The Pointless Press Article Thread

There seems to be an epidemic amongst so-called journalists these days. On the street, I believe it's called "talking out of your arse" but I might be mistaking this for real investigative research. Who knows?

That said, there seems to be an abundance of stories published (online) by supposed respected newspapers that either have no purpose or point, just to justify a salary I presume. Let's name and shame them here and see which paper wins the award for spouting to most crap.

 

I'll start off with this classic in The Fail today. I'm sure we'll all lose hours of sleep over this:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/fo...e-Tottenham-sixth-shots-hit-woodwork-net.html

 

The DM one is shocking

 

The worst thing about that Fail story? They nicked it:


Lazy bastards.

 

If Utd had decent players, we'd be top

If it was 1988, Liverpool would be top

If we were Victorians, Preston wouldn't lose a game

If Barcelona were English........

If Sky hadn't reinvented football

If Stokes hadn't bowled that last over

 

Surely then the real question here is who on earth pays some bellend with a calculator and an excel spreadsheet at Opta to come up with this nonsense?!

 

I suppose a shot hitting the woodwork is an unambiguous measure of a near goal so perhaps this stat is vaguely interesting

 

Not unambiguous. The keeper may have got it, if it was on target.

 

Surely a table of shots on target would be more telling? Why don't they do that one. I doubt Leicester would be very high up the league!

 

I suppose there is an interest in this stat considering Spurs fans have been labelling Leicester "lucky" all season.

 

What does luck have to do with missing the target?

 

A shot hitting the woodwork is neither lucky or unlucky. It's just a near miss. PnP got there first...

 

Exactly the same as with anything else in football.

**** all.

 

You don't think that there's any luck in football? Depends on how you define luck, I guess.
If two players commit the same offence and one is punished while the other isn't, I can see why people would say that one got lucky.
You don't seem to agree.

 

If it's not luck that has seen Huth get away without 3 red cards this season, it must be something more sinister.

 

I'll grant you that you can get lucky with regards to refereeing decisions.

Vertonghen taking out Mahrez in the box or the Nathan Dyer "handball" for instance, but you can't attribute luck to anything the players do.

 

Officials get some decisions wrong. If you benefit from those then you've been lucky. If you disbenefit you've been unlucky.

 

This is the sort of thing that I mean. Correct decisions against Leicester are unlucky, apparently.
Incorrect ones in their favour aren't, though. Odd.

Players can get lucky and do so all the time. This largely irrelevant Newcastle goal, for instance:

 

But I haven't seen nearly as many refereeing decisions go in our favour as they have against us.

In fact, the only decision that has definitely gone in our favour is that Huth should have been sent off for kicking the ball at Wilson's head.

 

And what is lucky about that goal?

The Norwich defender did a poor job at attempting to block the shot and was punished for it.