The Tragical Comedy of Beach Ball 1 - 0 Liverpool

Every now and then, the EPL gets down from its straitjacketed stiff-upper-lip pedestal and delivers a truly farcical moment. These moments have become quite prevalent this season and are making otherwise academic title chases quite interesting, but have so far have been mostly limited to managerial rants and antics off the pitch. Today's Sunderland 1-0 win over Liverpool provided a rare moment on it.


The sole goal came when the shot deflected off a beach ball lying on the six yard line and pretty much mindf*cked Pepe Reina who couldn't decide whether to go after the football or the giant red balloon. For the record, he chose to ignore the football and wave a feeble hand at the beach ball, whether to curse it or to try and save it in the hope that the referee would be colour blind and think it is the football he's saved we'll never know. He failed anyway.

The supremely sweet irony lies in the fact that the beach ball was.. a 'Pool branded ball thrown by an industriously moronic 'Pool fan. ('Pool, beach - heh)

I feel sorry for the poor kid. His moment of stupidity has in all likelihood caused him to be disowned by his family by now and has probably dared not make the trip back to his hometown for fear of being lynched and quartered. Because, like every other self-respecting set of fans, the Liverpool supporters would have invariably laid the entire blame of the loss on him and his ball, completely ignoring the fact that they were second best and deserved to lose anyway. In fact, if Liverpool fall short of the title by a whopping ten-fifteen points (which is looking entirely possible right now), they'll blame the whole thing on that ball.

But maybe they have a right to be paranoid. Maybe the whole thing was planned all along. But who would be so insidiously devious to come up with such a cunning plan to crush the morale of the Liverpool players?
http://i37.tinypic.com/2njg5tl.gif
Who else?