FEELING THE BURN
It breaks The Fiver’s heart to see Blackeye Rovers suffering like this. After all, it’s only two short decades since future Liverpool and England supremo Mr Roy left them bottom of the Premier League and without a hope in hell of escaping releg … hold on, this is an extremely bad example … since Kenny Dalglish inspired them to their first English title since 1914. Happy days! Alan Shearer and Chris Sutton up front, of course, but there were other heroes too: Colin Hendry, Tim Flowers, Matthew Simmons, Andy Cole … the list goes on and on. Twenty-two years, though. The Fiver feels so very old. The Fiver is so very old. Bah! Sob! Here, these antidepressants don’t have much of a half-life.
But these days Rovers are to be found scrabbling around the bottom of the Championship, in grave danger of falling into England’s third tier for the first time since 1980. This sorry state of affairs is commonly ascribed to Venky’s, the poultry processing and pharmaceutical concern whose actions upon purchasing the club in 2010 can most generously be described as gloriously inept. Since then, they’ve managed to get the club relegated from the Premier League; sourced managerial talent such as Steve Kean-Out and Henning Berg, at one point burning through three bosses in 125 days; sold off dependable players in Jordan Rhodes, Grant Hanley and Rudy Gestede; and run up an £87m debt. We also strongly suspect, given this track record of corporate competence, that they manufactured the tablets The Fiver is currently taking.
Now, with life as a League One club a very real prospect, they’ve sacked Owen Coyle and replaced him with Tony Mowbray. It’s yet another appointment that’s been met with thundering indifference by the increasingly beleaguered Rovers faithful, though in fairness all everyone has to go on is his recent indifferent form with Coventry City, one of the few cases in the country able to out-basket Rovers. A thankless task, in other words. And it’s easy to forget that, before the sheen came off a little at the Queen’s Celtic and Middlesbrough, Mowbray was considered one of the most promising and progressive managers in the land while at Hibs and West Brom. With just 15 games of the season remaining, the next coming at fellow relegation strugglers Burton on Friday, Mowbray doesn’t have long to relocate his mojo. Here, pass that bottle of chicken-flavoured uppers, just in case.
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QUOTE OF THE DAY
“If one team can score a thousand million goals, it’s Monaco” – for the billionth time, Pep Guardiola, stop exaggerating.
FIVER LETTERS
“Wayne Shaw’s second-half snack, corrupt or otherwise (yesterday’s Bits and Bobs), only got on telly because the BBC producer zoomed in on him, poor thing. Are the BBC also being investigated? The BBC Sport website wasn’t able to enlighten me. Can The Fiver?” – Andrew Stern.
“A rare occasion. Upon reading yesterday’s tea-timely missive, my interest levels shot up to ‘intrigued’ from their usual ‘reluctance’ at the Quote of the Day involving Alexei Smertin – could that be the one I remember gracing the hallowed turf of Fratton Park back in the days when my (once) mighty Portsmouth FC had some money? Low and behold, not only was it the very same, but you even provided a picture of him in some fetching Pompey training kit. And then I looked at the changing room he was stood in and how sparse it was – even for a non-league ground – and realised that, even when the happy days of having a plush club existed, clearly all the coin was being trousered by greedy players and owners alike. Still, it gives The Fiver a potential riff for who has the worst changing rooms across the leagues. Someone is going to have to go some to beat that” – Simon Toms.
“I have every sympathy for Mick Ward. He had the only letter published in yesterday’s Fiver and still did not win the ‘prizeless letter o’the day’. However, his mistake was when he described The Fiver as an ‘august publication’, because even sarcasm has its limits” – Robert Darby.
• 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 … Simon Toms.
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And we’ve now got tickets available for an evening with Ray Parlour and Andrew Cole on 13 March. Get them here.
BITS AND BOBS
Wayne Rooney will do one from Manchester United this summer unless his first-team situation under José Mourinho improves. So that’ll be Wayne Rooney doing one from Manchester United this summer, then.
Leicester boss Claudio Ranieri is trying to tell himself that their impending Big Cup beatdown might not happen. “Sevilla could be the turning point, it could be everything,” he wept. “If we do a very good game, something inside could change. We need one match like this.” Where’s Claudio’s lick? Doesn’t Old Claudio get a lick?
Manchester City trio Carli Lloyd, Steph Houghton and Lucy Bronze are on the 55-strong shortlist for the FIFPro Women’s World XI, which will be named on 8 March.
Liverpool are shelling out the cash to tie Adam Lallana down to a new four-year contract and also move their training base to Kirkby. “The Melwood site is limited in space and unable to accommodate our longer-term ambitions,” whooped a club suit.
People voted for Brexit, but Ryan Giggs still can’t catch a goddamn break. “I just think, on balance, there’s too many foreigners at the moment and British coaches probably just don’t get the chances,” he blootered.
And Eastleigh have kicked Martin Allen to the kerb after an ill-fated 84-day dalliance.
STILL WANT MORE?
From Istanbul to the Etihad, Nick Ames has cherry-picked eight of the best Big Cup matches so you don’t have to.
This week’s Knowledge will ensure you know your Raheem Sterlings from your Adam Lallanas, when it comes to sell-on clauses.
It was Big Cup, but not as Pep Guardiola used to know it, muses Paul Wilson.
Invigorated by Kylian Mbappé and left staring at empty seats, Andy Hunter looks back on that eight-goal thriller.
What on earth has gone wrong at Crystal Palace? Look no further.
What do Giovanni O’Trapattoni, Carlo Ancelotti and Marcello Lippi have in common? Antonio Conte.
Will Milan loosen the purse-strings to snap up Sergio Agüero or Alexis Sánchez? That and more in today’s Mill.
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