FINAL FIGHT
The Fiver is not usually one to look a gift horse in the mouth, not least because gawping at horses’ mouths is a creepy habit unless you’re a dentist checking for damage done by an angry Newcastle fan. But this morning The Fiver had a long, hard stare down the throat of a prize donkey and decided that no, it would not ridicule José Mourinho for declaring their Big Vase semi-final second leg against Celta Vigo to be the biggest match in Manchester United’s history.
It’s not that we’ve elected to go easy on him, on the grounds that he’s had a lot to put up with this season – Einsteins constantly demanding food; knacks that have at times reduced his squad to just 22 full internationals; philistine opponents refusing to observe the tradition of rolling over at Old Trafford. No, the reason the Fiver isn’t force-feeding Mourinho a large serving of the Haggis of Unpalatable Truths is that we know he was just trying to motivate his players. And he was doing that precisely because he does, in fact, have a very keen grasp of history. He can, for instance, talk at considerable length about the time he created the world in seven days. And don’t get him started on the time he saw mankind invent fire, to which he immediately reacted by inventing the fire extinguisher.
Most relevantly, Mourinho has a deep knowledge of football history and, therefore, he knows that, since its very inception, Big Vase has had a tendency to slap the smug faces of English teams who thought they’d already got the job done by winning away to puny foreign outfits. The first Big Vase may be remembered mostly in Britain for Wolves boshing Spurs in the final, Dundee’s sensational comeback against Cologne or Aberdeen spanking Celta Vigo, but the Special One is also aware of that year’s meeting between Dirty Leeds and Lierse.
Don Revie’s team won the away leg 2-0, seemingly giving themselves an even plusher cushion than the 1-0 victory that Mourinho’s team managed to restrict themselves to last week in Vigo. “Even with so many of their players out injured I do not think we can expect to beat them,” sobbed the Lierse manager, Frank de Munck, before the second leg back in the day and before, many years later, his distant English cousin became the current Elland Road boss. “We will do our very best but I think we will have to be satisfied if we can avoid a very heavy defeat,” added De Munck. Lierse won 4-0. Imagine being dumped out of Big Vase at home by Belgian nobodies! That wouldn’t happen these days, not even to Tottenh … ah. As you were.
Mourinho, in short, is happy to talk up Thursday’s match if it ensures his team do not lapse into complacency and throw away their first-leg lead. He also knows that freakish things tend to happen in threes. So United’s knack-ravaged defence will have to keep a particularly sharp eye on Liverpool cast-off Iago Aspas, what with Joe Allen and Fabio Borini already having scored at Old Trafford this season. Most of all, Mourinho knows that winning an actual trophy is a much more satisfying way to reach Big Cup than by finishing second, third or fourth in the Premier League. That is not to say that United have been anything other than a boring disgrace in the Premier League this season, merely that Mourinho has been right to concentrate on Big Vase once he realised he was not able to guide the most expensive squad in history above teams whose first-choice defences include Victor Moses, James Milner and Jesús Navas.
All told, it is quite nice that Mourinho has come to the realisation that bigging up Big Vase is part of trying to return Manchester United to their former glory. The Fiver has a lot of time for anyone who attempts to give lustre to derided old institutions that have seen better days.
LIVE ON BIG WEBSITE
Join Paul Doyle for hot MBM coverage of Manchester United 1-1 Celta Vigo (agg: 2-1), from 8.05pm BST.
QUOTE OF THE DAY
“Sadly, the truth is not necessarily what is true, but what people believe. There is a lot of fake news and alternative facts about Fifa circulating. Fifa bashing has become a national sport in some countries” – considering ethics bods have just been “incapacitated” and council members are looking to hike their own pay, as well as the fact multi-million-dollar criminal bribes and kickbacks having been uncovered by the US Department of Justice in recent years among much other murky business, you’d think Gianni Infantino might have been a little less in-your-face when addressing Fifa congress. Nope, he came out swinging from the playbook du jour.
SUPPORT THE GUARDIAN
Producing the Guardian’s thoughtful, in-depth journalism – the stuff not normally found in this email, obviously – is expensive, but supporting us isn’t. If you value our journalism, please support us by making a one-off or recurring contribution.
FIVER LETTERS
“Re: yesterday’s Fiver. On performing my standard procedure of Googling football clubs I’ve never heard of, I was directed to the Östers Idrottsförening Wikipedia page, where they are described as a ‘Swedish sports club, currently specialising in football’. Which raises the possibility that during the golden age of Big Cup they were specialising in something else entirely. Making their appearance in it all the more remarkable” – Tom Telford.
“The Millennium Stadium is now called the Principality Stadium, but will be called the National Stadium of Wales for the Big Cup final because … oh, who really cares about any of this?” – Sam Easterbrook.
“Re: Marc Meldrum’s missive about The Fiver’s psychic octopus-style ability to predict results (yesterday’s Fiver letters). As he said, if you had staked a few quid, you wouldn’t have had to work again until next season. No more Fiver until September. No more bad jokes, no more scouring the back pages of the tabloids desperately looking for something to write about. No more hiding your empty cans of Tin from The Man. And no more Fiver in our inboxes. Everyone’s a winner” – Dan Makeham.
