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What the average TV pundit knows about the Euro 2012 teams

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Injury Time Incredulity: A Brief, Pseudoscientific Analysis

A week, they say, is a long time in football. Meanwhile, it's imperative to keep it tight for that crucial first twenty minutes. And it only takes a second to score a goal. This unusually philosophical approach to timekeeping does not apply to the moment that the fourth official's board goes up to display (sorry, "indicate") how much time is to be added on.

Fans of a team who are clinging on to a lead expect at least three minutes of injury time. Four minutes? Makes sense.

But FIVE?! WHERE DID HE GET FIVE MINUTES FROM?! BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

Mindless.

1992-2012: The Premier League in Cliché

Football began in 1992, the purists sarcastically say, so here are ten clichés from the two-decade Premier League era.

1) The Foreign Influx.

We should start with our traditional point here - no-one uses the word influx anywhere else. The Foreign Influx™ has become almost as established a brand as the Premier League itself. Before Arsene Wenger (the man credited with inventing the concepts of nutrition and not drinking alcohol) arrived on these shores, we made do with exotic imports such as Andrea Silenzi, John Jensen and a certain Frenchman by the name of  Eric - whatever happened to him?!

These early pioneers have a mixed legacy. They are said to have brought lots of good things over with them but, on the other hand, are deemed to be responsible for all sorts of horrors that have crept into the English game - going to ground easily, waving the imaginary card and (despite always claiming to have "watched it on TV as a child") not understanding the significance of the dear old FA Cup.

Scouring the continent for new signings has been a hit-and-miss affair for Premier League clubs. For all the Thierry Henrys, Dennis Bergkamps and Gianfranco Zolas of this world, there are the pub-bore anecdote staples such as Marco Boogers, William Prunier and Ali Dia. 

2) Mind Games.

One of the lazier Premier League clichés, admittedly given credence by Kevin Keegan's infamous on-screen meltdown. Nowadays though, pretty much anything Alex Ferguson says from February onwards qualifies as mind games. The less potent cousin of mind games is kidology, a pseudo-science that usually involves a manager playing down his team's chances. Resistant as I am to welcoming new entries to the football lexicon, it appears that Ferguson's absurd notion of squeaky-bum time has embedded itself firmly in fans' consciousness.

3) Parking the Bus.

Here we have another cliché whose provenance is indisputable. Jose Mourinho, whose penchant for a war of words has led to this tedious Premier League dichotomy of having to love or hate people you have never met, coined the phrase after a Tottenham's rearguard action had frustrated his Chelsea side. It's a charming phrase, increasingly relevant as the haves continue to race away from the have-nots at English football's top table.

4) "Top, top player".

This particular phrase has experienced a meteoric rise over the last two or three seasons. The much-maligned Jamie Redknapp is responsible for its osmosis into common usage, seemingly deciding that one "top" just isn't enough for the elite players. Occasional sightings of a trio of "tops" have been reported, but only for players for whom pundits have run out of superlatives. 

The surface-skimming that passes for TV punditry relies on similarly vague criteria to judge players' performance. Co-commentators often trade in the currency of quality, either as an unenlightening noun or a rather clumsy adjective. "A player of his quality," they say, "should be doing better from there". Quality can also be conspicuous by its absence if a team is just lacking that little bit of quality in the final third - note the trademark, non-committal imprecision there - it's very important.

The concept of credit has become so commonplace that anyone new to football would be forgiven for thinking it was an official scoring system. All credit usually goes to the winning team, but some credit must go to plucky losers.

5) Potential Leg Breakers.

The array of gadgets available to Andy Gray and his able Sky Sports successor Gary Neville has enabled them to analyse flashpoints to the degree that it becomes almost self-defeating. There is usually a sensible pundit on hand to briefly and half-heartedly pipe up about the "referee not having the luxury" of a slow-motion replay and several camera angles, but this UTTERLY CRUCIAL POINT is quickly brushed aside. 

Goal-line decisions and offsides (despite claims to the contrary) are clear-cut laws, and are often easily cleared up in the studio. The latest bone of contention, however, is the potential leg-breaking tackle. With referees clamping down on excessively forceful challenges, in the hope that the traditional hatchet man will finally be consigned to the history books, going in with studs showing is now officially asking for trouble. No malice is ever intended, of course, while the list of names who are that sort of player remains empty. 

6) Statistics.

