Scott Murray's Blog, page 217

Shakhtar Donetsk v Manchester United – as it happened

Minute-by-minute report: A point for United after a fairly humdrum performance in Ukraine. Scott Murray was watching

Scott Murray

The Fiver | In CRISIS | Scott Murray

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THERE GOES THE OLD BOSS, NOT QUITE THE SAME AS THE NEW BOSS

We're less than two months into the season, but already all of the following teams have been officially designated at some point or other as being in CRISIS: Arsenal, Sunderland, Heart of Midlothian, Coventry City, Millwall, Greenock Morton, Celtic, England, the England side Mr Roy talks about that he sees in his head, Liverpool, Manchester City, Real Madrid and Leyton Orient, who having dropped two of the last three points available to them, a pathetic failure rate of nearly 67%, are unravelling at a rate of knots.

But it's the travails of Manchester United that have grabbed the lion's share of attention. For a club who set the bar of achievement at the very top, successes have been hard to come by during this campaign. To be fair, they put four goals past Swansea City. They put another four past Bayer Leverkusen. And David Moyes has been taking the discipline of middle-distance staring to new levels of brilliance: during the recent Manchester derby, he become the first man never stationed in Vietnam, Iraq or Afghanistan to break through the thousand-yard barrier, a mark the punch-drunk United boss beat by three yards, two feet and five inches in a display hailed as a masterclass in cognitive dissonance. But that's it.

Of course, if United win at Shakhtar Donetsk in Big Cup tonight, they'll be officially designated as being ON THE ROAD TO RECOVERY along with the likes of Arsenal, Sunderland, Heart of Midlothian, Coventry City, Millwall, Greenock Morton, Celtic, England, the England side Mr Roy talks about that he sees in his head, Liverpool, Manchester City and Real Madrid (We're still waiting for one-draw-in-a-row Orient to pull their indolent fingers out.) The return of Robin van Persie may help in that regard. But just in case things go n!pples up again and United's worst start to a season in nearly a quarter of a century continues apace, Davie's predecessor Lord Ferg has given an interview to the US broadcaster PBS – think the BBC only without the craven attitude to whoever's in government – seemingly designed to pour oil on troubled waters.

"David will be fine, he's a good manager," began the ringing endorsement on the world's smallest bell. "United are in good hands." Addressing directly the children on message boards wondering whether it might be time for Lord Ferg to return on his white charger, Moyes having been given a fair crack of the whip after a whopping 94 days in the job, the old man made it quite clear that the only way for United is forward, as he's got bigger fish to fry. "I'm not interested in managing again or getting myself worked up about Manchester United's results. You would be throwing your money down the drain if you put any money on me coming back as manager. There is no way back for me now, I've got a new life."

But while Lord Ferg is planning a busy retirement which will include taking in "the Kentucky Derby, the Masters, the Melbourne Cup and vineyards in Tuscany and France", presumably in that order to ensure everything gets done, he can't quite let the mind games go. For he also took time in the PBS interview to rattle the cage at Chelsea, who he claims approached him when Roman Abramovich took over at Stamford Bridge. "I said, no chance. I always come back to this point: why would you leave?" So that was poor old José Mourinho second on Chelsea's wishlist back in the day, as well as United's this summer. The sort of whopping blow to the ego that could seriously disturb a man's equilibrium and affect his ability to function in everyday life. Here, shall we add Chelsea to that list of crisis clubs?

• Follow minute-by-minute coverage of Shakhtar Donetsk 1-2 Manchester United and Manchester City 1-1 Bayern Munich on Big Website from 7.45pm.

QUOTE OF THE DAY

"We have been followed very closely by Fifa and the IOC. They are very strict in their demands and their technical conditions for hosting the games and we are meeting all the requirements that have been presented to us" – Brazil's deputy sports minister Luis Fernandes defends their safety record for building 2014 World Cup stadiums, 1 June 2013.

"Countless infractions have been committed in various stages of the building project … [there is] a serious risk of workers being buried, run over and of collision, falling from heights and being hit by construction material, among other serious risks" – Judge Lorena Colnago suspends work on the Curitiba stadium, 2 October 2013.

FIVER LETTERS

"Wahoo! Reading yesterday's Fiver I was delighted to find my letter had made it in, but devastated to find it was cut and pasted with all the accuracy of a Jamie Redknapp metaphor. Luckily no one funny had bothered writing in, so I won letter o' the day. In light of yesterday's mistake I politely request that the pages of my prize be in the correct order and that Weird Uncle Fiver is not involved in the sending process. Many thanks" – Daniel Thomas.

"According to yesterday's Fiver, Rafa Benítez 'has never been one to let euphoria get the better of him'. Are you sure about that? Keep up the good (ahem) work" – Austin Hill.

"Re: yesterday's Quote of the Day. I can't be the only reader unsurprised to learn of Neil Kinnock's ejection from the 'home' supporters section after noisily celebrating Cardiff's, err, strikes at Craven Cottage. Perhaps he ought to have used the famous 'neutral seats' at Fulham's stadium but then, as in 1987 and 1992, he was rather slow to judge the mood of the majority" – Colin Young.

"Re: yesterday's link in the last line to the article about the rescued Eurasian scops owl: 'It was clear the poor little thing had literally run out of steam'. Either the bird was utilising a similar turbine propulsion system to HMS Illustrious, or Lieutenant Chris Patrick is related to Jamie Redknapp" – Matty Weir.

• 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 prize is Colin Young, who gets a copy of the newly-updated paperback edition of I Am The Secret Footballer.

JOIN GUARDIAN SOULMATES

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BITS AND BOBS

After news that Brendan Rodgers has drafted in former Spice Boys Robbie Fowler, Steve McManaman and sort-of Spice Boy Rob Jones to coach Liverpool's youth squads, expect the youngsters to turn out in white suits, bare their backsides to Leicester fans and get punched by Neil Ruddock.

Bargain buy Gareth Bale, who has so far cost Real Madrid £473,889 for every one of the 180 minutes he has been fit to play since his record-breaking move, has been ruled out of the Big Cup tie against Copenhagen with thigh knack.

Arsenal youngster Jack Jebb has been banned for four matches for using "abusive and/or insulting words … including a reference to ethnic origin and/or colour and/or race" during an Under-18 match against Norwich.

