Invasion of the Moral Crusaders

The papers aren't quite as scathing on our performance as I thought they might be. For the first 30 minutes we were dreadful, couldn't string a pass together, but after that we were pretty good, denied by Jaaskelainen on numerous occasions and controlled the game. Yet I thought the papers would simply criticise on the basis of the first half hour.
And yet we can still see hints of bias. Take this, from The Independent, it contains the usual "Giggs and Scholes, though they play for Man Utd we are allowed to like them" thing (the comparison with Gary Neville is intersting here - why does he not garner the same continuous praise? - is he just too Man U?) I often cite:

it was significant that Ferguson felt obliged to send on both Giggs and Scholes, even with two big cup ties coming up this week. Until that point, Ronaldo had remained the most likely source of a breakthrough for them.

Implying that Giggs and Scholes changed the course of the game. Now, while they both played well, and Giggs passed to Tevez in the build up to the goal, I'm not exactly sure they changed the game, we were playing well and were on top any way. Most of the other reports follow this line, from The Observer:

Ferguson sent on the old guard and must have been ­disappointed when Paul Scholes and Ryan Giggs proved unable to make any difference.

The point being that by the contrast between reality (which at least some reporters managed to pick up) and the report, we get to see the bias at work. It does not matter what happened, by pointing to how good we claim Scholes and Giggs are we get to, by implication, slag off the rest of the team.
Another great example of bias today (and I accept that it is a bias that I can also imagine occuring towards Chelsea - though not the saintly Arsenal or Liverpool) is the response to the sending off of Middlesboro's Digard. Watching it on Match of the Day last night I was shocked by the Boro players surrounding the referee in an aggressive manner. After that initial shock it occured to me to consider what would have been said had that been our players (or, I accept, Chelsea's). The outcry would have been immediate, from the commentator, carried on in the MOTD studio, and splashed right across the back pages. And when Boro do it? No discussion of it at all in the MOTD studio. And the papers today? Absolutely ignore it. The Observer match report even carries a picture of the players surrounding the ref, but there is no mention of it in the report. All we get on the sending off is this, "A rash decision from referee Mark Halsey ". It absolutely wasn't a rash decision. The guy jumped in with both feet, it was a horrible challenge, rightly given a red card. Again, imagine if it had been Wayne Rooney doing the challenge. And imagine if it had been Sir Alex using his blinkers and saying this, as Gareth Southgate did, quoted in The Sunday Times:

“I think it is controversial,” he said. “He wins the ball. It kills any hope of getting back into the game.”

I'm fairly sure that even Gareth Southgate must be aware that winning the ball is no guarantee that the tackle wasn't dangerous. The Mail's report is the worst though, just for this sentence, "Southgate later felt that referee Mark Halsey was harsh to dismiss Frenchman Didier Digard."
That's it. The report completely ignores its responsibilty to tell us what happened, instead telling us what Gareth Southgate felt happened. What is the point of a report that does that? Why not just have Gareth Southgate write the whole thing?
To finish on a lighter note, I thought that this description of the pitch invader, from David Walsh in The Sunday Times, was class for its portrayal of Gary Neville:

The game started tamely. Bolton’s poor recent run made them do everything cautiously and United weren’t in the mood to rush things. Then the strangest thing: midway through the half, a man left his seat in the stands and somehow insinuated himself into the game. He just trotted on to the field as a line of orange-coated stewards looked on menacingly. As he walked towards the centre circle, the intruder waved a red-and-white scarf over his head, indicating he might have been of a United persuasion. What prompted him was the mystery. Was he there to ask for more passion? Perhaps to complain about the lack of excitement? It was a strange minute or so. Play stopped and nobody moved. He was burly, and it may have been his size that induced such trepidation. “You tell him to get lost.” “After you,” the players and stewards seemed to be saying. Tevez’s quiet diplomacy didn’t work.

Then Neville, who has been known to rush in where angels fear to tread, went to The Burly One and suggested he leave. As the full-back ushered him away, you should have seen the belated bravery of the orange coats who swarmed on to the pitch and frogmarched the fan to the waiting police. So engaging was this little distraction that it was almost a comedown to return to the sedateness of the game.