Stats aren't a new thing, obviously, but the no-stone-left-unturned approach has now reached saturation point. For years we only had to deal with the moderate suspense of the pause between the shots stat and, signalling the co-commentator's cue, the shots-on-target stat. Ignore what you've actually seen, because we need a number to tell us that a team haven't really troubled the goalkeeper. Then, Sky started bombarding us with Action Areas, a crude separation of the pitch into thirds - again, essentially a device to nudge the auto-pilot co-commentator into assembling a few words to confirm what we can see in front of us. "Just look at that", he instructs, as we finally cotton on to the concerted spell of pressure exerted by a team camped in the opposition half.

In 2012, it's all about passing. Attempted passes, key passes, pass completion. 10 minutes in, the early possession stats flash up. "No real surprise, that", our dutiful co-commentator assures us, like a doctor holding up an X-ray of an incredibly obvious bone break. Possession percentages pile up as teams become happy to let their opponents have it there, resulting in the lion's share of the ball (sometimes combated with tigerish - but usually dogged - defending.) 

But, ultimately, the only stat that matters is the one in the top left-hand corner of your screen.

7) Storms.

Premier League football is a pantomime. At the heroic end of the spectrum lie your Scott Parkers and the inexplicable awe-magnet Mario Balotelli (a "complex character", apparently, because he gets sent off a lot and acts like a child in his spare time), while the well-established villainous contingent is too strong to count.  In the middle somewhere is a rather lost-looking Gareth Barry.

Football games can also be quite boring, especially for people who don't really follow the sport. To make up for this, there is a nine-month conveyor belt of the following controversies:

• Spat - Usually involving spitting, allowing the media to declare a spit spat. 
• Fracas -  Fracases (pluralised here, but never in football-speak) take place only in the tunnel. Details usually remain vague, but angry words are usually exchanged. The only ever witness is the pusillanimous Sky weasel, Geoff Shreeves.
• Bust-up - Clubs feeling the pressure are always susceptible to the training-ground bust-up. These usually occur when a player reacts angrily to a heavy challenge, coming to blows with his teammate. Thankfully, Dave Bassett will be on hand in the Sky Sports News studio to point out that this kind of thing happens at training grounds every week.
• Storm - Once a wide-ranging term, storms are now confined to social media controversies. Each week, a teacup-sized Twitter storm is manufactured from very little, as the gutter press sift through the list of tweeting players for any trace of an opinion. Twitter has now become the main arena for the rather grand-sounding concept of the war of words.
• Row - The slow-burner in this family of footballing controversies. Rows can tend to rumble on somewhat, especially if a certain issue deigns to rear its ugly head. Most are now familiar with the hallmark of a truly established row - the adding of the godfawful suffix "-gate", regardless of how unwieldy that makes the subsequent monster of a word. Like storms, rows can also give rise to a war of words, with managers using their press conferences to wade into debates such as the perpetually-raging club v country row.

8) The Sack Race

FootballClichés.com has analysed previously the Managerial Merry-Go-Round, but the ruthless Premier League prefers the less friendly-sounding (but equally thrilling) sack race to describe the perilous position of its managers. 

You know the drill: a team makes its worst start to a league season since the war and their manager is said to face the axe. Pressure (like credit, an unquantifiable thing that football media seems desperate to measure) continues to pile and mount, while the beleaguered boss must bat back questions about whether he has the backing of the board/owner. 

This backing used to be expressed in the form of the vote of confidence. This has now become the dreaded vote of confidence. Out goes the hapless manager, often by mutual consent, and he is invariably offered half-hearted "thanks for all his efforts" and "best wishes for the future". In comes the caretaker manager, a rabbit-in-the-headlights figure who tries desperately to say all the right things to steady the ship, whilst looking uncomfortable in his new suit, or just pathetic in a tracksuit with his initials on (WHY? WHY DO TRACKSUITS STILL HAVE COACHES' INITIALS ON?!). 

He will leave quietly in the summer, and the club will attempt to prise the latest coaching flavour of the month away from whichever club where he has worked wonders. Reports suggest the newly-installed boss will be handed a transfer warchest with which to rebuild the squad, while he has the safety net of the traditional honeymoon period (which later becomes a transitional period). 

But it won't be long until the cycle repeats...


