SUNDERLAND manager Gustavo Poyet has learned the meaning of numbers like 32, three and a half, and 80,000, one day too late.
Club officials explained the abstract mathematical objects after Poyet agreed to pay Jermain Defoe 14 million pounds until 2018, figures that Poyet came up with because he liked how they felt when he said them.
A Sunderland spokesman said: “Gus could drop numbers into conversation like he knew what they meant, but to him they were just meaningless floating signifiers. He’s like a human fruit machine.”
“With hindsight, we should have guessed he was winging it when I asked him how many sugars he wanted and he said ‘nine million’.”
Poyet welcomed his new-found understanding of integers, fractions, and basic adding up.
He said: “I now know the meaning of numbers like one, which is the number of league goals Jermain scored last season, and 32, which is Jermain’s age in years, and 600, which is how many pounds I once paid for a Twix.”
There is still a possibility that the deal may fall through when the concept of Sunderland is explained to Jermain Defoe.
