Click here to have the Fiver sent to your inbox every weekday at 5pm, or if your usual copy has stopped arriving DISCLAIMER: OTHER ILLEGAL FEEDS ARE AVAILABLE Professional football is both written about and marketed from the perspective of those who go to the game. A match report may mention the sweet smell of the freshly watered pitch as it’s warmed by a sultry late-summer sun; an advert might pan across a crowd as they bounce up and down while singing their song
DISCLAIMER: OTHER ILLEGAL FEEDS ARE AVAILABLE
Professional football is both written about and marketed from the perspective of those who go to the game. A match report may mention the sweet smell of the freshly watered pitch as it’s warmed by a sultry late-summer sun; an advert might pan across a crowd as they bounce up and down while singing their song. It’s all, needless to say, an entirely disingenuous affair. That’s partly because crowds are mainly silent these days, partly because the top notes of eau de Premier League are less redolent of well-manicured turf, more stale lager, soupy urine and the overwhelming stench of existential despair. But mainly it’s because most of us have been sh@fted by capitalism, and we simply can’t afford to attend top-flight football these days, instead condemned to spending our weekends sitting hunched in front of the computer in a string vest and suspiciously stained jeggings squinting at a dodgy feed and straining our ears so we can cobble together the West Bromwich Albion team news from Egyptian Arabic. We’re pretty sure it’s not just the Fiver who spends each and every weekend doing exactly that.
So for those of us who consume the game solely through television, via proxy servers also loaded up with the finest premium bongo, today was an important day, as the opening tranche of live fixtures for this year’s Premier League was announced. And that announcement brought bad news for Liverpool fans, whose season will be over before anyone else has even kicked a ball. They get the 2013-14 campaign started early doors on 17 August with a disappointing lunchtime draw at Anfield against Stoke City, the first match to be transmitted on the new BT Sport service, and simulcast on www.glamourandillegalsubscriptionsoccer.com. A very super Super Saturday continues over on the more established Sky Sports, who later in the evening transmit a fixture between Swansea City and Manchester United that’ll also be broadcast on www.contrabandsmut.eu/bootlegfitba.
The first stellar clash of the televised season comes 10 days into the new campaign as Manchester United host Chelsea on Sky (and also at www.indecencies-u-like.co.uk/flagrantcopyrightviolation), a match which will chart the beginning of David Moyes’s rapid descent into raging paranoia and jabbering madness, or the beginning of José Mourinho’s rapid descent into raging paranoia and jabbering madness. Before then, all three promoted sides will have already had their fresh-faced phizogs on the telly: Crystal Palace hosting Tottenham Hotspur and Hull City travelling to Chelsea on the first Sunday, then Cardiff City and Manchester City putting on a joint production of The Tragical History of the Life and Death of Doctor Faustus a week later. The big TV events keep coming thick and fast, though the Fiver doesn’t have the time, room or inclination to go through every one up until December. A quick scout around on Google should bring up a comprehensive list, though be careful kids, the internet is a wild frontier containing some very dubious content; it’s not all innocent stuff like live football, clips of cats and dogs peering out of toilet bowls, and retro grot.
QUOTE OF THE DAY
“I don’t have any kids, so I thought ‘why not’. Realistically, the alternative was going to be somewhere like Accrington” – journeyman midfielder Bas Savage comes to the conclusion that he’d rather ply his trade in Bangkok than Lancashire.
FIVER LETTERS
“Is it just me, or is anyone else filled with a strange foreboding when David Moyes claims he’s been to Wayne Rooney’s house (yesterday’s Bits and Bobs)? Somehow I’m struck by the image of a shaking Wayne peering through his window curtains on a dead summer night, while a jet-black car idles threateningly across the drive. He looks out as the tinted window slowly rolls down, revealing Moyes’ cold, unblinking, pitiless eyes. Then the engine roars, and before Wayne can jump back the car surges down the road, disappearing into the Stygian dark. Man. And they say the off-season isn’t exciting” – Scott Connolly.
