STERLING SLIDES
As we all know, Liverpool Football Club is special. Different. Classy. Unique. Special. Unique. Classy. Unique. Iconic. Unique. Special. Unique. Clubby. Clubbish. Clubesque. Special. Unique. Increasingly irrelevant. Over the hill. Past-it. Yesterday’s news. Special. Unique. Iconic. Unique. Special. Special. Special. Unique. Liverpool Football Club are special. And unique. And special. And classy. They’re special and specially unique and uniquely specially and specially special and uniquely classy and they have a different way of doing things, you wouldn’t understand, you just wouldn’t, because you’re not special, or classy, or unique, you’re not Liverpool Football Club, and you wouldn’t understand, so don’t even bother, just accept it, they’re the best football team in the tra-la-la-la land.
Liverpool Football Club’s specialness and uniqueness and classiness naturally places them in a position to pat lesser clubs on the head and let them know of their place in the food chain. Clubs, say, like Southampton, who were browbeaten into selling Adam Lallana and Dejan Lovren to mighty Liverpool last summer. “They have a choice as a club,” Liverpool’s head guru, Brendan Rodgers, roared last August. “They don’t have to sell. You have a choice. Maybe Southampton’s objectives have changed. They were looking to be a [Big Cup] club, I believe. They obviously wanted to change. There might be one or two others who leave. It’s just the way it works.” It’s. Just. The. Way. It. Works.
Words to live by. Poetry in motion that comes to mind now that Raheem Sterling is busy letting Liverpool know that the way it works is that he would like to leave in the summer, maybe join a bigger club, play for a team who actually have a chance of winning something in the near future, that there’s only so many times he can hear about the Miraculous Miracle of Istanbul before he’s forced to go all Van Gogh on his ears.
Treason! Naturally Sterling’s desire to play for a good team has been met with fury and The Fiver assumes he has spent the day locked in Melwood’s Re-education Chamber, a crack team of Phil Thompson, John Bishop and John Aldridge taking it in turns to hammer home the uniqueness and specialness and classiness of Liverpool Football Club, making sure Sterling knows that he will forever walk alone if he joins Manchester City, a terrifying prospect indeed. It’s just the way it works.
QUOTE OF THE DAY
“I have rejected Juventus four times: it’s a beautiful pu$$y that doesn’t get me h0rny” – Antonio Cassano, don’t ever change.
IN DEEP DUDU
26 February: “I’m happy for the affection of the fans since my arrival. To be an idol, I have to win trophies and do things for the club. I hope to become an idol for what I do on the pitch” – Palmeiras star signing Dudu gives it some big talk shortly after his arrival.
19 May: “We are confident that we will reverse this. We accept and understand it. The court tried to act with rigour, but that rigour has to be with a limit” – Palmeiras lawyers say they will appeal against Dudu’s six-month suspension for shoving a referee from behind after being shown a red card.
FIVER LETTERS
“As a Leicester City fan, I am understandably in a state of high agogness at present, not to mention substantially over the moon. Still, I’m happy to reveal that I don’t hold out many realistic hopes of one day seeing a star or two above the fox’s head on our team shirt denoting a Big Cup title. Or two. Might I suggest there should be different above-the-logo insignia available to plucky clubs like ours to remind us forever of our own triumphs-of-scale, like great escapes from relegation? How about a tiny gallows with a Ghostbusters-style red slash through it? Any other ideas?” – Trevor Marshallsea.
“Re: Beeb journos doing hard-time in a Qatari chokey (yesterday’s Bits and Bobs). Will The Fiver go there on holiday to prove the John Carver Principle? I’m not sure what it could prove but it seems like the right thing for The Fiver to do” – Grant McPhee.
“Surely the leather inside the gold plating around Lothar Matthäus’s boot (yesterday’s Bits and Bobs) will have turned to mould by now? Come to think of it, this was the same man who walked off to a standing ovation minutes before Bayern blew one of the most one-sided Big Cup finals ever. And he wasn’t much of a manager either. So from now on, if everything golden someone touches turns to mould, perhaps it’ll be known as the Matthäus Touch. Weird Uncle Fiver, rejoice! You’re following in the footsteps of greatness” – Justin Kavanagh.
• 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: Trevor Marshallsea.
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BITS AND BOBS
The FA’s new chief suit Martin Glenn reckons England winning the World Cup is, literally, rocket science. “When John F Kennedy said he wanted to put a man on the moon by 1970, everyone thought he was bonkers. But he put Nasa in place and gave them funding,” roared Glenn in quotes that will in no way be brought up every time he opens his mouth from now on.
There but for the grace of god dept: Wembley Stadium has apologised after misspelling Middlesbrough on tickets for Monday’s Championship play-off final against Norwich. “It was a human error,” welped a Wembley suit, neglecting to mention the other glaring typo that claimed it was £76 for the ticket.
Oh.
Lyon have taken notice of the various scouts giving Ligue 1 top scorer Alexandre Lacazette the glad eye and hung an “offers over €50m” price tag from his nose. “We will do everything to keep Alexandre,” sniffed club chairman Jean-Michel Aulas.
Chris Ramsey’s reward for taking QPR into the Championship is the opportunity to take them into League One next season after he was handed a permanent three-year deal. “He lives and breathes management,” whooped club chairman Tony Fernandes.
After releasing 17 players, Blackpool’s squad currently features eight professionals, no goalkeepers, and a striker, Nile Ranger, who is awol after complaining the club were “taking the mick” with his “minimum wage” contract.
Portuguese prosecutors are investigating the conduct of a policeman who allegedly beat a man in front of his young children and also punched their grandfather outside a football stadium.
Former Cheltenham manager Mark Yates will now be known as Crawley manager Mark Yates after signing a two-year contract. “I have been out of the game for a few months,” offered Yates as reason for accepting the role.
And Gilortul Targu-Carbuneşti, a side in the Romanian fourth tier, were forced to play 40km away in Stoina because the local mayor had rented their pitch, erected a marquee and rolled out a red carpet across the turf in order to host his daughter’s wedding reception, something local reports described as “probably the biggest party that has ever been held in the town”.
WIN! WIN! WIN!
Get your hands on (home) tickets to Leicester City v QPR on Sunday. Enter here.
STILL WANT MORE?
As a specialist in the field of incompetence, Tom Bryant has abused some of Opta’s stats to discover the most inept team in the Premier League.
Raphael Honigstein uses the phrases “Junge, Junge” and “mein Herr” in the first paragraph. Is he: a) writing about the goings on in the Bundesliga? Or b) penning an episode of ‘Allo ‘Allo? Answers on a postcard.
Model, Bollywood superstar and international $ex symbol Weird Uncle Fiv … John Abraham is making football big in India, reports David Hytner.
And here’s Conrad Leach on Ruben Loftus-Cheek, Chelsea’s latest Josh McEachran.
Oh, and if it’s your thing … you can follow Big Website on Big Social FaceSpace.
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‘GOAL FOR GRIMSBY!’
