TIM’S IN! (NEARLY)
Tim Sherwood. There he was, last season, on the touchline, managing Tottenham Hotspur, in his body warmer, hectically waving his non-insulated arms about. Put a paddle in each hand, and you’d have been able to pick out a message in semaphore. W-H-Y-D-O-A-L-L-Y-O-U-C-L-O-W-N-S-I-N-T-H-E-P-R-E-S-S-B-O-X-K-E-E-P-R-E-F-E-R-R-I-N-G-T-O-M-Y-B-O-D-Y-W-A-R-M-E-R-A-S-A-G-I-L-E-T-I-T-S-A-B-O-D-Y-W-A-R-M-E-R-I-F-Y-O-U-R-E-F-E-R-R-E-D-T-O-Y-O-U-R-B-O-D-Y-W-A-R-M-E-R-A-S-A-G-I-L-E-T-I-N-T-H-E-D-R-I-N-K-E-R-R-O-U-N-D-M-Y-W-A-Y-Y-O-U-D-G-E-T-Y-O-U-R-E-A-R-S-W-A-R-M-E-D-A-N-D-A-W-E-L-L-A-I-M-E-D-A-N-D-W-E-L-L-D-E-S-E-R-V-E-D-B-O-O-T-U-P-T-H-E-A-R-S-E.
But it was gilet this, gilet that, and gilet the other. The hack-yakking was so loud that you couldn’t hear Sherwood quietly pointing out how, during his brief reign, he’d won at Old Trafford, introduced Harry Kane and Nabil Bentaleb to the team, been the first man since 2008 to get a tune out of Emmanuel Adebayor, and achieved the highest winning percentage of any manager in Tottenham’s history. That’s a whopping six per cent! (We’re working from memory, but that sounds about right.) So there could be good times ahead for fans of Queens Park Rangers, because the talented but out-of-work Sherwood
tops a three-man shortlist for the vacant managerial position at Loftus Road. He tops it because the other two people on the list, Derby manager Steve McClaren and Real Madrid No2 Paul Clement, are thought to be almost certainly not interested. But he does top it.
McClaren spent a little time at Loftus Road as a coach under ‘Arry Redknapp, teaching the old boy some innovative training methods, and in return learning the basics of how to balance a clutch while mouthing platitudes into a microphone on live television for up to 17 fact-free minutes at a time. Meanwhile Clement, whose late father Dave nearly won the league at QPR as a defender in 1976, has built up quite the CV working as Carlo Ancelotti’s right-hand man at Chelsea, PSG and Real Madrid. Whether either man will be tempted to cash in a promotion bid or Big Cup chase for guaranteed relegation and the task of trying to entice Shaun Wright-Phillips out of a box filled with cotton wool in the storage room under the stairs – he’s not coming out, it’s warm in there – remains to be seen. Except it doesn’t really remain to be seen, does it. “I would say three interviews will be done,” insists owner Tony Fernandes, though let’s face it, in the Loftus Road home dressing room, there’s already a blue-collared armless garment hanging off a peg with Sherwood’s name on it.
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QUOTE OF THE DAY
MORE OF YOUR MUNDANE ENCOUNTERS WITH FAMOUS PEOPLE …
“In the late-80s/early-90s Neil Webb was doing lengths in Wilmslow public swimming pool during the half-term holiday. He was a pretty big deal at the time, having bust his achilles playing for England and costing Manchester United over £1m (a lot in pre-Premier League currency). We were a little amazed there wasn’t a pool at the United training ground he could have used. We did our best to avoid him when trying to bomb out of the gaze of the bored lifeguard. Later on we bumped into him in Sainsbury’s car park. He didn’t take his trolley back and just pushed it towards the trolley rank from his car. You have to pay £1 to use trolleys these days” – Dan Ashley.
“I once saw Hatem Ben Arfa shopping with his mum in Ponteland Waitrose. He was being a very dutiful son, fetching miscellaneous items of shopping from other aisles while she examined the vegetables. And at no time did he get lost in a mazy run around the ready meals or go over clutching his ankle after an encounter with a trolley. He will be sorely missed in the more high-toned supermarkets of the north east” – Paul Steeples.
“Back in the early-90s, I spotted the then-Oldham Athletic midfield dynamo Neil Redfearn (now Nasty Leeds gaffer) in front of me at the cash machine in Rochdale town centre. As he turned around, the best I could come up with was ‘I hope you’ve left some money in there for me Neil’, to which he replied: ‘Yes, of course’” – Carl Bamford.
