A CARVE-UP AT OLD TRAFFORD
People laugh when they think of The Fiver. Not because of the jokes. They never laugh at the jokes. As if anyone’s laughing with The Fiver; no, they’re laughing at the time it walked face-first into that glass door, leading to several weeks in hospital (the doctors were going to perform emergency facial surgery until they were told that it had always been that way); the time it turned up to work with no trousers on; the time it turned up to work with red trousers on; the time it accidentally superglued a phone to its ear. Happy memories, good old Fiver, always landing itself in a scrape! But here’s the thing. All those moments of misfortune were intentional. Every last one. It was all an act, a ruse, a hapless character The Fiver selflessly devised so that its colleagues would look better! It’s what makes it such a valued and well-paid member of Big Website, see, its unrivalled ability to take one for the team, the glue that holds the whole enterprise together.
Call it the John Carver Principle. See, there you have a man who loves Newcastle United so much that the only viable explanation for how badly his team performs is that whichever lucky guy replaces him looks like a combination of José Mourinho, Lord Ferg and Big Sam Allardyce by comparison. That takes guts. Sometimes you have to be unselfish, and so The Fiver knew what Keylor Navas was up to when the Real Madrid keeper gave away a calamitous equaliser in the 4-1 victory over Espanyol yesterday. Instead of doing the simple thing and clearing the ball, Navas dithered, dallied, pondered the meaning of life, wondered whether to stream the last ever episode of Mad Men or wait until it turns up on Spanish television, lost the ball and watched in horror as Christian Stuani scored.
Yeah, very good, Keylor, that must have been really embarrassing for you. But we all know that this was the JCP in action. Madrid want a new goalkeeper. Manchester United’s David de Gea fits the bill – but first Madrid have to show that they really need him. We already know that the current first-choice, Iker Casillas, is an accident waiting to happen but they needed his deputy to hammer it home and Navas did not disappoint. You can’t put Mr Butterfingers in goal! They’ll just have to go and sign De Gea.
United are sounding increasingly resigned to losing him too. “He is Spanish and his girlfriend is Spanish and he can go to another great club, so it is difficult for him to decide,” sighed Louis van Gaal after Sunday’s 1-1 draw with Arsenal. “David de Gea shall not leave us so easily because we are a great club and he wants to participate. He is still behind Casillas but now a Spanish club is coming.” Indeed they are and the problem for United is that De Gea has spent the entire season making his team-mates look better than they actually are. But if you think that The Fiver is comparing itself to De Gea, you’re very much mistaken. That’s not how it works. De Gea is also making himself look good with all those saves, the selfish git. You’ll not be seeing anything like that on these pages. The Fiver identifies more with Phil Jones and his amazing crawling headers.
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QUOTE OF THE DAY
“The Professional Football Referees’ Association welcomes and congratulates Ramon Blanco for proper arbitration today in the stadium Alejandro Villanueva. Very good job, Ramon!” – the Peruvian refs’ association commends one of their card-carrying members, Ramon Blanco, for his rapid-fire delivery of four red cards inside three minutes as Alianza Lima were reduced to seven men against Real Garcilaso. Blanco celebrated his quadruple by also sending off Alianza Lima boss Christian Cueva, who had staged a one-man pitch-based hot funk in protest.
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FIVER LETTERS
“After the fascinating and in no way repetitive forest of articles about $tevie Mbe in the weekend’s papers, I worry that the football scribes have shot their collective bolts too early and are going to be left without anything to write about for the final round of matches coming up. Wouldn’t it have been wiser not to throw all the anecdotes and interviews at $tevie’s final home performance and left something for filler (sorry, interesting articles) about his final away performance for Liverpool, and then his return on loan from LA in August, the contract wrangles enabling him to stay on, Lampard-like, even after the start of MLS, and then his final, final appearances at Anfield and some other ground once again? But no, that’s the short-sighted modern media for you. I suppose you could take a higher-order approach instead, dragging it out by writing articles about the articles about him, that might fill a few columns. And look, I’ve started you off, filling up a ‘Letters’ section on the theme already” – David Wall.
“With regards to the venerable Brad Friedal’s age of 93 (Friday’s Fiver letters), now we have cat lives, dog years and goalkeeper years. Surely we should introduce ‘Fiver’ minutes – 10 minutes of reading the nonsensical babble should be equivalent to 10 hours of normal time, as any real or imaginary information one is lucky enough to find in the rag could easily be absorbed in microseconds” – Stephen Hernández.
• 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: Rollover.
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BITS AND BOBS
In the most predictable plot twist since The Sixth Sense, Uefa is to ease FFP rules after rich men complained the regulations made it hard for them to waste their money. “The world is two-faced but we will say this openly: I think we’ll ease things,” volte-faced Michel Platini.
AVB has won the Russian title with Zenit, but still the haterz are hating. “Zenit play boring football,” harrumphed former coach Boris Chukhlov. “Villas-Boas says he is an admirer of José Mourinho. However, teams under the latter play a more aggressive type of football. Zenit on the other hand score a goal and then the defenders start hoofing the ball. It is boring and nauseating.”
A Malaysian supporters’ group has urged fans to rip up any tickets they have for upcoming lucrative friendlies against Liverpool and Spurs. “The matches are simply held to make FAM [Football Association of Malaysia], the organisers and their cronies rich, so don’t let FAM and the organisers profit from this sort of nonsense,” fumed Ultras Malaya. “What’s the point? A win for Malaysia is unlikely and you can’t be expecting the visitors to give their very best, like they play in the EPL on the TV, can you?”
Taking time out from issuing blasts of hot air from both ears, Lothar Matthäus has demanded the return of the boot he wore in the 1990 World Cup final, which Bayern Munich have since gold plated and lodged in their museum. “It is correct that Lothar has demanded to get back what he gave to Bayern’s museum,” sniffed his advisor Wim Vogel.
Four BBC journalists, who were invited by the Qatari government to see accommodation for low-paid migrant World Cup workers, were arrested and detained for two days for looking at said accommodation without the aid of the government’s minders. Or, as it is more generally known: doing journalism. “The problems that the BBC reporter and his crew experienced could have been avoided if they had chosen to join the other journalists on the press tour,” parped Qatar’s head of communication Saif al-Thani.
And knack-prone Burnley defender Steven Reid has successfully hung up his boots without straining anything. “Alongside the great memories there have also been the many lows of my well-documented injuries,” said the utility man who once played 45 minutes against Arsenal with leg-snap.
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STILL WANT MORE?
Drake started from the bottom but Barcelona started (and ended) at Atlético Madrid. Dr Sid has the low down on the Catalans’ title triumph.
Don’t be like Gary Neville. Like goals. Like these.
And while we are at it, don’t be like Claudio Lotito either, whose toys were ejected from his pram at an angle of of 45 degrees when he heard that Frosinone would join Carpi in Serie A next season.
Big Paper’s finest put down their holiday brochures long enough to come together and jot down some talking points from the weekend’s action.
Will Arsenal or Manchester United win the Premier League title next season? Amy Lawrence and Jamie Jackson dress up as Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson and investigate.
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