Media coverage of Sheff Utd game

[sykelatic1]

[TheBigDog]

Stelling's of a long line of Sky :censored:-houses that seem to have a problem with Latics.

It's the exact opposite as far as I'm concerned - the guy follows Hartlepool and understands what it means to follow a smaller club - the only bias he ever shows is towards his own team - and wouldn't we all given half a chance?

[jsslatic]

It's the exact opposite as far as I'm concerned - the guy follows Hartlepool and understands what it means to follow a smaller club - the only bias he ever shows is towards his own team - and wouldn't we all given half a chance?

 

Indeed. Nobody on Sky hates Oldham, few care about us really. Read Stelling's book (Jellyman's thrown a wobbly) for more info as to his opinions (or lack of) on other clubs...

Edited October 14, 2012 by jsslatic

[palmer1]

he probably said it more in jest at the fact that everyone believes that a big club should and will be dominant over little sides like Oldham and Hartlepool

 

being a small club fan he would know differently

Edited October 14, 2012 by palmer1

[leeslover]

Write to the BBC,...atrocious.

But what do you REALLY think?

[latics jan]

Football league shoe very disappointing. Very unbalanced coverage.

[steveoafc]

Football league shoe very disappointing. Very unbalanced coverage.

 

What size?........bung em on e bay..

[Canada_latic]

The BBC have always been like this! Even back in the glory years we hardly got a mention or a look in. Maybe 2 mins on Match of the Day if we were lucky. The rest of the time was filled up with Sir Trevor I talk BOLLOCKS Brooking and his love of West Ham! The only people that mentioned us and stuck up for us was Des Lynam and Alan Hansen. I don't think he liked us because we used to stuff his beloved West Ham.

[BP1960]

Write to the BBC, hopefully they will get the message if enough people complain, here's what I just sent (i'm aware there are probably a load of mistakes but it was already 20 minutes of my life I won't be getting back!)

 

 

I would like to draw your attention to The Football League Show aired 13/10/2013 and specifically the Sheffield United vs Oldham Athletic “featured” game. I have a number of issues with the programme – notably bias and the quality of the programme itself in relation to previous weeks (basically when the championship teams are in action).

 

Firstly looking at the “featured” game itself, footage of the game lasted for just short of 7 minutes, of which nearly an entire minute was spent babbling about a nothing incident between Oldham’s Lee Croft and a ball boy who kicks the ball away. Regarding this I think it’s fairly obvious that Lee Croft said something to the ball boy (although highly unlikely to be racist to anyone other than a complete moron) who was basically doing the complete opposite of the job he is paid to do. So in summary we have around 6 minutes of action for a “featured” game which to me seems hardly substantial. In fact it wouldn’t be a surprise to see 6 minutes of footage in standard online highlights. Moving on to the content there seems a clear imbalance when viewing the 6 minutes of footage in context of the stats (produced by the BBC) for the game. Taken from the BBC’s stats Oldham have 14 shots on target to Sheffield United’s 5 and 19 shots in total to 7. From this you would clearly expect that the majority of chances shown are from Oldham. Unfortunately it appears that this didn’t fit the brief for the game. The chances shown in the order in which they happened are as follows:

First Half

Oldham - Simpson long range drive with Derbyshire follow up

Second Half

Sheffield United – Williams over hit cross

Sheffield United – Doyle long range shot

Sheffield United – Penalty award and goal

Oldham – Derbyshire chance

Sheffield United – Flynn chance

Oldham – Smith goal

Looking first at the opening 45 minutes, the action has been surmised by one chance a disallowed goal for offside (which from the footage you can actually see is onside - a fact that the BBC commentator decides to ignore or just not understand which would be quite worrying). The first half actually had 2 shots on target from Sheffield United to Oldham’s 8(eight). This is clearly not reflected in the footage. It actually makes it look like very little happened in the first half (something reinforced by the BBC commentator in the second half when he exclaims “a much better start to this second half” with no mention of specifically towards Sheffield United after they finally manage a shot on goal) whilst in fact Oldham had a number of chances, notably almost scoring in the opening minute through a Simpson header and having 7 other shots on target. Although already a picture of how the footage has been edited is becoming clear, the second half to me is even more damning. I mean, how can you edit a half of football to make one team appear to be dominating when they’ve barely been able to get out of their own half? In the second half by use of mathematics(!) I have deduced that the shot count on target is Sheffield United 3 to Oldham’s 6, at least some way to being respectable. Somehow out of 3 shots on target however the BBC has managed to get 4 pieces of footage for Sheffield United. By all accounts this is at best absolutely pathetic and clear bias as an over hit cross is somehow regarded as a better chance than real clear cut chances such as a second chance for Derbyshire, a header by Smith that was well saved and earlier in the half a couple of strikes by Montano all of which were far more note-worthy than an over hit cross that you can clearly see from the replay the goalkeeper is comfortable with. From the stats and from actually watching the game you it’s obvious that Oldham dominated the game in both halves, instead we have a poorly edited highlights footage which somehow gives the complete opposite impression. From Oldham’s 14 shots on target to Sheffield United’s 5 we somehow end up with highlights that show 3 Oldham Chances to Sheffield United’s 4, please explain how this could possibly happen? It seems that because Sheffield United is a big club the BBC has gone all out to appease their fans and to pander to and reinforce the uninformed perceptions of the average armchair fan. A truly poor effort.

Moving on to my second point, the coverage was much less comprehensive than it normally would be for a featured game. I understand there is less interest in League One than the Championship, but this week there are no Championship games and so League One and League Two take centre stage and it is a chance for clubs who wouldn’t normally be in the limelight to get some decent media coverage. Instead it was almost like the BBC had been begrudgingly forced to cover Leagues One and Two, a token gesture of support to the lower leagues. In normal circumstances, featured games get much longer highlights and then some analysis from Leroy Rosenoir or Steve Claridge or both. On this occasion, you couldn’t even be bothered having the programme in the studio, a pathetic attempt at a subtle disguise for the fact you didn’t want to pay Steve to waffle on about big clubs being massive. Instead we had Manish wandering around Prenton Park an hour before kick off. So purely because the Championship weren’t playing the BBC put out an appalling excuse for the football league show. Whilst we’re talking about the shows general poor quality I would also like to point out that the guy you interviewed after the Tranmere v Yeovil game was not Gary Johnson as stated, it was Tony Skiverton. I’m not a Yeovil fan, I don’t follow Yeovil with any great enthusiasm but even I as a casual onlooker of the football league knew that wasn’t Gary Johnson. That is just plain lazy.

 

Here you had a chance to give League One and League Two some proper coverage with the Championship not playing. Instead it seems to have been seen as a chance to save some money. One featured game in which the whole focus appears to have been on making the ‘big team’ look big… and no attempt at any analysis of either division or game other than the bias comments of the commentator. I expect this from Sky where they have an ulterior motive to do this but the BBC has shown itself here; that was atrocious.

 

BBC editors are coming in for some stick these days, is editing a lost art, or are there too many BBC bods interfering ?

[oafcprozac]

Terry Skiverton…..

[Guest Scratch2000uk]

Football league show disgraceful journalism,no more than we should expect ,propaganda sucked in to bigger clubs just like the ref today

 

Run by the BBC isn't it. It doesn't just apply to football though, It's riddled in it.