Rich Cooper doesn’t know anything about football, but he works in an office full of people who do. This is his attempt at making sense of the weekend’s football without watching a single match, based purely on hearsay and speculation.
The men looked at their feet, then at the ball, then at each other.
Each wore a look of desperate confusion. What were they doing here? What were all the people in the stadium around them doing here? And why was everyone shouting? It was a complete mystery. One man tentatively tapped the ball with his right foot, the transfer of kinetic energy between the two causing the ball to roll forward a few feet. He leapt back in amazement. “Chaps,” he exclaimed. “Did you see that? I think I just invente-”
Phweeeeep. The whistle blew, signalling the end of West Brom v Middlesbrough, officially the most boring game of professional football ever played; a game so boring it failed to even register as passed time. During the match, NHS England reported a 120% rise in eye-gougings, the most ever recorded in a single 90 minute period. Chief Executive Simon Stevens said that the rise was “unexpected but understandable, given the levels of utter shite on display today.” There were no goals and only a handful of survivors.
Photo by Mark Runnacles/Getty Images
Manchester United added another win to their resurgence with a hard-fought game against Hull. Their third Premier League game in the charge of caretaker manager Steve Bruce 2: Spawn of Steve Bruce, Hull put up a formidable defence against United, holding the game at a steady 0-0 for the entire 90 minutes. The game eventually tipped over into injury time, when last-minute substitute Rash Ford came on to score a late winner. Ford, a mere 18 months old, first came to prominence after winning a local dribbling competition. His mother was quoted as being “proud, but running out of napkins.”
The match saw the return of ‘Fergie Time’, the mid 90s song/dance craze helmed by former United manager and gabber DJ Lord Alex Ferguson. The crossover hit dominated the charts in 1995 and was famous for its accompanying dance routine: chew, chew, step, chew chew, hairdryer, chew, step step, chew chew. Though hugely popular, the song was derided by critics, with the NME describing it as “literally worse than genocide” and “like being fucked in the ear by a pilled-up Glaswegian degenerate”.
Spurs faced off against Liverpool in a game that had all the makings of a classic, but instead was marred by some questionable refereeing. A debatable offside decision resulted in one of four outcomes: a goal scored by Liverpool was disallowed; a goal conceded by Liverpool was disallowed; a goal scored by Tottenham was disallowed, or a goal conceded by Tottenham was disallowed. It was a disgraceful decision, unless of course you support the other team, in which case it was a good call.
Photo by Jan Kruger/Getty Images
Tottenham’s man in goal was without a doubt the standout of the match. A vormidable presence in the box, the Spurs keeper lay vormant for the first 20 minutes, but suddenly was working even harder than vormal, shutting down a few strong chances for Liverpool. The keeper was just getting vormed up though, later bagging a couple of saves that were nothing short of vormographic. There was a great deal of controversy surrounding a particularly close save, but was later brushed off by the keeper as simply being a vorm in a teacup.
Harry Kane came under fire again for failing to score for the 1,384th Premier League game in a row. Kane is now second only to Mr Whiskers, a blind cat accidentally signed by Everton in the late 1980s who went 1,402 days without scoring. Mr Whiskers then netted a hat-trick against Southampton and was killed in the subsequent celebratory pile-on. His memory lives on.
Due to a technical error, Chelsea were accidentally booked to play Burnley Village Athletics Society at the local community centre. Though obviously a mistake, Chelsea showed their respect for the game and their opponents by turning up for the match as scheduled, then beating them senseless. It was a merciless and bloody affair, with at least three of the eight Burnley supporters visibly weeping and begging for the slaughter to end.
In other news, Crystal Palace fans still hate Alan Pardew and Manchester City are boringly good at football. Not strictly news, then. It’s still all to play for!
Got any hot footballing tips for Rich? Keep them to yourself, but follow him on Twitter anyway: @richcooper
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