2018: A SPACE ODYSSEY
New year, new same old Fiver: another 12 months (minus the bank holidays and the bit around Christmas when we can’t be bothered) groping for gags at 5.01pm, doling out in-jokes that weren’t funny when we thought of them in 1999, reminding people who Ailsa from Home and Away was and hoping the Emmerdale Eminem does something notable so we can get that one going again, in desperately padded out, ridiculously long, one-sentence opening paragraphs that get us nearer the word count and so help restore our Work/Tin balance.
Here’s what you’ve missed in the last few weeks, then:
• José Mourinho developed RSI of the jawbone thanks to extended gum flapping about a) money, b) referees, c) Jürgen Klopp, d) children’s decision-making abilities and e) Paul Scholes’s punditry. Oh, and f) anything at all really.
• Jesus wept.
• Ailsa from Home and Away huffed his way through a door but to the disappointment of protesting Stoke fans, who had eschewed the more traditional plane-trailing-a-banner in favour of just scrawling on really quite small pieces of paper, it was only the one out of the press room not the one out of the stadium.
• Arsène Wenger and Harry Kane reached landmarks that were utterly arbitrary but also very handy for filling space while we were far more interested in turkey carnage.
• Liverpool finally earned a free coffee on their Southampton loyalty card after exchanging 75 million new pound coins for one Virgil van Dijk.
• Garry Monk, Paul Clement and Carlos Carvalhal all set sail on the good ship QE Do One, with the latter particularly harshly treated when he subsequently pitched up at Swansea. Still, though, it could have been worse, he could have had the nerve to return to work after cancer surgery.
And so to what we can expect from 2018:
• Bored after winning the Premier League in February, Pep Guardiola converts Sergio Agüero into a goalkeeper, Brian Kidd into a marauding left-back and Eliaquim Mangala into an experimental street-dance troupe from Catalonia.
• Arsenal replace Mesut Özil and Alexis Sánchez with a 17-year-old whelp from the eighth tier of French football, David Luiz and someone they will spend £78m on who palpably won’t be a defensive midfielder and will get knacked by 7 September.
• Sam Allardyce issues a come-and-get-me plea to Real Madrid after guiding Everton to Big Vase via an eighth-place Premier League finish. His comments set the managerial merry-go-round into such frenzied action that a thoroughly bewildered Chelsea appoint Alan Curbishley and ‘Arry Redknapp as the dream team to replace Antonio Conte.
• Harry Kane gets metatarsal-knack on 13 June.
• On 14 June, the World Cup kicks off. A fortnight later, England beat a richly talented Belgium side 2-1 to add a little sparkle to the 4-0 defeats against Panama and Tunisia which have already knocked them out of the tournament.
• Edward Woodward goes toe-to-toe with Real Madrid for whichever South American midfielder happens to have a good World Cup, spending massively over the odds, before Mourinho starts the player exclusively in the Milk Cup (which will be staged in Thailand, kick-offs: 4am GMT).
• Neymar, Him, Eden Hazard, Philippe Coutinho and assorted others will either move clubs, or not move clubs, with a responsible press not writing about any of it until each move is confirmed by an official statement from the parties involved.
• Well into the 2018-19 season Mike Ashley continues to convince Rafa Benítez that he is genuinely selling Newcastle United. By then, Benítez will be fielding seven pre-teens, Rob Elliot, Brian and Bev, the nice couple he met in a Kirkwhelpington tearoom, and Bev’s sister Sue, still muttering distractedly under his breath about the potential of the north east, big clubs, and loyal fans.
• Liverpool return Van Dijk to Southampton, concerned he has the same virus that Dejan Lovren must have had when he left the south coast too.
• The Fiver’s reader continues to skip straight to Quote of the Day. Happy New Year to you!
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QUOTE OF THE DAY
“He saw what he wanted to see and we have to deal with that” – Arsène Wenger is facing another touchline ban after giving referee Mike Dean an earful for the penalty decision against West Brom that he hasn’t stopped banging on about since.
RECOMMENDED LOOKING
Get your peepers around the latest David Squires cartoon, on football’s New Year resolutions.
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FIVER LETTER
“As a Newcastle fan, I’d like to say how disappointed I was to see the ‘Ryan Shawcross Award – For Not Being That Kind of Player’ dropped from this year’s Fiver Christmas Awards. I can only imagine how upset Jonjo Shelvey must be” – James Fearnley.
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THE RECAP
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BITS AND BOBS
Manchester City’s Gabriel Jesus may be out for up to three months after suffering knee-knack at Crystal Palace.
West Brom have fired off a strongly-worded letter to the FA complaining about the fixture scheduling that has afforded West Ham five days’ more rest before Tuesday’s 0-0 draw between them.
Jürgen Klopp isn’t giving a flying one after Nike web-bunglers launched a page advertising Barça shirts with Philippe Coutinho scrawled on them. “I couldn’t be less interested in anything in the world,” he over-the-topped. Meanwhile, Klopp says he’s “gutted” that coach Pepijn Lijnders is off to manage NEC Nijmegen. “As much as we would have loved for him to remain, we cannot stand in his way,” he tooted.
And the Premier League’s joint-leading goalscorer in 2018, Ragnar Klavan, has welcomed the addition of Virgil van Dijk to Liverpool despite it likely meaning he will be shoved into a box and stored in a dusty corner of Anfield for the foreseeable future. “There is competition and competition is good,” he sobbed.
STILL WANT MORE?
Creative fulcrum and all-round good egg Juan Mata is the Guardian’s footballer of the year. He chats to Donald McRae about it all here.
Remember the outrageously talented freestyler in the Euro 2017 ad? Meet Liv Cooke, its world champion star, in Suzanne Wrack’s latest blog.
Son Heung-min’s wholeheartedness is key to why he is so loved at Spurs, and such a regular contributor of goals, cheers David Hytner.
Both Everton and Manchester United had reason to pine for Romelu Lukaku, reckons Paul Wilson, but the latter had Paul Pogba, which made all the difference.
“One of the biggest things people say to me is that I probably should have had more England caps, but I was pleased to get eight.” Kevin Phillips, the last English recipient of the European Golden Shoe, now coaching at Derby, talks about the art of goalscoring, playing two up top, his favourite goals and more.
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