Mark Langdon: A week of highs and lows

Where I come from, beating the system is a badge of honour. If it was offered up as an A-Level course we would pass with flying colours and what few pubs remain in east London will have numerous tales of grifts of the past, current ones that are ongoing and potential coups of the future.

It never truly leaves you, even if you leave it, and whenever I tell the tale of how I get to work, using the services of a big national car park company, it goes down a treat. If you drive at a certain angle it is possible for the camera recognition to fail, at which point on departure you are asked to make an honest payment.

You could pay for ten hours. Or you could pay for one.

The only problem is, it is 30 minutes away from the office and on Tuesday night when trying to enter my car I realised the keys were sat on my desk, resulting in an extra hour of back and forth which took the gloss off what should have been a glorious evening as League One and Two ante-post picks Portsmouth and Stockport brought home the bacon.

I don't mean to be greedy, but I'd mentally banked those winnings some time ago and the annoyance of my stupid car key faux pas was still rife. I channelled that irritation to compile a mental list of all the things in football that are aggravating me.

TV replays during a game
What the hell is going on? There is a pandemic sweeping through Sky and TNT towers of producers thinking they know best and in recent weeks both channels have missed key moments of build-up due to replays. You can add crowd shots to this too. Just show the game.

Pundits wanting to keep matches 11 v 11
Darren Fletcher – sorry Fletch as we must call him – and Ally McCoist were full of praise for arbiter Tim Robinson for keeping his cards in his pocket early in the game after he refused to book Fabian Schar, Dan Burn and James Maddison for fairly routine cautionable offences last week. Tactical fouls have become the bane of my football watching and you get a worse game the more a referee refuses to clamp down. Exhibit A was Anthony Taylor's weird performance in the recent Man City v Arsenal snorefest.

Bottle jobs
The online abuse aimed at then-Sky Sports presenter Rachel Riley for her infamous "It’s deja vu for Spurs, isn’t it? Proper bottle job" comments after a defeat at West Ham in May 2017 went too far, but I've refused to watch Countdown and Eight out of Ten Cats since she said it. Spurs had won 16 of their previous 19 league games, including nine in a row before a 1-0 defeat at West Ham put paid to their title chances.

You'd think somebody who was good with numbers would understand the probability of a team dropping points in a ten-match period but instead it became the classic football punditry of sticking a narrative on a result because it's the easy thing to do.

Arsenal had won ten of their last 11 league matches with the other a draw at City before a home defeat to fourth-placed Aston Villa on Sunday. There will be bumps in the road because you can't win every game and the Gunners are on for a points tally in the mid-80s. Anyone who thinks that constitutes a bottle job is wrong.

And while we are on the subject of Arsenal, apparently their European exit to Bayern Munich was half-explained by their lack of European pedigree, but if it's that important how did Atalanta overcome Liverpool?

My former colleague Kevin Pullein has always said to me that football results just happen and, powered by that knowledge, outcomes are now easier to digest.

Well nearly all of them. Ipswich are the final leg of various EFL multiples alongside Portsmouth and Stockport and if they bottle it I'll never drive a tractor again. And not just because I forgot the keys.

Read more from Mark Langdon . . .

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