MOYES WILL BE MOYES
During his latest whinge about the lack of opportunities afforded to British managers in the Premier League, Sam Allardyce told Saturday’s Match of the Day audience that it’s “always time an English manager is given a chance” as far as he was concerned. “Or a British manager – there’s no doubt about that and there’s not enough of us given a chance.” It was the second time in a week Big Sam had espoused this view; the same Big Sam who was given the chance to manage England on the back of chances he’d previously been given at Bolton, Newcastle, Blackburn, West Ham and Sunderland. Most recently, the 63-year-old was given the chance to manage Crystal Palace in the top flight and is expected to get the chance to manage Everton any day now. So, just the eight chances then for poor neglected Big Sam at the expense of those pesky foreigns.
And for all the reluctance of Premier League clubs to give British managers a chance, it has not gone unnoticed that by the end of the current international break, no fewer than nine of the 20 top flight teams are likely to be managed by Brits and you can draw your own conclusions from the fact that seven of them currently occupy positions 14 to 20 in the table. Vacated by dastardly foreigner Slaven Bilic this morning, the Taxpayers FC job is likely to go to another up and coming young British tyro after owners Gollivan announced their intention to hire “a quality manager to the position to inject fresh ideas, organisation and enthusiasm into a very talented squad”.
With eight of the top nine teams in the Championship managed by Britons, some of them young and hungry, the Fiver presumed it would be the “fresh ideas, organisation and enthusiasm” of Bristol City’s Lee Johnson, Derby County’s Gary Rowett or Cardiff City tyro Neil Warnock that West Ham would want to tap into, so imagine our surprise when it was announced they will almost certainly be giving the gig to David Moyes, 57, a man who was fired with enthusiasm by Manchester United and Real Sociedad, before quitting Sunderland of his own volition after marching them out of the Premier League. A man so enthusiastic when it comes to new ideas that he spent his entire stay in Spain living in a hotel, not learning Spanish and barking loudly for egg and chips at meal times, Moyes’s own lack of enthusiasm has recently been eclipsed only by those of many West Ham fans who heard he was in line to take the job. Still, it’s not bad news for everyone: the Mr 15% of Steven Pienaar, Darron Gibson and Tony Hibbert are on standby, eagerly anticipating his calls.
LIVE ON BIG WEBSITE
Join Simon Burnton from 7pm GMT for hot coverage of the FA Cup second round draw.
QUOTE OF THE DAY
“He could have found some other place to go celebrate his goal” – Antwerp coach Laszlo Boloni says Sporting Charleroi’s Cristian Benavente was at fault for the smoke bomb that was bounced off his head during his side’s 3-1 win, rather than the fans who threw it, because the midfielder had the nerve to be happy with his goal in the wrong part of the pitch.
RECOMMENDED LISTENING
DOWNLOAD FOOTBALL WEEKLY NOW! DOWNLOAD FOOTBALL WEEKLY NOW! DOWNLOAD FOOTBALL WEEKLY NOW! DOWNLOAD FOOTBALL WEEKLY NOW! DOWNLOAD FOOTBALL WEEKLY NOW! DOWNLOAD FOOTBALL WEEKLY NOW! DOWNLOAD FOOTBALL WEEKLY NOW! DOWNLOAD FOOTBALL WEEKLY NOW! Or at least do it in a bit when it’s up.
SUPPORT THE GUARDIAN
Producing the Guardian’s thoughtful, in-depth journalism – the stuff not normally found in this email, obviously – is expensive, but supporting us isn’t. If you value our journalism, please support us by making a one-off or recurring contribution.
RECOMMENDED LOOKING
FIVER LETTERS
“After reading po’ post-truth José comparing himself favourably with crying managers while he maintains a stoic silence around his own injury crisis, a word was on the tip of my tongue all weekend, only coming to me this morning ... so for any other similarly troubled readers: the particular (or you might say ‘special’) ironical rhetorical device being employed by Mourinho lately (and repeatedly) is called Apophasis, ‘wherein the speaker brings up a subject by either denying it, or denying that it should be brought up’. May I suggest Ajophasis: ‘wherein the manager brings up a subject by either denying he ever moans about it, or denying that others should moan while he is fully justified to do so’” – Matthew Daniel.
“Re. Matt Leuw’s crisis measuring machine, as a supporter of an ‘outlier’, I would welcome such an invention. By re-calibrating the expectation level, you’d hope that the crisis-meter would give some much needed perspective, allowing Arsenal fans to justifiably whinge about always playing in the Champions League, while talking Leeds fans back from the ledge when we drop to seventh in the Championship. I guarantee improved mental health will ensue” – Andy Cochrane.
“Re: Matt Leuw’s letter [Friday’s Fiver] regarding crisis clubs and some way of establishing ‘a definitive answer for what constitutes a crisis’. I believe the internationally-recognised signifier that a club is in crisis is the depiction on the back page of a tabloid newspaper of the club’s badge, dramatically cleft down the middle. The extent of the crisis can be gauged by the number the points on the jagged central fissure, the size of the angle between the two halves of the badge, and whether or not the image is accompanied by the ticker ‘…in crisis + + + club in crisis + + + club in crisis + + + club in cr…’” – Andy Korman.
