Scott Murray's Blog, page 212

The Fiver | England's World Cup dreamweaver has spoken

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MR ROY: THE NEW ALF RAMSEY? YES. AND NO

A couple of years before the Jules Rimet Trophy was contested in Blighty, the England national team manager made an announcement to the press corps. "Gentlemen," Alf Ramsey carefully intoned in that shy, quiet, hesitant voice, "most certainly we will win the World Cup." Now, it would be ludicrous to claim that Ramsey's famous promise was Churchillian in its scope and delivery, but in fairness to a private man for whom public speaking was a chore, he was at least making the effort, showcasing some very real ambition, making a pledge to aim for the stars if not even higher, and ensuring the country carried with it a little hope, wonder and innocent excitement going into the 1966 World Cup. Mr Roy, by comparison, reckons the England of 2014 might, er, erm, be worth a tenner at the bookies. "I'd have a chance of losing it on Brazil," he reasons, "so why not put it on the team I want to win?" Hold on to your hats, kids! The dreamweaver has spoken!

Where Hodgson does show some similarity to Ramsey is in his unerring ability to radge off half of Latin America in one fell swoop before even getting there. Ramsey managed this in 1966 by describing Antonio Rattín and the Argentinian team who so entertained the Wembley crowd in the World Cup quarter finals as "animals", a quip which was taken as the egregious insult it most certainly was. He then compounded the problem by criticising Mexican fans, journalists and organisers alike during a "friendly" at the Azteca in 1969, at one point chasing several hacks away from England's dressing room door while waving his fist in the 'Emotionally Engaged' style. As a result, England were given pelters during the entirety of their stay at the 1970 World Cup, to the point that after their quarter-final defeat to West Germany, the happy city of León resembled a large Bavarian bierkeller on the first day in November.

Fast forward 44 years, and Hodgson is telling anyone who'll listen to him deliver one of his trademark 978-minute soliloquies that "Manaus is the place ideally to avoid". In fairness to the man, he's only talking about the temperature and humidity of the city, which is not easy to run about in at full pelt – "You have a better chance if you get one of the venues where the climate is kinder" – but on the other hand Hodgson is sold to the public as a cut above the average manager in terms of intelligence, and avoiding this sort of stuff is Public Relations 101. You know what's coming.

"We would also prefer that England doesn't come," retorted Arthur Virgilio, the piqued mayor o' Manaus. "We hope to get a better team and a coach who is more sensible and polite. He's one of the few people in the world who is not curious about the Amazon, who doesn't want to know about Manaus. To make excuses shows lack of enthusiasm and self-confidence." The very thought! Unlike Mr Roy, Virgilio has read his copy of Public Relations for People Who Have To Do Stuff Like Public Relations (And Dummies) from cover to cover, and was quick to add that "fortunately the English people are different than Mr Hodgson. It's polite to be able to value what is beautiful. And nothing is more beautiful than Amazonia, Amazonas and Manaus."

So if England's travails at Mexico '70 are to be any guide, that's Hodgson's team getting no sleep at their team hotel, with irritated locals hanging around outside, operating their car horns, radios and mouths until the early hours. Bring on Argentina, Italy, USA and Ghana in this afternoon's draw, then! England will be hot, out of breath, and deprived of kip, so it makes little difference now.

• Live on Big Website now: join Scott Murray for the World Cup 2014 finals draw

QUOTE OF THE DAY

"There's no such thing as coming back and being a hero, that's the biggest mistake you can make. I should kick myself sometimes for always wanting to come back too early, but that's how I am" – No doubt Vincent Kompany is also too much of a perfectionist, tries to do too much, and is too self-deprecating.

FIVER LETTERS – STILL WITH PRIZES

"Re. yesterday's Quote of the Day: I think John Hemmingham is dead wrong. It would be a great idea if everyone brought a drum in to the stadium. That way, maybe the infernal band would be drowned out. (Hey, it's The Great Escape! Again! Who saw that coming?) After all, if we learned anything at all from the last World Cup, it's that football is vastly improved by the crowd all joining in constantly on a tuneless instrument" – Matt Dony.

"Might I suggest that any of the England band members wishing to smuggle instruments into the upcoming World Cup get in touch with the eight-year-old 'flare mules' that are currently doing the rounds across the UK. If nothing else it is the closest that the band will ever get to creating fireworks this summer" – Sam Illingworth.

"The Fiver's walk-through of my childhood yesterday (Gripper Stebson, Marty McFly, Rambo …) reminded me that there were always one or two kids in my class whose parents wouldn't allow them to watch Grange Hill due to its corrupting influence, while at the other end of the scale there would be a child in the same class whose parents' hands-off approach to child-raising allowed the scamp to repeatedly view a grainy pirate copy of Sylvester Stallone's finest. I'd hazard a guess that Chris Smalling wasn't allowed to watch Grange Hill in his youth and Señor Suárez was quietly devouring Rambo at an early age, while Little Nicky Bendtner would have told anyone who'd listen that he'd stayed up all night watching video nasties despite being tucked up in bed at 8pm with a warm cup of milk" – Mike Hewetson.

"Re. the reporting of Luis Aragonés's retirement announcement as: '"Luis is past, it's over, I do not coach any more," he third-personned'. Given that he changes tack halfway through, should this not be an example of the curmudgeonly old coach one-and-a-half personning? And in pointing this out on behalf of the usual shower, is this an example of me One-Thousand-And-Fifty-Eight-personning?" – Derek McGee.

• 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: Matt Dony, who wins a copy of Football Manager 2014, courtesy of the very kind people at Football Manager Towers. And, lucky reader, we've got a new prize to give away all next week: signed copies of Sid Lowe's book, Fear and Loathing in La Liga.

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BITS AND BOBS

Despite losing to Everton in midweek, David Moyes retained his bullish, buccaneering, swashbuckling, devil-may-care attitude before United's weekend fixture. "It could be a bad time to face Newcastle," he said. "They are coming to Old Trafford and we will make it as hard and as difficult for them as possible." Newcastle have not won at Old Trafford in 41-and-a-half years.

Dinky Everton manager Roberto Martínez seems to have recovered from a traumatic summer of derision and insult prompted by another club's attempt to sign his players. "We are going to use the window in January to try to help the team," he asserted.

Nike Football's Footwear Design Director, Denis Dekovic, is a proud man - and rightly so, after commissioning the world's first sentient shoe. "It has all the latest technology and performance insights," he boasted. The Fiver wonders if he'll be quite as chuffed with himself when it nicks his job.

Mark Warburton, the Brentford sporting director – yes, Brentford have a sporting director – spoke to the press today, on Wigan's desire to snaffle their manager, Uwe Rosler. "Uwe will decide if he wants to speak to them and we will be in constant dialogue with him," he sniffed, suggesting he is either set for a monotonous few days or he doesn't quite know what "constant" means.

And Vincent Tan is considering listing Cardiff City on Singapore's small-cap Catalist exchange. Because he really loves the club and wants the best for it, obviously.

RECOMMENDED VIEWING

World Cup 2014 video profiles of all 32 national teams travelling to Brazil.

STILL WANT MORE?

Hoodoos, the Fun Police and Dimitar Berbatov shifting his moody @rse further than a few yards are just three of the 10 things our hacks reckon you should look out for this weekend.

Barney Ronay takes a jug, fills it with cold water and pours it all over the hopes of European teams winning the World Cup.

