Life-enhancing LSD and Lucozade
If life has taught us anything it’s that hard hitting investigative TV programmes which claim they will expose the sordid underbelly of football always let you down. And that Rowntrees will never run out of ways to exploit the Kit Kat brand. And that cheap mouthwash is just coloured water.
In spite of this PremCheat sat down to in front of the TV to watch Channel 4′s Dispatches programme about drug use in football filled with a giddy sense of anticipation. We hoped that they would reveal that Lionel Messi’s superlative performances over the past few seasons have been the result of a steady diet of life-enhancing LSD and Lucozade.
Unfortunately this wasn’t the case (It really, really wasn’t the case – PremCheat’s Expensive Legal Team).
There wasn’t even a suggestion that England’s poor second half performance against Germany in the 2010 World Cup was due to the team deciding to experiment with Ketamine during the half time interval (No suggestion at all. Absolutely None. Zilch suggestions – PremCheat’s Expensive Legal Team).
The sum total of the programme’s revelations was that some bloke you’ve never heard of took cocaine and the FA banned him for a few weeks without telling anyone. Probably because they knew the footballer wasn’t famous enough for anyone to care.
Oh yes, and a player who was so anoymous that his parents christened him “Player A” had an unusually high level of testosterone. No high enough to give him superpowers or even to allow him to beat a bear in armwrestle you understand, just high enough so that he had to use and a really expensive face scrub to soften his powerful, wirey beard before shaving each morning.
The only vaguely entertaining part of the programme was seeing football fans react with horror to the news that one of the players had spent some of his (not very) hard earned cash on Bad Drugs. ”He should’ve been sacked straight away!” shouted one supporter, “Did we learn nothing from the Be Here Now debacle?” exclaimed another, “Did Zammo die in vain?” wailed a third person, all of whom only existed in our minds.
Which leads us neatly to our PremCheat Moral Dilemma Of The Week: If it was revealed that your team’s best player had been taking drugs would you want him to be:
a) Sacked and made to pay £15 million to your club in the Mutu-style.
b) Suspended for a couple of months and forced to hang out with Tony Adams
c) Forgiven as long as the drugs were performance enhancing and his performance had been sufficiently enhanced.
Answers on a postcard to the usual address, please. Or just enter a comment below. Actually just enter a comment below, it’s much easier.
For What It’s Worth
Just when Arsenal fans thought they could sleep soundly in their beds after Brian Woolnough has officially confirmed their “crisis” is over, Professor Paul Charles Merson dramatically burst into their bedrooms and loudly proclaimed, ”…someone’s got to sit (Arsene Wenger) down and tell him to spend some money!”
Obviously telling this to Mr Wenger when he was standing wouldn’t drive home the seriousness of the situtation.
This was important information.
It could only be imparted in the sitting position.
Professor Merson then went on to turn the world of economics upside down by declaring that “Arsenal have to spend money, and if they have to spend over the odds to get the players they want then so be it”.
Unfortunately Merson failed to give a more detailed explanation of why he believed Mr Wenger should follow a strategy of overpaying for players. This is a pity as conventional wisdom holds that a club will should always pay less for a player than a player is worth to them. Otherwise there would be no point in buying the player at all.
Therefore the correct way to run a business is to buy a Thierry Henry for 11 million, bleed him dry of pace, goals and amusing celebrations and then sell him on for 24 million a few years later, just before his value plummets faster than Luis Suarez in a crowded penalty area.
And most people believe that if Arsenal are going to spend £17 million for the services of Phil Jagielka then the management of the club should only do so if they believe Phil will add over £17 million worth of value to club. Unless the fiesty Everton defender is about to make an unexpected breakthrough in the world of quantum mechanics, this seems highly unlikely.
Therefore until until we get to read the full text of Professor Merson’s thesis on the economics of football we’re going to stick with boring old conventional wisdom. The alternative seems like reckless gambling and we’re sure that’s something the good Professor would never endorse.
Love Cheat 1: Robert David Keane
The well-travelled Irishman managed to keep a straight face and utter the words “I have always wanted to come and play in the MLS so it’s the perfect combination for me and a dream come true” after signing for the LA Galaxy this week.
