Football Daily | Mings the merciful and a tale of two handballs

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A pint of foaming shaft belonging to the hardest bloke in the pub. The wrong child from nursery. Somebody’s else’s suitcase at the airport carousel. Who among us hasn’t picked something up by mistake and been forced to rue our error? However, few have done so as publicly as Tyrone Mings, who in front of 23,466 largely delighted attendees at the Jan Breydel Stadion, made the critical error of picking up the ball after a short goal kick had been prodded his way by Villa goalkeeper Emi Martínez during Aston Villa’s Bigger Cup match against Club Brugge. While Football Daily can only guess what was going through the skipper’s mind as he leaned over, picked up the ball and placed it on the edge of the six-yard box, we have a fair idea what his manager was thinking when the ref proceeded to award the home side a penalty for handball. Unai Emery’s expression ran the gamut from bafflement, through withering contempt and finally settled on pure thunder.

I can assure you that the fan who chucked a pig’s head on to the field at Corinthians v Palmeiras (yesterday’s Football Daily) was a Corintiano because no away fans are allowed into either stadium for derbies between these teams” – Ryan Lloyd.

In these corporate days of uber-professional football, with managers having a dozens of people in their coaching teams, marginal gains, and players having chefs, trainers and strict regimes, Mikel Arteta being so dozy he picks the ball up before it has gone out of play and Tyrone Mings being so unobservant he picks up the ball to place it for a goal kick just after Emi Martínez has already taken it is a heartening throwback to a bygone era. In which case, can we also bring back £5 admission and no waiting lists for season tickets?” – Noble Francis.

Arguably Celtic’s best European display for two decades received a paltry 22 words of coverage in my third favourite tea-time daily football email newsletter (yesterday’s News, Bits and Bobs, full email edition). That’s almost short enough to be conveyed in haiku form, in fact:
Celtic roars at home,
Leipzig silenced, three to one,
Press turns a blind eye” – Joe Brown.

Flogging the dead horse which is the ‘great headlines’ thread (Football Daily letters passim) while simultaneously patting myself on the back, I humbly submit one I wrote when working as a sports reporter/sub for the Slough and Windsor Observer. Windsor and Eton FC were knocked out of the FA Cup in the qualifying round by the Met Police and our headline was: ‘They fought the law … and the law won.’ Enough years have passed that I can confess that although I covered the fortunes of W&E, I was hoping they would lose solely so I could use that” – Andy Stiff.

This is an extract from our daily football email … Football Daily. To get the full version, just visit this page and follow the instructions.

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