Journalism in Lower League Football

This blogpost has been in the brewing for a couple of months now. In fact ever since Mel Morris took the decision to relieve Paul Clement of his duties as Head Coach at Derby County I have been looking far more closely at the national media with regards to the reporting of football in the lower leagues.

The reaction of the national media to Clement's sacking was very much the same as most Derby fans; shock. What happened afterwards was very different though. As Mel Morris gave the reasons for his decision including the words "Derby Way" and "Promotion isn't the priority" everyone took stock trying to figure out what they meant. Derby fans; or at least a majority of Derby fans saw the reasoning and came to a similar conclusion that Morris had come to - harsh though it was, the sacking was for the greater good.

Paul Clement was sacked in February after the teams poor performances (Fabio De Paola)

The various news outlet of the national media reacted rather differently with many questioning the decision and openly stating that it would come back to bite us in the arse. As recently as yesterday, 3 months after the sacking, there were still pieces expressing confusion. This would suggest a distinct lack of detailed research into the topic. Anyone who had seen more than 5 matches prior to Clement's sacking could've seen exactly what most Derby fans have recognised since; a defensive-minded team relying on moments of magic to scrape out 1-0 victories. This simply isn't viable in the long term unless you have truly world class players.

The way football journalism tends to work is interesting when it comes to national newspapers. The big papers focus on the Premier League - why wouldn't they? That's what most of their audience wants to read about. Within this they tend to have reporters who cover specific areas; John Percy covers the Midlands for the Daily Telegraph, Louise Taylor covers the North-East for the Guardian etc. Even so most of these journalist converse about their areas with other football correspondents at their papers - or at least I would hope so!

It is a tough balancing act. There is a lot of football to cover; in the Midlands there could be 7 Midlands clubs in the Championship alone next season. I'm sure it's tough for one person (John Percy in this case) to stay abreast of all developments in these clubs. It would be very tough for them to be as knowledgeable as a fan of each club; to know not only the results,who scored and when, but also to know how good the performance was, what the positives and negatives of each performance were. Of course this would be expected for Premier League teams like Leicester City, West Bromwich Albion and Stoke City, but not for those in the lower leagues.

John Percy could have to cover 7 Championship teams next season. (telegraph.co.uk)

You would be far more suited looking to the local papers such as the Derby Telegraph for in-depth discussion (or in some case factual discussion) of lower league teams. Even though Derby are a big club* and are only one league below the Premier League some reporting left me clawing at my eyes. There was a lot stated in the press about how Derby were fifth in the league, only five points from the top of the league and saying how this was a decision based on wanting promotion at all costs. I've detailed rebuttals to all of this in a previous blog post. Respected journalists were coming out with this stuff, stating how it didn't make sense when Morris explained everything clearly and concisely.

* I am fully aware of how bad using the term 'big club' makes me sound. What I mean is that in terms of readership we would be a big club - over 23,000 season ticket holders and over one million people living in Derbyshire is not a small potential readership base.

This is beginning to sound like a rant. Next you know I'll be talking about some kind of anti-Derby conspiracy! However I know it's not only Derby who suffer from this. I was at an interview recently and I got talking to somebody there. This man is a Barnsley fan, born and bred. We were talking about Lee Johnson leaving Barnsley just outside the playoffs and going to Bristol City. The national press were talking about the great job that Johnson had done at Barnsley to get them that high in the league and I asked this man if he thought Barnsley would miss Johnson. I was a little surprised when he said no and that despite turning around their appalling start to the season they would cope well without him. I was a little skeptical but here we are at the end of the season and Barnsley are in the playoffs.

Lee Johnson left Barnsley for Bristol City in February.

In that same conversation this man mentioned that it appeared that Clement had been hard done by, to be sacked in fifth place and five points of top. I explained to him my point of view and we both came to a similar conclusion - there are things that the national press miss, especially when it comes to lower league football. You can't just look at the results of a team and automatically come to a conclusion about whether a sacking was the right one - you have to actually see the team in action for at least several matches, not just watch them on Sky if they happen to be on.


This is an unavoidable fact of supporting team not in the Premier League, you get less coverage in the media and that which you do get is of lower quality. From a journalists perspective I'm sure there is so much to cover that it's inevitable that some things get lost in the hustle and bustle of it all. That knowledge doesn't make me any less frustrated when the media comes out with ill-informed articles and uses this to back up arguments. 

The article that tipped me over the edge and contributed to the synthesis of this article was this one by Daniel Taylor in the Guardian. In his blog Mr Taylor talks about how sacking managers rarely makes sense and includes the sacking of Clement as one of his examples. Now, Daniel Taylor is an exceptional journalist (if you ignore the fact that he supports Forest), and I'm sure he is extremely well-versed in matters taking place in Manchester where he was based before becoming the papers Chief Football Writer.

It's worth noting Mr Taylor that despite what your piece implies, Clement was not sacked for our league position, he was sacked for dour football and a lack of integration of academy players into the main squad. Promotion is a secondary target this season, the main target was to built on the expansive football that Nigel Clough introduced and Steve McClaren took further and to that extent Darren Wassall has succeeded as far as he can in three months. I can accept people on opposition and online football forums being uninformed, but not top journalists who are supposed to know their stuff.

Another team mentioned in the article is Huddersfield Town. Huddersfield sacked Chris Powell when they 18th and finished the league in 19th position. On the face of it this adds to Taylor's argument, but Huddersfield's improvement since Powell's sacking on the pitch was remarkable. They went from a team that was poor away from home and struggling to score goals, to a team full of attacking verve who were lovely to watch. Improvement is not only measured by results and I'm sure if Mr Taylor had seen many of their matches since that sacking would've noticed that. 

A piece by Daniel Taylor was the inspiration for this piece/rant. (@DTguardian)

I'm going to finish what has definitely turned into a rant with an aside. Mr Taylor mentioned that Derby are now 11 points from the automatic promotion places - what would you make of Sheffield Wednesday then who are 3 points further behind us than at the time of the sacking, or Hull who are still only five points ahead of Derby at the end of the season. Hull were second in the league when Clement was sacked, yet no mention of Hull's poor performance in the second half of the season can be found in the national media.

Perhaps that's more of an indictment of the national media's general apathy towards lower league football in general. Lower league football doesn't sell views and readers like the Premier League does; is that because people are less interested? Is it because there is simply less quality journalism about it? Or maybe it's both - there's less reporting on the lower leagues, so less people read it? There are hundreds of enticing and riveting stories going on in the lower leagues and personally I think it's a shame that many don't get reported upon and that when they do, they are often reported poorly or to fit a larger narrative that they don't fit.