IT’S EVERYTHING YOU FOLLOW FOOTBALL FOR
Today we’ve got it all, dear readers, including: an attention-seeking politician! An irritating old businessman! An obnoxious jock (that’s jock as in the pejorative term for a ‘sports berk’ not for ‘a Scottish person’, although the berk in question happens to be a Scottish person. ‘Jock’, then, is an homonym – we’d normally have steered clear of using such a thing but some of the people in this piece are believed to be so militant in their defence of equal rights for homonyms that we wanted to be seen to be inclusive!) Yes, readers, it’s everything you follow football for, right here in one feelgood story!
Following rumours last week that Plucky Wigan were poised to appoint a manager who is currently under investigation by the Football Association for partaking in text-message blather that reportedly included comments that were “disrespectful of other cultures”, a Wigan-based Labour MP, one Lisa Nandy, wrote to the club’s chairman, The Dave Whelan, to express the hope that this would not transpire to be true. Whelan made the appointment he wanted, thanked Nandy for her interest, then declared that “she’s not a Wigan lass so she doesn’t know anything about football.” Since Whelan is unlikely to ever entrust his team to a manager who knows nothing about football, the Fiver can only assume that the person he hired, Malky Mackay, is a good Wigan lass.
Maybe that’s a case of the Fiver putting two and two together and coming up with 8.5 million, which sounds like the sort of calculation that, say, Cardiff City owner Vincent Tan would not be happy with, but if it is indeed the case that Mackay is coming out as a woman, then the Fiver congratulates her for her courage and offers a suitably progressive and happily metaphorical pat on the bottom to Whelan, whom the Fiver had until now mistakenly pegged as a vain and backward-thinking greedhead. “Contrary to the way he has been portrayed in recent months, the Malky Mackay I met this week, and who has been vouched for by the many different people from whom we have sought advice before making this appointment, is an honourable man,” explained Whelan, leaving the Fiver utterly perplexed.
QUOTE OF THE DAY
“This is just a starting point for me. Back home I did my mates’ hair and built up a client base. Now I want to do the same thing here so I’m inviting fans. Football always comes first but this is something I can fall back on as I get older and it’s something I really enjoy doing. I’m very flexible when it comes to making appointments” – Grimsby Town winger Nathan Arnold is unveiled as the busy Grimsby salon Hairwayze’s newest hairdresser. Book your appointment now.
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FIVER LETTERS
“I see you were offering the opportunity to win tickets to see Newcastle v QPR yesterday. Last time I went to see a game against QPR it was at Loftus Road. My team won handsomely and I was a very poor winner, stood front and centre in the away end, arms outstretched observing in loud voice that the QPR fans were not singing any more. I had forgotten that my Mother had bought me a shockingly yellow winter coat for Christmas that I’d been guilted into wearing that day.
After the game I stood, shivering in a t-shirt, yellow coat rolled up tight and hidden in a plastic bag, as one group after another of QPR fans raced past searching for the fat b@stard in the yellow coat. I shall not be attempting to win those tickets, thank you” – Marten Allen.
“I think Dave Whelan’s Recruitment Policy (Yesterday’s Quotes) has been given an unnecessarily hard time. After all, it is possible that the 19 applicants after Malky’s were akin to this. Do the bosses at Football Manager Towers provide references?” – Gareth Collins.
“I love how you describe Wigan’s new manager being revealed with ‘depressing inevitability’. I guess the Fiver would have avoided that charge by starting late, telling a lame joke, and then sending out Uwe Rösler for a second time by mistake” – Mark Ireland.
“Unfortunately, yesterday’s Fiver was only viewed by 1,056 pedants, as the 1m35s I usually allow for Fiver-gazing, was interrupted by a phone call from an excited friend. Said excited friend informed me that an old school chum – now a professional portrait painter, of all things – had a recent change of fortunes, after taking on John Doe of the centre circle and all-round footballing humdrummer, John Obi Mikel, as a client. Turns out the former ‘next Claude Makelele’ has his likeness painted all over his home. I’d imagine the volume of pictures is to offset the inevitable anonymity of Mikel’s presence when seen to next to his Banksy cushion, IKEA wall clock and signed photo of James Milner” – Mark Lloyd.
