football cliches that drive you mad

Of slow, old forwards: "He's got the extra yard in his head"

"It's their cup final" = e.g when Anderlecht, who have actually won a European competition, played Liverpool in the Champions League a few years back

... I was almost expecting it in the Arsenal v. Celtic game last night!

that's unfair tom. arsenal are a pretty big club.

True, but it must have been a novelty for their players to be playing in front of actual football fans

was probably a new experience for most celtic fans being in a library too though.

:p

celtic has triumphed over barcelona in a competition which is more than what arsenal had managed..

hearing alan hanson say 'non chalant' was a great MotD moment

ken c is killing it all over the football threads atm.

Jonathan Pearce: "... and [insert name here] wins the game for [insert name here]"

This guy. See also: inane observation, followed by same observation in portentous voice. Everton fan sitting among Liverpool fans, no-one batting an eyelid - "You don't want to be sitting there, son. [pause] YOU. DO NOT. WANT. TO SIT THERE."

"We all do things in the heat of the moment"

word for word what was in my mind when i saw the thread in new answers

"You'd bet your mortgage on Rooney scoring from there."

"he's left his leg in there" when, in fact, what's he's left is the opponent's leg. severed.

the goalkeeper is NEVER the hero after a won penalty shoot-out. NEVER. STFU everyone who says this, seriously.

the 'heroes' are the people who score their penalties and even then they are not heroic; penalty shoot-outs are barbaric imo and should be replaced with a golden-goal system whereby every 2 minutes a player is withdrawn from each side

would you take the goalkeepers off first? would you?

well obv it becomes VERY important not to get sent off because the numerical disadvantage becomes exaggerated

i think that it is 2 minutes for every withdrawal until one or both teams have 2 men and then it is played indefinitely but someone will surely have scored by then

i would not take off the goalkeepers. assuming 11 vs 11 i would take off my most tired players in order of tiredness.

i am thinking eventually this will replace extra time completely, but let's just have it instead of penalties for now

you, sir, are a madman. and you must be stopped.

I agree with you about penalties creating only villains and not heroes tho.

while watching the bbc post-draw nonsense i told joel it wouldn't be surprising if we got the "if you'd told capello this morning that he'd get blah blah in the draw he'd have bitten your hand off". 10 seconds later, thank you alan shearer. although he's now 16 i believe joel thinks i still have mystical powers with football punditry.

"...and long may that continue". primarily by terry or lampard in every post-match interview when they've won eg. "yeah didier's been unplayable recently and long may that continue", "we haven't been conceding many just now and long may that continue", "peter cech is still rocking the headgear and long may that continue". seems to have been picked up by players from other teams who've been in the england squad now too. it's odd.

Shearer just uttered one re Lampard: "it's not a great penalty to be honest but it's a great save from Given". It's the same fucking penalty as Lampard hits every other week, you prick, Shay just dived the right way this time.

i'm already sick of people "booking their seat on the plane". 6 more months of this bullshit to go.

Motty following up with the same peanlty cliche about Fabregas ten minutes later

One beloved of lower division/non-League players: describing particularly talented colleagues/opponents as "different class".

One beloved of (at least my) local newspaper reports: managers never just signed a new player, they always "swooped to sign" said player.

One beloved of managers/programme note writers following an unexpected home defeat: "it was a bad day at the office".

Could get a 'poor penalty to be honest' hat-trick in a minute if they bother to do any punditry on the Pompey game. To be fair, that one was a shocker

Kudos to the fivelive commentator who described some harsh Sunderland double-team tackling as creating 'a Zamora sandwich' earlier. First time I've ever heard that the right way round - normally they talk about being 'caught in a Sunderland sandwich', 'tucking into a bread sandwich', etc.

"he had to get there"

"THAT... is a goal worthy of.....*insert superlative**"

My current bugbear is commentators' seeing inside players' heads, e.g. "...and Chelsea are fuming; they believe they should've had a penalty..."

If there's one thing worse than the "biting your hand off" cliche, it's the misuse of that cliche. Surely it's about taking something being offered to you with huge relish. So it sounds well weird when pundits say "if you'd said to us at the beginning of the season we'd be Xth in the table on X points in December, we'd have bitten your hand off". That sounds illogical and frankly barbaric to me.

"he's enjoying himself on the field now"

also bad is the corruption of 'bread and butter' and 'meat and drink'

and the latter's occasional transformation into 'food and drink' what?? next: 'that kind of pass should be fruit and veg for a player of his quality'

that should have been a gin and tonic catch for the keeper and he's made a complete hash of it.

I quite like "food & drink", it conjures the image of the centre backs like lions in a cage, devouring high balls tossed into their enclosure. I've been hearing it used on it's own recently though, and it just sounds weird. Lazy-ass pundits.

using metaphors correctly really ought to be cheese and ham for a sports pundit

Keane still struggling at Ipswich - this will be like prawns in a sandwich for the man

using metaphors correctly really ought to be cheese and ham for a sports pundit

whereas in fact they make a "Chicken Liver Parfait, Oak Moss and Truffle Toast" of the whole thing

should be careful here, this might turn into a roots shoots and leaves affair

"he can't hit it any better than that" when a keeper quite easily saves it/it goes wide/the player just doesn't score. he can hit it better- he can score.

spurs central defenders being a fucking disaster, how's that for a cliché that will send me to an early grave

x-post I dunno, if a player hits the post or something I kind of think "yeah he's done well, unlucky."

like it's just an inch or two away, he's done so little differently from what he would have had to do to score

which reminds me, "just an inch away!" or "only millimetres from scoring!" when the ball whistles past the post = idiocy, once ball clips post it's still got a good 7 or 8 inches' leeway before it's hitting post and going in

yeah but is pretty close...surely a post isn't 7 or 8 inches wide?

yeah but it's kinda like saying 'oh that was close' when you get 5 out of 6 letters needed in a wordsearch.

cliche- jermaine defoe missing a penalty. that's 4 in a row.

edge of ball clips outside edge of post to centre of ball hitting centre of post is about 4 inches...2 more inches and it's inside of post and out...3 more inches and it's in. at a rough guess.

it's not...missing by 10 feet, missing by a lot, like I said, hitting the post is so close to scoring. putting ball straight at the keeper or something, that's worthy of disdain.

yeah, no i take and agree with your point, i was just arguing that when a ball MISSES the post and a commentator makes out a breath of wind could have taken the ball in, then i am in disagreement. a bit like

"it was in all the way! then it just curled away at the last moment!"

shut up.

"i've seen them given"