9) The Best League In The World™
Thanks largely to the aforementioned foreign influx, the Premier League carved out a reputation for being the best league in the world. No detailed rationale was ever supplied to back this claim up - it just is. Italian football is defensive and boring, you see. They can't defend for toffee in La Liga. Who even watches the Bundesliga? 

However, now Gray and Keys have taken their tub-thumping to the radio and ESPN/Sky have started covering all the major European leagues, a new breed of football hipster has emerged - one that emits a strange vowel sound of approval when "Barca" string a few passes together. You're nobody if you don't follow the caution-to-the-wind fortunes of Mazzarri's Napoli or the unique club culture of St. Pauli. You're supposed to know who has been dubbed the new Neymar before Neymar has even left Brazil. You've nominated yourself as your 5-a-side team's trequartista. You've bought a Deportivo Wanka away shirt off the internet for the bantz. You don't care about England's chances at Euro 2012 because you want to see RV-fucking-P fire the "Oranje" to glory.*

Still, the Premier League clings on to its lofty status, thanks to the odd pulsating 4-4 draw here and there. Anyone can beat anyone, apparently, even though they frequently don't. But what about the fabled Premier League tempo, which England are urged to employ at major tournaments? Those languid, ponderous continentals don't like it up 'em, etc.

*All of that is more than welcome, of course, apart from the Deportivo Wanka-inspired bantz.

10) Benefactors
With the financial state of many clubs officially classified as "parlous", all offers of investment are being considered. The floodgates opened with Roman Abramovich, henceforth referred to by his first name for no apparent reason, whose success with Chelsea suddenly made lots of people care very passionately indeed about the dubious acquisition of Russian oil companies. 

Then, various "fit and proper" chancers appeared at West Ham and Portsmouth, promising to bankroll missions for Champions League football, but actually getting closer to "doing a Leeds" - a quaint pre-Abramovich term that has happily stuck around. Chelsea, and now fellow billionaire's playthings Manchester City, face accusations of (attempting to) buy the title as they stockpile players. Despite their wealth, such clubs declare that they won't be held to ransom over signings before happily paying over the odds for players who subsequently struggle to pay back a huge chunk of their transfer fee. Usually, only one vital goal is required to complete this rather unfair transaction, although the actual monetary value of the chunk is never established.

Saturation point is nigh. Here's to the next twenty years.

Stevenage v Tottenham: Cliché-by-Cliché

Live cliché-by-cliché coverage of ITV's broadcast of Stevenage vs Tottenham in the FA Cup fifth round. Join in the not-inconsiderable mirth by commenting in the client below or via Twitter to @FootballCliches

"Where's the Talking?!"

Follow @FootballCliches

This is a piece about Sunday league football.

It will not make any reference to hangovers (Haha! Some of them go out the night before and are still drunk when they turn up!), fat players (LOL! They aren't professional athletes!) or crap pitches (ROFL! The public playing surface isn't completely flat and abundant with grass!)

English football, from top to bottom, has always been characterised by its intangible, unquantifiable (unless you count bags as suitable units of measurement) qualities of spirit, passion, grit, determination and, less notably, "talking".

Talking is easy. Not talking enough is generally agreed in Sunday league to be highly counter-productive. Players are urged before kick-off for "lots of talking", especially "back there". Not talking is an accusation that can only be levelled at a whole team (or at least its rearguard), rather than an individual (unless it is the captain, who must shout indiscriminately for ninety minutes, for that is his job.)

To avoid this indictment, a lexicon of largely useless phrases has emerged, which can be called upon whenever it is necessary to fill a period of relative silence. Everyone knows them, everyone understands what they are vaguely supposed to mean, and almost nobody questions them. Now, clichéd as they are, many bellowed phrases you hear on a football pitch - "Man on!", "Out we go!", etc - are useful instructions. Nothing wrong with those. The following set of on-pitch rallying cries, however, must not escape scrutiny:

1. "We've Gone Quiet"

Going quiet, as highlighted earlier, is the sign of a malfunctioning team. No-one is talking, which means we all might as well go home. A period of notable quietness is ended only when the captain draws everyone's attention to it: "Come on lads, we've gone quiet!". It can, at the shouter's discretion, be bookended with "...haven't we?", to offer the illusion of a debate where one is really not available.

Apart from functioning to actually end the quietness, this is accepted as an open invitation to call upon phrases 2-8 in this list.

