The Fiver | Episode 57 of the still popular Ben Arfa v Emery series

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The Fiver is not one of those highfalutin organs that would admit to nicking gags from France’s best-known sports daily, so we’re here and now coining the name Panic Saint-Germain. It’s a name that gained fresh relevance this week, of course, but the collapse that seems most pertinent happened two years ago, when Unai Emery was in charge of the jittery marketeers. Because after PSG surrendered a 4-0 first-leg lead to Barcelona in 2017, one of their unused substitutes, Hatem Ben Arfa, is said to have rebuked Emery for laying the foundations of the capitulation by “spreading stress”.

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