TFN editor Greg Johnson reckons there’s something false about how football fans have come to use that very word…

People get very upset about others wanting to try and be clever or more ambitious with their language. It’s not fear. Too often when people whine, complain and criticise it’s put down to some sense of terror or jealousy, but that’s not the case. Instead, there exists a strange desire to manage how other people use the words we know, use and perhaps, in our heads at least, own to some extent. Seeing someone else misuse or mangle our special words, or try to bring in new terms into a semantic field we’ve already decided is settled, can conjure up great feelings of anger and entitled from those who object.

Take the talk of “false nines”. For some, it’s enough to set the old eyes rolling back and trigger dismissive scoffs of derision about people of a certain pretension, or whom are attempting to gain a level of knowledge or insight that their critic believes is above their station. There’s nothing inherently wrong with the idea of a “false” No. 9. In fact, once those embittered antagonists get over their own spite and consider the label, it makes sense. Continue reading →