jts1882
Dean Richards
On the Europa Handicap Chase:
Manchester United should play a tea lady in goal if it helps to avoid the Europa League
Seventh place is the holy grail for ambitious Premier League clubs who want to lift the curse of Thursdays in the Baltics and a tea lady in goal could help Manchester United avoid qualification
On the eve of a weekend featuring pivotal six-pointers at both ends of the Premier League table, with Liverpool hosting Emirates Marketing Project and Norwich visiting Fulham, this seems the perfect time to slay some myths. It may appear that the crucial domestic footballing battles du jour are those for the title, the last Champions League slot and the avoidance of relegation.
But it only seems that way, and the most significant scrap is the downhill slalom to finish seventh, thereby securing non-qualification for the Europa League.
This is something you are unlikely to hear from the three managers consumed by the phobia of finishing fifth or sixth. Ask Arsène Wenger, David Moyes and Tim Sherwood, and all would deny it.
Yet if, for whatever curious reason, the CIA extraordinarily rendered them to a friendly middle eastern capital for a top-level summit between their genitals and a pair of electrodes, they would confess the preference to spending the next decade being water-boarded in a US enclave on Cuba over snaffling a Europa League berth.
This is in no way to denigrate a perfectly magnificent competition. For those who live only to spend their Thursdays visiting Baltic states, it may be the greatest tournament on earth. And yet, however powerful the urge to enjoy the scenery on the coach ride into town from Riga airport, playing interminable Europa ties is a curse for a club with ambitions to challenge for the title, or merely to join the big boys in the Champions League.
The fixture list is interminable. The travel is as fatiguing as the financial benefits are negligible. Winning the trophy would be meaningless consolation for Arsenal and Manchester United to whom Europa qualification counts as the equivalent of Michelangelo being required, by a community service order, to paint cartoon characters on the ceiling of a Droitwich parish church. Spurs, meanwhile, have had enough Europa experience to want no more.
For each, the dilemma is different. With Arsenal locked in combat with Everton for that final Champions League place, Wenger’s conundrum is whether to go full tilt for fourth, risking certain Europa qualification should he fail; or to throw every remaining match in the distant hope of finishing seventh. By and large, he would be wiser to go for broke and opt for the former.
As for Sherwood, since he is certain to be fired next month, he must calculate whether it is worth jeopardising any future employment prospects to avenge himself on his chairman, the genius Daniel Levy, by nurdling sixth place for Spurs and sabotaging the club’s chances of Champions League qualification next season. Judging by Tottenham’s 5-1 demolition of Sunderland on Monday night, he has concluded that it is.
For Moyes, on the other hand, the equation could not be simpler. Since Manchester United have zero chance of finishing fourth, and assuming that Moyes wants to keep his job, the advice is to prosecute the campaign for seventh without delay. On Sunday week, when United visit Everton, he must take a radically original approach to team selection and subtly refine his tactics.
While we are familiar with a goalkeeper charging into the opposition box for an added-time corner, Moyes must play David de Gea as a striker from the start, filling the vacancy with Old Trafford’s most arthritic tea lady.
She should be chained to her urn while badgering the back four, in the style of Craggy Island’s Mrs Doyle, to “go on, go on, go on, go on ...” and have a lovely cup of cha.
At half-time, if the result remained in doubt, the sensible move would be the triple substitution of Wayne Rooney, Michael Carrick and Nemanja Vidic with, respectively, a hamster, a terrapin and a sloth.
If that did not prove decisive, he should put De Gea back in goal for the closing minutes, moving the tea lady to central defence. She might be quicker and less liable to be turned inside out than Rio Ferdinand, but not by much.
There is a remote chance that the Football Association would take umbrage at these innovations, and penalise United accordingly. In this instance, the most condign punishment would not be docking United points for fielding ineligible players, and an arguably even less eligible item of tea-distribution furniture. It would be awarding the club extra points to ensure their qualification for the Europa League.
