Cold comfort for Arsenal millionaires at Sutton

SUTTON, England: The magic of the FA Cup will be sprinkled liberally around Sutton United’s Gander Green Lane ground on Monday but Arsenal’s multimi l lionaire players wi l l not fi nd anything magical about the changing rooms.

Painted a rich chocolate brown, with metal hooks on the walls, simple showerheads and the old players’ bath stripped out and cemented over, the visitors’ facility is not designed to lift the spirits.

“We thought about putting new shower heads in ... for about two seconds,” smiled manager Paul Doswell, meeting reporters ahead of his minor-league side’s fi fth-round tie against the 12-time winners.

“And then thought, no. We haven’t done it for any of the other teams that are coming down. It’s only because we haven’t been able to afford it. It’s not us trying to be big and clever. One of the players said to me the other day, ‘When I played against you it was always hot in the dressing room’. I said that’s because we can’t turn the (radiator) off – the valve’s gone.”

Football lore is rich in anecdotes of clubs deliberately making visiting teams uncomfortable – Cambridge United’s former manager John Beck famously flooding the changing rooms before opponents arrived or turning the heating up to the max.

Sutton, wrestling with a leaking roof and other infrastructure problems fami l iar to clubs scraping by in the lower reaches of the English game, have no need to be inventive for the visit of the likes of Alexis Sanchez and Mesut Ozil.

“The boiler’s absolutely shot to pieces,” said Doswell.