Spot the balls – six sorry excuses for football failure

http://www.theguardian.com/football/2014/may/11/best-football-excuses-david-stubbs

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Mohamed Al Fayed, the former owner of Fulham FC, recently claimed that Fulham were relegated because they removed the statue of Michael Jackson he had installed outside the stadium. Having leaked over 80 goals this season, perhaps the trick Fulham missed was to winch the statue into their back four, where it might have done a more effective job. Whatever, Al Fayed's remarks are a fine addition to the pantheon of spectacular excuses for footballing failure, which themselves should be carved in stone.

■ Sir Alex Ferguson, naturally, furnished us with the most preposterous excuse, against which all others should be measured. When Man United went 3-0 down before half time to Southampton at the Dell in 1996, Ferguson blamed the team's reserve kit of grey shirts, which, he said, meant his players could not easily pick each other out. Since the only colour Ferguson could ever see was red, you can understand why he thought the shirts would have rendered his players invisible.

■ In 1998, when Newcastle United could only scrape a humiliating draw against Conference side Stevenage in an FA Cup tie, Magpies manager Kenny Dalglish explained that the bounciness of the balls used "suited them more than us". Well, of course. It's a well-known fact that in the lunar conditions of non-league football, they're more used to playing with balls that fly about unimpeded by the laws of gravity. One misstep for Dalglish, one giant leap for football excuses.

■ When languishing in the Championship table, Crystal Palace fans knew where to point the finger of blame – at Palace's own cheerleading troupe, "the Crystals", whose acrobatics, the fans opined, were distracting the players, luring them like sirens to the rocks of relegation.

■ As if already aware he was on the slow, stopping train terminating at Failure, David Moyes got his excuse in early this season. He complained that the fixture list meant Man United would face Chelsea, Man City and Liverpool in their first few games. Unfair to demoralise a team as grand as Man United by making them play games they might lose. Fortunately, they would later get to play lowly West Brom, Stoke and Sunderland and, er, lose to them too, so it all evened out.

■ Prior to Euro 96, Terry Venables's England team barely scraped past an elderly assortment of expats playing under the banner of the Hong Kong XI, at Hong Kong's Happy Valley stadium. Venables maintained his team's performance had nothing to do with his touring players being pied and vodka'd to the gills – rather, the grass was too long, which did "not suit England's passing game". Those who have witnessed England's "passing game", akin to firing aerial balls randomly as if from a cannon in the vague direction of a centre forward, demurred.

■ Having lost 4-0 to Spain in the 2006 World Cup, Ukraine's players complained that croaking frogs outside their hotel had kept them awake the night before, meaning their defenders had to catch up on their sleep where defenders so often do – during the game.