2. "Straight In"

A staple instruction that can be used only at a very specific moment - namely, the opponents kicking off the game. "Run after the ball!", it demands, "Chase it when they kick it backwards!". Only the strikers need to, of course, and the moment quickly passes. Getting "straight in" is not a continuous requirement, but merely an opening gesture of intent, which is guaranteed to be unfulfilled.

Often accompanied by a mindless, yet somehow entirely appropriate-feeling, clap of the hands.

3. "Two On The Edge"

When a corner is awarded, it is everyone's job to pick up their man. One player has the added task of spotting a particular discrepancy in this complex marking system, in that there are two unattended opponents lumbering into the penalty area. In extreme circumstances, there may be "three on the edge" - an unthinkable catastrophe which is met with a suitably incredulous cry of "I've got three here!". The lack of concentration may be down to the defence's preoccupation with the big man, the tall (i.e. lanky) opposing centre-back/estate agent, who has arrived with a look of great purpose from the back.

4. "All Day"

An utterly irritating phrase (specifically designed to be so) used by smug opponents to declare your attacking efforts as weak and unlikely to succeed even if repeated. Often said twice in quick succession - as a speculative effort flies high, wide and [not at all] handsome - to compound the humiliation.

5. "It's Still 0-0"

Football is an overwhelmingly childish pursuit. Much of football supporting is based on schadenfreude and suffering the taunts, in return, when your own team is humbled.

To combat this threat, some employ an overly defensive stance, hoping that an audible absence of pride will pre-empt any possible fall. And so, if a Sunday team races into an early lead, one stern-faced, armband-toting try-hard will attempt to construct a parallel universe in which the game is, in fact, goalless. The job is not done, he says, a point he may return to when the final score is 7-4 or something similarly amateur.

6. "Box 'Em In!"

A cult classic, in my eyes. Satisfies two fundamental criteria: 1) A laughable attempt at tactical insight, and 2) Exclaimed almost instinctively, EVERY SINGLE TIME. The ball goes out for an opposition throw-in, deep in their final third, and it is universally accepted that they do not have the adequate technical skills (or simply the upper-body strength) to play/hurl their way to safety.

7. "[Shirt Colour] Head on This!"

Possibly the most pointless one of all. For the uninitiated, this cryptic command is for your teammates to meet an imminent opposition hoof with their head before the other lot can. No accuracy is required but congratulations are available for heading it really, really hard, straight back where it came from. "WELL UP!" you are told, with your name declared in full if the game is particularly tense. More forward-thinking Sunday league players concern themselves with the second ball, which is often simply another header. Third balls remain an untapped, bewildering resource, possibly due to Chaos Theory.

8. "Away!"

Loosely translated as "Now look here, teammate - I neither want nor trust you to play your way out of trouble. Please dispose of the ball as quickly and as far away as possible." Failure to do as directed leaves one open to castigation for "fannying about with it there". Professional footballers, it should be noted, do not officially fanny about but simply dally, hesitate or dwell on the ball.

Meanwhile, back on recreation grounds up and down the country, players might be allowed to fanny about if they are deemed to have an adequate amount of:

9. "Time!"

The ball drops from the air and a player finds himself in acres of space. Pointing this out to him might seem a good idea. It'll calm him down, allow him to get his head up and play a pass, rather than treat the ball like an unpinned grenade.

However, when ten other players scream "Time! Time!" in unison, it tends to have quite the opposite effect. The futility of the situation is laid bare when, after relinquishing possession easily, the player is offered a final, withering, retrospective observation.

"You had time."

10. "Where Was The Shout?"

The ultimate act of Sunday League buck-passing. A player is unceremoniously dispossessed from behind, to howls of derision from his teammates. Accompanied by a despairing flap of the arms, the player begs of his colleagues: "Where was the shout?"

There wasn't one.

Because they've gone quiet, haven't they?

Where's The Talking, Part II is here.

The Eleventh Hour.

Yesterday saw the the transfer window slam shut and with it a cluster of clichés get trotted out. Players all over the country failed to do their ties up properly and practised their best “I didn’t want to leave XYZ but as soon as I heard ABC were in for me, it was an easy decision” rubbish. The loan system was put to good use, with a number of teams sending out their 17-year-olds for valuable first team experience to prepare them for the next twenty years of really needing first team football at this stage of their careers.