The Group of Death, a physics-defying football and a weird logo? The clichés to look out for in the lead-up to the perfect World Cup.

Bosnia and Herzegovina players will remain the pride of the nation even if they get spanked in Brazil, writes Sasa Ibrulj.

Louise Taylor loads her gun and takes aim at Paul Ince: "Hysterical, shrill, over-emotional, unable to cope, unsuited to the job, hormonally imbalanced." And relax.

Oh, and if it's your thing, you can follow Big Website on Big Social FaceSpace.

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DIDI DADDYWorld Cup 2014World CupRoy HodgsonEnglandScott Murray
theguardian.com © 2013 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

The Joy of Six: smoking sports stars

From equality in tennis to the pipe smokers of the year, the relationship between sport and snout

1. Tennis

The Marlboro Man was one of the 20th century's most enduring icons of old-school machismo: the granite jaw, the muscles of steel, the iron lung. But it's often forgotten that the wheezing old bugger did a little bit for the feminist movement too. In 1968, Phillip Morris - that's the real name of the Marlboro Man, and a rather disappointing one at that, big-leggy cowboys simply shouldn't be called Pip - launched a brand of cigarettes called Virginia Slims. Marketed at young women, the accompanying advertising campaign - "You've come a long way, baby / To get where you've got to today / You've got your own cigarette now, baby / You've come a long, long way" - didn't quite manage to distil all the philosophies and ideologies driving Emmeline Pankhurst, Simone de Beauvoir and Betty Friedan's century-long struggle against oppression into one catchy 30-second jingle. It's also questionable whether equal-opportunity health hazards are desirable in anything other than strict theoretical terms. But Pip and his pals weren't just cynical bandwagon-hitching opportunists: Virginia Slims would also play a small but significant part in a genuine advance.

1968 was also the year in which tennis went open, and prize money for professionals went through the roof. If you were a man. The women were ludicrously under-valued, and when Jack Kramer - a former Wimbledon and US Open champion turned promoter - refused to pony up more than 15% of the prize purse he was paying the men in a 1970 tournament, Billie Jean King led a walkout. The United States Lawn Tennis Association, she reasoned, could go whistle. King, along with eight other players - Rosie Casals, Nancy Richey, Peaches Bartkowicz, Kristy Pigeon, Valerie Ziegenfuss, Julie Heldman, Kerry Reid and Judy Dalton - formed a rebel tour. With the help of magazine publisher Gladys Heldman, who prized a sponsorship deal from Pip Morris, the Virginia Slims Circuit was born.

The circuit - the first professional women's tour - was a glorious success. Within three years of its launch, it led to the formation of the Women's Tennis Association, the main overseers of the game today. And three months after the ink had dried on that deal, the 1973 US Open became the first major event to offer women and men equal prize money. The Australian Open followed suit in 2001, before the French Open and Wimbledon finally did the decent thing in 2007.

Old-fashioned attitudes at Wimbledon clearly took a while to shift, then. They may or may not have become entrenched in 1972, when Casals opted to wear a mauve and white dress for her semi-final against King that was patterned with a series of VS motifs. She lost the match 2-6, 4-6, but was still in the running for the mixed doubles with Ilie Nastase, and so a letter arrived on her doorstep the morning after from referee Captain Mike Gibson, ordering her to desist with the sly advertising.

Given that Virginia Slims were involved in tennis in the first place only because the likes of Wimbledon were refusing to pay the women anything close to equal money, it could be argued that the Captain was being a cheeky bastard. Happily, Casals was having none of his sorry nonsense. She dismissed the Captain's morning log as "the biggest laugh I have had for a long time", and came onto No1 court for her mixed-doubles appointment sporting another VS-inspired outfit. This one, in red, yellow and green, pictured a woman, 18 inches high, holding a tennis racquet in one hand and a cigarette holder in the other. A slogan read: "You've come a long way, baby."

The Captain - either interested in crisp, clear, traditional costume design or hell-bent on reinforcing the patriarchy, you make the call - ordered Casals to return to the dressing room and slip into something a little more comfortable for him. The player protested that she had already worn the dress twice at the championships. "I said it must have been on a back court and had not been drawn to my attention," sniffed the Captain later, "because had it been, I would have ordered her to change it." He clearly wasn't in the habit of looking very hard, because on the other side of the net Betty Stove of Holland was wearing a similar design, but with Casals in the firing line, she slipped under the Captain's radar.

Casals changed costume, but a little victory in the bigger war had been won: her VS dress, its unsubtle advertising, and the point it was rather more subtly making, made the front of several national newspapers for two days running. ("A star's choice of dress when she goes onto court is a personal matter," noted its designer, the former player-turned-fashion guru, Teddy Tinling. "It is entirely her own business.") Casals also went on to win the tournament with Nastase, and if her profile in the Observer back in 1968 was anything to go by, celebrated well that evening: "Sometimes I drink a rum and coke, or a Bloody Mary. Oh, and Creme de Menthe, that's my favourite drink. And I like a beer after dinner, when I have the one cigarette of the day."

2. Golf

Before we go any further, and so our consciences are clear, it'd be remiss of us not to hammer home the obvious: the devil weed can be extremely injurious to your health. Here's Tony Lazzeri, one of the star names in the legendary New York Yankees team from the 1920s that also boasted Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig, shilling tabs from the impossibly glamorous pages of a magazine. "After a tough day at the ball park one needs mental as well as physical relaxation. I get mine through smoking Lucky Strike cigarettes. I smoke one of them; two of them; three of them; and I like 'em. They never bother my throat." Sure enough, a heart attack did for Lazzeri at the tragically young age of 42.

Then there's the winner of the 1946 US Open golf tournament, Lloyd Mangrum. One of the greatest players of the immediate post-war era, Mangrum recorded another 25 top-ten finishes in the majors. Usually seen with a cigarette hanging from his lip mid-swing, Mangrum was said to chain his way through several packs a day. He was once bollocked by a spectator, who shouted from the gallery that "athletes shouldn't smoke". His pat response? "I'm no athlete, lady, I'm a golfer." Mangrum died of a heart attack - his 12th(!) - aged only 59.

So those are the dangers writ large. But in the interests of balance, here's the morally problematic flipside: some people really do look darn wonderful when they've got a fag on. Here's Mangrum, the Rhett Butler of the fairways, making his way round Augusta National at his own pace during the late 1940s.

The fags also helped this smoothie smooth out his game. Not only was his swing one of the most effortless on tour, each gentle draw helping to shape each gentle draw, he was also a super-sharp cherooter on the greens: he put down his nerveless putting stroke to his habit of taking the edge off beforehand with a long, deep, rich, calming drag. He won the 1946 US Open by rattling in a very missable snaky seven-footer which, like the smoke, didn't even touch the sides.

Mangrum, of course, picked up his habit in an era before the true dangers of smoking were scientifically proven, and everyone was merely in thundering denial regarding the root cause of that persistent hack. But plenty of golfers have nevertheless since used cigarettes or cigars as both relaxant and emotional crutch. "There are some players that have sports psychologists," explained Angel Cabrera upon winning the 2007 US Open. "I smoke." Add Mangrum and the carefree Argentinian to the following list, illustrative rather than definitive, of golfers who have been spotted sucking them down on the links at one time or another: Lee Trevino, Tony Jacklin, Brian Barnes, John Daly, Darren Clarke, Miguel Angel Jimenez, Ian Woosnam, Jumbo Ozaki, Thomas Bjorn, Sam Torrance, Fuzzy Zoeller, Ben Hogan, Walter Hagan, Bobby Jones, Arnold Palmer, Jack Nicklaus.

