HAIR RAISING
With his towering bouffant increasingly resembling a Coldstream Guards bearskin hat, that Manchester United Fan With The Hair is currently on Day No 380 of his personal “challenge” not to get a trim until Manchester United win five consecutive matches in all competitions. A journey that predates Ruben Amorim’s arrival at Old Trafford and began as a joke between friends, Frank Ilett’s daily dispatches from the frontline of Social Media Disgrace subsequently grew traction due in no small part to his team’s comical inability to win more than one Premier League game in a row under Amorim. Ilett and his increasingly long locks have captured the public imagination to such an extent that several weeks ago a follically-challenged, fellow United fan chose to attack him at Old Trafford for the heinous crime of having a high barnet, while yesterday a Portuguese reporter raised the subject of the challenge with Diogo Dalot in a post-match interview. “We’ll see,” said Dalot, upon being told that Ilett would probably sleep easier for a while, now that United had finally strung together back-to-back top flight wins for the first time under Amorim. “We hope that we can give him that haircut.”
While Amorim would almost certainly promise to take a clippers to the hirsute young fan’s noggin in the centre-circle after United’s game against Everton next month if it guaranteed his side took all nine points available in the interim, not even Sunday’s victory against Liverpool is enough to suggest he and his team have finally turned a corner by following one Premier League win with another at the 10th time of asking. “It’s embarrassing, really,” said Harry Maguire, after securing victory for United. “It’s not a stat that we should even be speaking about because it is an embarrassing stat to have. Now that’s out of the way let’s try and make it three [wins] on Saturday against Brighton, because we have to start putting a bit more consistency together.”
A lack of consistency is one of few issues not currently troubling the champions, even if the barbers of any Liverpool fans who have promised not to get their hair cut until their team lose five matches in succession are mentally preparing for a gruelling day behind the chair with garden shears in hand. Should Arne Slot’s side come unstuck against Eintracht Frankfurt in Bigger Cup on Wednesday, they will become the first Liverpool team to lose five matches in a row in 72 years but pondering his team’s current losing streak, the Dutch coach insisted he doesn’t think his team’s confidence has bottomed out. “I cannot see it yet because every single game we’ve lost, we were able to create an unbelievable amount of chances,” he parped.
While it is fair to say that on another day and with better luck, Liverpool might have won yesterday’s match at a canter, an uncharacteristically dismal performance from the normally unflappable Virgil van Dijk contributed in no small part to both Manchester United goals and ultimately defeat. Asked if he thought play should have been stopped in the buildup to United’s first goal after Liverpool’s skipper had unwittingly clobbered teammate Alexis Mac Allister, causing the Argentinian to go down with a head injury, Slot refused to be drawn. “I think the main thing I should do now is not complain, blame or do these kind of things,” he said, following a hair-raising and chaotic match in which his skipper had appeared to spend most of his time doing all those kind of things, when he wasn’t tripping over his own feet.
QUOTE OF THE DAY
“I said I will never coach another team, a different team, in England. So that means if then it’s Liverpool … yeah, theoretically it’s possible. I’m 58, that means I could make the decision in a few years, I don’t know. I can just see what the future brings” – Jürgen Klopp, who was eerily quiet last season when the Reds were romping to the Premier League title, has timed his appearance on Steven Bartlett’s Diary of a CEO podcast to absolute perfection in “theoretically” making himself available for a future return to Liverpool, just as Arne Slot and the Reds limped to a fourth successive defeat.
FOOTBALL DAILY LETTERS
“The football pages (including yours) are full of comments about why this or that player was bought when they are seen to be underperforming, followed by speculation on which transfer window will see them moved on. Surely the same should apply to football managers! Once employed by a team owner, they should be obliged to keep them until the next transfer window, rather than moving them out immediately they have a string of bad or (in the owners eyes) unacceptable results. Owners must learn to live with their mistakes, like the rest of us!” – Raymond Dyer.
Maybe we should consider the manager of Forest as the Premier League equivalent of a Christmas job. Hard work, but well paid and you’ll be let go on Christmas Eve” – Kev McCready.
Send letters to the.boss@theguardian.com. Today’s prizeless letter o’ the day winner is … Kev McCready. Terms and conditions for our competitions can be viewed here.
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