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      Your worst football cliche

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      HUYTON RED
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      Re: Your worst football cliche
      Reply #46: Jul 21, 2011 01:46:42 pm
      "top, top player" repeatedly. Is it that hard to say "very good player" "excellent player" etc etc, but no it is always "he's a top, TOP player."

      Used by thick cu*ts such as Paul Merson and Jamie Redknapp, showing most of the time that they maybe millionaires, but the majority of footballers are as thick as pigshit.

      Tayls
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      Re: Your worst football cliche
      Reply #47: Jul 21, 2011 03:20:48 pm
      "top, top player" repeatedly. Is it that hard to say "very good player" "excellent player" etc etc, but no it is always "he's a top, TOP player."

      Used by thick cu*ts such as Paul Merson and Jamie Redknapp, showing most of the time that they maybe millionaires, but the majority of footballers are as thick as pigshit.



      :D There was a funny piece on that one in the Guardian recently.

      Why Jamie Redknapp goes over the top top top when rating players
      The Sky Sports pundit's love of superlatives is now football's default setting – a gloriously irresolvable confusion of absolutes

      It seems significant that the dominant emotion of the current summer transfer window is not excitement or ambition, but a kind of generalised, grasping confusion. Mainly, nobody has any real idea about value. English premiums, contract lengths, degrees of risk and reward are all suddenly avenues of fevered debate. It is a peculiarly exciting mess – and one that is developing its own language. This week Harry Redknapp described Luka Modric, who looks increasingly haunted and unhappy, like a frightened cat being forced into a basket, as not just a good player but "a top, top player".

      Redknapp isn't alone in identifying this quality. Charlie Adam has talked about the "top, top players" at Liverpool and how he's looking forward to "learning from them", albeit this is the sort of thing you would expect Adam to say given his endearing resemblance to a Dickensian man-child rogue, perhaps a thieving tinker or a chimney sweep who is taught to read by a six-year-old girl and discovers the true meaning of Christmas. Top top players. Top top top top players. This is apparently the way we're going to talk about footballers now. But whose fault is it?

      It is tempting to point to a wider overheating, a compounding of absolutes everywhere. It is a top top top top world and football is simply reflecting this. On the other hand it may be easier just to blame Jamie Redknapp. Redknapp popularised the concept of top top through his punditry on Sky Sports, often concluding his entertaining digressions with the phrase "We're talking about top top players, Ruud – top top top players". No doubt this has had a profound influence. Like the kind of people who shout "Murderer!" and "Give Denise's baby back!" in the street at off-duty soap actors, there are those who have perhaps become confused by Redknapp's TV persona and genuinely consider him to be a footballing oracle, the voice of what Pelé once called "the top top game".

      It is above all a crisis of diminishing superlatives. The concept of top top sprung out of a superheated Sky-driven Premier League where everything is great pretty much all the time. How do you express excitement or even mild approval in a world where the emotional barometer is continually pitched at a level of damp-eyed superbity?

      In theory, this is an open-ended scale. Redknapp might remark in passing: "You look at Wayne Rooney, Ryan Giggs – these are top top players."

      "Yes, Jamie," you'd say. "But you look at Xavi, Iniesta – these are top top top players."

      "Lionel Messi, Nandor Hidegkuti, Garrincha, Hot Shot Hamish, the Honourable Alfred Lyttelton – you're talking top top top top top players," Jamie would insist, becoming agitated.

      And so it is that fresh mezzanine levels of topness just keep opening up, secret doors, priest holes, tower rooms, private elevators, Jamie ushering you ever upwards though VIP suites of vertiginous approval and into a realm of pure top top top top top. In fact, the issue of footballing classification pre‑dates even the Redknapp Index. The more you look at it, the more confusing it becomes – and so in the current age of rolling analysis the old problem of working out who is and isn't any good at football has become a barking chorus of blanket bafflement. This isn't cricket, where a player's worth can be measured out by an exacting formula. Football is free-form. It is one giant amorphous opinion. Even with things like statistics and goalscoring records and medals with things like "player of the year" inscribed on them, still the debate rages.

      No one is safe. Frank Lampard is too fat. John Terry is too slow. Rio Ferdinand is too easily distracted by bright lights, magazines, shoes, gurgling banter-attacks. Steven Gerrard is simply a pair of wild, flailing legs. Stewart Downing is wreathed in a peculiar air of sadness. Peter Crouch is a brilliant satirical spoof of English traditional "strengths". Messi is a cheat, obsessed with temperate weather. Weirdly, the only exception, the only unclouded absolute, is Paul Scholes: if you say he's rubbish you get stabbed in the eye by the Queen.

      This instability extends across management, officialdom and punditry. Sir Alex Ferguson makes referees give Manchester United trophies. Arsène Wenger is mad and a proven loser. Fabio Capello is evil. Stuart Pearce hates old people and dogs. Roy Hodgson tortures mice in his kitchen. Sam Allardyce regularly shoplifts penny sweets then just throws them out of his car window on the motorway.

      I think Jamie Redknapp is great but there are those who see only a thigh-chafing collage of unrelated think-blurts. Is Graeme Souness really any good, or is he just grimacingly soulful and authentic, like a man in an uplifting advert for boiler repair care plans? Is Alan Hansen wonderfully laconic or does he just never say anything with any content, instead lolling immovably on his sofa cushions, trussed within his satin man-shirt and unspooling his soothing gobbets of TV-Scottish?

