THIS WEEK, ON SPURS …
In the era of the fly-on-the-wall football documentary, losing is the new winning. Sunderland’s slide towards League One and Nasty Leeds’ Spygate-tinged season were big on drama. Manchester City’s chronicle of a near-perfect season proved less so, with star turn, tactical cyborg Pep Guardiola, being reinvented as the kind of character you might spot in one of those vox pops at a provincial shopping centre. And now Tottenham are set to become the latest team to star in their own documentary, an all-access deal reportedly agreed with Amazon Prime. Last year, Spurs didn’t get their new stadium open until April, still got to Big Cup final, and promptly lost it within 23 seconds. With the cameras rolling behind the scenes this season, how could they possibly out-Spurs themselves? Fear not …
Spurs have been thrashed 2-2 by Manchester City, and let two-goal leads slip at Arsenal and Olympiakos. They’ve lost at home to a Newcastle team led by Bernard Cribbins, a manager whose idea of a punishment is giving his players the day off. Failing to win trophies has been a stable of previous editions, but going out of the Milk Cup to Colchester United – a team that new overseas audiences might suspect are fictional – was a nice twist. Then there’s Tuesday night’s jaw-dropping Big Cup Special, as Spurs were eviscerated by Bayern Munich, the most destructive guests at a new home since Mother!.
This truly was a double bill to savour, with Spurs getting thrashed twice in one game, their stadium emptied by two 10-minute bursts of vintage Bavarian ruthlessness. Serge Gnabry played the ice-veined villain, banging in four goals before tweeting “North London is RED”. The winger wasn’t rated by Tony Pulis at West Brom and let go by Arsenal for £5m, a crumb of comfort only visible under a microscope. Admittedly, Bayern had 10 shots on target to Tottenham’s eight, the implausible 7-2 scoreline fuelled by laser-guided finishing that had Hugo Lloris checking the dimensions of the goal behind him. But don’t let the facts get in the way of a riveting night’s viewing.
All of which leaves us wondering, again: what on earth happens next? Will Serge Aurier ever recover from his mid-game existential crisis? Could leading man Pochie, played with groin-grabbing intensity by Mauricio Pochettino, be hastily written out because his planet needs him? Or will they limp out of their group and end up lifting (then dropping, and irreparably damaging) Big Cup? Are these Spurs really the Spursiest Spurs who ever Spursed? Find out next time, on Spurs.
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QUOTE OF THE DAY
“I gambled everything and it hasn’t paid off. I left a wonderful club, a wonderful group of people that were really on their way up. I gambled with other people’s lives as well, my staff’s lives, my wife’s life. That is the thing for me that is really hurting because I worked so hard to get to a certain position and it just hasn’t worked out. The fans have given me patience but I haven’t repaid them” – with Stoke City languishing bottom of the Championship and adrift of his former club Luton Town, a heartfelt Nathan Jones readies himself for the axe.
FIVER LETTERS
“I have always wondered why I’ve been drawn to The Fiver. Every weekday I open the email, despite my better judgement, knowing there will be no humour, no entertainment, no literary value, and certainly no football journalism of merit. But yesterday, reading the tortuous missive once again, just under the headline, I saw your ingenious device and it became clear. The ‘statement, instruction, question, order’ method you deploy is a manipulation used by advertising execs as a ‘call to action’, and by hypnotists as a means to ‘bypass the critical factor’ of the human psyche, enabling information, no matter how nonsensical or that which would normally be dismissed as irrelevant drivel, access the subconscious. I only hope that by bringing this to other readers’ conscious attention I can alert them to your ruse, and provide a means to change their automatic responses” – Lee Smith.
“Re: Bayern being ready for the questions Spurs would pose (yesterday’s Fiver). I think they had the answers” – Craig Fawcett.
Send your letters to the.boss@theguardian.com. And you can always tweet The Fiver via @guardian_sport. Today’s winner of our prizeless letter o’the day is … Lee Smith.
NEWS, BITS AND BOBS
The Premier League’s search for a new chief suit is finally over after a trip to Guardian Towers, but somehow The Fiver has been overlooked in favour of David Pemsel.
Manchester City’s Bernardo Silva is facing a potential ban after being charged with misconduct by FA bods over that tweet.
Cardiff City will appeal to CAS over Fifa’s ruling that they must pay Nantes the transfer fee for Emiliano Sala. “There remains clear evidence that the transfer agreement was never completed in accordance with multiple contractual requirements which were requested by Nantes, thereby rendering it null and void,” insist Cardiff. Nantes’ lawyers Jérôme Marsaudon and Louis-Marie Absil said: “We can imagine that Cardiff will continue the legal battle. That is what they have been doing since the beginning of this case. They use any pretext, up to the death of a man, to not respect their commitments.”
Frank Lampard’s Chelsea manager Frank Lampard has gone Peak Frank Lampard’s Chelsea manager Frank Lampard over Ross Barkley getting involved in a row with his taxi driver during a night out in Liverpool. “He hasn’t committed a crime other than eating chips in the back of a cab, which is probably a bit out of order for the cabbie, but on a serious note what he has done from my point of view is be naive,” tooted FLCMFL [sounds like a position in Championship Manager – Fiver Ed].
River Plate are 2-0 up after the home leg of their South American Big Cup semi-final against Boca Juniors.
Nasty Leeds are back on top of the Championship at the time of writing after beating West Brom 1-0.
Paul Pogba will miss Manchester United’s Big Vase trip to AZ Alkmaar due to foot-knack he sustained against Southampton back in August.
And German football’s biggest ever club fine has been dished out to Mainz, who are €166,000 lighter in the pocket due to their fans’ pyro display at Kaiserslautern.
STILL WANT MORE?
Barney Ronay on Bayern’s scything of Spurs.
The German media on Bayern’s scything of Spurs.
Salzburg, the supreme finders and polishers of footballing diamonds. By Nick Ames.
Top of La Liga, maybe, but all is not well at Real Madrid, as evinced by their get-out-of-jail 2-2 draw with Club Brugge in Big Cup, reports Sid Lowe.
Which Premier League player has the most vowel-heavy name? Let the Knowledge inform you.
Ben Fisher checks in on life at Wycombe for Gareth Ainsworth.
Oh, and if it’s your thing … you can follow Big Website on Big Social FaceSpace. And INSTACHAT, TOO!
