ACTS OF DAFTNESS THAT WOULD MAKE CHRIS SMALLING TUT
Children, as we all know, are stupid. That isn’t their fault, because they are still developing, they haven’t learned much yet, and their wee brains both can’t and don’t have to contemplate much more than swapping Pogs and watching Rocco’s Modern Life on hip new TV kiddies’ station Nickelodeon (check these cultural reference are up to date – Fiver Ed). They even get things like food, shelter and clothing supplied for them, knowing all they have to do is scream to be provided with them. What a racket! It’s no wonder they’re such dunces. This intelligence deficiency is why a truculent child, if told he or she cannot have a thing, will happily smash that thing into many pieces just so no other child can have the thing. It’s a behaviour pattern that most children eventually leave behind, once they develop things like common sense and decency, but it occasionally resurfaces after these children graduate to being adults.
This phenomenon occurred at the Etihad (or, as assorted social media LOL-merchants call it, “the Emptyhad” – ho! What japes!) on Wednesday night, for after it became clear that City were going to lose in shambolic fashion to CSKA Moscow, a few of their number reacted by simply booting as many opposition players as hard and as high up in the air as was possible. Samir Nasri notably somehow managed to escape any sort of censure for hoofing Georgi Milanov like he was a smaller boy’s sandcastle, and that’s before we even get to Yaya Touré and Fernandinho getting themselves dismissed for acts of daftness that would make Chris Smalling tut.
Of course, the other thing that children are is unintentionally funny. If they say a silly thing or do a little dance, everyone has a good old chuckle and the room lightens a touch, something that again brings us back to Manchester City. If football can’t be good then it should be funny, and if you can’t laugh at a team assembled for a gajillion pounds not being able to achieve basic competence and win a single game in the competition they spent those pounds in order to win, then act like bawling brats when they don’t get their way, then frankly you’re in the wrong business. Adding to the funny was Manuel Pellegrini, who seemingly doesn’t have the first idea what’s gone wrong, why it’s gone wrong or how to fix what’s gone wrong. “Of course we must try to find what happened with this team in [Big Cup],” he I-dunnoed. “The mentality of the players, all of them are important players, so I don’t understand why they cannot play in [Big Cup].”
City must now beat both Bayern and Roma, and will have to do so without Touré, Fernandinho and possibly the knacked David Silva, to have a sniff of avoiding a third first-round exit in four years, a prospect more embarrassing than the time a young Fiver suffered a Tip-ex calamity involving a whole bottle of the white fluid spilling on to the front of our adolescent trousers, forming a spread and pattern that could only be described as ‘suspicious-looking’. Pellegrini was brought in to replace Roberto Mancini on the basis that: a) the players wouldn’t hold him in open contempt and; b) he might stop them being European football’s equivalent of a cartoon character attempting to fire a blunderbuss, having no success, checking said gun by peering directly down the barrel and ending with a scorched face and no hair. If he can’t manage that, then City will be looking for the biggest Acme bin they can find and politely inviting Pellegrini to hop in. Brendan Rodgers has been smacked around town with a wet slipper this week for having the temerity to pick 11 professional footballers, but while Liverpool lost in Madrid, at least they didn’t carry on like cross toddlers.
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BITS AND BOBS
Mr Roy has called up West Brom’s Saido Berahino and West Ham’s Stewart Downing Mark II for England’s Euro 2016 qualifier with Slovenia and the Scotland friendly. Full squad: Fraser Forster, Ben Foster, Joe Hart; Leighton Baines, Gary Cahill, Calum Chambers, Nathaniel Clyne, Kieran Gibbs, Phil Jagielka, Luke Shaw, $exually Repressed Morris Dancing Fiver, Chris Smalling; Ross Barkley, Michael Carrick, Stewart Downing Mark II, Jordan Henderson, Adam Lallana, James Milner, Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain, Raheem Sterling, Andros Townsend, Jack Wilshere, Theo Walcott; Rickie Lambert, Wayne Rooney, Daniel Welbeck, Saido Berahino.
Serial Jermain Defoe-signer Arry Redknapp is at it again. “He’s a player we’d be interested in [signing from Toronto] in January, but it depends on the expense of the deal,” wheeler-dealed the QPR boss.
Wayne Rooney was once so proud to play for England Under-17s that he channelled his inner Ted Hughes and wrote and performed a poem about it. Yes, really.
Galatasaray have been charged by Uefa for throwing flares, fireworks and various pyrotechnics around Signal Iduna Park – among other crowd disturbances – during their 4-1 defeat at Borussia Dortmund on Tuesday.
Painful memories of foot-long grazes picked up at Luton Town and Preston North End may have loomed large as Football League clubs voted against the return of artificial pitches. “This vote is reflective of the fact that this issue divides opinion amongst clubs as much as it does across the football public,” confirmed Football League chief suit Shaun Harvey.
Nemanja Matic has put the following words into a pot and given them a stir before Liverpool v Chelsea: “Many teams this season have tried to park the bus in front of the goal against us, but we win. It’s not easy. If you defend, you have to know how to defend,” he nod-nod-wink-winked in the direction of Brendan’s back four.
And Jermaine Pennant has not finished playing football club snakes-and-ladders just yet. The 31-year-old, who has been keeping fit by twiddling his thumbs for the past year, has signed for FC Pune City in the Indian Super League.
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STILL WANT MORE?
The Secret Footballer recalls Mark Viduka and his gleaming car v Boro fans in this book extract explaining why players will always be figures of hate.
Big-spending Barça are having an identity crisis, diagnoses floating-football-brain-in-a-box Jonathan Wilson.
It’s Big Cup review time, with Paul Doyle, Nick Miller, some stats and really nice pictures.
Paul Campbell reveals how the Republic O’Ireland turned down a job application from a fan with a proposal to play quite possibly the most attacking formation ever.
It’s not all doom and gloom for Burnley. A win could change everything, cheers Paul Wilson.
But it is almost all doom and gloom for Manchester City in Big Cup after that shambles last night, says the very same Paul Wilson, putting his serious face back on.
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