CHANGING ROOMS
What is the world coming to, reader? Has everyone lost their sense of humour? Their imagination? The Fiver is in despair. On Saturday, there should have been widespread acclaim for Gus “Gob Bluth” Poyet after he treated a packed Stadium of Light to a surprise magic show, the Uruguayan and his 11 lovely assistants making 46,000 people disappear with a spectacular vanishing trick that they had worked tirelessly on for the entire week. Slip! John O’Shea’s fallen over again. Sob! Patrick van Aanholt is having a little cry by the corner flag. Prang! Steven Fletcher and Jermain Defoe have just run into each other. Whoosh! Aston Villa have just doubled their away tally for the season. Whoa. Where have all the people gone, Gus? Gus? Why are you staring so intently into the middle distance, Gus?
Maybe he was worried and, if so, his fears were well-founded. The show was met with mostly negative reviews, from both the punters and the critics, and although a good magician never reveals the secrets behind his methods, for fear of being expelled from The Alliance of Magicians, that didn’t stop the venue’s manager, Ellis Short, from summoning Poyet to his office on Monday morning. Short was determined to find out why the trick had been met with such a poor reception, but the Great Gusinho wasn’t about to spill the beans. “An illusion, Ellis,” Poyet presumably replied. “A trick is something a wh0re does for money.”
And so it was with a heavy heart that Short told Poyet that Sunderland were going to move in a different direction and hire a more audience-friendly magician, maybe one who won’t spoil a performance by accidentally crushing a live dove in his suit jacket. “I would like to thank Gus for his endeavours during his time at the club, in particular last season’s ‘great escape’ and cup final appearance, which will live long in the memory of every Sunderland fan,” Short said, once again demonstrating his effortless aptitude for releasing appropriately worded statements about sacked employees. He’s really got it down to a tee.
If there’s one consolation for Poyet, then, it’s that being sacked can be seen as a term of endearment in a way in Sunderland – look how nice Short was! Yet more was on the way. “Sadly, we have not made the progress that any of us had hoped for this season and we find ourselves battling, once again, at the wrong end of the table,” Short continued, adding Poyet to a swaying, overly populated scrapheap that already contains Roy Keane, Steve Bruce, Martin O’Neill and Paolo Di Canio. “We have therefore made the difficult decision that a change is needed.” With Sunderland in dire need of someone to pull off a crowd-pleasing conjuring act, it seems that change, at least in the short-term, is going to herald the arrival of Felix Mag … D1ck Advocaat.
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“Before signing off I would like to recommend to those who come to Manchester a visit to the Whitworth Art Gallery. I went there a few days ago and I was really surprised by some of Cai Guo-Qiang’s works and his drawing technique using gunpowder. Overall, this is a very interesting and well-designed museum” – pretty much peak Blogging’s Juan Mata.
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BITS AND BOBS
Zlatan Ibrahimovic has apologised for his nasty words about referees in France, but that ain’t enough for some: Front National leader politician Marine Le Pen wants him booted out of the country. “Those who consider that France is a [ess] country can leave it,” she frothed.
Sometime footballer Salomon Kalou could be in bother with German authorities after taking a hammer and chisel to the Berlin Wall for a TV programme. The wall is a protected monument and anyone found doing stupid things to it faces a fine of up to €10,000. “When I saw the pictures, I almost fell off the couch,” Ashley Coled the East Side Gallery chairman, Kani Alavi.
Marca have had a fair old pop at the BBC – the organisation, not that abominable abbreviation of Real Madrid’s attacking triumvirate – over an article it published about Gareth Bale. The Spanish paper’s response, entitled “Hooligans en la BBC”, goes on about Jimmy Savile, mixing up the Italian and Bulgarian flags in the Six Nations and how it had “veered off the course that made it a byword for quality journalism throughout the 20th century”.
Ukraine’s president, Petro Poroshenko, wants his friends around the world to think about boycotting the 2018 World Cup in Russia. “As long as there are Russian troops in Ukraine I think a World Cup in that country is unthinkable,” he said.
And Ronny Deila is on a high following the Queen’s Celtic’s Scottish League Cup final triumph over Dundee United. “It’s the first trophy we can win so it’s good to get that start at a big club,” he roared, before presumably looking in Scott Brown’s direction: “The players should enjoy the moment but there’s not going to be any nightlife.”
STILL WANT MORE?
Tweets? Pah! Early-1900s sports hacks used carrier pigeons. Note: also features Oxo and crowd-surfing yoof.
Bhutan stand on the brink of unimaginable World Cup 2018 qualifying success. Nick Ames has the skinny.
Big Paper/Website’s football writers took time out from planning their group trip to a yoga retreat in Nelamangala to jot down 10 talking points from the weekend’s action.
Emmanuel Adebayor tells David Hytner that he has come through a “dark moment” in his career – no, not that time at Manchester City – and that he is ready to don a cape and become a hero for Spurs once again, if indeed he was ever a cape-clad hero in the first place.
A Rafa Benítez team is rotating too often and floundering at the business end of a season, reports Paolo Bandini. Hmm, sounds familiar.
Give us a break over the winter demands on English clubs, writes Sean Ingle.
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‘THIS IS THE HOUSE THAT FUNK BUILT …’
