JOE DE VIVRE
When, to protest at the way their club is run by chairman Karl Oyston, Blackpool supporters bombarded the Bloomfield Road directors’ box with eggs before last week’s draw with Reading, The Fiver could only despair at their mindlessness. Why oh why hadn’t they used garlic? Or holy water? At least some of the team’s wingers probably shanked a couple of crosses towards the posh seats but that, evidently, has not proved enough to drive away the vampire that fans fear is in the club’s midst.
In fairness, the notion that Oyston is sucking the lifeblood from Blackpool is one that the man himself bats away. He points out that the club is in fact in rude health, having posted a profit of £9m last month, making it a model of sustainability that other clubs would do well to emulate. Oyston, whose father Owen bought the club in 1987, likes to portray himself as a crusader for financial prudence, and you can certainly imagine him in a cape. The payments that the club has made in recent years to companies owned by various Oystons have been all about pursuing tax efficiency on behalf of the club, not bleeding it dry, and you should be careful how you express interpretations to the contrary, lest you be branded a “massive retard”.
It is unfortunate that Blackpool’s players have all season long been producing performances so impoverished that The Fiver has often considered donating them a clue. In fairness, the fangs of relegation always looked like being sunk into the side ever since it was hastily cobbled together on the eve of the campaign after their pre-season tour to Spain was scrapped because they did not have enough players to participate in a proper round of drinks, let alone a football match. Sure enough, the aforementioned draw with Reading rammed a wooden stake into their feeble attempt to avoid the drop. On the plus side, Oyston could point with pride to the resourcefulness that some of his players showed even for that match, it having emerged today that goalkeeper Joe Lewis improvised impressively when confronted with a lack of workwear at the club.
“Before starting the game I noticed Joe Lewis’s shirt,” wrote Blackpool’s Spanish midfielder Andrea Orlandi in his weekly column for the website am14. “It was signed and I thought he was going to do a raffle after the game [a common practice in England]. It turns out that no, he had not even noticed or knew anything about it and when he tried to get another one he was told there were none left.” It is not clear who told Lewis that, but it wasn’t the club’s kit man, because the club doesn’t have a kit man any more. “It was funny because he tried to put a plaster over the writing to cover it and it looked even more funny,” continued Orlandi. “There are details that should be improved as a club. A small thing? Probably, but still not a normal thing for a Championship club,” concluded Orlandi, who did not reveal whether the writing on the jersey was by Bram Stoker.
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QUOTE OF THE DAY
“P0rn? No, it’s not p0rn. It’s a piece of art. It’s just a piece of art. But you can see it like this. It’s beautiful. You should see it. Unfortunately, p0rn is not so aesthetic and so beautiful. But love is $ex also, you know?” – Eric Cantona takes time out from crowning Javier Pastore as the world’s best player and Catalonia as champions of the world in 2010 to denounce claims that his new film, You and the Night, is of the bongo variety.
RECOMMENDED VIEWING
We packed Julien Laurens off to Paris to discuss all things French football with Darren Tullett and Henri Ghnassia.
FIVER LETTERS
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“I realise you are suffering from a paucity of literary contributions but to publish a photograph of a decapitated Carlos Valderrama lying in the middle of the road, is both tasteless and represents lazy journalism” – Nick Kershaw.
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• 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: Nick Kershaw.
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BITS AND BOBS
Idiots on social media have harangued Manchester City and England’s Toni Duggan to the extent whereby she felt she needed to apologise for posting a photograph with Louis van Gaal.
Liverpool boss Brendan Rodgers isn’t best pleased that Raheem Sterling got up close and personal with a balloon apparently packed with nitrous oxide. “Young players will make mistakes but as long as they learn from them, that is important,” he parped.
Arsène Wenger’s eyebrows have rocketed skywards after overseeing Arsenal’s recent eight-match winning streak. “No manager in the world can predict a run like this. It’s down to the quality and the attitude of the team, the quality of the spirit,” he purred.
Lionel Messi reckons that being a dad has helped him re-discover his form on the pitch. “Before, if I missed a chance or I had a bad game, I would not speak to anyone for three of four days. Now I see my son and everything else passes me by,” he mushed.
Until very recently the worst team in the world, Bhutan’s dream of reaching the 2018 is over. Probably.
Bayern have lost Arjen Robben, Franck Ribéry, Bastian Schweinsteiger and David Alaba among others for their Big Cup quarter-final first leg against Porto on Wednesday, and they don’t give a damn about it.
And GB sprinter Richard Kilty is so fed up at seeing hacks claim that Arsenal’s Héctor Bellerín is faster than Usain Bolt over 40m that he’s willing to put £30,000 where his mouth is and race the Frenchman, as well as Theo Walcott for good measure. “Media claiming @HectorBellerin can run 4.42 over 40m. Absolutely no way. Are these journalists complete morons!” he roared.
STILL WANT MORE?
What happened to the Premier League’s 10 youngest players, asks Nick Ames, before going on to answer his own question.
Which conveniently leads on to the youngest of those players, Matthew Briggs, being interviewed to within an inch of his life by – you guessed it – Nick Ames.
An exclusive interview with the Juventus manager Massimiliano Allegri? Go on then.
Fernando Torres will be on the bench for Atlético Madrid’s Big Cup quarter-final first-leg tie, and according to Sid Lowe, he doesn’t mind one little bit. Sid has also taken to the internet to answer your questions on tonight’s Madrid derby, which you can read in this here webchat.
Meet the San Antonio Scorpions: the NASL club that give their profits to charity.
Want (home) tickets to Chelsea v Manchester United? Then enter this here competition.
Oh, and if it’s your thing … you can follow Big Website on Big Social FaceSpace.
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