“Seething with incandescent rage at missing out to Matt Leuw for Friday’s prize of the day, I worked all that night and called in all the boffins over the weekend to devise an algorithm to definitively answer the question of which teams are, or are not achieving according to their historical status. In layman’s terms I simply analysed all results since the dawn of ‘foote-ballle’ in China c100 BC and gave slightly extra weight to positions since 1886. Based on this analysis a score of 50 is what teams should be expecting to achieve. Some clubs are right on the 50 mark –unsurprisingly both Liverpool and Arsenal are. The biggest underachievers are Blackpool and York City on 27 and 22 respectively, and the team most overachieving at the moment are Brighton & Hove Albion with a score of 94 ... I will be happy to supply the full list if anyone is remotely interested. Having done all this I still fully expect to be pipped for today’s prize by someone who’s written a Tony Pulis haiku” – Tony Crawford.
“He always wears it
That hat with the West Brom badge
Is it glued to him?” – Hazel Ford.
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 … Hazel Ford, who wins a copy of the excellent new David Squires book, The Illustrated History of Football: Hall of Fame. We’ve more to give away, so keep typing.
VOTE! VOTE! VOTE!
Big Paper, Football Weekly, David Squires and Jonathan Wilson are all up for gongs at the upcoming FSF Awards and you can vote for them here, should you wish.
NOTIFICATIONS AND QUERIES
Big Web App has launched its new and improved Premier League notifications. Get more details and sign up here.
BITS AND BOBS
After Morgan Schneiderlin and Kevin Mirallas took the sensible precaution of doing exactly what Duncan Ferguson told them to when he suggested they should do one from an Everton training session if they were not going to take it seriously, David Unsworth dropped them from the squad to face Watford.
Andrea Pirlo will have more time to spend with his vineyard and silky, silky beard after perfectly clipping his boots 60 yards on to an impossibly distant peg in order to hang them up for good.
Chelsea’s former director of panic buys and last gasp transfer window trolley dashes, Michael Emenalo, has hoofed himself through the door marked Do One and is currently to be seen skittering down the King’s Road on his trousers.
Former Stoke City player Dionatan Teixeira has died at the age of 25. The Brazil-born defender had joined Moldovan champions Sheriff Tiraspol in February. “Dionatan was a hugely popular member of our squad. It’s difficult to comprehend,” said the Stoke chief executive, Tony Scholes.
Arsène Wenger could be heading for the FA’s naughty step for saying Raheem Sterling “dives well” after Arsenal’s defeat to Manchester City. “I believe it was no penalty ... and the third goal was offside. I am very upset,” Wenger pouted. City say they are shocked, SHOCKED! at his comments.
Claude Makélélé will take his shoring up skills from Swansea City to the Belgian club KAS Eupen, who have conceded 39 goals in 14 league games, where he has been named manager.
Everton’s Michael Keane is the lucky player called into the England squad after Dele Alli was ruled out with a bout of hamstring-twang. Harry Kane may also miss one or both of the games against Germany and Brazil with a touch of hamstring-hmm.
Fun and games in France dept: Lyon’s derby game at Saint-Étienne was delayed for half an hour three minutes from time after Nabil Fekir sparked a riot by holding his shirt up to the home fans – after putting Lyon 5-0 up. Elsewhere, a standard weekend for Mario Balotelli, who scored, was sent off and attacked a dugout as Nice beat Dijon.
Fun and games in Canada dept: Toronto FC’s Djinkin’ Jozy Altidore claims he was sucker punched by NY Red Bulls’ Sacha Kljestan before the pair of them were sent off during MLS’s Eastern Conference final. “Yo @SachaKljestan why you snitchin bro? You tried to pull up on me while my back was turned and almost got that work,” Altidore parped in a tweet he swiftly deleted.
THE RECAP
Sign up and receive the best of Big Website’s coverage, every Friday, it says here. Seems to be a curious lack of mentions for The Fiver …
STILL WANT MORE?
George Graham talks Michael Thomas, José Mourinho and keeping it tight on the golf course with Donald McRae.
Jupp, Heynckes has turned it around, may be a rehash of a bad gag from this time last week but it still holds. Read Andy Brassell’s bundesblog to find out why.
Meanwhile Mourinho has handed Manchester City a huge advantage in the title race with his negative tactics, tuts Jonathan Wilson.
Arsenal’s trip to the Etihad was more than a little awkward for Alexis Sánchez, writes Paul Wilson.
Fans of conversations about sharp objects will be disappointed to learn our talking points blog is all about the Premier League.
Could hipsters be wearing a Sampdoria Champions League kit next season? It’s not a fantasy, according to Paolo Bandini.
Quiz time! Who are the top scorers for Europe’s finest sides? Test your knowledge here.
Oh, and if it’s your thing … you can follow Big Website on Big Social FaceSpace. And INSTACHAT, TOO!