In other Arsenal news, a man was hospitalised on Tuesday night after the Piebury Corner – yes, really – restaurant was mobbed by up to 50 Napoli fans who were reportedly shouting, swinging belts and throwing tables and chairs.

And Stoke have banned players from talking about their former manager Tony Pulis after comments from Kenwyne Jones allegedly sparked a dressing-room rift. "It is not fair on Tony to be rubbished," parped owner Peter Coates, who must have watched less of the Pulis era than the Fiver did.

STILL WANT MORE?

Mesut Özil/Ozil/Eurrzil is not so much the special one as the spatial one, reckons tactics titan Michael Cox. Meanwhile, have your say on whether the Arsenal man can hold a torch to Dennis Bergkamp or not.

David Moyes has been told not to let the cameras catch him with his head in his hands. All this and more in Paul Wilson's blog on the embattled Manchester United manager.

The only effing involved in discussing the Celtic keeper is in spelling his name, writes Ewan Murray of Fraser Forster's fabulous form.

Manuel Pellegrini is likely to cope better than Roberto Mancini against Bayern Munich in at least one department: he won't have to ask Carlos Tevez to warm up tonight. Which is not quite what Jamie Jackson has written, but whatever.

And this week in nerd nirvana the Knowledge: the least capped record cap holder, perfect penalty runs and bettering Hendon FC.

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9,882 WORDS OF PAINManchester UnitedScott Murray
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The Joy of Six: Manchester United and West Bromwich Albion | Scott Murray

Matches to remember from days when West Brom beating United was not a shock – from Denis Law to Cyrille Regis and an eight-goal Old Trafford thriller

So it is not a rivalry of clásico proportions? Never mind that! We have debuts for Denis Law and George Best, an emotional post-Munich return for Bobby Charlton, a stat-tastic Indian summer for Johnny Giles, United all strung out on drugs, and the signature performance of Big Ron's classic Cunningham-Regis side. These two should get it on more often ...

1) Manchester United 2-2 West Bromwich Albion (August 1962)

Matt Busby spent most of the summer of 1962 chasing Torino striker Denis Law. Or, to be strictly accurate, chasing the haughty Torino president Angelo Filippone, whose blessing was required to sign the unhappy emigrant. First Busby flew to Amsterdam, where he knew Filippone would be watching the European Cup final between Benfica and Real Madrid, hoping to be granted a bit of facetime. Filippone could not be bothered to meet. A date was arranged in Lausanne - which the Torino overlord failed to grace with his presence. So yet another confab was set for Turin.

Having been assured that this one really was on, Busby once again put in some hard yards. Bolting from Majorca, where United were involved in a pre-season tournament, he jumped on a flight to Geneva, then zipped over the Alps in a fast motorcar - only to find Filippone once again couldn't be arsed to show. His second in command was sent instead, but he quoted Busby a fee of £200,000, a price that would have outstripped the world record paid by Internazionale for (the original) Luis Suarez by nearly £50,000. At this point, many gallons of steam whistled from the exasperated United manager's lugs, as he skipped around the room on both feet in the 'Animated' style. That's an end of that, then. And after all that effort too.

A month later, a Torino mandarin phoned Busby and offered Law to United for £115,000. Simple as that. Busby, scratching his head in contemplation of this post-palaver volte-face, quickly did the deal anyway.

Law gave Busby an instant reward for all this breathless bother. In the opening match of the new season against West Bromwich Albion, he scored with a glancing header after seven minutes. It was United's second goal of the game, David Herd having opened the scoring after 90 seconds. The 51,685 souls who had traipsed into Old Trafford were cock-a-hoop. But the goodtime vibe didn't last long. With Don Howe tackling hard, Law was afforded little room for the rest of the match. Derek Kevan pulled one back for the visitors on 75 minutes with a rasping shot, then with five minutes to go, Keith Smith pounced on a poor Maurice Setters backpass to equalise. The bumper crowd, proving preposterous impatience isn't a modern disease, made their displeasure known. "One cannot recall having heard the slow handclap at Old Trafford so early in the season," reported the Guardian. "Is this a record?" David Moyes will be thoroughly grateful times have changed.

2) Manchester United 1-0 West Bromwich Albion (September 1963)

A year on, another epochal debut. With winger Ian Moir injured, Matt Busby decided it was time to blood a 17-year-old George Best. Fellow youth teamer Eamon Dunphy thought the young Irishman's ascension had come too soon. He had blamed Best for United getting knocked out of the previous season's FA Youth Cup - "He fucked around on the left wing all night," recalled Dunphy in his Busby tome A Strange Kind of Glory – and wasn't sure there had been any improvement in the interim.

Easy to knock that analysis in retrospect, but Dunphy was right about the timing in some respects. Best approached his debut with trademark insouciance – he sat in the corner of the dressing room idly flicking through the club programme, then popped out for a cup of tea with his mates, only returning a quarter of an hour before kick off – but the match would prove a stern test for the young whippet. He was up against the no-nonsense Welsh international Graham Williams, and so rough was the treatment meted out, the Guardian noted he "twice sought refuge for short spells on the opposite wing". Busby sent the young man back to the reserves for three months to think on. "He was a schoolboy among men," noted Dunphy, "and he played like a schoolboy as well."

Then again, Best started the move which led to the only goal of the game, slipping a short pass to Nobby Stiles, the busy midfielder shuttling the ball across the area to David Sadler, who belted home. The wise Busby brought a refreshed Best back against Burnley at the end of December, the young winger scoring on his second league outing in a 5-1 win. Three weeks later, Best scored his second goal for United's first XI, against - one goal away from the perfect symmetry - West Bromwich Albion, an angled drive which was the culmination of some fucking around on the wing.

3) West Bromwich Albion 2-2 Manchester United (March 1958)

On the evening Manchester United made their emotional return to action after the Munich air disaster, beating Sheffield Wednesday 3-0 in the fifth round of the FA Cup at a sepulchral then celebratory Old Trafford, West Brom were seeing off Wednesday's neighbours United in the same competition atThe Hawthorns. Their 4-1 victory set up a home quarter-final against Manchester United, a match which the manager Vic Buckingham approached with relish. "We will win 6-0," he announced.