      Nobody really knows. Nobody really knows anything. Glazed by superlatives, wildly overpriced and buffeted by conflicting tribal denouncements, this is now football's default setting: a gloriously irresolvable confusion of absolutes, and a condition that spreads right through from bottom to top to top top top top.

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      Eem
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      Re: Your worst football cliche
      Reply #48: Jul 21, 2011 04:19:44 pm
      When a player is linked away, he's either a star or an out-of-favour misfit.
      lfc_ynwa
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      Re: Your worst football cliche
      Reply #49: Jul 21, 2011 04:25:02 pm
      When a player is linked away, he's either a star or an out-of-favour misfit.

      Or he's the next "Messi" or "Gerrard" etc.

      That annoys me massively.
      crouchinho
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      Re: Your worst football cliche
      Reply #50: Jul 21, 2011 05:34:01 pm
      'Close in', as in "Liverpool close in on new signing'.

      They're not a F***ing vulture, closing in on their prey.
      TKIDLLTK
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      Re: Your worst football cliche
      Reply #51: Sep 01, 2011 10:04:33 pm
      "over the moon" - Bellamy on signing for LFC again
      ayrton77
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      Re: Your worst football cliche
      Reply #52: Sep 02, 2011 05:02:36 am
      Lmao

      There are more from Jamie too...

      "These balls now - they literally explode off your feet."

      "Alonso and Sissoko have been picked to literally sit in front of the back four."

      "Steven Gerrards literally left Ben Haim for dead there."

      "Peter Schmeichel will be like a father figure to Kasper Schmeichel."

       :roll:

      Another cliche that gets on my nerves in football is a player having a "Sweet left foot" (why is it never a sweet right foot!?)

      Good ones! :D

      Personally, if I read about a "cold December night at the Britannia" again, my head will literally explode across the living room! ;)
      Billy1
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      Re: Your worst football cliche
      Reply #53: Sep 02, 2011 08:56:44 am
       When I saw the thread title I thought it was about Cliche now of Man City :f_tongueincheek:
      fields of anny rd
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      Re: Your worst football cliche
      Reply #54: Sep 02, 2011 09:08:22 am
      "The transfer window slams shut"

      No it didn't Jim, and stop shouting, nobody gives a sh*t about whether or not the transfer of Jason Puncheon went through to QPR, least of all you.
      mattmcg
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      Re: Your worst football cliche
      Reply #55: Sep 02, 2011 09:31:47 am
      ''Fabio Aurelio appears to have picked up a knock there''.

      That is fast becoming a cliche. ;)

      Another one...''the manager has lost the dressing room''.

      Really?  Where did he put it? Stop the match, we need to find the dressing room!  :o
      FATKOPITE10
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      Re: Your worst football cliche
      Reply #56: Sep 02, 2011 10:58:54 am
      How would Barcelona cope with a cold night at the Britannia against Stoke ? - A favourite of Andy Gray.
      ayrton77
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      Re: Your worst football cliche
      Reply #57: Sep 02, 2011 12:10:07 pm
      Personally, if I read about a "cold December night at the Britannia" again, my head will literally explode across the living room! ;)

      How would Barcelona cope with a cold night at the Britannia against Stoke ? - A favourite of Andy Gray.

      Muzzman1969
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      Re: Your worst football cliche
      Reply #58: Sep 02, 2011 01:41:14 pm
      Some of my personal favourites:

      "one man team"

      "if they get a goal now it could be interesting"

      "the draw feels like a defeat/win" - so what would a defeat/win feel like?

      "that is a candidate for goal of the season"

      ''if [insert keeper name] hadn't got a touch on that it was in"

      "he has a good touch for a big man" (been mentioned but what a cracker)
      brilad
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      Re: Your worst football cliche
      Reply #59: Sep 02, 2011 04:01:29 pm
      Step up to the plate ..............aaaarrrrrr rrrrrrgggghhhh it F***ing sends me that does,every time.
      Oh and ........a statement of intent:( F**k off.
      Roddenberry
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      Re: Your worst football cliche
      Reply #60: Sep 02, 2011 04:07:25 pm
      A lot of the former professional pundits who, usually faced with a question they can't answer honestly, say you can't have an opinion on football because you've "never played the game".



      simolfc
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      Re: Your worst football cliche
      Reply #61: Sep 02, 2011 10:59:11 pm
      When a team gets a decent win and the opposition team manager refuses to give them any credit by saying his team had a poor performance, making out they could have won it if they'd tried harder ala Owen Coyle last week
      lester76
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      Re: Your worst football cliche
      Reply #62: Sep 07, 2011 11:49:54 pm
      'He's got it in his locker'

      Really? Then why isn't it on the pitch...
      A lot of the former professional pundits who, usually faced with a question they can't answer honestly, say you can't have an opinion on football because you've "never played the game".



      Robbie Savage does that alot on 606....i quite like his candor at times but that really pisses me off.

      So because I haven't been a politician means i can't have an opinion on how f*cked up England is?
      Because I haven't been a baker means i have no idea what good bread is?

      They normally then retort with 'haven't played at a top level'

      OK....Paisley, Shanks, Fagan, Benitez, Mourinho, Villa Boas...nuff said.
      TKIDLLTK
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      Re: Your worst football cliche
      Reply #63: Sep 08, 2011 12:12:03 am
      Yeah, sometimes that is a valid point, sometimes it is used to cover a poor argument.
      lester76
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      Re: Your worst football cliche
      Reply #64: Sep 08, 2011 12:23:43 am
      Thats my point.

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