BotN: Grumpy Villas-Boas takes negatives from Tottenham performance
Thursday 27 December 2012 11:11
The Spurs boss is far from full of festive cheer, reports Back of the Net's John Foster...
A gloomy-looking André Villas-Boas has refused to discuss the positive aspects of Tottenham’s result against Aston Villa, preferring instead to focus on the downsides of his side’s 4-0 win.
Four second-half strikes including a wonderful hat trick from Gareth Bale saw Spurs romp home to climb back into fourth place, but victorious manager Villas-Boas, wearing a shabby, stained overcoat and sporting a thick beard, refused to engage with questions about his side’s superlative display.
“I know you [journalists] will want to talk about Gareth Bale’s hat-trick,” the ex-Chelsea boss said after the game. “But I wish you’d focus on the negatives for once. If Marc Albrighton hadn’t wasted his chance in stoppage time, we’d be looking at 4-1, and that’s a very different picture.”
“Okay, the second half was good, but did you see the first? What a pathetic advert for the Premier League that was,” he continued. “Sandro was off the pace, Naughton looked like he wasn’t trying, and Bale didn’t even score once.”
“If we keep that up, and stop storing goals, and make a lot of other mistakes, and have an epidemic of injuries, then there’s no way we’re finishing in the top half.”
Villas-Boas went on to bemoan the Birmingham weather and the hardness of the Villa Park dugout, before turning his ire on Christmas, which he called “a miserable orgy of materialism, false jollity and familial loathing.”
Seasoned Portuguese football-watchers observed that this behavior is par for the course for Villas-Boas.
“It’s the time of year. André hates Christmas,” explained Lisbon-based journalist Paulo Gualtério. “He was notorious back in Porto for going on and on about how much he disliked sprouts and turkey and presents. If you gave him a really good glass of port, he’d find something disparaging to say about its mouthfeel and criticize your cheese.”
When informed that Aston Villa manager Paul Lambert had been effusive in his praise for Spurs’ attacking pair of Jermain Defoe and Emmanuel Adebayor, Villas-Boas rolled his eyes.
“You want to talk about Defoe? He was off the pace all game. Adebayor? Stupid hair. And Bale? If he’s so good, how come that’s only his second career hat-trick? We were lucky, and also, everyone you love will die one day.”
Asked for his view on puppies, Villas-Boas commented that they fart a lot, and concluded the press conference with a ten-minute long screed about the carcinogenic properties of chocolate.
Editor's note: this is satire and not a serious accusation - all
quotes are fictionalised. But you knew that, because you're not stupid.
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