Tunnel of Love: Where would every Premier League manager take you on a first date?

Love. What is it? Where does it come from? How does it taste?

It’s been 1,750 years since Saint Valentine was shot to death by Cupid’s bow in the Valentine’s Day Massacre so that we could honour his memory by expressing our one-of-a-kind love for somebody who we find geographically convenient through the medium of schmaltzy greetings cards designed by somebody you've never met. Nothing says romance like big business.

Here at JOTB, we love love. We love it like the Honey Monster loves honey, like Milhouse loves Lisa, like Robson loves Jerome, and we think everybody deserves their shot at finding the one. Everybody, regardless of age or race or creed or anything, should have their chance at finding that special somebody who makes you go weak at the knees and gooey in the centre.

And that includes professional football managers.

So, because it’s Valentine’s Day, and because we’re short on content, here’s where every Premier League boss would take you on a first date.

Unai Emery

Unai whisks you away to a midrange tapas bar in a faceless suburb in his Skoda estate. You make forced small talk in broken English for a while, waiting for your patatas bravas. He’s cordial and enthusiastic, and he smells quite nice, even if he does look like a low budget B-movie vampire.

Things are going well, not great, but well. Then he gives you a mischievous smirk and asks if you want to go back to his to watch ‘Picky Blunders’.

You politely decline.

Eddie Howe

Fifth-row seats at a Take That concert. He would’ve bought front row, he tells you bashfully, but didn’t want you to strain your neck craning it too far upwards. He hopes you don’t mind. You tell him fifth row is perfect and you settle in for a night of man-band wonderment with Barlow, Owen, and the other one.

During the encore they soar into Rule the World and you glance across at Eddie as a single tear rolls down his cheek. He catches your gaze and smiles, embarrassed.

Could it be magic? Yes.

Chris Hughton

Turns out that Chris Hughton used to write a column for Workers’ Revolutionary Party publication News Line back in the 70s, so I can only assume that his idea of an ideal first date is reading the Communist Manifesto by candlelight and bringing death to our Capitalist overlords. Dreamy.

Joking aside, the Brighton boss has been eager to distance himself from the Trotskyist elements of the paper and seems like a proper standup guy. If everybody took his view of healthcare, social welfare, and the education system, the world would be a much better place.

Sean Dyche

Pint of bitter and a steak and ale pie (garden peas, none of that mushy shite) down the Dog and Duck then back to his for a look at his new power-washer and a Scrapheap Challenge marathon that he counts as foreplay.

Lovely.

Neil Warnock

Two words: Local. Spoons.

Maurizio Sarri

Maurizio insists that you dine al fresco for some strange reason.

Halfway through his eleventh tab you get up to leave, asking the waiter to put your cannelloni in a doggy bag.

It’s the middle of f*cking February.

Roy Hodgson

Roy picks you up at around seven and promises your mother he’ll have you home by ten.

First you swing by his favourite roadside diner to go halfsies on a knickerbocker glory, and then it’s off to the local dancehall for a night of hand jives and lindy hops with absolutely no heavy petting.

True to his word, he drops you off at your front porch just as the clock strikes ten.

You get into bed and write all about it in your secret diary, scribbling the words ‘Roy Forever’ in a cavalcade of misshapen love hearts.

Marco Silva

You’ve been trying to nab a date with Marco for ages. He’s Iberian and successful and looks a bit like a cousin of Joey Tribbiani’s that came stay with him for a week on Friends.

At last, you manage to land your man and things started off brilliantly. He bought you  a beautiful bouquet of flowers and wowed you with his recommendation from the cocktail menu; a pricey little number called a ‘Richarlison’.

But now the starters have been cleared and the conversation has run out of steam. He tries to breathe some life into the conversation by bringing up a mutual admiration of David Moyes, but you just sigh and gaze out of the window longingly, wishing you were having a chip shop tea outside a bookies’ with Big Sam.

Claudio Ranieri

It seems like you have been climbing this winding mountain pass for hours, with the top on Claudio’s elegant coupe pulled down and the warm breeze rippling your headscarf. Above you the Swiss Alps loom large, and beneath you is a patchwork quilt of vineyards and sleepy villages.

Finally, you arrive in the charmingly cobbled piazza of one such townlet, tranquil and silent but for the delicate birdsong.

It’s then that Claudio tells you that he has booked you in for a couple’s cuckoo-clock-making class.

While you’re carving away amateurishly at an intricate wing pattern, Claudio slips out unnoticed, and the next time you raise your head from your endearingly shoddy handiwork he’s stood in the doorway, bathed in sunlight, holding an exact replica of the Premier League trophy he whittled for you himself from a single branch of elm.

“Claudio”, you gasp. “You little tinker.”

