Foot & Soccer Soccer Match Reports, Football News
Morning all.
Mikel Arteta’s press conference yesterday had no big surprises, no shocks, a bit of team news here and there, and a determination not to be pulled into any kind of discussion regarding the other big fixture this weekend. He, of course, is focused on taking three points from Brentford, and would give no indication of his preference when it comes to a result between Liverpool and Man City, saying:
Honestly, it is nothing to do with me. I will sit down with my kids and enjoy the match.
A lot of Arteta’s media strategy appears to be designed to give headline writers, and the clickbait nature of so much football coverage these days, nothing at all to work with. It doesn’t make for great copy, it means press conferences are often quite bland – verging on dull – but you can understand his reasons. He is not the kind of guy who would Tweet something about a nice kickabout the boys, for example, steadfastly refusing to give any opposition even the slightest thing they might use for motivation.
That said, I do find it quite funny that a manager in an intense title race with those two clubs can sit there straight faced and say it’s got nothing to do with him. Obviously it’s not something he can control, or help decide in any way, but the game still has ramifications for him and his team. Still, if he said something one way or the other, and the opposite outcome occurred, there’d be ammunition for the other side.
Just look at how comments from Trent Alexander-Arnold (from an interview in FourFourTwo that was probably done weeks before this fixture) have been used in the build-up to spark some ‘controversy’ ahead of Sunday’s game. He called Man City ‘a machine designed to win’, and apparently this is ‘taking aim’ at them, rather than being a very fair representation of what they are all about. It’s true, isn’t it? And even leaving aside my own view of Man City and how they have been put together, it’s not even really a dig….
Source link : https://arseblog.com/2024/03/say-nothing/
Author : arseblog
Publish date : 2024-03-08 07:02:26
Copyright for syndicated content belongs to the linked Source.
