Showing posts with label arsenal. Show all posts
Showing posts with label arsenal. Show all posts

Five things sports journos should stop saying

Sports reporting is a funny old thing.

Loads of pages to fill / dead air to talk over / blog posts to write and a fairly limited number of new things happening at any one time.

But it must also be the form of journalism which most churns out the same old tired cliches and phrases. Here are my top five:

1. 110 per cent
It's impossible unless your figure is comparative so leave it alone. I will accept "Newcastle United have increased their number of wins by 110 per cent". I will not accept "David Silva has given 110 per cent today". Go to the back of the class.

2. Unsung hero
Occasionally this is used correctly. For example, you might say that Attilio Lombardo is the unsung hero of Manchester City. Very few people know what he does, or that he is even at Eastlands, but as the team is currently very successful, he seems to be doing it well.

However, I will not be happy if I again see Scott Parker described as an unsung hero at Spurs. He is currently Football Writers' Player of the Year, Tottenham's fans sing his name louder than all others and the Match of the Day team go all misty-eyed at the mere mention of his name. Leave it out. Right out.

3. Referee
OK so this is not a cliche but, for the love of Le Tissier, please stop talking about the whistlers all the time. Yes. They make mistakes. Yes. We can see the errors after we have watched an incident 12 times from four different angles and at super slo-mo but come now do we need to pull every decision apart every game?

4. Good touch for a big fella
Footballing folklore goes that if you're tall you have limited skill because you always have a cold head up there in the clouds. So every time Crouch attempts a back heel or Carroll beats his man we have to hear about how unusual it is. Get over it. We rarely hear the phrase 'terrible touch for a tiddler' despite its obvious application in connection with Theo Walcott or Sean Wright-Phillips.

5. Literally
Do you know what literally means? It literally means that something is exactly like something else. So, catching myself in my fly when I zipped up after a loo break is literally the most painfully embarrassing experience I have ever had. Robin Van Persie is not literally a thoroughbred racehorse. Messi did not literally leave the defender for dead. And yes Jamie Redknapp I'm talking to you.

Mind you when you see what happens if people in football try out some new terminology, perhaps it's better they do stick to cliches.


The annoying thing about football . . .

. . . is the fans. They're supposed to be the best thing about the game in England if you listen to Match of the Day or Talksport or any of the sychophants on our airwaves.

Why oh why won't anyone tell it how it is? OK so Adebayor was not clever sprinting to his former club's fans and sliding to his knees in celebration after scoring a goal but then again they had treated him like a paedophile at a school's PGA meeting for the best part of an hour.

Apparently if a former idol slides to his knees in celebration it is then beyond the ability of any football to show restraint. Oh no, not them. It is perfectly acceptable to respond by trying to inflict serious injury on said striker by lobbing coins, bananas and chairs at his head. For God's sake grow up you muppets.

I haven't been to a football match for 12 months after I watched Derby County v Reading. A trio of my own club's fans (for I support Derby) felt it was OK to stand for 90 minutes with their middle fingers extended towards the Hoops' fans. And these guys were in their 40s.

Not for me. Rugby has its problems at the moment but at least the fans can behave like human beings and not a pack of dogs.