People who moan about stadiums with running tracks

They should go to Napoli's ground, where you could drive a squadron of tanks outside the touchlines and behind the goals without getting close to a spectator. And there's a moat. But the fans do what fans should, which is get there an hour before the kick-off, sing their songs, and then spend 90 minutes giving unstinting support to their team. At Stamford Bridge, Old Trafford, the Emirates and elsewhere, we seem to have forgotten how to do that. Richard Williams

Kicking the ball out to get attention for an injured player

And even worse, being morally obliged to do so. He's not injured and even if he was, waiting a few more seconds for treatment isn't going to make any difference. Usually the player who goes down and stays down is, frankly, cheating – trying to force the ball to be booted out. And then it's the player who carries on who is whistled like he's some kind of heartless, cynical cheat. That and the ease with which fouls are blown against attackers which would never get given against defenders. Let's face it, the referee isn't giving a foul, he's giving the danger of there being a far more significant decision to give. Oh, and referees who go over to tell pushing players to stop it before corners. Why? If there's a foul, give it. You don't run up to a striker and warn him not to run offside. Sid Lowe

The extent to which broadcasters who have paid billions to show Premier League football kowtow to players and managers in post-match interviews

In US sport, it would be unheard of for the best known and most decorated coach in the land to refuse to give an interview to the national broadcaster for almost a decade. Or for players wearily and sometimes grudgingly to grant a couple of minutes of their time for those who indirectly pay their wages. It is a minor but emblematic issue among many that have led to an increasingly distant relationship between players and fans. Owen Gibson

International teams being managed by foreigners

The clue is in the name of the competition: international football. So why are managers foreign to a nation allowed to lead that country? Italy, Brazil, France, Spain, Argentina: none of the major football forces has ever employed a non-national and would never entertain the idea. And whether it be Cameroon, the British Virgin Islands, India, Iceland or middling old continually-slipping-down-the-rankings England, the state and progress of a country's football is measured by the coaches who are produced – as well as players – so the wrong message is sent to the next generation when home-grown gaffers are treated with suspicion whenever the ultimate managerial job becomes vacant. Jamie Jackson

The refusal of the game's governing bodies to use of video technology

There were concerns among fans of tennis, rugby, cricket, American football and baseball – to name but a few – when those sports introduced various forms of video refereeing or Hawk-Eye and yet there are few involved in those sports now who would argue for going back. Even if you were to restrict the technology's application to goalline incidents it would still be worthwhile: Italian researchers identified 26 occasions across that country's top two divisions last season where a referee's decision to award a strike or not might have been altered. What makes the whole thing more galling is that the fourth officials in top-level matches already have a screen on which they can see instant replays of contentious incidents. How hard would it be for them to signal the referee in just the same manner as the assistants on the touchlines? Paolo Bandini

Newspaper marks out of 10

When scouts are sent to matches they are asked to assess one, at most two, players, so asking journalists, who also have to compile match reports, to judge 22 professionals – plus substitutes – on a one to 10 basis is ludicrous. The upshot is loads of meaningless sixes, not to mention the occasional tap on the shoulder from the disgruntled recipient of a five. It would be fascinating to stage a sort of footballing wine-tasting whereby a cross-section of managers, scouts, players and, possibly, the odd reporter and supporter, were assembled at a game and each asked to provide a detailed marking and analysis of the same player over 90 minutes. Those results would really be worth reading. Louise Taylor

Goals in the last minute of extra-time

A winning goal should never be an anticlimax but it usually is when struck after 119 minutes of drab play, when it feels not so much like a grand finale but as a final insult. There you were thinking that for sitting through the preceding dross you would at least be rewarded with the excitement and suspense of a penalty shootout when some centre-back lurches up to scramble a cheap deus ex machina into the net and deprive you of even that little treat. Even if the goal is a thing of beauty, such as David Platt's exquisite volley against Belgium in 1990, it still, for neutral onlookers at least, feels like a diabolical sleight of foot. Paul Doyle

People being perfectly fine about players 'winning' penalties

Diving has moved to a new level. It has become commonplace for an attacker to hook his leg around a defender and star-fish to ground, and for the referee to buy into the foul. As nauseating, though, are the sages who say: "Ah, but there was contact" after finally detecting it on the 14th replay angle. André Villas-Boas got it right when he tried to highlight the sharp practice three weeks ago. It is cheating, and there is no justification for it. David Hytner

Playing of loud music when a goal is scored

Where do you start? It would have been the problem of the increasing number of managers, pundits, fans and journalists who excuse a dubious penalty award on the basis that "there is contact" – it's still cheating unless there is a foul. It could be the heavy corporate bias at the new Wembley or top clubs cherry-picking the best young talent and thereby reducing a lesser club's prospects of a future financial windfall. But there is a weightier issue that can be resolved at the flick of a switch: the playing of loud, usually dire music the moment a goal is scored. There is no better sound in football than the roar of a crowd. Leave it be. Andy Hunter

Drum and bass instruments at grounds

The people who bring them should be banned for thinking that the rest of us want to hear that bland, repetitive drone during matches. And, yes, I'm looking at you here Bolton Wanderers, Blackburn Rovers, Portsmouth etc. Add to that those clubs – are you listening, Middlesbrough? – who seem to think it is zany, or novel, or ground-breaking, to play tacky little anthems after a goal has been scored. Football doesn't need these gimmicks. Let the supporters make the atmosphere, with their voices, the old-fashioned way. Daniel Taylor

Half-time marriage proposals

If there is one thing guaranteed to bring warring supporters together during the heat of a match it is some guy on the pitch asking his girlfriend if she wants to marry him. The collective sense of anguish is tangible among a group of thousands who have no interest in seeing such a gesture having just spent the previous 45 minutes hurling abuse at each other. Then there is the discomfort felt on behalf of the recipient who has basically been emotionally blackmailed into saying "Yes" whether she, or he, is ready to do so. The only good to come from such an act is the chanting of "You don't know what you're doing" that often sweeps across a stadium as soon as a proposer gets down on one knee. Sachin Nakrani

The Football Creditors Rule

There is one thing worse than this rule, by which when a club falls into administration, as has happened 55 times since the Premier League clubs broke away to keep all the TV money in 1992, other clubs and players must be paid in full, but all other creditors get pennies. This rule has meant that St John Ambulance, which does not even charge clubs – it volunteers – to help injured people at grounds, and asks only for expenses, has been left owed thousands, while other clubs and players on huge salaries receive everything. Worse than the rule itself, though, is that when you talk to the football authorities about it, they cannot seem to see why it is so wrong, or why it looks so bad. The Football League has been in the high court recently, with the Premier League, defending it. David Conn