This weekend saw the resumption of the Premier League following this summer’s European Championships and in many ways, good and bad, it was business as usual.
Arsenal kicked off the season in the way only Arsenal could – losing handily to a side that hadn’t see top-flight action since before the National Health Service was founded. Chelsea blew away Vieira’s new-look Palace with relative ease; Rafa Benitez’s Everton (still not used to writing that) outfought Southampton after a rocky start; Brighton defied all odds and actually outperformed their xG; Liverpool cashed in half of their customary six points against Norwich and Pep Guardiola lost to the Harry Kane team without Harry Kane for the fourth time in a row at White Hart Lane.
We also slapped Leeds for five again but what else is new?
But with the fans back in the grounds; the War of the Roses back being battled on the streets and Watford being back in the big time with a manager nobody’s heard of, the Barclays is well and truly back!
Joking aside however, whilst the return of fans in the grounds and on the terraces is welcomed up and down the country, some of the narratives and agendas perpetuated in the media aren’t, and they never really went away.
Paul Pogba’s scintillating display against Leeds really was the Frenchman at his best, assisting Bruno three times and even managing to set Fred up for goal, becoming only the seventh player in Premier League history to assist four goals in a single game. Despite this though, everyone’s least favourite uncle, Graeme Souness said of Pogba’s performance, “We expect that from a £100m man.”
We’ll ignore the fact that he was £89m and not £100m for a second and just try and process the fact that Graeme Souness thinks four assists in a game is the expectation for Paul Pogba. Four (4) assists. Every game.
To put that into perspective for you, that means that Graeme Souness expects Paul Pogba to have one-hundred-and-fifty-two (152) assists come the end of the Premier League season. That’s 7.6x more than the current record shared by Thierry Henry and Kevin de Bruyne. An unrealistic standard to say the least.
His blatant contempt for Pogba was only compounded by his arrogant dismissal and disregard to any counter-argument from Micah Richards and any other guest on Sky Sports when challenged on the subject. Souness has long since had a chip on his shoulder regarding Paul Pogba, so at this point perhaps his disdain is to be expected.
However, the continuously perpetuated double standard between Pogba and Harry Kane when discussing both of their purportedly desired moves away is also painfully apparent and it’s not just from Souness either. Gary Neville repeatedly describing Harry Kane as a “saint” in wake of him missing training in order to force a move through to Manchester City was and still is nauseating.
The hysteria surrounding Pogba when he so much as gets a new haircut is inescapable, however when the England captain downs tools and tries to force his way out of his boyhood club for a faceless and soulless sports conglomerate, not only do they not condemn him, they actively defend him. I’d like to say the silence is deafening, but it’s not, the noise is deafening.
It’s not so much the criticism of Paul Pogba – as I think most of it is justified – it’s the lack of criticism from prominent and influential members of the media for players like Harry Kane, who would rather stoop to such egregiously hypocritically depths lest they have to admit their golden boy isn’t so golden anymore.
It’s not the first time with Neville either as we saw with his baffling praise for Marcelo Bielsa last season after his side was knocked for six in their Cup final after waiting the better part of a decade-and-a-half for it. Then again we probably shouldn’t be taking the bloke who was clutching his pearls over the European Super League and the implications it would have for the fans all that seriously, given he works for a company that tried to charge fans £15 on top of their Sky Sports subscription for West Bromwich Albion vs Sheffield United during the height of lockdown mere months earlier.
When the disparity of discourse is so stark and so shamelessly obvious it’s hard not to jump to more nefarious conclusions and start to see some slightly more sinister undertones surrounding the discussions…
Paul Pogba has rarely been out of the headlines during his United career for better or worse but I just find it absolutely exasperating that on a weekend in which we beat Leeds United 5-1 at Old Trafford with him assisting four goals we’re somehow still talking about off-the-pitch issues, instead of just seeing his performance for what it was – world class.
It seems we’re all incapable of separating the man from the player or maybe more pertinently the reputation from the player.
Despite his questionable consistency Paul Pogba has done what only six others have managed to do in Premier League history and yet people still can’t praise him and cite past indiscretions to avoid doing so. And in the same breath and despite decidedly NOT acting like a saint Harry Kane is declared one nonetheless. Shambolic.
If professional pundits who are paid to be neutral can’t keep their emotions out of their “analysis” then I’m not sure television work is for them, then again punditry is hardly at its zenith at the moment, so perhaps people like Souness and the clowns on talkSPORT are perfect for it, which is indicative enough of the state of modern journalism.
All in all, if this weekend’s anything to go by, with the incredibly bitter refusal to praise Paul Pogba; the mind-numbing double standards for Harry Kane; the failure to dig out £100m man Jack Grealish despite his subpar performance, which I couldn’t even be bothered to mention, the Premier League is back and the agendas are too.
It’s going to be a long season…