Latest news with #OneFlewOverTheCuckoo'sNest
Daily Mirror
06-05-2025
- Sport
- Daily Mirror
Tom Cleverley was never going to survive Watford sack after deluded decision
Tom Cleverley's craven sacking by Watford leaves English football's most fickle club searching for their 11th head coach since 2020. And after the third-longest reign under Gino Pozzo's ownership was sawn off at 14 months, social media comedians have fresh material to feed their laughing-stock gags. Hornets boss Cleverley walked the plank after his end-of-season appraisal concluded, ludicrously, that failure to reach the play-offs with a squad among the bookies' pre-season favourites for relegation was somehow a sackable offence. To finish 14th with 57 points - one place higher and with one more point than last season - was not the true measure of Cleverley's rule. He was the first coach since Javi Gracia, who led Watford to the FA Cup final six years ago, to reconnect the fanbase with their team. But as another decent man is tossed overboard, Cleverley joins the Hornets' favourite son Luther Blissett - whose appointment as club ambassador was quietly discontinued, without explanation, earlier this season - as surplus to requirements. Pozzo was plotting to sack Cleverley in late January, lining up former Villarreal coach Juan Martin Rojo (also known as Pacheta), only for a tsunami of fan protests and the Spaniard running into work permit complications allegedly preventing the coup. In a hasty U-turn, Pozzo issued a statement on the morning of Watford's 2-1 defeat at Coventry claiming the Hornets hierarchy were 'committed to support him and look forward to the challenges ahead together.' Wayne Rooney names two ex-teammates he was surprised to see become managers Premier League promise over FA Cup final broken due to Man Utd and Tottenham That pledge can now be filed in the same folder as the reneged promise to back Rob Edwards 'come hell or high water' - before Edwards was binned after just 10 games in 2022. When Cleverley presided over a textbook home win in February against doomed arch-rivals Luton Town, who were relegated on the last day of term, he looked safe for at least the remaining 12 games. But as Watford's hopes of a top-six finish faded, the twitchiest trigger finger in English football was reaching for the holster again. At face value, Watford's results since Christmas - 20 points from the last 24 games and just nine points from the last available 36 - left Cleverley vulnerable. But if the Hornets power-brokers genuinely believed he could reach the play-offs with only two fit strikers - 19-year-old greenhorn Mamadou Doumbia and the perpetually infuriating Vakoun Bayo - they were not just deluded. They were living in cloud cuckoo land or One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest territory. Bayo finished the season as top scorer with 10 goals, but five of them came in a single week, with four in the same game at Sheffield Wednesday six months ago, a freak show which has long been dismissed by despairing fans as a mirage in the desert. Notably, neither Pozzo nor executive chairman Scott Duxbury put their names to the statement announcing Cleverley's departure, leaving sporting director Gian Luca Nani as mouthpiece for yet another dollop of corporate hogwash from Vicarage Road. 'We thank Tom for his service – not just in his role as Head Coach but for everything he has given Watford as a player and member of staff,' said Nani, trotting out the party line. 'But the time has come for a change and to build on what we believe is a young and talented squad that will have benefitted from the experience of the Championship this season. 'It has been a privilege to work closely with Tom; to understand how he sees the game and his enthusiasm for everything here. He deserves to be recognised for this and I'm sure he will have a bright future in the game. Tom will always be part of Watford in recognition of all that he has achieved over so many years.' The former England midfielder, who won 13 caps for the Three Lions and represented Team GB at the London 2012 Olympics, issued a dignified statement after the axe fell. He said: 'After nine-and-a-half years of my life - as a loanee, player, captain, academy coach and head coach - my time at the club has come to an end. "After the sadness wears off, I will forever have a feeling of gratitude and happiness towards the club and the place and people of Watford. To have built a connection with the players and supporters over the last 14 months has been special and the achievement I'm most proud about. "To see the development of our key players, young players and academy players has been an incredibly rewarding part of my job and their progress in the game will always be something I look out for. To the club I'm grateful for the opportunity, the players for their efforts, and the supporters myself and my family will forever appreciate the love and support you have given me on this journey. "I repeat I will be sad that it's over, but full of happiness that it ever happened. And I hope it's not the final time our paths cross. You 'Orns." With 35-year-old Cleverley's departure, it leaves Portsmouth's John Mousinho as the season's sole survivor among head coaches and managers in the lower half of the Championship. Join our new WhatsApp community and receive your daily dose of Mirror Football content. We also treat our community members to special offers, promotions, and adverts from us and our partners. If you don't like our community, you can check out any time you like. If you're curious, you can read our Privacy Notice.
