My best chant award goes to Toon fans who taunted: ‘You’re getting Pardew in the morning’
AND so it reaches that time of year when I dip into my sack and hand out the presents.
( Yes, I know it’s three days late but, like half of your real gifts, I ordered them online and they have only just arrived.) It’s been a strange year for English football. We started 2017 with five teams in with a shout of the title as the gap between first and fifth was 10 points. We end it with a bigger gap than that between first and second, as Manchester City make a mockery of “the most competitive league in the world” cliche. Internationally, England won two World Cups and a Euros, offering the frightening prospect that those Under-20s, 19s and 17s might actually give Gareth Southgate a decent shot at beating the grown-ups in a couple of years. Especially now Gareth’s been assured that even if he loses to Panama, Belgium and Tunisia at the World Cup, his job is safe. Which is plain weird.
THE PROPER FOOTBALL MAN’S AWARD FOR FUNNIEST PIECE OF SELF-DELUSION:
Gordon Strachan said Scotland would be fine at international football if their players weren’t too short. New Crystal Palace boss Frank de Boer bragged he’d soon be bringing Ajax’s Total Football to Croydon, only for the club to bring in Roy Hodgson. Joe Hart said he was going on loan to West Ham so he could keep his England shirt, only to lose his West Ham one. But the daddy of them all was Mark Clattenburg revealing he held the destiny of the 2016 Premier League title in his hands when he refereed Spurs’ visit to Chelsea, and his “game plan” not to send anyone off ensured justice was done.
THE BRAZIL 1970 AWARD FOR MOST AWESOME SIGHT:
England’s under-age sides winning trophies made you rub your eyes in astonishment. Blackpool’s owner Owen Oyston getting his comeuppance when a judge ordered him to pay back the £31million he had stripped from the club made you punch the air. But the winner by a wet hankie was Jermain Defoe clutching terminally ill six-year-old Bradley Lowery to his chest as he walked on to the pitch or sat with him in hospital, and eulogised about him when he died, which comforted his family, raised awareness of childhood cancer and showed footballers do actually care.
THE CRISTIANO RONALDO BOG-EYED STATUE FOR YEAR’S WORST IMAGE:
There was Sutton United substitute goalkeeper Wayne Shaw, letting pie juice run down his chin during an FA Cup tie, live on TV, so his mates could win a bet. We had a Birmingham City fan showing off a calf tattoo of Harry Redknapp, who was sacked a fortnight later. We had the dozens of company logos on hoardings behind managers’ heads which make the back- drop to postmatch TV interviews look like a washing line full of Formula One drivers’ suits. But for a footballing institution that refers to itself as “more than a club” to be openly tapping up players the way Barcelona did with Philippe Coutinho and Antoine Griezmann was truly ugly.
THE BOBBY ROBSON MEMORIAL BEST QUOTE AWARD:
Graeme Souness inspired fears for his mental health when he said Liverpool should sell Philippe Coutinho because he’s “a six or seven- goals- a- season player” who doesn’t “turn up in the real big games”. Arsene Wenger made even his critics chuckle when asked for his reaction to a plane chartered by fans trailing a banner calling on him to go: “When you say fans, who do you mean? The rich ones?” But for sheer lip-quivering emotion, the winner was Claudio Ranieri ( left) thanking Leicester fans after his sacking: “You took me into your hearts from day one and loved me. I love you too. No one can ever take away what we achieved together and I hope you think about it and smile every day the way I always will.” Gulp.
WEALDSTONE RAIDER AWARD FOR MOST HUMOROUS FAN CONTRIBUTION:
Best chant goes to Newcastle’s Toon Army taunting West Brom in November with: “You’re getting Pardew in the morning.” Best flag goes to the highly-imaginative Evertonians who displayed this beauty at Lyon: “CARRAGHER STINKS OF P**S.” But for tearinducing laughter the winner is the United fan who screamed this at a TV camera after the Manchester derby: “F**k Lukaku off. Herrera? What is he on the f***** g pitch for? What were Mourinho’s tactics? We’re not f*****g Stoke, we’re Man-f*****gUnited, we should be f*****g battering them. That was diabolical out there. Hoof, hoof, hoof.”
THE SEPP BLATTER TIGHTER SHORTS FOR WOMEN AWARD FOR WORST IDEA:
Fever Pitch: The Opera opened in north London with songs like: “Kick-off comes when rival fans start fighting in the street, and ends two hours later in a bleak nil-nil defeat.” Why? Sky’s Jeff Stelling must surely be regretting ever asking Paul Merson what he thinks of a foreign boss coming to England as the quality of punditry plummets through the studio floor. But nothing could touch Jose Mourinho’s decision to storm into a noisy away dressingroom after his side were humbled by their Manchester neighbours demanding more respect. He got a milk sundae instead.
THE FA’S ANTI-BETTING STANCE HYPOCRISY AWARD:
Garth Crooks ranted this about ref Mike Dean neatly forgetting what many BBC licence-payers think about him: “It’s not about you, Mike, it’s about the games – people come here and pay good money to see football, not for you to act like a petulant school teacher.” Roy Keane, who coaches one of the most eye-bleedingly boring sides in international football, said of free-scoring Liverpool: “If they were playing at the end of my garden I wouldn’t watch them.” But nothing got close to Sam Allardyce bemoaning on Qatari TV the “glass ceiling” English coaches hit in their own country, saying: “We’re highly-educated, highlytalented coaches now with nowhere to go. The Premier League is the foreign league in England now.” Weeks later he landed the job at Everton as Alan Pardew was appointed at West Brom.
THE ALTERNATIVE DONALD TRUMP COVFEFE TWEET OF THE YEAR:
In bronze, for part of his longrunning studs-up banter with Gary Neville, we have Jamie Carragher with: “The Oscars Sunday! Wishing @Gnev2 all the best in the best actor category for his part in ‘ The manager’”. Runnerup is Peter Crouch for posting a picture of himself feeding giraffes above the words: “Summer for me is about spending time with the family.” But the winner has to be Neville Southall for his stream of surrealism summed up by: “I love the thought of recycled skeletons. Imagine walking down your street and all your dead relatives were lampposts. Brilliant.”