ITALIAN BISHOPS AND SPANISH OPENINGS?
The world is ridiculous. This week The Fiver has marvelled at the frothy-mouthed excitement that has been generated among nerdy folk with even more time on their hands than us by watching two men with brains the size of swollen marrows thinking really, really hard in public. Like, about as hard as it is possible to think. So hard, in fact, that if you hooked the content of their skulls up to a generator you could power Basingstoke for the weekend – and maybe even Bognor Regis. And guess what? This nerdy trend isn’t going to just blow over like the way trucker caps with stupid slogans on them did in 2005. No, because Pep Guardiola and Antonio Conte are getting their very own version of Carlsen v Karjakin on this weekend, having spent much of the past few days spent hunched over tables glaring intensely at little pieces on a board while trying to second-guess which of the 1,347,567 possible ways Raheem Sterling might move on Saturday. Among other things.
The venue for this grand think-off will be the Etihad Stadium, where Manchester City host a Chelsea team that have won seven league games on the bounce and conceded just one goal since Conte’s switch to a 3-4-3 formation. A tactical tweak that has prompted opposing teams to react in the utterly powerless and bemused fashion of a medieval peasant being presented with an iPhone and being asked to call up a SnapFace video of Honey G. But surely Pep has a plan to counter Conte’s blue wall and wing-backs, doesn’t he? Well, we’re sure he has. Not that we have a clue what it might be. Our random number generator tells us we may see a 2-3-2-3, which is a football formation these days and not a 1950s village store telephone number.
One thing we can expect to see is brooding bishop Yaya Touré sat on the bench sticking pins into an immaculately dressed, shaven-headed Catalan doll. Because word has it that Ilkay Gündogan is set to return to Manchester City’s midfield, despite the Ivorian having been influential in the wins against Crystal Palace and Burnley, as well as not saying anything stupid for a week or two. As for Chelsea, with some desperately unpleasant headlines in the news before this match, they will be glad to focus on the football, where they have the chance to stretch their lead at the top of the table to four points over City. Not that Thibaut Courtois is getting too giddy about the club’s impressive form. “It is hard to say yet whether Chelsea can win the league,” he buzz-killed. “When I started with Genk we had a team of quality and we knew we could be champions. It was the same at Atlético [Madrid], we knew we could win trophies. It is the same with Chelsea now but there are a lot of teams who can say that.” Well, probably just the four Thibaut. But we understand you have a duty to say modest banalities in the lead-up to a big game.
Not that it will dampen the excitement among millions of nerds looking to jump ship from chess to football. No, we can expect a global audience for this one, including Garry Kasparov, Boris Spassky and co. We can also expect a touchline explosion of cerebral flexing too. Not that we’ll be doing any ruminating in public, mind. The last time we did that we got pinched in Skegness.
QUOTE OF THE DAY
“Maybe he needs to come to a game at the weekend and experience a game at the stadium and see the excitement and energy of Premier League football. I’m sure he would enjoy it. He’s speaking from maybe a place where he doesn’t understand the Premier League and hasn’t experienced many games [here]” – Ailsa from Home and Away has got a bigger funk on than normal after Ottmar Hitzfeld hooted earlier this week that Xherdan Shaqiri should not stay in “no man’s land” at Stoke.
FIVER LETTERS
“Imagine my joy at seeing one of my missives printed in yesterday’s Fiver letters (intriguing start), and furthermore, it being a quiet day with only two letters meaning a 50-50 chance of winning ‘prizeless letter o’the day’ (interesting build-up), only to have my hopes dashed as there was no prize and it being a roll-over (let-down by the ending). I guess The Fiver also writes films for Hollywood” – Craig Hills.
“A truly remarkable week for Harry Kane. First he signs a new £32m, five-and-a-half-year deal at Spurs, then this” – Andrew Wade.
“I read with complete disinterest the story of Harry Kane’s new contract (yesterday’s Fiver). Personally, I find ‘new contract’ signings slightly more interesting than ‘retirement from international football’ stories but I genuinely couldn’t care less about either. I’m intrigued by which stories fill other Fiver readers with the same sort of ennui?” – Ben Graham.
