PRIDE COMES BEFORE A ($TEVIE MBE) FALL
Ah, Liverpool. What to do with Liverpool. Even when they win, as they technically did on Wednesday, edging out on penalties a Carlisle side that damn near disappeared from the Football League last season, they still manage to look faintly ludicrous. A bit like a man tripping over in a pub but just about managing to avoid spilling his drink everywhere – technically a win but you still have to sheepishly get up and shuffle back to your table. Talking of Liverpool and tripping over, $tevie Mbe has been in the news again.
$tevie, despite now winding down his career by playing alongside such titans as Donovan Ricketts, Gio dos Santos and the Ghost of Robbie Keane at LA Galaxy, is keeping himself in the news back home. And how? Why, he’s got a book out! Did you know he’s got a book out? Kept that quiet, didn’t he? Another one! The first volume of the 35-year-old man’s autobiography came after meekly slipping out of the 2006 World Cup, while the second volume lands on our bookshelves after losing 6-1 to Stoke. Still, we’re sure there are lots of interesting tales to tell, particularly about conversations with Merseyside disc jockeys, meek exits from international tournaments and that time Liverpool nearly won the Premier League.
This is the chance to get the inside track on why Liverpool didn’t so much trip over the final hurdle in 2014 as run into it, demolishing it into a thousand pieces and burrowing a nine-foot hole in the ground, particularly when there’s one moment that readily springs to mind, involving a certain former Anfield midfielder and a small falling incident.
$tevie wrote, about Liverpool’s nearly season and the game that ultimately cost them: “I’ve never been able to say this in public before but I was seriously concerned that we thought we could blow Chelsea away. I sensed an over-confidence in Brendan’s team talks. We played into Chelsea’s hands. I feared it then and I know it now.”
So there you go. One does wonder why, if $tevie sensed this swelling hubris, why he perhaps didn’t use his senior position as Liverpool’s designated deity to, y’know, have a word and try to calm things down a bit. But still, it’s always handy to have someone else to blame when the defining moment of Liverpool’s glorious failure involved a brief ball control calamity, a subsequent balance snafu and a terrace song that has caught on rather nicely. Presumably Brendan’s over-confidence extended to $tevie’s own assuredness in his footing, the skip thinking too much of how grippy his studs were, and thus came the unfortunate meeting of his mush and the Anfield turf.
Still, as if by magic, as if the universe is as serendipitously generous as to arrange things exactly (although it possibly had more to do with whoever schedules Liverpool’s press conferences), dear Brendan was talking today as well. And as if to scotch talk that he might be a tad over-confident, he trumpeted: “I walked in here as a 39-year-old manager and as I sit here now I am a much better manager but I understand I must get results. We know with one win you are back near the top four.” It is worth pointing out that one win will actually put Liverpool 11th, and that’s assuming everyone else loses. But let’s not nit-pick.
As you might imagine, most of the questions posed to the owner of the whitest teeth in football were related to his job, or potential imminent lack thereof. “I’m never complacent enough to think it never has been,” Brendan parped when asked if his position was unsure. “You need to be at your best every day when you come into a club of this stature, and thrive on that positive fear. It does not affect me. I have a belief in what I do. We nearly achieved great things.”
There you go. They nearly achieved great things. They nearly won stuff. They were nearly good. And Brendan may well nearly have a job soon.
... BREAKING ON THE SKY SPORTS NEWS TICKER OF DOOM ... BREAKING ON THE SKY SPORTS NEWS TICKER OF DOOM ... BREAKING ON THE SKY SPORTS NEWS TICKER OF DOOM ...
When Fifa suddenly cancelled a press conference to which journalists around the world had flocked, something smelt a little iffy. Move along, they said. Nothing to see here. And there isn’t a lot to see – not in Sepp Blatter’s office, anyway, with various items apparently having been impounded now that the Fifa president is the subject of criminal proceedings by the Swiss attorney general. If that seemed as inevitable as death, taxes and the rest, then it gets even juicier – among the allegations against Blatter is that he “is suspected of a disloyal payment of 2m Swiss francs to Michel Platini”, who was asked to provide information to investigators. The Fiver can’t escape the image of a man trapped in the middle of a quicksand bog, futilely clawing for safety.
