Who Is Your Chris Waddle?

Chris Waddle has angered people with his opinions again. The recently retired David Beckham, England’s Rose, has been the subject of a savage broadside from this former yeoman of the mullet, who has declared that the former Preston North End winger wouldn’t make his list of the top 1,000 Premiership players of all time.

Waddle has form for this, having once angered Arsenal fans for suggesting that Theo Walcott has no footballing brain. He will only continue to dispense such savage barbs as he persistently throws himself elbow-first into the most fragile of footballing discourse, in the vain hope that it will divert attention from an underwhelming media career. His greatest contribution to the world of football analysis thus far has been his consistent mispronunciation of the word penalty as ‘pelanty’. Does he do this because he’s melanty ill? No. Like everything provocative he ever says, he does it for a good reason, and I must confess – I suspect I am that reason. You see, on some cosmic level, though he may not realise it, Waddle has a point to prove to me.

As a child discovering football, the first thing I ever learnt about him was that he once missed a penalty (perhaps this was the psychological trigger for his tragic speech impediment?) in pretty much the worst way possible. The second thing I learnt about him was that he had an amusing name, thanks to The Fast Show reducing it to a comic staple. The third thing was that he had an electrifying screen presence in that Pizza Hut advert he did with Stuart Pearce and Gareth Southgate. In my mind, these factors had rendered him a laughing stock, and anything he had ever done would forever be viewed through the prism of my relative youth and my perception of his flaws. For me, he was never a good player and never could be considered as such. This was before I’d even heard of Diamond Lights. It’s a harsh system, but that’s just the way it works.

So it’s no wonder that Waddle continues to court controversy. He’s a former lothario frustrated by his own impotence, a man whose former relevance is brought into sharper relief with the passing of time, no longer capable of captivating interest as he once did. He knows he’s a joke to people like me, people too young to truly acknowledge his former glories. According to the man himself in this interview, he may have been one game away from winning the 1991 Ballon D’Or. Now he is a joke, a relic of the past, a dull fart squeaking through the slack buttocks of a slumbering geriatric. The anti-Beckham invective is his way of reminding the world of football that he once used to be one if it’s leading dramatis personae. He is the embodiment of every 40-something Sunday league footballer who boasts of his former relevance, deluding himself by boring those around him with sad tales of what should’ve been, if only the world had taken greater notice of their majesty.

Everyone has a player like this, a player for whom it’s inconceivable that he ever once possessed divine talent. There are some children who are yet to be born who will one day see a washed-up, clapped-out Lionel Messi sluggishly going through the motions for Atletico Madrid and laugh at the fact that if this clown can win a Ballon D’or, then even QPR’s Brooklyn Beckham must surely have a shot of winning it eventually.

Every football fan has a Chris Waddle. We all identify a former great by the schadenfreude-tinged footnotes that have appended themselves to an erstwhile glittering career. Waddle may have been idolised at Tottenham, and excelled abroad in a way that so few Englishmen have before or since, and been a match away from being the world’s best in his heyday. To me, he will always be some unfortunate, Frank Spencerish footballing harlequin, stumbling and bumbling from missed penalty to comedy sketch to Pizza Hut advert, always and forever, irrevocably trapped in the role my adolescent brain prescribed him. Nothing he can ever do or say will ever change that. Ulmitately he has paid the pelanty. Chris Waddle will always be my ‘Chris Waddle’. Who is yours?

What Next For Team Hughes?

Mark Hughes is no longer the manager of Queen’s Park Rangers. Many of us have been aware of that for some time, but it was made official last Friday, after Harry Redknapp somehow convinced the Rangers board that he genuinely wanted to manage the Ukraine national team. As part of the ruse, Redknapp took photos of his son Jamie tied up and beaten, showed them to QPR chairman Tony Fernandes, and insisted that “We’re in deep wiv the gangsters! I ain’t got no choice!”.