The prediction was rooted in logic. West Brom had seen off the Busby Babes early in the 1957/58 season, Bobby Robson the two-goal hero in a 4-3 victory at The Hawthorns, and United were obviously a weakened proposition after the tragedy. The Baggies, on the other hand, were looking certain of a high finish in the first division, even if catching the runaway leaders, Wolverhampton Wanderers, looked beyond them. It was the last hurrah for some of the superlative side which had won the 1954 FA Cup and narrowly missed out on the Double. One could understand Buckingham's confidence.

But it didn't quite work out as Buckingham had hoped. United were buoyed by the return of Bobby Charlton, astonishingly back in red a mere 23 days after the harrowing crash. The staunch young man took all of five minutes to set up the opening goal for Ernie Taylor. West Brom equalised through Ronnie Allen, finishing off a melee in the box also involving Derek Kevan and Robson, but Alex Dawson's header reclaimed the lead for United before half-time.

United held on until 86 minutes, but their brave, youthful endeavour caught up with them. "Players too young to make the ball do the work had done it all on their own legs," reported the Manchester Guardian, "and now those legs, no more than human, could do no more. The furious pace and enthusiasm of their play and the emotionally charged atmosphere had, until now, obscured some of the technical shortcomings which, at slower pace, became sadly obvious." Allen thundered a 30-yarder which Harry Gregg could only parry. Roy Horobin lashed it home.

Albion had earned themselves a replay at Old Trafford, but the semis were beyond them. The replay remained goalless until 90 seconds from time, when Charlton set up Colin Webster for the only goal. "There have been some remarkable ovations since the United team first took the field after the Munich disaster," noted this paper, "but nothing like the cheers from the crowd of over 60,000 when the all-important goal was scored, and it continued long after the final whistle." United were in the semi-finals, a fact relayed almost immediately to Matt Busby, still in a Munich hospital. His reaction? "Bang on! Wonderful!"

Meanwhile let's be scrupulously fair to Buckingham, who wasn't that far off the mark, despite it all. By a quirk of the fixture list, West Brom returned to Old Trafford in the league three days later - and thrashed United 4-0.

4) West Bromwich Albion 4-0 Manchester United (October 1976)

The Baggies really had United's number in the mid to late Seventies. Here's the first of three famous thrashings, from the start of the 1976/77 season, when Johnny Giles, the erstwhile Leeds legend but also a member of United's 1963 FA Cup-winning side, put Tommy Docherty's entertaining Coppell-McIlroy-Macari-Hill team to the sword with a little swash and buckle of his own.

Giles, 35 years of age, his glory days behind him, raged against the dying of the light in a one-man show. "It is one thing having a brain which tells you where a pass should go," reported this paper, "but another to have the physical coordination and skill to put it there." These were the days long before statistics and raw data had taken over, and reading the sports pages felt like studying for a PhD in fractal geometry, but so dominant was Giles' display that our man Richard Yallop felt the need to tot up the numbers. Giles made 71 passes that afternoon, and only four went astray, some total in an era where possession was at a premium in English football. "You have to add to that the quality of each pass, the weight with which it was delivered, making it always immediately controllable by the receiver. For anybody who believes the beauty of football lies in its passing, the afternoon was a joy."

The cherry on the cake was a screamer into the top corner from 25 yards which evaded the desperate stretch of Alex Stepney. A real energy piece, especially when you consider Giles was also managing West Brom and the Republic of Ireland at the same time. (His was the first name on – arguably the club's greatest contribution to football, this – Albion's poetic and Waltonesque managerial roll call of the 70s and 80s: Johnny, Ronnie, John, Ron, Ronnie, Ron, Johnny, Nobby, Ron, Ron.)

The thrashing knocked the stuffing out of United, who won only one of their next 10 games (a futile first-leg Uefa Cup win over Juventus, 1-0, which was easily overturned in Turin) and flirted with the relegation places before turning their season around with an unbeaten run of 14 wins in 16 league and cup matches. Albion should have beaten United in that run - they were 2-0 up in the return at Old Trafford thanks to another measured display from Giles, a glittering performance from new £110,000 signing Laurie Cunningham, and a goal from the "immensely promising midfield player" Bryan Robson, but Gordon Hill netted a penalty and Steve Coppell scored an injury-time equaliser. Still, it was becoming clear that this West Brom vintage were beginning to enjoy playing against United.

5) West Bromwich Albion 4-0 Manchester United (October 1977)

Giles didn't stick around, though. Less than a month after that 2-2 draw at Old Trafford, he announced his resignation as player-manager, in order to return to Ireland to develop the game back home. "I must make it clear that I am not leaving in search of higher income or because of any disagreement, for I have been treated with courtesy and consideration," he said. "Football and football management are precarious professions. I frequently wonder why the government, which cares so much for the well-being of each and every member of society, does not make it compulsory to print a health warning on a manager's contract, so high is the mortality rate."

Ronnie Allen took over. It was all change at United, too, Tommy Docherty having got his zip stuck during the summer, Dave Sexton taking his place. But the trend of Albion enjoying themselves at United's expense continued apace, with a repeat of the previous season's scoreline. John Wile – "mobile, versatile in defence and attack, and arrogantly dominant in the air" – opened the scoring for Albion with a header, and United were polished off in the second half with three goals in a 12-minute blitz, a couple from David Cross and one from Cunningham.

United were thoroughly outplayed – again – but this time they at least had an excuse. A couple of days later, they were due to play an exhibition match in Iran. As advised by government quacks, the team had been given cholera vaccinations the week before. Nobody, however, had considered the potential side effects. The Greenhoff brothers were laid low, while several other members of the team became distracted and queasy. A zoned-out United were thumped 4-0 in the Cup Winners Cup by Porto, then lost by the same score here. After winning 2-0 in Iran, the strung-out selection rounded off this chemically assisted sequence with another loss, 2-1 at Aston Villa. Steve Coppell later suggested that a deal had been struck between United and the government to throw some diplomatic shapes in Iran in exchange for help in lifting the European ban then placed on the club's feisty support. Quadruples all round!

