A TALE OF TWO CITIES
Manchester City’s bid to seriously irritate their neighbours by going one better than 1999 while their manager strikes a pose of studied indifference, making out he genuinely doesn’t care either way, and what’s more by the look in his eye he might even mean it, continues apace. In the first leg of their Three-Handled Tin Pot semi-final at the Etihad, the runaway Premier League leaders beat Championship side Bristol City, who were on a collision course with heartbreak the minute Bobby Reid deservedly gave them the lead in the first half, everyone just knew it. Oh Kevin! Oh Sergio! How can your souls be so bereft of romance!
De Bruyne’s equaliser and Agüero’s injury-time winner condemned the Bristolians to a fate not totally dissimilar to the one they suffered at the same stage of the same competition in 1989, when as a Third Division team they visited Brian Clough’s Nottingham Forest in the first leg and conceded a late equaliser after playing extremely well. And so Pep Guardiola was able to wander off the field whistling absentmindedly, one hand in his pocket, just a half-chewed toothpick and straw boater sported at a rakish angle away from picture-perfect insouciance. Though to be fair he did break character for a few seconds to vigorously shake his finger at Lee Johnson, another theatrical display of respect for a defeated opponent’s efforts which registered a mere 0.33 Nathan Redmonds on The Fiver’s patented Passive-Aggressive-o-Meter.
That particular job now three-quarters done – well, y’know – the Cityfolk of Manchester turned their attention to other matters, namely making a squad yet to lose a live match this season even stronger. As well as planning pay rises for De Bruyne and Raheem Sterling, they’re also turning up serious heat on Arsenal in their pursuit of Alexis Sánchez, with a £20m bid now slapped on Arsène Wenger’s increasingly rickety table. “If he comes he will add something to the team,” said De Bruyne, crooking a finger in the cheeky, saucy style.
All this blatant come-hithering is unlikely to put Wenger, already fuming over a series of recent penalty decisions, in a better frame of mind as he tries to get Sánchez to concentrate on Arsenal’s Tin Pot semi-final visit to Chelsea. With opposite number Antonio Conte still on a rolling boil thanks to his ongoing feud with fellow toddler José Mourinho, it’s only going to take one vaguely contentious VAR decision on Wednesday night to instigate a touchline funk so spectacular it’d make your average pub discussion over Brexit sound like the warm luxury-spa-approved oscillations of the panpipes. Oh Pep! Oh Stooky Bill! How could you!
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QUOTE OF THE DAY
“Romelu is very Catholic and voodoo is not part of his life or his beliefs” – Romelu Lukaku’s Mr 15% gives his client a lesson in firing shots by responding to Everton chairman Farhad Moshiri’s claims the striker left Goodison because of a voodoo message with the threat of legal action.
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FIVER LETTERS
“All you subscribers to a certain well-known sports TV channel provider, can I point your attention to the Steel City derby on Friday night? Specifically, can I thank you all for your TV football addictions resulting in said provider moving our game from the normal, socially acceptable, traditional time of Saturday afternoon, to a rather annoying, completely impractical spot. (Seriously, who in their right mind would move this game to a Friday night? It will not end well.) Anyway, if you could all not actually watch in protest at the farcical TV-related scheduling system, that would be lovely” – Dan Makeham.
“My brother was kind enough to give me a Liverpool calendar for Christmas. As usual we joked about which players would still be with the team by the time their month rolled around. I don’t suppose the makers knew something when they put Philippe Coutinho’s mug on January? I see Emre Can has a month just in time for a transfer to Juventus” – Sarah Rothwell.
“Re: Andrew Want on being recognised in relation to a namesake’s Fiver letter writer (yesterday’s Fiver letters). Not quite the shame of being recognised as a reader, but I experienced a similar situation when I was asked by my girlfriend why googling my name had returned, among other things, a picture of John Carver in a chef’s outfit. I had to explain it was a (winning) entry to Big Website’s The Gallery, showing a ‘Carvery dinner’. She must have been suitably impressed, we’re married now” – Matt du Gay.
“I was surprised by the emails I received from friends when I was published in The Fiver. When I found the link I was ashamed to discover I’ve been reading for 10 years now. I guess I’ve been waiting for you to come up with a better gag” – William Cook.
“Although the other two have now left, there were at one point three (!) of us in my office who read The Fiver. I was asked twice in the same day if it was me who’d written in. As it turns out, one of them was also published in a later edition (hi Mairead!) but the other, despite many efforts, has yet to meet The Fiver’s high standards (hi Dan!)” – James Kirk.
“An ex-colleague sent me a link to The Fiver shortly after he started working here and back when it was funny (a bit like Viz). I’ve since had three ‘letters’ published. I’m convinced that he left when I got the hat-trick. Conversely, when I won a prize for having the third letter ‘printed’, I received a book that had been written by another ex-colleague. Can anyone top that?” – Frankie Dodds.
“I have had the opposite experience with my colleagues. Twice my letter has been published and proudly I showed the office, but nobody had heard of The Fiver and nobody cared. Strange, because I have signed quite a few of them up to receive The Fiver over the years. I can only assume they read it once and unsubscribed” – Matt Henderson.
Send your letters to the.boss@theguardian.com. And if you’ve nothing better to do you can also tweet The Fiver. Today’s winner of our prizeless letter o’the day is … Matt du Gay.
THE RECAP
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NEWS, BITS AND BOBS
Tommy Lawrence, the former Liverpool goalkeeper who won three major trophies at the club, has died aged 77.
Jake Livermore will face no action from the FA after a remark directed at him in relation to his baby son who died in 2014 prompted him to become involved in an altercation with a West Ham fan.
Yay! FA suits are introducing a version of the Rooney Rule. Oh! Chief suit Martin Glenn failed to keep those size nines out of his mouth when suggesting female footballers may be less tolerant of “banter” than their male counterparts.
Mid-life crisis’s André Villas-Boas has withdrawn from the Dakar Rally after an unfortunate car/sand dune interface ended his chances in the race. “Just to tell everyone that both me and [co-driver] Ruben [Faria] are safe and well and back in the bivouac,” he rasped after being taken to hospital.
Having wound Antonio Conte up to the point of explosion, José Mourinho has wandered insouciantly from the smoking wreckage.
Meanwhile in Manchester, Old Trafford suits will increase ticket prices by £35 for Sevilla fans travelling to the Big Cup last-16 tie to subsidise the cost of United fans being charged an “excessive” £89 and £133 for first-leg tickets at the Ramón Sánchez Pizjuán. “Harrumph,” more-or-lessed a Sevilla response.
And Harry Kane will get his World Cup metatarsal-knack on during June friendlies against Nigeria and Costa Rica due to be staged as Russia 2018 warm-ups.
STILL WANT MORE?
Martin Laurence has seven Championship brides for seven Premier League clubs.
Paul MacInnes on the spit spat spot the FA has found itself in.
Want Premier League goals? Don’t sign someone from Oman, Albania or Pakistan, warns The Knowledge … oh, spoiler alert.
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