ONE MORE SLEEP
Christmas is in the air. The John Lewis advert has arrived, tugging on the nation’s heartstrings and overdraft facilities with a cover of Blink 182; the Guardian Sport Xmas do was on Thursday night, which is why this Fiver reads as if written by a rampantly hungover tea-time email guiltily phoning it in, in the hope The Man is still depositing unmetabolised crème de menthe into a wastepaper basket; and various Premier League managers have been asked about what it would mean to be top/third/16th/bottom on 25 December.
The disease of the mind that led Fifa’s finest to award its fancy shindig to Qatar means this weekend’s round of fixtures is the last before Santa tours the country dispensing Voltarol to hundreds of red-zoned Premier League footballers. The Fiver will be keeping an eye on three things this weekend – the scores, what bloody formation Chelsea are playing and which poor sods feel their muscles go ‘ping!’ on the eve of the Human Rights World Cup. In other news, Cristiano Ronaldo missed Manchester United’s Milk Cup win over Aston Villa through illness.
If Arsenal win at Wolves on Saturday, they will be top at Christmas – a symbolic and almost entirely meaningless achievement at the best of the times, never mind when Christmas comes on 12 November. It might not be a bad thing if Arsenal aren’t first when the presents are unwrapped. The last five times that happened, between 1951 and 2007, they blew the title, usually via a thundering meltdown.
Arsenal made a statement last week by battering Chelsea 1-0. Newcastle will hope to do the same at St James’ Park in the weekend’s biggest game. They sit deservedly in third, making The Fiver wonder whether it should trademark the phrase “Big Seven” and try to sue every news organisation in the land when they start using it. Newcastle also have three players in the England HRWC squad, Eddie Howe is the Premier League Manager of the Month and Wor Miggy Almirón has won his first Player of the Month award since coming to England. That’s one more than Jack Grealish, the life coach whose controversial methods – derived from the classical English theory of sneering drunken abuse – have revived Almirón’s career. But Grealish does have one thing on Almirón: he’s going to Qatar. Just so long as nothing goes “ping!” against Brentford.
LIVE ON BIG WEBSITE
Join Rob Smyth from 7pm GMT for MBM coverage of England 0-0 Japan in their women’s international friendly.
QUOTE OF THE DAY
“If Roy Keane was doing punditry work and said I’d made a mess of something, I might disagree but I would accept it … I have a level of earned respect for that opinion, but not a lower-leaguer who wouldn’t know what it is like to win a medal. And who is now finding how difficult it is to win football matches” – Martin O’Neill sharpens his studs and goes in two-footed on Republic O’Ireland assistant Keith Andrews, among other things, in this red-hot chat with Ewan Murray.
RECOMMENDED LISTENING
The latest Football Weekly Extra podcast is right here, right now.
RECOMMENDED BOOKING
There are still a handful of tickets available to attend Football Weekly Live on 17 November in that London, plus plenty more if you’d rather stream it remotely.
FIVER LETTERS
“The old 27-man squad, including a ringer, joke was very predictable (yesterday’s Fiver). You can’t possibly expect everyone to believe Gareth Southgate really picked Jordan Henderson to go to Qatar” – John Lawton.
“Morecambe defender Donald Love won’t become the first manager to share his name with a song (yesterday’s Fiver letters), but is to date the only Premier League player to ever share their name with a character from Grand Theft Auto III” – Ed Taylor.
“I can only seem to find one flaw in Chris Martin’s dream for achieving world peace with England and Argentina sharing the HRWC trophy (Wednesday’s Quote of the Day) . They’re on the same side of the draw” – Marco Tierney.
Send your letters to the.boss@theguardian.com. And you can always tweet The Fiver via @guardian_sport. Today’s winners of our prizeless letter o’ the day is … John Lawton.
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