Football
Wit

Aubrey Malone

FOOTBALL WIT
Copyright © Summersdale Publishers Ltd, 2008
This selection was compiled by Aubrey Malone.

Illustrations by Ian Baker.

All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced by any means, nor transmitted, nor translated into a machine language, without the written permission of the publishers.

Condition of Sale
This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out or otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent publisher.

Summersdale Publishers Ltd
46 West Street
Chichester
West Sussex
PO19 1RP
UK

www.summersdale.com

Printed and bound in Great Britain

eISBN: 978-0-85765-567-7

Disclaimer
Every effort has been made to attribute the quotations in this collection to the correct source. Should there be any omissions or errors in this respect we apologise and shall be pleased to make the appropriate acknowledgements in any future editions.

Contents

Title Page
Copyright Page
Editor’s Note
Can You Manage It?
Ignorance is Bliss
Whistle-stop Tours
Fanning the Flames
Creative Mathematics
A Blood Sport
Time’s Winged Chariot
A Safe Pair of Hands?
Identity Crises
International Duty
Six of the Best
Injury Time
Club Life
Bottling It
Crystal Balls
Let Me Rephrase That
Kiss and Tell
Strategic Skills
Appearance Issues
The Life of Brian
Winner Takes All
In a Manner of Speaking
God Complexes
Goals, Goals, Goals
Wags’ Tales
Survival of the Fittest
Unsavoury Comparisons
Born to Lose
Quick on the Uptake
The Money Men
A Little Bit of Ireland
Aiming Below the Belt
The World at Their Feet
Mea Culpa
Keeping Up With Jones
Make Your Mind Up
Difficult Bodily Manoeuvres
Press Ganged
The Boardroom Boys

Editor’s Note

Football players aren’t necessarily expected to be funny, or even articulate. As Brian Clough once noted, their brains are in their feet. Which means that when someone comes out with a thought-provoking comment, like for instance Eric Cantona’s famous pronouncement on press intrusiveness (‘When the seagulls follow the trawler, it is because they think sardines will be thrown into the sea’), people react almost as if they’ve just heard a latter-day Shakespeare.

A lot of the so-called wit in these pages is unwitting, if you’ll forgive the contradiction. This is the football world’s confused (and often confusing) meanderings on lame duck managers, overpriced (and under-performing) stars, visually challenged referees and cash-hungry magnates.

If you’re an aficionado of Match of the Day you’ll know what it’s like to suffer dull post mortems. But occasionally a pundit comes out with a nugget – intentionally or otherwise – and it’s up to anthologists like me to commit these to memory and regurgitate them for your delectation.

As the man said, football’s a funny old game.