The Big Sam Conspiracy: This Weekend in the Premier League

Given that we’re in the middle of the January transfer window, the Premier League is even more ridiculous than usual. Not only do we have the usual scandals, slip-ups and managerial sackings, we also get to watch players changing clubs for enough money to buy every property ever covered in London Rental Opportunity of the Week.

Amidst this absolute lunacy, then, here are some Great Opinions™ on this weekend’s football.

A 2-0 defeat to Leicester and that was the end of it. Marco Silva, the man heralded as the Eurocentric future of football management, was sacked as Watford manager only months after leading them into the top ten in the Premier League. As it turns out it was all Everton’s fault, with the Toffees attempting to poach Silva back in November and unsettling him and his team in the process. In a statement on their official website, the club said: “Had it not been for the unwarranted approach by a Premier League rival for his services we would have continued to prosper under his leadership.”

It’s hard not to suspect that, on some level, this is all part of a grand conspiracy by Sam Allardyce. Having claimed that English coaches were “second class” in their own country before casually walking into the Everton job, he clearly has an axe to grind with slick, successful Europeans. Nothing says Brexit Britain more than Allardyce booming with laughter as Everton inadvertently ruin the career of an up-and-coming Portuguese technocrat. Picture it now: Big Sam cheerfully waving a downcast Marco Silva out of the Watford training ground, before reaching theatrically into his top pocket and very slowly pulling out a raised middle finger.

If the latest reports are correct, Alexis Sanchez’s move from Arsenal to Manchester United will earn him a wage of £350,000 a week after tax. That’s £50,000 a day; £2083 an hour; £35 a minute; 57p every breath in, 57p every breath out. Admit it: if you earned that much money you would be dead five times over within a week. The fact that Sanchez gets through the day without fatally overstimulating himself is a testament to the resilience of the human spirit.

There are two schools of thought when it comes to footballers like Sanchez becoming filthy rich: those who are glad to see huge amounts of money go to a kid who grew up in poverty in Chile, and those who regardless feel that it’s grotesque for one man to earn more than he will ever need. Ultimately, both of these schools of thought are meaningless, because when you earn £350,000 a week you don’t need to rationalise things. Alexis Sanchez is now on another plane of existence to 99.99 percent of the planet, ascending to a higher state of financial being. He is officially richer than God, but then God has never scored a Premier League goal to our knowledge and can’t play all across the front three.

Surprise surprise, The Sun have got another tabloid scandal from the world of football with a young, black footballer as its target. To save you from clicking through to their evil website, buying their evil paper or even looking at their evil red logo, here it is in the form of a tweet.

The upshot is this: Stoke forward Saido Berahino has allegedly, allegedly, a million times allegedly, “romped” with a prostitute in a manner that only the subject of a tabloid sleaze sting can. It’s hardly Raheem Sterling doing a bit of hippy crack, but it still sells.

Much to the amazement of Stoke fans, in the earliest versions of the story circulated online, it appeared that The Sun used a picture of a man who very obviously wasn’t Saido Berahino. They could, of course, argue that this was a mislabelling in the photo archive; a quickly amended placeholder; an innocent error made in haste as opposed to something more sinister. It’s The Sun though, so let’s not be too charitable. Think of the worst intentions imaginable: that’s probably pretty close to the truth.

When it comes to the relationship between north and south, Britain is already a divided country. We, the southerners, laugh at our northern kin for their Greggs, their parmo and chips, their salt-of-the-earth mannerisms and their grumbling mistrust of the establishment. They, the hardy northerners, despise us for being a bunch of middle-class Tories who drink £6 pints, refuse to say good morning to our neighbours and are, frankly, soft as shit.

Naturally, both of these stereotypes are to some extent inaccurate, sowing mistrust and misunderstanding between people who should otherwise feel a sense of affinity with each other. This is not helped by the most prevalent cause of north-south suspicion, namely: Mike Ashley. Southerners may know Mike as the man who owns Sports Direct, a company which is to workers’ rights what a noose is to the human respiratory system. He is also the man who reportedly vomited into a fireplace after drinking 12 pints during a work outing (“To huge applause from his senior management team”), meaning he’s the closest thing the south-east has to a reincarnated, late-stage-capitalist Henry VIII.

Now, in what may well be a parting insult to a club which he has plastered in Sports Direct imagery for much of the last decade like a shrine to the concept of zero-hours contracts, Ashley is prevaricating over his much-publicised wish to sell Newcastle United. In the meantime, with few funds available in the January transfer window, Newcastle manager Rafa Benitez is quickly coming to resemble a downtrodden store manager stuck in a neglected corner of Ashley’s monstrous sportswear empire. From southerners to our friends on Tyneside, then, we can only say that we are very sorry. We’re not all like Mike Ashley, we promise. Some of us are alright really.

@W_F_Magee