One of the small joys of the Premier League season, so far, has been the delicious schadenfreude of watching the Shakespearean Tragedy of Mourinho at Manchester United play itself out.
Barring a miraculous return to form, Mourinho is certainly out at the end of this season. But he is not going quietly, he is raging against the dying of the light, persevering in playing a particular brand of negative football week in and week out. His players aren't happy, the fans are not happy, and I doubt he is happy either, as United find themselves in eighth place with a goal differential of one.
I watched the lastest twist in the story on Wednesday night, when Man U hosted Arsenal. It ended in a slightly disappointing 2-2 draw (disappointing, at least, if you were waiting for Mourinho to finally get sacked. If he had lost 5-0 or something, he probably would have...). It was a chippy game, and all the goals were....well, kind of crap, in that none of them probably should have happened.
But it was compelling enough, and I was eager this morning to read some additional analysis from the Guardian sport's desk. I was reading Johnathan Wilson's take on the game when I came across this:
A 2-2 draw against a team who are now 20 games unbeaten is no disgrace, of course, not even when that team are Arsenal, who haven’t won in the league at Old Trafford since 2006, who on Wednesday night still seemed to be drained by the emotional frenzy of Sunday’s north London derby, who lost players every four or five minutes to injury and who at times regarded the ball in their box with all the decisiveness of a group of nervous Victorian maidens spying a butterfly on their first jaunt out with a raffish lepidopterist.
To which I said: What the fuck? I mean, I am known for conjuring some crazy shit out of nowhere, some of my work emails are epic; but what Wilson wrote is just really, really, out there. Where in the world did that come from? What was going through his mind when he came up with that one?
I was not entirely sure what lepidopterist was. Turns out it is someone who collects and studies butterflies or moths.
So it was with raffish. Rakish is a word I am familiar with, but raffish was a bit beyond me. It turns out that they are almost the same thing, as Google saith, it is means some one who is "unconventional and slightly disreputable, especially in an attractive manner". Rakish is a synonym of raffish, bohemian, unconventional. It looks as though use of the word hit its peak around 1950, which might explain why it was so unfamiliar to me.
So yes, that is one for the refrigerator door. But the beauty of it is that it really is a perfect simile, because it describes the Arsenal defense on Wednesday night so well. I mean....I want to try to improve on it somehow, to try and to explain it deeper. But I can't. It's perfect. Absolutely perfect. Well written and a perfect description. It just about took my breath away.
So, I am happy and honored to award Johnathan Wilson, of The Guardian, the 2018 Nicholas Marickovich Simile of the Year Award. I extend to him my warmest congratulations, like a fan fiction devotee giving their favorite author a pair of mittens that they knitted themselves with Merino wool in the coffee shop, out of love.
I know, I know. But I have never won the Nicholas Marickovich Simile of the Year Award. Johnathan Wilson has. So again, well done Johnathan!
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