The Fiver

[ifu03340]

Not sure if anyone else signs up for the daily Guardian football email but todays is quite funny...worth a wee read below if your bored

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IT'S THE FIRST WEEK OF AUGUST, SO THE POPE'S O'RANGERS MUST BE ON THE VERGE OF GOING OUT OF BIG CUP

 

While it's easy for jaded cynics to wonder what exactly Scottish fitba is for, if nothing else the annual exit of the Pope's O'Rangers from Big Cup serves as a warning that the English football season is about to begin. After their Euro Disnae League title defence was derailed by a draw with Hearts that prompted their notoriously patient fans to boo them from the field, O'Rangers' season went from "yer maw" to "skaggy baws" when a 1-0 home defeat at the hands of Malmo left them on the cusp of elimination.

 

With O'Rangers fans banned from Malmo's Swedbank Stadium as part of a Uefa punishment for singing sectarian songs (or songs, as they are known to many at Ibrox), it has been left to the home fans to cause trouble at tonight's second leg and it seems the Swedish side's support are more than up to the task. Last Saturday, for the second time this season, one of Malmo's league matches was abandoned when fireworks were thrown on the pitch during the opening stages of a game against Djurgardens. Earlier this year, a match against Helsingsborgs was stopped when a Malmo fan confronted the opposition goalkeeper.

 

"I looked at the team and the coach maybe rested one or two players and then it ended up with the vast majority of them getting a rest with the game only lasting for 11 minutes," chuckled Ally McCoist, whose lame quip would suggest he might be pining for a return to the slightly less hostile cauldron that is the A Question of Sport studio. With his captain David Weir, 89, struggling with a hamstring injury probably sustained as a result of exiting his Stannah Stairlift too quickly, McCoist was grateful that a work permit-related rick which ruled centre-half Dorin Goian ineligible was overturned and the Romanian can now play.

 

The O'Rangers cause has not been helped by the fact that they're currently embroiled in a bust-up with Dundee United after failing with a seventh bid for striker David Goodwillie, who looks Blackeye Rovers-bound despite boasting an amusing name that would afford the Ibrox faithful the opportunity to come up with a new repertoire of amusing new ditties about something other than religious denomination.

 

"Rangers can say what they like but they would have got David if they had made the right offer at the right time. They didn't," harrumphed Dundee United chairman Stephen Thompson in response to claims from O'Rangers that he wouldn't have sold them the striker out of spite. Let's face it, if Scottish fitba was half as entertaining on the field as it is in the boardrooms and stands, we'd be unable to tear ourselves away.