BUSINESS-LIKE UP FRONT, A SHAMBLES AT THE BACK
With exciting midweek Big Cup action to come in the wake of a crazy weekend itinerary that featured an 8-0 shellacking, no shortage of comedy own goals, managerial rants about overweight Moroccans and the injustice of referees, the Fiver could do with a night off from the football. But rather than curling up on the sofa to watch our Aston Villa’s Goals From Their Last Four Matches DVD, our attention will turn to the Hawthorns, where West Brom’s match against Manchester United will need to be a real humdinger if it is to eclipse Gary Neville and Jamie Carragher’s analysis of Sunderland’s defensive shortcomings in this evening’s Sky Sports Monday Night Football entertainment stakes.
“There are no teams who are easy to beat – that is the big difference between England and other leagues,” said Manchester United manager Louis van Gaal, who the Fiver will charitably presume was talking prior to Saturday’s events in Southampton. A win tonight would catapult United to the dizzy heights of fourth in the league, but with just four points separating them from Newcastle in the relegation zone a heavy defeat would plunge them into the bottom half of the table, prompting premature talk of a crisis. With nobody seeming quite sure yet whether or not West Brom are any good, only time will tell if they have enough about them to inflict a defeat of any kind on Van Gaal’s United. In the buildup to the game, Alan Irvine has been nothing if not respectful.
“They are still Manchester United and have some great players,” he said, upon being asked if he fancied his side’s chances against a team that, like Chris Waddle’s famous mullet, looks pretty business-like up front but remains a bit of a shambles at the back. With matches against Chelsea and Manchester City ahoy, United fans will be hoping they can extract maximum points from what could prove a tricky Monday night fixture that has wreaked absolute havoc with midfielder Juan Mata’s blog-writing duties.
“The day before a game I like to sleep a lot so I don’t go to bed very late,” he wrote in One Hour Behind from the team coach as it made its way to the Black Country. “Today I’m writing this earlier than usual, because normally I work on the blog after dinner, when all the games are finished. But to me it’s very important to feel rested during the most important moment of the week.” Of course considering Mata’s nationality, his idea of an early night could be 4am, not too long after finishing the meal he sat down to eat at the traditional Spanish dinner time of two o’clock in the morning. Hopefully, he is well rested. The Fiver suspects any complaints about fatigue lodged with Mata’s decidedly volatile boss would not be met with sympathy similar to that of a certain England manager.
LIVE ON BIG WEBSITE TONIGHT
Follow West Brom 3-5 Manchester United with Simon Burnton’s minute-by-minute report.
QUOTE OF THE DAY
11am “I’m definitely not walking away, no chance. This is a big club, I love working for it and I am proud to be the manager. There have been a lot of tough days and I haven’t put up with that for over two years just to walk away. I’ve got to come out fighting for myself because there’s no one else doing that at the moment. I’m not after a kiss and a cuddle – maybe from the missus – and supporters are within their rights to boo but it’s easy to boo when you lose” – Lee Clark says he will not walk away from Birmingham City.
2.15pm “The search for a successor has already begun and the board will look to make an appointment in the very near future” – Birmingham City make it clear he can head home for that cuddle after all.
QUOTE OF THE DAY 2
“I can’t protect people who don’t want to run and train, and are about three stone overweight. Taarabt is not injured. He’s not fit. He’s not fit to play football unfortunately. He played in a reserve game the other day and I could have run about more than he did. I can’t pick him. What am I supposed to keep saying? Keep getting your £60,000, £70,000 a week and don’t train? What’s the game coming to?” – ‘Arry Redknapp reveals that Adel Taarabt is more than a few salads shy of making the QPR team anytime soon.
A BIGGER PLUG THAN THE ONE FROM THE BFG’S BATH
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FIVER LETTERS
“So Arsène Wenger admits that ‘We are a bit short with the injuries’ again, for the eighth consecutive year. Oh, Arsène, if only the French had a word for déjà vu …” – Noble Francis.
“Re. Friday’s Fiver, I read the first line, ‘Unlike the player himself, this Raheem Sterling story just runs and runs’, laughed a proper out loud laugh, thought ‘f*ck it, it’s not going to top that is it’, and closed the email. Was the brilliance of the opening line just a fluke (the proverbial monkey who managed to type the collected works of Shakespeare) or a cunning ploy to hide the fact that the rest of the fiver was filled out by somebody just holding down the zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz key before knocking off even earlier than usual and heading for the pub?” – Andrew Beveridge.
“A friend just sent me this – I don’t where it came from, but it made me laugh” – Jonathan Foulkes.
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: Noble Francis.
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BITS AND BOBS
Having plucked the ball out of his net just the eight times against Southampton, Sunderland goalkeeper Vito Mannone is now going to pluck some cash from his account to pay back fans’ travel costs. He’ll also try to pluck up the courage to ask his team-mates to do likewise.
Gareth Bale is likely to miss Real Madrid’s 7-3 victory over Liverpool and 1-0 defeat to Barcelona after struggling to recover from buttock muscle-knack. Yes, buttock muscle-knack.
José Mourinho was delighted to confirm that Diego Costa’s continuing hamstring-twang has ruled him out of Chelsea’s Big Cup tie with Maribor. “Some [national team managers] simply don’t care. This is not something we can resolve,” blabbed Mourinho.
Fun and games in South America dept: a referee in Peru halted a cup match eight minutes early after five Defensor Bolívar players went down writhing around with ‘knack’ at exactly the same time to try to get a match they were losing 4-1 to Defensor La Bocana abandoned.
But it wouldn’t happen in North American soccerball dept: Toronto keeper Joe Bendik was booked for picking up knacked Montreal Impact player Felipe and dumping him on the side of the pitch in the closing moments of his side’s 1-1 draw.
And referees’ chief Mike Riley has received a package from Garry Monk in which the Swans boss has stuffed as many complaints about Michael Oliver’s refereeing of Swansea’s defeat to Stoke as postage would allow. “Mike will no doubt be speaking to Gary this week,” peeped a Professional Game Match Officials Ltd suit.
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STILL WANT MORE?
Over in Bilbao, the Athletic players are all munching on salt and vinegar Hula-Hoops and sucking on Ribena as they try to cure their hangover. But the delirium tremens have nothing to do with drinking gallons of Txakoli and all to do with Big Cup, as Sid Lowe explains.
After hearing the news about Bilbao’s choice of post-hangover crisps, our football writers got together to discuss and debate and eventually vote on their favourite flavour to help cure the fog. (The answer is in tomorrow’s Fiver.) While they were doing all that, they also put together 10 talking points from the weekend’s action in the Premier League.
Jacob Steinberg doesn’t do crisps but he does do blogs on which strikers have been the best value for money so far this season.
Jürgen Klopp doesn’t do blogs on which strikers have been the best value for money so far this season but he does do defeats. Raphael Honigstein explains why.
Paolo Bandini doesn’t do anything for love but he does do blogs on Internazionale and Napoli. Here is what he has to say about all that jazz.
And Real Madrid’s Alvaro Arbeloa waxed lyrical about Anfield when he sat down for some red-hot chat with Sid Lowe.
Oh, and if it’s your thing, you can follow Big Website on Big Social FaceSpace.
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