Roberto Mancini nicked the crown jewel of Fergie’s post-match phrase weaponry yesterday after his team’s exhilarating comeback against Chelsea. Mancini explained to the press that after Gary Cahill’s deflected strike gave Roberto Di Matteo’s side the lead, the remainder of the high-stakes match “seemed like squeaky bum time”.
In a bizarre coincidence, Manchester City colossus Yaya Toure was quizzed about his knowledge of the term in the lead up to the Chelsea match. Clearly it hasn’t reached the realms of La Liga just yet. You can watch the midfielder’s bamboozled response in the video above.
The hallowed phrase, conjuring up delightful imagery of a pair of buttocks squirming nervously in a creaky seat, was the brainchild of Sir Alex Ferguson, with the term first seeing daylight back in March 2003.
With Manchester United and Arsenal wrestling it out for top-spot, Fergie confessed his anxiety in an interview, saying: “It’s squeaky bum time and we’ve got the experience now to cope.”
Fergie’s fine coinage – perhaps up there with his treble-winning season in 1999 – is also acknowledged by the Oxford English Dictionary who define ‘Squeaky bum time’ as “the tense final stages of a league competition, especially from the point of view of the leaders”.
Imitation is often said to be the greatest form of flattery, but will Fergie see the funny side of Mancini’s borrowed wordplay? OTP hopes for a tit-for-tat mimicking battle for the rest of the season, starting with Fergie donning a beautiful light blue scarf against Fulham next Monday. In turn, we would like to see Roberto chewing gum in his dugout with relentless gusto.
