Every club's supporters believes they get a bad deal from the national media.  In Arsenal's case however there is a reason to believe it is true.

I don't intend to catalogue that anti-Arsenal bias of recent years - it is all too obvious - rather I want to look at the reasons behind this phenomenon.   But I will take in a couple of examples to get us going.

On the day after Arsenal completed the unbeaten season the press were mostly singing the praises of the team and the club - it was done, many agreed, without spending fortunes and through playing wonderful football.  But more than that - it was unique - no one, save Mr Wenger had even contemplated such a thing - and he was laughed at by the press when he did.

Yet in the midst of all this the Observer could not find its way to join in, printing page after page of negative comment about the season.  It was one of the most extraordinary spectacles of biased journalism of all time.

Or take something utterly different.  When Alan Greene called a player of Chinese origin after a commonplace dish in a Chinese restaurant Greene and the BBC apologised.  But when Jonathan Pearce on 606 repeatedly made racist fun of Oleg  Luzhny by laughing at his name and commenting on his supposedly inability to run, complaints to the BBC were ignored.

For a third example, take the Emirates Stadium - which endlessly caused stories saying that Arsenal had gone over budget, that the interest repayments were so high the club could not afford to buy any players, that the stadium would be half empty, and so on.  The stories were of course insane - if there was ever any debate about Arsenal's support is was set to rest in the first years of Wenger's reign when 70,000 plus turned up for each European game played at Wembley.

I could go on and on - what stimulated me to write this piece was the presentation by the BBC of the crazy Beveren story in which it was alleged that Arsenal had been involved in underhand dealings with the Belgium club by paying money to the club through an intermediary..  There was talk of Arsenal being relegated to the Championship, and fined huge amounts, thrown out of the Champions League and then ultimately would go bust.

You could also hear the saliva dripping from the mouths of the journalists who wrote this nonsense - and nonsense it was, as revealed by the fact that it took FIFA (an organisation not known for its ability to move at speed) little more than two weeks to discover that Arsenal had done nothing wrong.  But then, amazingly, the BBC claimed that FIFA had failed to ask the right questions and that there were clearly issues that needed to be resolved.   

Just how crazy this was can be seen by the fact that it took no time at all to show Arsenal and Mr Wenger as contributors to the Beveren fund - they had paid money over openly out of their own accounts.  Someone should tell the BBC that crooks don't do that.

So the question to be explored is why - why does the media go for Arsenal in this bizarre way?

To find the answer we have to go back  to the earliest days of the BBC when Lord Reith was both General Manager and MD of the BBC between 1922 and 1927.   Reith was born in 1889 - the early days of football - a time when the amateur game ruled - especially in the south of England.   This brought him into conflict with London's one professional club - the one club that had attempted to take the professional game of the north into London.

As a way of showing his displeasure  Reith lay down an order that professional football should never be commented on, discussed or reported on, on the BBC.   By the 1930s however there was pressure for the newly formed television service to recognise its existence as a mass form of entertainment.  The response was odd indeed - for the BBC started showing live broadcasts of amateur matches in London - pitching the programme directly against times when Arsenal were playing at home.

So the prejudice started, and despite the triumphs of Arsenal that followed, the notion of knocking Arsenal remained.

The response of Arsenal throughout was one of calm - no attempt was made then, or now, to fight back, no negative stories were spread about the media's dirty work.  Arsenal had itself had had its own dark period in its move to Highbury, and its attempts to push itself back into the First Division.  It was not going back down that road again.

So at all times Arsenal have remained above the childish muck spreading, letting the journalists continue their nonsense without comment coming back from the club.

Which means we can look forward to more statements like that from Sir Ferguson saying "Arsenal players surrounded the referee shouting at him.  United players would never do that," and find the journalists accepting this as a reasonable statement which requires no enquiry.

So while the managers of Man Utd and Chelsea refuse to speak to the media, Mr Wenger speaks to everyone whenever they want.  But the BBC makes no comment about Ferguson refusing to talk with them - and instead go on writing nonsense about Arsenal.

Strange world.

Consider these from September 06.   Van Persie has just scored one of the great goals and what does the BBC do?  They put on their northern Ireland commentator who runs 606, and ask him, and instead of saying "great goal" or commenting on the technique, he wonders whether Van Persie should have been sent off for a foul earlier.

Or Match of the Day.  When asked by the chair if Arsenal will win anything this year, their Scottish correspondent says, "no, because they won't put anyone into the box when they attack - they always go down the wings."

Now that leads to an interesting question.  How could it be that a manager as experienced and with as many trophies as Wenger could actually make such a mistake, while a pundit sitting in the studio can see it?   Surely that is the most interesting question of all.   That is the question to ask - how can a manager paid as much as Wenger be so stupid?  How can a club like Arsenal be so daft as to employ a manager who cannot see that you need a player in the box?

But no, they won't ask, because of course to ask that would mean that the stupidity of the original comment would be opened up for inspection.   Wenger's vision of Beautiful Football involves a style of play which among many other things has reconfigured the notion of what the centre forward does.   Strange the BBC never quite got this.

So instead we ask - why is the BBC employing people to make such childishly idiotic statements?   Now we know - it goes right back to the start.

Last modified: February 23, 2008