RIFF, RIFF, RIFFING ON GEORDIE PAIN
Taking candy from a baby. Stealing the pennies from a dead man's eyes. Kicking a blind man's stick. Over the years, Newcastle has so useful as a source of material for the Fiver, that there are times when we feel genuinely feel guilty about riffing on the obvious pain of those who support it: a proud Geordie people whose only crime is to have been born in close proximity to a football club run by people - one set of them after another - whose raison d'etre seems to involve outdoing each other in the slapstick and farce stakes. Sack the venerable Rir Sobby Bobson? We'll see your sacking the venerable Rir Sobby Bobson and raise you employing Joe Kinnear ... twice. You know how it is - small wonder police horses the length and breath of Newcastle city centre spent this morning running scared.
But now it seems possessing the ability to beat a Newcastle team that has never won a Premier League game at the Etihad; who were down to 10 men for half last night's match; who had to hand a debut to a tender footed, whelpish defender; whose best player was "unavailable" having had his head turned so much that it was spinning like that of the kid in The Exorcist; and who had Mathieu Debuchy re-enacting Troy McClure's performance from Leper in the Back Field in their back field has changed people's minds all of a sudden. What? You can beat that Newcastle? Then you are world beaters! Then you are favourites to win the league! Then your new manager is a tactical genius!
Not that the Fiver is denying that City were good. They were. But, if years of snoozing along to the Premier League has taught the Fiver nothing else, and it hasn't, it's that Newcastle should perhaps stick to sports more suited to them, such as hot oil wrestling, horse-punching, foxy boxing and employing Joe Kinnear. And, more importantly, that judging a side for beating them on the opening day of the season with 37 more games to go is more premature than Jim Levenstein's spectacularly brief dalliance with Nadia.
Afterwards, Pellegrini smiled like the cat who had just invented cream but was having none of this City are the greatest-thing-since-Boots'-Expert-Disposable-Dental-Flossers chat. "I don't think it is a dream start – it is a very good start," he whispered, forgetting rule No1 in the Premier League manager's handbook: turn the propaganda knob up to 11 regardless of the result. So while Alan Pardew's team couldn't show him how it is done on the pitch, Pardew showed the newcomer how it was done off it. "Up until then [the sending off when his team were 2-0 down and could, nay should, have been a whole lot more down if it weren't for Tim Krul's heroics] we had given a very good account of ourselves," he yodelled in the post-match presser.
Ah, if only the Fiver could view life through the same kind of rose-tinted spectacles as Alan. But then, we don't have an eight-year contract.
QUOTE OF THE DAY
"At first the contractions did not seem to be getting any shorter and we thought we were going to be in for a long night. Then suddenly it went from relative calm to [Amber] screaming her head off and the head started to appear. We could barely hear the instructions because of the noise. So we did the best we could. We lifted her up and she pushed again and Barry was there to catch the baby as it came out – I've never seen him move so fast" - after an unplanned home-birth, Brighton striker Craig Mackail-Smith reveals that the first human face ever seen by his new-born daughter was the sweary, presumably teary visage of her doting grandpa, the Peterborough United director of football Barry Fry.
FIVER LETTERS
"It was great to see Paolo Di Canio's response to the mistake by Sunderland's Valentin Roberge mistake in allowing Pajtim Kasami to score for Fulham on Saturday, by pointing out it was 'Not Paolo Di Canio' who messed up. So, when Sunderland score the goals to win a Tyne-Wear derby, it's perfectly fine to slide the length of the pitch in a fancy suit as if the goals were somehow scored by Paolo Di Canio. But when Sunderland make a critical mistake it has nothing to do with the manager. Clearly this means that when Sunderland win, it is all down to Di Canio, but when they lose it is the fault of individual players. Doesn't it make you think that the Sunderland team must love their supportive boss?" - Liam Murtagh.
"It's easy to mock Arsenal (yesterday's Fiver) but that's surely no reason not to. Signing no one but a French youth international, failing abysmally at the start of the season and then winning towards the end to scrape into fourth place. Can someone with a better command of languages than Arsene Wenger tell him what the French for 'Déjà vu' is?" Noble Francis.
Send your letters to the.boss@guardian.co.uk. And if you've nothing better to do you can also tweet the Fiver.
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BITS AND BOBS
Sunderland have suspended Phil Bardsley after their full-back took time out from lying on casino floors lightly drizzled in £50 notes to make what appeared to be disparaging online comments about his soon-to-be former team's home defeat at the hands of Fulham last Saturday.
Clearly aware of the utter futility of a manager returning to his former club in an attempt to buy his former players, Everton manager Roberto Martinez has described Manchester United's £28m joint offer for Marouane Fellaini and Leighton Baines as "a waste of time".
Hope Powell has gone the way of nearly all football managers, male or female, after being sacked as boss of the England Women's team.
Liverpool fans hoping their team was about to sign Black Eyed Peas frontman Willian from Anzhi Makhachkachkachkachkachkala will be deleted to hear the attacking midfielder is in that there Big London, enjoying advanced talks with Tottenham Hotspur.
And in fitba news, having consulted with the board at Ibrox, Charles Green has agreed to stand down as a consultant at the Pope's O'Rangers ... less than four months after stepping down as chief executive at the Pope's O'Rangers.
STILL WANT MORE?
Michael Cox explains how Pelligrini's millions beat Pardew's minions, and Jamie Jackson peruses five talking points from the new City manager's first competitive match in charge.
English representation is at an all-time low in the Premier League, writes Louise Taylor, with just 33.6% of Englishman participating in the opening round of fixtures. Mike Adamson and David Washington have the stats behind the, umm, stat.
Those snapping synapses belong to Jonathan Wilson, who is busy thinking that Black Eyed Peas frontman Willian's modern-day qualities will be an excellent acquisition for Tottenham should the move go through.
With both Manchester City and Manchester United having got one Premier League match apiece under their belts, our mouthy man in the north-west, Jamie Jackson, donned his Reni hat and Kappa tracksuit, gurned enthusiastically and sat down to answer your questions in a lunchtime Premier League webchat. Scatter!
Do we really need post-match explanations from referees? Hell no, says John Earls, from half-decent football magazine, When Saturday Comes.
The Queen's Celtic are currently taking on Kazakh side Shakhter Karagandy in their latest Big Cup qualifier. Find out they're getting on in our minute-by-minute report.
And stay up to date with all the news on the transfers that aren't happening across the UK and beyond with Marcus Christenson's Much Ado About Nothing.
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"WHO ARE YOU TO JUDGE THE LIFE I LIVE? I AM NOT PERFECT AND I DON'T HAVE TO BE. BEFORE YOU START POINTING FINGERS MAKE SURE YOUR HANDS ARE CLEAN"
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