S4M22: Much Ado About Spurs & a little History lesson from Prof. Impossibilitee

For some reason, of all the matches I got wrong last week, and there were a lot of them, I'm most annoyed about Spurs. Man City slipping up should annoy me more - I, a self-confessed Mourinho kick-in-the-crotch-if-I-ever-get-the-chancer should have been really bugged by the slip up affording Chelsea their lead back. Admittedly, I'm not drastically fussed or annoyed by Swansea and West Ham drawing. I'm even glad to have got Southampton's win at Old Trafford wrong - a feeling I should have over Spurs's demise.

But I'm not. I'm fuming. And after careful consideration, I'll tell you why.

'Cos it was so bloody obvious. Of course Spurs were going to spurs it up. That's what they do, what they have always done and will continue to do ad infinitum, long after the machines take over and football is played by robots like Cristiano Ronaldo, who I'm convinced is the best animatronic Madame Tussauds model ever. It's in their collective DNA; their very raison d'etre. Spurs spurs things up. They give hope to the most pessimistic of followers....just enough to ensure the crushing disappointment that is sure to follow hurts that bit more. Of course they were going to lose to Palace. Of course they were going to do it by taking the lead. The utter buggers.

I'm not even a Spurs fan and they've really wound me up. Must be utterly gutting to be a Spurs fan (for a variety of reasons, I'm sure). That said, my own team are doing their best to follow the lead as it stands.

Anyway, I'd gotten over it. Spurs returned to part A of the Spurs cycle with a win (from behind, natch) against Burnley. The equaliser - a drive from 20 yards by Capoue. Nice enough goal...hardly a worldy but a good hit.

The BBC commentator - I don't know who she was, but she was bloody awful...channelling her inner Jonathan Pearce with breathy 4-5 word clauses for every, single thing - uttered a cliche to describe the finish:

"like an Exocet missile"

I got to thinking - why is it always an Exocet missile? There must be loads of different types of missile out there - Sidewinder, Patriot, Aegis, Tomahawk, Bazooka, Scud & Fajr to name just a few. So, dear readers, I thought I'd do a little research to learn what is the feature of the Exocet that allows it to describe a hardly struck shot in football.

What have we learnt? Well:

• Exocet is the French word for 'Flying fish'
• It's an anti-ship missile
• It sunk a British ship during the Falklands war - this is I assume, where it entered the public consciousness. 
• It's radar guided at the end of its flight - so has late vector changes. To my mind, this makes it a more appropriate name for the kind of "knuckle" free kicks that are now en-vogue.
• It has a pretty short range, and is generally effective against small to mid-size boats

So basically - it's a pretty weedy missile by comparison. It's fast, but not that fast. It moves late and it doesn't do loads of damage. It seems point 3 is probably the only reason that we have this cliche. This leads me to 2 questions:

1) Pre-1982, was there a cliche about Doodlebugs? 

2) Is this cliche same-same-but-different elsewhere? ie, if you went to watch football in Japan, would they call a shot like that a 'Fat Man'? Or do Israeli commentators refer to blistering shots as being 'Katyushas'?

I feel I've educated enough for one blog, but if you know the answers to anything, or have other theories to share with the class, send your entries to the usual address post them below.

Nuff chat. Let's get statty:

This week, 21 people played

Most popular predicted result: Man City WIN (21/21)

Most disputed result: Crystal Palace vs Spurs (5-4-12 split)

Highest odds: AFM (423,648/1)

Highest odds excluded AFM: Josh Daniels (4229/1 or ~ 1% of her total. The old, if that was the solar system....)

Lowest odds: Me (1021/1)

Average odds: 62, 359/1 (AFM exlcuded: 2144/1)

Best predictors: Lawro, Fink Tank, Eli Daniels & Josh Daniels

Worst predictors: AFM & Chernick (2/10)

Average score: 5.33/10

Best predicted result: Chelsea WIN (20/21)

Worst predicted result: Everton vs Man City DRAW (0/21)

Everyone's scores:

The leaderboard, for those who have played >2/3 of available games (15/21)

Now to this week's predos:

Aston Villa vs Liverpool - LIVERPOOL

Burnley vs Crystal Palace - DRAW

Leicester vs Stoke - LEICESTER

QPR vs Man Utd - MAN UTD

Swansea vs Chelsea - CHELSEA

Spurs vs Sunderland - SPURS

Newcastle vs Southampton - SOUTHAMPTON

West Ham vs Hull - WEST HAM

Man City vs Arsenal - ARSENAL

Everton vs WBA - DRAW

Total odds: 4013/1 (Paddypower)

Good luck folks!