Motson's glorious career

Sporting Spotlight

Sometimes I need a reminder of why I started this blog. Sometimes the BBC posts a little reminder for me.

BBC football commentator John Motson discusses the best players he has seen,

Could be interesting, but will most likely be nonsense

how football has changed during his career

A looooooong career, so fair enough question

and his favourite Motty impersonators

Wha? A 40 year career and this is the question on everyone’s lips?

Ok, let’s stop being facetious and get into it.

Q: How did you first get into commentating on football?
A: I was lucky 

And we were not.

Q: Which match stands out in your memory as the best one you have seen?

Bare in mind the tens of thousands of games this man has seen. He has commentated on some truly great games of football. Euro 1984 France 3-2 Portugal AET is in the sidebar on the same page as this Q & A, so that is a candidate. The world’s greatest players performing at levels of skill beyond that of normal players in the biggest games of their careers. Spain 4-3 Yugoslavia at Euro 2000 maybe?

A: Hereford's 2-1 FA Cup win against Newcastle in 1972 is one which helped develop my career because it came up in the year's trial I had at Match of the Day. Nobody saw the result coming.

1. Seems to be answering a different question than the one asked.
2. Making it all about him when he has been simply asked which is the best game.

One of his great failings as a commentator is the need to get his stat in, to make it the Motty show. Everyone loves a good Motty stat so let’s make it about me again lads.

Later in my career, it would have to be England beating Germany 5-1 in Munich in a World Cup qualifier in 2001 when Sven-Goran Eriksson had just taken over as manager. We went there to play our oldest rivals and Michael Owen got a hat-trick.

Great for an Englishman, but it was only a qualifying game, and both teams qualified anyway. The standard of football played wasn’t all that either. Typical jingoistic Motson rubbish.

Q: Who is the best player you have ever seen?

Let me first list some acceptable answers to this question, baring in mind his commentary career started in 1972.

Cruyff

Maradona

Platini

Baggio

Matthaus

Ronaldo (either of them)

Zidane

Messi

But really I think you should narrow that down to Maradona/Messi/Zidane. Anyway his answer…

The best English player I saw was Paul Gascoigne.

Not the question, but an acceptable answer to a different question I suppose. Why would you answer this question by first saying who the best player of your own nationality was? It’s absurd in the extreme.

I would go for Eric Cantona as the best overseas player. He changed the history of Manchester United. I have to mention Thierry Henry at Arsenal too.

Seriously, why won’t he answer the question that has been asked of him? Has it been written down incorrectly on the web page? The best player you have seen is not any of these men, and let me openly state I have a deep and meaningful love for Arsenal’s record goalscorer beyond what might be termed socially acceptable. Best Premier league players was not the question you fool. Also thanks for reminding us who Henry played for, really needed that.

I need to write this out again because it is so insane it's the only way it will sink in:

John Motson thinks that Eric Cantona is better than Diego Maradona, Lionel Messi, Ronaldo and Zinadine Zidane.

NB. Thierry Henry is so much better than Eric Cantona it's not even funny.

Q: How much has football changed since you started out?
A: It was fun in the way that winning was not what it is today. 

Has anyone really been far even as decided to use even go want to do look more like?

Erm, the English language is on line five John. Seriously, parse that fuckers!
I can't for the life of me work out what he was supposed to mean here.

Q: If you could take one aspect out of today's football, what would it be?
A: The laws of the game have stood the test of time and do not need much tampering with but to make it more entertaining and clear I think the offside rule needs clarifying. It has become far too complicated and it is much harder for the assistant referees.

Diving, match-fixing, PED use, racism. No, the fucking offside law is too complicated for poor John Motson cos he can't work out what is happening, although that's no suprise considering he can't at the best of times like when a player has the ball in the centre circle and Motson suddenly screams his name out as if he has beaten 5 men and is about to slam it in the top corner...

And breathe.

Q: Have you ever been shown how Twitter works?

Oh god. I don't know what to say to this. Just to picture Motson's face even trying to open a laptop gives me hysterical fits of laughter.

Gary Lineker asked me this last summer and I told him I have no interest in it whatsoever. I am too busy to even think about it. I am not on Facebook either and I don't do email.

No interest is learning anything new thank you very much. Can't see the point in it, too busy looking up stats in my log book of games I keep on parchment, lovingly hand written by candle-light with a swan's feather quill. There's not a better way yet been invented that I am aware of.

Also, I read this as if he wouldn't even listen to what twitter is. It's not that he doesn't like the idea, it's that he won't even listen to anyone who wants to explain to him what it actually is. Like he has no interest at all with anything on a computer, no matter what it is.


My life is very simple, it is controlled completely on a mobile phone with my texting.

Listen to your mobile phone overlord, for it rules all others. I know your wife wants to go for a nice Valentine's meal, but just think, what does your phone say?

I like to think that Motty's wife has to text him to come out of the study for his tea, because he will no longer respond to human interactions.

Fin. 

