Catalan powerhouse saves fortune by being useless

Take a long intrusive look at the losing Chelsea/ Man United fans on Thursday morning, and you’ll notice a deadness behind the eyes. That’s because they have spent the whole evening shouting into a pillow, weeping until their brains can no longer process emotions like “despair” or “overwhelming sadness”, and have instead been left with “numbness” - they are just an empty shell. Even the cheerful people of Cardiff probably spent most of Sunday morning repeatedly punching one another in the nose and yelling in Welsh.

No such self-pity, however, over in sunny Spain - a place where football fans are supposed to be over critical. And yet, the people of Barcelona haven’t taken their bad season as an excuse to skip their tapas and angrily down gallons of sangria instead - quite the opposite, they’re glad that their team managed to achieve less than nothing. Why? Because they’ve saved a whopping 35 million Euros in players’ bonuses. That’s the kind of money that could buy them a promising young midfield star, or even another dazzling attacker to join the fifty-two they already have.

Will there be any such bright side lurking in the north/south of England this week? Damn right there won’t!