6) Manchester United 3-5 West Bromwich Albion (December 1978)

To get some sort of idea of Laurie Cunningham's enchanting grace, here's Arthur Rowe, the architect of Tottenham's famous push-and-run title winners of 1950/51 and advisor to Orient in his dotage, who said this to the legendary Frank Keating in the mid-70s while the player, then 17, was still at Brisbane Road: "Tell you the truth, nothing much in our game now turns me on - but this boy Cunningham excites me more than anyone I can remember. When I turn up for training and little Laurie's off sick, or with another batch of players, I'm always terribly disappointed, you know, really terribly."

"And that," noted Keating, "from the man who'd seen it all."

This was arguably Cunningham's, and certainly this fondly remembered team's, signature performance. They timed their arrival at Old Trafford perfectly: United had just lost 3-0 at Bolton before suffering a Boxing Day massacre at Anfield, where Liverpool tonked them 3-0. United's unhappy holidays had to bottom out sometime, surely, and they sort of did here, in as much as they didn't play particularly badly at all. They were just steamrollered by a team at the very top of their game. United's notorious 70s support were, even by the unenlightened standards of the day, making a show of themselves, booing every touch of Cunningham, Cyrille Regis and Brendan Batson to the rafters. The knuckleheads dragging United's name through the gutter that day got their karmic comeuppance in one of the greatest top-flight games of all time.

United gave as good as they got in the first half. Brian Greenhoff opened the scoring with an outrageous volley into the top right from the edge of the area. Cunningham, abuse ringing around him, teased a pass in from the left and set up Tony Brown for the equaliser. The winger then stepped it up, sashaying past two desperate challenges before taking out two more men with a pass that found Regis on the edge of the box. A smooth backheel found Len Cantello, who roofed home. Gordon McQueen's header and McIlroy's snaky run regained the lead for United, before Brown bundled home at the end of the first half, the six-goal spoils shared.

The second half was all about Regis, who had a header cleared off the line by Greenhoff, saw a 25-yarder clawed away from the top right by Gary Bailey, sent Cunningham through to score West Brom's fourth, and Cantelloed a fifth into the roof of the net to put a sheen on the scoreline. The gulf in class was perhaps best illustrated by that Cunningham goal: as the winger made his way down the inside-right channel before burying the ball in the bottom left, Stewart Houston took a wild swipe at his ankles, but connected only with fresh air. United were thrashing around helplessly in a match the Observer called The Avalanche in the Snow.

Granada Television offered champagne to each side's men of the match, with the managers selecting their favourites. Sexton went for Steve Coppell, while Ron Atkinson gave Regis the nod after announcing that it would be a "toss-up between one of the coloured front people". Oh Ron! The past is a different country all right, and we'll not be rushing to apply for a visa.

Manchester UnitedWest Bromwich AlbionScott Murray
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Villarreal v Real Madrid – as it happened | Scott Murray

Minute-by-minute report: Gareth Bale scored on his Real debut in an entertaining match. Scott Murray was watching

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Everton v Chelsea – as it happened | Scott Murray

Minute-by-minute report: Steven Naismith scored the only goal of a fast-paced, entertaining game as Roberto Martinez registered his first win as Everton manager. Scott Murray was watching

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Crystal Palace v Sunderland - as it happened | Scott Murray

Minute-by-minute report: Palace registered their first three points of the season with a deserved victory over the Black Cats. Scott Murray was watching

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Manchester City v Hull City – as it happened | Scott Murray

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The Fiver: Some Bovine Dig Posted By An Idiot | Scott Murray

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

STOP TWITTER STOP TWITTER STOP TWITTER STOP TWITTER STOP TWITTER STOP TWITTER STOP TWITTER STOP TWITTER STOP TWITTER STOP TWITTER STOP TWITTER #opleasestoptwitter

It wasn't a great start to the day for the folk who work at Liverpool Football Club. They turned up this morning to find the place in a right old state. Seems the slow-witted office boy had taken it upon himself to stay late yesterday evening and tidy up, but his efforts proved to be more of a hindrance than a help. There he was, sitting atop a pyramid of broken desks, jabbering and crying and patting the top of his head with his palm. Soap suds were oozing out of the carpet. The curtains, newly released from their moorings by the windows, were sticking out the bottom of the Hoover. The bathroom was flooded, with a suspicious trail of toilet paper leading all the way across the floor and into the back of the office boy's trousers. In fairness the kitchen was sparkling clean, though upon closer inspection a small jet of fire was coming out of the cold tap.

An awful lot of mess to clean up, then, though the worst of it was yet to be discovered. For it quickly became apparent that the office boy had worked out to turn on the VIC-20 and had managed to log on to the company Twitter account. Whereupon, presumably in the name of painfully unfunny banter, or, as it's more commonly known, banter, he'd retweeted some bovine dig posted by an idiot regarding the Munich air disaster, and followed it up with the sort of tedious response that would have earned him a clip round the lug from one his own supporters if he'd parped it down the pub. And no we're not giving the tweets any more air, not least because they're so very witless and boring.

An embarrassed Liverpool offered United an immediate unconditional apology, which was accepted with good grace, though it was something of a shame that this latest shambles occurred on a day when a Hillsborough commemorative tracksuit worn by United at last year's north-west derby at Anfield was put on display in the Museum of Liverpool to show how "bonds can be forged between clubs and rival cities". Liverpool have launched an investigation with the express intent of cracking heads, and, along with all other clubs, might question the worth of getting involved in casual chats with half-cut punters on a medium which doesn't have the safety net of a sub-editing process. Not least because company banter is so very witless and boring.

So perhaps they'd like to join our new campaign, STOP FAUX-CASUAL CORPORATE BANTER, which will run alongside our hardy perennials STOP BANTER and STOP FOOTBALL. Though of course all the problems in the world would be solved if we were successful in our grand plan to STOP TWITTER, but that's an argument for another day. As for the office boy? What will happen to him in the long term is yet to be established, though to keep him out of the road today, where he couldn't cause any more damage, he was sent out this morning to run some fools errands, including the purchase of a glass hammer, some striped paint, and tickets for Liverpool's away fixtures in the group stage of Big Vase.

QUOTE OF THE DAY

"We can't really divulge what is going to happen but I have been told something about 100 performing poodles being involved!" – excitable Sky Sports News presenter Jim White remains uncharacteristically coy upon being asked if he'll be making a James Bond-style entrance to the studios when he turns up for work on Transfer Deadline Day. We think he's joking about the poodles.

