Hull boss “sweet-talks” girl contemplating suicide 

There’s an old adage among top flight managers: if you’re team has only won two of their last 29 matches, take them for a walk on a suspension bridge. Phil Brown did exactly this yesterday, taking his woeful troops for an “inspirational” stroll across the Humber Bridge. While avoiding the question of why he took his team to a suicide hotspot for inspiration, the orange boss has nonchalantly revealed how he talked down a jumper:

“We walked across the Humber Bridge on Wednesday and saved a girl actually.”

“She was considering her future, shall we say, but you never know whether somebody is just standing there until they jump. But there was no need to be up there unless you were a football team looking for inspiration. Maybe she must have seen us and thought ‘at least it’s not that bad’. Well for me in particular - not the players.

“She was claiming she was 40-plus, but she looked a lot younger I tell you. Nobody said she was going to jump. She was contemplating her future, but so was I. In the end she tootled off back to wherever she had come from. I’d sweet-talked her out of it.”

Phil certainly deserves praise for his rousing “things could be worse, you could play for Hull” speech - it’s just a shame that he looks so powerless to help his team avoid a drop of a different kind.

Winger recalls the trauma of relegation, takes swipe at Newcastle 

As The Spoiler watched Newacstle’s Premier League swansong in a busy Las Vegas casino sports book, a distraught Geordie shouted “Let’s torch the place!” just as the final whistle blew. The immediate appearance of dozens of security staff changed the supporter’s mind, but the point was clear: those involved with the Toon Army didn’t take relegation well. Today, it has been revealed that Damien Duff had an equally hyperbolic reaction when Captain Shearer failed to avoid the huge iceberg ahead of the SS Newcastle:

“I was feeling suicidal about the way we went down at Newcastle and wasn’t even thinking that far ahead.”

One would imagine it would take months, maybe years, for someone to come to terms with an event so tragic that it prompted thoughts of suicide, but Damien Duff is a trooper. Not only has he successfully moved back to the Premier League with Fulham, but he has even found the strength of spirit to deliver a backhanded swipe at his beloved former employers:

“It’s really exciting, from where I have come from, to come to a well-run football club and a team where everyone enjoys their job.”

Calls us pedantic, but when Duff said “suicidal about the way we went down at Newcastle”, did he actually mean “mildly peeved that I would have to move house”?

Over-reaction to relegation nearly ends badly

For the first time in their 110 year history, four-time league champions Vasco da Gama were relegated from Campeonato Brasileiro Série A. Feeling that he couldn’t live without the excitement of top flight football, one fan decided to climb atop the roof of the Estádio São Januário with the intention of meeting his maker.

Fortunately, he is seized by police and an inexplicably shirtless man before the 36,000 crowd had something else to be unhappy about.

[Deadspin]