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Monday, February 3, 2014

Injury and fitness news v Chelsea & a moan about sports reporting

James Milner is back in the squad for tonight's game, but Nasri and Garcia are still out injured, Pellegrini announced at Friday's press conference .

Unfortunately, as proceedings were dominated by questions of the "Would you say?" variety, not much actual news came out of the press conference. Pellegrini revealed that Aguero is out for "maybe one month, but not sure absolutely now", while Nasri "continues with (his) treatment".

In fact, it's games like these that really highlight the unthinking, sensationalist nature of so much of the national press nowadays. Here's a transcript of some of the questions from Part 2 of the press conference:

Journalist 1:
Q: "Would it bother you how they (Chelsea) play?"
Q: "Would you ever criticise another manager the way Jose did?"

Journalist 2
Q: "Do you think Chelsea were lucky to beat you down there, Manuel?"
Q: "You seemed to be upset by Jose's celebrations those days. He went up into the crowd, didn't he, and danced around the technical area. You seemed quite angry about that. Remember that? I can't image you doing that."

Journalist 1:
Q: "Are you concerned about getting drawn into, soft of, mind games with Jose Mourinho?"

I was chatting to a national journalist the other day and we were both remarking on how radically the working life of a newspaper reporter has changed since the old days. Back in the 1970s and 80s any reporter who spent long periods at his desk was seen as a shirker, because real reporters were supposed to be out of the office, cultivating contacts and digging up stories. Today the opposite it true. Reporters are expected to be at their desk all day, re-working wire copy and collecting quotes over the phone.

It's a shame that the few journalists actually allowed out of the office nowadays include people like these guys, who only make the trips in the hope of collecting the sufficient words to complete their pre-written stories.

Anyway, here are the details of minutes played and goals scored for the last seven games:



































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