Total majors between that little lot: 66. And if we throw in the majors won by a certain modern superstar rumoured to enjoy the odd equilibrium-enhancing snout: 80. You do the math.

3. The Olympic Games

Having established that tobacco can be good for you - well, OK, but y'know - here's a stash of the stuff getting one of the 20th century's most legendary sports stars into a whole heap of trouble. Ricardo Zamora is remembered as one of the greatest players to ever have played for Spain. He kept goal for both Barcelona and Real Madrid. He won a silver medal with Spain at the 1920 Olympics. He starred in Spain's famous 4-3 win over England in 1929, the first time the English national team had been defeated by a team from the continent. The trophy which is given to the keeper of the season in La Liga is named in his honour.

And yet despite it all, he's arguably best remembered as something of a bon viveur. As Sid Lowe reports in Fear and Loathing in La Liga - if you haven't done so already, get on it in time for Christmas - Zamora was "a friend of the tango singer Carlos Gardel, consumer of three packets of cigarettes a day and countless cognacs" and "a famous night bird during the 1920s when Barcelona became the most fashionable city in Spain".

Zamora lived life to the full, though he would take it too far in the wake of Spain's aforementioned success at the 1920 Olympics. Spain were knocked out by the hosts and eventual champions Belgium in the quarter finals, but the tournament's bizarre structure (no point asking, life's too short) gave them a second chance at the silver and bronze medals. Spain made it through to the final of the consolation round - Zamora had been sent off against Italy en route, having planted one on an Italian opponent - and they beat the Netherlands to the silver medal. (In a pleasing symmetry, Spain's crowning goal in a 3-1 win was scored by Rafael Moreno, aka Pichichi, whose name, like the man guarding the Spanish net, would later adorn a memorial trophy handed out for La Liga excellence in his position.

Zamora, along with the rest of the team, celebrated their silver medal with extreme prejudice. The rest of the team, however, did not decide to purchase several cases of contraband Havana cigars to take back home with them. Zamora stashed the lot under his train seat, and would probably have got away with it, had he not decided to light up a fat one in the carriage and hang out of the window puffing it in a fashion popularised years later by Charles Kennedy. The fact that he was sucking it down right by the border, when a customs officer was sniffing around, further complicated matters, but did at least illustrate his devil-may-care attitude. Zamora was fined 500 pesetas and thrown in the jug for the night, the customs officer making off with his smokes. Ah well, at least he still had something to show for the trip, with his medal.

4. Cricket

Tennis is not the only sport to have benefitted from an injection of tobacco. Formula One has been fuelled by smoke, overtly or otherwise, for most of its existence. Rugby league's big day out was known for years as the Silk Cut Challenge Cup. The World Snooker Championship will always be known to a certain generation as the Embassy, and hasn't been the same since legislation spirited away its yellow-stained glamour. While darts is, well, darts: Embassy gave each competitor in the very first world championship, held in Nottingham in 1978, a carton of 200 fags, or 20 slim panatela cigars. Per day.

Cricketers too have benefitted from the largesse of the tobacco conglomerates: Benson & Hedges would also regularly dole out free cartons of 200 to participants ahead of matches in their eponymous Cup. As we've seen with the golfers, the benefits to cricketers of such gifts are more psychological than cardiovascular. John Crawley was reckoned to have gone through two packets while waiting to go into bat against the West Indies in 1998. Meanwhile poor Tony Greig, reaping what he'd sown during Grovelgate, as it wasn't known back in 1976, spent lunch chain-smoking after the Windies directed a hurricane of misery towards his noggin - with a little help from his team-mates who were lighting the fags, a job beyond their captain, who was reportedly shaking so much that the simple operation of a box of Swan Vestas was way beyond him.

5. The World Cup

Smoking has not been a barrier to footballing excellence. You'd be able to pick a decent enough XI out of this lot: Dino Zoff, Johan Cruyff, Garrincha, Gérson, Socrates, Zinedine Zidane, Nat Lofthouse, Dixie Dean, Jack and Bobby Charlton, Ossie Ardiles, Paul Gascoigne, Fabien Barthez, Billy Bremner, Jimmy Greaves, Carlo Ancelotti, Gordon Banks, Alfredo Di Stefano and, eh, Jack Wilshere. Cesar Luis Menotti and Enzo Bearzot can fight it out for the right to puff away pensively in the dugout.

Mind you, Gérson's habit could easily have cost football's most famous team their signature World Cup. Every winner, no matter how talented, needs a little bit of luck, and the 1970 Brazil side was fortunate that the World Cup that year was played in Mexico, where the heat and altitude slowed the game right down. That allowed Gérson - the brain behind the team who was on 40 a day and had been comprehensively outpaced against Hungary in England in 1966 - to take things at his own speed, something he would have been unable to do were the tournament being played in cooler climes, at sea level, and against players whose lungs were able to function at their usual, full capacity.

In the final, Gérson kept quiet for the first 50 minutes or so. "He discovered before half-time that he could move up and put Italy in trouble," a highly impressed Bill Shankly told the Observer's Hugh McIlvanney, "but he knew if he did too much of it they would see what was happening and try to find a solution at the interval. So he waited until the second half. Then the Italians had no chance to discuss the problem. They were sunk." Gerson went on to score what was effectively the winner, then dictated terms for the rest of the match. A rope-a-dope masterclass, albeit one for which Shankly had perhaps given Gérson a soupçon too much credit, given that it had been also designed with the purpose of eking out their spluttering midfielder's contribution for as long as possible. It'd be nice to think that Gérson, upon coming up with the fiendish plan beforehand, had scrawled it on the back of a cigarette packet.

6. Bowls (and the Indoor League)

The most distinguished carriage for tobacco product, the pipe has lent gravitas to many a sports star. There's Fred Trueman on Indoor League, oozing effortless authority and poise despite being half-cut on Sid Waddell's Yorkshire Television expense account. Jimmy Greaves was often spotted during his mid-60s pomp with a stem clamped between his teeth. Meanwhile Ian Botham has shilled Hamlet cigars and skinned up once or twice in his day, but it's his 1988 Pipe Smoker of the Year award of which he'll surely be most proud.

However, in the world of sport, and arguably further afield, there is only one true pipe smoker. David Bryant won six world bowls titles - three outdoors, three indoors - between 1966 and 1988, plus five golds in the Commonwealth Games between 1962 and 1978. More often than not, he did it with a pipe sticking out of his ice-cool coupon. Mind you, it was rarely lit during actual competition, and never on the indoor greens, where the carpet would have been ruined by the constant dropping of ash. Bryant was nothing if not a considerate man. (After winning his 1978 Commonwealth title, Frank Keating congratulated the 46-year-old Bryant by "jokingly suggesting his victory was another nice encouragement to the old and ageing ... He remained polite, of course, but he tapped out his pipe on his heel sharply enough to convey that he was momentarily miffed.")

Like Botham, Greaves (1985) and Trueman (1974, the height of Indoor League's popularity), Bryant also picked up the Pipe Smoker of the Year award, in 1986. He's in decent company: other winners of the prize include Harold Wilson, Eric Morecambe, Henry Cooper, and JB Priestley. Also Dave Lee Travis, but let's not cloud the issue here.

