The Terrible Journalism & Tom English Thread

[Darren]

47 minutes ago, Ric said:

"Facing the great Robert Lewandowski was an Everestian feat"

Everestian? What in the ever loving f**k?

The man is a f**king idiot. I was reading the piece, unaware of who the author was, I get about 2 paragraphs in and there it is, another painful Englishism.

 

 

Unfortunately I read past that to this:

Had you asked Hanley his name he might have needed to phone a friend. Naturally, Zalewski scored. 

[Ric]

1 hour ago, Darren said:

Unfortunately I read past that to this:

Had you asked Hanley his name he might have needed to phone a friend. Naturally, Zalewski scored. 

He's surely not built his career on this sort of nonsense. This couldn't have been his shtick when we has a young and upcoming journo, right? I mean it's just such bad writing that you'd be hard pushed to believe he doesn't write furry fan fiction. Everestian? Like seriously, it's just so cringeworthy. It's also so telling as a comment, it really shows his age, an age when Hillary an Tenzing were pop culture heroes.

[Darren]

5 minutes ago, Ric said:

He's surely not built his career on this sort of nonsense. This couldn't have been his shtick when we has a young and upcoming journo, right? I mean it's just such bad writing that you'd be hard pushed to believe he doesn't write furry fan fiction. Everestian? Like seriously, it's just so cringeworthy. It's also so telling as a comment, it really shows his age, an age when Hillary an Tenzing were pop culture heroes.

Brevity has never been his strong point, but at least when he worked for The Scotsman he would have had a word count and someone to cut out some of the inane rambling.

Now he seems to have carte blanche to write any old bollocks at length.

[invergowrie arab]

If the BBC are going to cut corners just do the information side accurately and well and cut the long reads.

[Miguel Sanchez]

The longer this game went on, the harder Scotland chased, the more Steve Clarke transformed himself from an anxious pensioner playing the penny slot machines with caution to a fearless footballing version of the great Amarillo Slim holding court at the poker table in Vegas, attacking with abandon, throwing negativity to the wind.

 

[craigkillie]

The bit that stood out to me was the claim that Gauld had suffered "A decade of snubs, a career full of rejection from a succession of Scotland managers". Scotland have only had 3 managers across the last decade.

[Leith Green]

21 hours ago, Darren said:

Now he seems to have carte blanche to write any old bollocks at length

I think his current contract at the BBC gives him exactly that.

IIRC it was deemed appropriate for him to be allowed to cover pretty much whatever he wants unedited.

It's as mental as Kheredine being given a career which was "follow Andy Murray round the world and file some copy".

[O'Kelly Isley III]

On 06/09/2024 at 17:38, invergowrie arab said:

If the BBC are going to cut corners just do the information side accurately and well and cut the long reads.

Talking about BBC information, is anyone else getting completely random matches regularly coming up when they hit a fixture on the Scores page ?

For example, yesterday I hit Stranraer v Annan, only for Ukraine versus whoever appearing.  Weird.

[Vietnam91]

I went looking for a match report. Almost impossible to find. Can't do a full feature on how our youth is being overlooked and getting no game time then within a week have pretty much zero coverage of said youth playing. No real excuse as it was broadcast free on YouTube, someone sat down by the Clyde could have penned something tangible.

[kingjoey]

Kevin Kyle, I know I know, the latest expert to come out with “Hearts should be finishing third every season”. A team that has finished third, three times in the last thirteen seasons. Up alongside “Celtic and Rangers have to win every game they play”.

[Darren]

2 hours ago, kingjoey said:

Kevin Kyle, I know I know, the latest expert to come out with “Hearts should be finishing third every season”. A team that has finished third, three times in the last thirteen seasons. Up alongside “Celtic and Rangers have to win every game they play”.

Funnily enough, they never seem to quote former players saying Celtic should be winning the league every season – despite the huge financial disparity between them and Rangers.

Hearts, Hibs and Aberdeen are all similar-sized clubs with as much 'right' to finish third as any of the others. (None of us do this consistently, and there's no such 'right'.) 

Joe Harper used to come out with the same pish in the Evening Express about Aberdeen back when you were finishing bottom six every season.

[Jacksgranda]

51 minutes ago, Darren said:

Funnily enough, they never seem to quote former players saying Celtic should be winning the league every season – despite the huge financial disparity between them and Rangers.

Hearts, Hibs and Aberdeen are all similar-sized clubs with as much 'right' to finish third as any of the others. (None of us do this consistently, and there's no such 'right'.) 