Sky Sports News get terribly excited on days such as this, with actual things happening that they can report on rather than endlessly looping mildly controversial incidents from four days ago. However, it was still not quite enough to prevent them from stating on their news ticker:

BREAKING NEWS: HARRY REDKNAPP THINKS JERMAIN DEFOE WILL BE A GOOD SIGNING

Well, fancy that - a manager trying to sign a player he thinks will do well. Although, this being Harry Redknapp, [this part of the sentence has been censored to ensure that Mr. Redknapp will still talk to us rather than have Tony Adams taking four hours to finish an interview].

Portsmouth signing Jermaine Defoe produced one of the finest examples of how ingrained the cliché has become in the discourse of modern football, giving rise to the first of an occasional series entitled Nonsensical Cliché of the Week.

“It’s a great opportunity to play football…”

Good start to the sentence there, a slight variation on the “at this stage of my career” theme.

“…I just want to play for Portsmouth and score as many goals as I can this season…”

Second point well made, you would think. Fans of Portsmouth must be pleased that their new £7 million striker plans to score as many goals as he can, because that, after all, is what he is there for.

However, as we are about to see, something goes off in Defoe’s mind - a flicker of recognition of a lesson he had in “Media Training” at Charlton Athletic's academy, possibly called “Lies to Tell Towards The End of Interviews“

"…but what’s important is the three points.”

This obvious lie, developed at the Shearer Institute for Inane Comments, was designed to perpetuate the myth that strikers aren’t selfish and don’t really care about scoring.

So deeply ingrained is this in the minds of footballer that they trot it out even when, as in Defoe's case, there aren’t even any specific three points at stake – unless of course their new signing expects Portsmouth to gain a mere 3 more points between now and May.

Now that would be interesting.

Coxie.

Mansfield v Middlesbrough: A Case Study of Cliché

Some casual, unstructured observations from today's FA Cup game between Mansfield Town and Middlesbrough, live on the BBC. I'll try and avoid addressing the usual Cup clichés, as that would, in turn, be an act of cliché in itself:

2 mins - Martin Keown, today's co-commentator, contends that the "swirling wind" will be a problem for the Midlesbrough defence. Therefore, watch out for a plucky Mansfield defender getting caught out by the swirling wind at some point.

5 mins - BBC coverage of a lower-league side hosting an FA Cup match is not complete without some young scamps (probably on the Beeb playroll for the afternoon) clambering up a tree outside the ground. This will, whatever its position, be described by the tradition-struck commentator as "the best seat in the house".

7 mins - David Wheater, apparently, has impressed this season. Why? The young, English, homegrown local lad has scored FOUR goals this season, making him the club's joint-top scorer. Oh, right. He can't manage to stop his side conceding to drag them away from the dropzone, but he has scored 4 goals. That's what he's in the side for, obviously.

This is typical. No defending can really catch the eye of any pundits, but a couple of goals will always be conspicuous for a defender. Furthermore, as soon as one media outlet describes him as "having an outstanding season", others will blindly follow.

My advice to any young defender would be to go up for a few corners. Get lucky at some set-pieces, and the media will be all over you.

17 mins - In a massive turn-up for the books, Mansfield's bright start has been followed by a straightforward Middlesbrough goal, caused by the Mansfield defence getting caught out by the swirling wind. The opener is "barely deserved", of course, because Mansfield have had a couple of corners at the other end.

25 mins - Robert Huth is booked for clearing the ball and following through on Michael Boulding's midriff. Cue horrified yelps from the commentators, convinced that a red card should have been issued. You wonder, if a Mansfield player had done the same, if the incident would have been dismissed as "clumsy". But no, Huth's foot "cut Michael Boulding in two".

47 mins - The second half begins with another bright start by Mansfield. A couple of corners brings about an "air of belief" at Field Mill.

60 mins - Mansfield embark on a "magnificent spell" of two corners and zero shots on goal.

73 mins - Martin Keown shares a joke with the commentator about the size of the latter's car. The nation can breathe a sigh of relief as it collectively ticks the box marked "Self-Deprecatory Joke between Commentators".

81 mins - Gareth Southgate demonstrates the modern skill common amongst aspirational, young English managers - standing up from the bench and clapping earnestly towards one or more of his players.

84 mins - A Mansfield defender commits an "understandable" foul, to go with the home side's "unfortunate" individual errors and under-hit set-pieces, which have been "a shame".

86 mins - Mansfield score an own-goal. "Cruel".

Adam.