FAILURE TO LAUNCH
When Crystal Palace lost against Manchester City the weekend before last, going down to a goal scored by an unmarked opposition player from a corner, their manager Alan Pardew declared that “the goals we’ve conceded from set plays is not us”. When, at the time, his team had just shipped their ninth out of 21 goals from set plays. The Fiver often gets lost in a reverie thinking about Gylfi Sigurdsson and last week we imagined and even predicted the Icelandic dead-ball specialist would be licking his lips, rubbing his thighs and shouting “Eranu indeed!” at the prospect of filling his boots against Palace at the weekend. And so it came to past, with Gylfi scoring directly from one free-kick, before setting up three of Swansea’s four other goals from set plays that led to some of the most comical breaches of Palace security since Michael Fagan broke into the Queen’s bedroom. All of this in a match that could only have been improved if “Pards” had done his dance after his side had gone 4-3 up, before conceding two in injury-time to lose 5-4.
Of course, while there is only so much Pardew can do from his technical area to ensure Christian Benteke stays awake, it seems abundantly clear that Crystal Palace players don’t listen to a word he says on the training ground, and on this occasion was at least prepared to point his Big Finger O’Blame at himself as well as others for Saturday’s debacle. “The goals we have conceded don’t reflect well on us and for me personally,” he declared. “The scrutiny on me comes with the territory. I will do what I always do, reflect on this game and try and correct it for the next one.” This whole reflecting on one game and trying to correct it for the next one hasn’t been working too well for Pardew of late, what with his team having lost six on the spin to maintain their record as the worst team in English football’s top four divisions this calendar year. Rumours suggest he may no longer be able rely on this strategy, as former England manager Mr Roy and his successor, keynote speaker Sam Allardyce, have been approached with a view to replacing him.
Assuming he is ushered to the door marked “Do One”, Pardew can at least console himself with the news that he won’t have to deal with the potential absence of Palace’s star player Wilfried Zaha during the Africa Cup of Nations scheduled to take place in Gabon from 14 January to 5 February. Despite having featured twice in friendlies for England, double the number of matches one of his future potential Palace managers was involved with the team, the Abidjan-born winger has nailed his colours to the Ivory Coast mast. “The Ivorian-English attacking midfielder Wilfried Zaha has chosen to play for the Elephants, under the colours of the Ivory Coast, his country of origin,” trumpeted an IFF statement released on Sunday night. The player was promptly accused of “turning his back on England”, by one particular newspaper more readily associated with the “encouragement” they tend to offer immigrants when it comes to returning from whence they came.
QUOTE OF THE DAY
“It’s been a long process, we’ve had the baby now, so hopefully we can move on as a family” – Arsenal’s Theo Walcott lets it all out after being asked about the birth of his second child.
FIVER LETTERS
“Slowly clearing through my inbox from a week away on my honeymoon and was about to hit delete on a week’s worth of Fivers before noticing my mate Frank Turner’s name in the preview window. Scrolling down it seems that The Fiver has linked to the steaming nonsense that Clapton Ultras wrote about me and my friends. I’m not after a correction or clarification, or indeed for this letter to appear in The Fiver and I doubt any of your readers care. However I have commented on the original blogpost in question should the good folk at Fiver Towers be interested in what actually happened” – Sean Carroll.
“Theo Walcott says he’ll get a coffee machine if he scores 10 goals by Christmas? Despite being in the 2006 World Cup squad, he has been a latte developer” – Darren Leathley.
“As alluring as the idea is of getting a free copy of Football Manager 17 and taking Middlesbrough to pixelated mid-table obscurity, if it’s been down the back of The Fiver’s sofa, I think I’ll pass …” – Andrew Tate.
• 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 … Andrew Tate, who receives our last copy of Football Manager 2017 from those good people at Football Manager Towers.
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BITS AND BOBS
The paedophile football coach Barry Bennell has been taken to hospital after police responded to a “fear for welfare incident” at an address in Stevenage on Friday night, where he was found unconscious.
Tony Pulis has lost his appeal against an arbitration ruling that he must pay Crystal Palace £3.77m after his departure from the club in 2014, after he was found to have deceived a Premier League managers’ arbitration tribunal. A big day for Steve Parish’s hair, you’ll find.
Queen’s Celtic winger James Forrest has paid tribute to Brendan Rodgers after their Scottish League Cup final win over Aberdeen. “All the boys repaid him with the trophy and hopefully we can continue to do that,” he tooted. “It’s been a great start for the full team and we are just buzzing to get this trophy in the bag early doors.”
Jürgen Klopp is waiting around like a jittery expectant parent to find out just how long Philippe Coutinho’s ankle-knack will keep him out for. “I have no idea what it is,” he parped.
Mauricio Pochettino can’t get enough of £30m record Spurs signing, Euro 2016’s Moussa Sissoko. “You sign a player and then you expect something, and you don’t find what you expected,” he sniffed.
Santos are sniffing around Bastian Schweinsteiger with head coach Dorival Junior in the market for moody social media snaps. “I told [the board] that we should try to get a big name in world football, or at least send an invitation,” he blootered. “It was just a recommendation … It won’t hurt us to try. A player like that can obviously lift the level of the team, but he has to come with an objective and an appetite.”
Portsmouth manager Paul Cook admits a full and frank conversation between captain Michael Doyle and defender Christian Burgess at half-time contributed to their 2-1 defeat to Stevenage. “I’m not going to insult Pompey fans’ intelligence. There was an incident, unfortunately, which resulted in two of our mainstay players coming off. They are vocal in what they do and sometimes that goes a little too far,” he sniffed.
Four League Two defeats on the spin have got John Sheridan feeling funky enough to order his first team to play in the reserves at Chesterfield on Tuesday.
And Toulouse boss Pascal Dupraz agrees that he made himself look a bit of a whopper by collapsing to the turf like he’d been hit by a cartoon wrecking ball when a paper aeroplane whistled past his ear during the 1-0 defeat by Rennes. “I heard the delegate tell me that I was making things up. I knew I was crazy but at this point [I thought] I’m going to get up and then we’re not going to make a movie about it,” he honked, as various media outlets did that for him.
STILL WANT MORE?
Your Premier League talking points, right here.
Paolo Bandini stopped chain-sipping espressos for long enough to pen this blog on how, just the 6,084 days after his pops scored to beat Juve, Giovanni Simeone inspired Genoa to victory over the shambolic Serie A champs.
Danger, danger, high voltage! wails Michael Cox of the threat posed by Arsenal’s tactically astute, supercharged Alexis Sánchez. If you want to know how he keeps starting fires, follow this link.
Prefer pictures to words? Well focus your peepers on The Dozen, featuring a steaming Yaya Touré, José Holebas and Xherdan Shaqiri having an exasperation-themed game of top trumps and more.
Raf Honigstein scratches your Bundesliga itch with a look back at Hamburg v Bremen.
English youth football coaches are now obsessed with fun instead of results, which probably means more abject failure for England fans to bathe in in the future, writes optimism’s Alex Clapham.
Oh, and if it’s your thing … you can follow Big Website on Big Social FaceSpace. AND INSTACHAT, TOO!