“In the interest of prolonging the debate surrounding the accounting treatment of the sale of Jordan Pickford (Fiver letters passim), which I, along with 1,056 others, have been following with great interest; the transfer fee received would not be shown as revenue, contrary to John Ferguson’s suggestion (yesterday’s letters), unless the player’s CA (carrying amount) had been depreciated to zero, which is unlikely given that the player’s contract still had time to run. The correct entry is to remove the full cost and accumulated depreciation, with only the transfer fee in excess of the NBV at sale being realised through revenue. I would therefore have to re-disagree with The Fiver’s assessment that the transfer fee is revenue. I look forward to reading Friday’s edition for a continuation of this fascinating debate” – Bruce Martin.
“Salaried employees aren’t recorded on the balance sheet, therefore Jordan Pickford has no net book value (no offence intended to him). As always transfer fees are revenue and (not anywhere near always) The Fiver is correct. Yes I should get out more” – Ash Cowan.
“There is a real story in here, perhaps for a Proper Journalist. Players are valued on a club’s books at their transfer value, and depreciated over their contract length. If I buy someone for £60m, on a three-year contract, £20m goes into the P&L as depreciation per annum. If I sell said player after one year, for £60m, I write off £40m, and book £20m as profit. So even though, in common sense terms, I haven’t done anything other than sell someone for what they are worth, I have booked a profit. Compare with what happens if I just let the player play for three years. There is a reason why clubs buy and sell players other than making their teams better. It is better for me to buy a player for £60m and sell one for the same, ending up with the same value of players, and the same cash position, than just to hang on to what I have got. Accounting is weird. You can wake up now” – Dan Levy [maybe that one? – Fiver Ed].
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 … Tom Telford.
JOIN GUARDIAN SOULMATES
Chances are that if you’re reading this tea-timely football email, you’re almost certainly single. But fear not – if you’d like to find companionship or love, sign up here to view profiles of the kind of erudite, sociable and friendly folk who would never normally dream of going out with you. And don’t forget, it’s not the rejection that kills you, it’s the hope. And it’s still a much better option than this.
BITS AND BOBS
Everton can expect to receive a summer offer for Romelu Lukaku way beyond their wildest dreams after José Mourinho instructed Manchester United bean-counters the Belgian is a prime transfer target. As for Ross Barkley? “It is still one week. Time for him to decide,” sniffed Ronald Koeman.
West Brom fancy a bit of wantaway Nasty Leeds defender Charlie Taylor, who’s been fined two weeks’ wages for refusing to play at Wigan last week. “It could go to a tribunal but our club would rather try and sort a deal out with [Nasty] Leeds if we’re going to do it instead of going to tribunal,” cooed Tony Pulis.
Jürgen Klopp couldn’t give a flying one about reports in Spain claiming Barça are readying a £76m offer for Philippe Coutinho. “What our owners say is there is the absolute opportunity not to sell anybody if we do not want to,” he tooted.
Swansea have threatened to punish fans who have sold tickets that have been paid for by the first-team squad for Saturday’s trip to Sunderland. “Any supporter found selling their ticket runs the risk of having their season ticket and club membership revoked,” growled a club suit.
Pope’s Newc O’Rangers boss Pedro Caixinha is fed up with leaks from the dressing room. “We are a big club and a big club cannot have this sort of behaviour,” he honked. “The majority of the speculation is coming from inside and that is my main concern. We need to identify [who is leaking] and then seal it.”
Zlatan Ibrahimovic’s surgeon, Freddie Fu, says the Manchester United striker could play on for many years after undergoing his own top, top surgery to repair cruciate knee-knack. “He’s one of the top athletes I’ve ever touched,” trilled Fu, sounding a bit like like Weird Uncle Fiver.
And Juve defender Leonardo Bonucci has revealed why Dani Alves is still so effective at the age of 34. “Dani is an alien,” he parped.
STILL WANT MORE?
Transport yourself to Naples in 1987. You’ll want to.
“It was a great season for Liverpool – one of their best – although I would have liked to have played a bigger part and that corner [against Chelsea] is the final memory, so it’s their lasting image of me. But in football you can’t live forever in the past.” Iago Aspas, now thriving at Celta Vigo but less fondly remembered at Anfield, gets his chat on with Sid Lowe before his Big Vase visit to Old Trafford.
Said competition has a big prize this year – a place in Big Cup next season. But is this fresh allure undermining domestic leagues as contenders rest key players, muses Paul Wilson.
Get a load of these goalkeeper assists – from an Iranian keeper’s astonishing long throw to Packie Bonner knocking it long in the expected fashion – in this week’s Joy of Six.
With Arsène Wenger increasingly and stridently at odds with Arsenal’s high-ups, Wednesday night’s win at Southampton was a handy small victory in an unlikely civil war, writes Jacob Steinberg.
Atlético Madrid’s atmospheric Vicente Calderón stadium hosted its last Big Cup tie against Real Madrid – Sid Lowe drinks it all in.
The feats of D1ck, Kerr’s Ladies, John Oliver skewering Fifa and the days of Holland being good are among the clips prepared for your enjoyment in this week’s Classic YouTube.
Oh, and if it’s your thing … you can follow Big Website on Big Social FaceSpace. And INSTACHAT, TOO!
