1. “Scoring too early” – The only time in which a team can score ‘too early’ is during the pre-match warm-up. Once the game has kicked off, there is no point at which one may legitimately score too early. Everton – specifically Louis Saha – stood accused of scoring too early in the 2009 FA Cup final but this is patently nonsense. Despite scoring after only 25 seconds, Chelsea’s subsequent equaliser effectively put the match back on tenterhooks (whatever they are) and what transpired from that point on owed little to the fact that Saha did not balloon it into Row Z on purpose, as many have implied that he should have done.
2. “Flat track bully” – Also referred to as “not a big game player”, this term has been applied to such recent Premier League luminaries as Thierry Henry and Cristiano Ronaldo in accusation that they only turn it on against the lesser sides. In this sense, the term ‘flat track bully’ has become synonymous with whoever happens to be regarded as the league’s most dangerous attacking player at the time. This phenomenon fails to take into account the simple fact that a player is more likely to run rings around a beleaguered rabble of relegation candidates than they are the defenders of a fellow top team. Expressed as a principle, this general rule has much in common with that which determines that being swatted by a rolled-up newspaper is far more likely to kill a fly than it is likely to kill a crocodile.
3. “Manager of the Month curse” – Sir Alex Ferguson has been named Manager of the Month countless times and it hasn’t done him much harm. Some winners of the award have enjoyed similar success the following month, whereas others, possibly as a result of being unable to sustain overachievement, have not. That’s kind of what happens. Suggestions that the award jinxes a team’s form are therefore wide of the mark, although previous winners have complained of showers of frogs, blood running from their taps and the occasional swarm of locusts.
4. “A team are at their most vulnerable when they’ve just scored” – Sometimes, a team concedes a goal immediately after scoring one themselves. In the vast majority of cases, however, they don’t. No-one is sure of when exactly a team is at their most vulnerable, although a study conducted by the Department of Footballer Vulnerability at Grimsby Polytechnic has concluded that it is most likely to be when a Manager of the Month-cursed side that has scored too early comes up against a flat track bully.
5. “It only takes a second to score a goal” – According to all known records, no player has ever scored in the first second of a game. While it is true that only one second might elapse between a ball leaving a player’s foot and hitting the back of the net, there are usually more complex patterns of play which have led up to the shooting scenario and therefore it indisputably takes more than a second to score a goal. Factor in a lifetime’s worth of training and shooting practise and it becomes clear that it actually takes years to score a goal. Decades, even.
Saha...should have skied it
6. “There are no easy games in international football” – Yes there are. San Marino; there’s one. Faroe Islands; there’s another. American Samoa lost 32-0 to Australia, which suggests that a blind monkey chained to a railing would probably at least sneak a draw against them. There are some very easy games in international football. Just ask Cilla Black, who recently beat Aruba 3-0.
7. “These things even themselves out over the course of the season” – Quite aside from being untrue, this assertion directly contradicts the other time-honoured belief that “luck goes against you when you’re at the bottom”. This phenomenon is known as ‘colliding myths’ and the consequences of this can be just as disastrous as colliding tectonic plates. For example, when Jimmy Greaves coined the immortal phrase “it’s a funny old game”, little did he know that, somewhere else in the building, a reporter had told a colleague that “it’s a cruel game”, causing volcanic eruptions which devastated Finchley.
8. “Youngsters play without fear” – While some youngsters profess to being more phased than others when they make their debut, they are not as a general rule devoid of fear. Quite the opposite, in fact. Young footballers breaking into the first team have often complained of panic attacks, existential crises, nightmarish apparitions and monsters under their beds. In the aftermath of his match-winning debut for Manchester United, Frederico Macheda was stalked for weeks by a man dressed as an evil clown. (Probably.)
9. “They’re fighting for their lives” – This comment is often trotted out in reference to teams embroiled in a relegation battle; however, the practice of relegated clubs executing their own players is one that has never been implemented in this country.
See also: “relegation six-pointer”. Again, there is no recorded instance of a team ever having been awarded six points for defeating fellow strugglers. And again, this could change if Liverpool ever find themselves battling the drop.
10. “Away goals count double” – They don’t. (That’s all we’ve got on that one.)
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