ROONEY or Tevez . . . who is more valuable? That debate has been raging ever since Wayne Rooney’s metatarsal curse struck yet again on Sunday. The answer, of course, is simple. It’s Tevez, who is worth a whopping 17 points in Scrabble, while Rooney is worth a mere nine.
I’ve had Scrabble on the brain for the last couple of weeks, after becoming addicted to playing Scrabulous on Facebook. I’m sure there are far more constructive things I could be doing with my free time than playing online Scrabble against friends a couple of hundred miles away, but I’ve yet to find out what they are, and I’m beginning to suspect I never will.
The upshot of this addiction (apart from discovering that ‘zo’ and ‘qi’ are actual words) is that I have found myself starting to make value judgements according to the Scrabble board. And I actually think there might be something in it.
John O’Shea, for instance, struggled as a makeshift striker when Rooney went off. I’m certain this is because O’Shea is worth even less than Rooney on a Scrabble board – just eight points.
By contrast, look at the identity of City’s two scorers at West Ham on Saturday: Bianchi (14 points) and Geovanni (12 points). It’s clear that Sven-Goran Eriksson has been studying his Scrabble board closely over the summer, and it’s paying off.
It doesn’t end there. Sir Alex Ferguson has committed the major oversight of playing van der Sar in goal (just 13 points), when he has the much more valuable Kuszczak in reserve (theoretically 36 points, but in reality only 21, as you would need both blank tiles to make up for the fact that a Scrabble set has only one K and one Z).
Still, the fact that Tevez will come in for the injured Rooney at Portsmouth on Wednesday night is at least a step in the right direction. But if Fergie really wants to be a success this season, there’s only one player he needs to sign: Jan Vennegoor of Hesselink (33 points). Expect a bid before the transfer window closes, or my surname’s not worth 16 points.
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WHEN the powers-that-be come to hand out the prizes at the next journalism awards, I hope they leave something aside for our non-league reporter Tony Glennon.
Tony’s knowledge of the North West non-league football scene is unrivalled, but that’s not why I would put him forward for a gong. No, I think he deserves an award for record-breaking brevity in a match report.
Tonight, Tony has somehow managed to condense his report on Hyde United’s 6-3 win over Vauxhall Motors in the Blue Square (Conference) North into 86 words. (We don’t have much space in tomorrow’s paper.) That’s fewer than 10 words per goal. It must be a record. It’s certainly a tribute to Tony’s writing.

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