Where were you on 12th July 2010? You probably won’t know, but that date was the start of months of joy and grief for me, for both football and non-football reasons. The 11th July was the highly underwhelming World Cup final between Spain and the Netherlands, to top off the highly underwhelming South African World Cup. Naturally, the 12th July was the day I walked up to Ladbrokes to collect my (relatively) large (for me) winnings on a pre-tournament bet for David Villa to finish top goalscorer. The same walk saw the debut of the controversial and much sought after (I like to think) bright yellow Adidas fisherman’s style coat. Much like Robbie Savage, you either love it, or you hate it. A lot of Sheffield seem to hate it, if the strange looks I receive are anything to go by.
“We’ll pay you for a quarter of the odds duck cause he was joint top goalscorer”. So I walked out disgruntled, but not surprised, as like the lady said, my man David shared the top scorer accolade with Thomas Muller, Wesley Sneijder and Diego Forlan. I left Ladbrokes with £10, of which £5 was my stake . The profit I made was merely enough to cover the cost of food that I had to consume to provide my body with the fuel it required for the half and hour round walk. I had to do something drastic, and something drastic against Ladbrokes.
The only thing for it was to open an online Ladbrokes account and put £20 on Wigan to get relegated for the upcoming season. You know Wigan? The team that offers nothing to the Premiership whatsoever? The only team in the country in which there are five empty seats to one occupied seat in their stadium? The only team in the country who’s fans turn up to see a rugby league match, only to realise it’s actually the football on show? Yeah, hopefully you now know what team I’m on about. I bet on them. Despite a scare early on in the season when they beat Tottenham at White Hart Lane, Wigan occupied the part of the league they belong in for the majority of the season; the bottom 3. The delight I had at seeing Wigan fail most weeks then turned to apprehension, and it has now turned to anger as they look set for a dramatic escape.
Wigan v West Ham. Massive match with the losers most likely to go down. At 16:30 I logged on to my computer, and to my delight and disbelief saw that a certain D.Ba had put the Cockney Massive 2-0 up. Was the £65 and World Cup compensation package heading into my account? Terrorised with fear and dread, I went down to make my Sunday dinner. Pork. It got to half 5, 20 mins to go in the football and I hadn’t looked at the score for an hour. What could I do to pass 20 mins and not know the score? If you’re ever in doubt on how to pass 20 mins, I suggest Spontaneous Stuffing. This is where one makes stuffing despite not having had this in the Sunday dinner itinerary.
17:50. Couldn’t resist. Ran upstairs a West Ham fan and put on 5Live. “OH AND IT’S COME OFF THE POST AND GONE STRAIGHT INTO ROB GREENS ARMS! WHAT DRAMA!”. Not what I wanted to hear. Come on you Hammers, hold on for me. A minute later, “AND NZOGBIA CURLS IT IN AND WINS IT FOR WIGAN!! WHAT A VICTORY THIS IS FOR WIGAN. WEST HAM SECONDS AWAY FROM RELEGATION!”. Fantastic. So whilst I was putting in hard to work to my Sunday dinner, West Ham were putting even harder work in to throw away a two goal lead in the most heartbreaking of circumstances. West Ham relegated and good riddance to them. A little tip for you gamblers out there; for both West Ham v Millwall matches next year, don’t bet on number of corners or both teams to score, bet on number of deaths, and both sets of fans to have a person killed. I’ll give you odds of 8/11. And as for Wigan, well, they’ll stay up and frustrate us all for another year.
David Villa missed a penalty in the group stage of the World Cup to complete a hat-trick. If he’d have scored that he’d have been top scorer, I’d have received my rightful money, not have had a grudge against Wigan, this blog post wouldn’t exist, and you would have spent the last two minutes doing something else. Sorry.
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