grauniad (Manchester based modern men) the Telegraph( must create working class enemies if there are no real ones anymore) or the Times (look and see who their Master is and what else he owns). Frankly, I don't give a damn. The whole idea of a responsible press was lost 30 years ago when Murdoch etc., got going. Football is just a very small part of that.

-- Anonymous, August 20, 2001

Most of these reporters will be based in the south and will suport the likes of Chelsea. Can't blame them really for not wanting to slag off the team that they support.

-- Anonymous, August 20, 2001

even when they were comprehensively outplayed for 45mins by an 'old-fashioned team of inexpensive journeymen'?

Totally agree - disgraceful reporting but not really surprising. If it had been a team assembled by KK for that amount of money, you could easily guess the headlines...

cockeny w*****s!

-- Anonymous, August 20, 2001

That's a headline we'd all like to see min.

-- Anonymous, August 20, 2001

The Mail was just as bad, calling Newcastle's midfield mediocre and stating that with Petit's vision, and the mass of chances Chelsea created, Newcastle should have been dead and buried after 20 minutes.

Excuse me, but did he watch the same game? I know it's not exactly the same watching it on Sky, but it's still the same game. Petit was largely anonymous to me and how the hell he got man of the match from them I'll never know.

There's no substitute for seeing the match for yourself, especially when you've only got stuck up journalists as an alternative.

-- Anonymous, August 20, 2001

Don't the national papers have slightly different local versions? I just wonder if those saying there was no mention of the Toon were reading southern versions of the papers. I can't check this theory as I didn't buy a national today - but the Journal and the Chronic were full of Newcastle! :-)

-- Anonymous, August 20, 2001

How times (small "t") have changed Jonno. The Journal and Ronnie used to be full of chips and "scratchings" (?) when I was a lad. ;-)

-- Anonymous, August 20, 2001

.... aye, but you can get pooder to stop yer 'scratchings' these days, Screacher! ;o{)

-- Anonymous, August 20, 2001