Have you heard of Gematria? I’ll give you a clue, its not an East European country between Serbia and Albania. Its not a disease of the lower intestine of arthritic type. Nor is it a new form of yoga in which you eat kale whilst sitting in a sauna on your head.

Its about numbers. You assign numerical values to letters, like A=1, B=2… I’m sure even you get the idea. Although these really have to be hebrew letters, or it don’t work. So you look at a sentence, which may be (in Hebrew, but I’ll translate it just for you); “Blessed be the Lord who took us out of slavery and gave us Association Football. Amen”. And you add up, say the values of the first letters of each word… and that comes to… 64. Which is the same number as the sentence: “my penis is exceptionally large”. And so that must be true. God said it. In numbers.

I didn’t say it either made any sense nor had any use. It just is.

Because we love numbers. They help us understand the world. Even if its just to realise that the car wash bastard just short-changed me. Numbers tell us. So its only ‘natural’ to attribute superstitious (13!!!) or supernatural powers to numerical coincidences or sequences. Well, some of us do.

Yesterday in the Premiership, 4 games of football were played. For Man City this was an important day for their quest for a top 4 finish. So they beat Stoke 4-nil. There’s nothing significant in that alone. Everyone beats Stoke 4-nil. Though its perhaps rather significant if you are a Stoke player or fan, in that those numbers say: YOU ARE FUCKING USELESS; GET A GRIP AND A DEFENCE BUT NOT NECESSARILY IN THAT ORDER.

In the massive game between Liverpool and Newcastle, for the former as they chase a top 4 finish and the latter to try and get to 4th from bottom to avoid relegation, they split 4 goals between them. A somewhat better result for the Geordies than the Scousers.

Chelsea put 4 past Bournemouth and Southampton did the same at Villa.

Four matches, four lots of four. Teams playing 4-4-2 (made that up, just for effect).

Luis Suarez played for Barcelona yesterday, scored 4 goals. For the second time in a week. Shame he’s not very good. Even bigger shame he didn’t go to Arsenal instead. Though luckily, according to Wenger, they don’t need a world class striker anyway. Who does?

So now I’m going to spend the rest of the day translating all the newspapers to hebrew and looking for the number 4 in any way shape or form, and trying to work out how that can mean “Leicester will lose at Swansea”. I feel that’s good use of my time.

Happy Sunday (39)

A (1) xxxxx