It’s early in the season & your team are having an awful start.
No decent signings over the summer, injuries stacking up & confusion on & off the pitch.
You have a new manager who keeps saying everything will be just fine. And you want to believe him.👇
👆Things are going from bad to worse
Painful to watch
Leaking goals at the back
No creativity up front
Baffling team selection
Incomprehensible tactics & formation
Fans getting restless
Hopefully we’ll sign some top players in the transfer window.👇
👆The transfer window comes & goes with no signings
Then reports from the dressing room reveal that the players don’t EVEN have the proper kit
Frustration is building with the manager, but he injures himself on the training ground & ends up in hospital.👇
👆Bottom of the league & you think things can’t get any worse.
Then comes news that the team didn’t do any pre-season training.
The manager had cancelled it to go to the Caribbean with his girlfriend.
He comes out of hospital & talks about “success”!👇
👆After another 5-0 drubbing the manager & faces the press
Q. What’s gone wrong?
A. We’re ramping up
Q. Will you apologise?
A. I’m sorry if people feel there have been failings
Q. But you’re bottom of the league?
A. It’s too early to judge. Wait until the end of the season
👆”That’s not what I was saying!”
The pundit that the manager referred to in his press conference to back up his argument that comparisons with other teams can’t be made & talk about performance isn’t valid until the end of the season, slams him on TV.👇
👆Some players & backroom staff aren’t happy.
They’ve known about ‘the strategy’ - drawn-up by the manager’s Machiavellian ‘Director of Football’ - all along.
Hearing about this, the ‘Director’ comes into the dressing room for a motivational team talk.👇 vine.co/v/Ow9Qx9H6Ked
👆Your team is STILL bottom of the league.
The manager comes out & tells the fans again that they’re wrong to judge the team’s performance until the end of the season.
👆#SCANDAL Footage emerges of the manager at the start of the season telling club shareholders:
“If the team do really badly this year, then we’ll be able to sack the chair, sell the club to a Saudi Prince, completely restructure & emerge like Superman.”👇
👆With mounting media criticism, the manager sends backroom staff to post-match press conferences.
Asked why management are now refusing to talk about the fact the team are bottom of the League, the physio says:
“When this manager says optimism, he means he hasn't got any ideas. When he says we need to be positive, he means he has no plan. When he says it's very simple, he means he hasn't read any of the detail.”👇
The pundit (@GNev2) here is @d_spiegel, who the PM referenced in PMQs.
He went on TV, called govt’s use of figures “frankly embarrassing", a "theatre of numbers" & “not a trustworthy communication of statistics” & told them to treat people like grown-ups.
👆Fans are getting angry, threatening to burn their season tickets.
Loyal fanzines are starting to ask difficult questions.
Assistant manager, Gove, speaks: “Our return to the top will be staggered...& so will you be when you find out what we’re up to.”👇
👆A ban on players talking to the media has silenced the ‘lack-of-proper-equipment’ scandal.
But the shocking goal difference won’t go away & isn’t helped when the trainer says it’s “hundred thousand, & thirty four, nine hundred & seventy four thousand."👇
👆Still rooted to the bottom of the table & with multiple scandals mounting, the manager makes a rare public appearance.
“Our defence may be conceding the most goals but they offer a ‘protective ring’ around the keeper. Talk of relegation is negative.”👇
👆News leaks that the team’s Machiavellian ‘Director of Football’ had not only ignored the strict rules against gambling on matches but had bet on the team to lose.
👆Stuck in the relegation zone, with scandals piling up on & off the pitch, the manager announces he will sign a “world beating” player on 1 June: Lionel Messi.
Messi doesn’t show up!
The manager says: “I signed him but he won’t start for 3 or 4 months.👇
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The govt claim this was a ‘working holiday’ but @JCalvertST reported that “aides were told to cut down documents or the PM just wouldn't read them”. #ValentinesDay#valentines
1/. The biggest story I ever “broke” (coverage-wise) was a piece about Malawi’s plan to ban farting in public
I was researching an article about homophobia in Africa & stumbled on the story in the @NyasaTimess
I wrote it up for a tabloid & it went global
2/. The story I wrote for the @DailyMailUK - I was a freelancer...don’t judge me - was packed with fart gags: “The winds of change blowing through Africa” etc
If you're free this Sunday, I'm doing a free walking tour tracing London's greatest lost waterway - the River Fleet - from it's two sources on Hampstead Heath as it heads towards the Thames (with my dog Mango)
This 1746 map follows the Fleet from the Thames at Blackfriars along the Fleet Ditch, up Fleet Market (now New Bridge St) along Saffron Hill, past Clerk’s Well (now Clerkenwell) past Black Mary’s Hole & Battle Bridge (now Kings Cross) towards its source on the Heath #FreeTheFleet