POSTCARDS FROM THE EDGE
“The journey starts with us all pulling together.” It’s a pleasing enough sentiment to hear from your team’s new manager, the problem for the FA was that it was Sam Allardyce who said it, and that by the time it was ready to hand out the 4,000 T-shirts it had printed with the slogan upon them for England’s game against Malta next Saturday, there wasn’t so much pulling together and more being torn apart. Of course, this could all have been dealt with very easily if the FA was the canny administrator we all wish it would be. Someone would have gone knocking on Gareth Southgate’s door, asked if he agreed that the journey would probably start with us all pulling together, promptly ordered 4,000 iron-on patches with his name on to cover up the departed Allardyce’s and spent the following couple of evenings in front of EastEnders with the ironing board out.
But no, this FA headed to the nearest skip and dumped the obsolete fashionwear altogether, the whole sorry episode having cost it £10,000. We know what you’re thinking: if the T-shirts in the FA’s shop sell for between £12 and £24.99 – which they do, by the way, we checked and everything – and we now know that they only actually spend £2.50 on them, the bungling bureaucrats must pocket between 79% and 90% of every freshly-shirted supporter’s coin. Perhaps the Allardyce quote they should have printed up was the one when he told thinly-disguised undercover reporters that the FA had “stupidly spent £870m on Wembley” and so “are all about making money aren’t they?”
Then again, perhaps the FA didn’t need the T-shirts any more because it’d already ordered a replacement batch featuring one of noted orator Southgate’s many inspirational one-liners. Perhaps the one from the 2002 World Cup when he said that “England needed Winston Churchill, but got Iain Duncan-Smith”, only with the punchline updated to be less Sven- and more Sam-focused by replacing “Iain Duncan-Smith” with “a cross between Boris Johnson and an intoxicated hippopotamus”?
Meanwhile the FA had also printed up some encouraging motivational postcards for Sam to sign and send to the players, and somehow contrived to pop them in the post on the very morning that it was reading sensationalist newspaper reports about its then-employee and deciding that he should probably be on his bike. The postcards were duly delivered on Thursday, to the presumed hilarity of postmen across Cheshire, headed with the legend: “The journey has begun.” The Fiver has several questions to ask about this. What exactly is going on with this journey? Has it begun, or will it start with us all pulling together? If it has already begun, do we actually need to pull together at all? Have we already pulled together? Has the journey now ended? Are we on a different journey now? Why is our head spinning? Have we had too many pints of lunchtime Blue Nun again? Can we go home now, or will that journey only start when we pull ourselves together? And who the hell sends postcards in this day and age anyway?
LIVE ON BIG WEBSITE
Join Simon Burnton from 8pm BST for hot MBM coverage of Everton 2-2 Crystal Palace.
QUOTE OF THE DAY
“The actor Jason Statham and Ronaldinho. Just those two” – Everton winger Gerard Deulofeu, unconstrained by time, space and mortality, reveals his answer to the question: “Which three people would you like to have round for dinner?”
RECOMMENDED VIEWING
The new Fifa game is so realistic they’ve got Wenger struggling with his coat and Jürgen Klopp losing his glasses. Or at least it would be if they’d paid attention to our suggestions.
FIVER LETTERS
“Much of the fallout over Sam Allardyce et al has been about greed – what’s a bit more coin to someone with a lot of coin already, etc. This ad starring Him shows that football stars will do literally anything for a bit of cash” – Craig Fawcett.
“Anyone else had the ‘Fat Sam’ song from Bugsy Malone in their head for the last couple of days? Looking at the lyrics here, they are a nice summary of Sam Allardyce’s time in charge, starting with: ‘Once you get here feel the good cheer’ (his appointment joy); Fat Sam(’s) ain’t humble’ (no he’s not); ‘each night astounds you’ (Tuesday night certainly did); ‘rumours are a-buzzin, stories by the dozen’ [Snip – Fiver Lawyers]. Although Sam may regret misinterpreting the ‘speakeasy’ part of the chorus. Da da da da da da …” – Alan Belton.
“Is it fair to now say that the folks of Guardian Soulmates finally saw the utter futility of advertising an online dating service ‘for interesting people’ in The Fiver?” – Ian Kip.
• 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 … Craig Fawcett, who wins our last copy of Nige Tassell’s excellent book, The Bottom Corner, courtesy of the kind people at Penguin.
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BITS AND BOBS
Sweeping new broom Gareth Southgate has slammed his fist down on the England manager’s desk and bawled “There’s gonna be some changes around here – BIG changes.” To whit, his first move has been to send shockwaves through the country by calling Wayne Rooney to say he’s still England captain.
Mike Phelan has been in charge of Hull since August, but the club don’t seem keen to admit it, and give him one of those contract things. “At one point last week I thought I had a deal done,” Phelan whimpered. “I mentioned that to you, that it was near enough done and over the line and now it has changed a little bit.”
Arsène Wenger, England manager? It’s definitely going to happen. Absolutely. 100%. For sure. Well, maybe. “My priority is to do well here,” he roared. “If I am free one day why not, but at the moment my focus is on my job.” Wenger also hopes that Francis Coquelin’s knee-oof isn’t as bad as first feared, but says he would be “short” for Arsenal’s game against Burnley. Although what his height has to do with it, we’re not sure.
Antonio Conte has declared he doesn’t “have a magic wand” with which to solve Chelsea’s defensive problems. And even if he did, we’d like to think he’d use it for something more constructive than sorting out Gary Cahill’s positioning.
Manchester City manager Pep Guardiola is, it’s fair to say, a fan of Mauricio Pochettino. “I think he’s one of the best managers in the world,” Guardiola if-you-like-him-so-much-why-don’t-you-just-marry-him’d. “He’s doing an amazing job in London at Spurs. The way they play I like a lot – they’re aggressive and have a lot of quality.”
And QPR boss Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink says he was “naive” to get himself involved in discussions with the Telegraph’s undercover team, but reckons he would “never entertain” profiting personally from a player transfer.
STILL WANT MORE?
In his interview with Stuart James, Leicester’s Ahmed Musa reveals he is: a) a very nice man; and b) that his idol is Nw@nkwo Kanu, so expect him to continue playing into his mid-50s.
You’ll want to know which things you should look out for this Premier League weekend, no doubt. In which case step right up – we’ve got 10 of ‘em.
This Golden Goal, on that Ritchie Humphreys chip against Leicester in 1996, would be lovely enough, but it only benefits from the presence of David Pleat.
Abject. Desperate. Hapless. Woeful. That’s not a description of Barney Ronay’s piece about Chris Sutton, king of football’s cinematic miserablists, but rather part of the great man’s favoured vocabulary.
Oh, and if it’s your thing … you can follow Big Website on Big Social FaceSpace. AND INSTACHAT, TOO!
