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And very quietly, taking great care not to draw any attention to themselves, lest everyone starts pointing and laughing, Arsenal fans everywhere are removing the umlauts from their Twitter profiles and tearing them off the back of their replica shirts and desperately trying to scrub the umlaut tattoos off their special areas. Öh Mesut! Öh Arsenal! Öh umlauts! They were once every tragic poseur’s must-have diacritic – you were nothing without those special two dots above every vowel in your Twitter user handle. And now? No one wants to be seen dead with one. People would rather be seen spending two seconds in the company of the Fiver – talking to us, making eye contact, stoically pretending not to notice that smell – than be associated with those two little dots. And that really is saying something.
Mesut Özil, though. The man appears to be on a one-man mission to destroy the very concept of the umlaut. That really was quite the feeble performance from the German in Arsenal’s 2-0 Big Cup defeat to Bayern Munich last night. It started with an early penalty that was so tame he might as well have picked up the ball, placed it atop a velvet cushion and then deferentially handed it to Manuel Neuer, before offering to do the Bayern keeper’s household chores for free over the next 10 years. And, er, that was it. As soon as the penalty was saved, Özil cleverly eluded the Bayern midfield by letting the Emirates pitch swallow him whole there and then, thereby allowing him to disappear from view for the next 80 minutes. That’s the kind of quick-thinking and deceptive movement £42.5m buys. Frankly, he deserved the man-of-the-match award – it was an astonishing achievement from him to avoid being substituted.
Arsène Wenger didn’t sound especially pleased with the state of Özil’s penalty, although at least it proves his point about buying expensive players – see, he does know. But mostly his ire was directed at Bayern and the referee, Nicola Rizzoli, for sending off Wojciech Szczesny when the Arsenal man brought down Arjen Robben and gave away a penalty. “Our keeper genuinely went for the ball, he touched Robben and he certainly made more of it,” Wenger wept. “I told Robben that. He has enough experience to know to make more of it.” To be fair, it was easy to understand Wenger’s anger. Not only because Arsenal had threatened to overwhelm the European champions before the concession of the penalty and Yaya Sanogo’s 15 minutes of fame had caused the hard of thinking to compare him to Didier Drogba. Or that Szczesny is facing an extra Uefa rap for his dignified reaction to his red card. It was more than that – Wenger had also just got off the phone to Weird Uncle Fiver about getting that umlaut tattoo removed from his special area and had been quoted £42.5m for the job. What a world.
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QUOTE OF THE DAY
“It may be an avenue we are forced to explore and adopt” – Hull City vice-chairman Ehab Allam says the club may have to raise season-ticket prices by almost 50% … if they fail in their bid to rebrand the club ‘Hull Tigers’.
FIVER LETTERS
“Re: Boston United’s imaginative benefit claimant manager (yesterday’s Quote of the Day). It could be worse. It wasn’t that long ago we employed a player serving a prison sentence for stabbing a horse to death. Every cloud, etc” – Pete Brooksbank.
“Yesterday’s last line is good but, for me, the definitive case of TV film redubbing has to be this” – Mark Gregersen.
“To the herpetological pedants, ophiological pedants and purported serpentologists cited in today’s Fiver: boll [Snip – Fiver Bad Word Ed], boll [Snip – Fiver Bad Word Ed] and boll [Snip! Snip! Snippety-snip! – Fiver Bad Word Ed]. Snakes who use venom can be described as poisonous – it’s common English usage and approved by any dictionary you care to look at. Don’t believe everything you see on QI, they make up spurious distinctions like that to make Alan Davies look silly” – Robert Strang (and 1,056 others).
“Can I be the 1,057th pugilistic pedant to point out the problem with Sami Hyppia’s boxing analogy (yesterday’s Bits and Bobs). A boxer may get up after a knockout, but it would be pointless, as he would have already lost. After such a comprehensive beating, said boxer is likely to be confused, delusional and nonsensical (insert your own Manuel Pellegrini/Arsène Wenger joke here)” – Iain Plummer.
“What do you suppose Pellegrini actually meant by ‘… a big game with two important teams [needing] a referee with more experience’ (yesterday’s Fiver)? Given that Manchester City’s importance on the European stage is limited to a 1970 victory in the Cup Winners’ Cup, I suspect the word he was grasping for was ‘rich’, or possibly ‘self-important’” – Simon Gray.
• Send your letters to [email protected]. And if you’ve nothing better to do you can also tweet the Fiver. Today’s winner of our prizeless letter o’ the day is: Mark Gregersen.
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BITS AND BOBS
Barcelona have been charged with tax fraud over the signing of Neymar.
Uefa will investigate Manuel Pellegrini’s post-match commentzzzzz … Meanwhile, Martín Demichelis reckons referee Jonas Eriksson was right to send him off for a foul on Leo Messi. “I don’t blame the referee,” he anti-Pellegrinied. “It happened all too fast. I have seen the moment again on TV and think ‘Why did I have to tackle him and not keep running by his side?’”
Spurs defender Michael Dawson has hit back at former boss Juande Ramos after he said the club had fat players who would eat at McDonald’s during his tenure. “It was interesting reading there was a McDonald’s around the corner in Chigwell,” scoffed Dawson. “I live not far from Chigwell and I am not sure where that McDonald’s was.”
New Fulham boss Felix Magath has expressed (limited) sympathy for the sacked coaching regime he is replacing. “I was sacked a few times also, I know the situation and I’m sorry for each coach,” he trilled. “But we have here a situation where the management waited a long time. I think if you want to change something, you have to do it now.”
Everton boss Roberto Martínez has backed new coach Duncan Ferguson to make a big impact at the club. “The players respect him,” trembled Martínez.
Former Manchester United No2 Carlos Queiroz insists David Moyes must be given more time to settle into the job. “It’s not my old team, it’s my team,” said Queiroz, neatly passing the buck. “Of course I still care. We’ll be there, don’t worry, just give us a little bit of time, we’ll be there.”
And two men have admitted being part of a burglary in which two safes, an iPad and a 42-inch TV were pinched from Fleetwood Town’s Highbury Stadium. Benjamin O’Connor and Paul Stafford will now be sentenced alongside Stephen Sumner and Paul Palin, who have already pleaded guilty to burglary.
STILL WANT MORE?
Ewan Murray on Toni Kroos, the modern midfielder Bayern would be crazy to lose.
Paul Campbell on why football should scrap the ‘triple punishment’ rule over penalties.
James Riach on five things Felix Magath must do to keep Fulham up.
The Sport Network on Newport’s run to the last eight of the 1981 Cup Winners’ Cup.
Classic YouTube … ah. Well, there’s Maradona v the League of Ireland, Danny Baker’s Right Hammerings and Attilio Lombardo at Samp in this week’s round-up.
Oh, and if it’s your thing, you can follow Big Website on Big Social FaceSpace.
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RUSSIAN ICE HOCKEY’S VERSION OF ANGRY SHOUTY POINTY ARSENAL FAN IS LESS SHOUTY AND POINTY, BUT AT LEAST AS ANGRY
Jacob Steinberg
theguardian.com