FIVER LETTERS

Yet more evidence of Arsenal's crippling procrastination in the transfer market. As this Big Paper article clearly points out, had Arsène Wenger moved a mere 52 years earlier they could have had Luis Suárez for £39,848,001 less. What is going on at that place?" – Nick Trim.

"Re: the improbability of the Fiver spelling out the word 'futility' with the 22 red and blue discs on a tactics board (yesterday's Fiver Letters). Given the fact that the Join Guardian Soulmates section appears in every single edition (implying of the failure of your attempts to point out the futility of advertising it) have you considered pointing out the futility using the same discs? That kind of thing seems to get your readers interested" – Fran Callaghan.

"Last lines that rely upon showy hyperlinks (yesterday's Last Line) to mean anything other than nonsense (Fiver last lines passim) are the footballing equivalent of pink boots. Reading a hyperlinked last line on a Smart Phone deep in New York's mostly no-signal Subway is as gratifying as watching late 2008 vintage Nicklas Bendtner in his rosy slippers on black and white telly. Please stop" – Damien Neva.

"While marvelling at Morgan Armstrong's powers of observation in spotting the 'brown ball things' on the kitchen work-top of the Mayfair flat Papiss Cissé may or may not buy (Fiver Letters passim); I noticed that the estate agent had subtitled the picture to call out the white plastic sink (it's stainless steel) and four-ring electric hob (it's gas). Neither of these are very likely to get used by anyone who can afford to buy the flat, but still, way to earn your money Foxtons" – Paul Dixon.

"Hamburger SV manager Thorsten Fink is now officially my favourite footballer manager after his response to the question of why he didn't sign Nicklas Bendtner (Best Striker in the World™) this summer: 'first - he's too expensive, second – I can't remember the last time he scored'" – Noble Francis.

Send your letters to the.boss@guardian.co.uk. And if you've nothing better to do you can also tweet the Fiver. Today's winner of our prizeless letter o'the day prize is: Damien Neva.

JOIN GUARDIAN SOULMATES

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BITS AND BOBS

It's almost over! Word that Gareth Bale has almost agreed personal terms with Real Madrid and will be unveiled at the Bernabeu at noon tomorrow was greeted with much raucous cheering from everyone in Fiver Towers who has the weekend off.

Manchester United have made a €12m bid for Roma midfielder Daniele Di Rossi, whose name is an anagram of "ideal derisions" … which kind of sums up the Serie A side's rejection of the offer.

United have bid £25m for Athletic Bilbao midfielder Ander Herrera, whose name is an anagram of "hear rare nerd" … which doesn't really sum up the La Liga's side's rejection of the offer.

Swansea City's lucky fans are off to Spain! Wigan's lucky fan is off to Belgium! Tottenham Hotspur's fans are off to Dagestan, the Ukraine-Moldova border and the North Pole. Click on this link for all the details of this afternoon's Big Vase draw.

And Steaua Bucharest defender Vlad Chiriches has signed on the dotted line for Tottenham Hotspur in an £8.5m deal, despite Sky Sports News footage which suggests the club didn't even send somebody to meet him and his wife at the airport.

STILL WANT MORE?

Mild-mannered Swede Marcus Christenson has been slowly mentally unravelling for the past fortnight in order to bring you all the latest non-news on his rolling transfer blog. Catch up on all today's speculation before he turns Partridge, jumps in his car and drives barefoot to Dundee while eating a Toffee Crisp (Marcus doesn't like Toblerone because he's indifferent to the Swiss).

Jacob Steinberg and Paul Doyle are looking forward to so many things in the Premier League this weekend that they wept salty tears upon discovering they could only compile a list of 10 in this article.

An expensive footballer, another expensive footballer and four other expensive footballers all feature in this week's Joy of Six: record transfers.

And speaking of record transfers, test your knowledge of the 20 Premier League clubs' record signings in Paul Campbell and Charlotte Trundley's lovingly compiled quiz – it's been doing a preposterously brisk trade all day on Big Website, smashing all things Miley Cyrus-related out of the park.

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The Joy of Six: record transfers

Gareth Bale's move to Real Madrid is making the headlines, but the game has been awash with money from the get-go

1. Willie Groves (West Bromwich Albion to Aston Villa, 1893, £100)

In an ideal world, the entire blame for football's modern descent into multi-million money madness would be laid at the door of cartoon villains such as Rupert Murdoch, Roman Abramovich, Sheikh Mansour, Florentino Pérez, Kia Joorabchian, Damien Comolli and Jim White, capitalism's unthinking cheerleader from off the telly. If you're a Tory, or devoid in some other way of basic human decency, you may care to finger Jean-Marc Bosman, George Eastham or Jimmy Hill, the brave workers who stood up to be counted and whose battles ensured footballers would no longer be ragged-short-trousered philanthropists. But in truth, money has talked loudly in football pretty much from the get-go.

"Football is a big business," wrote the league founder William McGregor in a 1905 partwork called The Book of Football. "The turnover of some of our clubs is considerably larger than the turnover of many an important trading concern." This only two decades after Preston North End finally let the genie out of the bottle. Preston were disqualified from the 1883-84 FA Cup for fielding professionals, the FA still backing the thoroughly disingenuous posing of the public school and university types who insisted the game should only be played for fun, which was easy to say if you could afford to take the time off work to play. The northern and Scottish clubs and players weren't having it, and Preston's fate instigated a debate which led to the legalisation of professionalism.

It wasn't long before the English game was awash with cash. One of the first to notice was Darlin' Willie Groves, a stocky and powerful striker with Hibernian, who knew his own value. Having earned good money as a stonemason, he wasn't about to be left out of pocket. He was accused of trousering illegal wages when helping Hibs to the 1887 Scottish Cup. (Yes kids, Hibs did once win Scottish Cups, ask your great-great-great-great grandad.) He left to join the newly formed Celtic Football Club in 1888, then headed south to the world of professionalism, and West Bromwich Albion, via a contract dispute with Everton.

