Joe Devine looks back at the Premier League matchweek that was…
1. Brendan Rodgers lost grip on reality
Sadly for Liverpool fans, it seems that paragon Brendan Rodgers finally lost his grip on reality. A giddy mess at the end of last season, Rodgers’ “couldn’t believe his luck” attitude quickly evaporated as the team got off to a bad start in the 2014/15 season. With an ever increasing run of bad results, Rodgers’ traditional gritty realism has been replaced with a dejected, fancicful spool. Most recently Rogers began discussing folklore at a press conference then reportedly ran off into the woods and hasn’t been seen since. Fingers crossed he gets back in time for Sunday’s United game, as it looks like they’ll be needing all kinds of fairytale luck to get anything from that.
2. Man City opened new ‘Bond villain’ complex
Billed as a ‘training complex’, Manchester City owner Sheik Mansour this week opened the club’s new ‘Bond Villain’ like headquarters in Manchester. Built on a site previously housing a chemical plant, the complex includes a state of the art armoury, a handful of wild sharks and a whole office dedicated to skirting financial fair play rules. Alongside a number of useful facilities, the first team players also have access to a new simulator designed to aid their bid for better contracts. The bill for this centre came to £200m, but it’s already paying dividends. Manchester City Council haven’t been this happy John Lennon died.
3. Double Dutch never dies
On the run up to yesterday’s match-up between top four hopefuls Manchester United and Southampton, much of the press attention centred on the two Dutch managers. Having worked together in years gone by, news of a spat wet the pants of many a media man. Having fallen out “professionally” during their coaching years at Barcelona, much was made of their head-to-head last night, and boy did it prove to be worth the wait. The hotly fought contest between two stunning, stunning teams was probably the best game anyone has ever seen played, and the fighting didn’t stop there either. After the game, the Dutch boys kept the competition going by trying to be the one better at calling United shit. Both men claimed hard, but you can’t help but feel that Van Gaal came out on top this time. A dejected Koeman slouched off camera and reportedly ate a whole wheel of cheese before being sick all over Nathaniel Clyne.
4. Someone finally let Alan Hutton back in
In a match that can only be described as “a game of football”, right-back Alan Hutton bathed in the glory of victory, and all the more sweetly since (as it had been repeatedly pointed out) he had been “locked out” of the team for so long. Critics angrily blamed Paul Lambert for Hutton’s “locking out” whilst human rights lawyers around the world clamoured to suggest foul play. Lambert himself spoke after the game and pointed the finger at one of the clubs janitors; “There’s a lot of doors at the stadium, and Alan’s really quiet you see, so nobody noticed he was gone”. Whatever the reasons, the football world can rest a little easier now in the knowledge that Alan “The King” Hutton is safely warm inside.
5. Alan Pardew and Big Sam steal thunder from each other
The public’s favourite managers Big Sam and Little Alan have been on good form lately. On the scale of “how much they make Joe want to vomit in post-match interviews” both managers have scored sky high in recent weeks. But what good can it do the country when two English managers, such as these, succeed simulataneously? Since we all know happiness is finite and mustn’t be shared, it would seem that the two English heavyweights have become trapped in a game of ‘trading the thunder.’ As the self-aggrandising pair swap momentum in a perfect state of equilibrium, the English game suffers and it will continue to do so until one of them fails abruptly. Oh dear, if only one of them were actually responsible for what their team were doing maybe they could stop it before it was too late.
@IllustratedGame; @The_False_Nine
