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’ online scribblings.
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…
David Stockdale
The Fulham goalkeeper went to support his beloved Darlington as they took on Hayes and Yeading last night…
Jermaine Pedant says: Afternoon all! David, I must say that this makes for a somewhat novel note on which to begin this week’s lesson. As you are clearly preoccupied with ‘foreword’ over ‘forward’, I can only assume that you are a keen reader of biographies, a much healthier pastime I might add than spending all evening hitting the fast-forward button on your Sky Plus. A proclivity for the written word is traditionally the mark of an ‘eccentric’ footballer, but I’m willing to believe that the financial plight of your beloved Quakers has left a hole in your life that can no longer be filled with Hollyoaks.
John Oster
The Doncaster Rovers midfielder was left dazzled by Barcelona’s performance in El Clasico the other night…
Jermaine Pedant says: Usually I deal with matters of grammar, John, but it would be remiss of me not to acknowledge that pedantry ploughs other furrows besides syntax. As such, I’d quite like to know if I’m the first person to point out to you that Barcelona are quite clearly not in the same league as the cream of our top flight. I know some good geography teachers if you would like me to set you up with some evening classes. Do let me know.
Michael Owen
The sidelined Manchester United marksman hit back at the internet warriors, and spent some pleasant time with family…
Jermaine Pedant says: While I’m stepping momentarily out of my grammar shackles, I’d like to draw Michael’s attention to the contrary nature of these posted-relatively-close-together Tweets. While I absolutely do not condone people giving you undue grief on Twitter – quite the opposite, in fact – I will say that pleading a ‘normal life’ is somewhat undermined by the advertisement of the fact that you have a pony. If I remember correctly, pony ownership is – along with playing for Manchester United, being able to fly and having three heads – one of the four main signifiers of not living a normal life. I concede that I could be wrong about that.
Marcus Gayle
The former Wimbledon and Watford forward was sufficiently impressed to retweet this particular nugget from a certain What the F**k Facts…
Jermaine Pedant says: I’m glad that you’re getting into palindromes, Marcus, but I’m afraid that the titular insinuation of fact is somewhat undermined by the deliberate (or otherwise) misspelling of “damn it, I’m mad”. Unless of course “dammit” is now such a common colloquialism that it’s been accepted into the old OED. I concede that this is entirely possible. That reminds me, I must check the latest updates. In any case though, I’m not sure how the selective presence of punctuation affects the purity of a palindrome – must check that too.
Nick Summerbee
The former Manchester City and Sunderland winger, a regular on these pages, posted an open invitation for opinion on Mario Balotelli’s alleged stamp on Scott Parker…
Jermaine Pedant says: Pardon? That was just noise to me. I give up on you.
A Bury fan
Over on Twitter, @buryfcfan kindly retweeted a Burp article inspired by Shakers duo Steven Schumacher and Giles Coke fighting over who got to take a penalty…
Jermaine Pedant says: Firstly, @buryfcfan, thank you from everyone at Football Burp for retweeting one of our articles. As such, everyone else here told me to refrain from making an example of you , but I definitely wouldn’t have been able to sleep if I hadn’t. I trust that you shall respond to this defiantly!
Fabrice Muamba
The Bolton Wanderers midfielder was the subject of the following hilarious prank…
Jermaine Pedant says: Fabrice, first point of order in terms of any counter attack must be to inform the perpetrators that they can’t spell ‘separated’ properly. Still, you should be honoured – Geoffrey was a great character.
Conor McAleny
The young Everton striker posted the following baffling picture…
Jermaine Pedant says: Well, you’ve put your foot in it in more ways than one with that post, young Conor, because that should be ‘gutted’. Unless of course you take your dog to be a stream or a candle, in which case you require a level of assistance that I simply cannot offer you. Oh yes, and there should be a question mark on the end of that.
Right, I ought to put in a few extra hours at the old training ground if Tony Pulis is to stop leaving me out of the side for out-of-position defenders. Class dismissed!
Tune in every Wednesday for more from Football Burp’s very own Jermaine Pedant!