TARDY TOFFEES
Big Sam has agreed to take charge of Everton, who should note that if you want the full Fiver treatment, featuring all our bangs and whistles, you need to get up early in the morning. Alan Pardew and West Brom got there first. In any case, there’s no point making a big deal over it, he’ll have resigned by Christmas if the last couple of years are anything to go by. “Sam Allardyce will be at Finch Farm this afternoon to finalise terms on becoming the new manager of Everton,” blathered a club suit.
PEPE, ALAN, TONY, ALAN
During the 70s and 80s, West Bromwich Albion employed a series of managers whose first names fairly tripped off the tongue. Listing out loud the monikers bestowed upon Mr Giles, Allen, Wile, Atkinson, Allen, Wylie, Giles (again), Stiles, Saunders and Atkinson (again) guaranteed the speaker a whole world of tongue-twisting fun: Johnny, Ronnie, John, Ron, Ronnie, Ron, Johnny, Nobby, Ron, Ron. Hoo hoo! In fact, if you rattled them off quickly enough, folk would often wonder whether you’d just broken into song. Specifically the a cappella breakdown towards the climax of Chas and Dave’s 1980 hit platter Rabbit. Hey kids, mock The Fiver if you must, but back in the day you had to make your own entertainment.
Despite the Baggies going on to employ two Brians and a Bryan, plus a Ray, Rob, Roberto and Roy, sequential sobriquet-based hi-jinks have been thin on the ground in recent years. Nothing’s ever quite come off: there’s always been a Gary, Denis or Osvaldo getting in the way, mauling the metre, ruining the riff. So hats off to the West Brom board for attempting to get some mouth music going again by naming Alan Pardew as the successor to Tony Pulis. It’s just a shame about the Alan Irvine interregnum between Pulis and Pepe Mel, or they’d already be well on the way to completing the first bar of a new P-ditty.
Whether this is the sole reason Pardew got the gig is open to conjecture and interpretation. Could there really be any other? It’s certainly the case that chairman John Williams also happens to think Pardew – West Brom’s second Alan in three years, and fourth full-time Alan in history, perhaps they can make something out of that, too – will end a winless run stretching back to the second week of the season. “Alan brings the experience of more than 300 Premier League games and the kind of dynamic leadership from which our club can benefit,” he said, with Pardew adding that he’s “thrilled with the opportunity … to work with what I consider to be a talented group of players.” So there is that. But whatever the reason, The Fiver wishes Pardew well. And fervently hopes he’ll one day be succeeded in appropriate fashion. By Claude Puel, perhaps. Or Phil Parkinson. Or Guardiola, Pep. Anyone like that would do.
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QUOTE OF THE DAY
“I think it’s fantastic for Conner as a player to play in the first team and credit should be given to the manager for taking the chance on youth, as it doesn’t always happen at other clubs. He’s tall, brave and dedicated to training and works very hard with the coaches. The physical side has to be managed, but the flip-side is that the game is not as physical as it maybe was 20 or 30 years ago, when goalkeepers got clattered. He’s also marshalled by experienced players who will look after him” – the head of Glenavon’s academy, Ryan Prentince, waxes lyrical about goalkeeper Conner Byrne, who made his first-team debut in the Mid-Ulster Cup win over Portadown aged 14, yes that’s F-O-U-R-T-E-E-N.
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FIVER LETTERS
“I’m surprised The Fiver didn’t point out how odd it was that Holloway told early-departing QPR fans ‘Our boys need you’ given how emphatically his players had just proven the opposite. Showing you don’t need someone and telling them to eff off is a classic manoeuvre. Has The Fiver never had a girlfriend? Oh” – Christopher Smith (and 1,056 others).
“Went to my kids’ school fair this weekend and one of the Silent Auction items was a copy of 2018 Football Manager which I bid a realistic £18 for (for ‘one of the kids’ Christmas presents’) and was pipped at the death by a slightly more desperate astute parent. Afterwards, my crestfallen demeanour gave real indication that it was I who wanted it. And all because you’re doling them out here. Pavlyuchenko’s Dog if you will” – Jeff Lloyd.
“I think we have Tony Crawford beat (Tuesday’s Fiver letters). The derby between Oldham and Rochdale is locally known as either El Flatcapico or, perhaps more accurately, El Crapico” – Alex Metcalfe.
“The Bongobéu (Fivers passim)?” – Chad Thomas.
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 … Jeff Lloyd, 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.
RECOMMENDED LOOKING
Get your retro artwork fix with this here gallery – World Cup posters: an illustrated history.
THE RECAP
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NEWS, BITS AND BOBS
Santi Cazorla’s injury nightmare shows no sign of ending. The Arsenal midfielder has had to abandon his hopes of a January return after undergoing surgery for a ninth time.
Crystal Palace fans involved in bother in and around Brighton’s Amex Stadium at Tuesday’s 0-0 draw face stadium bans and possible criminal action. ‘This kind of antisocial and criminal behaviour is completely unacceptable,’ said a Palace statement.
Torino plan to honour the victims of the Chapecoense plane crash during their Serie A fixture this coming weekend by wearing green shirts.
LGBT fans have been warned about holding hands in public and other displays of affection during next summer’s Ethics World Cup in Russia.
Mauricio Pochettino expressed his dismay at the return of the “lads, it’s Tottenham” incarnation of his side after they slipped to a third away defeat on the spin, at Leicester. “The collective performance was so poor,” he wailed.
“I prefer to focus on all the good things we did,” roared José Mourinho after his side hit FOUR whole goals to win at Watford, before epic-bantzing that the still-goal-deficient Romelu Lukaku ‘needs a big contract with a new boot company’.
And Nikita Parris struck twice as England’s women strengthened their World Cup qualifying chances with a 5-0 shellacking of Kazakhstan in Colchester.
STILL WANT MORE?
What is the point of Gianni Infantino, muses Marina Hyde in her latest column on the Fifa head suit’s ‘delusions of adequacy’ as the Ethics World Cup tombola and Russia 2018’s general problematic-ness hove into view.
One of the great World Cup tombola conundrums – why is this taking so long and who are all these celebrities? – is picked over by Richard Foster, who talks us through the strange history of this overwrought and overlong spectacle.
Arsenal and Huddersfield meet tonight at the Emirates, two clubs whose historic greatness was forged in no small part by Herbert Chapman, who went from being banned to English football’s most influential manager in the inter-war years. Simon Burnton unearths the history.
Taxpayers FC are crying out for the sort of intelligence David Moyes demonstrated when at Everton, if not elsewhere, roars Jacob Steinberg.
Long goalless streaks at international tournaments, derby kit clashes and individuals sponsoring shirts are among the pub-conversation essentials chewed over in this week’s The Knowledge.
Who’d have thought that a report commissioned by Lewisham council – into the contentious development scheme around Millwall’s ground – would exonerate Lewisham council? Barney Ronay is decidedly un-flabbergasted.
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