QUOTE OF THE DAY
“We don’t have the time nor the inclination to feel sorry for ourselves. That would not serve us well. We are all in this together and we will get out of it together as a team. We view you, our supporters, as an important part of that team. Now is the time to show determination, resilience and fight and together, over the coming weeks, change the course of this season for the better” – Newcastle’s managing director, Lee Charnley, stops a fraction short of calling their supporters the “12th man” in a letter written to them and details the failsafe list of abstractions and intangibles that will steer them to safety.
FIVER LETTERS
“Re Craig Fawcett’s calculation in yesterday’s Letters: as one of the 1,057 may I point out that if he is talking about the median then he is correct but if he is calculating a simple average then, given the number of teams and the lower attendance outside the Premier division, he is wrong: or is that just being mean?” – Richard Barlow.
“I was all set to write a smug missive to explain the finer points of differing types of average to Craig Fawcett – have you heard of mean, median and mode, Craig? – when I got to thinking how the Fiver chooses the letters it decides to publish? Does the Fiver pore over every entry in a considered, deliberate manner, or does it simply pick them out at random, like the lottery numbers or the FA Cup draw? I don’t know why I’m curious. But then again I don’t know why I read the Fiver” – Ross Wilson.
“Regarding Mr. Haughey’s math (yesterday’s Letters), I would be interested in seeing his process. My results are a bit different. Through multiplication we find that 14 players (don’t forget the subs) in 6.3 positions each across 18 matches is 1,587.6 possible player-match-positions. Taking that number of positions 11 at a time, we find (using permutations math) that Rogers could have created 1.55 E+35 player formations (a number similar to the volume of the sun in cubic meters). My upper limit is of course low. 38 Liverpool players have appeared in the past 2 seasons, so the number of possible 14 man squads is quite large. Not all of those have appeared in the last 18 matches, but I won’t narrow it down because I have a life” – Steve Rice (and approximately 1.056E+3 others).
“Lewandowski scores five goals and it’s all over the media but score six and not a word. Mind you Lewandowski scored five out of his team’s five whereas Robinson only scored six of his team’s 16” – Brian Ross.
• 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: Richard Barlow.
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BITS AND BOBS
A lesson to Arsène Wenger: if you tell José Mourinho that he owes much of his success to Claudio Ranieri, don’t be surprised if the Chelsea manager snaps back. “[Wenger] can speak about the referees before the game, can speak about the referees after the game, can push people in the technical area, can cry in the morning, can cry in the afternoon, nothing happens,” Mourinho whinged. He cannot achieve [success] and keep his job, still be the king. It’s a privilege.”
Neymar has made nice to Manchester United by admitting he had “conversations” about joining them in the summer. Impressive, given that Ed Woodward had only wanted to ask him for the phone number of his milliner.
Pep Guardiola is less inclined to let a serious back-and-forth develop into frippery, something he proved with a severe “Many thanks and auf wiedersehn” upon being grilled about a possible flirtation with the England job.
And Georginio Wijnaldum wants Newcastle to “play free” as they battle to get their season up and running, and “free” certainly sounds better than “rabble of expensive mistakes”.
STILL WANT MORE?
What game is Mauricio Pochettino playing at Spurs? A long one, writes David Hytner.
Look out for this weekend’s 10 things to look out for, hewn by Nick Miller and Paul Doyle.
What’s the secret behind Callum Wilson’s meteoric rise? Eating his shoots and leaves, he tells Jacob Steinberg.
Regional giants who can’t get their act together? Come to Germany with Raf Honigstein, the twist being that Hamburg are actually starting to get their act together. And if that doesn’t sell it, there’s bonus material about granddad Heinrich’s philatelic obsession.
Miller and Doyle sound like a 70s cop double act but the prosaic reality for them, and the source of unbridled pleasure for you, is that they’re back with a Joy of Six about football’s short-lived rule changes.
You are the ref! Well, you’re probably not and, if you are, you’re probably at risk of a Commons motion masterminded by under-employed Arsenal fans. Can you pull a Mike Dean and make a call on these tableaux?
And what’s on the cards in MLS this weekend? We’re not sure, but Richard Whittall is.
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