TennisGolfCricketScott Murray
theguardian.com © 2013 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

Premier League: 10 things to look out for this weekend

Arsenal enter a crucial week, Chris Hughton cannot afford to lose and Dimitar Berbatov has a point to prove

1) Will United make themselves a little luck?

"These are gloomy, ill-humoured days at Old Trafford," began the Guardian's report of Newcastle United's last win at Manchester United. That copy was filed in February 1972, and it might make a fine cut-and-paste introduction for December 2013's dispatch should Newcastle put an end to their dismal run at United's famous old stadium. The home side are not having much luck at the moment – the woodwork has been regularly getting in the way – but as their fans rightly pointed out during Alex Ferguson's 20-year Premier League pomp when opposition supporters whined about United's surfeit of late goals, penalty decisions and assorted other rubs of the green, you make your own. United simply haven't been piling on the pressure in their trademark style, and therefore the well of good fortune is running dry. Neither have they been snapping up the chances when they do come along. David Moyes needs to ensure his team ups the tempo, especially during the latter stages of matches when United are sitting back, their limited ambition making them uncharacteristically vulnerable to the sucker punch. Meanwhile with Wayne Rooney suspended and Robin van Persie likely to still be out injured, the misfiring Danny Welbeck needs to step up to the plate. Because if United fail again, there's another snatch of that 1972 match report which may come in handy this weekend: "We've had it in the league," sighs a supporter, "we'll have to concentrate on the cup." SM

• United may go back in for Athletic Bilbao's Herrera
• Moyes says United have no room for error in title push
• Jamie Jackson: five things Moyes needs to address

2) Will the Toon end a 41-year hoodoo?

As for Newcastle? They were well beaten at Swansea on Wednesday night, by a team who had only won once in their last 11 matches at home and didn't even play a striker either. But they will point to being on the wrong end of a crucial penalty decision, and in any case they'd won their previous four games. Still one of the form teams, with recent victories over title hopefuls Chelsea and Tottenham under their belt, they're in the hunt for a European place, have winnable games against Southampton, Crystal Palace and Stoke coming up, and therefore go to Old Trafford feeling little in the way of pressure. They will also be buoyed by last season's match, when they came agonisingly close to ending their four-decade drought on Boxing Day, going ahead three times before falling in the last minute to a Javier Hernández sickener. If Everton can break a 21-year hoodoo, anything's possible, though much may depend on the fitness or otherwise of Hatem Ben Arfa. SM

• Listen to the latest Football Weekly Extra podcast

3) Will the Hammers end a 49-year hoodoo?

West Ham United's record at Anfield makes Newcastle's Old Trafford run look like a mere blip: they haven't won there since 1964, a wait which stretches nine months short of the half-century. The Hammers, without any warning klaxons going off in the media, have slowly been slipping down the table. Their only league win in the last two months came against Fulham, a result which embarrassed the Cottagers into getting shot of their manager. They're hovering over the relegation places having recently lost dismally at Norwich and Crystal Palace. Only Chris Hughton is stopping Sam Allardyce from being the bookies' favourite in the sack race. Something's got to give at some point, you'd have thought – yes, folks, they really should be too good to go down – though whether this weekend is turnabout time is a moot point. West Ham do have that stunning 3-0 win at Spurs under their belt, but Liverpool have been rolling over the division's weaker teams at home, and Luis Suárez is ... well, Luis Suárez is. The visitors' slim hope of victory rests on a creaking Liverpool central defence which will be permed from the underperforming Agger-Skrtel-Touré-Sakho quartet, though Allardyce's whatever-whatever-zero formation is unlikely to apply too much pressure. West Ham do have one of the best defences in the league, mind, so a second 0-0 in a row at Anfield might be their likeliest hope of taking something away, especially if Liverpool suffer another Hull-style misfire in midfield. SM

• Louise Taylor: Suaréz most potent striker in England

• Suárez vows to stay and fire Liverpool into Champions League

4) Arsenal and Everton look to put down markers

Seeing we're hammering the subject of dismal runs, Everton have only won once at Arsenal since they recorded a victory at the tail end of their last championship season, 1986-87. That victory came when Andrei Kanchelskis scored late on at Highbury in 1996. It's been the best part of two decades since the blue half of Merseyside travelled back from the red half of north London in celebratory mood. But after Old Trafford, now would appear as good a time as any to break that particular sequence. Arsenal beat Hull at a canter in midweek, easing up with one eye on a hectic schedule which sees them take on Everton, Napoli and then Manchester City in quick succession. With progress to the Champions League knockout phase not quite yet guaranteed, Arsenal may be forgiven for taking their eye off the ball for the odd minute or two this weekend, which might give Roberto Martínez's side a glimmer of hope. This weekend may tell us a little about Everton's chances of European football next season; this week may tell us a lot about Arsenal's chances of silverware this time round. SM

• Bendtner determined to take Arsenal chances after goal

5) Pozuelo: player!

Swansea remain peerless when it comes to bargain-hunting in Spain. Michu may be missing but in his absence Alejandro Pozuelo has emerged as a beautiful creator. On his fourth successive Premier League start the 22-year-old exuded class and cunning against Newcastle, finding and exploiting space with exquisite precision and complementing the more barnstorming approach of Jonjo Shelvey. Michael Laudrup has compared Pozuelo to Philippe Coutinho and evidence so far suggests that is fair – but the £500,000 that Swansea paid Real Betis for him in the summer looks like brazen theft. PD

• Premier League table: check out the latest standings

6) Leniency. Lots of leniency

Following Wes Brown's ridiculously harsh dismissal in a match against Stoke two weeks ago, Premier League referees have seemed curiously reluctant to brandish their red cards. In the 24 top flight matches to have been played since match official Kevin Friend was criticised and ridiculed in the immediate aftermath of 10-man Sunderland's defeat at the Britannia Stadium, not a single player has been sent off – a remarkable statistic, surely?

It's a state of affairs which may be entirely coincidental, although the evidence of the midweek round of fixtures suggests referees might well - either subconsciously or acting under instruction - be thinking twice before issuing the ultimate sanction.

And it's not as if player behaviour has suddenly improved markedly. Even the most blinkered supporter would have to concede that Stoke's Charlie Adam, Manchester United's Marouane Fellaini, Swansea's Jonjo Shelvey and West Ham's Ravel Morrison were all lucky to stay on the pitch in their respective matches this week. If nothing else, these are worrying times for players hoping to pick up a Christmas suspension so they can kick back and enjoy the festive holidays like us normal folk. BG

• Ten of the worst red card decisions ever

7) The Tottenham Hotspur Fun Police

With Tottenham Hotspur having cravenly acceded to the wishes of their local council's Fun Police by resisting the efforts of some of their younger, more dedicated fans to enjoy themselves at football matches, it will be interesting to see how, or indeed if, they monitor any members of the 1882 Movement who have purchased seats in the away end at Sunderland's Stadium of Light this weekend. "We simply want to make noise and get behind the team, which hopefully creates a more enjoyable match-day experience," announces The 1882 website, in a statement clearly not written with the increasingly joyless and largely fun-free modern Premier League match-day experience in mind. This is the kind of youthful exuberance that needs to be stamped out sooner rather than later. Down with this sort of thing. Careful now. BG

• Tottenham combatting fan group trying to improve atmosphere

8) Dimitar Berbatov's next performance

These are troubling times for Fulham's striker, who apparently wishes to leave Craven Cottage in January. He is quite obviously far too louche to engage in anything so vulgar as a relegation scrap when he could be contemplatively smoking a Gauloises and pondering the philosophical and metaphysical ideas raised in On The Island Of The Blissful, written by his compatriot Pencho Slaveykov. Yes, that much me know. But if the 32-year-old Bulgarian is to secure as lucrative a final contract as he might like, he really needs to put himself in the shop window by significantly adding to his tally of one Premier League goal this season before the transfer window opens in January. But then, doing so will of course involve the kind of effort for which the name Dimitar Berbatov is anything but a byword. To try, or not to try? That is the question. One can't help but feel the sheer mental torment of such a philosophical connundrum would kill lesser men than Dimi, who will inevitably rise above it. BG

• Dimitar Berbatov wants to leave Fulham in January

9) Is the end finally nigh for Chris Hughton?

