- Nov 24, 2013
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This is a good observation. When we were at our best under Poch, the narrative was always: "how long can they hold onto Poch, how long can they hold onto Kane."That's true but whilst there is no 'hidden agenda' the media portrayal of us is disproportionately negative.
Even when we were 'media darlings' (as we should have been) we still suffered from an engrained negativity in how our coverage was presented. Even at our high points they would swing the narrative towards something that would diminish us or worry the fans.
There's lots of reasons but they broadly centre on our position: Big but not big enough. It manifests in many ways. We're big enough to turn our opposition into plucky underdogs, but not big enough to turn commentators into squealing k-pop fans who'll look favourably on every misplaced pass. We're noticable enough to generate strong opinions from reporters and ex-players of a certain age, but not good enough to have instilled genuine respect. etc. etc.
It means everything is far more likely to tend towards disrespect and negativity as soon as the opportunity is there. It's not like that for other big teams. Arsenal and Man Utd have been terrible and criticised recently, but when there's a glint of hope the media story will be about their inevitable ressurection and they'll get puffed up with outrageously optimistic stories.
We are definitely in that 'too big for underdog but not big enough'. Good case in point was when Leicester won the title. Because Leicester had the 'people's team' tag, it wasn't acknowledged that actually, the concept of a team that had badly underachieved for decades actually being in the title hunt was a good story. We were bigger than Leicester so the narrative was with them.