Club statement of the week
“Bolton Wanderers have today announced a new five-year stadium naming rights deal with Bolton-based recyclable building product manufacturer, Toughsheet. The home of Bolton Wanderers will be officially renamed as the Toughsheet Community Stadium from the 1st July 2023.”
It will, you suspect, be a long five years for the club, although as one tweeting respondent put it, “if you don’t like the name, Toughsheet”.
Word of Mouth
“You look at the fixtures and you’d have to be a bloody idiot to come here – but that’s what I am, thankfully.” – Neil Warnock explaining why, at 74, he has returned to football management with relegation-threatened Huddersfield. In fairness to the bloody idiot, his reign began on Saturday with Huddersfield’s first win of 2023.
“If football introduced the rule like in ice hockey where if there is on field issue then let two players involved have a 10/15 second tear up and then sin bin them, I guarantee they’d be far less handbags.” – James McClean calling for warring footballers to be allowed knock seven bells out of each other before play resumes. Em ...
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“I don’t know if he stays or not. Maybe he does, maybe he doesn’t. I don’t care much.” – Carlo Ancelotti stopping a touch short of pleading with Marco Asensio to stay at Real Madrid beyond the expiry of his contract this summer.
Feud of the Week
We’ll go with the one bubbling beautifully between Michael Beale and Chris Sutton after Sutton’s response to the Glasgow Rangers manager’s much lauded decision to order his players to allow Partick Thistle score in their cup game (after a dodgy incident that resulted in a Rangers goal after the ball had been put out following an injury to a Partick player).
Their back-and-forth in the press:
Sutton: “Would he have done the same if they were playing Celtic?”
Beale: “Growing up, I was a fan of Chelsea. So there is one pundit around here who is the worst ever player to play for Chelsea. That is why I won’t mention his name – because I try to forget him. There are pundits that are comedy acts. They don’t help our game at all. All they do is bring it back down to the gutter.”
Sutton: “You aren’t going to survive long in Glasgow if you have skin thinner than cheap toilet roll.”
This one will, you’d suspect, run and run.
Quote of the week
“We can’t have goals disallowed for hair being offside – we’d all have to get the same haircut as me.”
Max Allegri, the follicly challenged Juventus coach, on VAR needing to quit its hair’s breadth offside rulings.
Number of the week: 0
The number of games Everton have lost when Séamus Coleman scores (28 goals in all). They should play the lad up front.
More word of mouth
“When you look at him now, he’s lost a little weight. But when he was at Chelsea, the night before a game, he sat there for like 20 minutes eating rice pudding. He likes his food.”
John Obi Mikel on his former Chelsea team-mate Eden Hazard’s grub-fondness.
“I’ve got to learn what his body will and won’t take. We look at everything – what’s his diet like, what’s his lifestyle like, what car does he drive, what mattress does he use, how many hours does he sleep a night?”
Everton gaffer Sean Dyche on his efforts to get Dominic Calvert-Lewin firing again, the striker now possibly feeling stalked.
“Probably the worst night of my footballing career.”
Non-league Bowers and Pitsea manager James Collins after his side led Wingate & Finchley 3-0 with eight minutes to go and, yes, lost 4-3. Probably?