There’s two ways to interpret that statement:
1) Robbie Keane really has always dreamed about playing in the MLS, or
2) Robbie Keane was openly lying to the fans of his new club.
Both of these options fill us with pain, regret and sadness.
Robbie, you have 30 days to change your name to L.A. Galaxy Keane to prove us wrong. Consider yourself warned.
F.A. Cup Final Bingo
Welcome to the second in the epic PremCheat bingo card trilogy. After the furious excitement generated by the El Clasico Bingo Card we proudly present the “The FA Cup sponsored by E.ON Bingo Card”. Download it now from here and add some bingo-y magic to the most magical day in the football calendar.
In other news, PremCheat needs your help! It’s nearly the end of the season and we need to ensure that all acts of footballing badness have been examined by the PC jury. If you’ve witnessed a morally reprehensible act on a football pitch in the past eight months and have failed to report it to us then contact us now or you’ll regret it for the rest of your lives. We’re tweetable at @PremCheat or contactable here. The moral majority will salute you and the world will be a better place.
Never Mind The Balkage
Wise Ray Wilkins once sagely remarked that “He who pays the piper, calls the tune” and the past couple of weeks have seen a myriad of top tunes being called by people all over the football universe.
In West London Mohamed Al-Fayed has been standing on the north bank of the Thames belting out the 1970’s disco classic “My Cash, My Club, My Statue”, much to the bemusement of passing rowers, after he decided to erect a slightly scary statue of slightly scary King of Pop Michael Jackson, outside Fulham’s ground.
Here at PremCheat Towers we bow to no-one in our admiration of Jacko – we know all the words to “Hold My Hand”, the lead single from last year’s disappointing “Michael” album – however even we would balk at paying £100K for a statue of the great man. And we would balk for a second time if someone suggested that we should put that statue outside a football ground.
Fulham fans are obviously less balkable than us though and David Lloyd, editor of the club fanzine, There’s Only One F in Fulham summed up the views of many of them when he said: “If I was asked: did I want it? I would say no. But we’ve got a chairman who has done so much for us if he wants a Michael Jackson statue, so be it. What we don’t want is the ridicule that will come with it.”
Sadly in these politically correct times it’s becoming increasingly difficult for a football club to erect a statue of dead popstar who was twice charged with child molestation without attracting ridicule.
Meanwhile 1,000 miles above planet Earth Rupert Murdoch could be found lying on a satellite, strumming the old blues standard “Your Bad Sweary Is Bad For My Business” on a battered acoustic guitar.
He dedicated the song to Raging Ranting Rooney who managed to offend the timid viewers of Rupert’s TV station by swearing directly at them after scoring against West Ham. It wasn’t casual funny swearing either, it was harsh nasty swearing like you might hear in a rap song or a Helen Mirren interview.
Clearly everyone’s favourite megalomaniac media man wasn’t aware that such industrial language was used on a football pitch when his company paid one billion pounds for the right to show games live on TV. We assume he’ll now be asking for his money back from the F.A. and will only be screening sports which meet his company’s high moral standards from now on. Expect Super Sunday to consist of four hours of red-hot crown green bowling action from next August.
An alternative is for Premiership games to only be screened on TV after the 9pm watershed which would have the added bonus of the matches also being able to include mild sex scenes and drug references which would definitely spice up a mid season encounter between Blackburn and Stoke.
Finally, over in North East England a scary bunch of punks could be seen huddled around a guitar, trying to find a second chord to use in their anthem for doomed youth “We Don’t Care Which Five Blade Razor You Use Mr Henry”.
The band’s charismatic lead singer is top Guardian brain-box Jonathan Wilson who has got together with a group of his writing chums to create a fine new football magazine called The Blizzard.
The magazine is based on the simple idea of asking football writers to write about football. This is a novel concept at a time when many of them appear to be writing articles in order to get the readers to buy razor blades, moisturisers or energy drinks and so we wholeheartedly approve of their anarchic scheme.
Full details of how to get a copy can be found here and you can download the first issue on a “Pay What You Want” basis which means it’s the football magazine equivalent of “In Rainbows” but with better lyrics.
