We're Independent Are You?

When I write about football I tend to write through the prism of a hardcore Baggies fan who has experienced his fair share of ups and downs. I am biased but I hope it does not make me blind to the faults of my club or the failings the players it employs. Anyway that is my excuse I am left wondering as to what Jon Culley's is for the match report in the Independent of the game between LIVERPOOL & West Bromwich Albion.

I understand that Liverpool the team with a wage bill 3 times it's opponents, a player whose transfer fee would have paid for the entire Albion match day squad with change is the story from a national newspapers perspective hungry for clicks and eyeballs from around the world. However it does not let the writer off writing something which does justice to both sides of the story.

Albion played their part in a keenly fought contest, Culley managed to name check two Albion players who were not playing but ignored the excellent Claudio Yacob who along with his team mates.matched their more heralded opponents for possession across the game. Did he mention that Sturridge's goal might have been offside  or that Gerrard might have been lucky not to be booked for a cynical foul ten minutes before he was rightly booked for a bad tackle on Yacob? No, perhaps that did not fit with the predetermined narrative.

While the game turned on Toure's dreadful error it was not solely down to Liverpool's ineptitude that the Albion rescued a point from an unpromising position of being one - nil down to a team lest we forget is chasing a Champion's League position. However reading the Independent on line one might get the impression that it was particularly when the match report is accompanied by another five hundred words on how the Liverpool manager forgave Toure for his howler. As an aside is it me or does Brendan Rodgers get more insufferable by the day?

Part of me shrugs and just pours scorn on the London based media rather pathetic attempts to report on the Albion. In fairness I am taking a shot at the Independent but I could have equally taken a shot at any of it's broadsheet competitors (apart from the Times I won't pay for the privilege of being patronised  or ignored in equal measure). However there is a serious point the absence of reasonable press coverage hinders the club in getting even a tiny fragment of the global marketing pie and it reinforces the notion that match officials are there to "protect" the star players from the big clubs and if they make a bad decision against us it is no big deal because it is only West Bromwich Albion.

I know I am biased but at least I have an excuse for that bias. I am not sure the "National Media" does.