In the wake of his team's latest shellacking at the feet of Luis Suárez, what is otherwise a bit of a shoulder-shrug of a fixture as far as neutrals are concerned has probably taken on added significance for Chris Hughton. The poor sod is so nice that the many harbingers constantly (and thus far incorrectly) predicting that he'll be the next Premier League manager to get the sack invariably preface their prophecies of doom by pointing out what a top bloke he is, and they're not wrong. But with fan dissatisfaction growing at Carrow Road, it's difficult to escape the notion that his team have been doing litte more than the bare minimum to keep him in gainful employment up to this point. The bookies have reinstalled him as the new favourite in the Premier League sack race and if we could find footage of him cackling fiendishly while drowning a big bag of Labrador puppies, we wouldn't feel so bad about predicting that defeat in this match will finally mark the end of his stint at Carrow Road. BG

10) Stoke are going to lose and there is nothing Mark Hughes can do about it

Two Premier League teams and nary a striker between them. But at least Chelsea have a plethora of incisive midfield connivers, unlike Stoke, for whom Marko Arnautovic and Oussama Assaidi have yet to show that they are really better than the existing, barely-adequate attacking options. Asmir Begovic will need to have a blinder or Stoke are going to be battered. Petr Cech should be given the day off. PD

Premier LeagueBarry GlendenningScott MurrayPaul Doyle
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Premier League clockwatch – as it happened | Scott Murray

Minute-by-minute report: Arsenal, Chelsea, City, Liverpool and Everton all won, with the Toffees, winners at Old Trafford, registering the standout result of an evening which saw 32 goals in nine matches. Scott Murray was watching

Scott Murray

Newcastle United v West Bromwich Albion – as it happened | Scott Murray

Minute-by-minute report: Chris Brunt scored a fine goal for West Brom, but Moussa Sissoko's was even better, as the pair rescued a previously dismal match, and Newcastle rose to fifth in the table. Scott Murray was watching

Scott Murray

The Fiver | No country for thin-skinned men | Scott Murray

Click here to have the Fiver sent to your inbox every weekday at 5pm, or if your usual copy has stopped arriving

ARCTIC CHEEKY MONKEY

Much as it goes against the grain and sticks in the craw, sometimes we should give The Man a bit more credit. The Fiver has, after all, really tested his patience over the last 15 laugh-free years. We've lost count of the times we've filed complete rubbish (though admittedly 15 multiplied by 52 multiplied by 5, minus a few for bank holidays, would send us into the right ballpark). We're often to be found at our desk rocking and crying, with not a single word typed up, six empty cans of Purple Tin crunched up at our feet in the 1970s style. Occasionally we run off up Big Road and hide under a bush, where we watch the world and deadlines fly by, while sitting in a puddle of our own making, shivering. Fiver's a-cold, poor Fiver's a-cold. O do de, do de, do de.

The Man could have sent us packing on hundreds, nay thousands, of occasions. But he's never once swung the axe. Beneath it all, he's a good man. Sure, he's threatened us with our P45 once or twice, and regularly beats us with a 12x2 plank of timber with a rusty nail sticking out the end of it, but we've never been escorted from the premises and the nail's not so bad when he pulls it out quickly and oh, we do love him so. Our Stockholm syndrome is irrelevant, though. Point being, the Fiver might be an abject disgrace, yet here we still are. André Villas-Boas, on the other hand, has taken his Tottenham Hotspur side to within four points of second place in a packed Premier League, got them into the next phase of Euro Vase, and is one game away from a Milk Cup semi-final, and that match is against a team whose manager never plays a striker these days, just to be awkward. And he's on the brink of the sack!

Villas-Boas's big mistake, of course, other than taking over from media darling 'Arry Redknapp, is having presided over what we assume, if all the entitled noise is anything to go by, is Tottenham's first defeat in league football since the 1960-61 season. Spurs got over that 6-0 drubbing at Manchester City last night at Tromso, and now they're looking forward to the big game at the weekend against Manchester United. "I am very happy for the players to have bounced back," said Villas-Boas after the game. "Obviously the opponent we have on Sunday is the biggest that we can have. But to prepare for that game it was important to get back to winning ways and we did it in a fashion where we looked solid and created lots of chances. I am extremely happy with the performance and result."

Villas-Boas had been less enamoured with Tromso supporter Reidar Stenersen Jr, mind you. The 29-year-old hairdresser had been standing right behind the Spurs dugout during the first half of last night's match gleefully informing Villas-Boas via the medium of sing-song that he was going to get "sacked in the morning". Having got, as intended, right on the end of AVB's presumably quite erect n!pples – this was north of the Arctic circle, after all – the Spurs boss requested that the braying fan was situated somewhere out of earshot. "He was being a bit petulant," moaned Stenersen Jr, who turned down the opportunity of a comfy seat elsewhere in the stadium, preferring to spend the second half sulking in the pub before running off to a newspaper to tell tales.

Stenersen Jr also declined to confirm whether he'd be OK with the Fiver turning up at his salon to loudly complain that frosted highlights and mullets are out of fashion, there's pomade and brilliantine smeared all over the floor, and his small chat about where sir is going on holiday next year is bogus. Though in fairness he did have a point when suggesting that Villas-Boas should probably be a little less thin-skinned, noting that "this is the same thing that can be sung by 60,000 at the Emirates Stadium or other grounds". Because that song, rightly or wrongly, will certainly get another airing come 6pm on Sunday should a suddenly in-form United turn Spurs over, which to be fair at White Hart Lane they usually do. He might have returned from the Arctic, but poor AVB's still a-cold! O do de, do de, do de, oh dear.

QUOTE OF THE DAY 1

"They need a good team spirit, a good work ethic and good defensive tactics from the manager. If they stick to that they will stay up. It will be hard work but it will pay off" – Bromley spiritual healer Stephany Cohen, who claims she used to be Joan of Arc, reveals that aliens have told her that Crystal Palace will stay up.

QUOTE OF THE DAY 2

"Everyone had an initiation that you had to go through on the youth team, that was one of the most uncomfortable ones! The fact that I had to look at Clayton Blackmore's calendar and do certain things, while looking at Clayton Blackmore …" – perhaps the most surprising news about the $exual initiation David Beckham was forced to undergo at Manchester United was the fact that someone had actually made a Clayton Blackmore calendar.

FIVER LETTERS – STILL WITH PRIZES

"So Steve Howell managed to win yesterday's letter o'the day by repeating one of the jokes from the previous day's Fiver, did he [don't hate the player – Fiver Ed]? Well, two can play at that game, Steve. On second thoughts, this is harder than it looks" – Andrew Nelson (and others).

