Jump to content

The Terrible Journalism & Tom English Thread


Recommended Posts

11 minutes ago, VincentGuerin said:

This is most football journalism, to be fair.

Most of it is a combination of guesswork, bias, and retrospective justification for pretty random events.

When did you last read or hear a journalist say something really new or interesting about football? Most of them are just like us on here, except they get paid (pressured?) to put out some absolute nonsense every few days on whatever the essential issue of the week is.

A good number of the posters on here could (with a bit of editing) write a weekly column that wouldn't look out of place on the BBC Football site. Most of them are no more switched on than we are.

A lot of football podcasts are like this. People with an ice-thin knowledge of the topic coming out with half-baked opinions on teams they rarely see play, showing judgement that is often quite bizarre, and generally just sharing their subjective views. Most of it is rubbish, and carries no more weight than what you get on here.

The addition of the religion of statistics to football has given a veneer of sophistication to it, but even then, most sports journalist types don't really know what to do with the avalanche of stats in today's game, and a lot of them ar meaningless nonsense.

Imposter syndrome must be very common among sports journalists in general. And rightly so.

The only stat that really matters is the scoreline.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Watching the live text of the penalty shootout Forfar v Cove on the BBC

'92 Forfar score.... 1-0

'95 Forfar score...2-0

'98 Forfar score...3-0

'91 Forfar miss...3-0

'92 Cove miss...3-0

'96 Cove score...3-1

100' Cove miss...3-1

Forfar win 3-1

in that order, I had no clue what the f**k was going on.  It then put them all in order, I thought I was going mental.

Edited by SlipperyP
Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 20/07/2024 at 22:13, sugna said:

Watching Tom English in the post-match discussion of the Chile-Scotland match (rugby, sorry). Not for the first time, he's striking me as a bit of a bluffer: turns up armed with some quite pithy nuggets of information; but seems to use those objectives facts as a credibility shield, to deflect criticism from his frankly facile analysis.

A fairly effective technique.

More surprisingly his appearance seems to be evolving towards a cross between Jim Moir and Barry Took - but without their wit, obviously.

Yeah he is very guilty of this. Get yourself a few helpful statistics, pad it out with relatively vague hyperbole to make it sound interesting, and throw in a dash of “x fans won’t want to hear this but…!” As plausible line of defence when people start picking holes. 

He does it all the time but the one that really stood out for me was during the Jim Goodwin season for us but he started targeting our ‘rotten recruitment!!!’ And reeled off some stats about signings and how bad we were as a result. Relatively unarguable at the time given our form to someone who wasn’t watching, but I remember thinking that summer we’d signed Duk, miovski, Leighton clarkson and ramadani (and to a lesser extent Liam scales on loan and even kelle roos was a reasonable pick up in goals) Yes we’d signed some stinkers (hiya Anthony Stewart) but the trained eye would have known we’d recruited really well in some areas and there was talent in that team. 

Once you notice it, it really makes him quite unlistenable. Like most of them tbf. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 22/07/2024 at 11:25, Dons_1988 said:

Yeah he is very guilty of this. Get yourself a few helpful statistics, pad it out with relatively vague hyperbole to make it sound interesting, and throw in a dash of “x fans won’t want to hear this but…!” As plausible line of defence when people start picking holes. 

He does it all the time but the one that really stood out for me was during the Jim Goodwin season for us but he started targeting our ‘rotten recruitment!!!’ And reeled off some stats about signings and how bad we were as a result. Relatively unarguable at the time given our form to someone who wasn’t watching, but I remember thinking that summer we’d signed Duk, miovski, Leighton clarkson and ramadani (and to a lesser extent Liam scales on loan and even kelle roos was a reasonable pick up in goals) Yes we’d signed some stinkers (hiya Anthony Stewart) but the trained eye would have known we’d recruited really well in some areas and there was talent in that team. 

Once you notice it, it really makes him quite unlistenable. Like most of them tbf. 

Aye. Whatever else you can throw at Jim Goodwin, and there is plenty, by and large his recruitment is pretty good.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

39 minutes ago, ancientnoise said:

The what stadium?

 

janbreeder.png.083cf7e00a01a20dca102b49cfa5f6ba.png

 

Someone can't spell Jan Breydel. 

Who seems to have been the Flemish Robert the Bruce. Or something.

We don't have many football things named after historic Scots. There's Kirkintilloch Rob Roy but he was a thieving bastud. Imagine Ayr playing at the Robert Burns Stadium (ETA: oops, forgot I was replying to a Killie fan...!). Stirling Albion have the Wallace monument on their badge so why not call Forthbank the William Wallace Arena. 

Edited by tamthebam
Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 20/07/2024 at 16:17, A Diamond For Me said:

image.png.9606fadc9eb6c54a6aa37105f6756993.png

 

This is the second time they've done this this afternoon.  I am howling with pedantic rage.*





*The best kind of rage!

I don't get it.

Yes I feel very stupid for not getting it.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

The BBC really don't give a shite about anybody but Rantic, do they?

"Peterhead opened Group C with a 5-0 humbling at home to Queen's Park but followed that up with 4-2 win at home to East Kilbride"

Link to comment
Share on other sites

From the BBC text site.

Half-time scorespublished at 15:52

15:52

Group A

Airdrieonians 0-0 Queen of the South

Aberdeen 1-0 Dumbarton

Honestly, they just don't care.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I'm taking this line from the BBC Gossip page, but the story originates from the Daily Mail. There is no direct link, and I'm not going to look for it, but..

jOa1ufD.png

This just seems like the epitome of contrived OF connections. Vignal, who spent a solitary season on loan with Rangers, and did so nearly 20 years ago, is somehow relevant enough for him to be in an OF fluff piece.

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Big fan of the record's new moron clickbait tactic "[insert mediocre OF jobber's name] sold for £30m: Brazilian International and Real Madrid youngsters sign up-Rantic's dream window" 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, coprolite said:

Big fan of the record's new moron clickbait tactic "[insert mediocre OF jobber's name] sold for £30m: Brazilian International and Real Madrid youngsters sign up-Rantic's dream window" 

Qué? 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Unfortunately, your content contains terms that we do not allow. Please edit your content to remove the highlighted words below.
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

Loading...
  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.
×
×
  • Create New...