The Athletic and Leicester

[fleckneymike]

Does anyone find that the City articles are becoming a tad ‘lazy’?

 

Today’s feature on Vardy’s party the night we won the league includes more details about home improvement fixtures and fittings than anything else. It details how many bedrooms, the type of work surface in the kitchen (‘designer American walnut with island if anyone’s interested) along with details of his tattoo. 
 

I know we’re rather limited in terms of big moments in history but if we’re at the stage of writing articles that read more like a piece from country living then heaven help us. 

[Guest Electric Yetis]

It's Rob Tanner. It was never going to be great.

I cancelled after my original discount subscription. Just not worth it.

[baldeagle]

I found a lot or the articles , especially Leicester are just as rehash of ones they've written for their previous employees .Rob Tanner being the main culprit 

[Reginaldo]

10 minutes ago, Rain King said:

It's Rob Tanner. It was never going to be great.

I cancelled after my original discount subscription. Just not worth it.

Same. Saying that, I cannot recall many insightful interviews with any of our players for some time. Slim pickings I think.

[Golden Fox]

The Athletic is still very US-centric, and as such, they think the "EPL" is made up of 6 clubs with the rest being makeweights. (Let's face it the Leicester home page has the schedule for home and away the wrong way round as it probably comes from a US sports' algorithm).

 

They pay lip service to other teams by just assigning 1 writer and thinking that does the job. I do enjoy Rob's articles, but it will take a few days to write an article and there are only so many topics you can generate, so it is a bit of a hospital pass to him to have to cover a team on his own. (e.g. I've just glanced at some of the Greedy Six pages & they have multiple writers, and NFL teams can have teams of writers).

 

I also follow US sports so have had the subscription for a few years (Grant Bribsee is a must read!), but if I were subscribing for a Leicester City only point of view, I would be disappointed with the return and can't disagree with any of the comments made here.

[The whole world smiles]

39 minutes ago, fleckneymike said:

Does anyone find that the City articles are becoming a tad ‘lazy’?

 

Today’s feature on Vardy’s party the night we won the league includes more details about home improvement fixtures and fittings than anything else. It details how many bedrooms, the type of work surface in the kitchen (‘designer American walnut with island if anyone’s interested) along with details of his tattoo. 
 

I know we’re rather limited in terms of big moments in history but if we’re at the stage of writing articles that read more like a piece from country living then heaven help us. 

I like Rob tanner, I especially like his features on players the one on James Justin that went into his father dying in particularly good. 

 

In his defence its difficult to come up with 2/3 fresh long features a week every week without it becoming a tad repetitive. The only thing I don't like is the fact he's a brummie surely they could have a got a die hard Leicester fan doing that job! 

[The Horse's Mouth]

The athletic is a load of old bollocks anyway, who's paying a subscription fee to read about the history for Dunfermline's mascot

[fleckneymike]

There are some good articles on there. Just not about Leicester (unless they’re  written by someone else). 
 

Honestly, today’s reminded me of a terrible Jimmy Greaves autobiography I had where I swear he’d been paid by the word. There were anecdotes about myxomatosis in rabbits and half a page dedicated to what was on at the cinema one week in the 60s. 
 

 

[UpTheLeagueFox]

I pay £1 per month for 12 months. Well worth it. Yeah some rehashes here and there but some belting in depth stuff about football generally, not just us.

[gerblod]

What's 'The Athletic'?

 

[Dahnsouff]

6 hours ago, gerblod said:

What's 'The Athletic'?

 

Football writers retirement plan

[Freeman's Wharfer]

I cancelled my subscription.

 

It’s probably worth £1 a month but their model would not be sustainable with everyone paying that so I don’t think they’ll be successful in the UK long term with the current offering.