“Shahid Khan in charge of Fulham (yesterday’s Fiver)? That may still provide its share of entertainment. If you had looked at sports news from over the pond (I know, but bear with me) recently you would have noticed that one of Mr Khan’s ideas for improving woeful attendances at his Jacksonville Jaguars games is, and I’m not making this up, showing TV coverage of the other games in the NFL on the giant screens in the stadium during Jaguars games. The NFL of course having cracked the conundrum that apparently confounds the best minds of the Premier League, of selling TV rights and sticking to traditional kick-off times without fail. Imagine if he tried a similar scheme at Fulham. The Premier League would likely disappear up its own tailpipe trying to decide who to sue for copyright breach” – Jason Tew.
“Enough endless transfer speculation and strategic leaks from players’ Mr15%s: why can’t Big Website liven up the off-season with the occasional minute-by-minute report from a Nigerian promotion battle (Fivers passim)? Just reading the list of goalscorers would see us nicely through most of the summer” – Justin Kavanagh.
“Re: Seattle Sounders interior designer Obafemi Martins upholstering his gold-plated dining room chairs with tops from his seven previous clubs (yesterday’s Bits and Bobs). Any word on the size of auditorium in LA Robbie Keane will need to install in house to do the same job?” – Padraic Cassidy.
“On the basis of the final item on Theo Walcott’s high hopes for Arsenal in yesterday’s Bits and Bobs, can I suggest that you introduce a full-scale Sky Sports-style ‘Footballers Who Say In Interviews That Their Team Will Do Well This Season’ section in the Fiver in future. You could probably replace most of the usual stuff with it. Which would probably be as much of a relief to you as to us. PS: am I the only one wondering whether Yohan Cabaye might end up joining big-lunged elderly relative Montserrat in Barcelona, or are there 1,056 others?” – Nick Drew.
• Send your letters to the.boss@guardian.co.uk. Also, 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: Nick Drew.
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BITS AND BOBS
Wilfried Bony, em, has joined Swansea City for £12m. “I had a lot of offers from all across the world, including England, France, Ukraine, Russia and the UAE,” he big-I-amed.
Pep Guardiola has grabbed his saxophone, circular specs and pulled a mock salute before joining David Moyes in a Benny Hill-style chase for Barcelona prodigy Thiago Alcântara. “It is either Thiago or nothing,” boomed Guardiola.
Racing Santander have denied there was any funny business involved in their 3-0 home win over Hercules on the last day of the second division season in Spain. “I believe it was clearly fixed … there will be news,” thundered league president Javier Tebas in response.
Martin Olsson has signed on Norwich’s dotted line, while Leroy Fer – he who bought his girlfriend a £22,000 horse, failing to consider that she lived in a high-rise flat – is also set to join.
Sunderland’s relentless buying of everyone is continuing as Velez Sarsfield’s Gino Peruzzi coughs for their doctors.
And the Welsh Government has agreed a stadium sponsorship deal with Cardiff City, renaming the club’s Canton Stand the Croeso Stand … which – according to the Fiver’s leek-waving, bread of heaven-eating, male voice choir-singing Welsh cousin Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch Fiver – translates as Welcome To Stand. That shouldn’t cause any problems at all.
RECOMMENDED VIEWING
Internacional player Maurides scores first ever professional goal. Celebrates with backflip. Knacks knee.
STILL WANT MORE?
In today’s Rumour Mill: the Mill pretends to invent a game in order to file today’s column in five seconds flat.
Included free with today’s football quiz: one mild freak-out as you realise just how old you now are as you guess the season from the pictures provided.
And the fact that Brendan Rodgers is keeping quiet for once speaks volumes for Luis Suárez’s future, reckons Paul Wilson.
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FOOTBALLERS WHO SAY IN INTERVIEWS THAT THEIR TEAM WILL DO WELL THIS SEASON
“There are a lot of good teams out there but with the squad we’ve got, we have great players and a great mentality here, we can do very well this season” – Kolo Touré gives it the big talk at his Liverpool unveiling.