How bad is bad press for sports men and women?

It's fair to say that the Bears' performances over the first month of the season have been unpredictable. Perhaps the nadir was the first three days of their opening away County Championship match at Northampton.
Warwickshire were simply dreadful - and my colleague George Dobell said so. Never one to shirk from expressing his opinions on the game, our chief cricket writer duly laid into the Bears on the Saturday morning. "Years of poor scouting and coaching and petty squabbles', ' a habit of making the opposition look like world-beaters', 'unless things improve markedly, several will be looking for new clubs or new careers." Ouch.
There was even an obscure Bob Dylan reference that had me, often looked upon in the office as a bit of a walking encyclopedia, trawling fruitlessly through the internet. It did, however, prompt me to write one of those headlines that makes its' author punch the air like West Bromwich Albion's Chris Brunt after driving in a crucial goal: "Bears need a hard rain to fall."
It was supposed to allude to the fact that George had said only a deluge could save Warwickshire from defeat. Well, it didn't rain and the Bears pulled off an outrageous victory, making the fifth-highest fourth-innings total in their illustrious history.
We know, because captain Darren Maddy told The Post, that a team meeting before play on the final morning had inspired his men but I'd be interested to know if George's words had some effect.
Football managers, of course, routinely deny being influenced by what the media write. That's probably largely true and I can only think of one instance involving one of the current big six West Midlands managers where angry telephone calls were exchanged over a story in The Post. The manager involved said his piece, the reporter said theirs and everyone lived happily ever after.
I think professional football players tend to realise that criticism and praise comes packaged with their £20,000 a week, although it's less true of other sports and other areas. Post Rugby Correspondent Brian Dick recently revealed that one player with a West Midlands club hadn't spoken to him for two years after Brian left him out of his team of the year and criticised his conditioning.
I probably overstepped the line much earlier in my career when I quoted a West Midlands non-league football manager as saying a transfer target he had failed to sign wasn't worth the £XXX a week he was making at his current club. That player was playing football as a sideline to his proper job, travelling all over the country at all hours of the week for the love of the game and melted my phone for 30 minutes when he saw the newspaper.
I also criticised another player's workrate and attitude as a particularly bad team went down to another defeat. He didn't speak to me for the remaining 18 months I spent on that newspaper before joining The Post - which was a tad tricky for me, because he was going out with the editor's secretary at the time and for all I know, may now be married to her.
Clubs, however, are a different matter. Professional football clubs claim not to be interested in what the media write and know that the national newspapers sometimes stretch the facts, but if the locals get it wrong, they can be down on us like a ton of bricks.
These days, clubs employ press officers who are often trained journalists and fans at the same time, to promote the party line. Hence the preponderance of 'it's a massive game on Saturday' quotes - the very type of thing I wondered whether Post readers were interested in.