"We've had enough of this bollocks" so said national treasure and football hero, John "Motty" Motson in his capacity as the newly anointed chair of campaign group Football UK Commentators (FUKC). Motty came out fighting today as Arsenal FC announced new signings for the forthcoming season.
"I'm sure Arsenal's management is doing this on purpose. Look, it's okay every other year when we have to put up with all sorts of weirdo Johnny Foreigner names during the European championship or World Cup, we can even cope with a few of them in the Premier League but now Arsenal is taking the piss. I'm arranging a ballot among the membership on whether or not to boycott their matches."
It is the announcement of the signings of Sokratis Papastathopoulos and Stephan Lichtsteiner which has aroused Motty's ire. They are joining Arsenal's squad alongside Papastathopoulos' countryman Konstantinos Mavropanos, 20, who joined in January. He was the first signing by new head of recruitment Sven Mislintat, formerly chief scout at Dortmund.
That month Arsenal also brought in Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang from Dortmund and Henrikh Mkhitaryan - another ex-Dortmund player.
"Let me explain" said the normally affable Motty. "Every other year I would spend six weeks from early May to mid-June learning by rote unpronounceable players' names for the European Championship or World Cup. Then there would be three of four weeks of stress putting that into practice and trying not to laugh at some of them. Do you remember Shittu and Dudu? Yes, somehow they both ended up at QPR and their names were quite appropriate. There was also Rafael Scheidt but those players weren't a problem.
"What's happening now is that this malarkey will also be going on throughout the whole of the football season with no let up, particularly when Arsenal is the commentary match. Look, we've just got used to Arsenal's Polish goalkeeper Wojciech Szczesny, when they ship him off to Italy, only to make it even worse.
"Paul Merson is going insane about this. After all, we've only just managed to get him to speak English and his old club is now about to fry what few brain cells he has.
"As for international tournaments, the Poles and the Balkan teams are usually the worst ones to learn: Jakub Blaszczykowski, Artur Jedrzejczyk and Sergej Milinkovic-Savic are prime examples. Get your tongue around those, if you can. But of course this year we've got the Middle Eastern teams, plus Japan and Nigeria complicating our task even more. Just think of it - for Nigeria we've got Ikechukwu Ezenwa and Kelechi Iheanacho and for Japan, Masaaki Higashiguchi, and those are the easy ones.
"It's not easy for my members, but for me there is the consolation of having retired, plus I'm not an international cricket commentator. Just imagine Sri Lanka's matches - Sadeera Samarawickrama, Kapila Wijegunawardene, Pramodya Wickramasinghe etc. Now that is commentator's hell..."
