CAPSIZED
The Fiver almost spat its Purple Tin out when it heard Tony Pulis had been at West Brom for only three years. Three years! Time moves slower than Dimitar Berbatov tracking back when Pulis is in charge. As well as the rubbish results, his lack of style is why he found himself staring forlornly at a collection of sports caps and tracksuit tops on Monday morning instead of taking a training session in which Gareth McAuley blooters a ball towards Dudley and Salomón Rondón and Jay Rodriguez take it in turns to chase it. Even Pulis knows he’s sucked the boing out of the Baggies.
It’s the reason he turned up to his pre-match press conference last Friday armed with a list of his West Brom highlights which included: not having been relegated, not having been relegated, not having been relegated and, um, not having been relegated. He also pointed out that it’s not fair to call his team boring when nine goals have been scored in the last two homes games. Given that seven of them were scored by Manchester City and Chelsea, that particular highlight was reminiscent of Weird Uncle Fiver arguing his case for a mortgage by pointing out how exciting his financial arrangements with a vicious loan shark were. Add to that the £40m he spent this summer in addition to signing the coveted Grzegorz Krychowiak on loan from PSG, and it’s clear that Pulis’s season high should have been more than a 1-1 draw at Leicester that led to Craig Shakespeare being hoofed out of the King Power.
“These decisions are never taken lightly but always in the interests of the club,” honked Baggies chairman John Williams as he shut and triple-bolted the door behind him. “We are in a results business and over the back end of last season and this season to date, ours have been very disappointing.” That’s some understatement. West Brom haven’t won a game since beating Accrington Stanley in the Rumbelows Cup in August, and most people think they’re made up. With the trees almost bare and Christmas on the horizon, that’s quite some time ago.
Still, one man backing Pulis for a comeback in the near future is his old drinking pal Pep Guardiola. “Whenever we played West Bromwich he was an amazing man, so gentle,” cooed Pep, to the distant sound of James Beattie guffawing. “We drank red wine and hopefully we can do it again in the future.” If they do, perhaps Pulis will tell Pep how, in some ways, the Spaniard is responsible for his demise. By introducing a brand of football into the Premier League that looks like it’s been beamed in from the year 2050, even if Pulis tried to be expansive it would look like he’d just devoured John Beck’s big book o’tactics.
The good news for Pulis is that for a very short time he may well be made to look mildly creative. With the club a point and a place above the relegation zone and facing Spurs at Wembley on Saturday, Gary Megson has been upgraded from assistant to caretaker. That’s Gary Megson who used to berate his players with shouts of “blousey, mummy-daddy” football if they dared string more than a couple of passes together and who was sacked by West Brom 13 years ago for failing his own style test. If history repeats itself, Pulis can look forward to a triumphant return at the Hawthorns in 2030. Fashion comes and goes. The sports cap will have its day again. Mark the date Baggies fans.
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QUOTE OF THE DAY
“Ringing 999 because West Ham United have lost again and you aren’t sure what to do is not acceptable. It is a complete waste of our time” – in the wake of a 2-0 defeat at Watford, Essex police offer some thoughts to some spectacularly unfunny people who’ve been phoning the emergency services to complain about the general state of West Ham.
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FIVER LETTERS
“Now, I’m not a fan of people who rage quit Football Manager, but if you took the Sunderland job days before the West Brom one became available, I think I’d give you a pass. Also, how far have Sunderland sunk for West Brom to be a better option?” – Jim Hearson.
“I’ve heard you speak several times about the footballers with the best individual attributes (best right foot, best forehead, etc). What about the best footballers with the best intangibles? Who was the most competitive, who had the best vision of the field, who anticipated where the ball was going best, who improved their team-mates the most, etc. Curious for your thoughts on the list of valuable intangibles and who would fill the bill for each” – David Markus.
“As a season-ticket holder at Toronto FC, I take offence to Noble Francis’s spurious accusations about MLS (Friday’s Fiver letters). I am happy to welcome him to join me for a match where he can enjoy watching the footballing excellence of Jozy Altidore. Oh. Point taken” – Scott Henderson.
“Noble Francis questioning the existence of MLS footballers whose names appear to have been made up by morphing the names of past players? Pot? Kettle? Black?” –Martyn Shapter.
“No idea what to call your next World Cup Fiver, but a great strapline suggestion: ‘Russian into your inboxes’” – Alex Metcalfe.
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 letter o’the day is … Martyn Shapter, who wins a copy of Football Manager 2018, thanks to the good people at Football Manager Towers. We’ve got plenty more to give away, so keep typing.
THE RECAP
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BITS AND BOBS
Chris Coleman says he’s not bitter after ditching life working with Gareth Bale for Lee Cattermole as Sunderland officially removed the veil they’ve been keeping over his head. “I’m not going to be negative about the Welsh FA. We had great times,” he sighed.
There will be one fewer person furiously denying being racist, homophobic or anti-Semitic in the Italian football federation after Grande Parmigiano Carlo Tavecchio ushered himself to the door marked Fanne Uno and lobbed himself through it.
Felines would do well to avoid the area around The Valley should Charlton lose in the near future, given manager Karl Robinson’s response to drawing 2-2 with MK Dons on Saturday. “If I had a cat it would be getting volleyed all over the house when I get home,” he parped. “But I haven’t got one.”
Wycombe Wanderers have banned two fans from the club after one was arrested for being drunk and in charge of a pyrotechnic device and another was heard using racist language while “in a highly intoxicated state”.
And Colchester United manager John McGreal has blamed the absence of a drum-playing supporter from the South Stand for his side’s dip in form. “I think we are missing the drum a bit – we need to get that out,” he paradiddled. “I don’t know where the drum has gone.”
STILL WANT MORE?
Nolito gets his chat on with Sid Lowe in surprisingly sweary fashion. Topics: the English weather, Liverpool and Pep Guardiola.
Fans of conversations about methods of poking people in the eye will be upset to learn our Talking Points blog is about the weekend’s Premier League football.
Come for the Mambo No5 gags, stay for the Paulo Futre, Bam Bam Zamorano and Gigi Buffon anecdotes, in Barry Glendenning’s ode to shirt numbers.
“Look, it’s not about me,” protested Garry Monk on his first return to Nasty Leeds. “We beg to differ,” replied the Nasty Leeds fans, in a slightly more colourful manner.
After another knack-layoff, what better way to remind West Ham fans of your quality than to run about that place like a man trying to start a fight with his own shadow, reckons Simon Burnton of Andy Carroll’s return.
Sid Lowe filed his weekly La Liga blog on the Madrid derby and how Barcelona profited from it so early he hadn’t even had his daily siesta by the time it was up.
Big Website subs had three different goes at getting a Kruse pun in the headline of Andy Brassell’s Bundesblog on Werder Bremen before they realised they’d done them all before and went for something else instead.
Our French duo on the rise of Amiens.
And Paolo Bandini reports on a weekend in Italy in which they started to get over their World Cup-knack.
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