POCH’S THE MATTER?
With his team holding a commanding 3-0 lead over Borussia Dortmund going into the second leg of their Big Cup last-16 tie, you could be forgiven for assuming Mauricio Pochettino would be in chipper mood. After all, even Dortmund are billing the game as “Mission Impossible” and history suggests Tottenham should be utterly incapable of blowing this one. Of the 130 occasions in Big Cup history that a side has won the first leg 3-0 at home, they have gone on to qualify 123 times – a success rate of 94.6%. Those numbers don’t lie and lead us to conclude that it would take quite a special team to squander this opportunity to make Big Cup quarter-finals for the first time in eight years and only the third time in their history. The kind of reliably unreliable outfit that, for all its talent is ingrained with the sort of mental fragility that invariably leads them to come up short in the face of apparently imminent triumph.
Now The Fiver knows what you’re thinking, but the current version of Tottenham aren’t really like that. Punching above their financial weight in a league they were threatening to win as recently as three weeks ago, Mauricio Pochettino’s men seem to have been found guilty by association with their more flaky predecessors on the back of two consecutive defeats and a decidedly fortuitous draw with Arsenal. And it was the scheduling of that particular derby that had Poch in a hot funk as he embarked on that all too familiar rant you tend to hear from certain football managers around this time of year, when they get the hump over the fact that the highly paid footballers in their care are being asked to play football.
While Europe’s other big leagues are happy to schedule or even postpone matches to give their representatives in Europe the best chance of success, the Football Association and Premier League remain weirdly intransigent on the matter for reasons we’re going to presume have to do with spinelessness on the part of the former and the bottom line on the part of the latter. “It’s impossible in this type of game, the last 16 of [Big Cup] – with how important it is – that one team have 24 hours more than the other to prepare,” roared Pochettino. “It is not fair for the players and for the team who compete with a massive disadvantage. We need help from the FA, we need help from the Premier League, and it’s true they need to be more sensitive to this type of situation.” He’s right, of course, even if the irony of anyone connected with a team hoping to call the still unopened White Hart Lane 2.0 home complaining about other people’s shortcomings in the scheduling and planning department should be lost on nobody.
QUOTE OF THE DAY
“We were doing agility testing. I went to bend down, hurt my back, went ‘aargh!’ and fell. Alex Neil asked what was up with me. ‘Gaffer, I was out lifting bricks and helping my mate yesterday’. He’s looking at me like, what the [eff] … don’t you ever do that again!’. All the other boys were howling. He laughed about it later but he was like, ‘what is wrong with you? You’re no’ right in the heid’” – Hamilton captain Darian MacKinnon on how he just can’t resist a bit of hod-carrying when his builder mates call for help.
RECOMMENDED LOOKING
Had the pleasure of meeting Liverpool’s title bid at a charity do once … it’s David Squires.
RECOMMENDED LISTENING
Football Weekly got there eventually. Here you go.
FIVER LETTERS
“From yesterday’s Bits and Bobs: ‘If The Fiver’s honest, it doesn’t understand most of what it’s just written.’ Finally, some empathy with your readers. Thanks Fiver” – Justin Kavanagh.
“Yesterday, Big Paper suggested Liverpool’s recent form showed alarming inconsistency. But surely four draws in six games displays remarkable consistency. Not the kind that wins the title, but still” – Mark McFadden.
“Bratwurst mit kartoffelpuffer (yesterday’s Still Want More)? Well, I suppose it is officially a thing, but most Germans would probably prefer to combine their fried sausage with kartoffelsalat (potato salad), mashed potato and/or sauerkraut, or possibly a fairly prosaic white bread bun, usually with lashings of ketchup or mustard. If you really fancy something exotic, you could go for a currywurst (same sausage, but with curry-flavoured ketchup and bun). A local emporium offers the latter in all variations from hardly-noticed-it mild to burn-your-mouth-out-and-where’s-that-bucket-of-water. Almost inevitably, the spicier versions frequently give rise to daredevil competitions between young scallywags on a night out” – Chris Weaver.
Send your letters to the.boss@theguardian.com. And you can always tweet The Fiver via @guardian_sport. Today’s winner of our letter o’the day is … Mark McFadden, who wins a copy of Matchdays: The Hidden Story of the Bundesliga. Plenty more prizes to come.
NEWS, BITS AND BOBS
Prosecutors in Turkey have launched an investigation into allegations that Amedspor player Mansur Calar attacked four Sakaryaspor players with a hidden razor blade in their third-tier match.
Chelsea have appealed against Fifa’s decision to ban them from signing players in the next two transfer windows.
Cardiff captain Sol Bamba has been ruled out for the rest of the season after suffering cruciate ligament-knack.
Bolton v Millwall may be postponed unless the troubled Trotters can assure the local council by 1pm on Wednesday that they can rustle up the necessary cash to pay stewards and provide adequate safety measures for Saturday’s game.
Gianno Infantino has been bigging up the possibility of a joint North and South Korea Women’s World Cup bid. ‘They have been in a very, very difficult situation until recently,’ he observed, astutely. “[A bid] would be great!”
And Manchester City’s plans for world domination continue apace. “We’ve been looking at [buying a club in] India for nearly two years now,” blathered Feran Soriano, chief suit of City Group, who own seven clubs around the world but sadly not The Fiver’s pub team. “I’d say this year we’ll end up doing an investment in India.”
STILL WANT MORE?
Criminal or whistleblower? Ed Aarons brings you the story of the man behind Football Leaks.
Three losses in a row. Bother over Bale. Real Madrid’s Big Cup clash with Ajax is now the last chance to save their season, warns Sid Lowe.
Dortmund: a warning from history. How a free-scoring BVB became the first German side to win a European Trophy, in 1966.
Back to the present, and their trip to Dortmund will test Tottenham’s professionalism, writes David Hytner.
Oh, and if it’s your thing … you can follow Big Website on Big Social FaceSpace. And INSTACHAT, TOO!
