Modern Sports Journalist is the F**kin S**ts - Reasons 1-10

1.    They use crap words or terms that are never heard of outside of football, e.g. warchest (he’s got some money to spend), rescinded (he’s had his yellow card written off the record). Transfer windows slam shut, teams swoop for other players etc etc ad infinitum

2.    They build up players, especially English ones, to be far better than they are, then rip them apart at the first opportunity (see Beckham, David and Rooney, Wayne).

3.    Sky Sports News build up every game shown by Sky as if it’s the most important game ever. Top four teams CLASH on Super-Duper-Mega-Tastic-Sunday.

4.    Teams are always two games from a crisis. West Ham lose a few games under their new manager, and they’re getting relegated. Said team wins a handful of games and they claim they’re on the brink of Europe. Hull’s Phil Brown is a genius; suddenly he’s under pressure for his “underperforming” side, who were “over performing” at the start of the season…

5.    They make stories up about transfers, call them ‘EXCLUSIVES’, then write an article the next day about how reports of said transfer were “wide of the mark”. They then come back to said story eight months later when the deal coincidentally goes through, claiming they were the first to report it. I think the word for it, is scattergun.

6.    If a manager doesn’t give good sound-bites, he’s dull. If a manager loses his rag with the press, he’s under pressure. If Alex Ferguson does either of the above, he’s ‘canny’, and ‘playing mind games’.

7.    They always write articles when the FA Cup comes around comparing a non-league team to Chelsea/Man Utd/Liverpool/Arsenal. They compare the cars driven by each team’s star player. They compare their wages, their personal life. They call it the magic of the FA Cup. They then proceed to tell us how the magic of the FA Cup is wearing off because no one wants to go and watch their team’s reserves lose against some other team’s reserves.

8.    They have ‘sources’. Sources that normally have no idea what’s going on at the club. They can write an entire back-page article based around the source’s quotes, even though he is probably just a bloke who sells pies at half-time.

9.    They have no bases for their stories. They read forums, blogs etc and quote them as truth. They claim made-up players are about to sign for Arsenal (read about it here)

10. They don’t find this funny.