 

Two things that annoyed me:

 

1) I was seeing a lot pop up in Tanner’s articles that I’d read before or even heard elsewhere on publicly available podcasts. I think he struggles to write decent long reads and ‘pads out’ a lot of his articles with fluff (he’ll often make an article out of a Rodgers press conference with a load of fluff around the quotes that you can hear on BBC Radio Leicester anyway)

 

2) They’ve taken a very strong political/moral position. The appeal to me was that this was about quality football writing and have seen a lot of articles that are as much political, moral or social justice related as they are football. We get that everywhere else at the moment, I just want to read about football.

 

Tanner is a bog standard local paper reporter who joined the Merc when Leicester were dire. He got incredibly lucky that the greatest sports story happened during his tenure and this role off the back of it. The problem is he’s been catapulted into a publication alongside some of the finest writers in the country - and it shows. It might seem a small thing but I rarely read an article of his without a typo/error.
 

That said, when you compare him to the guys that are the club specific writers for the likes of Leeds, Newcastle and Liverpool, he’s also still out of his depth. From 10+ years at the Merc you’d expect a good journalist to have a plethora of contacts to interview about the club and real inside knowledge. He has neither.

 

So my advice is if you want decent writing on football in general, give it a try at £1 a month. If you want to get decent stuff on LCFC, don’t bother.

[Guest ttfn]

I agree with lots of this, I’m sure he’s trying his best but he doesn’t seem to have the same level of access as some of the other clubs’ writers and the writing isn’t of the same quality as the likes of Oli Kay, Adam Crafton, Daniel Taylor etc.

 

That said, one thing I will say for him is that his writing is polite but generally not overly sycophantic about the club. If you read any of the articles written about Liverpool by the Liverpool reporters they are nausea-inducing. 

[Footballwipe]

2 minutes ago, Freeman's Wharfer said:

Tanner is a bog standard local paper reporter who joined the Merc when Leicester were dire. He got incredibly lucky that the greatest sports story happened during his tenure and this role off the back of it. The problem is he’s been catapulted into a publication alongside some of the finest writers in the country - and it shows. It might seem a small thing but I rarely read an article of his without a typo/error.

I feel really harsh to agree, and yet I agree with this. Tanner is nowhere in comparison to the other club-specific reporters at the Athletic. Leeds like you mention have Phil Hay, who is brilliant. The top teams get top reporters. Laurie Whitwell was a Mail Sport writer, Jack Pitt-Brooke for Spurs. These are good, nationally recognised with previous  contacts and can offer genuine insight.

 

I really enjoy a lot of their podcasts as they have a great network of them, but I can probably count on one hand the amount of times Tanner has been bought on... or I've learnt anything new. I just wonder that as he was a local rag reporter for so long, he was never afforded the luxury of insider knowledge or a way-in, and nothing has improved since I've never engaged with their LCFC pod because I find club specific podcasts tedious.

 

It's a vicious circle though... sub-par writing and insight doesn't draw LCFC fans in, meaning there's no incentive to beef up the line-up or make a change to give us something new.

 

I guess it was the easy (lazy?) choice to go for him when they were starting up, but it just feels like we've been left behind the standard I'd expect of them since.

 

 

[FLAN]

10 hours ago, Rain King said:

It's Rob Tanner. It was never going to be great.

I cancelled after my original discount subscription. Just not worth it.

On a par with Jason Bourne as a journalist.
I remember asking Bourne why he wasn’t asking the club for their stance on the Offside Trust when clubs were starting to back it. He basically said he didn’t know what it was - this was a massive story at the time 

[FLAN]

14 minutes ago, Freeman's Wharfer said:

I cancelled my subscription.

 

It’s probably worth £1 a month but their model would not be sustainable with everyone paying that so I don’t think they’ll be successful in the UK long term with the current offering.

 

Two things that annoyed me:

 

1) I was seeing a lot pop up in Tanner’s articles that I’d read before or even heard elsewhere on publicly available podcasts. I think he struggles to write decent long reads and ‘pads out’ a lot of his articles with fluff (he’ll often make an article out of a Rodgers press conference with a load of fluff around the quotes that you can hear on BBC Radio Leicester anyway)

 

2) They’ve taken a very strong political/moral position. The appeal to me was that this was about quality football writing and have seen a lot of articles that are as much political, moral or social justice related as they are football. We get that everywhere else at the moment, I just want to read about football.

