SKY ACCUSED OF SENSATIONALISM

The morning after the night before, Sky News was boasting that it would be "coming live from Old Trafford to keep you up to date with all the action as it unfolds". While not quite on the same scale as demanding the Prime Minister apologise for the slave trade, there was a sense that such reporting may have been a little tardy. Twelve hours after the event, the visiting Roma supporters had all flown home, the middle-aged English blokes in black ski jackets had stopped running around shouting, all we could see were a couple of bleary-eyed Irishmen emerging with carrier bags from the Manchester United megastore. Even Sky's reporter, Ian Dovaston, sounded a little apologetic about the implication from the studio that he was delivering a dispatch from the front line of a re-enactment of the Battle of Monte Casino.

"It would be wrong to say that we saw anything like last week," said Dovaston. "And it would be right to say that Greater Manchester Police dealt swiftly with any tension."

Nonetheless, Sky News had decided that what happened before United's Champions League quarter-final with Roma was significant enough to lead its bulletins all day. Thus, as Dovaston stood in lonely vigil outside the ground, the pictures of the previous evening's scuffles were replayed for approximately the 323rd time. So often had they been shown, we could tick them off on our mental register: the fat bloke being wrestled to the floor by half a dozen cops, the hooligan with a scarf covering his face taking a swipe at the camera, the woman with a twisted ankle being helped from the scene. Compared to what had gone on in Rome the previous week, this was thin televisual gruel.

What Sky News was engaging in here was as fine an example of news creation as you will see. Despite the fact that the principal participant and instigator of the previous bout - the Rome police - would, by definition, be absent, Sky's management had decided that Old Trafford was to play host to a rematch of the big fight. They had stationed cameras outside the ground which caught a couple of moments of ugliness. These were then replayed interminably, generally accompanied by a caption stating 'Manchester United could face disciplinary action after trouble flared at last night's Champions League game'. There was no indication as to who was suggesting such a thing might happen, or, given that the incidents were as nothing compared to the nastiness of Rome, why.

What seemed even more singular about Sky's news judgment was that the really significant story unfolded on Tuesday night behind the walls immediately over Dovaston's shoulder. United's 7-1 demolition of Roma, coupled with Chelsea's character-full win in Valencia, brings the tantalising prospect of two teams facing each other at the last to decide the outcome of the Treble. United and Chelsea are edging ever closer to meeting in two cup finals, with a Premiership showdown as an appetiser. One fortnight in May could turn out to contain the biggest football news of the decade. Though Sky News will probably report it by replaying shots of the hooligan in the scarf assaulting the camera.