Joe Harper used to come out with the same pish in the Evening Express about Aberdeen back when you were finishing bottom six every season.

Bottom six "every season"? When was this then? Were you in the top flight at the time?

[kingjoey]

1 hour ago, Darren said:

Funnily enough, they never seem to quote former players saying Celtic should be winning the league every season – despite the huge financial disparity between them and Rangers.

Hearts, Hibs and Aberdeen are all similar-sized clubs with as much 'right' to finish third as any of the others. (None of us do this consistently, and there's no such 'right'.) 

Joe Harper used to come out with the same pish in the Evening Express about Aberdeen back when you were finishing bottom six every season.

You were doing so well up until that last sentence.

[BFTD]

On 08/09/2024 at 17:42, O'Kelly Isley III said:

Talking about BBC information, is anyone else getting completely random matches regularly coming up when they hit a fixture on the Scores page ?

For example, yesterday I hit Stranraer v Annan, only for Ukraine versus whoever appearing.  Weird.

They're trying to cure us.

"Alloa v Inverness? Are you sure you wouldn't rather look at this sumptuous preview of the latest Celtgers walkover? Just give it a try, you might like it"

3 hours ago, kingjoey said:

Kevin Kyle, I know I know, the latest expert to come out with “Hearts should be finishing third every season”. A team that has finished third, three times in the last thirteen seasons. Up alongside “Celtic and Rangers have to win every game they play”.

There's a real problem with our sports press actively wanting football to be as predictable as possible, purely so they can copypaste the same thousand words and CTRL+H the names from the hospitality suite at their favourite grounds. Frankly, there's very little about Scottish football that isn't money for old rope.

But it's been like that for a very long time.

[Dons_1988]

3 hours ago, kingjoey said:

Kevin Kyle, I know I know, the latest expert to come out with “Hearts should be finishing third every season”. A team that has finished third, three times in the last thirteen seasons. Up alongside “Celtic and Rangers have to win every game they play”.

His actual quotes amount to nothing more really than ‘Naismith win games be good, Naismith lose games, he sacked’. 

The bigger problem is the absolutely rancid quality of punditry across the board. The daily bbc podcast on the occasions I’ve listened to it is just dull platitudes like this. 

Scott Allan’s opinion on Luke Mccowan going to Celtic was essentially ‘he’ll want to get in the team and play well but it’ll be hard’.

And I don’t even mean that as much of an insult to scott Allan, it’s been an acceptable form of pundit for a long time. It’s just the need to churn out content, no matter how bland it is that’s pretty galling. 

[Charles Stiles]

1 hour ago, BFTD said:

They're trying to cure us.

"Alloa v Inverness? Are you sure you wouldn't rather look at this sumptuous preview of the latest Celtgers walkover? Just give it a try, you might like it"

There's a real problem with our sports press actively wanting football to be as predictable as possible, purely so they can copypaste the same thousand words and CTRL+H the names from the hospitality suite at their favourite grounds. Frankly, there's very little about Scottish football that isn't money for Old Firm.

But it's been like that for a very long time.

FTFY

[Darren]

1 hour ago, Jacksgranda said:

Bottom six "every season"? When was this then? Were you in the top flight at the time?

 

1 hour ago, kingjoey said:

You were doing so well up until that last sentence.

Aberdeen finished in the bottom six in each of the three seasons I lived in Aberdeen (2009/10, 2010/11 and 2011/12) and paid any attention to Joe Harper's weekly column.

Hearts were indeed in the top flight, finishing sixth, third and fifth.

[Jacksgranda]

2 hours ago, Darren said:

 

Aberdeen finished in the bottom six in each of the three seasons I lived in Aberdeen (2009/10, 2010/11 and 2011/12) and paid any attention to Joe Harper's weekly column.

Hearts were indeed in the top flight, finishing sixth, third and fifth.

That's what you should have written then, rather than finished bottom six every season.

And twice twelfth since.

[Darren]

17 minutes ago, Jacksgranda said:

That's what you should have written then, rather than finished bottom six every season.

And twice twelfth since.

I said back when you were finishing bottom six every season. You were, as I've shown.

The point being neither club, nor Hibs, has a divine right to finish top six, let alone third. Hearts and Hibs' subsequent spells in the Championship simply reinforce that point.

We've all been poor to varying degrees. And we all have former players willing to get paid to talk crap in the media.

[BFTD]

That's "finished in the bottom six every season" added to the bank of trigger phrases.