On a sporting level, the minute a footballer hints at a change of scenery - or just fails to deny one firmly enough – his big-money move is reported as being signed sealed and delivered.

Most readers can, and do, take this with a pinch of salt,  but it is more difficult to stomach when press intrusion becomes influential on events. They can report what they want, but it’s when their reports and sensationalism begin to truly affect goings-on at a club that the football fan can rightly feel a little aggrieved.

A recent case of this is in the Manchester City melodrama. Granted, there was hardly intense media pressure on City chairman Thaksin Shinawatra to comment on manager Sven Goran Eriksson’s future, nor did they influence his bizarre and ill-educated philosophy. But the fact remains that through the press, a man’s career has been put into question.

Shinawatra spoke to the press and his comments on Eriksson’s now-uncertain future were met by the Swede with understandable bewilderment. Without any contact being made between the two parties, City are in crisis, with their chairman isolating himself from the fans simply by sharing a few badly-chosen thoughts with the press. Meanwhile, the fans are up in arms as their players are outraged and go on to lose 8-1 to strugglers Middlesbrough.

I’m not blaming press intrusion for this, but it highlights how quickly its involvement can turn things sour.

The media has never been kind to poor old Sven. In his previous role, as England manager, there was a more deliberate press involvement, which became a sustained character assassination. Again, the press could not solely be blamed for his departure from the role, as Eriksson’s performance in the job drew widespread criticism. Perhaps more to the point, his off-field behaviour was under constant scrutiny.

This highlights how outside football, the media do so much more than report the news. They influence the everyday thinking of nearly everyone. Whether it be through the hounding of a drug-addled celebrity or the righteous campaigning over the latest national moral panic, you can bet that the media will be right at the very heart of it.

Going back to football, the press tendency to go beyond the call of duty and create news off its own back makes the life of a journalist easier. But for everyday fans, it poses a threat to the well-being of their beloved club.

…he’s only gone and got himself misquoted in the French press!

From Drogba to William Gallas to Lance Armstrong, it seems everyone who is anyone has found themselves in a sticky situation with the French media, particularly sporting rag L’Equipe (link in french, obviously).

Drogba has had to backtrack for the umpteenth time on comments made in L’Equipe about wanting a move from Chelsea to AC Milan.

Similar incidents have occurred recently concerning Arsenal defender William Gallas, who was lambasted for “criticism” of the Arsenal medical staff. As a poster on Gunnerblog points out, it turned out on this occasion that Gallas’ comments were something like this:

Do you blame the medical staff at Arsenal?
“Well, yes, a bit, on account of this error of diagnosis. Afterwards, the doctors did all they could to recover me. But, in the end, my season was not satisfying. We haven’t seen the Gallas of Chelsea or the French team and I blame myself. I haven’t performed as I have previously.”

Hardly a damning indictment.

Gunners midfielder Mathieu Flamini is another to flirt dangerously with L’Equipe in recent years. When asked by the paper how things are going at Arsenal, he never seems to do the right thing by his club and keep shtum. Instead, as Ahmed Bilal wrote on Soccerlens, he expresses an interest in moving away from a club he should show loyalty to. Flamini did recently make his much-touted move to AC Milan.

It’s difficult to pin down who’s to blame. Clearly, players could do more to avoid such situations. But at the same time, L’Equipe is hardly a stranger to controversy.

A regular ”victim” has been former cyclist Lance Armstrong. The seven-time Tour De France winner has frequently been targeted by L’Equipe in connection with drugs accusations.

As several readers commented on tdfblog.com, it remains a mystery that he has not sued the paper for defamation. And DrPat of Blogcritics magazine argues strongly in Armstrong’s favour.

The question has to be asked: If these poor sportsmen are being misquoted, then who is misquoting them?

Such controversies are hardly exclusive to the French press, with British tabloids giving them a real run for their money.

It would be easy for sportsmen to blame the language barrier, claim that the fuss about their comments is because of something lost – or added - in translation.