"I do appreciate that, since my letter earlier in the week, there has been a noticeable increase in the number of clear and very well signposted punchlines incorporated into the Fiver. Good to see you doing your bit for the economy. However, following Thursday's 'acorny' punchline, please could I retract my previous letter, and ask that all future punchlines go back to being so well hidden that I can go back to wondering whether there was a punchline at all. Sod the economy" – Daniel Rice.

• 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: Andrew Nelson, who wins a copy of Football Manager 2014, courtesy of the very kind people at Football Manager Towers. We've got more copies to give away this week, so if you haven't been lucky thus far, keep trying.

JOIN GUARDIAN SOULMATES

We keep trying to point out the utter futility of advertising an online dating service "for interesting people" in the Fiver to the naive folk who run Guardian Soulmates, but they still aren't having any of it. So here you go – sign up here to view profiles of the kind of erudite, sociable and friendly romantics who would never dream of going out with you.

BITS AND BOBS

Two men have been before the beak charged with plotting to defraud bookmakers after an investigation into alleged match-fixing.

Three men have been charged with perverting the course of justice after allegations of computer hacking at the FA.

In another blow to West Ham's Premier League campaign, Andy Carroll is set to return to training.

Stoke City bouncer Robert Huth will be out for several weeks with knee-knack. "Unfortunately Robert Huth has got a problem with his knee," said manager Mark Hughes, echoing exactly the feelings opposition strikers have about the defender's knee too.

Arsène Wenger has revealed plans to do away with the entire Arsenal team and replace them with Aaron Ramsey clones. "If you let him, he takes the ball at the back, passes to himself in midfield and passes to himself up front because he wants the ball so much," Wenger purred.

STILL WANT MORE?

Stuart James headed to a school with more consonants in its name than pupils in its classes to hear what a goody-two-shoes Aaron Ramsey was when he broke through at Cardiff City.

Tommy Gemmell toe-punting West Germany's Helmut Haller up the fundament in a 1969 World Cup qualifier is just one of the incidents covered in this week's Joy of Six on footballers seeing the red mist.

If José Mourinho's nickname was Alice, then we could have made reference to a classic Terrorvision song when asking him what's the matter with Juan Mata in our blog on what to look out for in the Premier League this weekend. But it's not, so we won't.

And assorted Guardian writers get appropriately hot under the collar for Ryan Giggs as he turns 40.

While Andy Hunter does much the same, but gets his own article in which to do it.

One hundred and 30 years ago yesterday Dublin University AFC hosted Dublin AFC in the first ever match between established clubs in, you've guessed it, Dublin. To mark this solemn occasion Dublin University will read the Fiver. And look forward to Saturday's FAI Intermediate Cup clash against St Mochtas, a club whose only claim to fame is that one member of Team Fiver has been sent off against them three times. Can you guess who? (Answer in anagram form somewhere on this page).

Oh, and if it's your thing, you can follow Big Website on Big Social FaceSpace.

SIGN UP TO THE FIVER

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APE LOUDLYScott Murray
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The Joy of Six: red mist in football | Scott Murray and Rob Smyth

From Frank Rijkaard's spat with Rudi Völler to Mark Hughes going for the ball, footballers losing the plot in the comedy style

1) Frank Rijkaard v Rudi Völler, June 1990

Long before Cheryl, Posh and Scott Carson's girlfriend tore it up in Baden-Baden, Wags were impacting upon the World Cup. Frank Arnesen's sending off, which contributed to Denmark's sad exit from Mexico 86 , was the consequence of serious concern for his wife's health (this vicious tackle, after a breathtaking piece of skill, didn't put him in the best of moods either, but we digress). And four years later Frank Rijkaard's infamous contretemps with Rudi Völler was apparently sparked because of the breakdown of his marriage just before the tournament.

There have been 159 red cards in the World Cup, but it is hard to believe that anyone has misplaced the plot to this extent. Let's recap. Rijkaard scythed down Völler and sniggered like a naughty schoolboy when he was booked. He then defiled Völler's mullet with spittle – very few people noticed at the time, although the BBC's Tony Gubba did – as he ran past. From the resulting free-kick, after Völler pulled out of a tackle with Hans van Breukelen and fell over, Rikjaard lumbered over and shaped to lift Völler by the ear. At this stage Rijkaard was still only on a yellow card, and might have got away with the whole thing, but the context of a World Cup knockout game against Holland's fiercest rivals (in a World Cup qualifier a year earlier, a banner had jauntily compared Lothar Matthäus to Adolf Hitler) was secondary to the urgent need to flob at Völler a second time.

As Völler was stumbling to his feet, about to receive the most unjust punishment in the history of mankind, Rijkaard furiously horked every last particle of phlegm from the deepest recesses of his sinuses, attempting to set an unofficial world record for mucus thickness. It's an astonishing sight . Then, when both men were sent off, Rijkaard finished the job, nonchalantly gobbing into Völler's hair like a jogger aiming at a lamppost, and breezily fled the scene faster than you could say "noggin's gone". Voller stood still, the personification of affronted confusion. He might well have thought the whole thing was some elaborate Truman Show-style wind-up, but he took his red card with staggering dignity. If anyone was entitled to some red mist it was Völler.

On the BBC highlights programme that night, Ray Wilkins thought of the children. "Young kids, y'know … please, parents, turn the videos off now because that is just absolutely scandalous." It was even more unfathomable because Rijkaard was usually such a, well, phlegmatic character; a gentle soul and a good man.

He apologised to Völler a few months later, and in 1996 the pair adorned cream dressing gowns and shared breakfast in an advert for a butter company. "The fee was donated by both of us to charity, otherwise I wouldn't have joined in," Völler said in this interview. His enduring beef is not so much with Rijkaard but the referee Juan Carlos Loustau. "I still can't understand why the ref sent me off, and I guess he will take it to his grave." So will Völler and Rijkaard, whose brilliant careers were arguably defined by that one moment of weirdness. RS

2) Tommy Gemmell v Helmut Haller, October 1969

Here's one of the all-time classics, a piece of film that could only be bettered were it set to a Flintstones soundtrack. Yes, it's Scotland's Tommy Gemmell toe-punting West Germany's Helmut Haller up the fundament in a 1969 World Cup qualifier.

Haller had sent Reinhard Libuda clear to score the decisive goal in a 3-2 win in Hamburg on 79 minutes, but it was not the German midfielder's last act of the match. With time running out and the Scots desperate to at least equalise, Gemmill cut inside from the left only to have his leg cynically swiped by Haller. [FX: Barney Rubble's Big Head Take] There's the briefest of pauses as the mist descends on Gemmill. As the Scot turns in the determined fashion, Haller suddenly realises what he's done, and attempts to exit the scene in one piece. [FX: Fred Flintsone Scrambling] No such luck, son. Ooyah! Oof! [FX: Fred Drops The Ball].

But it wasn't all cartoon capers. Gemmell's club manager, Jock Stein, had been in the stands watching, and sat on the plane home in a low seethe. He dropped Gemmell for the following weekend's League Cup final against St Johnstone, Davie Hay taking his place and his winners' medal. Gemmell put in a transfer request, and though the Lisbon Lion would remain at the club for two more years, scoring in the 1970 European Cup final just as he had done in 1967, his relationship with Stein would never recover and he eventually left for Nottingham Forest. "If it hadn't been for Haller," reminisced Gemmell after the German's death last year, "there is every chance I would never have left Celtic. Although I wanted to kick him over the stand that night, I am sad at his passing." SM

3) Gary Bennett v David Speedie, January 1990

Gary Bennett is a Sunderland legend for a number of reasons: 11 years of languid defensive excellence, 440-odd games, one famous goal. But mainly for his services to fan/player interaction via the medium of David Speedie's throat.