The Sun
29-04-2025
- Entertainment
- The Sun
Jaws, The Godfather II and Monty Python mean I think 1975 was the greatest year ever for cinema – so do you agree?
THE greatest year for movies? It has to be 1975. Half a century ago, cinema was changed for ever by the release of five films so important that no one would dare remake them. 23 23 23 23 It is impossible to improve on Steven Spielberg 's nerve-shredding Jaws, the first summer blockbuster. Who would have imagined that a film about a killer shark, one you don't see for most of the two hours, could smash box office records. In the same year, people queued to see arguably the best film ever — One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest. The darkly comic drama starring Jack Nicholson as a criminal who feigns mental illness for what he thinks will be an easier time on a psychiatric ward won five Oscars. Nicholson, the man Leo DiCaprio wants to be, has never been better. And while I'm no fan of the sequel plague, something director Francis Ford Coppola recently apologised for, that trend was begun by his brilliant The Godfather Part II. Never has a follow-up come so close to matching the original as the Al Pacino gangster epic, which arrived here in 1975. If that is not enough to sway your opinion, surreal comedy went global when the Monty Python team released their first movie together, Monty Python And The Holy Grail. Sure, Life Of Brian later topped it, but there is no doubt that knights saying 'ni' and fighting a giant killer rabbit set future script writers on a more unpredictable path. And then there is the campest, most unlikely cult hit British cinema has produced — The Rocky Horror Picture Show. Monty Python's John Cleese and Terry Gilliam reunite with Michael Palin for 81st birthday as fans praise the 'silly men' Still touring as a stage show around the world, Richard O'Brien 's sci-fi horror musical blended genres and genders in a way no one else could have imagined. Other movies enjoying their 50th anniversaries this year include The Who's rock opera Tommy, Goldie Hawn's Shampoo and bank robbery classic Dog Day Afternoon. Now, I can already hear millennials and Gen Z' ers bleating that their eras were far better. The last decade? Barbenheimer was a fantastic marketing ploy, but Oppenheimer isn't even director Christopher Nolan 's best creation and the Barbie film will age even less well than the doll. Millennials have a decent claim with 1994, which brought us Pulp Fiction, The Shawshank Redemption, Four Weddings And A Funeral, The Lion King and Forrest Gump. 23 23 23 My generation, Gen X, will rightly have fond memories of 1984, when we were treated to Ghostbusters, Beverly Hills Cop, Footloose, The Terminator, Gremlins, A Nightmare On Elm Street and The Karate Kid. I could watch all of them again and again. None, though, are as daring as those who went before them in 1975. A then relatively unknown director, Spielberg was given the budget to stick an animatronic great white shark into the sea, something that had never been tried before. It promptly sank due to the salt water. The film includes a long monologue from Robert Shaw 's drunk sea dog Quint recounting being surrounded by the 'lifeless eyes, black eyes, like a doll's eyes' of the sharks that circled him after his ship was torpedoed in the Second World War. 23 23 23 With the planned 55-day shoot stretching to 159 days, and the budget more than doubling, Spielberg thought his career was sunk. But the risk-taking more than paid off, because Jaws beat all previous movies financially by earning £355million. In today's money, that's more than £3billion. It's also hard to imagine a movie such as One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest, with a psycho nurse tormenting mental patients, finishing second at today's box office. No, what we get is a churn of remakes, prequels and sequels. If cinema is ever going to surpass 1975, Hollywood is going to need bigger balls. 23 23 23 23 23 HOLD ON A SEC…WHAT ABOUT 1999? By Dulcie Pearce OH to be back in the Nineties. The decade when the music was superb, the fashion so cool that teens are wearing it again now and just before the internet fried all our brains. 23 23 23 23 But, most importantly, it held the year that saw the best films ever released: 1999. The variety of box office beauties from that year reads like the results of Googling 'best films of all time'. The incredible movie list includes Fight Club, Notting Hill, American Beauty, The Sixth Sense, Toy Story 2, The Blair Witch Project, The Matrix and Being John Malkovich. I see your One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest and raise you The Talented Mr Ripley. This is a film so breathtakingly dark and alluring that it legally must be watched when regularly repeated on ITV2. How I wish that cinema could party like it's 1999 again. 23 23 23 23
