Excellent article. One of my pet hates is during penalties. If the goalie dives one way and the ball ends up in the other corner, you can almost guarantee you will hear the phrase "he sent the keeper the wrong way". Which is, of course, ludicrous. Sure, the penalty-taker can shape his body to make it look as if he is going to shoot in a particular direction and then play the ball to the other side, but all professional goalkeepers are more than aware of this possibility. The keeper will choose his own direction to dive in. The penalty-taker certainly will not have "sent him the wrong way", that is just blatantly untrue.

I would think you can only send someone the wrong way by issuing a command which is then obeyed, or by (short of physically moving them) exerting some sort of telekinetic control. At best one causes the keeper to go the wrong way and does not 'send' him. And obviously, it's the 'wrong' way only as far as the goalkeeper is concerned.

"The ball could have gone anywhere" gets me. Clearly it did go somewhere else it would still be attached to the player's foot!

I love the Andy Gray bit.

I'm far more annoyed by the stating of the bleeding obvious. I don't know who the cockney twat is who co-commentates for sky (at least I assume it's sky). A couple of his gem-like insights at the Fulham - Man Utd game last week, were that in the second half with the score at 1-1 'Fulham will be hopeful for more than just a point' and after Utd took a 2-1 lead in the last 10 mins we were informed that Mark Hughes 'won't want his team to concede another at this stage' an insight of such staggering clarity that I felt as if a blinding white light had burnt into the very center of my being causing me to fall off my barstool.

At least that was my excuse to everyone present

Sadly I think 'the referee's blown up!' isn't used as much as once it was...

My favourite bit of outright nonsense(it was Kevin Keegan I believe), is

"Oh,and the lad's gone down with cramp. And at this stage of the game that's worse than a broken leg."

Well, no.

Once the autumn rains start,how long will it be before

"the ball picked up pace on the wet turf"

Or variations on this physically impossible theme ?

"He literally has no left foot" is always good for a laugh.

Another one when the ball hits the aluminium: "The post/crossbar stands in the way of a goal." Take them away then and let's see what happens next.

"We deserved more out the game than a point".

Nope. You scored the same amount of goals as the opposition. You knew before the game started that you had to score more than them to get more than a point.

Ergo, You deserved a point.

"So Spain finally win the world cup - do you think they were the best team at the tournament, Allan?"

What tournament's that then, Gary? The one they just won? yeah they were probably the best team at that tournament ... seeing as how they won it and all that.

The one that always gets me is "we want a result out of this game".

A 7-0 defeat is a result, so you'd settle for that? Or are you looking for a positive result - i.e. a win? In which case why not say so?

Another pet hate of mine is at a penalty when commentators refer to having "missed" a penalty when it was actually saved. To actually miss it has to go outside the goal - and at least give the goalie some credit for saving the thing in the first place.

Can someone tell me what an "ask" is? Usually in football they are "big" but I still have no idea what "ask" as a noun actually is.

Also can someone point out to commentators and pundits that there's only one Manchester United and one Chelsea (etc, etc), so I'm not sure what they are talking about when they say "the Manchester Uniteds and Chelseas of this world".

Oh and also why do they refer to "the likes of" David Beckham (for example) when they actually mean David Beckham?

'The pitch is very greasy tonight.'

Unless some ne'er-do-well has somehow gained access to the pitch, unnoticed, and covered it with grease, I find it highly unlikely that the surface is greasy. It's far more likely to be wet.

I really don't understand why people let the mixture of metaphor and cliche that has evolved into football terminology annoy them so much. However there seems to be a lot of you - perhaps Lynne Truss should do a book entitled: Missing the points

@tratorello

I agree. What's even more confusing is when commentators say "your Lampards, your Gerrards, your Beckhams..."

What my Lampards? How did you find out about my secret cloning experiments?

Have to agree with Efficient Baxter. I get riled when commentary is poor or plainly not insightful, but cliches and metaphors are surely fine so long as everyone understands them contextually.

(NB. 'greasy' as an adjective doesn't necessarily imply being smattered with grease; a 'result' in football implies being a positive scoreline given pre-match expectations and the goings-on of the game; a team can be 'better' than another without beating them - surely the joy of football is that precise fact. There is room for interpretation of the game and if scorelines were the sole indicator of success then it wouldn't be worth turning up waving your scarf.)

Not to deny that some commentators are awful, of course. The World Cup proved that.

One of my favourites has always been the sacrificing of players from the starting eleven. Mere substitution isn't enough; the footballing gods must be appeased.

There's a particular gem that always sticks in my mind, from a game between West Ham and Everton some years back. The West Ham keeper was sent off on the stroke of half-time, Everton scored the penalty with Julian Dicks in goal, and as there was no time to restart the match, a substitute keeper was brought on during the break.

A fairly standard development, which Trevor Francis described beautifully as

'Tony Cottee has been sacrificed during the interval'

which seems to be perhaps a little extreme. After all, they were only a solitary goal behind, surely a little early to be buying the favour of the heavens with the blood of the miniature centre forward.

You may have Your Gerrard's and Beckhams of this world but At Chelsea we have Eleven Robert Flecks as we all live in a Robert Fleck World.

There are others which also irritate me, namely...

1) Something / someone being 'quite unique' or 'almost unique' - it's either unique or it isn't, it can't be anyhting else

2) Giving 110% per cent - you can't give more than 100%, which means you're trying 10 per cent harder than last week, meaning you only gave ten-elevenths of your potential previously

3) Every player's name as prounced by David Plett (he can't be arsed to say their names properly, so I can't be arsed to spell his properly)