Groves was one of the stars of West Brom's 3-0 FA Cup final win against Aston Villa in 1892, a match that led to great bitterness and recrimination. Not only was the Villa keeper Jimmy Warner accused (unfairly and inaccurately) of throwing the match, having supposedly placed a wager on the opponents, West Brom's goalscoring hero John Reynolds was accused by his own board (!) of only bothering in the big games in the hope of landing a transfer. When Villa came in for Reynolds and his team-mate Groves, they were accused of tapping up and were forced to pay £25 in fines – they paid £50 for Reynolds, and a barrier-breaking £100 for Groves.

Groves won the league with Villa before kicking off about money again, and returning to Scotland. Much good his cash-conscious ways did him, for the money only lasted so long and, after a period of illness, he died penniless at the age of 38. Reynolds too died in abject poverty, aged 48. Warner left the country in the wake of the match-fixing allegations. But football marched on. And while the numbers have long changed, much still stays the same. In the aforementioned Book of Football article, McGregor notes that Middlesbrough made a net loss in 1904-05 of £1,035 2s 5d. They'd just broken the world transfer record for Alf Common, the first £1,000 player, in doing so living very much beyond their means. Boro: the Real Madrid, Manchester City and Paris St-Germain of their day. History, it seems, teaches us nothing. SM

2. Juan Sebastián Verón (Lazio to Manchester United, 2001, £28.1m)

At his press briefing the day before Arsenal arrived to wrap up the 2001-02 title race at Old Trafford, Sir Alex Ferguson embarked on a famously volcanic rant at journalists. Even by the standards of the spiky and paranoid Scotsman, it was quite the bollocking. "He is a fucking great player," he said in closing, after ordering the press-pack off the premises. "And you are all fucking idiots." The "he" in question was Juan Sebastián Verón, then a British record signing at £28.1m from Lazio. An out and out playmaker, he arrived in England in 2001 under a legal cloud with the validity of his passport being questioned in Italy. Such was the barrage of media criticism to which he was later subjected, he left Manchester United two seasons later under a professional one with his validity as a footballer under the same intense scrutiny.

An undeniably "fucking great player" who had proved his worth before his move to United and would do so again after an unhappy time in England, his two-season spell at United was, by his own high standards, a failure, although nowhere near as disastrous as some would have you believe. Regularly portrayed in the press for being the personification of money squandered, the opprobrium heaped upon the Argentinian by British football writers was a source of extreme irritation for Ferguson, who understandably saw it as an attack on his own judgment. At the end of a season in which Arsenal won their second Premier League and FA Cup double in four years and United finished without a trophy for only the third time in 13 years, it was small wonder he spectacularly blew his top.

Contrary to reports that Verón's boyhood dream had been to play for Sheffield United, like his uncle Pedro Vere, the man they call La Brujita (Little Witch) would later insist he grew up hoping to one day for sign for Manchester United, against whom his father, Juan Ramón (aka La Bruja, The Witch) had played twice for Estudiantes in the 1968 Intercontinental Cup. At Verón's Old Trafford unveiling he was shown around the club's museum, where an Estudiantes pennant with his father's caricature apparently still resides. "Imagine my feelings!" he said in a subsequent interview with FourFourTwo magazine. "At the moment, I was trying not to think much about it, but when I was alone, it was really emotional."

It was about as good as things got for Verón at Old Trafford, albeit not through any great fault of his own. Originally purchased after United had failed to break down Bayern Munich in the previous season's Champions League quarter-finals, it seemed Ferguson may have bought the classy Argentinian without having any clear idea quite how he was going to accommodate him in a midfield comprising such talents as David Beckham, Paul Scholes, Roy Keane and Ryan Giggs. The player's confidence suffered during the subsequent season of experimentation, in which he was dogged by a nagging achilles injury, and after United's exit from the following season's Champions League at the hands of Bayern Leverkusen, Ferguson was forced to deny that Verón had been openly criticised by two team-mates who were angered by his peripheral performances over both legs of a semi-final United lost on away goals.

A sublime player who made and scored goals and could pass the ball through the eye of a needle, it would be harsh to judge Verón's second and final season at Manchester United as an abject failure. In the Champions League he excelled upon being given free rein as the midfield fulcrum from where he conducted the United orchestra when available. Having bought him despite not particularly needing him, considering he already had Scholes, Ferguson decided he no longer wanted his piratical acquisition and sold him on to Chelsea for a little over half of what United had paid. Once again, Verón was underwhelming and it was not until his 2007 return to Estudiantes, where he was installed as a playmaker, that he was able to once again demonstrate the qualities that had made him enough of a success at Lazio to earn his record move to United. BG

3. Denílson (São Paolo to Real Betis, 1998, £21.5m)

There was no doubt about Brazil's star attraction at the 1998 World Cup. Ronaldo was the player every kid in the playground wanted to be, the player everyone wanted to see on the ball all the time. He was already a household name in Europe, too, after that stunning, solitary year at Barcelona was followed up by an impressive debut season at Internazionale in the lead-up to the World Cup. There was no mystery. People knew what to expect, even if that did not mean they knew how to stop him. We all watched Football Italia.

Yet when it came to judging those who played outside Europe, it was more difficult 15 years ago. Now everything is at our fingertips. It only takes a flick of a switch. If you wanted to be clued up about Paulinho before he signed for Tottenham, it did not require Herculean efforts to watch him play for Corinthians. But back then, there was no Twitter or YouTube. You couldn't stream matches on your computer or watch South American football on television; instead people relied more on word of mouth and had to wait to see for themselves, usually at a World Cup, and that is why there was so much intrigue surrounding another rising Brazilian talent: Denílson.

To listen to the type, here was a player who would go on to be a multiple Ballon d'Or and Champions League winner. Having made his debut at the age of 17 for São Paulo in 1994, the left-winger made his international debut in 1996 and impressed as Brazil won the Confederations Cup a year later. Yet it was at the World Cup where he would be introduced to the wider public.

By then, excitement was building. Denílson had rejected a host of top clubs, agreeing to move to Real Betis in a world-record £21.5m deal, and everyone wanted to see what all the fuss was about. It was not immediately clear, though, mainly because the 20-year-old was restricted to cameo appearances off the bench. It was the stepovers, the blur of feet, that caught the eye, yet there was rarely any suggestion that he would dominate and when he was introduced at half-time in the final with Brazil trailing 2-0 to France, he could not find a way past Lilian Thuram.