Speedie was a footballer who loved to be hated. He spent his career winding up opponents and fans for – and with – kicks, sometimes obscuring a considerable talent in the process. "Speedie is a prick," says one comment on an alternative YouTube video of this incident. "I would know. He's my uncle."

His relationship with Bennett began after the first leg of the 1985 League Cup semi-final between Sunderland and Chelsea when Bennett and Howard Gayle had a zealous exchange of views with Speedie's father in the players' lounge at Roker Park. Five years later, Sunderland met Speedie's Coventry in the quarter-finals of the same competition. Bennett had a bad knee, and probably shouldn't have been playing, and as centre-half and centre-forward he and Speedie exchanged the usual unpleasantries in the course of their work.

Matters came to a head when a loose ball broke towards the touchline. Speedie went miles over the top of the ball, leaving a snide one on Bennett's bad knee. As his momentum took him towards the Sunderland fans in the Clock Stand – no fencing in those days, remember – Speedie tilted his head theatrically to the side and stood statuesque while staring into the middle distance. He was a picture of misplaced pride, with the self-satisfied pose of somebody who thinks he's won hands down - oblivious to the fact that, behind him, a hand was going up, the chickens not so much coming home to roost as to whip off his wattle. Bennett's tensed, open hand homed inexorably in on Speedie's neck, like a scene in a horror movie where the audience can see what's coming but the protagonist has no idea.

Bennett, for a split-second consumed with a hate supreme, was intent on some vigilante justice: he eased Speedie over the advertising hoardings into a disappointingly benevolent crowd. The ITV commentator John Helm, used to a culture in which ABH usually only merited a stern talking-to, said the referee "will have very strong words with the Sunderland captain about this". In fact he sent both Bennett and Speedie off.

"To be honest I just saw red," said Bennett in this interview. "Goodness knows what might have happened if the officials hadn't pulled me away. In fact at one point he ended up in the crowd but they just kept pushing him back. When supporters ask me about David Speedie I always tell them, 'It's your fault, you lot could have sorted him out once and for all that night!'" RS

4) Mark Hughes v David Tuttle, January 1994

There is a superbly perceptive section in Paul McGrath's autobiography in which he describes the unspoken dance between centre-half and centre-forward as they battle for supremacy, the balance of power changing almost imperceptibly throughout a match. It applied more in McGrath's time, when teams played two up and each centre back took a man. Theirs was a unique relationship, not least because they were in constant competition yet scarcely ever in a position to stare awkwardly at each others' eyebrows, never mind the whites of their eyes. There were so many ways you might exert superiority. Strength, skill, subtlety, sleight of foot or sleight of hip, all geared towards the decisive breaking of your opponent's will.

Or you could just boot him unfairly and squarely in the trousers.

All the YouTube videos of Mark Hughes , all those furious finishes, remind us how big a sweet spot existed on his right boot. It was not as big as the tender spot between David Tuttle's legs, upon which Hughes homed with rare decisiveness after miscontrolling a ball over the top from Denis Irwin. "When I viewed the game on video late that night I couldn't believe what I was seeing," said Sir Alex Ferguson in Managing My Life. "Hughes had almost dislodged Tuttle's testicles."

The beautiful thing about this is its almost entire pointlessness: with two minutes to go the game was pretty much safe, thanks to a quite glorious goal from Hughes - "If we've got any chance in international football, this has to be the way to score goals," plus-ca-changed the co-commentator Trevor Brooking – and Tuttle had done little beyond exhibiting the usual assertions of masculinity written into a centre-half's contract in the early 1990s. There was a bad, unpunished foul on Hughes 16 minutes earlier but that was par for the course.

No matter. As the ball drifted towards the corner flag, Hughes suddenly contracted an almost lethal dose of the battle fever. In the future words of his team-mate Roy Keane, he stuck it up Tuttle's bollocks. And then had the gall to complain, as did Ryan Giggs, who stopped just short of pleading that Hughes had got the ball. In those days, it was only a second yellow card. Tuttle probably had a couple of yellows as well. RS

5) Roy Keane v Alan Shearer, September 2001

Keane is mainly remembered these days - this is purely in the context of transgressing football's laws, he achieved one or two other things in the game after all - for his cold-blooded assassination of Manchester City midfielder Alf Inge Haaland in 2001. A modern take on Big Jack Charlton's Little Black Book, Keane had made a mental note of Haaland who, four years earlier and then at Leeds, sneered over him as he rolled around in pain with a snapped cruciate ligament. "Bryan Robson had told me to take my time," Keane later recalled. "You'll get your chance, Roy. Wait."

Wait he did. And the calm and calculating nature of the eventual payback - "Alfie was taking the piss. I'd waited long enough. I fucking hit him hard. The ball was there (I think). Take that, you cunt" - is usually the first point of reference when it comes to Keane and the darker arts these days. But it rather obscures the fact that the whole episode was set off after Haaland had piqued Keane in that fateful 1997 brouhaha with a masterclass in niggly fouls, to the extent that the Manchester United man knacked himself while attempting a retaliation. ("I was trying to trip him up rather than kick him," explained Keane. "I knew it would probably mean a booking, but fuck it.") The 2001 Haaland hit was an aberration; the majority of Keane's mistakes were made while out of control on a rolling boil, his brain very much melting in a bain-marie of belligerence.

Keane has contributed quite a few classics to the canon, from tap-dancing on Gareth Southgate's titties in the 1995 FA Cup semi-final to losing a battle of minds with Alan Shearer at Newcastle in 2002. ("Shearer stops me taking the throw in," begins his account in the Eamon Dunphy-ghosted Keane. "He's taking the piss. I lose it, throw the fucking ball at him. 'You prick,' he sneers. The way he says it, I know he really means it. I go for him, try to grab him by the throat. He's grinning. 'You prick,' he gestures dismissively. The red card comes out. Shearer's right. I am a prick. Fell into the trap.")

But here's one that's oft-forgotten these days. It's October 1995, and Eric Cantona is four games back after the eight-month absence enforced for his kung-fu clean-out of that clown at Crystal Palace. United are hosting Middlesbrough, and on 18 minutes Nigel Pearson makes a two-footed lunge at Cantona, no doubt a warm and witty homage to the French striker's Selhurst Park shenanigans. Cantona bats not an eyelid. "Since returning," reported David Lacey in this paper, "Cantona has yet to give an opponent a dirty look."

However, Keane had clearly decided to take up Eric's slack. Running the length of the pitch to instigate a Hegelian dialectic with Middlesbrough's players and the referee, and having then offered a trenchant antithesis to Pearson's thesis, he became frustrated at the lack of a third way. Which may explain why he "followed this up with a wild hack at a passing opponent", then 12 minutes later responded to Jan Aage Fjortoft tugging at his shirt by extending his right arm and attempting to push the Boro striker's face through. Off you go!

The game was scoreless at the time, but the ten men of United went on to win 2-0. It was Keane's third sending off in a United shirt - he had walked for the aforementioned Southgate incident and then for a dive at Blackburn - and each time his team went on to win the game. "Perhaps their handicap should be re-examined," was Lacey's tinder-dry assessment.

