All in the Game: Many happy returns, Liam Brady

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“Overpaid mercenaries.”

One of the many banners aimed at Paris Saint-Germain players during their game against Rennes on Friday night. Alas for PSG, they were being waved by their own fans.

Number: 66

That’s how many candles were on Liam Brady’s birthday cake on Sunday - many happy returns, Chippy.

Frugal Lille

There were some gobsmacking figures in that report released last week by CIES Football Observatory, the Swiss-based research institute, which detailed the transfer activity of clubs in Europe’s top five leagues over the last decade.

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It didn't, need it be said, make for pretty reading for Manchester United, the only club to have a negative net spend of over ….. one billion euros. In all, they spent €1.545 billion on transfers, bringing in €470m in player sales.

The shining stars of the list were undoubtedly Lille, the club with the biggest net profit from transfers in this period, Nicolas Pépé (Arsenal, €80m), Victor Osimhen (Napoli, €75m), Eden Hazard (Chelsea, €35m) and Rafael Leão (AC Milan, €23m) among their biggest sales.

If them beating Paris St-Germain to the French league title last season didn’t already look like a remarkable achievement, the figures put an even bigger gloss on it: PSG have a negative net spend of €941m in the last 10 years, Lille have a positive net spend of €349m. Lille, you have to say, are the business.

Word of Mouth

“There’s no more bacon butties.”

No wonder Manchester United’s players are disgruntled - as ‘a source’ told The Sun, Ralf Rangnick has banned them from eating rasher sandwiches.

“Being in the ambulance, I told the medical people: ‘Keep my boots, I won’t need them again’”.

Christian Eriksen, back in business with Brentford, on his message to the paramedics who treated him after his cardiac arrest at Euro 2020.

“If you asked Ronaldo, ‘who’s the worst midfield players you’ve ever played with?’, Fred and McTominay wouldn’t be far off. He’s playing with a few dummies.”

Wales old-boy Dean Saunders saluting the quality of Manchester United's midfield.

“I didn’t see Arsenal celebrating like this in the past 10 years - it was like they won the league.”

Wolves’ Ruben Neves after a mass outbreak of whooping, cheering and high-fiving from Arsenal players are their 1-0 win at Molineux on Thursday.

Portuguese Red Mist

How rowdy was Sporting Lisbon’s meeting with Porto at the weekend? Well, if you don’t count the five red cards handed out by the ref after the brawl towards the end of the 2-2 draw, one that carried on after the final whistle, then it was calm enough.

Needless to say, Porto’s Pepe found himself heavily involved in the mayhem, him being one of the dismissed lads, but Sporting president Frederico Varandas blamed only one man for it all. “This game reflects, for me, what the last 40 years of Portuguese football has been about. Of an era where Porto have a president called Pinto da Costa.”

Varandas, it would, then, be accurate to say, is not an enormous fan of 84-year-old da Costa, who has been Porto president since 1982. And he was even less a fan of his club when, he claimed, he was verbally abused and had his phone and credit cards stolen by a number of their officials as he attempted to board the team bus after the game.

“Sporting CP will file a criminal complaint against [these men] and will make every effort to ensure that the aggressors of these acts are banned from sports venues,” said the club.

A lively affair, then.

Neighbourly Love

Apology of the week: The one offered by Arsenal after an issue arose on their online store. “This was posted to the site in error without appropriate checks and approvals and is being removed as quickly as possible,” read their statement. What was the problem? Well, if you didn’t buy anything, the message you received was: “Your basket is as empty as Tottenham’s trophy cabinet.” Tsk.