TOTTENHAM HOTSPUR DOES COUNTDOWN … QUITE BADLY
As if getting beaten at home by Arsenal in Milk Cup last night wasn’t infuriating enough for Tottenham Hotspur, a terrible evening at White Hart Lane had already started badly with an example of the kind of poor spelling that the Fiver has long been renowned. Having wheeled out White Hart Lane caretaker Ledley King to present Canadian ice hockey legend and special guest Wayne Gretzky with his own personalised Spurs jersey in a pre-match ceremony, only for Spurs officials to be left Arsenal-coloured red of face when it was drawn to their attention that they’d managed to spell The Great One’s name wrong.
“Our sincere apologies to @OfficialGretzky for the shirt error,” they tweeted, making sure not to compound their boo-boo by spelling “shirt” wrong. “New one on its way! #COYS”. Being Canadian, Gretzky had of course been too polite to point out the error at the initial handover. “Not to worry @SpursOfficial it happens all the time!” came his reply.
The Mathieu Flamini of his sport, goal machine Gretzky is a four-times Stanley Cup winner who was an ardent supporter of fair play throughout his career, so he may have been perturbed to see visiting Arsenal fans, or people who have no affiliation whatsoever to Arsenal but just so happened to be sitting in the upper tier of the area of White Hart Lane reserved for visiting Arsenal fans, killing time as they waited to be let out of the ground by staging their own impromptu Countdown conundrum by removing and rearranging the letters of the famous old sign that says “THIS IS MY CLUB, MY ONE AND ONLY CLUB’, to read “BY UNCONDITIONALLY CHUMMY BLESS”. Or that’s what some of the 10 fans arrested for assault or criminal damage may claim in court, perhaps adding that they’d heard Spurs were thinking of knocking down and renovating their stadium and were just being neighbourly by giving them a helping hand.
Upon hearing that the Football Association had announced the matter was criminal and that neither club will face FA charges for any post-match shenanigans, the Fiver couldn’t help but notice that in its own rulebook, this august governing body – a body that has already announced this week that it is still charging one Arsenal player for complaining about a red card it has already admitted he shouldn’t have been shown – states that each club “shall be responsible for ensuring that its directors, players, officials, employees, servants, representatives, spectators, and all persons purporting to be its supporters or followers, conduct themselves in an orderly fashion and refrain from any one or combination of the following: improper, violent, threatening, abusive, indecent, insulting or provocative words or behaviour.”
So on this particular occasion what looks like an incident of random vandalism is a police matter but at least we can be thankful the rules in the FA’s inconsistently applied handbook are at least spelt correctly.
QUOTE OF THE DAY
“He’s got no future at the football club. Through his contractual obligations we have to try and get him fit, when he turns up, if he turns up, whenever he turns up. We’re available for him but he won’t train with the first team and he won’t train anywhere near the ground. As I said two months ago, he’s got no future as long as I’m the manager here.” – Do you think Neil McDonald sees a future for Nile Ranger at Blackpool?
FIVER LETTERS
“Can I be the first of 1,057 nostalgic wind-up merchants to insist the Fiver goes back to calling Newcastle United ‘Jongleurs FC’ once again?” – Thomas O’Mahoney (and no one else, ever).
“Perhaps Brendan is not worried about being told to Do One from Liverpool, since judging by the photo heading Wednesday’s Fiver he is planning his future as a stunt double in the next remake of Total Recall. And remember the talented Mr Rodgers is not even using makeup. Probably” – Dan Silk.
“In yesterday’s Fiver, you said: ‘Of their last 18 fixtures, in which the team has been set out in 398,267 different formations, each player asked to play in, on average, 6.3 different positions per match’. You’ve grossly overestimated the different formations Liverpool have managed. By my calculations Rodgers has carefully crafted the 11 players, playing 6.3 positions per match into a mere 332,640 different formations per match. You can’t even manage the basics ... sessh!” – James Haughey.
“Yesterday’s MLS article points out that ‘While the league averaged over 15,000 fans per match that season, half of the teams averaged fewer.’ Now, I’m sure the 1,057 could explain many occasions when this may not be the case, but by and large, isn’t that how averages work?” – Craig Fawcett.
• 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: Dan Silk.
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BITS AND BOBS
Clever Calum Chambers has said that Arsenal’s “character and belief” – rather than his second own-goal in five days – was the key to Arsenal’s derby win over Tottenham. “At 1-1, we showed a lot of character to keep our faith, keep our composure, keep playing and get a goal,” he swooned.
Speaking of Arsenal, Claudio Ranieri has admitted he is surprised they have not won a title in 11 years. Really, Claudio?
No need to try and be funny here. Brendan Rodgers’s assistant Gary McAllister reckons Liverpool were delighted with beating League Two’s Carlisle 3-2 in a penalty shootout. Three more years! Three more years!
Australia’s former captain and record-setting Matildas goalkeeper Melissa Barbieri has announced her retirement from international football.
Bad news for Scotland, or good, depending on how highly you rate Charlie Mulgrew. According to his manager at the Queen’s Celtic, Ronny Deila, the defender is unlikelty to play in Scotland’s next batch of internationals. “I think that is going to be tough [for him to make it]. I am not 100% in that, I am not a physio – even though I think I am sometimes,” he doctored. “But as I understand it, he is still not on the pitch training [with the] football so it will be tough to reach the Scotland games.”
Louis van Gaal has said he’ll have to field a makeshift defence on Saturday after confirming that Marcos Rojo will be unavailable through injury. Given that they are playing Sunderland, he probably won’t lose any sleep over that.
STILL WANT MORE?
“He was Robin Williams in Good Will Hunting.” Tactics’ Jonathan Wilson on where it has all gone wrong for Brendan Rodgers at Liverpool.
As if there was not enough despair at St James’ Park, here is an extract from Martin Hardy’s new book on Kevin Keegan and the club’s impossible dream.
Paolo Bandini has the lowdown on Frosinone, who sound more like a desert than a football club, scoring their first Serie A goal to earn at draw at Juventus.
For a profession that prefers to go about its business, both metaphorically and literally, in the back room, the story of Eva Carneiro’s departure from Chelsea is an unwelcome distraction from the increasingly significant role that medical personnel play in modern football, reckons Richard Foster. When Manchester United won the treble they had three medical staff. Now some Premier League teams have 25.
Mathieu Flamini was training alone not so long ago, now he is an Arsenal hero, purrs Sachin Nakrani.
Derby-day clashes, Robert Lewandowski and Jack Charlton in his prime all make an appearance in this week’s edition of Classic YouTube.
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