 

Tanner is a bog standard local paper reporter who joined the Merc when Leicester were dire. He got incredibly lucky that the greatest sports story happened during his tenure and this role off the back of it. The problem is he’s been catapulted into a publication alongside some of the finest writers in the country - and it shows. It might seem a small thing but I rarely read an article of his without a typo/error.
 

That said, when you compare him to the guys that are the club specific writers for the likes of Leeds, Newcastle and Liverpool, he’s also still out of his depth. From 10+ years at the Merc you’d expect a good journalist to have a plethora of contacts to interview about the club and real inside knowledge. He has neither.

 

So my advice is if you want decent writing on football in general, give it a try at £1 a month. If you want to get decent stuff on LCFC, don’t bother.

Amazes me how often you see typos in online articles. There’s a thing called spellcheck now lads. 

[HighPeakFox]

Just now, FLAN said:

Amazes me how often you see typos in online articles. There’s a thing called spellcheck now lads. 

Spellcheck only works if you know how to apply it  

[Babylon]

I enjoyed it to start with, but it's rubbish now and I ended the subscription. I could sit and read an article about Man U in the Guardian for instance, but on the Athletic the reporters who write about each club seem to do so with such rose tinted spectacles, the articles for the "big" clubs are ludicrously biased to appeal to their fan base and the writers from the smaller clubs seem to write shite to appeal more to the masses, rather than an in depth article only Leicester fans might read. 

[davieG]

I gave up during the free subscription period.  I also gave up on Tanner's book about our Championship win it was 90% just a rerun of the match reports with very little added. I've read several others on the win and they were all significantly better and way more interesting.

[FLAN]

11 minutes ago, HighPeakFox said:

Spellcheck only works if you know how to apply it  

You wouldn’t believe how often I read my reply before posting it! 

[Freeman's Wharfer]

12 minutes ago, davieG said:

I gave up during the free subscription period.  I also gave up on Tanner's book about our Championship win it was 90% just a rerun of the match reports with very little added. I've read several others on the win and they were all significantly better and way more interesting.

Very good point. The editors at The Athletic should have read that book and seen the standard of writing they would get. Compared to The Unbelievables it was very poor.

[eblair]

12 hours ago, The whole world smiles said:

I like Rob tanner, I especially like his features on players the one on James Justin that went into his father dying in particularly good. 

 

In his defence its difficult to come up with 2/3 fresh long features a week every week without it becoming a tad repetitive. The only thing I don't like is the fact he's a brummie surely they could have a got a die hard Leicester fan doing that job! 

 bit harsh he has reported on city for over 10 years now

[HighPeakFox]

2 hours ago, FLAN said:

You wouldn’t believe how often I read my reply before posting it! 

No doubt - my point was that some people's phones autcorrect to the wrong thing - and that can only happen through repetition. For example, a lot of people type 'Evan's', which can only occur through repeated insistence on a mistake. 'Definately' is another, I think. There's evolution of language, and then there's just 'getting it wrong'.

[Guest Electric Yetis]

Just now, HighPeakFox said:

No doubt - my point was that some people's phones autcorrect to the wrong thing - and that can only happen through repetition. For example, a lot of people type 'Evan's', which can only occur through repeated insistence on a mistake. 'Definately' is another, I think. There's evolution of language, and then there's just 'getting it wrong'.

N'didi

[KingsX]

For me, Tanner and his LCFC coverage have been the only disappointing thing about the Athletic.  The ongoing coverage of the ESL has been superb, with several club writers providing insider-sourced info about what went down, plus some scathing criticism of owners’ intent and execution.

 

Unlike them, Tanner either has no access, or is unwilling to rock the boat.  A very bland writer who rarely tells you anything you don’t already know.

 

But the whole point of the Athletic is inside information and quality analysis you can’t get elsewhere.  I can see why City fans aren’t staying signed up.