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Peter Drury

Hyperbole loving ITV commentator, friend of the thesaurus, enemy of anyone wanting football to retain its sense of context.

The patriarch of horrible pre-prepared sound bites and forced emotion.

Abbreviated player names

We’re not American, we don’t have to refer to Cristiano Ronaldo as CR7, so just stop it.

Probably dreamt-up by some over hair-gelled advertising executive in California, and now used by tedious fans who spend all of their free-time learning the skill moves on FIFA.

John Terry

Cliff-faced former England captain. Sometimes mistakenly described as being polarising, whereas in reality he’s detested by anybody who didn’t start supporting Chelsea circa 2003.

Adulterer, possible racist, and a vastly overrated footballer – for ‘brave’, read ‘slow’ and ‘naive’.

Cup Upsets

Truly against the grain, and I’m sure something that makes me a killjoy. The ‘romance’ of big teams taking on small, impoverished sides from villages with a male population of 17 is fine, but it’s became a hackneyed cliche. From the perspective of wanting to see the latter stages of competitions populated by talented teams rather than a ‘hard-working’ equivalent, it’s actually quite nice to see the no-hopers given a proper beating.

I don’t know why, I’ve just always enjoyed it. Plus of course, upsets play into the hands of commentators in the Peter Drury mould, and the melodrama becomes truly grating.

Footballers’ Autobiographies

Invariably, almost always ghostwritten by Oliver Holt. The whole autobiography exercise is just a literary equivalent of a prolonged post-game interview with the particular player – just without the ‘kind ofs’, ‘sort ofs’ and ‘you knows’. Brilliant, how many cliches can you fit into two hundred and fifty pages, and how much false-modesty can you coat them with?

There are a few exceptions; Paul McGrath’s distressing tale and Robbie Fowler’s frequently funny effort to name a couple, but for the most part these are self-promoting, non-enlightening wastes of time – although sometimes providing a window into the vaulted halls of certain players’ egos…

“Jonathan, are you taking the piss?”

‘Ironic’ cheering

Moronic default noise of dullard football fan. Hate it. Hate it. Hate it. A wayward shot, a miscontrol, a stumble, an untied bootlace – ‘waaaaaaaaaaaay’ etc.

Urgh.

Believers of institutional bias in football

Yup, everything’s just one big conspiracy against your club, and the entire football world is comprised simply of your own fans and a mass of others desperate to see you fail. Resentment and agendas are also apparently carried by the FA, all media pundits who didn’t captain your club, and every referee in the country.

Glen Johnson

Complete weapon of a right-back, currently pretending to defend at Liverpool. Deserves his place in this section forever thanks to his Paul Merson rant. Personifies the ‘I’m a footballer, hence immune from any type of criticism’ culture in the game.

Also prone to doing silly things with his hair.

Martin Lipton

Smarmy and self-important Chief Football Writer of the Daily Mirror. His opinions matter more than yours, and he’ll talk loudly over the top of you until you agree about that.

Summed-up perfectly by this wonderful, wonderful video with the rather lovely Gigi Salmon.

“You’re being silly. Stop being silly!”

Alan Shearer

“What’s happened there, is he’s collected that pass brilliantly, tried to score, but the keeper’s obviously saved it. He’ll be disappointed with that.”

Shearer is to punditry, what sign-language is to those that can hear.

Step right this way for the parody account that makes this point better than I could ever dream of.

Zlatan Ibrahimovic

The most overhyped commodity since the Y2K bug. Open up the old Championship Manager statistics and find a ’1′ for loyalty, a ’2′ for determination, and a ’20′ for pouting. The only forward on the planet who could find a way not to maximise his talent at Barcelona.

Super Fans

So, you want to get dressed-up as a giant bird, dangle yourself off the edge of a stand, and make a spectacle of yourself? Yeah? Right, well then you’re an attention-deprived tosser then aren’t you.

Also includes anyone that has ever deed-polled a player’s/club’s name into their own, or gone to a football match looking like this…

The FA’s disciplinary panel

Blundering and unnecessarily opaque.

So, your team has been on the receiving end of a disputable refereeing decision and faces a three-game ban. Your club appeals to the FA, only to receive the terse ‘insufficient grounds’ press-release dismissing the claim.

Would it hurt to expand on this? Would it be such a bad thing to clarify a stance, or set precedents over refereeing directives?