I can see the sense in having the "best" local journalists cover each club so the fans get the best connected and most focused analysis of their team, but it certainly has its drawbacks too.
Namely, it leads to tribalism not only filling the comments sections, but driving the articles themselves. Case in point, the steaming pile of article from Laurie Whitwell today absolutely fumbling about with the numbers of United's transfer dealings to try and make Klopp's comments about rival spending look foolish. To create such a strawman argument is pathetic in itself, but he doesn't even capitalise on it with the correct answer. He seems to have just made up some things about amortization and theoretical amounts, rather than actually knowing how much United are paying and when. If you're getting triggered by some pretty harmless comments from a rival manager, enough to write a hasty and poorly stuctured piece for a paid subscription service, then maybe you're not professional enough to be in such a role.
This was followed up by the Chelsea correspondent Simon Johnson doing similar via Twitter in response to Klopp's comments, in which he added up Chelsea's sales to make it seem like they've pretty much broken even, despite the fact the figure includes the £34m for the Abraham deal, completed today, four days after Klopp made those comments.
If this is what modern journalism is going to be, slightly more erudite versions of the same gimps you see on Twitter with Sancho or Mount as their avatars who scream at anyone not on their side, I'm out. The Athletic does have some terrific journalists/writers, but they are increasingly being lost in the puddle of biased 'opinion' pieces from people who would make AFTV blush.
Oh, and their sub-editors are shite, or possibly non-existent. Like reading The Grauniad most of the time.
