I made the wise decision the other night to watch a football match I just knew would contain everything that’s good about the game. Skill, style, pace, quality throughout the team. It seems only natural that this game was held at Arsenal’s stadium since that’s the fare we are served up weekly. However this game was Brazil vs. Sweden. The option of course was to watch England on the box against France. Needless to say, I made the right choice. The game in London was full of skill, tight control and passing, some great defending and some moments of sublime football.

When I got home in a suitably uplifted mood I made the error of switching onto the BBC highlights of the England game. Fortunately, I missed most of the game but decided to watch the “expert” pundits, in this case Shearer and Hansen, giving their summation.

I was stunned. And this was on two levels. Firstly I was surprised to find myself agreeing with what they had to say. England are one dimensional, with too many players of insufficient technical ability to make a mark at international level. Of course none of this is news to anyone with a fairly balanced view and/or who has had the opportunity to watch Arsenal over the last 10 years or so. It’s just that we’ve had the “players union” in cahoots with lazy journalists and self interested TV companies telling us how lucky we are to be watching the latest “golden generation” of under-talented, over-compensated, chav opportunists for such a long time it is easier to accept their views rather than apply your own thought processes.

But once I’d picked myself up off the floor from agreeing with these doyens of the beautiful game, the real shock was that, yes, these are the same pundits who week in, week out espouse the “up-and-at-‘em, in their faces, gritty, they-don’t like-it-up’em Mr Mainwaring” philosophy in their analysis to Premier League matches. We know all too well that these phrases and a hundred other such are simply euphemisms for “it’s ok to play the game as though it were rugby league”. Suddenly, they seem to have had some Damascene conversion and are presenting themselves as the saviours of the game.

And mow I note that this contagion is beginning to spread. Paul Hayward has written in the Daily Mail;

“Yawn if you must, but a national curriculum for coaching and technique will one day save us from having to wonder where the centre forwards went, what happened to English goalkeepers, why the ball bounces off Stewart Downing, why the side who faced France displayed such a shocking lack of pace, especially on the flanks, and why a country with a fine national academy but an unsung top division can so utterly outshine the big earners of the Premier League... My own conviction is now unshakeable. England are the sick man of Europe because the culture is failing to produce enough footballers who are comfortable with the international technical 'vocabulary' of Croatia or France.”

I'm sorry but this is just a statement of the bleeding obvious. And it palls coming from media types who have done so much harm not just to Arsenal's game but to the national game too. These are the men who refuse to condemn tackles by thugs like Taylor on Eduardo and who artfully attempt to shift the focus onto Wenger’s (to my mind still correct) assertion that such players should be banned.

These are the men who propound the theory that mediocrities like Allardyce, Hughes, Boothroyd and Warnock are somehow guardians of our football heritage and that by implication forward thinking men such as Wenger are somehow not be trusted. These are the men for whom the embodiment of all that is good about English football is Ian Nolan or any number of other players whose main talent is in being able to run around a lot for 90 minutes and kick people. When confronted by a sublime talent like Ronaldo (it hurts but it’s true), or Cesc they state explicitly that it’s perfectly acceptable to kick them out of the game. Which sends down the message to the managerial bottom feeders I’ve already named that this is what they not only are best suited to doing, but where their ambitions ought to lie.

Perhaps this is just the start of a turnaround in the way the media looks at the game. Of course I wouldn’t expect them to attribute any of the credit to the likes of Wenger. They are far too shallow for that. But if this is the start of a sea change in the way the game is reported on, then it can only be good for Arsenal Football Club and the next generation coming through the ranks.