Jan Siewart

Jan’s new in town so he asks you to choose where to go. You decide on a hip little street food vendor that specialises in currywurst to make him feel at home, but when you get there you find that he reminds you too much of your ex, David.

David came from Dortmund with charismatic glint in his eye and a cool tracksuit, the same tracksuit Jan is wearing right now.

This is never going to work.

Claude Puel

Claude rings you and asks you if you’d like to accompany him on a tour of Leicester’s famous Abbey Pumping Station Museum, exhibiting the industrial, technological and scientific heritage of the city.

You tell him you’d rather stick hot pins in your eyes.

“Fair enough”, he says.

Jürgen Klopp

You meet Jürgen in an basement bar somewhere in a hip part of town, all ambient lighting and exposed brickwork.

He recommends to you a fabulous pale ale that you simply have to try, and then you just talk. And he listens. Hours slide by without awkward pauses or cursory glances at your phone and, before you know it, the bespectacled barkeep (with a tattoo of a stag’s head on his forearm) is wiping down your table and wishing you a safe journey home.

You step outside into the soft sodium glow of a streetlight and Jurgen gives you a hug.

“Let’s does this again”, he grins. Let’s, Jürgen, let’s.

Pep Guardiola

A virtuoso first date.

Pep sweeps you away on his private jet to a Michelin-starred restaurant beneath the Eiffel Tower, followed by a night of opera at the Palais Garnier.

After a moonlit stroll along the Seine he presents you with a flawless pearl necklace before a string quartet drift by on a bateau, playing a breathtaking rendition of Blue Moon.

You turn back around and find Pep, now dressed as a naval captain, holding a Siberian tiger cub that he wants you to have.

“Pep”, you exclaim. “How you can you afford all of this?”

“Oil”, he replies.

Ole Gunnar Solskjær

A guided tour of Old Trafford, complete with lengthy perusal of the gift shop where he buys you a teddy bear with a little club crest embroidered on its stomach that he, hysterically, calls Sheringham, followed by dinner and drinks in the Hotel Football bar.

During the meal he says the phrase “playing under Sir Alex” 37 times and tells you that he bleeds red.

We all do, Ole, we all do.

Rafa Benítez

A Wednesday night salsa class in the sports hall of a leisure centre. It has to be Wednesday because that’s when the kids, Ayoze and Jonjo, are with their mother.

You get there and Rafa chats warmly and with a worrying familiarity to Sue, the instructor. You get the impression that you are not the first date that Rafa has brought to Wednesday night salsa.

Things start well, but as you practice your cucarachas and abenicos you realise that all, and I mean all, he talks about his is abusive ex, Mike: a flashy businessman who put his work before Rafa’s feelings.

You tell him you’re no rebound fling and collect your things as Sue stares on, horrified.

“Wait”, Rafa pleads. “You’re my lift home.”

Ralph Hasenhüttl

Just like your date with Jürgen - but not as good.

Mauricio Pocchetino

Mauricio apologises as you walk hand in hand along the bank of secluded meander in some quaint river or other. He wanted to do more than this you see, but money is tight and he’s about to move house, and things are all kind of getting on top of him.

Before you stretches an idyllic pathway of bluebells and leafy beeches, their branches overhanging your head to form a sylvan archway, punctured only by the occasional stream of rapturous sunlight, as if the angels themselves are peeking in on your wander.

“Don’t worry”, you respond. “Just having you here is enough.”

Mauricio looks away shiftily…

Javi Gracia

Don’t know why but I get an indoor crazy golf vibe from Javi Gracia. One of those pseudo-edgy, graffiti-on-the-walls, dim-lit places in the upper levels of a shopping centre that are actually just an excuse to get properly mortal.

At first you’re a little sceptical of his reserved continental manner, but a couple of Jägerbombs and a well-timed birdie through a windmill later, you’re loving life.

Javi’s a natural, but remains modest and unassuming throughout, even as you triple bogey a gaping crocodile’s mouth.

You weren’t expecting this. Every time he looks at you, you blush, and every hole he sinks, your heart flutters a little. You’re smitten, infatuated with Javi Gracia, the crazy golf lothario.

Manuel Pellegrini

A small restaurant in a Santiago back alley where the walls are papered with photographs of Chilean celebrities who have dined there in evenings gone by… renowned figures like Lucho Gatica and Marcelo Ríos.

Manuel knows the chef, and after a solemn embrace that blossoms into a wry smile between the two of them, insists that you try the curanto. It is to die for.

Then you and he work your way through a couple of bottles of chardonnay from the vineyards of Limari, and he regales you with tales of life under Pinochet.

Had to Google loads about Chile for this one.

Nuno Espirito Santo

Portugal. He bloody loves Portugal.