MAN NAMES TEAM
Arsenal and Liverpool both had a fairly eventful time of it in Big Cup last night. But whose antics were the most unbelievable? Arsenal shipped three goals at home in the last 29 minutes of their match, a collapse which almost certainly locks them into their usual pattern of finishing second in the group, drawing Bayern Munich, then losing 4-0 away from home in the first leg. Liverpool boss Brendan Rodgers, meanwhile, selected 11 professional footballers to play a professional football match, which they did fairly competently, albeit without reward. Yes, he really did do that!
But it’s a new day, and while a vindicated Rodgers is presumably ringing around every MLS club to see if anyone fancies taking a knackered 34-year-old midfielder off his hands, Chelsea manager José Mourinho will tonight be taking a much less cavalier approach away at Maribor. He’s giving the Slovenians his full respect, despite what happened at Stamford Bridge a fortnight ago. “The 6-0 win is a fake situation,” he said. “I need to convince the players that the game at Stamford Bridge was one of these matches where everything goes in our direction. Normally Chelsea to score goals needs a lot of chances.” It’s almost as though he stubbornly prefers grinding out dour victories to offering the masses free-flowing entertainment, something you’d never have guessed from following his career.
Meanwhile former Chelsea charge Frank Lampard, bound for MLS but currently in quarantine at Manchester City, has announced that he could come back from injury to face CSKA Moscow tonight. “I’m not far off selection,” he said. “Fingers crossed, if all goes well, I’ll be back in contention.” City don’t need to beat CSKA to retain hopes of making it to the knockout stages, except they sort of do if we’re all being honest with ourselves and each other. Whether Lampard will still be around should they eventually progress is another matter. “I’m contracted here until the end of December and my future will be at New York City at some stage,” was the furthest he would be drawn on the issue. And fair enough. City being City, the Fiver suggests there’s no point anyone worrying about this quite yet.
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QUOTE OF THE DAY
“Among other investigations were [those] launched into attempted manslaughter, disturbing the peace, breaking laws regulating explosives and laws on assembly” – a quiet night for German police after Galatasaray fans threw firecrackers and smoke bombs on the pitch and at Borussia Dortmund fans.
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FIVER LETTERS
“In yesterday’s Fiver you criticised Brendan Rodgers for ‘prioritising the Premier League over Big Cup in order to get into Big Cup which you then overlook [etc and so on]’, concluding that it was hypocritical and achieved no meaningful end. Unfortunately it fulfils the very meaningful end of maintaining financial status quo, since qualifying for Big Cup is the Big Payout that most managers strive for – even are tasked with as their main objective – and it is deluded to think that managers who can’t even plan beyond one season with confidence actually care about things like ‘glory’, ‘building a legacy’ or ‘fans’. It is with sadness that I say that whatever deluded reality the Fiver currently occupies, I would like to live in it also” – John O’Brien.
“You talk of the futility of prioritising the Premier League ahead of Big Cup and the vicious circle that it entails. Well, it’s been working for Arsenal these last 17 years” – Dave Hill.
“I’d like to thank Chris Harrison for pointing us to the teaspoon-disappearance study (yesterday’s Fiver letters). One of the elegant scientific conclusions of said study was that ‘somewhere in the cosmos, a planet must be entirely given over to spoon life-forms. Unattended spoons make their way to this planet’. It’s good to see that the Fiver editor practices science in his spare time” – Rigel Barros.
“Yesterday’s Fiver contained the unconscionable blunder ‘only three squares of Andrex to share between them’. This is just a red rag to the herd of pedantic bulls, right? Fine, I’m charging like an aforementioned half-tonne of bovine – Andrex, and indeed all types of toilet tissue come in rectangles, and of course this is clearly due to the greater surface area provided by rectangles. So glad I could clean that up for you. Wait? What?” – Gerry Wall (and no other toilet tissue pedants).
• 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 prizeless letter o’the day is: Rigel Barros.
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BITS AND BOBS
Police in riot gear had to be deployed to a Zurich university when protesters armed with smoke bombs tried to force their way into a room where Sepp Blatter was giving a lecture. Such was the demand, eh?
Oh look, it’s former Brazil striker Adriano. Yay! Oh look, he’s been charged over alleged links to a notorious Rio drug lord. Ah. “The accused, freely and consciously, in collaborating in the trafficking of drugs, associated with active traffickers in the Vila Cruzeiro [favela] with the intention of facilitating the illicit trafficking of drugs and related activities,” read a court statement.
Arsène Wenger isn’t a happy chappy after Arsenal blew a 3-0 lead at home to Anderlecht in Big Cup. “Across the pitch defensively, we were very, very poor,” he sniffed.
Manchester United boss Louis van Gaal isn’t planning to strengthen his squad in January. We’ll just leave that to percolate.
#RioFerdinand has been talking about doing the Twitter. Uh-oh. “‘That’s funny, that one’s funny, he’s giving me a bit of stick, that’s funny, he’s giving me stick, he’s coming back on again! I’m gonna shut him down’. Invariably I get it right, and I shut him down and he gets retweeted and he has to open a new account because he gets destroyed,” he bantzed.
Genclerbirligi striker Deniz Naki is leaving the club after an alleged racist attack. “They threatened me that this was the first warning, the club did not need anyone like me and I should go away,” he said. “This time I could defend myself – it was only fists – but eventually it’ll be a knife. I no longer feel safe there.”
Fabio Cannavaro will replace Marcello Lippi in charge of Chinese champions Guangzhou Evergrande next season. “Chinese Super League champions Guangzhou Evergrande officially unveiled Fabio Cannavaro as their new coach,” tweeted Cannavaro in a spectacular piece of third-personning.
And notoriously calm Millwall boss Ian Holloway has got the funk on with the lack of video technology after a 2-2 draw with Blackeye Rovers. “Uefa, Fifa, we are sick of mistakes,” he fumed. “We’ve got the cameras at all these grounds – Premier League, Championship. It’s human error, the eyes aren’t quicker than the ball. There is so much on this, just get the fourth official in the stand and get the decisions right with a camera … What’s happening to football at the moment cannot, cannot, cannot be right.”
RECOMMENDED VIEWING
Are Napoli currently the most dangerous side in Italy? Saucy sea rover James Horncastle unbuckles his swash all over Serie A.
STILL WANT MORE?
Marina Hyde is back, baby, and she’s got Chuck Blazer, the FBI and Fifa in her sights.
Want to know which goalkeepers have scored hat-tricks? And when games have been stopped by snowball fights? Then this edition of the Knowledge is for you.
Barney Ronay explains how Arsenal showed plenty of front but Anderlecht snuck round the back.
Liverpool could probably do with him now, but fans will have to make do with Divock Origi’s trip to Merseyside with Lille tomorrow, writes Claudia Ekai.
Brendan Rodgers: right to play a weakened Liverpool team at Real Madrid.
Brendan Rodgers: wrong to play a weakened Liverpool team at Real Madrid.
Brendan Rodgers: was he right or wrong to play a weakened Liverpool team at Real Madrid?
Bases covered.
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