After just four games of the season, the title is already a two-horse race between Manchester United and Manchester City with the rest battling for the minor places. Manchester City are seemingly better than Barcelona, Chelsea are too slow to challenge for the title, Liverpool are still in crisis, as are Arsenal. Steve Bruce is heading for the sack.
Sergio Aguero is the greatest import the world has ever seen. These are just a few of the over-exaggerations that have dominated the media coverage of the opening few weeks of the season.
In the world of rolling updates and 24-hour news, some degree of media hyperactivity is to be expected. However, it seems that the media frenzy around football is reaching new heights with each week that passes, and the media hyperbole is now starting to border on the ridiculous.
Media hyperbole has amped up coverage of every aspect of the game in recent weeks, from completely writing off Chelsea, despite their reasonable start to the season, and going into overdrive in stating that Manchester City and Manchester United are clear title favourites. In their quest to bring us something new and exciting every week, the media have created a particularly fierce culture of hype, where everything is now bordering on being an over-exaggeration.
Teams flit from being praised one week, to torn down the next. The new look Liverpool side were held up almost immediately as genuine title contenders, only to be heavily criticised and plunged back into crisis after their defeat to Stoke. Players are hailed as the next great thing, or the best player we have ever seen, only to be slammed when they fail to live up to these heights again.
The media hyperbole runs right through the game, and it is not just clubs and players that are affected, as it infiltrates every aspect of the game from exaggerated transfer sagas to criticism of managers, as the media bays for blood in the Premier League managerial sack race, hyping up and adding fuel to the fire.
It seems that the media has lost all degree of balance, or even just sense in its coverage and analysis and simply can no longer resist analysing through hyperbolic terms. The use of ridiculous headlines, and powerful imagery, might be necessary to grab our attention in this media saturated world, but the exaggerated nature of the coverage now means that we are starting to lose all sight of context within the game.
Take Chelsea, strong contenders at the top of the league for the last few years, and no doubt likely to challenge once again this year. However after only four games the media seems to have written them off, quick to criticise Andre Villas-Boas, and describe Chelsea’s team as aging and slow.
They have also been quick to jump on the Man City bandwagon and get completely carried away with their start to the season. Just this week stories have emerged suggesting that City will be the ones to topple Barcelona, before they have even kicked a ball in Champions League football.
Well thought out article, its really surpring that all hipes is given to Man city while the manager himself is saying they are nevourse. I hope it wont be called DISASTER when they fail to progress beyond the group stage. Watch this space
U are right.Most of them live in fantasy world and are very inconsistent with their reporting.
especially Arsenal. i knw the media houses must hv their keyboard dusted in order to write something funny about arsenal. shame!!
Yet another anti city story from Lauren. And you talk about jumping on band wagons? I think you will find most media outlets have just said united are favourites. But City have played excellent flowing football in all their prem games so far, and deserve the praise. Just wait till we gel.
Very well said, this silly season was the worst ever. 156 players were tied, bought and packaged for Chelsea according to the media (that already are in full gear for the next silly season window…). And the hyperbole after only four rounds already, what is there to say. Chelsea actually started even better last year and we all know how that ended. The big teams will play some 60 games and to state like some do that it is only a race between the mancs, silly is just the first word that comes to mind. And it is only getting worse, season by season. I mean, read the comics or Fanatix, Bleacher, Sportsvibe – what is the difference? It gives you a laugh but knowledge is so far gone that you wonder in which universe you are.