It’s hasta la vista, Jose as Tevez gets the off mark

IF I may get all Arnie on your ass for an intro: farewell Jose, The Terminated, and enter Coneman The Barbarian, as Avi Grant has been so cruelly dubbed. I note Mrs Grant also made a splash, so to speak, in the weekend papers here for ingesting her own urine on Israeli tv.

United, by contrast, preferred to EXTRACT the wee from the husband on Sunday; never have I seen such an abominable refereeing display, and I can still clearly remember the 1989 FA Cup quarter-final.

The British press was also full of a countryside outbreak of the Bluetongue Virus and at first glance I thought this was a reference to the foaming at the mouth of the massed Chelsea Blues, who have reacted with all the stupidity and lack of class, one has come to expect from the bandwagon-jumping cretins.

As the London Daily Mirror’s excellent columnist Brian Reade pointed out — and he’s a scouser, so an expert in matters of grief-junky misbehaviour — West London hadn’t seen anything as grossly excessive as this since 1997’s Dianafest.

But after Fergie’s public crocodile tears — or were they sobs of relief? — came the best antidote of all; Arsene Wenger’s timely intervention.

He quietly pointed out that CFC’s dominance hitherto is mainly due to Roman’s money, not Jose’s skills; that everyone had been complaining for months about Chelsea’s boring play and sour attitude, the cause of both of which has now been removed; and that “convicting” Grant before he’s even got started is an unjustifiable and illogical reaction to the Mourinho decision.

Quite so. One almost hopes Grant will be a success, thus forcing scores of hacks and thousands of fomenting Blues to choke on their bilious words. Almost, but not actually, of course.

Sunday was robbed of any significance by the lunatic Dean, so there’s not much point dwelling on it beyond smiling at the memory of our taunting songs and of Tevez’s account-opener, which thankfully removed him from the top of the stats list that embarrassingly had him as the man who’d missed most chances in the PL thus far. Just in time for Maradona’s state visit next month, too.

Balsawood Man, who promised prematch we would see ‘the real Saha’, rather depressingly unveiled that reality: a diving cheat. Slightly preferable, I suppose, to what I first feared when he went down — that a gust of wind had smashed his tibia.

Incidentally, ‘Red Issue’ revealed at the weekend that Saha was almost off-loaded to Bolton on loan before the window closed, so perhaps he shouldn’t be getting too cocky on the back of his goal just yet, not least as an extremely senior United source also told our operatives that Berbatov remains an absolute priority for next June.

Meanwhile, that source’s colleague, chief executive David Gill, was assuring us on BBC Radio that the Glazer debt repayments, fully exposed by our Supporters Trust and the NOTW, is being covered by the club profits, as if this is supposed to make us feel happy; contrast that with Arsenal’s announcement that Arsene can spend all of their stunning €100million annual profit on players if he wants. Indeed, amidst all the schadenfraude directed at Chelsea, perhaps we can all remember who had already established themselves as this season’s obvious main enemy weeks BEFORE Jose’s defenestration? Arsenal are back, full of spunky young talent, with a boss signed up to suckle them forever and with shedloads to spend. Chelsea as a threat is, like, soooo 2006. Get with the program, dudes! Erm, sorry about that linguistical spasm. Glazer’s evil Yankee effects clearly spread in so many malicious ways.

Back to tonight: impressive record ticket sales for the Cheap Pop Cup, but if it’s all to pay Malcolm’s AmEx bill, just what is there to celebrate? We pay, profits rise, Glazer gives it all to a hedge fund, we pay even more: recycling to no end. Like drinking your own urine, in fact...”

* Richard Kurt, whose ‘Red Army Years’ is ONLY available via [e-mail]