Football Daily | Getting the Peter Drury Easter bingo card ready for City v Arsenal
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With Arsenal primed to take on Manchester City at the Etihad in a potential title decider, the stage is certainly set for a certain Brazilian to hijack the occasion. As the clock ticks down to kick-off on Sunday, you can be sure commentators tasked with covering the game will have spent long evenings working diligently on their painstakingly scripted “ad-libs”, fervently hoping Arsenal’s No 9 will score the winning goal. Ideally, a strike that finishes a most unlikely comeback for his team. Suffice to say that Football Daily has got its Peter Drury bingo card ready and phrases such as “divine intervention”, “back from the dead” and the rather snappy “Arsenal looked doomed on their Etihad Calvary but Jesus has resurrected their title hopes on this Easter Sunday!” all feature.
Interesting reading the ‘Paul Bodin moment for the modern age’ (yesterday’s Football Daily). As we Swindon Town fans all know and cherish, the Paul Bodin moment for all time happened on 31 May 1993 at Wembley when his penalty took us to a 4-3 win in the playoff final v Leicester and promotion for our one and only (so far) season in the Premier League. Many happy conversations with Paul at the County Ground directors’ box on match days. Forever the Paul Bodin moment for all time!” – David J Waldron.
George Kirk’s puzzlement about Kobbie Mainoo’s playing position (yesterday’s Football Daily letters) supports my own perplexity. I’m a strong believer that a team should wear the numbers 1-11 whenever they play. So the sum total of the perfect team’s numbers would be 66. Any deviation, or excess, since it can’t be lower, from this should be frowned upon. In the recent Manchester United v Liverpool FA Cup semi-final the clubs had shirt totals of 216 v 220, respectively. Whenever I have no explicit reason for supporting a side in a match, I will often go with the team with the lower shirt total. My backup protocol (in the unlikely event that shirt totals might be equal) is to support whichever side is farther north. So in that particular FA Cup tie, United had the marginally lower shirt total … and the centre spot at Old Trafford is a meagre 0.033° further north than at Anfield. No wonder Erik ten Hag’s Specials came out on top” – Ken Muir.
In response to George’s query, a No 6 usually means a defensive midfielder (or No 5 if you’re South American) and a No 8 is now shorthand for a box-to-box midfielder. Also, No 10 normally means a support striker or attacking midfielder who sits off the main centre-forward, but that’s more obvious. And don’t get me started on these false 9s, 9-and-a-halves, etc” – Dale Godfrey.
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