Sunday 30 March 2008

Intuitive is one word for it, I can think of others

"A lot of what I've written about Arsenal here is intuitive, impressionistic, off-the-top-of-my head stuff and that is risky. It's written in the moment for the moment. You can come a cropper doing that, as I've done many times. Mistakes creep in at the best newspapers, despite armies of editors and sub-editors, so it's hardly a surprise that Myles Palmer goes off the rails almost every week.

By the way, you should question my knowledge of Arsenal. I'm one of many football pundits. I do my best to write honestly and tell you what I think. But it might be be healthier if you questioned everybody's knowledge."

So here Myles Palmer tries to justify his so called journalism, it would seem more sensible for him to think and consider what he writes, before he writes it; as then his pieces would not be filled with so much ill informed junk. I would not be proud to be impressionistic myself :"impressionistic - of or relating to or based on an impression rather than on facts or reasoning". The rather mixed reviews to his attempt to write an Arsene Wenger biography must have irked him somewhat I'd imagine, he was probably expecting a standing ovation:

"Palmer comes out with nothing but his own opinions but tries to make us believe that we can get more of an insight into Wenger's mind by listening to them as he's had a few 'chats' with various people. I've come out with remarkably similar opinions at around pub closing time on a Saturday night without the benefit of having media buddies getting me into the backrooms of Highbury. Just a bit too pretentious and self-indulging."

Myles Palmer responded to some of this criticism by writing it off as 'ridiculous', his response reminded me rather of his book's style, it was more about name dropping than any decent insightful and analytical journalism, it was more about someone's self indulgent opinion than any attempt at objectivity. Overall one gets the distinct impression that the author is so conceited that he rates his own footballing opinion higher than that of Arsene Wenger, and that the book has become his own footballing mouthpiece rather than a decent analytical biography.

In fact ANR frequently uses unsubstantiated transfer rumours to suck readers in, unsurprisingly these frequently turn out to be nothing more than baseless gossip. In fact one blogger even set up camp because of a difference of opinion with Myles, ironically his blog was far more insightful and readable than ANR ever has been.

"On the day of Arsenal's AGM, over two weeks ago, I posted this report. Yesterday, more than two weeks after the AGM, Myles Palmer on ANR posted this report. Spot the difference. Of course I have emailed ANR and asked them to explain so I'll report back when I hear something. In the meantime you can always check out the real ANR archives here on Arseblog. Leopold may be many things, but a copy-stealer he is not."

ANR and Myles Palmer never replied to arseblogger as regards this rather strange coincidence, if one can call it that. Taking another blogger's work without linking to it or acknowledgement is just plain below the belt, but that didn't appear to stop the great Myles Palmer.

It is also rather strange that ANR does not routinely publish all reader comments, surely the best way for any author to keep in touch with reality is to be accountable to his or her readers? I can only assume that after all these years of 'intuitive impressionism' quite a few genuine gooners have seen Myles Palmer who he really is, a trendy media type who likes to think of himself as being a tad more important and knowledgeable than he really is, meaning that he is more than happy to continue to subject us to his own self indulgent opinion without thinking. I think this little quote taken from a recent ANR piece does the talking better than I can:

"I sometimes think Bendtner is the best striker at the club."

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