OFF-GARDE
Back in 2007, baseball man and artificial muscle-enhancer enthusiast Alex Rodriguez announced his intention to leave the New York Yankees one October evening. This didn’t go down well at all, as at the time the Boston Red Sox, the Yankees’ despised rivals, were just about to win the World Series, and Rodriguez was accused of trying to take the attention away from the imminent champs, and direct it towards himself, like a clattering great egotist.
Maybe that’s what Aston Villa were trying to do on Tuesday evening, when they announced that Rémi Garde had been bought a one-way economy ticket on Air Do One during England’s defeat to Holland (which means they won’t now win Euro 2016). Perhaps they were just trying to get a bit of acknowledgement, some small glory. Maybe they were attempting to take the attention away from the national team and on to them, to sate their clear famelust. Or something like that.
Garde is gone, and it was the kindest thing to do. There can rarely have ever been someone who looked more miserable in their job than him, aside from perhaps the Fiver when the Man asks us to type some words and put our trousers back on. Of course Garde was no good, having won only two league games in his five months in charge, but he did always carry with him the air of a man who had been sold a charming rustic property as a “fixer-upper”, only to discover it wasn’t actually a house, but a drawing of a bedsit, by a five-year-old, on an old brown paper bag. Week after week, defeat after defeat, Garde made it clear that the club was a piping hot mess, that the players were no good and the blokes who signed the cheques and sent the faxes had lost their pens and, erm, faxing fingers.
He was indeed sold something of a pup. This was a club who in the summer lost their three best players, replacing them with a job-lot of Jordans, Rudy Gestede the colossal lumbering tree, and Joleon Lescott, a bloke with apparently so little control of his actions that he tweeted a picture of a car while his phone was in his pocket. All of which wouldn’t be quite so much of a problem if there hadn’t been such a chronic lack of investment in the squad and indeed club as a whole for some years. Buying those players last summer was a little like trying to fix a series of holes in the hull of an oil tanker with a packet of Mickey Mouse plasters.
But even with that in mind, Garde was terrible and it would be a cop-out to suggest otherwise, showing about as much tactical acumen as predecessor Tactics Tim showed … erm … tactical acumen, all the motivational skills of a snotty tissue and an approach to team selection akin to an eight-year-old playing free jazz on the xylophone.
Garde joins the long line of former Aston Villa managers who have tumbled into obscurity and nothingness since leaving the club: David O’Leary is unemployed; Alex McLeish is managing Zamalek in Egypt; Tactics Tim has probably opened a Pretty Green franchise somewhere; Martin O’Neill is with the Republic of Ireland. It doesn’t say much for his future job prospects.
And to think, at one point Garde was talked about as a potential Arsenal manager, largely on the basis that he was mates with Arsène Wenger. In fact, he might well not be talking to Arsène anymore, having consulted with his old boss about the Villa gig, to be told that it’d be a lovely idea. The lesson here is never take any advice from your mates. They don’t know what they’re talking about.
But hey, let’s look on the bright side. At least Jack Grealish is happy. And at least Villa spelled Garde’s name right when they gave him the bullet.
QUOTE OF THE DAY
“Whose shoes do you want to sell, Messi? How much do you think it will get? You don’t know that the nail of a baby Egyptian is worth more than your shoes? Keep your shoes to yourself … Messi, we Egyptians are 90 million people, who have pride, we have shoes. We don’t eat off the money of other peoples’ shoes. I would have understood if he donated his Barcelona uniform to the Egyptians, it’s accepted. But just the shoes? It’s humiliating to all Egyptians and I do not accept this humiliation. Egyptians may not find food, but they have pride. We Egyptians have never been humiliated before during our 7,000 years of civilisation” – Egyptian MP Said Hasasin takes the news that Lionel Messi is to auction his boots in aid of an Egyptian charity as well as can be expected.
QUOTE OF THE DAY II
“We do not believe that the fans mean it in that way, they come to have fun and nothing more. Nevertheless, we do think there are better ways of expressing enthusiasm and even messing with the opponent to put pressure on him” – Not that the Mexican Soccer Federation reckon their fans are really chanting anti-gay songs, of course, but on the whole they’d rather supporters ‘messed with’ the opposition in a slightly less homophobic way.
FIVER LETTERS
“David Lambert writes about doubling the Fiver’s readership by the addition of a further 1,058 pedants [yesterday’s Fiver]. Surely the logical flaw in that line of reasoning is that it assumes that all of the current readers are pedants … Oh” – Steve Allen.
“I once wrote a letter to Pedants Corner in Private Eye pointing out to some other pedant that actually it was entirely possible for Batman and Spiderman to appear in the same comic strip because there have been crossovers between DC and Marvel down the years. Two weeks later someone wrote in to point out that I was a fool and I should know that actually it is ‘Spider-Man’. And now David Lambert has done it to me here. To quote John McClain ‘How can the same sh1t happen to the same guy twice?’. (I’ll probably get corrected on that quote now too …)” – Sam Carpenter.
“Re Eric Penner’s enjoyment of a ‘completely humourless’ edition of the Fiver - welcome, Eric, you’re clearly a new subscriber” – John D’Arcy.
“I think I know why Raheem is struggling to sell that house [yesterday’s Fiver last line] … the first floor is obviously unsafe, judging by that poor guy in picture 14” – Dave Gill.
• 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 … Dave Gill.
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BITS AND BOBS
Manchester City defender Martín Demichelis has been charged by FA bizzies with being a very naughty boy in relation to betting.
Like pretty much everyone at the fag end of an international break, Danny Drinkwater wants to get back to the league as soon as possible. “I am just going to get back in with the lads and pick up where we left off, get another victory on Sunday and see how the run goes,” he jinxed.
Meanwhile Jamie Vardy says competition for an England starting role is so intense he might raise his game an infinitesimal amount to stay in the side. “It’s massive competition and that means everyone will be trying that extra 1% or 2%,” he shrugged.
And Brondby president Jan Bech Andersen has done the decent thing after being discovered masquerading online as someone called Oscar and slagging off former manager Thomas Frank, who walked out weeks ago in high dudgeon over the whole thing. “Due to the large media focus on me in the last few weeks, I have decided that it is best for the club that I do not seek re-election to the board,” sniffed Bech Andersen.
STILL WANT MORE?
If you want international football talking points, you got ’em!
Rob Smyth and John Ashdown spent a week in Big Paper’s dusty basement cranking stats through the Whizzo Hot Stats Statometer (™) to work out whether Barcelona are about to break the record for longest unbeaten run. Find out what they came up with here.
If you thought Rémi Garde was pretty forgettable, what about these chancers, hoots Simon Burnton.
Then again, reckons Paul Wilson, it’s not like it was really all Garde’s fault.
Martin Laurence on England’s Wayne Rooney problem.
Oh, and if it’s your thing … you can follow Big Website on Big Social FaceSpace.
