What really pisses me off is when some mediocre MOTD pundits say that so and so is just the player Arsenal need. No he f**king isn't. Tonight when they said it they were referring to a Hull City player. Well in my opinion he is just the fu**ing player Hull need and lets just hope he stays there. Who is Murphy? Some Arsenal head hunting honcho FFS?
Well said, Godders. Forget the little club, because they don't matter. It's one of my pet hates in football as well. Before punditry we didn't have that one to contend with. Besides, if Arsenal need him, you can bet that Hull need him even more. Actually it was Lineker who threw away the line you were talking about, but when Gullit said something similar about Bony, Lineker said don't say that to Swansea fans. Well at least he sometimes remembers.
You know what really gets me about football? It's when people talk about teams or players as though they're not singular. For example "Saints are a good team but they've got a while before they can challange a top six position, like your Chelseas, your Man Cities, your Arsenals".
Yep, know what you mean. Just an off-target observation here. We say Saints are a good team, but isn't a [one] team a singular..? Therefore should it not be Saints is a good team..? Or if we say Southampton is a good team, it sounds better. Someone give me a decent explanation quick otherwise I'm off to Google.
seriously, you don't know the difference between the singular 'saint' and the plural 'saints'? As to no-nos, something that probably has affected you more than us recently, ex-managers of your players 'flirting' with them in the press to try and engineer a move. I know it's their job to recruit but have some respect for your former fans.
Would 'saints' be classed as a collective noun though, it is simply the plural of 'saint', as signified by the 's' on the end, a collective noun is a word in it's own right that can also be pluralised. for example crowd and crowds, herd and herds.
Saints is short for Southampton FC so is singular and we should say Saints is a good team, but (even someone a bit pedantic like me) we don't...why?... because it sounds wrong. And we may not like it, but grammar does change or become obsolete.
SFC is referred to as the Saints. The club is singular, therefore the nickname is. That is why we refer to Saints' fans rather than Saint's fans...the latter would mean the fans of one Saint, whereas Saints' fans (note the position of the apostrophe) means fans of the club called the Saints.
I think both forms are correct, but it seems that Americans, who often use the more traditional grammatical forms, always refer to teams as singular, whereas British people tend to say e.g. "the Saints are..." instead of "the Saints is..."
The collective noun link I provided explains it very well: http://www.grammar-monster.com/lessons/singular_plural_ collective_noun.htm
Everyone missed the point I was trying to make. That's the bit that winds me up. "The problem is they don't have a creative midfielder, they don't have a player the likes of your Lampards, your Fabregases, your Schniederlins". It doesn't make sense. It should just be "they don't have a player like Lampard, Fabregas or Schniederlin". There's only one of each of those players.
The rule about being denied a clear goal scoring opportunity = red card, needs tweeking. Shoudln't apply inside the area because with the awarding of a penalty, the clear goal scoring opportunity isn't being denied, therefore shoudln't be a red card.
Talking about word use has reminded me of one of my pundit hates when they use the word them instead of the correct those. As in... I would have them defenders... rather than I would have those defenders... or we can group them clubs as cannon fodder, rather than... those clubs. Practically every pundit I've come across, bar presenter Lineker, use the incorrect term. Oh, and Graeme Le Saux uses those, as does Matty, thank goodness.
