Attention DirectTV subscribers with jobs and/or lives. You are currently missing the following :
ch. 613 (FSC) – Lecce 1, Fiorentina 3 (Serie A)
ch. 614 (Gol) – AC Milan 2, Lazio 0 (Serie A)
(11, Schevchenko, 14, Kaladze)
ch. 614 (Setanta US) – Doncaster 0, Manchester City 0 (Carling Cup)
Ugliest result (thus far) from the Worthless Cup – last night’s 8-3 comeback victory for Aston Villa over Wycombe. The Guardian’s Barry Glendenning struggles to make sense of post-match comments by Villa’s David O’Leary.
According to the League table, 61 places separate Premiership poormouths Aston Villa and League Two journeymen Wycombe Wanderers. According to the AA Route Planner, 92.42 miles separate their grounds. So when a deranged band of Villa fans embarked on a – Fiver counts its extremities – 184.84-mile round trip, on a school-night, to pay lots of their own money to watch an underachieving team of overpaid wasters troop off at half-time in a Carling Cup tie 3-1 down to a team slumming it three divisions below them, you could forgive them for voicing their displeasure.
After all, history didn’t suggest that Villa would emerge for the second half and score seven goals without reply, which is what they did, astonishingly enough, prompting manager Dvd O’Lry (above) to plumb new depths of smugness, even by his own charmless standards. “I take no notice,” he said of the boo-boys, clearly taking notice. “There is a genuine bunch of fans and then there is a fickle mob who get on your back very quickly. You have to let it go right over your head.”
And as the Fiver ran assorted snatches of this drivel through its spanking new Managerial Waffle Translator (results: “genuine bunch” = “gullible morons who’ll put up with any old rubbish” and “fickle mob” = “justifiably angry travelling supporters”), O’Lry was fulsome in his praise for his charges. “We didn’t panic and they deserve credit for digging themselves out of trouble,” he beamed. Asked to elaborate on how he’d prompted Villa’s remarkable second-half turnaround, however, the Irishman was giving little away: “We knew the first half wasn’t good enough and what I said to the players will remain in the dressing room,” he declared, leading a confused Fiver to surmise that it must have been half-time hugs, congratulations and backslaps all around.
After all, anything else would have been fickle
Bury, two points from the bottom of League Two, fired manager Graham Barrow on Monday. League One strugglers Bristol City (one win in 9 matches) announced the resignation of director John Laylock today, following the departure of manager Brian Tinnion after a 7-1 defeat at Swansea City a 10 days ago.
Bolton have lost Ivan Campo for the next 6-8 weeks after the midfielder broke his foot in training yesterday.