6) Humberto Maschio v Honorindo Landa, June 1962

The fixture between Chile and Italy in Group Two of the 1962 World Cup should be considered not so much a football match, more the statistical outlier in a centuries' worth of meteorological data, a unique atmospheric convergence of red mist which hovered over Santiago for an unprecedented 90 minutes (plus the eight minutes of first-half stoppage time which accounted for the bobbies coming on mob-handed to drag Georgio Ferrini off).

Picking one particular example of misto rosso from a game which featured several haymakers, a couple of broken noses, one acrobatic hoof in the coupon, a rugby tackle, and the forced removal of a player by several members of the local filth, is a futile affair. Not least because all the set-piece rumbles are so well known, and we'd be arguing all day over which one is the most entertaining. So instead let's pick a moment for the red-mist purist which occurred right at the end of the first half.

The Argentinian-born Italian midfielder Humberto Maschio had already (1) been shoved in the chest and (2) punched in the face, (3) punched someone in the face, and (4) raked his studs down a Chilean shin. Italy were down to nine men by this point, though as referee Ken Aston hadn't considered Maschio one of the worst offenders, he was free to continue playing. With seconds of the half remaining, he was brought down by Chile captain Sergio Navarro. It was a free kick. Eladio Rojas, jogging slowly back to defend, did what players do and flicked the static ball back upfield a couple of yards into empty space, in an attempt to lessen Italy's advantage. Play hadn't restarted, but the referee's whistle in Maschio's head blew loud and clear. He raced back after the ball, but instead of calmly retrieving and replacing it, slid across the turf and hoicked it violently out of play for a "throw". His fuses blown, there he was, doing battle with invisible opponents on the biggest stage of all.

This occurred at the end of a 53-minute half packed with so much ultraviolence that Maschio, a constant presence as both victim and perpetrator, had been propelled by righteous indignation, anger and ear steam into uncharted mental territory. He had found himself rocket-blasting through several layers in the mist-o-sphere with the controls of the funk mothership set for the heart of the sun. Most folk, no matter how annoyed, come back down to earth after a moment or two. Like panic attacks and erections, you can only keep it going for so long. But he'd been at it for nearly an hour. He really was out there. And this is what happens to a man. This is red mist in its most condensed form, a distillation of disintegration, a tantrum tincture.

Luckily, half time was upon him, during which a damp cloth to the napper could be applied. And by golly it worked, for Maschio was a much more measured gent during the second period. At the final whistle came happy evidence that his mind was working clearly again, and no lasting damage had been done. He offered his hand to Honorino Landa, and as the two shook in the sporting fashion, slyly crunched his other fist onto his opponent's jaw. [FX: Yogi Bear's Noggin Klonk] SM

Rob SmythScott Murray
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Football transfer rumours: Marco Reus to Manchester United?

Today's fluff is Mr. November

These are grim times for Ashley Cole, who can't even get into the Chelsea first XI ahead of a right-back. Ashley's a-cold! Jose Mourinho is looking to do poor Ashley some charity by bringing in Fabio Coentrao, who unlike César Azpilicueta is at least a specialist in the position. That's not going to make him feel much better, though, is it.

This state of affairs might test Ryan Bertrand's patience too, though whether former suitors Liverpool will still be interested is another matter. They've now got designs on Martin Montoya, who can't get in the Barcelona first team, but then it is Barcelona so the jury is out.

Ian Holloway is in the frame to become manager of Bristol City, and add the south-western city to a list of places he'll never be able to go back to in his dotage alongside Plymouth, Leicester and Blackpool, on account of his historical links with Bristol Rovers. This won't end well, you heard it here first.

Manchester United have just won 5-0 at Bayer Leverkusen, their best away result in Europe since winning 6-0 at Shamrock Rovers in 1957. Shinji Kagawa was a major part of that, so naturally having finally found his groove, they're trying to parlay him into Marco Reus by offering him back to Borussia Dortmund. Also on the Old Trafford radar: Sevilla and Croatia midfielder Ivan Rakitic, though in the modern social-media style, Chelsea and Liverpool also want to HAVE THEIR SAY about that one.

ChelseaLiverpoolManchester UnitedBorussia DortmundIan HollowayScott Murray
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Football transfer rumours: Harry Redknapp to Tottenham?

Today's fluff wears lemon (but never in the daylight)

It's the fourth Thursday in November, the time every year when the Rumour Mill celebrates Secularhol, a special holiday where we give thanks for blessings such as soccer, soccer trading rumours, and soccer trading rumour round-ups which have to be collated before sunrise. Thanks! Thanks! Thanks!

What a harvest of gossip we have to celebrate today, as well. A bumper crop of speculation. A feast, if you will, of supposition and blithe conjecture. Who needs a teetering 20lb pyramid of honey-glazed triple-fried turkey with a side order of sweet potato casserole topped with marshmallow, when the following chunks of juicy gossip are spread out across the groaning board?

Andre Villas-Boas is living on borrowed time after his Tottenham Hotspur side let in nearly as many goals in one match last weekend as they've scored all season. Should Manchester United do their Leverkusen thing again at White Hart Lane on Sunday, he'll be hooked in favour of Celta Vigo boss Luis Enrique, Swansea's Michael Laudrup, or Harry Redknapp.

Whether they've got a manager or not, Tottenham are still in the market for players, obviously, and are preparing a bid for Basel's young Chelsea-bothering winger Mohamed Salah. They're pining for Gareth Bale, aren't they? Liverpool are also interested, though presumably they're not so lovesick for Stewart Downing.

Yohan Cabaye is off in the summer, like he was last summer. Newcastle United will accept offers in the region of £20m for a player Arsenal recently valued at £10m. So that's about right, then. A gratuitous dig at parsimonious ol' Arsène Wenger, perhaps, but we have to deflect attention from the fact that Cabaye hasn't actually been linked with anyone at all today.

Fabio Borini has scored a grand total of zero career goals for Liverpool and Sunderland. A rough guess that's almost certainly incorrect, although we bet we're not that far off. OK, yes, again with the cheap shots, but nobody's being linked with him, and we have to pad this out somehow. He does want off in the January window, though, according to his agent, preferably back to Italy. So there is that.

Chelsea haven't been firing on many cylinders this season, so Jose Mourinho plans to address the problem by spending his way out of trouble. He's in for £30m Porto striker Jackson Martinez, Monaco's £12m-per-year hitman Radamel Falcao, Sevilla left-back Alberto Moreno and Southampton left-back Luke Shaw.

Manchester United are also in for Moreno, with David Moyes having run out of patience in his pursuit of Leighton Baines. United will also consider Fabio Coentrao of Real Madrid, who are coincidentally interested in Alexander Buttn... no, they're interested in Moreno as well.

Manchester United also want Torino forward and Arsenal target Alessio Cerci, and Fulham youngster Moussa Dembele, for whom Liverpool also have a thing.

Harry Redknapp, though. That rumour couldn't be sweeter or a more delicious confection were it smothered in a cranberry sauce reduction and topped with pumpkin pie jus. Happy Secularhol, everyone!

Scott Murray
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Bayer Leverkusen v Manchester United – as it happened | Scott Murray

Minute-by-minute report: United qualified for the knockout stage of the Champions League, ripping Leverkusen apart in their best performance so far of the David Moyes reign. Scott Murray was watching

Scott Murray