Off The Bar: Pedro pining and horrendous Hammers

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  • Chelsea's Pedro has the same goal tally as Manchester United.

    Once more Off The Bar delivers a satirical swipe at several talking points from the Premier League weekend. Either side of a topical water break, there’s a solution to Wayne Rooney’s goal drought and an analysis of good boys gone bad — West Ham United.

    Pining For Pedro
    Somehow the phrase ‘rubbing salt into the wound’ doesn’t quite do justice to the pain Manchester United fans must have felt when they saw Pedro notch up a goal, assist and Man of the Match award in Chelsea’s win over West Brom on Sunday. Try funnelling an entire salt mine (and a dash of lemon) into a festering wound.

    After months of hard negotiating, United were last week mere loose change from buying the former Barcelona player…that was until they eventually dilly dallied and refused to scoop their hand down the back of their sofa to make up the difference in valuation. In catastrophic penny pinching terms, this was essentially the equivalent of Frodo Baggins braving it all the way to the outskirts of Mordor before deciding at the last minute that his travel expenses had got too much to bare and it was time to head home to stuff his receipts in Gandalf’s letterbox. 

    Confusingly Luis van Gaal said he didn’t want Pedro anyway. Yes, despite the Spaniard being a fast, skilful, experienced and affordable creative midfielder, he was not the fast, skilful, experienced and affordable creative midfielder that Manchester United were after apparently.  Of course, we all know deep down that Luis and co are cursing their judgment. Off The Bar has never missed out on the capturing of a Champions League winner so we can’t truly relate to the pain he will be going through, though we imagine it’s like watching a lady you have had your eye on for a long time, but ultimately rejected, go on to become a beautiful Prom Queen held in the embrace of a smarmy High School Quarter-back called Josh Mourinho. We appreciate that Luis can go to the metaphorical Prom with an impressively in-form Chris Smalling but it’s not quite the same is it?

    Bolt-on Striker
    Pedro has quickly mustered as many goals as the entirety of Manchester United this season. Wayne Rooney is seemingly taking the majority of the flack for that diabolical statistic. That’s easy to explain when you consider the England captain hasn’t scored for 858 minutes of playing time — that goes all the way back to early April, mere days after he was pummelled at The Thriller In Rooney’s Villa. We expected Wayne would pick up a week of concussion after being knocked out In his kitchen, but his numb bamboozlement in front of goal suggests a terrifying new diagnosis — Wayne has yet to break out of a five-month Phil Bardsley fist-induced coma.

    Whatever the test results show, Rooney looks more burnt out than the post-invasion White House in Independence Day. Whilst he could successfully stop his receding hairline with transplant surgery, sprint speed transplants are not quite as easy. Though Usain Bolt is a huge United fan, we expect he is quite protective of his fast-twitch fibres. It might be cheaper, quicker and more medically sound to simply buy Usain for the remainder of the season before loaning the reigning 100m World Champion back to Athletics United for the 2016 Rio Olympics next summer. Until then Wayne can simply sit on the Jamaican’s shoulders to transport himself quickly around the pitch before dismounting when appropriate to hit home through balls. The quandary of whether to play two upfront or a lone striker would disappear overnight. Simply do both Luis.

    Water Break Time
    Global Warming scientists have been looking for a golden piece of evidence to totally undo the protestations of climate change deniers and now they finally have it — a water breaks took place at Premier League matches!  Forget concern about folically flamboyant players having their alice bands melt into their scalp during the Qatar World Cup heat, try playing in the dry arid deserts of East London, Sunderland and Norwich.

    The latter really seemed to get the most out of their water break — within 60 seconds of H2O refreshment Norwich scored a fine equaliser against Stoke City. When you are a relegation favourite you have to embrace whatever edge you can. Thus we can now expect Alex Neil to plough the remainder of his transfer kitty on atmospheric geo-engineering over Carrow Road — a strategy to pump the home game temperature upwards of 100F in a desperate attempt to make sure that tactically advantageous water-breaks are here to stay.

    Above all, our favourite rehydration highlight came when Danny Drinkwater was witnessed by the world…drinking water. We had great hopes that a flurry of players would follow suit by acting out their surname —  Schweinsteiger, which famously translates into English as pig climber, could have been something spectacular to behold at Old Trafford. Sadly it wasn’t to be.

    West Ham Wham Bam
    What a difference a season makes for West Ham’s disciplinary record.  Last campaign they were the teacher’s pet, picking up just three dismissals and earning qualification into the Europa League courtesy of their supreme record in the Fair Play League. It was the kind of sensible club you would happily bring home to meet the parents. But it’s best they stay away from Mr and Mrs Off The Bar for now — they’ve collected a fiery five red cards in nine competitive games. Like Harvey ‘Two-Face’ Dent from Batman, West Ham are clearly a good boy gone bad, very bad. Last week it was their goalkeeper delivering a Kung Fu kick that Neo would be proud of, and this weekend against Bournemouth it was Carl Jenkinson chopping away at an opponent like a demented lumberjack.

    So what’s changed? The chaps on the bench may have something to do with it. Manager Slaven Bilic has been sent to the stands so often that he is now permanently strapped into a chair lift for practical ease, and lets not forget that first-team coach and West Ham legend Julian Dicks is nicknamed ‘The Terminator’ and achieved more kick-ups with the body of a prone winger than he did with a ball. In rough and tumble terms, swapping a curmudgeon but harmless figure like Sam Allardyce for this duo is like going to your local pet stop to swap a cranky gerbil for a pair of peckish hyenas. Add in their faltering form and it seems increasingly likely that the snapping of teeth and regular laughter will be the soundtrack of West Ham’s season.

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