Actually, no.

The man is full of ulterior motives, unreliable, and his posts often amount to simple rumour repeating. Most of which turns out to be wrong and is nearly always negative. What it amounts to is less than the average troll on here to be honest. At least when he was firmly embedded in deepest darkest twitter you could occasionally glance at what 'sensational' job-saving snippet of pub rumour he was spouting that day. You could then read it in bullet point format and reworded, it seems, for an eight year old reading ability in the MEN. The bonus was that you could come on here and laugh and point at the strange journalist man.

Now he's spread his wings and suddenly wants to become Mr involved on here, when in reality it's just regurgitation (And I use that words meaning in all its connotations) of his same 'reporting' of general made-up rumour and heresay.

His insight is not worth having if you have to sift through the effluence of nonsense to find something worthwhile.

There's a fair effluence of nonsense on here generally so he fits quite well.
Butcher,I respect your viewpoint and I'm happy to wade through his offerings in search of a gem.
Let's see whether he's right about Goulding

Well this is exactly what Dr K tweeted at 10:30 last night in answer to that very question:

@sports_the_best not true at all. We have no plans to replace Iestyn Harris

Excellent news

Fair enough.

For me, he's to 'all over the place'. He wont even respond to more than a few on here, which is kind of defeating the object of a public forum. You're right in saying there's plenty of soft plop on here already. The difference is that it's talked and scrutinized by us, the fans. With no other affiliations than the Clubs we support. This guy can't even decide which team he supports. Swaying from Wigan to Salford the same way we decide which underpants to put on in the morning. His employment capacity means that any old guff that's spouted on here can be redressed as legitimate knowledge, and let's face it, a broken clock is right twice a day. He seems to be of the school of thought that says if you throw enough 5hit some of it will stick.

I don't mind him being here, or what tripe he posts. He hasn't shown me any reason to trust or take seriously most of what he writes. Be it as a Wigan fan slagging us off, a Salford fan slagging us off, a Journalist, a fan, a twitter user, or an RLfans poster. His 'work' is in the public eye and it veers too sharply for me into rewording social media turd, collecting rumour from players/ex-players, and nearly always reporting a negative for the sake of it.

Are you sure that Gareth Hock isn't writing Neil Barkers column in the MEN?

Mario/Neil whoever it is is a poor excuse for a journalist in my opinion,just read any of his articles, many are just rewrites of previous articles with snippets from his contacts?

He then resorts to reporting exclusives from what people have posted on social media,what sort of journalist is that?

He appears to collect most of his information from ear wigging at what people are saying at matches,possibly lip reading from other people and then we have his contacts?He even quotes twitter feeds from other reporters, that is very professional I must say.

No wonder the MEN has to give out free copies on two days a week.

MK makes a lot a false promises and this needs to stop, below I will list a few examples;

• MK vowed to make us a top 4 team by now, whilst I hope most fans realised this was never going to happen some people still bought into the idea.
• What has happened to the land around the stadium and the plans he had?
• What has happened to the club shop which was meant to be opening?
• What happened to the ‘gone are the days of free tickets’?
• What happened to the ’gone are the days, the big clubs come and sign our players’?
• What happened to MK taking legal action against Gareth Hock if he played against us for Leigh?

I could go on all day, new stadiums, football clubs, NRL teams etc.

Why are no other clubs in the same boat? The amount of players / companies claiming they are owed money to me signals there is something in it. I also remember a marketing company at the end of last year ‘tweeting’ Vickers claiming they were owed money and Salford hadn’t responded.

MK is clearly very difficult to work for, you only have to look at the amount of ‘staff’ we have gone through since his arrival, although granted a lot did need to be shipped out.

Very grateful to him for putting his money into Salford and for that you have to respect him, but his handling and running of the clubs at times is embarrassing. I’m bored of everything now, I want to go to games and enjoy the rugby

Well, the appalling writing style certainly means there's plenty of white lines.

A long time ago, when Butcher and almost all posters were but a possibility and MR was still in short pants, I was asked to review two football reports. One was by a tabloid and one by a broadsheet.I had to extract facts from comment and opinion: even with the broadsheet, the % of facts was very small. Hundreds of dubious adjectives, personal comments and quotes from players and managers made up over 70% of the report. Nothing has convinced me that anything has changed (except we did win the League in the meantime).
When I read the RL press (two papers) I find it worse: a paragraph telling me who scored (rarely how) and several paragraphs of comment from the coaches: I could do better by missing the game, going to the press conference, and noting the scores from BBC. I cannot say I am a fan of the MEN but it is better than this. The report of the Wigan game did focus on the last Wigan "try".

"resorts to reporting exclusives from what people have posted on social media,what sort of journalist is that?" Answer: almost all of them. In a society where selfies, facebook and tweets are commonly used to tell the world what you are doing, why should a journalist have to interview you? That they do suggests that they are still interested in a story ([size=85maybe not your story.)[/size

Read the MEN: Mr Barker is writing the articles the same as other columnists/reprters. The short paragraph style is an editorial decision.

I understand that HR, but I don't have to respect it or give it more credence because of where it comes from. There's very few good journalists these days, maybe because of the way that news has to be entertainment first and facts second. Just because the majority do it still doesn't make it worthwhile or any good. Maybe we are to blame as consumers of tittle tattle nonsense?

I agree but with so much: food, frink, sports tec.

Let's remember Mr Wilde:
"The difference between literature and journalism is that journalism is unreadable and literature is not read."

frink? I must have been frinking.

David Burke , Trevor Baxter , Jack McNamara . of old
Dave Hadfield & Tony Hannan, and , Malcolm Andrews in Aus.

Of the current crop , very few seem to write from the heart, for the love of the game ,most write to a pre-conceived agenda , and at CSE standard at best.

Does anyone know what time the press conference is tomorrow? Also I heard it was being streamed live, will this be on the club website? It's just there is absolutely nothing on the Red Devils website about it.

Not sure on the time of the conference but it is being streamed on perriscope, what ever that is?

its at 11 am, and being streamed by an app called 'periscope'. i think they are putting it on the website later in the day?

i agree with what you are saying, but to me, a club shop was never realistic. rental, staff wages would have been a lot more than it took.for example, if you go past the man city shop in the arndale during the week, its always empty.
if a big club comes in for an out of contract player, they are going to go 99% of the time, so you are right, he has to word things differently.

Just downloaded it - anyone any idea how you view the conference with it?

As an aside - is streaming MK live ever a good idea?!



edit: think I've workedit out, it's basically twitter video so I assume it will be broadcast by @salforddevils?

should be interesting......

Why does he need to swear so much? It's really cringeworthy.

Any news so far? cant listen as in work

Sheens appointed director of rugby.

Saying all players paid on time amongst an ill conceived rant about players' financial difficulties and advances against wages.

He's now reading a letter from Kevin Locke and referring to an email from his manager!! Moron.

The underlying theme is one of a hideous lack of professionalism.

Accepted Locke's resignation.

sounds like the circus most people predicted

Now addressing TP saying he's pursuing him legally.

Also said "I'm sure there will be another one or two claiming that they've not been paid" - WTF?

He's one strange chap.