Football Burp’s very own Jermaine Pedant enjoys nothing more than strolling back and forth in his professor’s gown, casting scholarly gazes over his fellow professionals’ various social media scribblings and broadcast utterances.

Each week, he homes in on a few choice instances of common grammatical failings and raps on them repeatedly with his disciplinary cane until we’ve all jolly well learnt to treat the Queen and her English with the utmost respect. Read on for this week’s lessons…

Izzy Iriekpen

Former Swansea City defender Izzy Iriekpen, whose chosen profile picture recalls this classic music video snapshot, surely can’t be referring to himself here…

Jermaine Pedant says: There/their/they’re. In this instance, you would need to use the possessive form, which is ‘their’. Hope this helps.

 

Danny Graham

In-form Swansea City striker Danny Graham makes a boo-boo before you even get onto his tweets…

Jermaine Pedant says: “Offical”? Oh dear, Danny. Misspelt opening words create a terrible first impression.

 

Ryan Babel

Hoffenheim and former Liverpool winger Ryan Babel is a very talented musician but perhaps his lyrical flow could have been bolstered by paying closer attention to sentence structure at school…

Jermaine Pedant says: A more grammatically correct version of this would read: “Something’s wrong. I hold my head. MJ’s gone. Our N*gga’s dead.” Also, Michael Jackson passed away in June 2009. (Apologies to Mr Babel if he was in fact referring to another deceased person of the same initials.)

James Vaughan

Norwich City centre-forward James Vaughan is understandably excited about recent goings-on pertaining to the X Factor televisual strand but he sure has an inelegant way of expressing it…

Jermaine Pedant says: In terms of person, that should be “all that HAVE voted”; but, as you appear to be aiming this acknowledgement towards deeds situated in the perfect tense, you need only have written “all that voted”. I’ll be sure to remind you of this when we play you at the Britannia Stadium on March 3rd, so remember to bring your exercise book.

Fitz Hall

Queens Park Rangers defender Fitz Hall has what appears to be a cunningly contrary request…

Jermaine Pedant says: You may not be accepting favours from others at this moment in time but I’d advise you to do yourself one by reading up on double negatives; unless, of course, you actually DO want us to do you favours. We’ll talk about that erroneous comma placement later.

Nick Summerbee

Meanwhile, former Manchester City winger appears to be using banter with talkSPORT broadcaster Andy Goldstein as a long overdue excuse to learn the English language…

Jermaine Pedant says: That’s it, I’m taking a long lunch break.

 

Tune in every Wednesday for more from Football Burp’s very own Jermaine Pedant!