So off he went to Betis, who had qualified for the Uefa Cup after finishing eighth in La Liga. Yet Denílson, weighed down by the expectation that came with his transfer fee, struggled and Betis made an early exit from Europe and were disappointing in the league, finishing 11th.

Denílson was seen as an expensive flop and he returned to Brazil in 2000, joining Flamengo on loan after Betis were relegated. Perhaps he had simply failed to live up to the hype though. He wasn't a terrible player and he did return to Betis in January 2001, helping them win promotion. He spent another four years in Spain, playing almost 200 times for Betis, before leaving for good in 2005. Then, after an unsuccessful season with Bordeaux, his career took a turn for the nomadic, as he moved from the US to Brazil to Vietnam to Greece, where he retired in 2010.

Despite everything, he was included in Luiz Felipe Scolari's Brazil squad for the 2002 World Cup and even made a late appearance in the 2-0 victory over Germany in the final. It is easy to mock, but he has one more World Cup winners' medal than any of us will ever own. JS

4. Ruud Gullit (PSV Eindhoven to Milan, 1987, £6m)

It was a record transfer in every sense of the word. With suitors across Europe chasing the signature of Ruud Gullit, the distinctively dreadlocked two-times Dutch player of the year who had propelled PSV Eindhoven to consecutive Eredivisie titles, the 24-year-old and his representatives travelled to Italy in 1985 to hear what the Milan owner, Silvio Berlusconi, had to say. Pleasantries were exchanged, terms were talked and perhaps feeling a prospective deal was slipping away from him, the future Italian prime minister played his ace in the hole.

Spotting a piano in the lobby of the hotel in which they had convened, the one-time cruise-ship crooner pulled up a stool, flexed his fingers and began to serenade Gullit by playing La Vie En Rose, the signature song of the French diva Edith Piaf.

Bemused, flattered, mesmerised and probably slightly scared by the haunting sound of an elderly Italian sexaholic business tycoon cooing that "It's he for me and I for him, throughout life, He has told me, he has sworn to me for life", Gullit was sold … metaphorically and literally. It was a smart move; his subsequent £6m world record transfer to Milan was an unequivocal success. The perfect pitch had clearly been pitch perfect and clinched the deal, although given what we've learned about Berlusconi and his Bunga Bunga parties in the interim years, the less said about "the endless nights of love" referenced in Piaf's song, the better. BG

5. John Charles (Leeds United to Juventus, 1957, £65,000)

On 24 March 1951 after an injury sustained by the team's centre-forward Len Browning during the previous day's Good Friday defeat by Hull City, Major Frank Buckley, the Leeds United manager, gambled on selecting his 19-year-old Wales centre-half John Charles at centre-forward for the Easter Saturday Division Two match against Manchester City at Maine Road. It didn't work, Charles rarely touched the ball and Leeds lost 4-1 but on Easter Monday he kept the No9 shirt, scored twice against Hull at Elland Road, scored once more in a further two run-outs up front that season but returned to the heart of defence the following campaign, which was curtailed by injury and National Service commitments. After 12 games at the beginning of the 1952-53 season at the back, Buckley again gave Charles the centre-forward role and this time, within a few matches, he was terrorising defences. He combined powerful running, a calm authority, unselfishness, balance, two excellent feet and a devastating indomitability in the air that enabled him to flourish in either role. In 28 matches that season after the switch he scored 26 goals, 42 goals in 39 games the next and four in six in 1954-55 before Buckley's successor, Raich Carter, was forced to shore up his defence with his best player.

In 1955-56 Leeds were promoted with Charles playing eight games at centre-half, four at right-half, 14 at inside-right and 15 at centre-forward: 41 matches in which he scored 29 times. In Division One, with Jack Charlton now a regular in Charles's old position, he played exclusively in the forward line and scored 38 times in 40 appearances. By then Charles had been acclaimed by Nat Lofthouse as the best defender he had ever faced and by Billy Wright as the finest striker he had ever seen. Little wonder, then, that Leeds had been fending off bids for their key player for five years, though back then with a maximum wage and no freedom of contract, unless the club urgently needed funds boards were under no constraints to sell.

On the night of Tuesday 18 September 1956, however, with Leeds second in Division One, Elland Road's West Stand burned down. The club's offices and dressing rooms had been housed in that stand and the losses were considerable – all the kit, the players' boots, balls and United's entire archive of paperwork, records and memorabilia were destroyed. Remarkably Saturday's home match against Aston Villa went ahead with the players changing into hastily sewn replacement strips in nearby houses after the chairman had asked residents along Elland Road to provide emergency accommodation. Charles scored in a 1-0 victory but the cost of the replacement stand, estimated to be £100,000, was never likely to be raised by the insurance settlement on the old one or from the relatively modest personal funds available to the directors.

After the fire Leeds received firm inquiries from Internazionale, Juventus, Lazio and Real Madrid. Gigi Peronace, a man for whom a job description would be inaccurate and restrictive – a polymath fixer, agent, scout, general manager, executive, interpreter, sounding board and liaison officer – had first been to watch Charles in training at Elland Road in 1955 and made contact with the player in April 1957 after a Leeds defeat at Highbury. Umberto Agnelli, the president of Juventus, then travelled to watch Wales play Northern Ireland at Windsor Park and a week later cabled the Leeds chairman, Sam Bolton, telling him to expect his arrival in the city to discuss the transfer.

Charles's agent, Teddy Sommerfield, took the train to Leeds on 18 April with Kenneth Wolstenholme to advise him and booked into the Queen's Hotel where Charles, dodging photographers and entering through the kitchens, met them in room 222. The hotel's Italian waiters, Charles reported, proceeded to do the best promotional work for Juventus possible, even before Agnelli and Peronace arrived, extolling the beauty of the country and the potential of the team.

The first meeting between the two clubs took place in a factory on the outskirts of the city before reconvening in room 233 at the Queen's. After an hour agreement was reached over a £65,000 deal, £55,000 for Leeds and a £10,000 signing on fee for Charles. The talks between the player's representative and Agnelli were more protracted before Sommerfield settled for £70 a week for his client, a £25 away and £15 home win bonus, a car and apartment of his choice.

