Spurs ‘do Man United favour’ as Frank sacked but hair today remains tomorrow | OneFootball

This is one of those rare and special mornings where the football media crackles and buzzes with a genuine big breaking story. That’s right, that fella with the hair still hasn’t had it cut.

Oh, and Thomas Frank’s been sacked.

Heroically, despite all that going on, there’s still time and place for more routine acts of tabloid housery in a rattled Mediawatch.

The real quiz

The confirmation that Thomas Frank has at long last been put out of everyone’s misery at Tottenham was a real ‘But Krusty, why now?’ moment.

It feels like the whys and wherefores of the sacking of a man who was taking Spurs into the Championship and turning them into more of a banter-magnet misery-festival than ever before are not among life’s great mysteries to be unravelled.

So we were slightly surprised by this Mirror headline.

We’d just assumed along with everyone else the ‘real reason’ was the results and performances. What was it, then?

Oh.

Decision time

Frank’s departure also prompted an immediate and familiar, almost reflex, Daily Express response. Regular readers will have seen this before and know precisely where it’s headed.

It’s another missing words round! This time the full and complete version of the headline should read:

In fact, even that’s too generous. The Daily Express writers haven’t even managed to decide who the next Tottenham boss should actually be given the four of them involved here have each come up with a different name: Edin Terzic, Ruben Amorim, Roberto De Zerbi and Enzo Maresca.

That’s that settled, then.

Cross purpose

Jeremy Cross has dashed off an opinion piece for the Mirror about how Spurs could now do Manchester United a favour by appointing Roberto De Zerbi, who has been tipped for the United job but could now obviously very easily rock up at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium.

Cross doesn’t think De Zerbi should ‘come close to the shortlist’ at United. Which is fair enough, it’s a game of opinions and all that. And yet…

Well no, probably not that bit, but guiding Brighton into Europe and the semi-finals of the FA Cup might be more of a factor?

Oh. Okay. But what about finishing second behind only PSG in Ligue 1 with Marseille. That’s quite good, isn’t it? About as good as can be realistically hoped?

Yes, glide past the good bit to the bad. Mediawatch doesn’t even disagree with the idea that De Zerbi is not particularly suited for the United job, or that he is a volatile and risky choice for anyone. But insisting there is nothing in that record whatsoever to support the idea feels a bit much.

Is it just us, or does the second sentence not really follow the first here? The one chance De Zerbi has had to compete at the top end of a halfway serious league he finished second behind a superclub that won the lot. United have finished as high as second only twice in their dozen and counting years in the title wilderness.

It may well be that De Zerbi can’t hack those expectations, but let’s not forget those expectations are also mental.

In any case, to go back to that original question of ‘What has he done to deserve a crack at one of the most demanding and difficult jobs in world football?’ a fair answer would still be ‘more than Michael Carrick’.

Hair raising

That’s not the biggest Manchester United news today, of course. Oh dear me no.

Not when the football event of this World Cup year took place last night, with Frank Illett – or to give him his full name ‘Hairy Man United Superfan Frank Illett’ – forced to pretend during his livestream of the 1-1 draw with West Ham to be incredibly disappointed that his golden-egg-sh*tting goose lives to fight another day. Well, several days.

Even if United now win their next five games it will still take them until March 20 to do so. Poor old Frank will, alas, have to keep making money from Paddy Power and Argos and endless tabloid coverage for at least another six weeks. He must be gutted.

And yet The Sun continue to insult our entire collective intelligence by insisting that gutted is indeed the current mental state of this man who – and this is an important point to remember – is entirely free to get a haircut any time he wants one.

He’s been very talkative for a speechless man.

No, he wasn’t.

Missed opportunity for a further reminder of the key fact that his head is hairy here. Standards slipping at the Currant Bun.

He shook his giant afro in dismay as the realisation set in before defiantly declaring: ‘I’m committed too far to just give up now.’

That’s more like it.

Mediawatch wearies of this drivel, so you will also have to indulge us at our most pedantic here.

That’s not even 18 months, guys. You can insult our intelligence but you can’t just bend time.

Hair today

Even Wayne Rooney gets it, as The Sun gleefully report in full tabloid cake-and-eat-it fashion.

Although it’s also no surprise that the sight of a man with a spectacularly full head of hair would be especially triggering for Rooney.

Swede dreams are made of this

While there might be a lot of important things happening right now with manager sackings happening and haircuts not happening, it’s a relief to know that the more simple pleasures of your basic good old-fashioned tabloid housery still have a place even on mornings like this.

Over to The Sun for an exemplary, textbook study of the dark arts of the modern headline writer’s art.

The ‘here’ it feels great to be is not – and this will shock you – in fact ‘here’ at Arsenal. It is there, at Kalmar in Sweden.

And who is feeling great to be there (not here)? Charles Sagoe Jr, veteran of one Carabao Cup appearance for Arsenal in September 2023 which, on The Sun’s calendar, is nearly three years ago.