“I’m a Southampton fan, who had just moved to Sydney, and was disembarking from one of those quaint green-and-yellow harbour ferries close to my new flat when I bumped into Gordon Strachan competing to get on the one-at-a-time gangplank to the wharf. With a nod of acknowledgement, which I hope conveyed both my disappointment at his recent resignation but also my gratitude for that run to the FA Cup final, I stood back to allow him and his wife off first” – Stuart Holden.
“When I was a boy, then-Aberdeen and Scotland defender Brian Irvine (no relation) used to use the same bank that my parents used. I met him pretty regularly there and got his autograph every time. I remember getting him to sign a scrap of the Argos catalogue once. (Un)interestingly enough, I now sit opposite his son’s brother-in-law at work. Star-crossed, I tell thee. How’s that for mundane?” – Iain Irvine.
“Granted the football connection is tangential but, as a wee slip of a lad around seven or eight years of age, I was at the local village fete (on the local football field) back in the day when it was possible to get a reasonably priced ex-Miss World to turn up and open said extravaganza. Anyway, after carving my name on a local’s fence-post with a shard of glass, I felt the need to go running off at a speed of knots and decided to launch myself over a wooden bench, just as ex-Miss World was returning to the pavilion for the free pork pie buffet and unwanted attention of local dignitaries. I tripped over the bench and bent my arm at an unnatural angle, and upon hearing of my plight, the lady at the centre of this story knelt down and placed my head in her lap until the arrival of the St John’s Ambulance. So although many have [Snip – Fiver Lawyers], I can say I have had my head in a Miss World’s lap” – Chris Steele.
“This is a slight shift in direction. At a bar in the ski hills of Colorado a few years back, I noticed Steve Sanders, who you all remember fondly was played by Ian Ziering on the original Beverly Hills 90210. Me: ‘Hello Ian, how was your day on the slopes?’; Steve Sanders: [ignores me, drags his large minder between us]. I have since gone from strength to strength working as a lawyer and Steve, according to 90210 Wiki, remains unhappily working at the Peach Pit. Isn’t it funny how things work out?” – Chris Blane [
ahem – Fiver Ed].
… AND THE REST OF THE FIVER LETTER
“I shouldn’t rise to it … I really shouldn’t but, clutch biting point in ‘Arry’s Range Rovers (yesterday’s Fiver)? Automatic gearbox … oh, never mind” – Tom Wilkinson.
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BITS AND BOBS
Up-and-coming Somerset taxi app Do One has just been called to Huish Park,
with a fare out of Yeovil for manager Gary Johnson. “Gary took the Glovers from the Conference to the Championship and is regarded as one of the best managers in the Football League,” cheered chairman John Fry on the one hand, before unclenching his other: “Unfortunately, ours is a business that depends on good results, and at this stage of the season the facts speak for themselves. Following our relegation from the Championship we are now bottom of League One.”
Dani Alves will be pretending to be a right-back somewhere else next season, after
Barcelona declined to offer the Brazilian a new contract. “They haven’t contacted us,” sniffed his Mr 15%. “I interpret that silence to mean they don’t want Dani Alves, so we will begin searching for a new club.”
Honest Lou, your friendly local bookie, has got a hot tip for you in the 5.15 at Wembley on 30 May. “People are maybe betting on us. I am not allowed to. I give you a tip,”
wink-wink-nudge-nudged the Manchester United boss after their 3-0 win over Cambridge. “I am not a casino man. But of course I think the highest-qualified teams have more possibilities to win than lower-qualified teams.”
Jorge Mendes reckons Jorge Mendes client José Mourinho
was the only manwho could’ve succeeded Lord Ferg at Manchester United.
Saido Berahino didn’t actually use the phrase “West Brom are just a stepping stone to something more lucrative” when discussing his future,
but he might as well have.
And referee Rajindraparsad Seechurn, the man who oversaw the hilariously calamitous Equatorial Guinea v Tunisia match that ended in a brawl and said official being chased down the tunnel by some irate Tunisians, has been banned for six months for his poor performance in the game. “The referees’ committee noted the poor performance of the referee,” solemnly noted the Confederation of African Football.
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DIFFERENT YEAR, SAME OLD STORY
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