• 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 letter o’the day is: Marten Allen, who wins a copy of Football Manager 2015, courtesy of the very kind people at Football Manager Towers. We’ve got more copies to give away this month, so if you haven’t been lucky thus far, keep trying.
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BITS AND BOBS
ITV have not confirmed whether a souped-up Andy Townsend Tactics Truck will be the key sell when they do battle with the BBC to win back Saturday night Premier League TV highlights.
Fun and games understanding Louis van Gaal’s accent led Manchester United to report that Daley Blind may be out for six months with knee-knack, before someone finally got their ears tuned-in and twigged that what he actually said was: “It will be a long story, but not six months or something like that.”
Olivier Giroud is set for a surprise return for Arsenal against Manchester United on Saturday. “Giroud is weeks ahead of schedule,” cheered Arsène Wenger, without revealing whether the French striker would jump out of a birthday cake if called into action as a substitute.
Manchester City have told Frank Lampard that he’ll have to postpone his retirement in New York as they’d like him to fill the Yaya Touré-shaped hole in their midfield during the African Cup of Nations.
Louis van Gaal is considering saving up all the Our Price vouchers he gets for Christmas and splurging them on Mats Hummels in January after deciding that Manchester United could do with a defender.
Roberto Martínez has joined Alfie Inge Haaland, Lord Ferg, Mick McCarthy, Carlos Queiroz, autograph hunters, Abba and Uncle Tom Cobley on Roy Keane’s black list after describing his comments about James McCarthy and Séamus Coleman as “nonsense”.
QPR – most recent debt £177m after £65.4m of losses in 2012-13 (including the whole Christopher Samba thing) and the club who have had more grounds than any other professional club in England - reckon shelling out for a new stadium somewhere else is the way out of the doldrums. “We need to move if we are to sustain a top-flight club,” parped owner Tony Fernandes again.
Sixteen months after leaving his position as Manchester United assistant manager and saying “my career has always been progressive … managing is where I want to go”, Mike Phelan has joined Norwich as first-team coach. “I am looking forward to … getting [Norwich] back into the Premier League,” he cheered.
Good old modern football dept: Phaedra Almajid, the whistleblower who made corruption allegations against the Qatar 2022 World Cup bid, has said she will be “looking over her shoulder for the rest of her life”. “It has cost me my credibility and most importantly it has cost me the security of both me and my children,” she said.
Bayern Munich have said surgery to correct Philipp Lahm’s ankle-snap has been successful. A club suit droned: “His ankle was fixed with a plate and a screw,” which sounds a bit Blue Peter to The Fiver.
And, after Ivory Coast and Cameroon appeared to stop attacking during the 0-0 draw that secured the home side qualification for the Africa Cup of Nations, supporters celebrated by being clubbed by the police.
RECOMMENDED LISTENING
STILL WANT MORE?
Jonathan Wilson knows so much about African football that, if you open up his head, you’ll find Ladysmith Black Mambazo doing keepie-uppies inside. Here’s his blog on the chaotic Africa Cup of Nations.
David Hytner knows so much about Spurs that the No259 bus frequently stops off outside his house after mistaking it for White Hart Lane. Here he is on why Paul Mitchell’s arrival as the club’s new super scout has jiggered Franco Baldini.
Gregg Bakowski knows so much about football banners that he goes around testing other people on how much they know too. Here’s his tifo quiz.
Wigan Athletic’s Dave Whelan knows so much about public opinion that he appointed Dave Mackay as the club’s new manager. Was he right to?
And this trail format doesn’t really work for the Classic YouTube column: so here are a bunch of videos you might like – including Paolo Maldini’s best bits and Radamel Falcao’s best bits with his head.
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