Late Goals Don't Count?

Charlton 2 Everton 0

I had decided to tempt fate and follow the scores online this afternoon, but in the end as it was a cold afternoon, I retired to bed with a book, and nodded off; well it was a late night last night. I awoke at quarter to six, one hour later than Britain of course, and made my way to the computer and logged on to Livescore. It loaded instantly with the result, which oddly enough was what I had been dreaming it would be, exactly. Livescore also provided me with the info that the goals had been in the 82nd and 85th minutes, and that Duncan Ferguson, who once spent three months in a Glasgow gaol for assaulting someone on a football pitch, had been sent off after 83 minutes . So an action-packed four minutes then, evidently. I looked on the BBC website for more info; there was a short description of the match, and the headline was something like “Late Charlton goals sink ten-man Everton”.

I reflected upon this; I am getting a little tired of people deciding what the football results are going to be before they are played, and then writing accordingly if things don’t go to plan. After all, anyone can predict football matches in newspapers and on web pages. All you do is look at where the club is in the table and choose the higher-placed one to win, unless they are Manchester United, in which case you always choose them to win. It helps if you are someone like Mark Lawrenson, who after all used to play the game professionally; he can read a league table like anyone else, and work out his predictions therefrom; it just adds a little authenticity to his predictions. He must know what he is talking about, having actually played for Liverpool at one time. But he doesn’t of course; otherwise he would have retired years ago on the strength of a couple of pools wins.

But getting back to the headline; Everton were 3rd; Charlton 8th, at the start of the match. So Everton obviously would win. And after 80 minutes it was 0-0, so our headline writer and match reporter (anonymous, and well he or she might be) began to think that an away point was still OK, given Charlton’s form, and the fact that they didn’t let Everton into the game. But then it was Charlton who scored. But not, actually, against ten-man Everton. Against eleven-man Everton, or ten-man Everton + Duncan Ferguson, at any rate.

Ferguson then thumps Hreidarsson two feet away from referee Mike Riley and is rightly sent off. Hreidarsson then scores against, OK, ten-man Everton, but it is hardly Charlton’s fault if Everton field homicidal maniacs in their team. And Charlton would have won 1-0, anyway.

Ah but I am forgetting; these are late goals, which in the wonderful world of football reporting, seemingly aren’t quite as good as other goals; maybe they should only count for half, then, but it would have been three points for Charlton just the same. At least it wasn’t a late penalty that sunk Everton, or maybe nine-man Everton; that would have been awful and Charlton would have had to let Everton have the points anyway, as a Christmas present because they are a (marginally) Bigger Club.

And just to rebut any accusations of partisanship here, another headline from the same website a little later read: "There's nearly half an hour gone at Anfield and Liverpool can't find a way through against Southampton."

Not, "Valiant Southampton holding out against Liverpool away from home", or anything like that. The result of the match had already been decided, and if things aren’t going the way you predict or want, then the writing comes out like that.

Anyway, it appears that Ferguson’s contract won’t be renewed after July, and David Moyes thought he was going to get three points at the Valley.

Next up is Arsenal at home on Saturday, maybe we should just cancel the game and let Arsenal have their three points; it would save a lot of mucking about. Maybe we should scrap the real football altogether and just let sportswriters vote for their favourite Big Club every week.

OK, we might not win against Arsenal; we might even lose. Lawro thinks the scoreline will be 0-2. This is very bad as he never predicts more than 2 goals for anyone, so even if he really thinks 0-6, he’ll only say 0-2.

Well, we’ll see, but I feel reasonably confident that Charlton won’t exactly disgrace themselves, though.