“The moment I saw the phrase ‘semi-humorous’ in yesterday’s Fiver, I started mentally penning an appropriate message – ‘ideas above your station’, etc. I promptly forgot about this, but then later on the ‘Yaya Blinks’ headline of a couple of weeks ago popped into my head, and I had to smile. Which, I think, shows two things: a) The Fiver is indeed deserving of ‘semi-humorous’ epithet; and b) I’m disturbed that bits of it are lurking in my subconscious, ready to emerge at any point. I hope no offence will be taken if I admit that neither of these revelations have made me feel better about anything” – Matt Huggins.
“Re: yesterday’s Fiver declaring: ‘We would certainly like to reassure The Man that, if he harbours a Tottenhamly desire regarding the salary of his star semi-humorous email-scribe …’ Is The Spin not content with what it earns already?” – Dan Makeham.
• 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 … Andrew Wade.
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Join AC Jimbo Max Rushden and co for the latest thrilling instalment of Football Weekly Extra.
NEWS, BITS AND BOBS
The former Chelsea player Gary Johnson says he was paid £50,000 by the Premier League club to not go public with allegations that he was sexually abused by the club’s former chief scout Eddie Heath. “All their fans deserve to know the truth about what went on,” he said. “I know they asked me to sign a gagging order and how many others are there out there. They may have paid others for their silence. I hope and pray no clubs are allowed to cover this up – no one should escape justice.”
After the high court ruled that Tony Pulis must pay former club Palace £3.77m for deceiving a Premier League managers’ arbitration tribunal, the West Brom boss is having to choose his words carefully. “Obviously I’ve got to bite my tongue a little bit at the moment,” he mumbled. “I’m really disappointed with the outcome and strenuously deny what has been said. But it’s been done.”
Al Pardiola, on a stunning run of form since this interview, admits that Crystal Palace are IN CRISIS. “I’m a realist,” he purred. “This is a great football club and one they have great plans for, but it’s in crisis at the moment. I understand the situation with the Premier League. I have got to make sure the next result is a positive one for us.”
After watching Jan Vertonghen exhaust the ink Spurs are using on their new contracts, Mauricio Pochettino is thinking about the one that got away. No, not Bongani Khumalo, but Gylfi Sigurdsson. “Every time we meet him and see him, he shows his quality – not only as a player but like a man,” sighed Pochettino. “It’s a shame but sometimes in football you never know what will happen in the future.”
Leicester City have got £15m with Genk midfielder Wilfred Ndidi’s name on it.
And Arsenal will be without the knacked Santi Cazorla for at least three months. “For me it’s very bad news,” sniffed Arsène Wenger. “You always know the date of the surgery but never the date where the player will play again.”
STILL WANT MORE?
Premier League: 10 [ten – Fiver Vidiprinter Ed] things to look out for this weekend.
Last season Brackley escaped relegation from National League North on the final day of season, and now if they beat Blackpool they will be in the FA Cup third round. Paul Doyle has more, while we’ve also a photo essay from the first-round Stockport v Woking tie. That’s right, shameless hit-chasing!
It’s clásico time on Saturday so here’s Sid Lowe on why victory would be a “fist on the desk” for Real Madrid and Zinedine Zidane.
West Ham’s Pedro Obiang has an Italian wife, a Spanish passport, parents who hail from Equatorial Guinea, is doing a degree in political science and makes for a fascinating interview with Jacob Steinberg.
Barry Glendenning casts his eye over the Premier League runners and riders and assesses who is best equipped for The Crucial Christmas Period™.
Leicester City couldn’t win Big Cup and go down, could they? Could they? Paul Doyle takes a look at their diametrically opposed form in Europe and at home.
Are José Mourinho’s Manchester United about to click into gear in the Premier League, after saving their best performances for the cup competitions? Just what exactly does “secret location” mean? Amy Lawrence has the answers.
Gareth Southgate has hit all the right notes so far, reports Dominic Fifield … and not a pint of wine in sight.
The Coppa Italia features in this week’s excellent Joy of Six which concerns flawed sporting competitions and the XFL.
Oh, and if it’s your thing … you can follow Big Website on Big Social FaceSpace. AND INSTACHAT, TOO!
