Commentator classics:

The Curse of The Commentator: it is a notorious trait of ‘The Commentator’ to be versed in the dark arts. These commentators-cum-sorcerers have the power to ‘curse’ the mere mortal struggling on the pitch below. “He hasn’t missed a penalty in his previous twenty attempts”; inexorably, the player misses. Spooky, eh?

He had no right to score from there: The Magna Carta itself includes a section on the angles and distances from which, by legal right, players can and cannot score. 30-yard ‘screamers’ are in fact illegal.

My grandmother could have scored that: Did the man who came up with this line ever have a grandmother? No offence to all grandmothers out there, yet, even if alive and pre-Zimmer, most likely she too would have missed that ‘sitter’ - especially if it had been a header.

Acres of space: The dimensions of a football pitch are as follows: length can range from 100 to 130 yards, width from 50 to 100 yards. To put that into perspective, a single acre equals 4,840 square yards.

 

Expertise from experts:

Could [insert footballer] do it on a cold and rainy Wednesday night at Stoke in November? The ultimate hypothetical question. The criterion for judging world-class players has had a tendency to boil down to a player’s ability to perform at the Britannia, specifically on cold and wet Wednesday nights in November. Messi, the argument follows, could not. Glen Whelan could. Perhaps obsolete now given Mark Hughes’s inception of Stokealona?

They’re parking the bus: Where does this bus come from? How did it get onto the pitch? Where is it parked? Who drove it? Are the players inside it? Is it the same bus for every team who employs the strategy?

He’s got bags of ability/pace: In a sport where there is minimal anti-doping legislation and enforcement, it is no surprise that players can get away with carrying bags of performance-enhancing talent.

He certainly has that in his locker: ‘That’ generally refers to a piece of brilliance exhibited on the pitch – a cross-field ping, a cheeky flick, an overhead kick. For some reason, and somehow, these flashes are kept in the changing room for the duration of the match.

Goalkeepers’ Union: All goalkeepers are obliged to join. They never go on strike.

 

Fans know better:

He scores when he wants: The obvious question then is why isn’t he scoring all the time? Is 30 goals a season enough for a player who supposedly has the supernatural faculty to put the ball into the back of his net at will? Perhaps fans ought to get on his back. Is his head truly in the game?

We are by far the greatest team the world has ever seen: Perhaps the treble-winning Barcelona side of 2009 that dominated Manchester United comes nearest to this hubristic claim. When Hull City fans sing it, there is a greater element of delusion.

 

Thank you, Captain Obvious:

If you don’t shoot you don’t score: As opposed to trying to ‘walk the ball into the net’, obviously.

Goals win games: Own goals can actually lose games; see Kolo Touré’s scoring record.

A Game of Two Halves: Not a game of two quarters?

We are going to take one match at a time: Squads these days are comprised of 25 players, so there is no reason why two matches could not be played simultaneously. Manchester City could probably take on three matches at once.

It ain’t over ‘til it’s over: Perhaps there is some sense in at least one of these clichés. It has always been a mystery how they formulate stoppage time and why the referee only rarely blows the final whistle at the correct point. ‘Fergie Time’ will never end.

When Manchester City don’t score, they rarely ever win: Thanks for that insight, Michael Owen.

 

Managers know best:

The players worked their socks off today: This is virtually inconceivable. How this dictum has become synonymous with ‘we chased every ball’ transgresses the mind’s capacity to reason. What do socks have to do with anything? Do they smell?

The lads gave 110 per cent: We don’t need a mathmo to prove that this is impossible. Odd that it is always 110 per cent as opposed to any other impossible percentage.

It really was a good time for us to score: Are there bad times to score? During a football match, probably.

They got stuck in today: A simple clamour for aggression. It makes very little sense if you think about it. Players becoming stuck would render them useless.

We showed great character: Did Luis Suárez collect for the Red Cross and Martin Škrtel help an old lady across the road then, Brendan?