Sensationalism and excessive coverage

Every year I think to myself 'surely meaningless pre season friendlies can't get over hyped more than this in the future?' and each year I am amazed to see that the excessive hype increases by another notch or two. An example of this was Real Madrid's completely inane and meaningless game against Shamrock Rovers being screened live on TV, not only this but the media were commenting on the performances and match as if it were an important Champions League game of real meaning.

Some people need to get a life. Pre season main purpose is getting players fit, obviously these days making some money and hyping the brand is also part of the plan. Performances are very much of secondary importance, obviously if someone is playing like a drain then it can be a bit of concern, but we have all seen in recent years the massive dangers in reading too much into pre season results. In fact there appears very little correlation between pre season results and early competitive results. Personally I find the most interesting aspect of pre season to be trying to see what Arsene is planning for the coming season, for example which young players are getting the games and is he experimenting with any new formations or tactics?

Last year's pre season did show us that our defense was unable to defend the aerial ball properly, I remember Ajax causing us immense problems with some rather hopeful hoofs. So I'm not saying we should ignore pre season completely, but we should see it in perspective and not get too carried away with the scorelines against various lower division outfits. Our fixtures show a few interesting games ahead, but really I will only start caring about the results when we travel to Goodison park in early August. Wilshere's presence in the games so far is hopefully a sign that he will get a few more first team games this year, while young Aaron Ramsey may also get a few more opportunities in the year ahead.

Elsewhere Ashley Cole has opened his rather big mouth again, he's keen that City finish above Arsenal next season. Players like Ashley Cole show rather well the pitfalls of being a stupid chav and being motivated purely by money and the cult of celebrity. He is obviously not the brightest, bless, and is part of a rather pathetic sham marriage, add to that the fact that he demonstrates all the loyalty of a slippery snake called Judas, he really is not the most popular player even amongst footballing neutrals. Personally I'd rather be a poor man than a rich man like Ashley, perhaps he should concentrate his efforts on keeping Chelsea in the top flight next year and persuading the Chelsea-through-and-through John 'king chav' Terry to stay at the club he loves so much for a new multi-million pound contract.

Arseblogger has a good round up of other news, a lot of it seems to consist of tabloid misinformation as usual. The Mail sums up this hypocrisy with one story stating that Arsene must throw money around for the sake of it and another debunking a stupid transfer rumour regarding Nic Bendtner, has anyone heard of the Mail making up transfer rumour and selling it as news?