Hughes has immediately plunged back into work, having been hired by Transport For London, where he will travel on trains and tut extremely loudly at anyone that misbehaves. But what about his backroom staff? It’s no secret that Hughes is accompanied to each new club by an extended coterie that fulfils his every need. Assistant manager Mark Bowen and goalkeeping coach Kevin Hitchcock are reasonably well known, but there are others working behind the scenes who are vital to Hughes’s middling success. Let’s take a look at some of the work conducted by Team Hughes.

Jon Plumber, Carpenter – His primary role is given to making extra large desks for Hughes, although in recent months he has been working ever more frantically, sanding down wooden surfaces (such as doorframes, shelves etc) that have been bitten by QPR players out of sheer frustration at their own bumbling incompetence. A fan of the sitcom Seinfeld, he is eager to try out the infamous ‘desk-bed’ model famously pioneered by George Costanza. He has been pitching the idea to workaholic Hughes for years, with no apparent success. His next club may well benefit from such unfulfilled furniture potential; it is thought that Reading’s Brian McDermott, with his poor diet high in sugar and saturated fats, may benefit from such power naps. Invaluable for team morale, with his ironic surname causing no end of dressing room japes!

Anna Plapp, Freudian Analyst – Paid every 15 minutes to assess the troubled psyche of the Welsh manager-turned-redundand. May struggle to find work at another Premier League club, having attracted criticism for failing to recognise the obvious phallic symbol represented by Hughes’s pathological proclivity for increasingly large desks. That such an experienced analyst would fail to spot such a glaring neurosis is a damning indictment of their work, but is considered a rare oversight. She once famously diagnosed Hughes’s unconscious desire to hump his mother simply by observing the way the Welshman ties his shoelaces. Hughes has been a fan ever since, and he and his mother are now happily in sex with one another.

Loz Smith, Feng Shui adviser – Forever indebted by Hughes for the masterstroke of placing two big, round, pink beanbags either side of his big desk to make them look like balls. This technique was employed while at Fulham, and was an implicit invitation to the players to sit next to the manager and discuss their personal problems throughout the day. This unorthodox method helped to raise team spirits, and developed the manager’s rapport with his team, whilst also making Hughes feel as if he had massive testicles, which he liked.

Keith Bembley, Club Stationer – Responsible for stocking and arranging vital office equipment such as mousemats, Post-It notes, desk tidies, desktop calendars and other essential desk-related sundries. Must also ensure the prompt delivery of Desk! magazine by the first Friday of each month. He doesn’t really do much else. An essential part of Team Hughes.

Susan Guzan, PA – Plays a vital role, constantly taking dictation on behalf of Hughes, noting down every thought to spill from his pinched old lady mouth and prematurely aged head. He is unable to take notes of his own, as years of obsessive (David Bentley once said “monomaniacal”, surprisingly) desk use have rendered him incapable of writing down anything unless he is at a perfect 90 degree angle to a flat page. Previous attempts at taking pitchside notes whilst standing up have resulted in some harrowing tragedies, such as the time he accidentally severed a ball-boy’s jugular vein when trying to double-underline the phrase ‘flat back four’. Hughes has only ever used crayons since.

John Terry: I’m Not A Racist

Ruud Gullit Sitting On A Shed is no stranger to delivering sizey scoops, and today we can exclusively reveal the defence that John ‘John Terry denies the charge’ Terry will unveil to a jury at Westminster Magistrates Court.

On Monday he will battle with trademark bravery to clear his name of allegations that he is a racist, placing his brave head in the way of imminent danger of prosecution with the typically defiant charge-denial for which he has become synonymous. After months of denying the charge in the privacy of his own home, he will at last be given a public platform upon which to deny the charge in full view, so his charge-denying can be judged entirely on its own merits. After months of consultation with an expertly-assembled team of charge-denying experts, it has been decided that the no-charge Chelsea champion will give a heartfelt recital of this poem, which is expected to leave jurors in floods of horrible tears. Terry has spoken to team-mates of his hope that denying this charge will finally demonstrate his ability to deny charges to a world-class level, with a view to denying more charges in the future. However, with his career winding down, pundits suspect that he can no longer deny charges as he used to several years ago, and that he may need to deny charges in a more lucrative market, such as the MLS, where he can deny American charges, such as allegations of jaywalking (which Terry’s legal team is quick to point out is something that their client pre-emptively denies any and all charges of).