While there is a good chance of this happening due to French and British tabloids’ hunger for controversy, the reality is that responsibility lies with the sportsmen to mind what they’re saying or face the resulting backlash.

IAN Wright will no longer be the loudmouth of BBC football coverage. But how big a loss will he be?

Wright explained to Broadcast magazine (link requires subscription) that he “doesn’t know how long young people are going to want to sit down and watch that same old ‘jacket, shirt and tie’ format.”

He added that he had been made “the comedy jester between Alan Hansen and Alan Shearer.”

In itself, this self-proclamation exposes a fundamental flaw in Wrighty’s broadcasting style. He can barely speak the language. One of his more infamous quotes was “You’ve got to take the rough with the smooth. It’s like love and hate, war and peace, all that bollocks.”

And few would argue that Wrighty had actually shown a witty turn of phrase when saying of his former Arsenal teammate, ex-alcoholic Tony Adams: “It took a lot of bottle for Tony to own up.”

Whether or not this is a problem has always divided opinion among football viewers, and no doubt will continue to do so along whatever paths Wright treads in the future.

He certainly has a point about the “jacket, shirt and tie format”. Every few years there’s a new batch of ex-footballers such as Gavin Peacock, Lee Dixon and Don Goodman, appearing on television, clinging onto their cliche books for dear life – but that’s a subject for another post…

Whether you agree or disagree with, or even fail to comprehend what he says, Ian Wright talks football like a fan. It’s just that this fan has played for his country and broken goalscoring records at a top European club.

He never attempts to hide his bias towards Arsenal, England, or his son, Chelsea’s Shaun Wright-Phillips. But who would want him to?

He is a million miles from eloquent, but there’s little doubt that he brings something to the table. As one blogger says on Anorak News, “If Wright were to being (sic) out a signature scent it would be of kebab, onions and thrown lager.” He is the fan among the “experts” – exactly what the BBC wanted him to be.

Which makes you wonder why he’s leaving, as opposed to continuing to provide the voice he feels viewers want to hear. No doubt a combination of England’s failure to qualify for Euro 2008 and the BBC’s loss of the rights to show England’s home games has played its part.

But whatever his reasons, Ian Wright will be missed. As blog BodogBEAT says, he tells it how it is, and he does so without shedding his personality. So good luck to him.

However, one of the main thorns in my side has been the quantity and quality of media coverage of my team. Many readers of this blog probably had little or no idea of Blackpool’s standing, nor that of clubs like Rochdale, Stockport and Peterborough.

And who can blame you? You have to be particularly selective in your choice of newspaper if you want to read below the top league, or even the top four clubs.

So often, it is clear from reading a lower league match report in a national tabloid that the reporter has never heard of the players on show. It is understandable to an extent that a reporter would not take the time to familiarise himself with every player from each of the 92 Football League clubs.

However, as supporters on The Football Forum concur, to read a report full of factual inaccuracies from someone who clearly wasn’t even at the game can be galling, particularly when the players’ performances are haphazardly “rated”.

Until recently, Sky’s “Lower League expert” Chris Kamara was asked to name player of the month for each of the leagues below the Premiership. As much as it pains me to criticise a man who causes hilarity with his excitable performance on Soccer Saturday, it made grim viewing for those in the know.

For the Championship, it was a fairly simple task for Kammy, as there was usually a well-known striker banging in goals and being linked with top Premiership clubs.

However, when it came to the bottom two divisions, his decision-making technique for suitable candidates appeared to be:

a) The striker who had scored the most goals that month.
b) …that’s it, unless a defender had somehow scored a freak four or five goals that month.

Having said all this, the reasons are clear. Quite simply, more people want to read about the bigger clubs, as they ARE the bigger clubs with bigger followings. However, newspapers such as the News of the World have to realise that it is not acceptable to fob off its readership with lazy, inept reporting.

The cutbacks are understandable in a world where satisfying the audience takes centre-stage. But it is a frustrating reality for lower-league football supporters that they are going to have to put up with sub-standard coverage of their sides for the forseeable future.