Complex sentence: Newspapers had previously claimed Walcott was the favourite but The Times pointed out that this was a lazy understanding of a system, which does not in fact admit of favourites, since the number of supporters listed in the University Gazette gives no clue to the final outcome.
Split into simpler sentences: Newspapers had previously claimed Walcott was the favourite but The Times pointed out that this was a lazy understanding of the system. The system does not in fact admit of favourites, since the number of supporters listed in the University Gazette gives no clue to the final outcome.