Ranieri joke’s honest, right .. and a killer

A GOOD news story to kick off the New Year. Steve Bruce is back in management at Sheffield Wednesday.

It’s his 10th club in 21 seasons and in that time, despite winning precisely no trophies, he’s only been unemployed for a total of 17 months.

Oh, and his Wednesday contract is said to be worth £2million a year. So please can we hear no more cries about the lack of opportunities for, or the undervaluing of, English bosses. USUALLY when a non-designated penalty-taker grabs the ball, shrugs off protesting team-mates, places it and misses, the manager goes into defensive mode.

Think Roberto Martinez when Everton’s Kevin Mirallas took it off Leighton Baines and blasted wide in a 0-0 draw against West Brom four years ago.

“The big disappointment is that we couldn’t convert the penalty, not who took it or why we missed it,” said Martinez, as fans in pubs around Goodison could be heard screaming for the Belgian striker’s head.

So fair play to Claudio Ranieri (top, left) for echoing the thought of every Fulham fan after Aboubakar Kamara (top, right) took the ball off Aleksandar Mitrovic and missed a late penalty against Huddersfield by saying jokingly that, at the time, he felt like killing him.

Fans always love it when their boss is honest and the fact some low-life cowards racially abused Kamara on social media does not mean Ranieri was wrong to speak his mind.

WHO’D have imagined that goalkeeping legend Gianluigi Buffon would say before the end of 2018 that he believed his PSG side would have less chance of knocking Manchester United out of the Champions League now Jose Mourinho has been replaced as boss by Ole Gunnar Solskjaer?

No-one. Certainly not Mourinho. How the mighty need to realise how far they have fallen.