END GAME: THEATRE OF THE ABSURD (WARNING: THE FOLLOWING STORY WAS NOT WRITTEN BY ANYONE SCHOLARLY ENOUGH TO INCLUDE CHARACTERS WITHOUT LEGS WHO LIVE IN ADJACENT DUSTBINS)
If only there were a French word for denouement, eh? Oh. Sorry, we'll start that again: football, film and law lore dictates that when it comes to any thrilling endgame the neutral plumps for the underdog. And with the Manchesters City and United level on points, we're set for the most exciting finish this side of Jari Litmanen's little-known spoken word album, Liverpool Ja Laughs. The only problem is that when one bloated footballing super giant coming off the back of 987 titles in a row is playing another bloated footballing super giant about to win 987 titles in a row, it isn't exactly clear who the underdog is.
Ur-dogs Manchester United must beat the Manchester United 4th XI at the Stadium of Light, knowing uberdogs Manchester City must slip up against QPR to give Lord Ferg's team the title. "In the situation we are in at the moment, it looks as though we are going to lose out this season," sobbed Lord Ferg on his suddenly precarious perch. "But there are a lot of young players in the squad. We don't look, in any way, as though it is the end of a period for us. In many ways it is the start for a lot of young players here."
Rather brilliantly for a tea-timely email trying to shoehorn two stories into one and eff off down the drinker for its Friday fill of stress-reliever, City's meeting with QPR is also a relegation decider. Rangers will stay up if they match, or better, Bolton's result at Stoke. And in a twist even twistier than Oliver Twist and Twist out of Spaced's love child sucking on a Twister while watching the movie Twister and doing the twist, QPR manager Mark Hughes is facing the man who replaced him at City, Roberto Mancini.
"This is not important," said Mancini, undermining much of the last paragraph. "On Sunday we play Manchester City against QPR. For me, they are a good team, they don't deserve to stay at the bottom. They want to do everything to stay in the Premier League and for this reason I think it will be a tough game."
Tough game or not, City will be at full strength and it would take miraculous farce or a farcical miracle for them not to win the title. Then again former United player the Wes Brown Comedy Experience could be back for Sunderland – if he can just nod home 53 own-goals, Lord Ferg will be lifting the Premier League title once again.
QUOTE OF THE DAY
"They saw me in tears and realised what it meant to all the City fans. United's players must have seen it too and it seems to have put the pressure on them. I like to think I started the mind games back then and it seems to have done the trick" - if Manchester City win the title on Sunday it won't be down to the £600m+ of petro-cash hosed into the club by Sheikh Mansour, but the salty tears of deluded crying man John Millington, who was broadcast around the world weeping salty tears because a football team he likes were losing to Swansea City.
QUOTE OF THE DAY
"I was talking to one of my mates about it. We were wondering if Mancini would ask me to come on the bus with them or even lift the trophy on the pitch. I'll wait for his call!" - John Millington again, this time hoping he gets the credit he deserves should Manchester City win the title.
FIVER LETTERS
"I just wanted to point out a small error in Tuesday's Fiver (I'm catching up). You said that St Johnstone striker Derek Riordan was arrested outside a trendy Edinburgh nightclub. Let me assure you, the HMV Picture House is not trendy, although it sits next to another 'trendy' nightclub, affectionately known as Scrubbers/Scrubway)" - John Falconer.
"I accept that the Fiver is perhaps an inappropriate forum for the ensuing epistle, but inquiring minds need to know: is the Thomas Thompson who featured in yesterday's Fiver Letters any relation to the deceased Canadian painter of the same name? And before 1,056 pedants indicate that the latter's surname lacked a 'p', let it be remembered that the names of Herge's Thomson and Thompson featured the same difference, though they were directly related" - Christopher Willoughby-Drupe.
"Re: Arsenal's star players gaining inches in height in their attempts to resist being dragged out of the Emirates by representatives from richer, more successful clubs (yesterday's Fiver). According to Man City's roster, Gael Clichy is currently listed at 5ft 8in in height. If, as the Fiver posits, he was 24 inches shorter than that while at Arsenal, he
would have been, at 3ft 8in, the shortest top-flight player in English league history. Why do I not remember that at all? Perhaps the pedant patrol can assist here" - Mike Wilner.
Send your letters to the.boss@guardian.co.uk. And if you've nothing better to do you can also tweet the Fiver.
BITS AND BOBS
Despite the professional, assured manner in which Liverpool FC's PR department conducted its business during the Luis Suarez-Patrice Evra r@cism row, the club's director of communications, Ian Cotton, will leave the club after 16 years service.
Manchester United defender Chris Smalling's faint hopes of being complicit in England's Euro 2012 shame have been dashed by groin-knack.
Wolves players have been nothing if not predictable in their reaction to the news that former FC Copenhagen manager Stale Solbakken, who is almost certainly unique in having once died for five minutes before going on to mastermind a Big Cup win over Manchester United, is their new manager. "I don't know who the guy is to be honest," said big-money flop Roger Johnson. ""Seriously, I don't know who he is," added his team-mate Ronald Zubar.
Barcelona winger Pedro has joined England's Brave John Terry, the Fiver and the gang of blokes in hard hats and Hi Vis bibs who loiter around the greasy spoon near Fiver Towers without ever actually seeming to do any work on the Long List of Folk Likely To Miss Out On A Trip To Euro 2012. "Pedro has been trying his best," said Spain manager Vincent del Bosque. "But he's had an erratic season. We have a limit of 23 players, and we can't take any more."
In a portent of Manchester United imminent status as Premier League also-rans, Michael Owen's horse Brown Panther joined Pippy and Tomway, owned by his Manchester United team-mate Wayne Rooney, in failing to win at Chester Races this week. [Fiver ponders ambling over to racing desk to see if any of the trio were beaten by a really expensive horse owned by a preposterously wealthy Sheikh, then decides not to bother].
And a report in today's Bucharest Herald suggests at least 400 Athletic Bilbao fans flew to the Hungarian capital for Wednesday night's Euro Vase final, instead of going to the Romanian city of Bucharest where the match was actually staged. In the hope of avoiding similar scenes, All England Lawn Tennis Club officials have asked us to remind West Ham fans that their play-off final against Blackpool is being played at Wembley.
STILL WANT MORE?
Teams, goals, games, signings, pundits, gripes, flops, ill-advised PR stunts featuring Luis Suarez t-shirts - our writers review the good, the bad and the ugly of the football season prompting assorted readers to foam at the mouth in the relevant comment sections below the line.
We've made up for the fact that we've ignored League Two all season by producing this unwieldy 8,000 word summary of how each club fared.
Rob Smyth takes off his spectacles, rolls up his sleeves and gets ready to rumble in a pwopah nawty fashion after penning The Joy of Six: Last-day relegation scraps. And, yes, that one you're thinking of from Romania's Seria VIII-a is in there.
David Lacey was covering football before your great-grandfather was in short trousers, so listen up as he harks back to a world before the internet, electricity, running water and other amenities still absent from many parts of the north-west and tells you about the last time Manchester City won the title.
And AC Jimbo takes time out from bringing regional football highlights to TV viewwers in Southampton and Portsmouth to bring midweek newspaper highlights to an even smaller pool of viewers.
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'FINISHED, IT'S FINISHED, NEARLY FINISHED, IT MUST BE NEARLY FINISHED'
انسخ الكود التالى و ضعه فى موقعك او مدونتك.
