Excellent Fiver tonight.

FIVER SAYS NO! TO NEGATIVITY

Notice how plain women always hang around with absolute boilers? Makes
them comparatively beautiful, see. Similarly, the presence of
Sunderland in this season's Premiership has made the rest of the
league look relatively good. But closer inspection reveals bags under
the eyes and pungent BO. We are on course for the first Premiership
season in history in which the average number of goals per game will
be under two. So is it really surprising that Liverpool and Chelsea
have emulated the MU Rowdies by being dumped out of Europe because of
their inability to score?

Lord Ferg abandoned his club's attacking tradition to fiddle with his
formation like a fumbling teenager, while Liverpool and Chelsea
ignored proven goalscorers Michael Owen and Hernan Crespo in order to
take on the cream of the continent with jumped-up bouncers such as
Peter Crouch and Didier Drogba - rich men's versions of Kevin Davies,
Mr Em and James Beattie, to name but three other oafs indulged by
English clubs.

Do you think Portuguese midfielder Tiago rang compatriot Comical Jose
last night to offer a further example? "You flogged me, a creative
player, to Lyon for a GBP1.5m loss and then splurged GBP24.4m to
relieve them of Michael Essien," he could have lectured. "And while
that glorified mule missed your Barcelona shambles because of
suspension, I delivered a man-of-the-match performance and two silky
goals in my new team's 4-0 destruction of PSV." Laudable Lyon combine
class with adventure, while the top English clubs blend brawn with
yawns.

The situation is, like the Fiver most Friday nights, scandalous and
staggering. Shouldn't Liverpool fans be singing "You'll never work
again" to a manager who invited Big Cup elimination by dropping his
best player in the first leg and trying to scab a 0-0? Is it really
acceptable for a team with infinite wealth to try to blag a goal in
the Nou Camp by sending on a second-rate centre-back as striker? And,
most staggering of all, is the man who's masterminding Lyon's
swashbuckling progress the same Ged Houllier who was run out of
Anfield two years ago for being narrow-minded and boring? Or is
Rafael Benitez that Ged Houllier in disguise?

Posted By: Arizona Bay, Mar 9, 17:13:58