THE ELIMINATION GAME
Despite protests from the Queen’s Celtic’s forensics department, whose CSIs are still hunting for evidence that Malmo might have fielded an ineligible player against them, Uefa cracked on with its Big Cup group stage draw in Monaco’s Grimaldi Forum on Thursday. Hosted by a large block of wood that bore a passing resemblance to Peter Schmeichel and occasional football draw hostess Melanie Winiger, who did most of the heavy lifting, it was as usual overseen by Uefa bingo caller Gianni Infantino. In an uncharacteristic Father Ted-judging-the-Lovely-Girls-style lapse from his usual professionalism, Gianni almost caused a diplomatic incident by, in a roundabout way, suggesting PSV were the Pot One team most likely to get their lovely bottom spanked, before quickly correcting himself by pointing out that, of course, they could all get their lovely bottoms spanked.
As has become customary these days, it is no longer possible to watch anything in any way related to football without learning some “things”. And with somebody, somewhere having arbitrarily decided that the number of these things that should be learned is five, it is with seething resentment that they didn’t decide on just one, two, three or even four things that we present Five Things The Fiver Learned From Yesterday’s Big Cup Group Stage Draw (Or Four Things Because We Predicted Manchester United Would Get PSV Eindhoven Several Hours Before It Took Place).
Thing No1: The preposterously skewed distribution of wealth in European football has ensured Big Cup group stages have now reached such general levels of tedium that the main talking point surrounds a “Group of Death” so terrifying it boasts … er, the third best team in Germany and the fifth best team in Spain.
Thing No2: Ronny Deila is a managerial genius. By instructing his players to perform so poorly on Tuesday night, the Queen’s Celtic manager has shoved plucky little Malmo into a hail of Real Madrid, PSG and Shakhtar Donetsk-shaped bullets. The thought of what those three teams might do to Queen’s Celtic players who cannot defend corners, constantly give the ball away and only run fast when they want to knee an opponent in the swingers makes their elimination in the qualifier seem more of a blessing than a curse.
Thing No3: Manchester United know where the Uefa bodies are buried.
Thing No4: They also have photos of those bodies in compromising positions with an Anglo-Nubian goat.
Thing No5: Chelsea? Meh. Arsenal? Meh, although they’ll probably still make a dog’s breakfast of it but scrape through anyway before getting knocked out in the last 16.
QUOTE OF THE DAY
“We had a big past here and I know a little bit about the salary of players – average players, lower than average players – and that’s crazy. People who bought those kind of players for those transfer fees and gave them those salaries didn’t care about the club” – D1ck Advocaat better hope that new Sunderland signing Ola Toivonen does the business after comparing the squad he inherited to nothing more than expensively-assembled litter scattered around the Stadium of Light.
OH CITY
Manchester, around 12.45pm: “Marcos is still a player here for Manchester City. He is a very good player. I am sure in the future he will be part of our club but for this year he must continue trying to play as much football as he can. Here he has a lot of competition with David [Silva] and Samir [Nasri] so it is better for him to go on loan” – Manchester City manager Manuel Pellegrini hails young midfielder Marcos Lopes as an exciting prospect, who he doesn’t want to leave the club.
Manchester, 1.30pm: “Marcos Lopes has joined AS Monaco on a permanent deal” – ah.
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“So Mario is under the watch of the Milan hair police (yesterday’s Bits and Bobs)? Were they behind Stephan El Shaarawy being shunted off to Monaco?” – Sonny Flanagan.
• 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: Sonny Flanagan.
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BITS AND BOBS
Spurs have signed Bayer Leverkusen striker Son Heung-min for around £22m in the hope that, not only will he remind Harry Kane how to score some goals, but perhaps bring some Creedence Clearwater revival to the terraces too.
Liverpool will let Fenerbahce borrow Lazar Markovic for a season in the vain hope that they’ll make him good enough so Brendan Rodgers can ignore him on the bench again next time around.
Here’s how Big Vase draw went down.
Premier League ref Michael Oliver jumped from the stands like a low-rent superhero to run the line in place of an injured assistant as Arsenal Ladies beat Reading in a match officiated by his wife, Lucy.
Tactics Tim has got his excuses in early before Aston Villa’s trip to Sunderland. “We have a couple of players, I don’t want to tell you who they are, but they’re not here today because they are ill,” he growled, perhaps from a toilet cubicle. “The doc is having to do some overtime.”
There was a Neymar lookalike who signed for Limerick …
And Harry Kane and co got a schooling from our very own Gregg Bakowski at the Walking Football All Star Game. “The snapper doesn’t seem to have got my goal,” he fibbed, failing to explain his ‘All Star’ status.
STILL WANT MORE?
In double the arbitrary fashion, Barry Glendenning, Paul Doyle and Jacob Steinberg take turns grabbing your head and pointing it at these 10 things to look forward to in the Premier League this weekend.
“This isn’t soccer, son.” Alan Smith on how Gaelic football helped Jack Grealish cope with the bumpy ride that is life under Tactics Tim at Aston Villa.
How is Steve McClaren going to make Newcastle less of a shambles? By … a) making sure Daryl Janmaat never goes near a black and white shirt again? Or by … b) introducing a no-effing-and-jeffing policy, a dapper dress code and by answering more emails? Here’s quizmaster Louise Taylor with the answer.
Barry Glendenning dons his ski-mask and recalls half a dozen transfer hijackings in this week’s Joy of Six.
Spurs must resist the temptation to go transfer crazy if Mauricio Pochettino is to make Tottenham less Tottenhamy, writes Alex Hess.
Time for your Friday afternoon visualisation session: you’re a ref, it’s your final match before hanging up your whistle and the home captain offers to swap shirts with you on the way to the tunnel after a match in which you awarded a dodgy penalty? What do you do? The Fiver hasn’t the foggiest, but once you’ve come round again you can tell us via this week’s You Are the Ref column.
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