Stats aren't always stats

By Anthony Kastrinakis

He has added up the times in games when Van Persie and Ronaldo have scored their first goal, and then divided by the number of games played. This then is used to give the time of their average first goal in a game. Apparently this predicts when the players will score. It’s utter nonsense of the highest order and the predictive power of this method is equal to blind guessing.

The most annoying part is the claim that:

Stats show when sharpshooting stars are most likely to score (empahsis mine)

The “stats” show nothing, this is the work of a moron who doesn’t understand statistics or football. This joker has added up a bunch of numbers to produce something he believes is meaningful when has no idea how to do so.

Consider his theory for a moment. Average time of first goal the player has scored in a game will predict when that player will score.

Using this amazing predictive system I have been able to predict the following:

Man Utd are likely to score 7 goals in total as that is how many players in the line-up had an average goal time to calculate.

Rafael should score after 46 minutes, beating two of the most prolific goalscorers in world football to the punch.

Alex Ferguson will start on his second strip of chewing gum after 6 minutes

Jose Mourinho will refuse to answer the 13th question posed to him in the post match press conference

There is a place in football for meaningful intelligent statistical analysis. It worries me that a journalist who writes for national newspapers thinks this is that, and that we are stupid enough to buy it

Lawro's predictions

Here's Lawro

We’ll start with the standard never more than 3 goals in a game stuff

1-1

2-0

2-1

2-0

1-1

1-2

1-2

1-0

2-0

2-0

Tottenham v Newcastle

I wouldn't be surprised if a few of their [Newcastle] injured players come back quicker now their places are under threat.

I take this to mean that these players are currently faking their injuries? Either that or they have the ability to manipulate time and space in such a way as to speed up recovery from injury whenever they so desire.

Joking aside it is a very strong allegation he is making against these unnamed players as to their professionalism. As if they didn’t want any part in coming back until some better players joined. I can only guess he is talking about Ben Arfa and Danny Simpson as they are the only first teamers currently injured. Simpson has a broken toe, Ben Arfa has been advised by the club doctor not to play because he could tear his hamstring. So without X-Men like powers what can they do?

Swansea v QPR. Prediction 1-2.

According to Lawro QPR should be 7^th in the table with 41 points. They are actually 20^th with 17 points. That’s some mighty fine predicting.

I don’t think Lawro even looks at the web page that publishes his predictions, if he did he would surely not keep this up. You would think that it you “write” a column for the BBC that you would at least give it a cursory glance to make sure that what you said is actually reflected in the article. Lawro obviously too busy bemoaning his employment situation, nay his very existence, to trifle with such things.

Sunderland v Arsenal

I can envisage a game where Arsenal have lots of possession

More revolutionary analysis from Lawro and his crystal ball. He’s right of course, but he might as well be saying that he predicts they will play with a round ball. It’s actually anti-analysis where he has just reached into the back of his mind for some vague description of what he thinks Arsenal are like.

Lawros’ brain: Well Arsenal always have loads of possession and try and pass it into the back of the net. Oh why do I even bother anymore, it’s hopeless. Someone get me out of here for the love of God.

Here’s how easy it is to do a bit of actual analysis. It took me 10 minutes to work out that Arsenal have had more possession in 14 out of their last 18 EPL games. The games they didn’t do that in were against Chelsea, Swansea, Man City and Wigan! It’s 11 of last 20 for Sunderland, which is a little higher than I thought but makes sense given their mid table position. Against top teams they are poor in possession. Man City 40%, Liverpool 39%, Spurs 44%, Everton 43%, Man Utd 41%. Also just for lols they only had 35% against Wigan and they still won 3-2!

So the message here is all signs point to more possession for Arsenal, but I wouldn’t expect the gap to be too wide. And also Wigan keep the ball very well but don’t do anything with it!

Aston Villa v West Ham

Let’s take a few titbits from this prediction:

Andy Carroll fit and scoring again.

how easy it is to score against Villa.

Set-pieces are their biggest issue, which is a particular problem when you play the Hammers because they thrive on set-pieces and organisation

Richard Dunne's absence through injury is a particular blow for Villa

All good points here. Looks like Villa are going to struggle

Prediction: 1-0

Oh Lawro.

Also worth mentioning, Liverpool v West Brom get’s 9 paragraphs, and a side bar about Stevie G. This is more than for any other game this weekend. Not in a biased way of course.

Classic india

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/How-many-died-in-CWG-projects-Govt-doesnt-know/articleshow/6795726.cms
 

Top, Top pundit

Jamie Redknapp nonsense:

Glenn Murray scored two more, so that’s 23 league goals for the season, but it was the No 9 alongside him — Kevin Phillips — who might just give
Crystal Palace that extra edge in the Championship run-in.

My old England team-mate has scored everywhere he’s been. An inspired loan signing in the window

So a 39 year-old man with 2 goals in 18 games will give his team the edge? Not the player with 25 goals in 28 games this season?

Stick to the boring platitudes Jamie.