An Open Letter to David Moyes

I DECLARE THIS LETTER OPEN

David/Moyesy,

I can’t help but notice that your club, Everton Football Club, has no strikers. Since Louis Saha’s untimely death, and Victor Anichebe’s untimely birth, you’ve clearly struggled up front. Thankfully, I know a thing or two about football (see previous sentence, wherein I correctly spell the names of two notable football figures), and have devised some revolutionary concepts designed to overcome this notable handicap.

• Firstly, are you absolutely certain that you’ve looked everywhere? And I mean ‘everywhere’? These things turn up in unexpected places, ie, the back of the sofa, cupboards etc. James Beattie hasn’t been seen in a while, is it possible that he might not be knocking around somewhere, in the room where the Lucozade is kept, perhaps?

• Why not take two defenders from your youth team and get one to sit on the other’s shoulders, whilst wearing a fake moustache and an extra-large Everton shirt with a number nine on it? I know what you’re thinking: why take two child defenders when I could just take two child strikers? This is a good idea, but no. Their wages would be prohibitively expensive, especially given the added overhead of novelty moustaches and comically oversized football shirts.

• Inquire as to the availability of Ray Winstone’s monolithic, floating head from the Bet365 adverts:

1. Pros: Good in air; low injury risk; very low financial outlay required on boots, socks, etc; surprisingly deft touch for a massive animated head.
2. Cons: Unproven at top level; tremendous strain on computer animator’s wrists.

• Just act like it isn’t true that you have no strikers. Flood post-match interviews, programme notes and so forth with even more empty cliché than usual. Say things like: “It’s no secret that the competition up front is fierce, but it’s a nice problem to have”, “It’s hard keeping so many strikers happy, but goals win games, so it’s a nice problem to have”, and so on. Like Father Ted kicking Bishop Brennan up the arse, the football world will be totally nonplussed by your ignorance of the whole thing, and it will be absorbed by the football community thanks to the twin wonders of received opinion and ignorance.

• Ask your groundsman to install a moveable halfway line, which can be manipulated via a system of pulleys. Depending on the half, move it closer to the defending goal so the attacking half appears bigger, thus making it easier for defenders and midfielders to flood the box. Supporters will barely notice that you have no forwards.

• Male porn stars shave their balls and pubis in order to create the illusion that their penis is bigger; shave Marouane Fellaini’s head?

Pictured: one enormous striker

Steve McClaren opens his mouth to speak…

Former Nottingham Forest manager Steve McClaren has spoken of his future plans in the wake of his ignominious departure from the club, stating that he doesn’t plan on being out of a job for very long. It is believed that he will seek a job in retail management in order to hone certain skills such as his man-management techniques, motivational aptitude, and his ability to order new stock.

Though McClaren may talk ambitiously of finding his way at one of the leading department stores (Marks & Spencer’s Bluewater store is known to be looking for a new Department Manager, but he may be reluctant to play second fiddle to the Store Manager), the only retailer to have expressed any interest at this early stage is ragbag, ragtag outfit TK Maxx. However, irate shoppers have already expressed reservations on Twitter, with one user stating that “McClaren has a proven track record of failure, and his visual merchandising skills would be an insult to the York City club shop”.

With such early opposition to his potential appointment, it is thought unlikely that a major player will be willing to risk alienating their followers. Although McClaren has worked under the best (he once appeared in a television documentary with the geometrically-coiffured Mary Portas, as he attempted to turn around the fortunes of a local charity shop), he also famously disappointed during a high-profile work experience stint at the now-defunct Woolworths, having failed to sell a single easter egg during the month of March.