And cooler artwork.
And more hummable tunes.
Cheat of The Week:
Petit Pois (Man Utd) - Fell down to due to particularly strong gravity in Newcastle penalty area: 4 points
Jagielka, Phil (Everton) – More divage, described in detail here: 3 points
Balotelli (Man City) - Merking Rio and being generally amazing at the end of the F.A. Cup Semi Final: – 3 points
Joe Kinnear’s Boutique
It’s been a quiet couple of weeks in the world of cheating. Sure, we’ve had Jonny Evans trying to slice an opponent in two, Steve Bruce getting all hypocritical on us and Mario Balotelli throwing darts at people but, compared to the gun and drug fuelled exploits of the past few weeks, it’s all felt a tad underwhelming which is annoying as there’s a big empty page here which needs filling with words. You know – verbs, nouns, adjectives, that sort of thing. Not punctuation though, punctuation is for losers.
Thefore to provide those words this week, we threw the pages of PC open to you, our beloved readers.
We asked you to write in with football related questions for us to ponder using our massive brains and you didn’t let us down. Here’s a selection of the finest questions we found in our lovely sack this week:
Dear PremCheat,
Which beard is generally recognised as being the greatest beard in the history of football?
Dave Oddstench, Liverpool, Merseyside
Sporting beard experts around the world unanimously agree that the finest footballing facial foilage ever was sported by Trevor Hockey as can be seen in this utterly tremendous photo.
Dear PremCheat,
I’ve always been a great fan of Geoff Hurst and like to know one or two things about him. Could you please tell me how old he is, and where he was born?
Carolyn Brown, Seaford, Sussex
Seriously Carolyn, you say you’re a great fan of Geoff Hurst but we have to question just how big a fan you really are if you don’t even know how old he is. And couldn’t you just look these facts up on the internet? Why didn’t you just type Geoff Hurst into Google, Bing or even Ask Jeeves? If you’d done that you wouldn’t have had to waste money on stamps and the whole process would’ve been much quicker. Anyway, as we’ve told you many times before Geoff Hurst is 28, Carolyn and he was born in Ashton-under-Lyne, Lancashire. He’s been living in the London area ever since he was a young lad.
Dear PremCheat,
I’m sure you agree that the most stylish man in football is still big, sweary Joe F****** Kinnear. Do you know where I can pick up a lovely tie which would look good on the fiesty former Newcastle manager?
Pierre Perplexed, Paris, France
If you want to copy Joe’s style then you should get yourself over to the “Fella” boutique in Hampstead where you can buy yourself a lovely Kinnear-esque tie. Don’t expect any “personal treatment” though, that’s just for Joe.
Dear PremCheat,
There’s been so much talk about football fans listening to “local radio” recently, I would like to know if you believe that one day this scary new technology will cause the death of the our beloved local newspapers.
Chest Rockwell, Glasgow, Scotland
Don’t worry Mr Rockwell, we believe “local radio” is merely a passing fad which people will soon get bored of, although some people foolishly disagree with us. Ask yourself this, can you wrap fish and chips in a “local radio”? We rest our case.
PremCheat Disciplinary Points Competition Update
Yes, its the competition which literally has set the internet on fire – PremCheatDP! We’re a month into the competition and there’s a three way tie at the top of the table.
Ryan Shawcross, Kevin Nolan and Nigel De Jong have all received one yellow card since March 1st which means that @wayneduncan, ms_tor and @nendsss are all huddled together at the top of the table like some strange, charismatic tri-headed beast. There’s still all to play for between now and the end of the season so stay tuned.
| Player | Cheat Police Member | Points |
| Shawcross, Ryan | @wayneduncan | 1 |
| Nolan, Kevin | @Ms_Tor | 1 |
| De Jong, Nigel | @Nendsss | 1 |
| Barton, Joey | @mikemc_81 | 0 |
| Gerrard, Steven | @markflan64 | 0 |
| Palacios, Winston | @dancingbear01 | 0 |
Should The Ferg be free to jibber jabber or not jibber jabber as he sees fit?
