Mikel Arteta, as we know, often uses, well, quite quirky methods to get the most out of his players, and he’s at it again. According to The Telegraph, he will be looking for advice from RAF pilots to help improve the manner in which his players communicate. No, seriously.
For them, Arteta explained, good communication is “life or death”. “I’m sure they don’t use 20 phrases or 20 words if there is one word. Don’t say ‘nah, the wind is coming this way, now you have to turn left’, because boom, dead. So, it will be one word.”
How impressed was Sky pundit Jamie O’Hara with the idea? “Do RAF pilots know how to defend? Do they know how to come for a cross? Do they know how to tell your winger to tuck in? An RAF pilot is an incredible person who knows how to fly a plane, he doesn’t know how to defend a set piece.” Not very.
QUOTE
“Are you Schmeichel in disguise?”
Manchester United fans jinxing their new goalie Senne Lammens who will inevitably produce at least three howlers in his next outing.
Roykini is football’s fashion item of the week
Football-related clothing item of the week? We’ll hand you over to the FashionBeans website: “At Dublin’s first Fashion Week, one look stole the entire show. Pellador – the young Limerick-born label – turned heads with a creation nobody could have predicted. Enter the “Roykini”, a bikini featuring Roy Keane reimagined in swimwear.”
Yes, it is indeed probably fair to say that not many of us predicted Roy Keane’s face popping up on bikinis, but here we are. “What makes Pellador exciting is its refusal to play it safe,” FashionBeans continued. “The Roykini embodies this philosophy ... the result is unforgettable.” That it is. Coming to a beach near you.
WORD OF MOUTH
“I’m available if they’re struggling, and I’ll do it for nothing. Put my name in the hat.”
Neil Warnock generously offering his managerial services to Manchester United.
“I can only congratulate those in Stuttgart for finding – I’ll use quotation marks here – an idiot who paid that much money. Because we certainly wouldn’t have done that in Munich.”
Karl-Heinz Rummenigge being a little bit rude about Newcastle paying €75m for Nick Woltemade. (After four goals in his first seven games, Stuttgart are probably sorry they didn’t look for €100m).
“There was a bit of a lack of respect there, even a bit of rudeness too, with no one giving you a ‘good morning’, a ‘good afternoon’. But anyway, that’s in the past.”
Antony on Manchester United folk being impolite to him. If they had chatted with him, it’d have been along the lines of ‘how the bloody hell did you cost €94m?’
“It is like becoming a grandparent – you don’t get to see the players all of the time, you send them back to their parents.”
United States gaffer Emma Hayes on the benefits of being an international manager.
A dinner with Lamine Yamal’s ... mother?
When event planning company Jen C teased the world with an intriguing announcement recently, some of us didn’t read it carefully enough so this is what we saw: “We don’t want to give too much away, but guests are in for a treat for one night only in London with one of the best footballers in the world”.
That sounded very exciting, until we had another look: “We don’t want to give too much away, but guests are in for a treat for one night only in London with one of the best footballers in the world’s mum”.
Yes, on November 7th, you can have a Christmas dinner in the same London hotel room as Sheila Ebana, Barcelona maestro Lamine Yamal’s Ma – and if you shell out €360 for a VIP ticket, you can even have your photo taken with her.
Hurry, though, “organisers state that tickets are limited”. You fear the number of attendees will be too.
NUMBER: 1,730
The cost (in Euros) of the cheapest ticket for next year’s World Cup final in New Jersey ... just the €1,555 more expensive than the cheapest one for the 2022 final.