Britain's costliest player and still, in this author's opinion, its best, led Juventus to the title in his first season with the Bianconeri, scoring 29 times and being named footballer of the year, formed a prolific partnership and friendship with the Argentina and Italy inside forward Omar Sívori, opened a restaurant, recorded two albums' worth of songs and won two further scudettos, two Italian cups and in 1997 was voted Juve's greatest ever foreign player. He returned to Leeds for an ill-fated 11-game spell in 1962 for a fee of £53,000 which was quickly recouped by selling him on to Roma.

His considerable physical attributes and particularly his strength – "he seemed to hover over opponents looking like an eagle among sparrows, a predator surveying lunch," wrote Michael Parkinson – were twinned with a self-effacing and placid character. He never retaliated, was never cautioned or sent off. If he used his wealth unwisely over the years until it was frittered away and in the 1980s and 1990s he could be found once a fortnight in the unpretentious Elland Road West Stand bar that bore his name and his transfer had helped to build 40 years previously, no one had deserved it more than Charles, Juve's imperishable "Il Gigante Buono". RB

6. Tore Andre Flo (Chelsea to Rangers, 2000, £12m)

The record purchase by a Scottish club was, contrary to received wisdom, no flop. The Norwegian striker's 29 SPL goals in 53 appearances following his £12m transfer from Stamford Bridge in November 2000 is more than satisfactory and he ended both his seasons at Ibrox as Rangers' top scorer.

What he symbolised, though, was Rangers' swagger under David Murray when challenged by a Celtic who had been hitherto parsimonious by comparison in the transfer market. When Martin O'Neill was appointed as manager of Celtic in the summer of 2000 he spent almost £20m over six months on six players including Chris Sutton for £6m, Joos Valgaeren for £3.8m and Neil Lennon for £5.75m.

When Sutton was bought from Chelsea in July he became Scotland's record transfer purchase. In 1998 when Celtic had ended Rangers run of successive league titles at nine, Murray's bombast had been evident in his pronouncement: "For every five pounds Celtic spend, we will spend 10." He was as good as his word in November 2000, offering Chelsea's chairman, Ken Bates, double the fee he had received for Sutton for Flo.

The Norwegian had started the season at Stamford Bridge as part of a three-man attack alongside Gianfranco Zola and Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink but had resumed his role as a substitute under Claudio Ranieri after Gianluca Vialli had been sacked five games into the campaign. "The new coach told me I was part of his plans and that I would play more games," he said in October. "But I have to be on the pitch to score and it's not helping me internationally. I have played almost 50 games for my country and don't want to be sitting on the bench." A week later the Guardian reported that Aston Villa's bid of £10m had been turned down and they had been told to return with £15m while the deposed Vialli said his valuation was closer to £17m, £2m more than he had paid for Hasselbaink. On 23 November Chelsea accepted Rangers' offer of £12m but only "reluctantly".

"Flo's been put under a lot of pressure by Norway's manager who has told him that if he doesn't play more regularly he could lose his international place," said Chelsea's managing director, Colin Hutchinson. "Tore is very patriotic and that means a lot to him. He has undoubtedly become frustrated at the lack of starting chances at Stamford Bridge. I think a little bit of work behind the scenes from people advising him has made this move come about."

Flo made his debut for Rangers in the Old Firm game three days after his move, scoring the second goal in a 5-1 victory but Celtic went on to win the league by 15 points and the following season's title by 18 points by which point Alex McLeish had replaced Dick Advocaat as Rangers manager and was looking for a more direct option up front, selling Flo to Sunderland for £6.75m where anyone who had ever seen him play could have told Peter Reid that he was not going to suit his system in a role designed for Niall Quinn. Rangers won the title the season he moved south while Sunderland were relegated but what he achieved on the pitch at Ibrox was secondary to what he symbolised to Murray, not so much keeping up with the Jones's by buying a bigger car but sticking a bloody great yacht on his drive to demonstrate his status as someone, in the old Harry Enfield fashion, "considerably richer than you". RB

Barry GlendenningScott MurrayJacob SteinbergRob Bagchi
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Football transfer rumours: Arsenal to sign Benzema, Ozil and Di María? | Scott Murray

Today's stories feel like they're trapped in a room floating through space for eternity, it's like the end of Sapphire and Steel but with Wayne Rooney rather than Joanna Lumley

Arsenal, we have been copy-and-pasting all summer, are in the market for a marquee signing or two. Having managed to secure a grand total of zero during the first 60 days of the window, now they're going for three in the last four, which seems a bit ambitious to us, but this is what they're insisting. Karim Benzema, Mesut Ozil and Angel di María of Real Madrid are the men in question, £70m the figure that's been plucked from the ether along with their names.

Manchester United, we have been copy-and-pasting all summer, are interested in Everton duo Marouane Fellaini and Leighton Baines. They've upped their bid by another few brass buttons to £36m, David Moyes seemingly obsessed with making Bill Kenwright cry for the first time since that bravura performance in the Rovers when Betty died in Coronation Street.

Liverpool, we have been copy-and-pasting all summer, really need to sort out their central defensive problems, Ron Yeats, Alan Hansen and Sami Hyypia having left rather a long time ago now. It'll be either Mamadou Sakho and Tiago Ilori, providing chief executive Ian "Easy Rider" Ayre doesn't shut up shop before the window closes again and pop off for a spin on his chopper. They're also after Aston Villa reject Shay Given as cover for Simon Mignolet and, in the most optimistic move of the entire window by any club in Europe, are looking for someone to buy Brad Jones.

Eliaquim Mangala, we have been copy-and-pasting all summer, is moving to the Premier League. But where? Manchester United seemed the most obvious destination, but Manchester City and Chelsea have joined the race. They'll all most likely be disappointed, as Barcelona are also showing an interest, and this is the food chain.

Chelsea, we have been copy-and-pasting all summer, are looking to hoick Fernando Torres out of the window. He might end up joining his old pals Atlético Madrid now that Samuel Eto'o has joined the club. Demba Ba meanwhile is being linked with a move back to Newcastle. It's also possible that José Mourinho is considering getting shot of Eto'o, if this recent no-striker gambit of his, which makes Rafael Benítez look more swashbuckling than Tommy Docherty, is anything to go by.

And finally, help. We're trapped in a room. There's no way out!

Transfer windowScott Murray
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