It seems like The Ferg gets hassle from The Man when he talks to the press and The Ferg also gets hassle from the Man when he doesn’t talk to the press. It’s a confusing and terrifying situation and the general public needs moral guidance about whose side they should be on. Should the Ferg be free to jibber jabber or not jibber jabber as he sees fit? As the nation’s moral compass what do you think about the situation Mr PremCheat?
Firstly, did you just use the phrase “jibber jabber” in an attempt to appear cool because it’s something you think a rapper might say?
Possibly.
Did you just steal the phrase from a Snickers advert starring Mr T?
Yes. Yes I did.
You pathetic young thing.
Anyway, we agree that the Fergie situation is an enigma within a puzzle, wrapped up in a quandary, placed in the mouth of an angry old man and chewed quizzically.
Obviously because we’re cardigan-wearing Grauniad readers we believe in free speech and all that fluffy nonsense. However because we’ve got also access to CNN and have seen Piers Morgan’s new chat show we know the distress and boredom that unlimited free speech can cause.
We agree that Fergie should be able to do whatever he wants, when he wants, to whoever he wants. If he doesn’t want to share his thoughts, knowledge and poems with the world then he shouldn’t be forced to. Unless he’s signed a contract which says he’s going to, of course. Then he should have to.
And as Man United have receive cash from “rights holders” to hear his words of wisdom then he really should start jibber-jabbering when he’s meant to.
Rights Holders? Surely you mean The Man? Why should we care about Rights Holders? We’ve got much more important things to worry about at the moment, like why the Beady Eye album only went in at number 3 in the album chart. Number 3! They’re basically Oasis with one less monobrow so why haven’t general public embraced them to their collective bosoms?
But they’re also basically a Heavy Stereo/Ride super group aren’t they?
OK, now it’s becoming clearer.
Getting back to the main point of this rambling conversation – you should worry about “Rights Holders” because they pay for those rights using cash which they’ve extracted from your pockets.
If the rights holders didn’t get more money in from selling TV subscriptions/newspapers/adverts to the unwashed masses than they paid over to the Premier League clubs for the rights to interview Fergie and his chums then they wouldn’t pay for those rights at all. Sky, Talk Sport and even the BBC aren’t charities set up to keep Stephen Ireland in wifi-enabled fish tanks you know.
Yes but Sky and the rest of their corporate chums never get any cash from me. I never go to live games, never buy replica shirts, don’t subscribe to Sky, ESPN or MUTV. I watch all my football from the flats which overlook some Premier League grounds or on dodgy streaming websites where people type racist comments into the “chat box” at the side of the screen. I have beaten the system – I am like Gandhi and Michael Moore rolled into one supreme being.
Have you bought a newspaper? Or watched Match of The Day? Or drank a soft drink of any variety?
No.
You’re lying aren’t you?
Maybe.
Well any newspaper sports section you’ve read will have had quotes from interviews that “rights holders” have paid money for. The BBC could reduce the licence fee or make more quality HD programmes about seals if they didn’t have to pay the Premier League so much for the right to hear Mark Hughes moan about the quality of someone’s handshake each week.
And you know those boards they have behind the managers in their post game interviews advertising airlines, electronic equipment and fizzy drinks? Well, subconsciously those little symbols will have influenced you to buy something at some point in your life.
Mmm I wondered why I randomly booked those flights to Qatar yesterday, it’s all starting to make sense now. So you’re telling me if Fergie doesn’t want to do post match interview any more then Man U should hand back all the money they’ve received from the rights holders and we’ll get more programmes about cute seals?
Yes, that’s exactly what we’re saying.
Sounds good to me! So are you going to award Fergie cheat points for his actions. He’s basically a seal clubber isn’t he?
Yes. Yes we are, 4 points are being sent to Fergie Towers right away.
Oooh I like it when you get tough. I pity the fool who messes with PremCheat!
OTHER NAUGHTINESS:
Jamie Carragher – got his Daniel O’Donnell on and made Nani cry – 4 points
Imaginary man who PremCheat had a conversation with – stealing two of Mr T’s catchphrases – 8 points